Free Beauty and Pain by Harlem Dae Page A

choice. Black, yes, it would be black, new, to match his crisp suits, and he’d drive like the wind so he didn’t miss the train.
    So he didn’t miss seeing me.
    That was a nice thought, him feeling the same about me as I did about him. He’d given no indication that he wanted to fuck me, his glances more along the lines of eyeing the goods but maybe not wanting to eat them. But, God, how I wanted him to eat me .
    I pulled into the station car park and got out to surreptitiously look around for black Audis and convertibles. There weren’t any, of course there weren’t, but it was fun all the same. After making sure my parking permit was showing on the dashboard, I secured my car and walked toward the payment windows. There were small queues, perhaps three or four people in each, and I tagged onto the end of one and stared around some more.
    He wasn’t in any of them.
    A swift gust of wind slapped one side of my head, sending loose strands of my hair whipping across my face. I reached up to shift them, momentarily blinded as I fought to tuck them behind my ear.
    “Here, let me do that?” a man asked.
    I turned to find him standing behind me. All six feet of him towered there, and he looked down with a quirk to his lips and his dark eyebrows raised in question. I blinked to cover my shock, making sure I didn’t let my mouth hang open. I struggled to find anything remotely sexy to say—after all, hadn’t his offer been a sexy one? Intimate? People didn’t ask if they could touch your hair if they didn’t know you, did they?
    But he does know me. Sort of.
    My stomach churned with the kind of excitement all my dreams coming true at once brought. I swallowed, hoping the nerves I suddenly felt weren’t displayed on my face.
    He was so bloody beautiful. Eyes darker than the most taboo sin, the stubble on his chin just as dark. His lips were a color between red and pink, not scarlet or rose or anything I could put a name to. He appeared to have broken his nose at some point, although it wasn’t so skewed as to make it obvious, and with a rigid jaw and a look to him that spoke of a man who could stand up for himself if he had the need, I thought he might be a boxer.
    “Or would that be considered too forward?” he asked. “You know, me taking that hair…” He held up one hand, finger and thumb poised as though he itched to sweep the hair away.
    “No, no,” I managed. “You can take it if you want.”
    Take it in your hand and wrap it around your fist, tug it hard, make my head do what I’ve fantasized it would do.
    He reached out and brushed my face free of stray strands with his fingertips, his skin dusting over mine and sending my knees weak.
    “That’s better, I can see you now,” he said, hand lingering mid-air.
    His voice was one that could send a girl insane with want, need, and every other sexual emotion all at once. Like the darkness of his eyes, it reeled me in, coaxing me to respond.
    “Thank you,” I said, annoyed that nothing else had come out. I wanted to say so many things, had rehearsed them time and time again until I knew every scenario off by heart. But this scenario—no, I hadn’t dreamt of this one.
    “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he said, lowering his hand back to his side. “You know, touch you in some way. But you don’t do that kind of thing, do you? At least I don’t.”
    “But you just did,” I said, sounding out of breath. And I was. It was proving difficult to draw air in.
    “I did, and I don’t regret it.”
    “Neither do I.”
    Someone coughed. “Next!”
    I swiveled to see the ticket line had diminished and a large gap yawned between me and the payment window. I wished I could say ‘fuck the damn ticket, I’m just talking to this man here’, but I dutifully approached the window and apologized. I paid, received my stub then turned to find the man had gone. I glanced about, hoping to spot him in another queue, but he wasn’t in any of them.