“M4,” I whisper, my cheek resting on his chest while the rest of my body conforms to his hard lines. “You do things by four so many times, I’ve noticed. Why four?”
We’re almost to our fourth time together. Are we over then too?
He exhales and sips the last of his wine, sets the empty cup aside, and we stare at the Chicago skyline. “I have a temper.” He stares into the distance, his profile thoughtful.
I reach for his hand on his knee and link my fingers through his.
He looks out, his voice coming lower, husky, almost regretful. “It was worse when I was young. Control is something that’s always taken me some effort. The staff kept quitting because nobody could keep me under control; the more they tried, the angrier I became. But my mother was the embodiment of patience. I guess this is why she could tolerate my father. She was patient, far more understanding than anyone should probably be. When I lost it, my mother said to count to three, and I’d argue that I had. That I’d counted to three—it didn’t work. So one day she pulled me aside, worried because my father has a temper too—she could predict the worst for me and the ways I seemed to push his buttons. And she told me I’d need to count to four. And that’s what I’d do. More than anything else, that’s what came with being a Saint. If you were asked for three minutes, you gave four. If you had to count to three, you counted to four. I do things in fours.”
“You even like foursomes.”
He lifts his brows. “Not with you. I enjoy taking my time with you.” He runs his hand up my spine, under his shirt. I shiver.
Shiver and want and melt.
And most of all, I’m crumbling to pieces inside and eaten alive with guilt over knowing such an intimate detail about him.
Heavy with feelings I can’t even process, I roll to my back to put a little distance between us. He props himself up on one elbow and flicks open the button of my top, and oh, god help me but there’s definitely more melting, melting, melting. I don’t protest, don’t move, only helplessly watch him pop a second button. Then three. Four. While the body beneath the shirt he’s parting open starts trembling in every centimeter.
I want to tease him, to lighten the intensity of the wild ache building in me. I whisper, barely managing to get it out, on a breath, “Take your time with me. It doesn’t bore me one bit.”
Four buttons. Five. And six. Until he spreads my top open and leans forward to kiss the center of my throat. The centers of my breasts. The center of my abdomen. And the center of my sex. Four kisses, then he nuzzles me between my legs. “I’m not one bit bored with you either, Rachel.”
I remember being so shy before. This time, when he flicks his tongue across my clit, I moan and spread my thighs wide open, rocking my hips up wantonly as I whisper, “Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm . . .”
“Hmm,” I whisper an hour later as he nibbles my ear, waking me from a little doze I was taking in the cabin.
“Your ear,” he rasps against the object of his delicious attentions. “I’m partial to it, and it matches your other one.”
I stretch with a smile, and he eases back to look down and watch me.
“I love it here on your yacht, it’s so peaceful,” I say, walking my fingers up his tanned chest.
“I’m never here alone. Too peaceful. I can hear my thoughts too well.” He frowns as he gets up from the bed and heads for his clothes. Dreamily, I roll to my side and stare at his absolutely mesmerizing physique as he jumps into his slacks. “Are you happy at Edge?”
I shake off the sleep fog, then sit up, one sheet clutched to my chest as I feel around in the bed for my underwear. “Why do you ask?”
“Rumors are it’s coming down.” He rams his arms into his shirtsleeves, measuring my reaction as he slowly starts to button up.
“I hope not. I like Edge very much.” Somehow I manage to find my panties and bra, and have to drop the sheet to get them on. “Why? Are you venturing into publishing . . . ? ” I ask, afraid.
He’s quiet as he tucks his shirt in, adds his belt—becomes Malcolm Saint right before my eyes.
“No, I’m not buying the magazine—that’s not where I see the money going. Businesses require time and vision. Reviving businesses is not where my passion is.” He looks at me for a moment. “Is owning your own business a dream of yours?”
“No, I want to write. I want to earn a good living so I can write more. More than more.”
He smiles. “You’re so little. I get a kick imagining those little hands typing up your big ideas.”
The fact that he thinks about me at all makes me butter.
He watches me dress. “So you see your future at that magazine even if you had a broader range of options?” he asks.
I’m taken aback. A grain of concern suddenly drops, like a tiny, uncomfortable little pin, in my belly. I think over my answer carefully.
“I guess . . . in a general sense, my ideal future is to feel safe in my career and, I guess, in my life. I want my mom to be and feel safe, and if I could help make the city physically safer for others as well, it’d be a dream. That’s the kind of thing I want to write about. But that kind of journalism takes time, and Edge has given me better opportunities than anywhere else. I feel linked to it, somehow. If it grew and I could grow right with it, that’d be a dream, it really would,” I admit.
He comes to sit on the bed and he edges forward, his expression intense. “Like, what would you like to do for the city? What’s your idea?” He tucks my hair back from my forehead with one large hand, searching my face.
“I don’t know. Change doesn’t happen unless there’s a huge collective effort, unless you’re very powerful.”
His lips quirk and his eyes glimmer with a predatory light that never fails to thrill me. “You’re sleeping with a very powerful man.”
I bite my lip. “Yes, yes I am.” I laugh and feel myself blush. He cups my cheek, and once again, I tuck my face into his palm, seeking his touch. “You’re not how I imagined you’d be, and I have a good solid imagination,” I whisper.
“That’s because you’re all good. Terrible things made me.”
“Oh no.” I laugh, but he doesn’t laugh. He’s quiet. “We’re all made of good and terrible things.”
“Are we?” He studies me again. “What do you see in me?”