Iris Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dair Teaser

  Mr. Beautiful Teaser

  IRIS

  R.K. LILLEY

  CHAPTER ONE

  DAIR

  TWO MONTHS AFTER THE FALLING OUT

  I had a bit of a nervous breakdown after Iris left without a trace.

  It was the strangest thing, but I suddenly didn’t like my own company so much.

  In fact, I began to hate it, even at home.

  I still went to the gym at the exact same time, every single day, in the small hope that she’d show again. She didn’t, but I kept going, because I wanted to see her again.

  She hadn’t been in my life for long, but I missed her.

  Being that I couldn’t stand my own company, I began to reconnect with old friends, people I hadn’t talked to since the divorce, the friends I’d chalked up to losses in the breakup; Tammy’s assets when we’d been chopping our combined life in half.

  For some reason, they all seemed very happy to hear from me. I felt like a jerk for going into full hermit mode and attempted to have something of a social life again.

  I’d often meet up with another writer friend for coffee or lunch after my workout, telling myself that if I just kept working at it—being a normal person, with normal social habits—it wouldn’t feel so forced.

  And it was true. Two months post Iris, and I was looking forward to having coffee with my friend, Benji.

  He was already sitting at a table as I entered the café a few shops down from my gym.

  I waved at him, saw he had an extra coffee for me, and bypassed the line to go directly to him.

  He slid me the cup as I sat down.

  “You make your deadline?” I asked him. Like me, he was a neurotic, work obsessed writer, and so we always had something to talk about. It was good. Distractions were good. The more the better. The more plates spinning the better, these days.

  He nodded with a grin, pushing his thick glasses up high on his nose, and sweeping his light brown hair away from his face. He was a good seven years my junior, with a lean, nerdy look that I thought suited him. He wore it well. “How about you? I know you were early on your publisher’s deadline, but how is your indie project coming along?”

  “Good. Good. My word count is flowing faster than ever. I should be done in about four weeks.”

  He whistled. “Will you sell it to the publisher, if they decide they like it and make you a good offer?”

  I shrugged. “I doubt it. This whole project is an experiment for me. It won’t be much fun if I don’t get to at least see how making seventy percent compares to making, yanno, eight.”

  He shook his head, smiling wryly. “You’re forgetting your advance. You can’t tell me they don’t give you plenty up front.”

  I shrugged again. “Like I said, this one is an experiment. I doubt even my publisher can sway me, and it’s not exactly written in the genre I’m known for, so they wouldn’t write me a big check for it, anyway.”

  “You’re probably right.” He sighed. “I envy you the flexibility to do what you want. Some of us are still writing just to pay the bills.”

  We sipped coffee and talked shop for a bit. We were just getting ready to leave when he suddenly trailed off mid-sentence, looking at something behind me.

  I turned to see what it was, and an electric fire went off in my brain at the sight that met my eyes.

  Setting my jaw hard, I turned carefully away.

  So the back of that blonde woman in line resembled Iris, so what?

  This wasn’t the first time my brain had tricked me into thinking she was somewhere close.

  But it was never her. I’d see some young blonde thing out of the corner of my eye and turn to stare until I met a stranger’s blank stare.

  Not today. Today I was going to ignore the urge to obsess. It wasn’t her, just some young woman with a great body. She wasn’t even dressed correctly, wearing a pleated skirt and a belted, collared blouse.

  Iris wouldn’t be caught dead in business attire.

  “Holy fucking shit, man. Did you see that chick?” Benji asked, his tone reverent.

  My mouth quirked up in a rueful smile. Even the most civilized men turned into mouth-breathers if a hot enough woman walked into the room.

  “I did.” I took a long sip of coffee, watching Benji, who just kept watching the woman in line, forcing myself, with great effort, to stifle the urge to turn around again. “Nice ass,” I noted.

  “Yes. But you need to turn around and check out the rest of her. Huge titties, man.”

  I rolled my eyes. There was a bit of a generation gap between us. My generation thought shit like that, but then we kept it to ourselves, like grown-ups.

  “Big soft tits,” he continued, “in a semi-sheer white blouse. Fuuuck. She’s got a tan. How many articles you think I need to write to bang a chick that out of my league?”

  “A lot,” I mused, still staying firmly with my back to the woman in question.

  “Like how many is a lot?”

  “What do you make? Like five hundred an article? I’d say about two thousand of those, minimum. If she’s as hot as she looked from the back, though, you’d need to be well into the millionaire club before she’d give you the time of day, so more like five thousand articles, realistically.”

  His eyes were wide as he finally looked away from the hot chick and back to me. “Really? That is fucking depressing, dude.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. But the really sad part is you’d have to spend a good chunk of that cash on her, if you wanted her to stay around for any length of time.”

  He shook his head. “I think you’ve gone cynical, after Tammy.”

  I couldn’t dispute that. Not a bit. “You may be right. What can I say? Divorce messes with your head.” I didn’t bring up Iris. I hadn’t told him about her. “Why don’t you go ask her out, if you’re so certain I’m wrong?”

  He laughed. “I didn’t say you were wrong, I said you were cynical, and so am I. That chick is out of my league, period. I need more money to bag a woman like that. Or at the very least, better looks and a bigger dick. And look at that, fuck, she’s already leaving. I was hoping she’d sit down to drink her coffee, and let me look at her for a few more minutes.”

  “Maybe you were creeping her out. You’ve barely taken your eyes off her since she walked in the door.”

  He didn’t even seem to hear me. “Oh, no, wait, she’s only going to the bathroom. I thought it was weird she was leaving without her order. Did you see her shoes, man? Those are some ‘fuck-me’ stilettos. And her hair is in this tight bun, and she’s wearing sexy librarian glasses. Will you please turn and look when she comes back out? I will drop the subject if you will just get a better view of her and agree with me that she’s a ten.”

  “Nope. Not doing it. That poor girl does not need us both creeping out on her. I’ll take your word for it.”

  That seemed to settle the matter. He dropped it.

  His phone rang; he checked the screen and started cursing. “I’ve got to run. Same time next week?”

  I nodded, and he left. I didn’t move and still didn’t turn around. I had that feeling, a tingle on my neck, like I was being watched from behind, and I was again talking myself out of obsessing about Iris.

  But burned in my brain was the image of the back of that woman, and in spite of mysel
f, I was comparing.

  And a small part of me was enjoying the torture of imagining it could be her, that she would find me again.

  Finally, I cracked, turning to look, thinking that the woman must have left, so I should just get it over with, like pulling off a Band-Aid.

  And there she was.

  There was Iris, standing only feet away, holding a cup of coffee and watching me, her expression very blank. She was wearing sexy librarian glasses, her hair in a tight bun, just like Benji had said.

  And it really was her, in the flesh.

  She wore white, and her clothes were fitted enough to show off every lush curve. Her mouthwatering breasts were clearly outlined, the buttons of her blouse open enough to show an extravagant amount of cleavage.

  How had I forgotten just how stunning she was? How captivating?

  Her large breasts were even more exceptional than I remembered, as though I’d dreamt her up as a comic book version of herself.

  Iris squared.

  The moment our eyes met, she began to move, walking with easy grace to sit across from me.

  She looked cold, so icy blonde and beautiful, like some mix of Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly.

  Terrible and beautiful.

  It felt like fatal voltage to my chest just to look at her like that.

  It was Iris, but Iris as a stranger. No, it was worse than that. It was like she was a curious, wild, imaginary creature, with the pieces of her just now put together, invented for my eyes, not how I remembered at all, because even when she’d been angry, she had never been cold.

  Then she smiled, and it was her again, all traces of the cold stranger gone.

  Which one was the real Iris?

  “Hello, Dair.”

  I swallowed hard and saw her eyes dart to my throat.

  “Hello, Iris.”

  “God, I missed the sound of your voice.”

  “The sound of my voice?” My voice caught on the question awkwardly, breaking slightly on the last word.

  She had such a talent for catching me off guard.

  “Yes. You have the best voice, like a stern school teacher.”

  My brain short-circuited for a bit before I could respond. “You say the most outrageous things.”

  She laughed, and its tinkling sound felt like velvet across the back of my neck. “Is that all you have to say to me, after all this time?” she asked quietly.

  “I’m sorry for all the things—”

  “I don’t want you to take those things back, if you still believe them, and besides, that’s not what I meant. Don’t you have anything else to say to me?”

  I took a few deep breaths. “Where have you been? And why are you back now?”

  “That’s not what I meant, either. And I don’t want to talk about that. Didn’t you miss me?”

  She reached a hand across the table, and I found one of mine grasping it, lacing our fingers tightly together.

  My eyes squeezed shut. It felt very good to touch her again, even just her hand. “Yes, Iris, I missed you very much.”

  “There you go. Was that so hard? I missed you, too. You look good.” She tugged her hand away, and my eyes opened to follow its retreat.

  “Why are you dressed like that?”

  She looked like she was trying not to smile. “Like what?”

  “Like a professional. Why are you wearing glasses? What are you doing? Where did you go? Where have you been?”

  She glanced around, and the way she did it struck me as more than a little paranoid. “Want to go for a walk?”

  My heart started pounding hard.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  “Of course I do,” I said, absolutely no thought required.

  I’d take a walk with her anytime, anywhere.

  She smiled, taking off those sexy glasses. “Well, then, let’s get out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Much to my chagrin, she actually meant it about wanting to go for a walk.

  I’d so been hoping she’d intended that more loosely, like, say, a walk to my car, where we would promptly drive to my house, to do the things I needed to do, and soon.

  The gym and coffee shop were in a large, busy strip mall. I followed Iris out onto the sidewalk, then walked beside her as she strolled along the storefronts, glancing at her out of the corner of my eye.

  She faced straight ahead, her arms swinging lightly at her sides, making no effort to touch me, or even to look at me.

  I didn’t last long like that, stopping abruptly, and grabbing her hand.

  She didn’t react with even the slightest bit of surprise by my movements, in fact accommodated me by shifting to lean against the wall, letting me study, letting me take in the sight of her.

  And I did.

  It was both torment and solace to look at her again.

  An agonizing comfort.

  Me, I was simple. I was order. A very neat, efficient machine that ran on nothing but air.

  Me plus anyone else, well, that was another matter.

  And me plus Iris, that was a monster of a machine, with all gears going at different speeds, some spinning off their hinges, just going mad, but it was a wonderful madness, at full throttle, misfiring in all directions.

  It felt wonderful and dreadful.

  I was breaking down, and it felt amazing.

  And terrifying.

  What did she have planned for me this time? What ways would she find to coil me up and let me loose? Where would it end? And when?

  And also:

  Why did she have to wear white?

  I was trying to be civilized, but I couldn’t stand not to touch her for even a second when she looked so touchable, every bit of her skin outlined just perfectly by the thin, light material of her skirt and blouse.

  My hands went to her waist, and I stepped very close, still drinking her in, my thirst working its way up to her tender lips.

  “You really aren’t going to tell me where you’ve been?” I asked her, my hands running from her waist up her sides to play along her ribs, then down again, all the way to her hips, then up again, rubbing, feeling at the soft material of her clothes, craving the supple skin beneath.

  “I’m not. I missed you, though. I wanted to come back and see you sooner.”

  “You should have,” I told her, pressing closer, slowly but steadily hemming her in. “Why didn’t you?”

  “A lot of reasons. Some of them. . . complicated. I don’t want to talk about me. I want to talk about you. How have you been? What have you been up to?”

  I shrugged. It was on the tip of my tongue to blurt out that I’d been doing nothing so much as missing her, but I stopped myself.

  It would be just too pathetic.

  “Have you been seeing anyone?” she asked.

  I tensed. I didn’t like that question, didn’t like the way she asked it like it truly wouldn’t bother her if I were.

  “No,” I said, stressing the word, because I wanted to say so much more, and moreover, was terrified to ask her the same question.

  I was pretty sure I knew the answer, and I really didn’t want to hear it aloud.

  “Really?” she asked, looking pleased, at least. It was the tiniest, most minuscule sop to my ego.

  “Really. God, what did you think I would say?”

  “I was gone for two months. It seems well within the realm of possibility that you may have moved on by now. Certainly, if you wanted company of the female variety, you’d have no trouble finding it.”

  “You know I’m not a social creature,” I said through gritted teeth, that small sop to my ego soaring away on the briefest gust of wind.

  “But you have been going out with your friends. Meeting up for coffee, even going to bars, right?”

  What the fuck? Had she been stalking me?

  The idea was too ludicrous to humor for even a second.

  “I have no notion how you guessed that, but yes, I’ve been going out a bit more with friends. Trying to join the lan
d of the living, as it were.”

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  I shrugged, trying to work past my agitation and just seize the moment at hand. “Okay. I’m getting used to it. I do enjoy talking to my friends. I’d forgotten.”

  “I read that magazine interview you did. I enjoyed it. And the pictures were phenomenal. I take it your friend, Lourdes, came back for that photo shoot.”

  How did Iris know her name? Had I told her at some point?

  I couldn’t remember doing that, but I supposed that was irrelevant.

  “She did. It took a few hours, but it wasn’t too torturous. You really won’t so much as give me a hint about what you’ve been up to?”

  She smiled and shook her head slowly. “Well?” she asked.

  My brows drew together. I had no notion what was going through her head at any given time. “Well what?”

  “Aren’t you even going to kiss me hello, Dair?”

  Now that…

  That I could wrap my mind around. At least we were on the same page about something.

  I leaned in and rubbed my lips against hers, slowly, back and forth, smudging her pale pink lip gloss, eating at her mouth, licking it off, then delving inside to taste.

  She pulled back within a few short moments, moving sideways so her back was no longer to the wall. “Wait. I wanted to do something with you. I saw this on my way in.”

  She grabbed my hand, tugging me to follow her.

  And, of course, I followed.

  She led me into one of those ice cream shops that let you choose your own ingredients, and after they mixed them all together, and you tipped them, they sang some loud song that made me wish I wasn’t a habitual tipper.

  “Sit down. I know just what to get, but I want to surprise you.” She smiled at me over her shoulder as she walked away.

  Her eyes scrambled my brain. I couldn’t even properly check out her ass until she’d turned them from me.

  She’d said she wanted to surprise me, but I watched the entire thing from my chair, mouth dry, fists clenched.

  She chose the sweet cream flavor, mixed it with cinnamon and topped it with powdered sugar, shooting me that sweet, wicked smile of hers from time to time.