Authors: Jami Alden
She would stay through the first dance, and then she was getting the hell out of there.
“Not too popular, I see.”
Karen twisted in her chair and glared up at Mike. She still hadn’t forgiven his earlier remarks. “Can’t say I really blame them,” she said, glancing at their former classmates. “Most of their boyfriends cheated with me at one time or another.”
Mike sat down, surprising her. “At least you’re honest with yourself.”
“I try.”
She studied him as he ordered a glass of wine from the waiter.
“What’s with the wine?”
Mike quirked a questioning brow.
“I never figured you for a wine kind of guy. It seems so refined.”
Mike’s lips quirked in the barest suggestion of a smile, and Karen restrained herself from launching into his lap and taking that curved bottom lip between her teeth.
“Just because I’m not a yuppie like Jake,” he said and grinned, “doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate nice things. We have a client, a developer who’s built a ton of high-end homes in the area. He’s a big wine aficionado and got me into it.” He paused as the waiter brought his glass. The look of pleasure at his first sip brought Karen’s senses sharply to awareness.
Though he came off as practical and no-nonsense, underneath Mike was a closet sensualist. He savored the pleasures in life. Good food, good wine. Good sex.
Karen’s thighs clenched beneath the table, and she mentally kicked herself. What kind of masochist was she, to be so turned on by a guy who seized every opportunity to insult her?
They sat in silence for several moments. Tension hummed between them as Karen prepared for another verbal assault. But he said nothing. She relaxed marginally, grateful to have him sitting at her table so she didn’t look like such a loser.
Then everyone was called to stand and welcome the new Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Donovan. Karen clapped as hard as anyone.
“Jealous?” Mike said softly.
“Of course,” she admitted. “But I’m happy for her.”
“I don’t get you. For as long as I’ve known you, you couldn’t stand Kelly, and now all of a sudden you’re supportive big sister?”
Karen’s hackles raised and she started to reply, but was cut off.
“Michael, what are you doing sitting over here?”
Karen barely stifled a groan and forced a smile up at Mike’s mother.
Maria Donovan had a look on her face like she’d just eaten a turd.
“Mom, you remember Kelly’s sister, Karen?” Mike said.
“Yes, I do.” Clearly she remembered
everything
anyone had ever said about Karen.
“You must be very happy for Nick,” Karen said in her most charming voice.
“
Kelly
is a wonderful young woman. Any mother would be happy to have
her
become part of the family.”
Unlike you, you little tramp.
Karen heard her loud and clear but kept her smile pasted on her face. Their past aside, if there ever was a reason she and Mike could never be together, Maria Donovan was it. “Kelly’s very lucky too, to have found Nick.”
Maria turned to Mike, clearly having maxed out her ability to be civil to a woman who had messed with one of her sons. “Mike, why don’t you go sit with Tony and Lauren? Your father and I are just at the next table over.” She indicated a table near the buffet, clear on the opposite side of the deck.
Karen stared at her glass of champagne, hoping her humiliation didn’t show. His fucking mommy was escorting him away. She shouldn’t have bothered coming. She could change all she wanted, but everyone’s attitude would stay the same.
She nearly fell off her chair when Mike said, “I’m okay here, Mom. Don’t worry.”
Maria looked like she wanted to argue, but Mike’s expression was firm, warning her not to make a scene.
“You don’t have to babysit me, Mike.” Karen said.
But he stayed, and Karen took that as a positive sign. She grabbed another glass of champagne and gulped it down for liquid courage. The time had come to tell him the truth.
What the hell was he doing? He should be avoiding her like the plague, not sitting there making chitchat while his dick got so hard it practically thumped against the table.
But she’d looked so sad, sitting by herself. Vulnerable.
Yeah
right
, he snorted silently to himself. She was about as vulnerable as a barracuda.
Yet he couldn’t leave her alone. She drew him as surely as if she had a leash around his balls. Arousal had exploded in his veins the moment he touched the silky skin of her shoulder during the picture. Thank God his tux jacket was long enough to cover his crotch.
Now, with the breeze teasing her soft curls and bringing her sweet, sexy scent to his nostrils, he was afraid he was going to do something inappropriate. He watched her sip her champagne and lick her lips nervously. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her so ill at ease.
A drop of champagne beaded on her glossy lower lip and he didn’t even think, just reached out and brushed it off with the pad of his thumb. Her lips parted in surprise, and the sight of his blunt, thick thumb against her plump bottom lip brought a sudden, painfully vivid image to mind. One of those lush lips closing over the tip of his cock, her tongue snaking out to lap up drops of thick fluid oozing from the tip.
He was done playing around. He stood and seized her wrist, pulling her to her feet. “Come on.”
Karen stumbled a few steps after him, then stopped short, tugging at his grip. “Where are we going?”
“Your room.”
“Why?”
“Don’t be obtuse.” He barely noted the stares they attracted as he maneuvered her through the tables. Let them look. For two weeks he’d been tortured by images of her. Naked, water running in rivulets down her smooth spine as she arched her back to take him deeper. Her legs wrapped around his shoulders as he licked and sucked her beautiful, smooth pussy lips. He had to have her again, and to hell with what anyone else thought.
H
alfway back to the lodge, Karen dug her heels into the cobblestone path.
“Let go of me,” she yelled when Mike pulled her off the path and pushed her up against the trunk of a tree. “What do you want?”
“I want to take you upstairs,” he said, leaning in so he could rub his straining erection against the softness of her belly, “strip you naked, and spend the rest of the night fucking you senseless.”
She braced her palms against his chest, but didn’t push. “Don’t do this, Mike,” she whispered brokenly. “I don’t want this.”
He bent his head to kiss her, but she turned her head at the last minute. Mike settled his mouth on the silky curve of her neck.
“We need to talk,” she half whispered, half moaned. Maybe she should take him up to her room, where they could talk in private.
“I can think of better ways to use your mouth.”
The hot, wet feel of his mouth on her throat momentarily paralyzed her. Against all sense, her hands crept up around his neck, and she turned and buried her nose in his hair. Her womb clenched as she inhaled the clean scent of his shampoo combined with his own unique masculine smell.
No, if they went to her room, there would be no conversation.
Even knowing how he felt about her, she was so very, very tempted to give in.
“Don’t,” she said again, pushing feebly against his brick wall of a chest. “I don’t want this,” as though by repeating the words she could convince her body.
“Bullshit,” he said, and roughly shoved a hand up her skirt. “You’re so hot you’re dripping,” he said, teeth sinking into her shoulder as he roughly palmed her sex. “I can’t get you out of my head,” he said between soft sucking kisses. “All I can think about is getting inside you again.” He slipped a finger inside the leg of her panties, pressing firmly against her creamy slit.
She moaned, using every last bit of resolve to keep from grinding herself against his hand. Oh God, it would be so easy to give him what he wanted. What she wanted too.
“Maybe if I stop fighting this I can finally fuck you out of my system.”
She froze, pain shooting in icy trickles down her back as his words registered. “So you can finally forget about me once and for all?” she whispered.
He didn’t have to answer. The truth was in his eyes. He hated himself for wanting her.
She reached down, grabbed his wrist, and tugged it from between her thighs, digging her nails in when he didn’t immediately respond. “I said STOP,” she said firmly, her resolve strengthening by the second. She was so done having sex with men who wanted her only for her body. Finished with letting them take whatever they wanted regardless of her feelings.
“Why are you jerking me around? It’s not complicated. I want you, I know you want me.” His breath came in angry pants, and his hazel eyes glittered as desire warred with frustration.
“I’m tired of being used like a brainless vessel that guys can fuck and forget,” she snapped, ducking out from under his arms and pushing away from the tree. She whirled to face him. “You’re all the same. You don’t even like me, you won’t even listen to what I have to say, but you expect me to spread my legs and give it up so you can get off.”
“You get off too,” Mike said.
Only with you,
she thought. “That’s not the point. I want someone to see me as a whole person, to actually like me before they fuck me.”
Her stomach clenched at Mike’s cold smirk. “Isn’t it a little late for that? Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve played guys, using their lust to get what you want. Why change now?”
“I never played you, Mike,” she said softly.
His eyes narrowed and his lips curled in disgust. “Baby, I was the biggest fool of all.” He took two menacing steps and grasped her by the shoulders, bending several inches until his angry gaze was level with hers. His voice was a menacing whisper as he said, “I actually had myself half convinced that I loved you, before you went off and fucked ol’ Jeremy.”
A raw sound of pain ripped from her throat. She didn’t know what hurt worse, the ugly memory of Jeremy or hearing Mike mention love in the most scathing tone she’d ever heard. Her forearms came up, knocking his grip loose. “I didn’t fuck Jeremy!” she yelled, loud enough that the wedding guests probably heard her over the band.
“Bullshit! I saw you, Karen! I saw him on top of you—”
“You saw him rape me!”
Mike froze, his mouth hanging open. He shook his head back and forth, denying the truth.
Her stomach seized, and she thought she might throw up. He didn’t believe her. She’d tried to convince herself that it didn’t matter, but his incredulity sliced at her heart with surgical precision.
“He raped me,” she repeated as Mike stayed silent, still shaking his head. “You don’t believe me now, just like you wouldn’t believe me then, but that’s the truth.”
“But I saw—”
“You don’t know what you saw,” she spat. She willed Mike to say something, anything. He said nothing, his face blank, expressionless as his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides as he shook his head in denial.
Mike barely heard Karen over the roaring in his ears. Rape? Jeremy? Could he possibly have been wrong all of these years?
He looked at Karen, at the devastation and fury in her face. She could be a manipulative bitch, but she wasn’t a liar. And if she wanted to make him feel like shit she had thousands of other ways to humiliate him.
She wouldn’t lie to him about this. Somehow every fiber of his body knew it.
She stared, waiting for him to say something, but he couldn’t force any words past his lips. She whirled on her spike heel and ran down the path.
He knew he should stop her, but her news rendered him numb. Snapshots of what he’d seen that night flashed in his mind, and suddenly small details snapped into focus. The way Jeremy’s body heaved over Karen’s much smaller frame. His arm, partly hidden by his torso, angled across her chest. As though he was pinning her down. From that position he could have easily covered her mouth, stifled her screams.
Oh Jesus, he had seen it happening and done nothing to help her. He stood outside the bedroom and waited for Jeremy to finish…to finish raping her.
And then he had pushed her away, treated her like she was filth when she’d been reaching out, begging for help.
His legs were suddenly too wobbly to support him, and he staggered over to a bench. He hung his head between his knees, gasping for oxygen.
“Mike, where the hell have you been? It’s time for the toast.”
Mike looked up at his irritated youngest brother and new sister-in-law. Jake and Kit followed close behind. Kelly’s scowl immediately morphed into a look of concern when she saw Mike’s face.
“Mike, are you okay? You look gray!” Lifting her skirt, Kelly rushed over and grabbed his wrist to feel his pulse and tilted Mike’s head back to look in his eyes. “Are you on something?”
“She finally told you, didn’t she?” Kit said quietly.
Mike looked at Kit, her eyes wide and serious, her full mouth bracketed by lines of tension.
“Tell me it’s not true.” He could barely force the question past the lump in his throat.
“What?” Kelly said, bewildered.
Kit shook her head, ignoring the others’ confusion. “I wish I could. But I’m the one who took her to the emergency room.”
“What are you talking about?” Nick asked.
Mike struggled to keep his self-loathing from spinning out of control. “About Karen. About Jeremy, about how he—” He stopped himself. This was Karen’s secret. If and when she chose to share it with Kelly was her business. “I have to go. I have to find her.” He pushed himself off the bench and ran to the lodge, determined to find Karen.
Mike paused outside of her door. What could he possibly say to her? Guilt and shame flayed him. If only he hadn’t been so scared at the prospect of falling in love with her, she wouldn’t have been alone. Hell, he would have never invited Jeremy down in the first place but instead would have followed his gut and savored every moment he had with her.
He knocked on the door, three short raps. Nothing. He knocked again, pressed his ear to the door, and heard muffled footsteps. She had the chain engaged so the door only opened a few inches. Through the crack she peered at him with one big tear-swollen eye.
He swallowed convulsively, uncharacteristically close to tears himself. “Can I come in?”
She closed the door, and Mike heard the scrape of the chain lock being unfastened. The door opened and he stepped in, following her out onto the veranda. An open bottle of chardonnay sat on the table next to a glass.
Karen had changed from her dress into a peach terry cloth shorts set with a zip-up sweatshirt and shorts that showed off her long, tan legs. Barefoot, she came up to the middle of his chest, and he was struck again by how small she was.
Too small to defend herself against most men. His hands shook at the thought.
He fought the urge to pull her into his arms and beg for her forgiveness.
Without asking, Karen poured him a glass of wine and settled into one of the wrought iron chairs.
He sat next to her and took a fortifying sip. He studied her profile, the small straight nose, full lips set in a tight line over her small upraised chin. He willed her to look at him, but she kept her gaze averted, staring instead at the view of Squaw Valley below.
Never had he so completely loathed himself. “Karen, I owe you an apology,” he began. Christ that sounded so lame and inadequate.
“I was trying to make you jealous,” she said softly, still staring off into the horizon. “I was so angry that you were leaving early and that you’d lied to me about the apartment. I finally realized you were never going to love me back, and I wanted to hurt you.” She turned to face him, her gaze oddly blank. “I thought I could make you jealous enough to take me home with you at the very least.”
Mike didn’t say anything, sensing she needed to purge herself of the memory and knowing that he deserved every bit of pain and regret her words conjured.
“He told me he was teaching me a lesson, not to mess around with his friend. Like he was protecting you,” she said with a short, humorless laugh. She refilled both empty wineglasses.
Mike pressed his thumbs into his eyeballs, as if that could stem the flow of horrific images in his brain. Looking back, it didn’t surprise him that Jeremy was capable of such brutality. He was crazy, the kind of guy you love to party with but a borderline sociopath. Women were nothing but objects to him. Guilt flooded Mike’s chest as he realized the kind of person he had brought into their lives, how oblivious he’d been to Jeremy’s true nature. He wondered how many other women Jeremy had hurt.
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” He regretted the words the second they passed his lips.
Karen finally focused on him, anger and disbelief crackling in her eyes. “My own boyfriend wouldn’t believe me. Why would the police?”
He winced, ashamed. “Kit said something about the hospital,” he heard himself say. Part of him couldn’t bear to hear it, but he needed to, as though by experiencing his own pain, he could absorb some of hers.
Karen sipped at her wine and looked away. “I had some bleeding afterward and I wanted to get checked it out, not to mention make sure he hadn’t given me anything.”
Rage and guilt nearly overwhelmed him, and he wanted to smash Jeremy’s face in all over again. But this time he wouldn’t stop at knocking out his teeth. No, he’d bash in his skull and rip off his balls so he could never, ever hurt another woman. “Oh God.”
“I’m okay now. No permanent damage,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, reaching out to grab her hand but stopping before he made contact. He was the last person she’d want touching him. “I would give anything to go back and change what happened. Anything.”
Karen leaned back in her chair and propped her feet on the railing, turning to face him once again. “I know, but you can’t.”
She was so beautiful. The rays of the evening sun burnished her tawny skin and made her golden highlights in her hair glow. Even puffy eyed and red nosed, she was more beautiful than any woman he’d ever known.
For eleven years he’d pushed every thought of her from his mind, unable to think of her and the time they’d spent without anger and bitterness. Now that was gone, and he was left with nothing but a deep, aching regret and a conviction that he had forsaken something very, very important.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. As though that could make it all better.
“Do you know how awful I felt, what it’s like to have someone you love turn their back on you like that?” She choked. Pain and guilt ravaged his face, but she didn’t let that stop her. For eleven years she’d swallowed her pain and borne this burden alone. He wasn’t getting off the hook with a simple apology. “You didn’t care about me at all, or you wouldn’t have ever treated me like that. Like I was a piece of shit you’d scraped off your shoe.”
He winced like he’d taken a blow, and his lips pressed together in a tight line. But not before Karen saw their telltale tremble. “I did care,” he said, voice choked. “I cared so much that it scared the shit out of me, made me run from you instead of being honest like I should have.” He closed his eyes, and a big, fat tear rolled under his thick lashes. He angrily scrubbed at his eyes. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and Karen tried to ignore the unmistakable sensation of her heart softening.
His beautiful hazel eyes were a more vivid green when he cried. “But that’s no excuse. I should have trusted you, trusted how I felt. I would never ask for your forgiveness,” he said shakily, “but I would do anything to take it all back.”
Part of her wanted to launch herself into his lap while the other told her to twist the knife a little deeper.
But with her initial surge of anger spent, she felt deflated. Strangely empty.
She observed Mike, so obviously consumed by guilt. When she’d imagined this scene, she thought she’d revel in it, that she’d seize the chance to rub his face in how wrong he’d been about everything. She finished her second glass of wine.