Darker the Release (3 page)

Sean Moore.

An older, balding man with a plain face and very dark eyes. Caleb’s former supervisor at Vendella.

The man whose phone had been used to call a hit man just before her father’s death.

If Caleb wasn’t responsible for her father’s death, then this man was.

She pulled her hand away from his, wiping it discreetly on her dress. The man looked harmless enough, but she didn’t want to touch him, to be close to him in any way.

He might have killed her father. He probably had. It didn’t feel quite true of Caleb, but it felt true of this man.

This could be the real murderer, the absolute bastard who’d taken her father away from her.

This man. In front of her.

Kelly felt a wave of nausea overtake her as she saw again her father’s body on the trail in the woods, his blood soaking into the dirt.

She managed to smile and act like she was listening to the conversation, but all she could hear was a buzzing in her ears.

This party had become like hell, all of these fake, smiling people who were secretly her enemies. Even Caleb with his intelligent mouth and warm eyes and strong hands might be someone she could only hate.

She was surrounded by them—no way to escape—and she kept trying to fight the nausea as it grew increasingly difficult to act normal.

She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be around these people. They weren’t her friends. They would only hurt her.

All she wanted to do was get away, but there was absolutely nowhere she could go.

Except the bathroom.

The idea came to her like a gift, and she excused herself to go to the restroom before the growing feeling of panicked claustrophobia completely overwhelmed her.

It was a large individual bathroom, so she locked the door and went over to the sink. She stared in the mirror at her face.

Her hair was still slightly rumpled and falling in loose waves all down her back. Her cheeks had been flushed before, but now they were a little pale. It looked like she’d even broken a sweat.

She wanted to splash water on her face to wash away the helpless feeling and the fuzziness from the champagne, but she was only carrying a clutch purse, so she didn’t have all of her makeup with her to redo her face afterward.

So she washed her hands for a long time, trying to relax and pull herself together.

She didn’t want to go back to the party right away, so she pulled out her phone to check her email—just for something to do—and she was surprised to see a text message from her mother. From the same anonymous number she always used to contact her.

She pulled up the message and read,
Why haven’t you finished this yet?
Stop stalling and get it done
.

Kelly stared at the words for a long time, feeling sick and guilty and angry—a conflicted mingling of all three.

If her mother hadn’t showed up in her apartment a couple of months ago, she never would have started down this stupid, torturous road. Her mother had told her then that she’d only had three months to live, but she’d been as good as dead to Kelly for a lot longer than that. Kelly could understand desperately wanting answers before she died, but it was hard to forgive the way her mother had put her in an impossible position.

It had happened, though, and Kelly had agreed to do this destructive, irrational thing. And her mother wasn’t wrong in recognizing how conflicted she’d become in her feelings for Caleb.

She kept telling herself she wanted to get this over with, but that might mean proving that Caleb was guilty of murdering her father.

And if she were honest with herself, she’d admit she didn’t really want to do that.

She deleted the message without answering it and slid her phone back in her little clutch purse, trying to pretend she’d never seen the text.

Trying to pretend she wasn’t so pitifully weak that she would stall in seeking justice for her father’s murder.

Maybe she could have gotten this thing over with sooner if she hadn’t fallen for Caleb so hard.

She was feeling even more rattled and upset than before when she finally left the restroom. She glanced around the large ballroom, looking for Caleb’s fine body and handsome face.

She didn’t see him, so she started to circulate, wondering why she couldn’t spot him, since Caleb stood out in any crowd. It wasn’t just because he was so attractive, either. There was something about him that called attention, summoned any eyes in a room.

But he didn’t seem to be in this room, even though she’d left him just a few minutes ago to run to the bathroom. He wouldn’t have left her, and he couldn’t have just disappeared.

But she had no idea where he was.

So soon she was flustered on top of all the other tangled feelings, at a loss because Caleb no longer seemed to be at the party. When she happened to pass his engaged friend, who was the honoree of the evening, he must have noticed her futile search because he said, “I saw him go off into the anteroom back there.” He gestured toward a door at the far corner of the ballroom.

Kelly smiled her thanks and made her way in that direction, thinking it would have been nice if Caleb had spared a thought about how she was supposed to find him before he skulked off in a corner like that.

He’d probably run into a business associate and had sneaked off to deal with something work related in the few spare minutes he had.

Typical.

The door to the anteroom was partly closed, so she pushed it so she could enter. The room was small and mostly empty—with just some ornate chairs, a couple of mirrors, and some decorative tapestries on the wall.

Caleb wasn’t here. But there was another door that led to another room or hallway, and she walked toward it.

She heard Caleb’s voice before she reached the door. She wasn’t likely to mistake his voice for anyone else’s.

He was saying, “We both know what happened. And that makes us both guilty. Trying to justify it isn’t going to help at all in dealing with this situation.”

Kelly sucked in her breath and moved closer, leaning against a tapestry to get as close to the doorway as possible without actually being seen from the other room.

“Then what do you propose we should do? Because I guarantee it’s not going to go away on its own.”

Kelly wasn’t sure, but she’d guess that was Sean Moore. She didn’t recognize his voice like she did Caleb’s, but it sounded right for the man she’d met less than fifteen minutes ago.

She knew—she knew—what they were talking about.

“We need more information. There’s nothing we can do until then.”

To anyone else Caleb would have sounded calm and in control, but she didn’t really think he was. There was a kind of edge to his tone that she only heard when he was emotionally affected by something.

Whatever he was talking about was important to him.

“You have a whole little Hamlet thing going on here, don’t you?”

Kelly gasped and whirled around at the new voice coming from behind her.

Standing there was Wes, with an ironically amused smile on his face.

She literally couldn’t move for a few seconds as she was washed with a chill of guilt, fear, and recognition.

He somehow knew her. He knew all about her. He knew what she was doing with and to Caleb. He was going to reveal her identity to Caleb.

And there was nothing she could do to stop him.

Wes’s eyebrows lifted, and Kelly realized she needed to answer if she was going to have a chance of making it through this moment.

But what could she say? And how was it even possible that Wes could know she was seeking vengeance for the death of her father—as he must if he’d just compared her to Hamlet?

“Eavesdropping behind tapestries, I mean,” Wes added, evidently taking her silence for confusion.

She let out her breath in a whoosh, suddenly realizing she’d been ridiculous to think he could have found her out in the half hour since they’d talked. “I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she said without thinking. At his arched eyebrows, she added, “I mean, I was just trying to figure out if the conversation was one I could safely interrupt. He disappeared on me to talk about work.”

She thought she’d done a pretty good job, but Wes was still looking at her skeptically.

She’d convinced someone else, though. “I thought I’d be through before you got back,” Caleb said, coming up behind her through the doorway and slipping an arm around her. “Sorry about that.”

He looked and felt a little tense, but it didn’t seem to be directed at her. It must be the aftermath of the conversation he’d just had with Sean Moore.

Which had sounded very suspicious.

Like he might have killed her father.

The reality hit her so hard that she felt physically ill for a minute, the dizziness slamming into her as she felt Caleb’s lips on her mouth and then glancing across the skin of her cheek.

“If you spend any amount of time with Caleb,” Wes said in a friendly voice, “you’ll have to get used to that.”

She knew that already—that Caleb’s priority would always be his work, no matter what kinds of feelings he might develop. She didn’t need Wes to tell her.

At the moment, she didn’t care about Wes at all, though. She didn’t care about anything but the fact that her father’s murderer might be pressing his body against hers intimately right now.

And just a few minutes ago she would have wanted him to do that.

Even now she could want it again.

What did that say about her, about what kind of woman she was, about what kind of daughter she was? There was something twisted and unnatural about her that she couldn’t seem to beat back into submission.

They went back to the party, and Caleb was more handsy than he’d been before. She wasn’t sure exactly what was causing it, but she had a few ideas.

He was anxious or angry or helpless about something—whatever guilty thing he’d done that Sean Moore had brought up in that back room. And he was trying to distract himself and feel powerful again with her.

She understood it. She’d done the same thing with random men—and with Caleb—over and over again herself. Bury yourself in sex, in sensation, in some kind of visceral power, so you don’t have to acknowledge all of the things over which you have no power.

She could sense the same thing in Caleb now, and she was pretty sure it would get more intense when they left the party and were alone.

He would want to fuck her hard and rough.

And she would let him, even if she was so scared and confused and rattled right now that sex was the last thing she wanted to do.

Because sex was what she had with Caleb, no matter what ephemeral feelings they were playing with. It was the only weapon she had in this battle.

Even if she used it against herself.

She had to get things back to normal between them, and she knew just how to do it. It didn’t matter if she didn’t want it. Right now, sex was all she had to work with.

The evening went on and on, until finally Caleb said she looked tired and asked if she wanted to leave.

She said yes gratefully, wanting desperately to feel fresh air and not be surrounded by strangers.

As they were leaving, Wes came back over. He mentioned a few things in parting to Caleb about his mother and his plans for going back to Paris, and then he took Kelly’s hand.

He held it longer than he should have. It almost felt like he was about to come on to her. Kelly stared up at him blankly, wondering what was happening as he leaned toward her and whispered in her ear, “I’m not sure what you’re hiding, but keeping secrets from Caleb is a bad idea.”

Caleb was used to feeling guilty, but he could usually shake it off better than this.

However, something about the clash between his feelings for Kelly and his conversation with Moore had left him with a guilt so heavy it was weighing him down.

He liked who he was with Kelly, and he didn’t like other things he’d done—the other man he’d been—to raise their heads in her vicinity.

There was nothing he could do about the sins of his past. They were done, and no recompense could be offered to absolve him of them. Most of the time he was fine with that, but he couldn’t shake the feeling tonight. The weight of it intensified everything else he was feeling too.

It was probably why he got so jealous when Wes leaned over and whispered something in Kelly’s ear as they were leaving.

He had no idea what his friend was telling her, but he didn’t like it. Not because he thought Kelly would ever respond to the other man, but because it indicated something about her that he didn’t know.

Her reaction was just a casual smile, but it didn’t look genuine.

Something bothered her about what Wes had said, and she just shrugged it off when he asked.

Caleb didn’t say anything else. He just took Kelly by the arm and led her outside to where his chauffeured car was waiting.

He wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much, but it did. Wes had no business talking to Kelly in private, and Kelly had no business keeping it from him.

He told himself to get over it. Nothing important had happened. It was just one of those nights where everything stood out in starker contrast. Where every feeling, thought, and impulse seemed stronger and more significant than it usually would.

It probably had something to do with the hot sex they’d had before they left the house, and it definitely had something to do with the lingering guilt from his conversation with Moore.

Kelly and what had happened with Moore were among the few things in the world that left Caleb feeling out of control.

“Wes seemed nice,” Kelly said, seeming a little distracted. She looked like sex embodied in lush, golden form in her red dress and tousled fall of hair, and his body reacted to the sight of her.

It almost always did.

Caleb wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say in response to that comment, but he really didn’t want to talk about Wes right now. “He’s okay.”

“You’ve known him a long time?”

“Since elementary school. Why?”

She gave a little shrug. “Just curious. Is he married?”

Caleb didn’t like the direction of these questions. Why the hell should Kelly care about Wes anyway? “No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Why?”

“They’re normal questions, aren’t they? Isn’t he your friend?”

“I guess.”

“Why are you so grumpy?” Kelly asked him with a frown. Her dress had shifted as she’d adjusted in the seat and was now revealing an even larger expanse of her deep cleavage.

“I am not grumpy,” Caleb gritted out, feeling like the hairs were standing up on the back of his neck. “I just don’t know why we need to have a whole conversation about Wes, if that’s all right with you.”

Kelly stuck out her chin as the car pulled into the street and headed back to Caleb’s house outside the city, which was over an hour away. “Are you jealous?” she asked, looking almost surprised. Her eyes seemed tired and a little strained—as if she’d had an emotionally stressful evening herself, although he wasn’t sure why or how that would have been the case—but they were now flashing with something that taunted him.

“I am not jealous.” He wished this topic had never come up. Wished he’d not attended this party after all. Wished one of his few friends in the world hadn’t shown up this evening.

Kelly took a deep breath, and something about that breath struck Caleb as strange—as if she was gearing herself up somehow. But then he forgot all about the strangeness when she scooted over next to him on the supple leather seat. She gave him a teasing grin and slid her hand from his belly up to his shoulder. “I think maybe you are jealous,” she murmured.

“Kelly,” Caleb warned, his impatience boiling up. He needed to be left alone so he could recover his control—of himself, of his feelings, of his guilt. If he didn’t, the roiling intensity inside him might escape, and Caleb couldn’t allow that to happen.

“What?” she replied, tilting her face up toward him. “Why don’t you just admit it? You’re jealous and angry because your friend made a move on me.”

Caleb made a harsh noise in his throat and jerked toward her. “So he
did
make a move on you?”

The corners of Kelly’s full lips turned up, although her eyes still looked rather stressed. Which didn’t make much sense, since Kelly should have just spent a relatively uneventful evening. “Of course he did. And what would you do if I told you I was…tempted by his offer?”

Caleb narrowed his eyes. He knew she was teasing him on purpose. He
knew
it. But he couldn’t suppress the feral response. “Were you?” he asked thickly.

Her eyebrows lifted. “What would you do if I was?”

“Were you?” he demanded again, leaning toward her and grabbing one of her upper arms with his hand.

He was being irrational. This was absolutely stupid. Why the hell couldn’t he act like his normal self again?

He was being played by her. She was trying to get him to let go of his feelings, and he was allowing it. Letting her play him.

Almost as if he wanted to let himself go.

“Would you try to convince me otherwise?” Kelly teased, her voice husky and seductive. She took one of his hands and placed it on her thigh, just where the slit of her skirt exposed the bare skin above her knee. “Would you try to prove to me that you have more to offer than he does?”

“You already know what I have to offer you,” he managed to say, in a semblance of his natural voice. Every word he spoke was rougher and throatier than it should have been, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he was acting this way.

His hand remained on her thigh, and he could feel both the fabric of her dress and her supple skin beneath his palm. He didn’t move it any farther, though. He’d always been happy to follow her lead whenever she wanted to try something adventurous sexually. But something about this felt strange—and the strangeness wasn’t just from his nearness to losing control.

Something about Kelly felt…off. As if she were baiting him this way in spite of her mood rather than because of it.

But that wouldn’t make any sense at all.

Kelly shifted until her mouth was next to his ear. She lowered her hand once more to his belly, just above Caleb’s partially hardened cock.

He’d been semierect for a while now, his arousal feeding off his other intense feelings.

“Caleb,” Kelly whispered, her breath wafting over the sensitive skin of his ear. “Why do you keep holding back? Let yourself go. Show me why I shouldn’t be tempted by anyone else.”

Then she covered his hand with hers on her thigh, closed her fingers around his wrist, and slid his hand up beneath the skirt of her dress. All the way up her thigh.

Up to the juncture between her legs.

He could feel the warmth of her through the fabric of her panties.

His cock jumped painfully to full erection as a flash of hot desire slammed into him.

“Fuck me, Caleb,” Kelly murmured, her voice an erotic caress, a tantalizing torture. “Are you really going to make me beg?”

Caleb grabbed her upper body and devoured her mouth with a hard kiss, finally letting go of the restraint that had been holding his instinct in check. She clung to him. Moaned into his mouth. And Caleb channeled all the smoldering intensity of the evening into claiming her as his.

His nostrils flared as his mouth moved roughly against hers—sucking, stroking, exploring, and nipping. His hands worked her over ceaselessly, touching her everywhere he could reach. She’d begun to whimper, and he loved the passionate sound of it. He reveled in the way she always responded to his touch.

Then she tore her mouth away, panting and flushed. “Now, Caleb,” she demanded, turning away from him and beginning to maneuver on the seat. “Fuck me now.”

He blinked, dazed with desire and still trying to hold on to the threads that kept his control intact. He stared at Kelly blankly until he figured out what she was doing.

She’d turned over on the broad expanse of the seat beside them and was now positioning herself on her hands and knees, her head toward the window.

Caleb blinked again, his eyes focused intently on the lush swell of flesh—her hips round and full beneath the slick fabric of her skirt. Then he saw that she’d reached behind her and was bunching up the silk, baring her ass to his sight.

He made a hoarse sound in his throat and was briefly afraid he was going to lose it before he even got in position.

But then, swallowing over the shocked thrill, he adjusted his body too. Raised himself up on his knees beside her and started unbuttoning his trousers.

The backseat of a car wasn’t the ideal place for fucking a woman doggie style, but there was plenty of room, and the slight instability in their positioning only made it that much more exciting. They had privacy, since the little window between the front and back of the car was closed.

As long as the driver didn’t slam on his brakes.

Kelly was looking at him over her shoulder, urging him to hurry with moaned repetitions of “fuck me” and “now.”

Then Caleb pulled her ass cheeks apart. Nudged at her until he found her entrance. Then wedged his cock into her channel.

The clasp of her body was tight and warm, but she wasn’t as wet and pliant as he’d expected. She was very tight.

He adjusted behind her, waiting for her to relax. She’d turned forward again and was facing the window. Her hair was falling all around her. She was breathing heavily—just as he was—but something about her body seemed different.

Every instinct inside him was screaming at him to thrust, to drive himself home, to take her, to claim her as his.

But he kept getting those prickles of uncertainty, so he made himself bite out, “Okay?”

She looked back over her shoulder at him, a familiar, sultry look in her eyes. “Yeah,” she breathed. “Good. Let go, Caleb. Fuck me. Take me like this.”

Her raw urging displaced the faint thread of concern, and he felt a new, powerful throb of base instinct. With a harsh grunt, he pulled back and drove into her, his cock sliding nearly out and then pushing its way deep into the hot depths of her body.

“Yeah,” she gasped. “Fuck me.”

So he let himself go after all. Released the hold he’d had on his impulses and thrust into her hard from behind, the powerful motion of his pelvis channeling his need to dominate, to possess, to claim.

He was sliding inside her fairly easily, and he could feel the tight friction on his cock and the indirect stimulation of his balls coalesce into a rising climax. The limitations of their location weren’t much of an issue, as Caleb could brace himself by widening the stance of his thighs.

Kelly was staring down at the leather seat, her body jostling every time he pushed into her, and she was releasing breathless grunts in time to his thrusting.

But as the repeated motion leveled off Caleb’s sensations momentarily, he started experiencing those nagging questions again. What did that stressed look in Kelly’s eyes mean? And why was she still not wet around the stroking of his cock inside her? And were those grunts of pleasure or merely an involuntary response to the momentum of his pounding into her?

“Kelly?” Caleb gritted out. “Good?”

“Yeah,” she cried on his next stroke in. “Fuck, yeah.” She raised herself up a little until she was bracing herself with her hands on the car door in front of her. Then she turned her head to look at him, something wild and frantic in her eyes. “It’s good.”

Caleb released his held breath at her assurance and leaned over her, bracing one of his hands next to hers against the door of the car. He kept thrusting, now pushing her whole pelvis forward on each thrust. “You like it like this?” he rasped, his momentum flaring up again as he felt her body moving with the power of his.

“Yeah,” Kelly gasped, turning her face forward again. “Fuck me from behind. Fuck me like an animal.”

Caleb was grunting now as he levered into her, his pelvis slapping against her ass on every thrust, his trousers pushed down to his knees.

Kelly’s verbal responses were getting louder and more urgent, and Caleb waited for her body to start shaking the way it did just before she came. It didn’t, however. It didn’t seem to tense up at all.

That heavy doubt sprang up again as he started to vaguely wonder if Kelly was as into this as he was.

But then she cried out, “God, Caleb. Harder, harder. I want it harder.”

He growled, forgot everything else in the red-hot rush of primal need. He pounded into her as she’d urged, letting primitive instinct turn him into a rutting animal. His cock was ramming into her roughly now, shoving her body forward with rhythmic force while her frantic cries kept urging him on.

He felt strong, powerful, invulnerable. Threatened by nothing—not past sins, not secrets, not Kelly, not his own feelings.

Until he couldn’t stop the mounting sensations. Let the wild rush of it push him over the edge.

Kelly was crying out hoarsely—it sounded like pleasure—when Caleb felt himself coming in a hard, fast, blinding release.

His pelvis thrashed clumsily against her hips as the spasms ripped through him, and then he felt the pulsing spurts of his release.

He was gasping and sweating beneath his tux when he felt himself come down.

Kelly was gasping too—still not looking at him—and her breaths sounded harsh and painful.

And instead of the familiar relaxation that usually overtook him after a physical release, he felt vaguely sick and dizzy. Not from the motion of the car.

He pulled his cock out. As soon as he’d pulled back, Kelly kind of collapsed onto the seat. But then she immediately moved to a sitting position, curling her body in on itself.

He couldn’t seem to bring himself to look at her face, afraid of what he might see there.