DEBT (10 page)

There would be no more cupcakes at three-forty-five on February third, no high tea, no one around to ask and listen about my day and my hopes and fears and dreams.

There would just be me.

But Byron was right about that too... I had no idea who I even was without my father around.

And maybe I was a little terrified to find out.

Later, much later, so late that it was almost early, I went back down to the kitchen, guilt flooding my system at leaving such a mess. I didn't want Ella to walk into a filthy kitchen the next morning.

But when I walked in, the room illuminated by the dim light on over the sink, it was immaculate. The cookies were in a plastic container on the island. My coffee cake was wrapped in plastic and left in the center of the oven, one hefty chunk taken out. All the ingredients I had strewn all over the counters were put away; the dishwasher had been run; the counters had even been wiped of all traces of flour and sugar.

I moved to turn and go back to my room, even more confused than ever about the enigma named Byron St. James who seemed wholly incapable of picking his damn towel up off the floor after his shower, but somehow knew how to clean a kitchen spotless, when I noticed something right in front of the coffee machine. Curious, I walked over to find a sliver of the coffee cake I had made on a small white square dessert plate, a fork sitting beside it.

I reached for it with a weird thrill in my belly and chest.

He left food out for me?

Was that like... his way of apologizing for sticking his finger into an obviously open wound?

I took my plate to my room, picking at the cake as I sat on my bed and stared at my bedroom door.

Finished, I put my plate on the nightstand and curled up on my side, slowly drifting off to sleep.

And it was the first time in my memory that I didn't fall asleep with worried feelings of my father running through my head like some dark, twisted, but familiar lullaby.

No, instead, I fell asleep thinking about Byron.

EIGHT

Prue

The next five days had me completely and utterly convinced I had imagined not only the orgasm in the den, but the whole conversation in the kitchen thing as well. Because things went back to business apparently. I fetched coffee. I washed sheets. I scrubbed bathrooms. I sat outside his office, his den, his dining room, his bedroom. There weren't more women to listen to him fuck, so what I was doing outside his bedroom was beyond me. There was also no more making me watch him jerk off. There were no glances that made me think he saw me as anything other than some kind of office equipment. There were no soft tones when he spoke to me. Only sharp ones.

The only real difference took place Tuesday afternoon when I walked into his office with his seventh (yes,
seventh)
coffee of the day. I had just put the mug down when his hand pushed a piece of paper across the dark surface of his desk toward me. My brows drew together because he never gave me papers. It was a simple piece of his watermarked white, expensive (I imagined) paper with... a handwritten recipe.

My head snapped up as soon as I realized what it was, my head shaking a little, to find him watching me intently with those dark, distant eyes of his.

"You're in charge of desserts twice a week," he informed me with the same tone he would if he were telling me I was in charge of washing and waxing his car, instead of giving me the smallest sliver of sunshine I had known since I moved in under his roof.

"Peanut Butter Triple Chocolate Explosion?" I asked, smiling a little.

"Too difficult?" he asked in his usual impatient bark.

"Don't insult me," I said instead, too glad to have a break from my every day monotony to even care about his usual douchebaggery. I even gave him what I would consider a grateful smile before I turned and walked away, looking down at the notes and realizing that he must have written them. It wasn't the delicate, swirly font of a woman. It was neat, almost to the point of anally precise. Which, well, seemed very much like the kind of handwriting he would have. So that meant he not only sat down to carefully jot down the recipe for me, but he had also went online and looked one up.

"Miss. Marlow?" he called, my last name going up on the end in the telltale sign that he was about to say something I wasn't going to like.

"Yeah?" I asked, turning, head tilted.

"I want the dessert at nine."

"Nine?" I repeated, brows drawing together.

"Nine. Find me wherever I am at that point."

"Um... okay?" I said, turning and leaving his study. That was a weird request. From what I could tell, aside from his coffee, he generally wasn't the kind of person who just... ate anywhere. Usually, he was in the dining room, even if he was eating alone, using the time to shoot off quick-fire texts to God-knew who or read the paper.

So, while he had dinner, I shooed Ella out of the kitchen and got to work on dessert, perhaps nitpicking over every single little step with borderline sociopath precision because, for reasons I was choosing not to analyze, I really wanted the dessert to come out perfect.

At five to nine, I walked to Byron's office with a giant slice of Peanut Butter Triple Chocolate Explosion on a plate with a fork and a big glass of milk to go with it. Because, let's face it, with a dessert like that, you had to have some milk.

Finding his office empty, I went to the den. Then, with a sinking feeling knowing, already knowing where he was, I checked the living room anyway. Hell, I even checked the dining room and the back porch. Then, with a swirling uncomfortable feeling inside, I went up the stairs and stopped outside his cracked bedroom door, taking a deep breath, convincing myself it meant nothing that he wanted his dessert in his bedroom.

But knowing better.

"Are you going to stand out there all night?" Byron's voice called, a little distant, a little cool, but not completely nasty for a change. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open with the tip of my shoe.

The lights were low, but on. The TV was on, some kind of news commentary, but the volume was too low to make anything out. And Byron was on his bed, sitting back against the headboard, shoes off, slacks on, but belt gone, dress shirt on but jacket discarded and all the buttons undone, exposing a sliver of his tan, perfect skin from waistband to throat.

My eyes found his face and everything about it confirmed the swirling in my belly.

I knew a slaughterhouse when I saw one.

And if I went anywhere near that bed, I was going to end up gutted.

But what choice did I have?

I took a deep breath and took purposeful steps into his room, going directly to his side of the bed, focusing my attention on putting down the glass and plate, ignoring the hovering presence of a silent Byron. I had moved to straighten when I felt my wrist snagged in a large, strong palm. Despite my brain booming out the ear-splitting warning signal you hear in every movie proceeding the end of the world, I lifted my eyes to his, seeing the knife in his smile, knowing how much it was going to hurt when it started slicing layers off of me.

But I didn't pull away.

There was a pregnant pause, both of us waiting for something, him for me to pull away, me for him to do something, say something that would allow my better sense to take control again.

In the end, Byron's hand pulled, sending me flying toward the bed, landing longways across it, barely able to get my equilibrium back before his body was half over mine, his head tucked down, his lips finding the sensitive column of my neck. Propped up on one arm, the other slid down the side over my body, teasing the dip of my waist, the flare of my hip. His fingers stopped at my knee, curling in, cocking it, and draping it around his back. His hand whispered down my calf, snagging my heel and pulling it off. I used the edge of the bed to kick out of my other, bringing my other leg up to wrap around him as his tongue traced upward to tease over the edge of my earlobe, dragging a shiver out of me.

On a rumbling, growling sound that reverberated through his body and into mine, his hand stroked back up my thigh to sink into my hip, pulling as he rolled onto his back, dragging me on top of him as he went. His legs parted, allowing mine to slide inside, pressing me bodily against him for a moment before I planted my arms and pulled up slightly.

Against my stomach, I could feel his erection, hard and straining, into my soft flesh.

His hands moved up, taking my hair which had curtained us and pulling it to one side of my head, wrapping it around his fist then tugging downward hard enough for me to gasp so his lips could claim mine. I pulled my body up a few inches, letting his cock settle at the juncture of my thighs, hard, offering a solution to the problematic heaviness tightly coiled low in my belly.

And I knew it was wrong. It was warped, twisted, completely insane. And utterly unlike me.

I chose the right men. Granted, none of them had turned out to be
the
right one, but I went with the smart choices. I went with men from stable backgrounds who worked hard at whatever their chosen profession was. I picked men who had manners and treated me well. They were all good, stable, and maybe just a little bit boring. But most of all... safe.

I always played it safe.

There was nothing safe about Byron St. James.

He was an ocean, constantly ebbing and flowing, always threatening a violent undertow or rip current.

And I was not a strong swimmer.

But the second his body touched mine, I was helpless to do anything but sink.

His hand released my hair and both palms flattened near my shoulders then moved slowly, possessively down my back, like he was claiming every inch. They trailed down and settled on my ass, squeezing hard, and thereby pressing his cock harder against my sex, drawing a ragged moan from my lips, the sound muffled by his mouth. I moved my legs out from between his, planting them on either side of his hips so I could rock against him, the friction easing some of the clawing need inside. Against my mouth, he let out a low, sexy grumble as his hips started thrusting up against mine as his teeth grabbed my lower lip and bit hard enough to draw a yelp from me. His lips pulled from mine, my eyelids fluttering open to find his dark eyes on mine.

"I..." I started, but was cut off by the shrill, unsettling scream of his cell phone on the nightstand.

He watched me for a long minute, his hand moving up again to cup my jaw, like he wanted to say something, but was searching for the right words. In the end, though, he knifed up, taking me with him, and reached for his cell, swiping over the screen before bringing it up to his ear. "Yeah?" he barked, his eyes on me, one of his hands still on my lower back. "Fuck. Alright. Yeah. Twenty. Okay. Keep me updated," he said, ending the call and dropping the cell down on the mattress.

And in that ten seconds, my common sense came rushing back, flooding my system with all the thoughts his hands on my body pushed away.

I let him touch me
again.
I melted into it
again.
Hell, I had ground myself against his erection.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

"Trying to convince yourself you regret it?" he asked, hand still pressing hard into my back.

I swallowed hard against my suddenly dry mouth. "I don't have to convince myself of anything. Of course I regret it."

"You know one perk to working in and then owning a casino?"

"No, but I'm sure you're about to tell me," I drawled.

To that, his lips tipped up slightly. "You learn how to read a poker face, no matter how good it is. You got a shitty fucking poker face, babe. You want to regret it, but you don't. So why don't you get your sweet ass off my lap, go find something appropriate in your closet, change into it, and meet me downstairs in ten."

Pretty much the second that he reminded me I was still sitting on his lap, I wrenched away and took my feet, then took a couple feet in retreat just to make sure he couldn't reach me. Not that he planned to, though, since he was reaching for the plate of dessert instead. "Am I going somewhere?"

"
We
," he emphasized, "have to go to Mandy's for a little bit."

Mandy's?

If there was one place I definitely did not want to go, it was to Mandy's.

"Um. I'll pass," I said, shaking my head as he dug his fork into his dessert, paused, then slowly looked up at me with one brow raised.

"Did I make that sound like a request? My mistake. Put some fucking clothes on and meet me downstairs. Now," he barked when I didn't immediately move to comply.

I lifted my chin and moved toward the door. "I hope you choke on that," I shot at him over my shoulder.

"Oh, Prue. You really want to believe you mean that, don't you?"

With no comeback to that, I stormed into the hall then my room, slamming the door and going toward my closet.

Fact of the matter was, he was right again.