Nameless Series Boxed Set (44 page)

Instead, she
watched Seth. Watched his twisted face, his flaring nostrils, his wild eyes as
he fucked her. And, despite the slight discomfort of the position, she felt a
swell of tenderness and satisfaction, that she was able to give him this—even
if she couldn’t give him anything else.

She panted each
time he pounded into her. Her legs and breasts bounced urgently, and the solid
bed shook from the force of their motion.

With something
hungry and dominant in his expression, Seth suddenly lifted her thighs even
higher, so he could thrust into her even more deeply.

Erin cried out
in surprise and fisted her hands in the sheet as she felt him drive his cock
deeper than was entirely comfortable.

At her broken
cry, Seth forced himself to pause, sweat dripping down the side of his face and
his entire body shaking with tension. “Okay?” His eyes rake over her, half in
primal hunger and half in anxious inquiry.

“Yeah,” she
gasped, one of her legs now raised up in the air. She squirmed slightly, trying
to assess the intense sensations. “I think...”

His features
contorting and eyes closing as he reined in his need, Seth gave a few more
experimental thrusts from this position, obviously allowing her to determine if
she was all right with it.

She'd
experienced deep penetration before, but for some reason this felt different. Seth's
cock felt huge and invasive, like it was piercing her, far past any boundary
she’d ever had. But the sensations were only slightly painful, and she could
feel something else—something deeply pleasurable—mingling with the initial
discomfort.

“Yeah,” she
panted, clutching desperately at the bed beneath her. “Yeah, it’s good.”

With a thick,
helpless groan, he opened his eyes and started moving again. The thick silence
of his breathing built into rough, animalistic grunts in time with his rhythm.

Erin felt like
the whole world was shaking with their motion. She felt helpless, out of
control. Until the rough friction of his drives inside her and the jostling of
her breasts, ass, and clit coalesced into a new kind of orgasm: one deeper,
more intense, not far removed from pain.

Matching the
rich, swelling ache in her heart.

Her rhythmic
whimpers rose into louder, wordless cries. She clawed at the bed, tossed her
head desperately until her motion pushed the pillow out from beneath her.

Seth’s eyes
never left her, shifting greedily from her face to the clumsy bouncing of her
breasts. Then he grabbed the leg that had been dangling next to his right hip
and pushed it forward, until her knee met her breast.

Erin choked on
the pleasure, as the shift changed the angle of penetration yet again. Her
other leg was still in the air, but she didn’t want to move it. Everything felt
so deep, so intense, so excruciatingly good just like this.

He held her
left leg in place as he fucked her, his grunts growing louder and more
uncontrolled as his thrusts became shorter and faster.

And Erin
realized she was about to come again, was momentarily terrified that this
orgasm would rip her apart.

“Oh, God,” she
cried out—too loudly, but there was no way to stop herself. “God, Seth!”

Seth made a
rough sound in his throat, almost like a growl. His eyes bore into hers, and he
forced out a few strangled words, “Say it again.”

Erin’s hot,
blurred mind was far beyond comprehending what he meant. She writhed beneath
him, needing release from the agonizing build of her orgasm but unable to move
in any significant way. “Wha—” she mumbled, then choked on another scream of
pleasure as his motion pushed her closer to release. “Seth!”

“Yes,” Seth
hissed, something new flaring up in his gaze.

Instinctively, Erin
understood. Her hands fumbled for purchase on the mattress, and her leg bounced
shamelessly in the air. “Seth. Seth!”

“Yes,” Seth
hissed again, between his deepening grunts and urgent panting. The tension in
his body had coiled up until it was almost unbearable to witness.

Erin felt a
quaking begin, deep at her core. Felt the tremors slowly overtake her. The
exquisite depth of it almost made her panic, and she had to stuff her fist in
her mouth to stifle her screams. But after a moment she managed to lower her
hand and choke out, “Seth, Seth!”

Seth’s fingers
were so hard on her flesh that they would have been painful had she been able
to concentrate on such things. He was fucking her like an animal now, in some
kind of primitive drive to claim her. His motion was clumsy and desperate, but
he never looked away from her face. “Erin,” he grunted, the word almost
incoherent in the guttural texture of his voice.

“Seth!” Erin cried
one more time, this time unable to suppress it. Her body erupted in rich waves
of orgasm, and she shuddered as the sensations slammed into her.

Seth came with
her, releasing all of the tension he’d been holding back for too long in a
series of spasmodic pushes. A wash of relief flooded his face for a moment, and
he managed to hold Erin’s gaze through the rush of sensation.

They were both
gasping desperately when the lingering spasms finally faded, and it looked like
Seth would have collapsed had they not still been tangled in their awkward
position.

Very carefully,
Seth straightened Erin’s leg, and she moaned pathetically as he slowly pulled
his cock out of her sore body. He held the base of the condom carefully, his
hands shaking despite his obvious attempt at control.

“Oh God,” Erin
moaned, totally leveled by their lovemaking.

He moved to the
side of the bed and sat there for a minute, clearly trying to recover himself. “Yeah,”
was all he said.

Erin felt hot
and sticky and sweaty and sore and still flooded with an intense satisfaction
and contentment that left her limp and boneless. If anything, Seth seemed worse
off than she was. He was trembling visibly, hadn’t managed to move yet, and was
still holding the condom on his softening cock.

“You okay?” she
croaked, stretching and feeling her muscles resisting painfully.

“Yeah,” he said
again, although his voice was faint and unnatural. As if to prove his point,
however, he heaved himself up and took a few steps toward the bathroom.

Erin winced as she
saw the angry, red lines she'd clawed into his back and his ass.

But, since he’d
managed to get moving so quickly, Erin smothered another groan and rolled off the
bed herself, pulling her gown down over her body again.

On her first
step, however, she let out a sharp cry and bent forward.

Seth jerked to
a stop and looked back at her. “You all right?”

She nodded,
feeling strangely embarrassed...by everything. “Just a little sore,” she
explained. At his anxious, intent scrutiny, she added, “But it’s nothing
compared to childbirth.”

He gave her a
very faint smile and continued toward the bathroom.

Erin limped out
of the bedroom and down the hall to the room next door. Peering in from the
doorway, she could see Mackenzie in the crib, still sleeping soundly—which
greatly relieved her mind.

After a minute
of standing there watching her daughter sleep, Erin turned around and went back
into the master bedroom.

Seth had
returned and was sprawled out naked on the bed, looking limp and replete and
oddly vulnerable. “She all right?” he asked softly, as Erin got into the bed
beside him.

“Sleeping.” She
pulled up the covers over both of them and—when he made no move to draw her
close to him—she snuggled up beside him anyway, feeling exposed and uncertain
herself.

Seth nodded. He
didn’t put his arm around her. Didn’t look at her. Just stared up at the
ceiling.

“Are
you
all right?” she asked softly, stroking his chest with her palm.

“Of course.”

Erin felt a
different kind of ache, and she let out a long, defeated sigh. “You know,” she
began, very slowly, very carefully, “I’ll admit to being confused a lot of the
time—particularly with you. I don’t always know what’s going on, and I’ve made
a lot of mistakes.”

She paused. Thought
through her words before she spoke them. “But, after the first couple of
months, I’ve always tried to be honest with you. I mess up a lot, but I try to
be honest about it. Even if my feelings confuse the hell out of me, I have
never intentionally lied to you about them.”

He was
listening to her intently. She knew it, even though he wasn't looking at her. His
sated body had gotten slightly tense as she spoke. Until finally he admitted,
“I know that.”

Erin swallowed
hard. Wondered if she had any right to say this. Said it anyway. “You don’t
have to open up to me or tell me anything you don’t want to. But I wish...I
wish you wouldn’t lie to me.”

He got very
tense for a moment, and Erin was afraid she’d gone too far. Then his body
relaxed against her, and he gave one brief, terse nod. “You’re right. I shouldn’t
lie to you.”

She didn’t
pursue the subject. Just caressed his chest and belly and wished there was
something she could do for him that went deeper than just fucking. She was
pretty sure she had helped him—if only to release some of his emotional tension—but
there was so much more she wanted to do.

She’d thought
the subject was over, and she wasn’t even begrudging that fact. But then he
surprised her.

Turning his
head to look her in the eye, he murmured, his voice only slightly
uncomfortable. “I don’t know how to do this.”

‘”Do what?”

“Any of this. I’ve
spent all my life by myself. I’ve never been part of a family. When I had a
chance fifteen years ago, I just ran away. I don’t know how to be part of one.
I don’t know how to be a father. I don’t know how to be what I need to be with
you. Sometimes, it overwhelms me. Sometimes, it terrifies me.”

“What are you
terrified of?” she asked in almost a whisper.

“That I’ll blow
it. That I’ll run away. That I’ll destroy everything. Everything I have for the
first time.”

Her eyes burned
in response to the thick words. “You won’t. You’re not going to blow it. You
haven’t messed up anything.” When he looked like he was going to object, she
amended, “Except for that one time, you haven’t messed anything up. You’re
really good at being a father. You’re really good at
this
.”

“I’m so sorry
about your job.”

She suddenly
realized that her job was what had prompted his dark mood in the first place.
He thought he’d blown it and she had suffered the consequences.

A tear streamed
down her cheek. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t mess that up. It just…it just
happened.”

He didn’t
answer except to tilt his head down and kiss her hair.

She wasn’t sure
what to say next, so she turned her head so she could press a kiss into his
shoulder.

They were
silent for a really long time, until Erin couldn’t take it anymore.

“So, Seth, are
you all right?”

Inexplicably,
the corner of his mouth turned up in faint amusement. “Yeah. Kind of tired. I
feel like I’ve been through a battle.”

Erin chuckled,
relieved both at his shift in mood and at the break in tension between them. She
kissed his shoulder again. “Poor baby,” she murmured, patting his flat belly.

She felt Seth
tense up momentarily beside her, and she suddenly realized something she hadn’t
before.

“Oh. I called
you that before, didn’t I?”

Seth’s gaze was
quiet and unreadable, with something vaguely soft underlying it. “You did.”

Erin squirmed a
little bit, irrationally embarrassed at this unconscious slip. But, after a
moment, she decided it wasn't that big a deal. She remembered their
conversation in the elevator several months ago, when Seth had been taking her
to the hospital when she’d had that virus from hell—it seemed like ages ago
now.

She tried to
make light of her unconscious endearment. “And you said that no one called you
baby.”

Her attempt at
teasing didn’t work. Seth’s expression didn’t change, except to grow deeper,
more intimate.

And all the
lingering amusement faded from Erin completely, leaving that same tender ache
in her heart.

Seth said, “No
one ever has before.”

At just after five o’clock on the
following morning, Seth walked Erin out to her car, which was parked in front
of the old house. He was holding a sleepy Mackenzie, and Erin was carrying her
stuff.

“You’re going
back to your father’s?” Seth asked, when they paused in front of the car.

 “Yeah. We’ll
spend the morning there and then head back to the city.” She was tired, but not
overly so. It was ridiculously early in the morning, but she’d woken up and
decided she wanted to get back before her father got up.

Although he
obviously knew where she’d spent the night, she’d still feel strange coming
back from a night with Seth while her father was reading the paper and drinking
his morning coffee.

Seth looked fully
alert, despite the early hour. He’d pulled on a pair of pants and the t-shirt
he’d been wearing the previous evening, and he certainly appeared more pulled
together than Erin did in her wrinkled clothes and messy hair.

He didn’t seem
tired, but he was unusually quiet this morning and a little withdrawn. Erin
wondered how much of it had to do with what had happened between them the
previous night.

“All right,” Seth
murmured, kissing Mackenzie, who now appeared to be asleep, and handing her
back to Erin. “I’ll call you later.”

Erin put Mackenzie
in the car seat and made sure the baby was securely fastened before she stood
up to face Seth again. “Okay,” she said, feeling a nervous clench as she looked
at his distant face.

She’d felt so
close to him last night, and now he seemed to be pulling away.

Not wanting
things to get weird between them again, Erin raised a hand and placed her palm
on his chest. “Seth? Are you all right?”

Seth met her
eyes and his mouth tilted up. “Should I try to count how many times you’ve
asked me that in the last twenty-four hours?”

Erin giggled,
relieved at the brief flash of ironic humor—proof that he wasn’t emotionally
closing down on her after all. Giving him a sheepish look, she slid her hand
down a little farther, until it was curved around one side of his waist. “I
guess I have been asking it a lot, but you seem kind of quiet this morning.”

 “Are you
implying that I normally babble too much?” His voice was dry and even, but Erin
could tell that it was just a ruse. He was slightly tense, uncomfortable. And
his eyes seemed as guarded as they’d been during the first few months of her
pregnancy.

She gave a
faint, appreciative smile. “I believe most of the babbling falls on my
shoulders. But I’m serious. You seem... Is everything all ri—” She stopped
herself before she asked the question again, but she peered up at his face
anxiously.

Seth smiled
faintly. “Are
you
all right?”

When she saw it
was a genuine question, she answered honestly. “Of course.  A little sore. But
last night was so good.”

“So it was
really what you wanted?”

She realized
what he was worried about. “Yes. I wanted it. It was what
both
of us
needed.”

They stared at
each other for a minute. Then she stood on her tiptoes and pressed a soft kiss
onto the side of his mouth. “I’d better get going. I’ll talk to you later.”

Seth nodded and
opened the car door for her. “I’ll call you this evening.”

As Erin drove
away, she could see him in her rearview mirror—standing on the side of the long
driveway, watching them drive away.

***

“So you and Seth actually...” Liz
paused abruptly, obviously rephrasing her sentence after a guilty glance over
at Mackenzie. “…did it? Again?”

Erin pressed
her lips together, her cheeks burning. She didn’t know why she’d been feeling
so embarrassed recently about her relationship with Seth. She’d never been
particularly self-conscious about men or sex before. She and Liz had shared
details about sexual encounters for years. But, for the last month or two, Erin
had felt like blushing whenever she referred to anything intimate regarding Seth.

She cleared her
throat. Pulled Mackenzie’s hand away from the fistful of her hair the baby was
pulling. “Yes. We did.”

Liz looked torn
between amusement, surprise, and delight. “Well, well, well,” she began, a
familiar taunt in her voice. “So what exactly is going on between the two of
you?”

Mackenzie babbled
happily and incoherently, and she made another grab for Erin’s hair. They were
eating an early dinner in a sandwich shop near Erin’s apartment, and it had
only been two days since the weekend with Seth.

Her daughter
had been good while Erin and Liz were eating, but then she’d started getting
fussy and restless, so Erin had moved her to her lap and was idly playing with
her while she chatted with Liz.

Trying to distract
Mackenzie with her baby spoon instead of Erin’s hair, she gave a shrug in
response to Liz’s question. “I don’t really know.”

“So are you
changing your mind about him?” Liz persisted, leaning forward.

“I don’t think
so,” Erin admitted, feeling that guilty ache in her belly at the thought. “I
don’t know. I mean, if we were in a normal relationship, then I guess I’d think
things were progressing well. But I’m just scared that whatever progress we
make still won’t take us to...where he wants us to be.”

Liz’s eyebrows
arched up. “And where’s that?”

As she was
squirming, Mackenzie accidentally kicked Erin in the stomach, making her grunt
softly in surprise. “Don’t be obtuse, Liz.”

They were
distracted from the conversation by a beep of Liz’s phone. She glanced at it
idly but then did a double-take at whatever she saw on the screen.

She clicked on
something, and her entire body froze.

“What is it?”
Erin asked, concerned by her sister’s reaction.

“This link was
just sent to me. It’s Mary Carlyle’s…”

She sounded so
upset as she trailed off that Erin just took the phone out of her hand.

She stared down
at the screen. There was no story this time. Just a photo and a provocative
question:  “Has Seth Thomas moved on?”

The picture was
of Seth in the hallway of a fancy apartment building or hotel, and he wasn’t
alone.

He was with a
gorgeous, slender blonde—one that Erin recognized as working in the mayor’s
office.

Seth’s arm was
around the woman, and she was smiling up at him seductively, her hand
disappearing inside his suit jacket. A suit that looked very much like the one
he’d been wearing yesterday when he’d dropped by her apartment in the evening,
before he’d left for what he’d called a “dinner meeting.”

Erin blinked. Felt
her throat close up. Started to shake inwardly. Had absolutely no words.

“That bastard,”
Liz muttered, finally finding a voice.

Mackenzie must
have been able to sense Erin’s distress because the baby’s face screwed up and
she let out a few whimpers.

Then she burst
into deafening squalls.

Erin couldn’t
seem to think. Couldn’t seem to move. Couldn’t seem to breathe. She
instinctively pulled her daughter closer and jostled her a little, but she couldn’t
begin to murmur anything comforting.

Never in her
life had Erin been so utterly stunned—so utterly without words.

It wasn’t a
crisis or a real trauma. Certainly not a life-or-death situation. But it had
leveled her in a way she could never remember being leveled before.

She wanted to
laugh bitterly from the sheer, exquisite irony of it all.

Irony had always
been her oldest of friends.

For some
reason, though, Erin found herself incapable of laughing it off.

“Erin,” Liz was
saying. “Are you all right? What do you want me to do?”

She couldn’t
respond to any of those questions.

After a minute,
Mackenzie finally quieted into pitiful sniffs and whimpers. Erin rocked the
baby against her.

The more she
processed the situation, the more she was able to move past her first stunned
and agonized response.

Nothing was
ever as simple as it seemed.

And some things
weren’t what they seemed at
all
.

So Erin was
finally able to meet Liz’s eyes, in control of herself again.  She actually
thought she could see something clearly for once.

“Erin,” Liz
said again, pulling her chair a little closer. “The picture...Seth. Wait until I
get my hands on that fu—freaking...butthole.”

“I think in
this case you can save your outrage. I don’t think this is what it seems.”

Liz drew her
brows together. “What do you mean? Seth and that woman. And evidently he spent
the night with her.”

Erin didn’t feel
quite as casual as she sounded, but she was starting to feel a strange kind of
confidence growing from the storm of her initial emotions. “Yeah. That’s what
the story said. But what kind of source is Mary Carlyle? I’m not going to react
until I talk to Seth about it.”

Liz was staring
at Erin like she was an alien. “Seriously? You think he’ll tell you the truth? If
he’s really been sleeping around behind your back—”

Erin shook her
head urgently. “See, that’s the thing. I don’t think he
has
been.”

“What? That
picture—”

“Was in a
hallway, not a bedroom. His arm was around her, but nothing else. They could
mean anything.” As she spoke, Erin became more and more certain that she needed
to wait before she completely freaked out. “We don’t have enough information, and
I don’t think Seth would have done this.”

Staring at her
incredulously, Liz asked, "Why not?"

Erin felt
herself blushing, behind the flush of all the other emotions. She looked down
self-consciously at the table in front of her. “He loves me.”

Liz looked a
little uncomfortable. “I know that,” she said, her voice obviously an attempt
to be comforting and reasonable at the same time. “But sometimes a person can
love someone and still have sex with someone else. And, if we think about Seth’s
history, it doesn’t exactly lend itself to—”

“I know,” Erin
interrupted, feeling a rush of anxiety that she immediately talked herself out
of. “I’m not saying it’s out of his character completely. Who knows what anyone
would do if they’re pushed in certain ways. I’m just saying I don’t think he
did this now.”

“But you’re not
together.”

Erin wished Liz
would shut up, although she knew that her sister was just trying to prepare her
for the worst—as an act of kindness and support.

The thing was,
for once, Erin wasn’t expecting the worst and didn’t want to start expecting
it.

“You keep
telling Seth you don’t love him, so maybe he wants to try to move on.”

“It’s possible.
But I think he would have said something to me first, if he’d changed his mind
about...about me.”

Liz’s voice was
almost hushed now. “Is he normally
open
about such things?”

Seth wasn’t
open about such things. He wasn’t open about anything.

But Erin—however
unreasonably, however much her cynicism and sense might tell her that he could
have easily sought some sort of solace and power by fucking another woman—still
didn’t think that he had.

A shaky kind of
peace had settled over her. One that could be rattled at any moment and one
that left her fingers trembling as they held on to her daughter. But a peace
nonetheless.

Erin's mind and
heart and instinct had settled into a tense, waiting quiet. An eye-of-the-storm
kind of thing.

“Erin? Are you
sure you’re all right? You handling this so calmly and maturely is kind of
freaking me out. Are you about to have a breakdown or something?”

Erin huffed
with what wasn’t quite real laughter. Mackenzie was warm and substantial in her
arms, and Erin clung to her—couldn’t even imagine what it had been like to not
have her daughter to hug. “I don’t think so. It’s weird, isn’t it? But I think
I’m all right. I’m going to wait until I talk to Seth.”

 “And will you
have the breakdown afterwards?”

“I hope not. Like
I said, I think the picture is misleading in some way. Mary Carlyle isn’t a
good source.”

Erin sat with
her daughter in her arms, at a corner table in the quiet sandwich shop. It felt
like her world had changed in some way during the last five minutes, although
she couldn’t exactly name what had changed.

It was bizarre,
surreal, and almost frightening, but it felt like something had shifted in her universe.

Liz was silent
for a long time, just watching Erin anxiously, uncertainly.

Until finally Liz
said, very softly, “What will you do if this
is
what it looks like?”

“I told you. I
don’t think—”

“But what if it
is?” Liz repeated, in almost a whisper.

Erin’s tenuous
calm vanished for a moment as she unwillingly acknowledged the possibility. Put
herself in the position of hearing Seth tell her that he’d actually fucked
another woman last night.

And Erin could
feel it. All of it. Knew exactly how she’d react to hearing it and was almost
overwhelmed by the pain of it.

Her face
twisted as she tried to control her rising emotions. “He has the right to do
what he wants,” she forced out, her voice thin and unnatural. “It would be fine.”

“You know, it
doesn’t look like it would be fine. It looks like it would be...devastating.”

Erin's
shoulders shook a few times, and she squeezed her eyes shut before she got
control of her emotions again—not wanting to overreact before she knew the
whole story and not wanting to upset her daughter again. Sniffing and then
opening her eyes, she managed to speak, her voice wavering but clearer than
before.

“It would be,”
she admitted. “For me. I would be really upset. But there’s nothing keeping Seth
from doing so, and what kind of heartless bi—witch would I be if I tried to
stop him from moving on?  But, of course, I’d be upset. I’ve built this whole
chapter of my life with Seth in it, with him functioning in this certain role, and
without him...”