Suck and Blow: Party Games, Book 1 (14 page)

Frankie drew in a soft breath. She’d heard that term used by her parents a few times, especially after she’d spent an hour or two carrying on about how “bloody Alley Cat did it to me again” as mortified disbelief sliced at her wounded pride. Her parents had made their fortunes through hard work, hard work pimping the talented and talentless to a country obsessed with the notion of celebrity. The very industry she’d moved into herself.

What a difference her life and Alec’s had been. So different. Worlds apart. She’d been handed everything she wanted on a silver platter—or, being that her father was the record-producer king of Australia, the platinum platter. Alec on the other hand had faced ridicule when that platter had landed in his lap thanks to a random collection of numbers and a twist of fate and luck.

She licked her lips, wishing she could say sorry.

“It didn’t worry me back then,” Alec said, as if knowing her very thoughts, “although Mum and Dad had been indignant I was never invited to after-school events or weekend parties. That their youngest son was ostracized upset them greatly—albeit quietly so. The Harris’s are, if nothing else, taciturn.” His attention returned to his hand on her body, his fingers drawing absentminded patterns up and down her waist. “I guess they realized their youngest son didn’t quite…mesh with the other kids at school. Mac fit in straight away so he never copped the same abuse, but then becoming best mates with Lachlan McDermott, Australia’s golden boy and heir to the McDermott Media Empire on the first day of school helped him.”

He stopped, his fingers pausing on her skin for a moment.

Frankie waited. She wanted to hear more. She
needed
to hear more. She needed to understand the man before her so much that her heart was one big aching knot of tight pain in her chest. She needed to understand because, no matter how much she tried to deny it, she
was
falling in love with him. Big time. Probably already
was
in love with him, God help her.

“Mac and Lachlan tried to give me a leg-up at school.” The statement left Alec on a dry breath, his fingers resuming their journey over her waist. “During senior year I’d attended more than one social event at Rodney McDermott’s mansion, but I never really felt comfortable there. Too much money. Too much pressure.”

“And yet here you are now,” Frankie said, her mouth still dry, her pulse a heavy thump in her temple, “a highly successful, highly sought-after landscape designer who, I’m guessing by this house, makes quite a comfortable income.”

Alec shook his head, a wry chuckle rumbling in his chest. “My accountant used the word millionaire last tax time. Who would have thought it? I sure as shit didn’t.”

You did, Frankie. But you could never get over your ridiculous pride and over-inflated sense of importance to really see that, could you? You’d despised how he kept beating you, and loathed how you couldn’t stop thinking about him. God, what a piece of work you are, Francesca-Maree.

Frankie looked at him, seeing the boy she’d known her entire high school life in the man lying beside her—a boy both grounded in a reality she’d never really had and thrust into a world of pretention and prejudice she’d known forever. That boy had pissed her off to no end—had challenged her and beaten her at everything she did to distance herself from the spoilt, rich brat deep down inside she’d feared she was. She’d hated him for that back then.

Now she understood.

And she felt horrible. So fucking horrible. And sick.

“Fucking hell, I’m such a…a…
moron
.”

Alec chuckled. “I wouldn’t say moron. Stubborn, maybe?”

She scrambled off his bed, her gut twisted. “I have to go.”

“You what?”

She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. For all her peacocking about how much better she was than her shallow, superficial parents, for all her self-congratulatory pats on the back for being so
above
the life she’d led, for all the kudos she gave herself for Playgrounds for Hope, the charity for disadvantaged kids she’d established the day she finished high school with the money her parents had given her as a graduation present, she’d been every bit the spoilt, indulgent brat she didn’t want to be when it came to Alec Harris. Shit, she’d given him an insulting nickname for fuck’s sake. She’d derided his successes and scorned his achievements, taking them all as a personal attack on herself.

She’d scoffed at his situation and mocked his status when all the time he was being the very person she believed herself to be.

Fuck, he didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve him.

“Frankie?”

She snatched her leather pants up from the floor, hugging them to her bare breasts as she searched for her shirt, her bra, her undies.

Fuck it. They could stay here along with her boots.
She
couldn’t. She had to get away from him. Before she realized even more how completely shallow her existence was. How utterly and totally self-centered and superficial and—

Strong fingers wrapped around her upper arm, pressing into her biceps with firm pressure. “What the hell is going on, Frankie?”

“Nothing,” she mumbled, looking everywhere but at him. She shrugged herself out of Alec’s grip—or at least tried to. The bastard wouldn’t let her go.

“Yeah, you running from my bedroom like I’m the devil is nothing.” His fingers grew harder on her arm and he pulled her to face him, his stare capturing hers. A frown creased his forehead, the expression part confusion, part irritation. “So after I just tell you everything about what was going on in my part of our backstory, you run off? What am I meant to think here? That you’ve realized you’ve just slept with the school loser? That I’m not good enough for you?”

“No!” she burst out, her belly churning. “That’s not it at all.”

His jaw bunched. “Well, I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but that’s exactly what it feels like. You’ve just discovered my parents are blue-collar to the bone,
 
That I was never one of the popular kids, and you’re running. You tell me what I’m meant to think?”

“It has nothing to do with your parents!” She stamped her foot. “I mean, it does, but not…not like…damn it. I…” She looked away from him.

Damn it, woman, say something! Tell him!

“Care to explain what’s going on in that head of yours, Francesca?”

She ground her teeth, giving him a flat glare. That the feel of his hand on her arm made the pit of her belly flutter and the junction of her thighs throb meant little.

Yeah, right.

“Nothing’s going on in my head.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her rather self-insulting statement, the sides of his mouth twitching. She glared at him harder. Damn it, there he went again, making her so bloody…bloody….
argh
. So bloody…

“Damn you, Alley Cat!” she burst out, shoving her hands to his chest and pushing him away when not a single adjective came to mind. “How do you always do this to me? Make me feel so goddamn pathetic?”

He stared at her, his nostrils flaring. An unreadable expression fell over his face. “That’s not how I want to make you feel at all.”

“How do you want to make me feel then, huh?” she snapped, chin jutted out, fists rammed to her hips. “’Cause at the moment, I’ve never been so fucking confused. Since meeting you at the party I’ve ranged from feeling like I was put on this planet to be your sexual slave, to believing I may actually be worth something, to finally realizing just how hollow and one-dimensional and trivial I am. And it’s your fault. If you didn’t come waltzing back into my life I wouldn’t be feeling so freaking messed up and confused and I hate hate
hate
feeling like that. I
hate
it. And as always, it’s your fucking f—”

The rest of her raw, absurd accusation was silenced by Alec’s kiss.

He’d been forceful with her more than once. He’d been gentle with her a time or two as well. But this kiss…this kiss was so sublime in its tender perfection she thought for sure her heart would stop.

His lips brushed hers, his hands cupping her face with barely any contact at all. “I want to make you feel amazing,” he whispered against her mouth. “Because you are.”

“No, I’m not,” she muttered. She should move away from him. She should. But she couldn’t.

“Yes, you are. Stubborn at times, conceited, probably far too opinionated for your own good, likely to argue with just about anyone and everyone if they don’t agree with you, inclined to be showy and more than a touch snarky, probably inclined to drive too fast and drive me to distraction but amazing all the same.” He laughed, running his thumb over the line of her bottom lip. “I redesigned Nick Blackthorne’s Melbourne garden recently and, God knows how, but we got to talking about what the rich do with their money. He told me his agent was the invisible head of a charity for underprivileged kids and that single benevolent act gave him hope for the future. Said it made him believe the filthy rich
can
possess hearts and souls. I looked up Nick’s agent that night and you know who I discovered it was?”

Frankie’s cheeks grew warm and she turned her head to the side, desperately wishing she could smack Blackthorn up the side of the head for revealing her secret. And feeling irrationally happy he’d revealed it to his landscaper. “Me,” she mumbled.

Alec chuckled, returning her gaze to his face with a gentle lift of her chin. “You. The Gun. The woman I watched for six years all the way through school. I watched you laugh with Mikaila Drummond at so many inter-school events I think I could have drawn your smile while asleep. I listened to you speak passionately about confronting issues no spoilt rich kid would ever care about and saw the soul inside your flamboyant front. I saw you at your best and at your worst, Francesca Winchester. And Frankie—” he tilted her head up until she had no choice but to look at him, his eyes holding hers with an intensity she felt all the way to the tips of her toes, “—your worst isn’t going to make me run for the hills.”

She stared at him, her throat so tight it hurt to draw breath. “How can you be so sure?”

“You know why I kept beating you every time we faced off in school comps?”

“Because you’re better than me?” It was meant to be a question, but for some reason she couldn’t help think it was the truth.

Alec however, seemed to find her answer humorous. He shook his head with a grin. “No. I was showing off. Trying to impress the girl I was head over heels for.”

Frankie’s belly flip-flopped. She gave him an exasperated glare. “You’re an idiot. I was always horrible to you.”

He laughed again. “True. Do you remember the state public speaking finals award ceremony at the Sydney Opera House? I was
this
close to asking you out.” He held up his right hand between their faces, his thumb and index finger barely a centimeter apart. “You were standing alone by the buffet looking lost and confused and grumpy, and all I wanted to do was hold you. Well, and maybe kiss you.”

She frowned, the thought of that lost possibility making her belly not just flip-flop, but flip-flop, twist in knots and churn like a washing machine. “Why didn’t you?”

He gave her a wry smile. “Because I
was
an idiot. And a coward.”

Frankie let out a ragged sigh. “And as much as I would have wanted to kiss you back, I probably would have laughed in your face.”

Alec grinned again. “Probably.”

Her chest squeezed tight at his response. God, she’d been such a cow. “You are too good for me, Alec. I’m shallow and selfish and way too willful. You deserve someone better.”

“Do you see me walking away?”

She shook her head. “Why do you like me?”

His grin softened and he feathered his thumb over her bottom lip again. “There have only ever been two things I’ve wanted with one-hundred-percent conviction in my life. Two things. One I knew at a young age—to get my hands dirty designing and forging gardens from the beauty of nature. The other I knew the second I saw you all those years ago at the state debating championship, furious with me for proving your argument about ‘neighbours needing fences’ wrong. A teenage girl on the cusp of being a woman, burning so bright with life and passion and stubborn aggravation that I couldn’t think of anything else but you for weeks after. So many weeks in fact, I failed a math exam.”

Frankie’s breath caught in her throat, her heart doing its best to slam its way to the same location. “What did you want, Alec? What is the other thing you one-hundred percent knew you wanted? Even back then?”

He pressed his forehead to hers, the corners of his eyes crinkling with a slow smile. “You. The first time I saw you, I knew I wanted to see you again. The next time I saw you, I knew for sure I wanted to get to know you better. And every time I saw you thereafter, that knowledge was reinforced. Reinforced so many bloody times that I eventually realized what I really wanted wasn’t just a chance to make you smile, but a life with you. A future with you. Forging pleasure from your happiness and giving it back to you tenfold.” He touched her lips with his thumb once more, his gaze holding hers. “You, Francesca. All of you. Even the argumentative, cocky bits.”

She knew she should say something, do something. She knew she should. But she couldn’t. She was too stunned. And too damned deliriously happy.

No, wait. Change that. There
was
something she could say. Something she’d never uttered to anyone before in her life. Something she needed to say to Alec right now. Right now and every day for the rest of her life.

He brushed his lips over hers. “I love you, Frankie. So damn much if I had to sit a math exam now I’d fail.”

His low but very clear confession slammed the wind from her lungs. She stared at him, her sex throbbing, her mouth dry, her lips parted. He loved her. Her heart thumped hard into her throat and her blood roared in her ears. He loved her. Holy fucking shit, he
loved
her. Her. She’d never felt so alive. So…so…shit, so gloriously, wonderfully real.

And then it hit her what he’d done. With an exasperated groan, she punched her balled fists against his chest and sent him reeling back a step. “Damn you, Alley Cat.” She glared at him, slamming her fists to his chest until his legs collided with the bed and he dropped to his naked arse on the mattress.