She paused, looking a little lost.
When the moment stretched, he prodded, “What happened, your parents didn’t approve?”
Her laugh was hollow. “No, Mama didn’t approve. But it was worse than that. We stopped off at his place first. His mom and dad were pretty nice to me at first. Naturally they asked about me living in town, where my mom lived, what she did. And found out she used to be their cleaning lady.”
Hell. He hadn’t even known her mother cleaned houses for a living. He could imagine that didn’t go over well with the uptight assholes.
“Yeah,” she said, correctly interpreting his grim expression. “His mom was kind of shocked, but his father was downright rude. He kicked me out. At that point, Doug got really quiet. He didn’t defend me or anything. He drove me home and barely said a word.”
Fuck it. She looked so small, so alone. He pulled her into his arms, pressing his lips to the crown of her head.
She took a shuddering breath, but she allowed him to hold her, even curled into him. “When I told my mom about it, she flipped out, saying I had to stay away from the whole family. We fought and finally she told me the reason why she stopped going there. Apparently Doug’s father had hit on her…like really pushy. She said that’s as far as it went, but I don’t believe that.”
A shiver went down Blake’s spine. Rape. That’s what they were talking about, and Erin had been in this guy’s house.
“I talked to Doug on the phone that night. His dad had some other messed-up story about my mom stealing something. We fought about it. Then he stopped taking my calls. The bus ride back took six hours since I’d left my car here.”
“The fucker,” Blake burst out, unable to hold it in any longer. When she jerked in his arms, he soothed her. “Sorry,” he muttered.
She burrowed into his chest. “It’s good to hear someone say that. I was half afraid you wouldn’t believe me either.”
“He didn’t bother you after that, did he?”
“Nope.” She laughed roughly. “I thought we were just having a fight. I mean, they were big problems, but I thought we were serious about each other. So we’d cool off over the winter break and patch things up later. Except when I got back to town, he still wouldn’t answer my calls. And then I saw him on campus with another girl. He didn’t even look in my direction.”
“Good riddance. Look, honey, I don’t know whether this Doug is a predator or just a guy stuck with a shitty dad, but you know, you
know
it wasn’t your fault or your mom’s, right?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “I know, but it’s hard to remember sometimes. And then with you…”
The realization sank in his gut. Cold self-disgust settled in his bones. “And then I came onto you like that guy did to your mother,” he finished for her.
“No,” she said, sounding surprised. “And then with you I can’t seem to let my guard down even though I know you’re nothing like him.”
A grim smile twisted his lips. “Not totally different. I was still willing to use my position, my money to hold influence over you. I always knew it was wrong, but hearing about someone else do it… Fuck. There’s no question.”
He was a bastard. He deserved for someone to kick his ass as surely as he wanted to beat the shit out of this Doug’s dear old dad.
“Blake,” she said, turning to face him. “I was grateful for the job, but it was my choice to show up for work each day. You didn’t come on to me even when I wanted you to. You never pushed me to do anything at all.”
Her sweet brown eyes met his directly, almost aggressively. She never flinched away from his scars, not in the beginning and certainly not now. Instead her expression was one of…tenderness. He hated to ruin it, but he couldn’t lie to her anymore.
“Erin, I put an ad out for a housekeeper on a whim. I figured I might call someone in from time to time, but when I met you, I knew I had to see you again, so I set up a weekly cleaning schedule. Then that wasn’t enough, so I increased it to twice a week. I’m as bad as Doug, doing whatever was necessary to keep you near me.”
“Why?” she whispered, sounding genuinely confused. It broke his heart, that confusion, that despite the strength that attracted him to her, she didn’t know her full worth.
“God, Erin. You’re kind, you’re smart. I knew it from the first day when you gave a mean, scary-looking guy a talking-to. You told me you would clean the house…”
“But you’d have to clean yourself,” she finished.
“It had been a week since I’d showered,” he admitted. “So I went upstairs and felt like a new man. And when I came back into the kitchen, you’d heated up soup for me to eat.”
“All those pizza boxes were disgusting.”
“I was disgusting,” he agreed. Then softer, “Though I think I’ve gotten better.”
A smile played at her lips. “No more forts made out of pizza boxes.”
“You noticed those, huh?”
“Yeah, you were a mess,” she said with fondness. “But you do clean up nice.”
He smiled too, then sobered. “I have no excuse for that, Erin. And I would understand completely if you want to break up with me…in fact objectively I think you should. But if you’d stay with me…God…”
“What?” she whispered.
He racked his brain for the right answer, the perfect gift that would bind her to him. And came up empty. “Nothing,” he said roughly. “I have nothing to offer you. Only myself.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and for a horrible second he thought she meant goodbye. Then she threw her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his. After a second of shock and pure relief, he crushed her to him, kissing her as if his life depended on it, because as he felt her cool hair brush away the ever-present pain in his skin, he did depend on her. He knew only pain, and she was freedom. He felt madness, and with her it was pleasure.
He gathered her to him, reveling in the soft weight and warmth of her in his arms again. She moaned and ground her sweet ass against his erection. He shoved the slinky fabric of her dress up her thigh, savoring smooth skin and the thin slip of her panties pointing downward. His fingers followed the edge, meeting the fleshy outer lips of her sex.
She gasped into his mouth. “
Blake.
”
“Yes,” he grunted.
And he gave her more, at once lighter and harder, faster and deeper, until neither of them could take it anymore. He found her clit and pinched lightly. She exploded around him, a lovely feminine moan of ecstasy, a soft rush of hot liquid against his knuckles and the tremble of her thighs draped over his own.
He petted her softly as she came back down. His erection pulsed impatiently, straining against his jeans to get near her, but he forced himself to back up, to pull away before he impaled her. He had something to prove to himself if not to her. He could have a thoughtful conversation with her. He could watch a movie all the way through. Everything didn’t always have to devolve into sex.
So when she turned those lust-dazed eyes on him and smiled sexily, he pulled the DVD case out of his jacket and held it up like a goddamned shield.
She blinked. “
Phantom of the Opera
?”
“You always brought a movie when you came over,” he explained. “Since I was coming over, I wanted to bring something.”
Her look was sweetly reproachful as she connected the characters. “Very subtle.”
“Hey, it was either this or
Beauty and the Beast
.”
“At least in that one they end up together.”
“Because he turns back into a normal man,” he reminded her. “There are no happy endings for the beast.”
Her expression dimmed. She crawled to him, straddling his legs with hers, and shit, how was he supposed to restrain himself like this? His dick was right there. A few layers of cloth could disappear and he’d slide inside her. She plucked the DVD from his fingers and tossed it to the side table.
“What are you doing?” he choked out.
She slid down to the floor between his feet. Her eyes flicked up, troubled and wicked. “Proving you wrong.”
She proceeded to do just that, using her tongue and lips and breathy sighs to drive him to ecstasy. The truest form of pleasure, a pure and potent happiness that was not what he’d meant but so much better. He wanted this all the time; he wanted her forever.
Beneath her seductive touch, he trembled with need, with hope. But he’d wanted things before, and they’d exploded right in front of him. He’d dreamed these things before and woken up alone.
He tried to resist, to accept the satisfaction of having her in his arms without the promise of a future, but it overwhelmed him. Like a tidal wave it swept him along, dragged him under, further away until he couldn’t see the shore.
There was only an endless expanse of him and her together, of sex and love and hope converging on the horizon. He was lost then, hips jerking upward in helpless thrall and coming copiously into her warm, waiting mouth. Dragging her onto his lap, he licked and suckled and teased her breasts until she rocked her hips down onto him. In barely minutes he was hard again, an aching erection ever ready to serve her need. It wasn’t even about sex then but sharing. None of it mattered without her, not the beauty or relief.
He impaled her onto him;
this is what you do to me.
He pushed up into her;
feel me, take me, never let go.
Her mouth was open in wordless entreaty while her eyes…dear God, her eyes. They burned with something more poignant than lust—there was knowledge. She knew what she did to him with her body, how low he could fall. She knew how hopelessly he thrust into her, desperate for more of her all the while aware it would never be enough.
“Don’t hide from me,” she whispered.
But he didn’t even know what she meant. He was looking at her, head on. She could see the worst parts of him, in the ugliness of his face and the degenerate use of her body. He showed her every dirty, unkind desire and God help her, she never told him no.
He realized she was murmuring something. Not a wordless sex-chant, but something more. “Let me see, let me see,” she moaned, and he shuddered beneath. He writhed, and it must have looked like pain. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye. A fucking tear—how had that happened? He didn’t know, but it hovered there on the brink, and he was unable or unwilling to reach up and wipe it away. She wanted to see? He would show her what a coward he was, and even then he wouldn’t let her go.
Mine.
The teardrop slipped from his eye, falling over skin that should have died. But it wasn’t dead, it was wholly, painfully alive. It burned all day and all night as if the explosion had never stopped. The moisture of a single tear wasn’t nearly enough to put the fire out, but she rested her face against him, right there. Her soft skin was a balm anywhere, but there, on his burns, it was a goddamned miracle.
He’d stopped moving, he realized dimly, but she hadn’t. She set her hands on his shoulders and moved over him in sweet, rhythmic sex. Her face was pressed against his, right where he was most disgusting, right where he was most vulnerable. He didn’t know why she’d want to see that, but it twisted something inside him. It made him desperate.
Desperate, he grasped her shoulders and pulled her down. Too hard. She winced.
Shit. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“No, that’s what I… Show me.”
He shook his head, refusing even while he held on tightly and did it again. She gasped at the impact, the breathy sound spurring him on. He thrust inside her faster and harder, the room filling with the slaps of her skin against his, of her moans and her cries. He was cruel and relentless but instead of turning him away, her sex clenched around him. It squeezed him tight as she threw back her head. Beautiful, so beautiful.
He shut his eyes tightly and placed hot, open-mouthed kisses at her neck while his body shuddered its release. He groaned against her skin, breathing her in while he ground her body down against his cock. Helplessly, his hand clenched in her hair. Her soft pussy tightened around his cock, her hips rocking gently, wringing a final spurt of come from his cock.
Her contended sigh was hot against his neck.
C
onsciousness came back
to Erin, carrying an almost acute sense of loss. The chill of something found and then lost. Still groggy, she stretched slightly, feeling along the thin cotton sheets of her bed. They were cool to the touch—and empty.
With a start, she opened her eyes, looking around for Blake. After their passionate bout of sex in the living room, they’d made their way into her bedroom for round two before falling asleep entangled in each other’s arms. It was the first night he’d spent over at her place, the first time he’d been here at all, and though his house was certainly nicer, it felt lovely to have him here. Like the first burst of bright spring, blinding hope on well-worn terrain.
He wasn’t in the bedroom or the bathroom. She slipped out of the bed, clothed only in the lingering musk from their lovemaking. A puddle of white turned out to be his undershirt. As she picked it up, something flat and square flipped open.
Little pieces of white floated down to the floor. His wallet. And she’d just spilled something. Bending, she started to gather the slips of paper when she realized what they were.
She opened one.
The key to your future lies in the past.
Another.
All your hard work will soon pay off.
Do not let ambitions destroy small successes.
Someone you care about seeks reconciliation.
There were more.
The fortune cookies. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. He’d saved the messages inside them, each and every one from their nights together. She was mildly impressed that some of them had come true, but far more moved that he’d kept these little folded pieces of paper, little notes of nothingness marking their time together.
Clutching the fortunes in her hand, she pulled the undershirt over her head. It went down to mid-thigh, so she padded out into the dark living room.
Blake stood at the sliding glass windows looking out, his silhouette both intimidating and forlorn. In that moment, she saw the warrior he usually kept carefully banked. His shoulders were broad and carved with muscles, angling down along thick arms crossed in front of him. His back was lean, sloping into loose-slung jeans he’d put on. His feet were bare, but she didn’t discount his fierceness for one second like this. His deceptive casualness, his quiet intensity—he looked calm but ready to fight. Not murderous but capable of killing. She shivered.