The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (24 page)

“You are the finest man I have ever known, and I will love you forever,” I whispered, and he still didn’t move.

I stepped out of my boots, watching for him to wake up, and left them by the wall. My clothes I dropped in a pile on the chair, and I crawled under the blanket next to Vince. The couch was small and he took up most of it, but he was warm and solid, exactly how I remembered him. I inhaled deeply and closed my eyes.

Vince stirred, raising his arm over me and pulling me closer to him. He rolled slightly onto his side and kissed the top of my head, as if I’d slept with him a thousand times before rather than only one night.

He thinks I’m Lynn.

Bitter disgust sunk down into me until he said, “Maris,” and the feeling was replaced by something so far beyond love I couldn’t fathom a term to define it. It was a mix of devotion, desire, adoration, and a complete trust that I’d never experienced in my life before I met this man.

“Vince.” My voice was quiet. I didn’t want to startle him, but I wanted him to wake up. I kissed his chest and ran my fingertips down his arm. “Vince, wake up.”

His breathing halted. The muscles of his upper body tightened beneath me, and I stayed still. “Vince. It’s me.” His eyes opened, and I waited for his recognition, but he only stared at the wood beams above us. “It’s Meredith.” My resolve cracked under the weight of my name. The desperation I felt withered my words to the point I barely recognized my own voice, and his breath lifted his chest beneath my hand. “Vince—”

“Shh.” He tightened his arm around my shoulders. His heartbeat pounded beneath my ear. I inhaled deeply and let myself disappear into the safety of Vincent Pratt. The anger at him for not telling me was gone. The need to scream at him was lost forever. I just wanted to be near him.

He lifted me on top of him, and I raised my head to face the most patient man I’d ever known. His stare fell from my eyes to my lips as his hands dragged down my body and back up again.

“Vince,” I started, but the look in his eyes stole the words from my mind. I stayed quiet in his arms, waiting for him to believe I was there. He didn’t move, and neither did I. His silence was breaking my heart.

“I remember,” I said, and through his eyes, I could see clear to his soul. And I felt, without a sliver of doubt, that he loved me in a way I’d forgotten was possible. He was more than I deserved.

“I know this is a dream, and I don’t care.” His voice was rough, barely of this world, but then again, neither were we. The desperation of our union was locked away with us in this cabin in the woods. We would never exist in the light, and because of one fight with Brad, we’d almost disappeared from the darkness.

My breasts rested on his chest, and I lowered my head to see our naked bodies touching for the first time in months. A heat originated in each nipple and spread through my core, throbbing between my legs, and I let them each fall to his sides as I tightened them against his waist. Vince held me tight to him as he sat up and the blankets fell away. My legs tangled behind his and my arms rested around his neck. Every muscle in my body tightened as I finally felt him.

Vince’s lips dragged along my chin. His hot breath followed his mouth to my ear. His tongue toyed with my ear lobe, and I dropped my head back, letting the sensation of his lips on my skin spread through my body until my hips pressed against him. “Do you remember this?” he asked. I forced my eyes open as I watched him take my nipple between his teeth. I was on fire. It was strumming under my skin, replacing the calm he always brought me with a frenzied need pounding between my legs, against my chest, and in the back of my throat.

“Talk to me.”

I threaded my fingers through his hair. “I remember.”

His fingertips slid down my stomach and between my legs. He slipped two into me and paused. His breath found my ear, and I trembled from his touch. “Do you remember this?” My eyes closed as he pushed his fingers deeper inside of me and they collided with the demand for him to touch me there. “Meredith?”

I fought to inhale. “I remember.” In his arms, I was in heaven. I pulled him closer with my legs around his back and my arms locked around his neck. I wanted him. On top of me, inside of me, lying next to me. Until death do us part.

“I’ve waited so long,” he said, but I could barely hear him. His fingers pressing inside of me stole all my senses and focused them on the heat pulsing at the point of his touch.

I reached down. It was as if his dick had never left my hand. I stroked it. I knew how to touch him. He was mine, and when he moaned, I rose up on my knees and guided him into me. “I’m here.” Not a moment had passed since the last time I’d made love to him. Not a minute had been missed.

Vince lifted me up and pressed me down again. Thrusting his dick even farther inside of me, and I stopped there. I faced him, faced
this
. Nothing would ever change the way I needed him.

Vince pressed his lips hard against mine. He kissed me until I was back in this cabin for the first time. When guilt had abandoned me to my beautiful colonel.

“I love you,” he said and held me as he pushed me on my back and climbed on top of me. “I love you.”

He spread my legs wide and crashed into me again, igniting waves of need that spread through me. He held me tight, thrusting against me, marking me forever, and robbing me of a future without him. I dug my fingers into him trying to hold off the release I’d sought every day I was near him. With every movement of his body to mine, I gave myself to him a little more until there was nothing left but him.

When the heat began to choke me and the trembles turned to tremors, I said, “I’m going to come,” but Vince didn’t respond. He was lost inside of me. His body finally taking what we’d both needed for months. He was rough and powerful, but I’d never felt as safe as I did in his arms. I belonged right here with him.

Vince made love to me until neither of us could speak. My orgasms had run away with my ability to think. They’d stolen any recognition of anything other than that of his body touching mine.

He lay beside me, cradling me in his arms, and the torrent of emotions the vision of him sleeping had held back, crashed against me. There was no place left to hide. In the silence of the cabin, safely wrapped in his arms, I cried for the lost memory of us.

THE COOL AIR FLICKED AGAINST
my now-electrified skin until I shivered. Vince pulled me on top of him, covering us with the blankets and nuzzling me closer to him than humanly possible. He caressed my face with his thumbs, erasing the stray tears. He was everywhere—below me, next to me, in my heart, and in my mind. I took a deep breath, still grateful for my memory.

I lay on top of him listening to his heart beating against my cheek. I breathed in the rich mahogany scent and disappeared into the safety of Vincent Pratt. It would be a while, if ever, that I was with him again.

“Vince—”

“Don’t say it.” His arms tightened around me, and I inhaled, wanting to trap him inside me.

“I can’t go back. I can barely face your wife now.” I lifted my head from his chest, already knowing I was never going to be able to walk out of here.

“I can’t go on with you living in that house.” His voice was dark, filled with a hatred I’d never seen before in him. He pulled me up to face him and demanded, “Look me in the eyes when you answer this question.” I already knew what it was about. “Did he hurt you?”

“No.” I stared steadily at him. I already had a plan for Brad, and it didn’t include the colonel.

“You promised you’d always be one hundred percent honest.”

“I was watching Liv swing. He came up behind me and said we could move if I wanted to.” Vince waited, observing every breath from my lungs to my lips. “Brad put his hands around my neck and said, ‘Just say the word.’”

I steadied my breathing. I didn’t let Vince see the tears swirling just below my surface. The memory of that moment, the end of Vince and the weeks after it when I barely knew him, came back and hurt me all over again.

“How did he know?”

“I don’t know. I think from the text I sent you the day of the talent show. I didn’t erase it immediately. There was a lot going on that day.”

“What happened after he said it?”

“Am I being interrogated?”

“Yes. I almost killed him just for being in the house when you were injured.”

“He walked away. I sent the e-mail to you and checked for anything else on my phone that needed to be deleted.”

“And?” Vince wasn’t letting it go.

“And he started screaming at me. I told him to be quiet so the kids wouldn’t hear. I acted like he was crazy, which was easy because of the way he was screaming.”

Vince’s muscles tensed beneath me. “And?”

“And I walked up the stairs with him following me. I fell. My feet came out from under me. I was rushing.” Vince stared at me, demanding the truth, but the words I’d shared were not a lie. “He didn’t hit me with a baseball bat. Why did you think he did?”

“Your e-mail. Your injury. And when I went to your house, the contents of your purse were all over the kitchen counter as if he’d searched your bag.”

I looked around the cabin. Brad was going to be harder to take care of than I’d thought. I couldn’t underestimate him.

With two fingers on my chin, Vince tilted my head to face him again. “If I find out you’re covering for him . . .”

“You’ll what? Hit me with a baseball bat?”

“Not you. And I won’t need a bat.”

I kissed Vince. I knew I had to leave. I had to go back to my house. It must have felt like a good-bye to him, because he rolled me over, trapping me beneath him again.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“I need some time. I have to take care of some things.”

“What things?”

“My family.”

Vince ran his fingers through my hair, and I could feel his frustration in the taut muscles of his arms. Guilt lowered my eyes from him. He still wasn’t mine to have. Nothing had changed about our situation, and although I wanted him, I wouldn’t put us through the last year all over again. Too much had already been lost to go back.

“Do me a favor?”

“Anything,” he said and lifted my head to face him.

“Stay off Facebook for a while.”

“What are you going to do?”

I couldn’t include him in this. It was between my husband and me. “I have to go. I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Vince rolled off me, letting me sit up and catch my breath. I wasn’t sure I could stand. The totality of the morning left me weak. I could have lain back down with him and fallen asleep safe in his arms, but that was impossible. I dressed while he watched me in silence. He was sitting on the couch, and I knew I’d never survive without him.

When he stood, I turned to face him.

“Vince.” He looked at me, intrigued by my use of his name. “I love you.” I broke through his wall of regret, and he smiled and shook his head slightly. “I love you, and now, we know that’s never going to change.” He stayed still, watching me. “I’d lost you in my mind, but every day I knew that I loved you even when I didn’t know myself.”

He leaned down and grazed my ear with his lips. His breath on my skin melted me.

“I love you,” I repeated. “But I still can’t have an affair with you. If our future’s together, it shouldn’t include anyone else. Because that’s not real life.”

I’D ALWAYS BEEN OPEN WITH
my phone and had always left it out. The kids knew the passcode pattern. Anyone could use it, because I wasn’t using it for anything other than a tool to mother my children.

Brad, in contrast, never left his phone unattended. I checked it while he was in the shower and tried a password every other day. I never guessed correctly. When it vibrated on our nightstand, I checked to see who was contacting him, but he had it set so nothing showed on the screen.

I didn’t actually need the information. I was pretty clear on Dharma’s role in our lives. I was just hoping one of them was dumb enough to make this easier for me. I spent my day off in our home office, scouring our phone records for repeated numbers. I’d never checked it for anything before. It took about three seconds to identify Dharma’s number.