Wrecked (The Blackened Window) (50 page)

I gasped and tried to push back, but he spoke and his voice was calm. “Little one, you are asking me to do something that feels wrong on every level. It’s my instinct to fight for you, even if it means fighting
with
you. I don’t know how to let you go. But I swear to God, I will
never
hurt you and if you tell me to go when we land, I will. But please…
please
consider that there is more to be said between us.
Please
admit that there is still a chance to work this out.”

I couldn’t speak. The pressure of his body against mine incinerated any thought I may have had. He turned a little, pressing me against the wall.

“I don’t know how to give you what you want and if space is what you need, I don’t want to fucking give it to you.”

The rumble in his voice left me breathless. I felt how I felt the first night he drove me home. A little flustered, a little breathless. His lips were next to my ear and he crooned again..

“You don’t really want it either. I can feel the way you react to me.”

It was true and I moaned, dropping my forehead against his chest, but his words sank in.
No. That isn’t what I want.
It took all my willpower, but I pushed him back again.

My voice was a whisper when I answered him. “Please, Xander. Please listen to me. You have to take your hands off me because I can’t fucking think when you touch me. And I need to be able to think right now.”

He dropped his hands from me with a curse, but kept his face right in front of mine. “All right, little girl. I’ll give you space. You’re fucking wrecking me. Every instinct I have says to claim you even more, but I’ll give you what you want—because I love you. Take the rest of the flight and when we land, we decide some shit.”

I gasped and dashed passed him. He was putting a time limit on how long I could think about all this.
How can he even do that? Does that mean we’ll break up if I don’t have an answer he likes when we land?
For the rest of the flight, my mind raced through scenarios and memories. Tried to analyze our relationship so I could predict something about the future.

We were back on the ground too quickly. Once we had our bags, he just looked at me expectantly. “Well? What’s it gonna be, Leda? Am I driving you to your place or mine?”

“I can just take a cab.”

He just laughed and grabbed my luggage, but his laugh was bitter, derisive. He tossed our bags in the back of his car, but he saw when I opened the passenger door.

“Goddamn it, Leda! What are you doing?”

I looked up at him like he was crazy. “I’m getting in the fucking car.”

“No! All I want to do is take care of you. All I ever want is to make sure you’re safe and happy. Why are you making it so hard?” When I didn’t respond, he walked over to the passenger side door and closed it. His voice was calmer. “I want to take care of you. I may want to do a million fucked up things in bed with you, but I never want you to have a moment of true pain or unhappiness. And I know it may seem silly, but the car door is just one of those things. It’s like it…just represents…something—fuck, I don’t know. Just…I don’t want you to open the car door, any door, for yourself when I’m around. I just want you to let me fucking take care of you.”

His voice had faltered at the end of his tirade and he looked down at the ground, his chest heaving, and I had a flash of understanding. He wanted me, wanted to cherish me. He may have wanted to destroy me in bed, but only if I liked it too. And everywhere else he wanted to adore me.

June’s warnings about the mental acrobatics of Domination and submission flickered in my thoughts and my thoughts came too fast. Flashing back to the memory of the first time he drove me to school, how pissed he was when I got out of the car by myself. All the little moments of his quietly doting on me. Protecting me from everything—from riding my bike home from school late at night, or holding off on sex, and later when we started the kink, easing me into it. Helping with studying for school.

All the lies and half-truths, the omissions, were part of it, part of protecting me. But from himself too. He thought some part of him would hurt me, taint me somehow. He was human, not Superman, even though he wanted to be. He wanted me to see him like some hero. That fractured need for me to love him melted my heart.

He had spent the last few days walking me through his personal hell and it had turned into exactly what he had feared it would. And, instead of raging at me or the world or even Stacy, he was here, laying himself bare to me, trying to make me understand, even while he believed I was going to leave him anyway.

I just barely touched his arm, my voice a whisper. “Okay. You get the door. I get it, Xander. I love you.”

He looked up at me sharply, his face set in lines of disbelief. But when he saw my small smile and the tears brimming over my lashes, his incredulity shifted to the purest, most open happiness. He grabbed me around the waist as a low, joyful laugh erupted from his chest. “Oh, thank God!” And he plastered my face with kisses. “Oh my God, Leda, I love you. So much. Thought my world was about to end.”

Between kisses, I murmured, “Okay, Boss?”

He answered with a gruff, “Yeah.”

“Then why don’t you take me home. No one is expecting us until tomorrow. That’s barely enough time to make up properly, but I bet you’ll make it work.”

Epilogue

Xander

Tom Petty,
You Wreck Me

All I wanted that night was to be next to her, to feel the sweet curve of her body shimmied up against me. She loved me. Even after hearing all the trash, all the shit I carried around inside me, she fucking
loved
me. There’d be days and days ahead for training her, tormenting her—teasing myself with her body.

As I watched her sleeping, I considered all the ways I wanted to make her yield and cry and scream. And it was all perfect. I thought about a life with her—quick fucks between calls in residency, vacations with no one but us, massaging her leg cramps away when she got pregnant, calling her Mommy for the first time, hearing our kids calling her Mommy for the first time. The million little moments that would make up a life together. I was in love with her, obliterated by her. Wrecked.

Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:

In Other Words: The Other C-Word

M.K. Schiller

Excerpt

Chapter One

I dreaded Mondays. They always loomed up before their time, like some quiet, inescapable, energy-sucking demon. It wasn’t because I didn’t love my job or minded getting up early. They just seemed to signify the end. The end of another wasted weekend.

I finished my last-minute preparations to the sounds of
Manic Monday
by the Bangles. It was a cliché, but it was the song my younger sister Stevie blared every Monday morning. I hastily tied my combat boots and adjusted the cuffs of my khaki pants as I thanked the gods for the hundredth time that I worked for a casual company.

I was about ready to leave when my cell phone buzzed in my hip pocket. I did a stunned eye roll seeing Kathy Carver’s name light up on the display. She was the executive assistant to David Henley, the owner of our company. I answered the phone hesitantly, wondering why she was calling when I wasn’t even late…yet.

“Hello,” I said, trying to coax fake cheeriness in my voice.

“Hi, Marley. It’s Kathy Carver,” she replied, as if I didn’t know. She was all business except for the intermittent cough between words. “I need you to do something for me.”

Oh boy, this couldn’t be good. Kathy Carver didn’t like me very much, so the only plausible explanation for such an early phone call was some sort of grunt work she was pushing off her plate and onto mine. On more than one occasion, she’d reminded me that she was an executive assistant while I was just a lowly assistant, although no such distinction in titles really existed at our small company.

“What can I do for you?” I surprised myself with the fake level of enthusiasm in my voice.

“I need you to pick up the consultant at the airport. You know, the one that’s going to clean house.” My face fell with the reminder that the dreaded consultant was coming today. The whole office was buzzing about the whiz kid from New York Mr Henley had hired to turn around our company. The consensus was that he would fire all our asses and move our production to China. Actually, it was fire
almost
everyone. People like Kathy were probably safe, but her not so subtle warning let me know I was not.

I worked at an athletic apparel company that also sold a budding line of women’s clothing. Times were tight, and although we had carved out a niche market, everyone was worried about our economic outlook. The rumour was that this consultant was a last-ditch effort by Mr Henley to improve our profits. I was completely rooting for him, even if it meant I’d lose my job, which was most likely anyway.

“He needs a ride from the airport?” I realised immediately how stupid my question sounded when that was what Kathy had just told me.

I heard the sigh on the other line, supporting my own conclusion that my question was redundant.

“Yes, Marley, he needs a ride. I was supposed to do it, but I’m sick. I need you to get to the airport, pick him up and bring him to our office. Can you handle that?”

I thought about it for a second. Really, her question was…are you such an idiot that you can’t do this?

“Um, sure I can do that. What time is his flight coming in?”

“In an hour.”

I glanced towards the clock, tightening my grip on the phone. The airport was almost an hour away.

“I’ll email you his flight info. I have to go now. I’m really sick.” For emphasis, she ended the call with a few more coughs.

I ran to my laptop and printed the email as Stevie walked into my room.

“Who were you talking to?” she asked, placing my errant clothes in the laundry basket against her hip.

“Kathy Carver,” I said, piling a few additional garments into the bulging basket. Stevie cast me her famous eye roll that could probably cut through ice—not owing to the Kathy Carver call but because I had so many dirty clothes in my room. Yeah, I could be neater. Stevie was the epitome of neat. What’s more, she was a complete fashion plate. She had an uncanny ability to pair not just colours, but patterns together. Today, she was wearing a red and white fitted striped shirt with a grey pencil skirt and argyle hose. It sounds weird, but she pulled it off like the true creative person she was. Stevie’s a graphic artist, and although she wasn’t required to dress so formally for work, she always did. Her long brown hair was up in a Tortoise-shell barrette and it even looked like she’d deliberately picked her black rimmed Prada glasses for this outfit.

“What did she want, Marley?” Stevie put down the laundry basket to pet Van Morrison, her cat. I hated that cat. It was mutual. Stevie’s boyfriend—well now fiancé—Adam, had bought him for her, because he felt there was too much oestrogen in our household. That cat followed Stevie everywhere. He also loved my younger sister Billie, and our mother. It was me he despised, even when I was being nice and feeding him treats. He would accept my offering, arching his back, showing off his orange fur in my direction, lulling me into a false sense of security. Then, just when I petted him, Van Morrison would hiss, claw my hand and scamper away.

Stupid cat.

“I have to go pick up the consultant.” Stevie knew about him. We called him the consultant because I had no idea what his name was. Everything was supposed to be top secret, but my best friend Dillon worked with me and always had the good gossip. It was Dillon that had found out the guy was some sort of business guru and had apparently saved many companies in crisis.

“Seriously, Marley? Are you wearing that?” Of course, Stevie would ask this question. We were as close as two sisters could be, but our fashion senses differed greatly. I liked to wear comfortable—what Stevie referred to as ‘boyish’—clothes. My wardrobe mostly consisted of flannel shirts, jeans and T-shirts.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, assessing my khakis and plaid button-down shirt.

“Do you want him to think you’re a slob?”

“I look fine. I’m in the dress code.”

Stevie rolled her eyes, “So? Don’t you want to impress him? Maybe he won’t be so quick to fire you then.”

“Stevie, my days are numbered either way.”

“Dress up…just this once.” Her voice got sing-songy as she uttered the next words, “I’ll let you borrow my Louboutins.”

My mouth dropped open. Okay, I’ll admit I’m a twenty-five-year-old tomboy, but I’m still a girl at heart. I liked to dress up occasionally and look good, usually in Stevie’s clothes. She was very generous with her wardrobe, and we had identical body types. She was, however, prickly when it came to her designer stilettos. A chance to wear Louboutins made my mouth water just a little.

“Deal, but I have to hurry. I’m already going to be late.”

We ran into Stevie’s room, an area of orderliness, which contrasted drastically with my den of chaos. She went to her closet and handed me a slim-line black skirt, a fitted jacket and a pale pink shell top. She placed the shoes on top, somewhat reverently.

“Pink, really?”

“Pink is perfect. It was practically made for your crazy shade of blonde hair and those pale blue eyes.”

“This is a little much, Stevie. Why can’t I just wear the shoes?”

“You’re kidding right? You want to wear my Louboutins with that outfit? Are you trying to insult the great Christian Louboutin himself?”