Unbreakable

by Harlow, Melanie

  I had to laugh. “He’s being an asshole.”

  She was silent a moment. “I’m sorry I said those things. I just get so mad sometimes.”

  “It’s okay.” Sitting up, I smoothed her hair back, my throat tight. “When we’re angry, sometimes we say things we don’t mean to people we love, and they forgive us.”

  “Do you forgive me?” She rolled to her back and looked up at me with tearful blue eyes that mirrored mine.

  “Always. And I will always be here for you.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Should we go tell Keaton?” she asked, her face growing concerned. “He’s going to be really upset.”

  My heart swelled with love for her. “Let’s do it together. And then let’s think of something fun to do tonight, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  My baby sister came to the rescue. When I called Frannie and told her what happened, hoping she might bring the girls over as a distraction, she offered to have my kids at her house for a sleepover.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Both of them?”

  “Yeah, why not? We’ve got the room—Whit can sleep with Millie, Winnie can bunk in with Felicity for the night, and Keaton can have Winnie’s room. Plus, it’s movie night tonight, and Mack got to choose, so it’ll be something Star Wars for sure. Doesn’t Keaton love Star Wars?”

  “He’s obsessed,” I told her. “You’re the best. Should I feed them?”

  “Nope, we’re ordering in. Just bring them over any time.”

  The kids were excited about the sleepover and packed their bags right away. I was dismayed to see that Whitney came downstairs with a fresh application of makeup on, but I didn’t say anything. Maybe she was trying to cover up the fact that she’d been crying.

  I dropped them off around six, giving Frannie an extra-long hug at the door before I left.

  “You okay?” she said, looking at me anxiously.

  “Me? I’m fine,” I told her, although it wasn’t entirely the truth. “It’s the kids I’m worried about. Did you see Whitney’s face?”

  She glanced over her shoulder toward the noise. “I wondered about that.”

  “I assume it’s some kind of armor. Maybe she feels like it protects her or something. Or it makes her feel tough.” I grimaced. “Hopefully she doesn’t ask to give Mack’s girls a makeover.”

  Frannie waved a hand in the air. “It’s just makeup. I’m not worried.”

  “I am.” I shook my head, fighting tears. “I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. Like the decisions I’m making right now are going to affect my kids forever. One minute I’m confident about them, and the next I’m doubting everything. Was it right to move them here? I don’t know. Should I take the makeup away from Whitney? I don’t know. Should I play nicer with Brett so he doesn’t take it out on the kids to spite me? I don’t know. I’m a fucking mess, Frannie.”

  “You’re not. You’re just worn out.” She squeezed my arm. “Take the night off from being Mom and do some things for you. Drink wine in the tub. Read a romance novel. Watch porn.”

  That actually made me laugh. “I have never watched porn in my life.”

  “Maybe you should.” Her eyes lit up. “Or play with toys—the adult kind.”

  “I don’t own any.”

  She shook her head. “Jeez, I thought I was sheltered. Now I know what to get you for your birthday.”

  “Goodnight, Frannie.” I turned around and headed out. Snow was just starting to fall, heavy and thick. “Thanks again. I’ll pick them up in the morning.”

  “No rush!” she called. “Drive carefully. I think we’re getting hit hard tonight. Like eight or nine inches.”

  I spun around and walked backward a few feet. “Maybe you’re getting hit hard with nine inches tonight—I’m getting nothing!”

  She burst out laughing. “Enjoy your evening anyway!”

  * * *

  When I got home, the house was empty. My parents had gone to have dinner with Oliver’s mom and dad, who were old friends of theirs, and wouldn’t be back until late. I puttered around the house, looking for things to do, but the kitchen was clean and the family room picked up and my mother liked to leave the Christmas decorations up at least through New Year’s Eve.

  If the inn had been open, I might have wandered down to the bar for a glass of wine, but it was closed until Monday to give the staff some time off. I thought about calling April, but then I remembered she was having dinner with a high school friend who was in town for the holidays. Chloe and Oliver were also at his parents’ house, and Meg was surely with Noah tonight.

  I thought about running a bath and relaxing in the tub with a book, but I felt too antsy. I didn’t really want to sit still. I didn’t really want time to think.

  Laundry, I thought, getting pitifully excited at the idea of a Saturday night spent sorting and washing and folding. At least it would keep my hands busy. I grabbed a basket from the laundry room and brought it upstairs, collecting my dirty clothes before heading into Whitney’s room. She was fairly neat, like I was, and everything that needed to be washed was piled on a chair in the corner.

  Keaton was a different story. His clothes were tossed all over the room. I was gathering them up when I noticed a bunch of crumbs on his unmade bed. Frowning, I lifted up his pillow, but nothing was hidden there. Kneeling on the floor, I bent down and checked under the bed. Nothing there either. When I stood up again, I pulled open the nightstand drawer—and found a pile of chocolate candy, a stash of Christmas cookies, and a ton of empty wrappers.

  My anger at Brett flared all over again. This was all his fault and I had no idea how to deal with it. I didn’t want to have to deal with it. I didn’t want to spend another Saturday evening feeling like a terrible mother. I didn’t want to be living at my parents’ house at my age. I didn’t want to be alone tonight.

  I wonder what Henry is doing.

  Stop it, I told myself immediately. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing.

  But what if he was still at work? If he was, would it be okay to go say hello? It had been three days. That was enough cooling time, right? Surely by now, we could have a conversation without being tempted to do stupid things. And that was all I needed—a conversation. Someone to talk to. Something to take my mind off things. Someone to reassure me I existed outside the realm of all my problems, to lift me out of this pit and make me forget.

  Make me feel good. Make me feel beautiful. Make me feel sexy and desirable and feminine and alive.

  Without giving myself any more time to think about it, I threw the laundry basket aside, raced downstairs, and put on my coat and boots. Maybe his truck won’t even be there, I thought as I hurried away from the house. The snow was thick beneath my feet. Maybe he’s already home for the night because of the blizzard. Maybe he’s even out with those other friends. It is Saturday night. Not everyone is sitting at home being lonely and miserable. I followed the path toward the winery, but I could see before I got too far that the parking lot was empty, covered in a pristine layer of white.

  I stopped walking. My shoulders sagged, and my heart ached. Any hope I had of salvaging this evening was gone.

  Or was it?

  Turning around, a plan began to take shape in my mind. A wicked, reckless, irresponsible plan.

  But I was none of those things. I was a good person. I could always be counted on to make the right decisions. I put others before myself. I was not the sort of person who went around acting on foolish impulses for the wrong reasons. And what I was thinking of doing was very, very foolish—more foolish than eight mimosas at Breakfast with Santa. It was greedy too. And it came with a much greater risk.

  But once the idea was in my head, I couldn’t stop myself.

  Ten

  Henry

  When I heard the knock, my gut told me it was her.

  For the last three days, I’d been expecting her at the winery with a mixture of dr
ead and anticipation. Each night, I’d come home feeling grateful that she hadn’t shown up and yet still wishing she had. Because even though I knew nothing could happen, I liked being around her. I missed talking to her. I missed her face. I missed the way it felt to do nice things for a woman I was attracted to.

  I was trying to do what Lucas had said, give both Sylvia and I some breathing room, but I hadn’t stopped thinking of her for a minute.

  My heartbeat quickened as I switched off the television and walked from the couch to the front door, my mind a jumble of questions. If it was Sylvia, what did it mean that she was knocking at my door at nine o’clock on a Saturday night? Did she still want to be just friends? If I invited her in, could I be trusted to keep my hands to myself? It seemed like a bad sign that I wasn’t sure.

  I unlocked the door and pulled it open.

  “Hi,” she said breathlessly. She wore a long wool coat buttoned all the way up, and her legs were bare below the knee. On her feet she wore high heels, the same ones she’d worn on Christmas Eve. Her hair was done like it had been on Christmas Eve too, and she was wearing the perfume—the one I’d told her never to wear around me. Snowflakes clung to her coat and hair.

  Right away I assumed she’d been out at a party or something, and jealousy kicked me in the gut. What I wouldn’t give to see her across the room at some function and be able to walk over and introduce myself. Get to know her without so many fucking complications. Tell her she took my breath away and kiss her until she lost hers.

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  I realized I had been standing there staring at her, and she was out in the cold. “Oh—sorry. Yes.” I opened the door and stood back as she entered, then shut the door behind her.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “Okay.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “You?”

  “Terrible.” She started to unbutton her coat.

  “Terrible?” I frowned. “Where were you tonight?”

  “Home alone. The kids are sleeping at Mack and Frannie’s. My parents are out.”

  Confused, I glanced at her high heels. “You were home alone?”

  “Yeah. And I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” She finished with the buttons and clutched the coat together at her chest.

  My cock twitched. Was she fucking naked under there? “You couldn’t?”

  “No. And it made me realize something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to break the rules.” She opened the coat and let it fall to the floor.

  My jaw dropped. She wasn’t naked.

  She was wearing the red dress.

  “I want to touch you,” she said, her eyes locked on mine. “I want to hear you tell me I’m beautiful. I want you to misbehave.”

  “Sylvia,” I said, working very hard to keep my cool. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.” She began slowly walking backward down the hall.

  I followed her like a predator stalking its prey. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Not a drop.”

  “Are you under the influence of drugs?”

  She shook her head.

  “Am I dreaming right now?”

  She stopped moving, allowing me to get close enough for her to reach out and put a hand on my dick, which was thick and hard under my jeans. “Am I?”

  I grabbed her by both wrists and pushed her up against the hallway wall, pinning her arms above her head. “I’m going to give you one chance to come to your senses, Sylvia.”

  “And if I don’t?” She strained against me, pressing her breasts into my chest.

  I put my lips at her ear. “Then I’m going to spend the rest of the night doing very bad things to your body.”

  “Do them,” she whispered. “I’m begging you, Henry. Do them.”

  Hearing my name on her lips like that—hearing her beg—flipped a switch in me. I was done asking permission, done worrying about whether this was right or wrong, done trying to talk her out of something I so desperately wanted—no, needed—to do.

  I crushed my lips to hers, plunging my tongue into her mouth. My hands moved down her body, along curves covered in red, and I wanted nothing more than to tear that dress from her skin with my teeth.

  But first I had to taste her.

  Dropping to my knees, I shoved her dress up her hips and reached for her underwear—except she wasn’t wearing any.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I whispered, the bulge in my jeans growing even bigger. “You knew what you wanted when you came here tonight, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, breathing hard. “So don’t stop.”

  I lifted one high-heeled foot and kissed the inside of her ankle. Her calf. Her knee. I placed it over my shoulder and kissed my way up her inner thigh.

  She flattened her hands on the wall beside her and gasped as I put my mouth on her pussy, stroking up the warm, slick center with my tongue, lingering at the top. I moaned at her sweet taste, at her velvet-and-satin texture, at the irresistible scent of her. I teased her clit with the tip of my tongue, and reveled in the way she moved her hips, and put her hands on my head, and tightened her leg against my back, pulling me in closer. She panted and sighed and murmured incomprehensible words of pleasure and disbelief. The leg she stood on trembled.

  “I’m so close,” she whispered, and I sensed something like fear in her voice, almost like she was afraid her orgasm wasn’t going to happen. “Don’t give up.”

  Give up? Was she fucking serious? Why would I give up? It made me wonder if her husband was an even bigger asshole than I’d previously thought.

  But half a second later, he was out of my head.

  I slipped one hand between her legs and slid one finger easily inside her, then two, searching for the spot that would put her over the edge. I knew I’d found it when her body tensed up and I felt her muscles contracting around my fingers.

  “Henry,” she said, almost frantically. “My God, it’s going to happen. It’s going to fucking happen, and it’s been . . . so . . . long.”

  Beneath my tongue, her clit was firm and swollen and I sucked it into my mouth, flicking it with quick, hard strokes. She cried out repeatedly, her fingers fisting tightly in my hair, her entire body going stiff except for the rhythmic pulse of her orgasm around my fingers.

  Fuck, it felt good to make a woman come, to know that I was giving her that kind of pleasure, to hear her sounds and taste her desire and see her bare before me. To touch her and kiss her and fuck her with my tongue just because I wanted to. And because she wanted me to. She wanted it so badly she’d come here in high heels and a red dress with no panties underneath.

  And that wasn’t all she wanted.

  “Come here,” she panted when she could talk again, yanking on my shirt.

  I rose to my feet and she reached for my belt. “I want to get my hands on you,” she said against my lips. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  I groaned as she undid my jeans and slid her hand inside, wrapping her fingers around my cock. Fuck, it had been too long—if she kept working me with her hand like that, I was going to lose control and come all over her fingers.

  Not that I’d mind a hand job from someone other than myself for once, but that wasn’t how I wanted this to go.

  I took her hand off me and spun her around. She braced herself with two palms against the wall. I’d only intended to unzip her dress, but seeing her like that—the long, silky hair spilling down her back, that dress hiked up above her ass, her thighs bare, those high-heeled shoes—I couldn’t help myself.

  Pressing up against her back, I lowered my lips to her ear. “Spread your legs.”

  She stepped out slightly.

  “More,” I told her, pushing my jeans down enough to take out my cock.

  When her legs were opened wide enough, I paused. “Do we need to be careful about—”

  “No,” she said breathlessly. “All good.”

  I slid inside her
, slow and deep. A guttural sound escaped my throat—she was warm and wet and soft and tight. She gasped and whimpered as her body stretched to accommodate me, arching her back and sliding her hands up the wall.

  God, I hoped she left handprints. I’d fucking frame them.

  Gripping her hips with both hands, I began to move, rocking into her with deep, rhythmic thrusts that made her cry out every time I plunged inside her. It felt so good that I forced myself to slow down, breathe, take it all in—if I only had one night with her, I was going to make it one she never forgot. I buried myself as deep as I could, sliding one hand between her legs and rubbing circles over her clit with my fingertips.

  Her head fell back as she moaned.

  “Is this what you wanted?” I asked, kissing her throat. “My mouth on your skin? My hands on your body? My cock inside you?”

  “Yes,” she panted. “All of it. I wanted to be this close to you.”

  “God, Sylvia.” I inhaled her perfume, and the room seemed to spin. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. You’re so fucking beautiful. I don’t even deserve this.”

  “Yes, you do,” she whispered. “You make me feel so good. I want to make you come, Henry. I want to know I can make you come.”

  Jesus, how could she have any doubt? Strapping my other arm across her chest, filling my palm with her breast, I held her tight to me and worked my fingers faster between her legs. “Do you know how hard I’m trying not to come right now?”

  “W-why?”

  “Because I want you to come again first. Then it’s my turn.”

  “I can’t come twice in one night.”

  “You can and you will. Right here.”

  “It’s never happened before.”

  “Even better.” I slipped my hand inside the top of her dress and teased her nipple with my fingers. “God, I love your body. I took one look at you in this dress at the party and wanted to fuck you right there in the bar. You make me so goddamn hard.”

  “Yes.” She took one hand off the wall and looped it around the back of my neck, gripping tight. “Tell me.”