Roark

by AC Arthur

  Chapter 16

  Hyde Park

  London

  “I’d kill for the chance to come up to your place.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that drastic,” Suri said before laughter bubbled up from inside her.

  Durant had her pressed against the front door of the building. One arm was around her back, the other was beneath her thigh, holding her leg as she wrapped it around his waist. “It’s your fault. You shouldn’t be so freakin’ sexy,” he whispered before thrusting his tongue inside her ear.

  That was probably the least sexy thing he could’ve done at that point. Suri hated a tongue in her ear. “I think you’re more hung up on the freakin’ part. You want another taste of what you had before and lost when you couldn’t keep up.”

  He’d moved from her ear to dragging his tongue along the hills of her cleavage. Now that she could get with, since as she recalled, Durant could suck the hell out of her titties, enough to make her come and want to beg him for more. But Suri never begged.

  His hand moved back until it was running over her ass cheek, gripping it tightly. She pressed into him then, remembering how good he was with her ass as well.

  “We can have it all again, Suri. Just say the word.” He looked up at her and waited until she opened her eyes to look at him. “Just say the damn word.”

  She knew it was as simple as that; she’d known it even before Durant had called her last week and asked for this date. It’d been months since they’d seen each other, since he’d walked out after she’d confessed her attraction to men and women. “No,” she whispered and thought seriously about retracting that one simple word.

  Durant was great in bed, there was absolutely no doubt about that. He was a computer geek who could—and most likely did—hack into any and every computer worldwide. Working as a private contractor and being in high demand meant he had his own money, so he wasn’t after the Donovan funds. One of the main things her brothers had warned her about was guys coming at her just for her money. As if she’d be naïve enough to fall for a scam like that. But that wasn’t the case with Durant. He owned a mansion and a luxury yacht where he preferred to sleep. And he’d offered to give her the world, his heart included.

  She’d turned him down then, and she was turning him down now.

  “Stop,” she said when he’d continued to kiss her breasts.

  He did exactly as she said, pulling his mouth away from her and letting her leg down slowly before taking a step back. “What do you want from me?” he asked, his tone as tortured as the confused look on his face.

  She cleared her throat. “Nothing. And everything.”

  He dragged a hand over his bald head. “You can’t have it all, Suri. Me. Them.”

  Suri knew the “them” he was referring to; she knew and she hated that he couldn’t even bring himself to say it. “Would you rather I lie to you and to myself?”

  “I’d rather you not think you can be with me and have a woman on the side too.”

  She frowned. “That’s not what I think.”

  “It’s what you said,” he argued.

  “No, Durant, that’s what you heard. And you heard that because your big ol’ ego was bruised. How dare I lay in your bed and let you do all those delicious things to me, come in your mouth, all over your dick, yell out your name, and then tell you I like girls too. How fuckin’ awful of me to be honest with you!”

  “I don’t know how that works, Suri. I didn’t know what you wanted me to say then, and damn if I know how I’m supposed to offer myself to you now.” He was frustrated, and once upon a time so was she.

  But Suri was over that now. She was secure in her wants, accepting the fact that some would think that made her different. What she hadn’t quite figured out yet was how her happy ever after would look as a result. “To be honest again, I don’t know, either.” She reached into her purse and pulled out her key. “And maybe it’s best if we just don’t see each other while I try to figure it out.”

  He cursed. “You said that the last time, and I left you alone. If you still weren’t sure, why’d you agree to this date?”

  “Because I wanted to see you again.” She’d wanted to see if she could hate him the way she’d tried to do in the months she hadn’t seen him. That answer was no. She didn’t hate Durant, and therein lay her biggest problem. “But I understand what you’re trying to say. I won’t agree to another date from you, Durant.”

  “Suri—”

  “No,” she said and held up a hand to keep him from stepping close to her when that was exactly what he’d tried to do. “It’s not fair. This is who I am, and I can’t ask you to accept that. I won’t ask you to accept me.”

  He opened his mouth to say something and then clapped it shut before shaking his head.

  “Goodbye, Durant.” She closed her fingers so tight around her keys, one pressed painfully into her skin.

  “Bye, Suri.” He said those words and turned to walk down the steps. Suri watched him get into his car and drive off, all while telling herself she’d done the right thing. Again.

  She couldn’t help who she was, not even to make the guy she thought she might be in love with happy.

  With that thought in mind, she took a deep breath and was about to turn around and unlock the door when she saw him.

  He was standing between two parked cars across the street. Had he been there the whole time? She didn’t know. Durant had come around from the driver’s side to get her out of the car as soon as he’d parked. And when she’d stepped out, they’d stood at the car with her back against the hood while he’d kissed her hungrily. She’d never looked around.

  The guy was staring right at her now. She couldn’t see his face, because he wore a long black coat with a hood pulled down low. And he wasn’t moving.

  She turned immediately and almost dropped her key as she fought to get it into the lock. Once it was in, she pushed the door, hurriedly stepping inside and then slamming it shut behind her. The front door to the building where she’d been temporarily staying was paned glass at the top, so she could look out again to see the guy hadn’t moved. Now fear eased its sharp claws over her skin, and Suri ran to the stairs, taking them two at a time until she was on the third floor, where her flat was located.

  She fumbled with the keys again, cursing her shaking fingers until she got it to work. Rushing into the flat, she slammed the door behind her and ran through the living room. “Aunt Birdie! Aunt Birdie!”

  Suri ran from the living room to the kitchen to the powder room, screaming for her aunt, because she had to be here, and she had to be alright. The woman drove her insane, but she couldn’t be hurt, she couldn’t be…

  “Aunt Birdie!” she yelled louder this time and ran down the hallway toward the three bedrooms. Aunt Birdie was staying in the biggest one all the way to the back.

  Suri slammed into the door, her hand slipping on the knob as tears clogged her throat. “Aunt Birdie!”

  When the door finally opened, she burst inside and was about to scream when to her left, another door opened.

  “Chile, if you don’t stop making all that noise at this time of night… Folk are tryin’ to sleep. Or if they ate that last bowl of buttered beans before going to bed, like I did, they were probably stuck in the bathroom too.” Aunt Birdie closed the bathroom door behind her and walked toward the bed.

  Suri leaned over, pressing her hands to her knees as she tried to catch her breath and calm the adrenaline pumping through her. “I just needed to make sure you were here and alright,” she said between breaths.

  “Well, where else would I be? Unlike you, I don’t hang out ‘til all hours in the morning with some no-good man.”

  Suri shook her head as she came to a full stand again and looked over to her aunt. She was wearing a long pastel-colored nightgown, as she did every night. Her head was wrapped with a silk scarf, and the eye mask she always slept in was hanging by the elastic string around her neck. Her ensemble was made complete b
y those ridiculous slippers with feathers or something fluffy on top. “He’s not a no-good man, and it’s called a date.”

  Aunt Birdie pursed her lips. “Hmph. Well, last week you were on a date with a no-good woman. You need to make up your mind.”

  Suri could only shake her head; she was in no mood to argue with her aunt tonight. It was enough that the mean-as-a-rattlesnake-woman was alive and well. “Alright, I’m sorry I disturbed you. Good night, Aunt Birdie.”

  She didn’t wait for her aunt to respond but left her room and moved through the house until she was once again in the living room. She hadn’t turned on any lights when she’d come in because Aunt Birdie was a staunch believer in conserving electricity, so empty rooms had to be pitch-dark at all times. Thankful for that tonight, Suri crept toward the window. Pressing her side against the wall, she eased an arm around slowly, pushing the curtain until there was the barest space for her to peek through.

  Her heart thumped and then stopped. He was still there, and his head was tilted back as if he were looking up at her.

  “Fuck this,” she snapped and released the curtain.

  Going back into her room this time, she yanked the shoebox from beneath her bed and pulled out the gun she kept there. A quick check of the bullets, and she released the safety before heading out again. She had to close the front door quietly, because she didn’t want Aunt Birdie coming out to see where she was. Running down the steps with gun in hand, Suri had no idea what she was going to do beyond telling the bastard to get lost, but as she arrived on the first floor and made her way to the front door, a loud boom and then a bright burst of light sent her flying back.

  At a little after midnight, Tamika sat on the edge of Roark’s bed and sighed. “I told myself to stay in the room with my mother all night.”

  Her initial plan had been to slip into bed with him and lose herself in the warmth of his embrace, because for a guy who was still relatively new to the snuggling thing, he was pretty damn good at it. But Roark was awake. He’d been sitting up in the bed, his laptop open, notepad, pen and a blue spiral-bound book with a burst of white flowers on the cover next to him.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “That’s just it,” Tamika said and turned sideways, lifting one leg onto the bed so she could look at Roark. “While she was in the hospital, Dr. Duvall had a psychiatrist come down and speak to her, so she’s now on an antidepressant, along with her pain medications, which I’m not totally sure is a good cocktail of meds. But besides that, she’s been on the antidepressants for about five days now, so when she began talking I figured that was the reason why. I had no idea she needed to talk because she’d been holding in so much.”

  Roark closed his laptop and leaned over to set it on the nightstand. “I wish my mother had talked.”

  Tamika had wondered how he felt about everything her mother had said earlier this evening. If it was hard for her to hear that her parents knew the man who wanted them dead, and had pissed that man off by leaving him in a burning car, then it had to be even harder for Roark to hear his mother had known for at least two years that this man was alive.

  “How did they live with this for so long?” she asked. “And how did your mother finally find out Kaymen was alive?”

  Roark shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been sitting here trying to find out. I hadn’t gotten around to closing out her email accounts and lucky for me, my mother was extremely organized. She kept all her passwords written down in her planner. I’ve been going through each email, trying to find some mention of Kaymen.”

  She kicked off her slippers and pulled both her legs up on the bed, scooting back so she could lean against the headboard the same as him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if something happens to her. If he gets—” She stopped talking when she felt his hand covering hers.

  “It’s not going to happen.”

  For endless moments, she continued to stare down at his hand over hers. This was exactly why she’d tried to force herself not to come in here. “So much is happening.” She hadn’t realized she’d said that out loud until he squeezed her hand.

  “That it is.”

  “Which means we should try to focus on one thing at a time, right? Prioritize. Sex was good. It was fun in the midst of all this…um, darkness. But now we have to concentrate on protecting the people we love and keeping our focus on them. Tell me that’s what you’re thinking too. Tell me I’m not the only one deciding to stop whatever physical was going on between us while we get to the bottom of all this killing. Dammit, open your mouth and tell me, Roark.”

  She dragged her gaze away from their hands and looked up to see that he’d been staring intently at her. Tamika knew she’d just babbled all the things that had been running through her mind in the last five hours. She also knew she was being a rambling idiot. What happened to that woman who was so in control of herself, her thoughts and her body? The one who’d said yesterday that they could just have sex until it was time to move on?

  With waves of embarrassment swarming through her, she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. Then he moved, using his other hand to pick up the pad, book and pen and toss them all onto the floor so he could slide closer to her on the bed. When he was still again, he lifted her hand to his lips, dropping a soft kiss on each of her fingers. “What I’m going to tell you is that Cade and Pierce are going to find this sonofabitch and they’re either going to kill him where he stands or they’re going to haul his demented ass to jail. That’s what I know without a doubt in my mind.”

  Her heart was still fluttering from the sweet kisses he’d just dropped on her fingers; now she was looking into his eyes and feeling the potency of his words.

  “The next thing I’m going to tell you is I’m here for you in whatever way you need me to be tonight. No judgment and no regrets.”

  And no promises. She didn’t say that, but the words immediately popped into her mind. But what the hell? There were no promises to be made. If not for Kaymen Benedict and his crusade for revenge, she and Roark would’ve never met. She may have come to Painswick to visit with her mother but there would’ve been no reason for her to promise a steak dinner to her friend in the IT department at the insurance company where she used to work to find Roark’s personal phone number and then insist they meet. They didn’t run in the same circles—her family worked good jobs, had pension plans and social security to look forward to in retirement, while his owned luxury B&Bs and ordered designer clothes like she ordered groceries.

  “I—”

  Whatever she was gonna say was cut short by an insistent knock on the door. She and Roark both jumped as if they’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t have. With a frown, Roark rolled off the bed first, and Tamika followed him. She hadn’t been prepared for what they saw when they opened the door.

  A woman wearing a pink-and-gold silk scarf wrapped around her head and a pale-pink quilted robe. Another woman wearing a great black cocktail dress and red boots laced up to her knee. But the outfit wasn’t what stuck out most about this woman, it was the flecks of what Tamika was certain were blood along her face, neck and upper chest.

  “Suri? What the hell happened? What are you two doing here?” Roark fired off questions while Tamika stood beside him waiting for the answers.

  “Apparently not as much as you’re doing up in here,” the older woman wearing the pink and gold said. “Now, get out here and show me to my room. That woman downstairs was all flustered and could barely tell me her name, said she was going to call somebody named Geoff. But I need to lay down and get some sleep. I don’t have the time nor the inclination to wait for somebody else to come and talk to me.”

  “No problem, Aunt Birdie. I’ll get you settled,” Roark stated briskly.

  Tamika touched his arm. “I’ll do it, Roark. Just let me get my shoes and I’ll get Dorianne, and we can have the rooms on the first floor set up for them.”

  “
Who are you, and why are you coordinating rooms at his B&B? Roark, are you sleeping with the staff? Lord have mercy, this family has gone straight to hell in a handbasket.”

  “She’s not the staff,” Roark insisted, but the woman’s words had already taken Tamika back to the thoughts she’d been having before the knock on the door.

  “I’m Tamika Rayder,” she said and extended her hand to Suri first, because she knew this one would be receptive.

  Suri extended her arm slowly, and Tamika immediately looked down to see that the back of her hand had specks of blood on it too. Roark must’ve seen it as well, because he moved quickly, stepping in front of Tamika and wrapping an arm around Suri so she leaned into him immediately.

  “We need to get you medical attention,” he said and scooped his younger sister up into his arms.

  That left Tamika with Aunt Birdie.

  “I can take your bag, ma’am.” The bag was actually a signature Louis Vuitton makeup case Tamika was certain cost over three thousand dollars. It made the eight-hundred-dollar bag Tamika had that had been a splurge purchase when she’d received her tax refund last year look like a cheap imitation.

  “You wanna take my bag, but you’re not the staff.” If it were possible, Aunt Birdie held the handle to her case even tighter and fell into step behind Roark.

  Tamika ran back into the room for her slippers and came out again when Roark and his family were halfway down the stairs.