He stepped into me, silencing me just with his nearness. “I saw you stumble out of the cab this morning, I saw your shitty apartment, saw you in a relationship that makes me murderous.” He lowered his head and spoke above a whisper. “For so long, you’ve been perfect to me. Untouchable. Unblemished. Now I want to touch you, Lake. I want to blemish you. I don’t want you perfect anymore. I just want you.”
My entire body shook with the force of my heartbeats. “Why now?” I asked.
“Because I’m done trying to protect you. If we do this, people are going to get hurt, including us, and you have to be okay with that.”
I tried to force myself to push him out of the way. Manning—this—was the one thing I desired most in the world, but I knew, even through my haze, how terribly it could go wrong. “How can I be okay with that?”
“If you can’t, tell me you’re happier without me in your life,” he said, almost pleading. “It’s the only way I’ll be able to walk away from you again. Otherwise, I’m going to take what I wanted from the start. And I’m going to erase him. For good. For-fucking-ever.”
“Corbin?” I asked, shocked that he was even on Manning’s mind at a time like this.
“You know what it does to me when you say his name like that?” he asked.
I knew, because he’d said her name to me, too. “I hope it hurts.”
“It does.”
I looked at the ground, guilt creeping in. Not because of Corbin, but because Manning’s perception of Corbin and me was wrong. I hadn’t corrected it so I could use it to hurt him, but I hadn’t realized how he’d latch on to that information, dragging Corbin into this. “You have no right to talk about him after what you’ve done,” I said quietly. “He’s been there for me in a way you never were. He’s my best friend.”
“And that kills me,” he said. “Give me a chance to erase both of them for us.”
My throat thickened. If only. “You can’t.”
He waited until I looked up to respond. “I will,” he said without a hint of doubt. He moved his mouth over mine, inches away. He was finally going to kiss me—but then what? Were his threats real? Would he really be willing to change everything with just one kiss?
“I can’t trust you,” I said weakly. I wasn’t even sure it was true. With all the ways he’d hurt me, nothing should’ve raged stronger in me than anger and skepticism—but in that moment, I couldn’t find any of that. On some level, I recognized all the things he’d done, he truly believed he’d done them to protect me. And I knew—I was in too deep with a man who’d ruined my life without ever touching me. If this went any further, I might not survive it. “How is it possible that I could trust you?”
I asked more out of awe that it was true than anything, but he had an answer for me anyway. “Because back then, I couldn’t give you this choice. You wouldn’t have considered the consequences.” Manning leaned in and my breath caught, my heart leaping into my throat. But he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he opened the door of the cab. “I was looking out for you, and I still am. Always. Go home, Lake.”
Disappointment hit me first, and then it filtered into embarrassment. Shame. Anger. He’d made me want it yet again, and again, he was taking it away. “I knew it. I knew you didn’t have the guts to do this.”
He slammed the door shut. “I have the guts. I’m prepared to destroy everything in our way, but you’re going to lose your sister forever and your best friend, too. And once you put this in motion, I’m never going anywhere you aren’t. I’m not walking away from you again. So you better know for goddamn sure you want this.” The night had gotten quiet around us, but he grew louder. We grew louder. “This isn’t like that night on the beach, when you begged me to love you knowing I wasn’t allowed. I’m allowing myself now, and you know what’ll happen if we do this. Not only will people get hurt, but everything you know about me is only going to get worse.” He set his jaw. “I’ve always thought of you as mine, but now you will be for real. If you thought I was overprotective or possessive before, you have no idea how bad it can get. Are you ready for that?”
Every nerve in my body buzzed. Manning made me dizzy, he inspired an ache between my legs, he was the force behind the hammering heart in my chest. I’d spent every day of my adult life wanting him, loving him, willing to give up anything for him. That hadn’t changed—I’d only been made to ignore it. I didn’t want to get in the car, but I knew I was supposed to. I was supposed to hate him for what he did to me, and that only made everything more confusing. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”
He opened the door. “Then get in the fucking cab—go home. If you have the smallest doubt about me, go and think and don’t come back to me until you know for sure what we’re getting into. Or stay away and be satisfied.”
Did I have doubts? There was no question I did. My instinct to love him was as strong as my instinct to cower from him. To cover my chest, anticipating the next blow. He’d beaten my heart black and blue, so what right did he have to try and take it back?
I moved to get in the taxi, but to my surprise, he stepped down from the curb and cupped my face in his palm. With dreamlike slowness, he lowered his mouth to my cheek for a chaste, gentle kiss. Between the open door and him, I was caged into a corner, completely blocked from the rest of the world—consumed by his scent, the warmth of his hand, his smooth lips on my skin. “This doesn’t mean I don’t want to fight for you,” he said. “That I don’t want you more than anything, even knowing the damage it can do. It just means I need you to be sure this is what you want.”
It’s what I want, I nearly screamed, but regardless of the fact that Tiffany and I had been as far apart as possible without actually being estranged, she was still my sister. And he was still her husband, still the man who’d hurt me all those years ago. Who’d nearly destroyed me. I couldn’t be expected to forget that in a day.
“Fuck,” he muttered, wetting his lips.
“What?”
“I was wrong. I said kissing you would change everything, but everything has already changed.” He closed his eyes for the briefest moment. “It’s too late for me. So in case this is the last chance I get . . .”
And then, tucked against a cab, in the middle of a busy city street, under our starless night sky, Manning bent his head and opened my mouth with his. Our tongues met, our lips pressed together, his hand curled into my jaw—and we kissed. I couldn’t believe, just like that, it was happening. We felt each other for the first time but fell into the kiss like old lovers. His thumb grazed my cheekbone as I slid my arms around his neck. When my knees buckled, he caught my waist, pulling me against his solid body, his need pressing my stomach—undeniable, hard, begging. The kiss didn’t last long, but it was so right, so heady that I had to pull back because I’d forgotten to breathe and was seeing stars. Worried I might pass out, I steadied myself with a hand on his chest.
He held me there a moment, searching my eyes, and then he took my elbow and pushed me into the cab. Without another word, he closed the door behind me and paid the driver through the passenger side window. “Avenue B and Houston,” he said and hit the roof.
My heart ached for him. My insides clenched for him. I was ready to be consumed, to sign over my life to him, to hurt anyone who came between us—and I understood then why he’d shoved me in the cab. Why he’d held back all these years, denied me, hurt me, pushed me away. Once we jumped off this cliff, there was no coming back for either of us. We might fly, we might hit the ground, but once it was done, things could never go back to what they were for anyone involved. I fought every urge, every instinct to call for him, to ask him to come with me.
He’d said it was too late for him—I feared it was too late for me, too.
6
Lake
Alone in my apartment, my Calvin Klein gown draped over the back of my desk chair, heels discarded at the door and makeup washed away, I tossed and turned in the dark. I wanted Manning there, caging me against the mattress the wa
y he had the cab. I needed him to make up for all the years we hadn’t been kissing the way we had hours ago.
I kicked off the bedspread and stared at the ceiling, restless, aching, lost. He’d sliced open a wound long bandaged, scarred though not healed, and now it wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Midnight became two in the morning, then four. I drifted in and out of sleep. I could have Manning, but he’d come at a price. Was I willing to pay? Corbin wouldn’t understand, and maybe Val wouldn’t either. My parents would never forgive me. Tiffany would be devastated. But after years of drifting apart from all of them, would severing those relationships hurt more than saying goodbye to Manning?
I forced myself to remember my sister, the good, the bad, and everything in between. The time, after she’d hit puberty, she’d pushed me out of her room while her friends were over, and I’d almost fallen down the stairs. The summer we were nine and twelve, and she’d carried me half a mile on her back because I’d sprained my ankle during handball. All the nights I’d sat across from her at the dinner table and shared an inside joke or called her annoying or let her use me as a scapegoat for whatever trouble she’d gotten into that week. The nights I’d lounged in her bed and watched in the mirror as she’d attempted bigger lips with the aid of liner or modeled clothing out of shopping bags, tags springing off her as she walked a makeshift runway.
I tortured myself with the memories but the instant that afternoon she’d sauntered up to Manning at the construction site came to mind, I lost my heart to my stomach. She’d swiped him right out from under me, and he’d let her. She’d already gotten more of him than she deserved. I could acknowledge the terrible thing I was doing to her, and how painfully I loved him, but I couldn’t think of them together so I didn’t.
A garbage truck growled and beeped down my street, stirring the peaceful night into a new day.
Regardless of the fact that I’d seen and wanted and loved him first, he legally belonged to her. She’d kissed and touched and made love to him first, but he actually belonged to me.
I didn’t choose her, he’d told me. He hadn’t chosen me, though. Could I get over that?
Give me a chance to erase both of them for us. Would he ever be able to?
I wasn’t sure, but what also echoed in my mind was what he’d said right before he’d finally put his lips on mine. In case this is the last chance I get . . .
The last chance. The end of us. Did I say goodbye to him for good? Or had my fate always been to get everything I wanted, just not the way I’d planned?
The excruciating idea that I might send him back to Tiffany, that I’d give her more of the time and love that belonged to me, was too much to handle. Unequivocally, without question or condition, I loved Manning and he was mine, and I didn’t want to wait any longer.
I sat up in bed, the room a dreamy white-blue with early dawn. Wrapping the top sheet around myself, I clutched it to my chest and went to the living room to dial 411. There were people I should’ve called first. Tiffany, to confess everything. Corbin, to prepare him for the blow. Val, to get her to stop me. Instead, I asked for the W in Union Square. When the front desk connected me to Manning Sutter, the line rang and rang until I eventually had to face the fact that he wasn’t there at six in the morning.
A pit formed in my stomach. I’d never asked how long his trip was. What if he’d only been here two nights and I’d missed my chance? Worse, what if something had happened between the theater and his hotel? As defensive as I’d been of my city, it was true—this wasn’t the safest place. I knew someone who’d been hit by a cab, and I’d read news stories about people falling onto subway tracks. A friend of one of my classmates had been mugged not far from the theater where Manning and I had just been.
I traded my sheet for the first things I found, baggy jeans and a white sweater warm and fuzzy enough to face a wintry day. I grabbed my purse and boots on the way, but I didn’t even make it into the hall.
Manning stood at my front door, still in his suit, his hair as disheveled as it’d been after a hot day on the construction site. I didn’t need to ask why he was there. By his hungry eyes, I knew the answer. He stepped into my tiny doorway and I flinched, my heart pounding, the silence growing thick between us as he dominated the space.
“I . . .” I choked. Overcome, I tried to tell him I’d been coming to find him. He was so large, so there, impatience rolling off him. I knew what he wanted, what I wanted, but faced with the reality of it, I wasn’t sure how to ask for it. “I called the hotel . . . I . . .”
“You better find your words, Lake, because I’m going to need to hear you say it before I take a step into this apartment.”
My chest rose and fell faster as I tried to catch my breath. The gap between us lessened, growing tenser. Hotter. He was here. He’d come for me. I just had to say it. “I thought about it all night. I thought about you.”
“And?”
“I know there’ll be consequences, but . . .” I bit my bottom lip. “I want this anyway. I want you.”
He kicked the door shut. My breath caught with its slam and before I could even exhale, Manning had my face in his hands, his mouth landing hotly on mine. He walked us backward while I tried to keep up, grabbing his shirt, touching his stubbled cheeks. I reached my arms around his neck, but he was so big—had he always been this tall?—that I stumbled. He caught me by the waist, pressing my back up against a wall.
I lost all sense of where we were in the apartment until he drew back. As he held my face, steps from my bedroom, there was nothing but the heated breath between our parted mouths, and then his thumbs as he grazed each one to the center of my bottom lip.
“Lake.” His voice was sweet and thick as syrup, all the intensity of the moment poured into my name. How could it not be that way? There were a million things I wanted to say and do. All that made sense right then was him.
“Manning,” I responded.
He touched my hair, gentle and reverential, then fisted the hem of my sweater, pulling it with a ferocity that made my insides tighten. “I’ve never done this,” he said.
My stomach was already flipping, my hands shaking, my thoughts giddy, so his unexpected words provoked a nervous giggle. “Done what?”
“I want to feel every part of you against me.” He returned his hands to my cheeks and pecked my forehead, then the tip of my nose. “I want to know all the ways you fit me.”
I tilted my head to meet his mouth.
“No,” he said. “Hold still.”
It was harder than it sounded not to move as he pressed his lips to mine, slow, damp, then kissed his way around my mouth, each contact growing more urgent. When his hips connected with my stomach, we each inhaled a deep breath. Manning was kissing me. The roughened mouth I’d dreamed about was opening me up. His solid, strong, slightly crooked nose pressed against mine. He made love to my mouth—that was the only way to describe it. Maybe he’d really never done this, because this wasn’t sex. It was an act of pure love.
His grip tightened and the kiss turned greedy. He became demanding, hard, almost angry. I was willing, soft, almost terrified. If he was as scared as I was, he didn’t show it. I tried to take his shirt off, but I couldn’t even get a button through its loop. His big body trapped me to the wall, and I felt nothing from the waist down except his erection against my stomach. Things suddenly became real—I was sixteen again and unsure I could keep up with such immensity. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I blurted.
“It’s me, Lake. Focus on me.” He took my trembling hands in his steady ones and moved them around his neck. With a hand under my bottom, he lifted me, and instinctively, I wrapped my legs around his middle. As he ground into me once, a need I’d never felt took over.
“Manning.” I didn’t know what else to say during the best moment of my life so I just let him kiss me dizzy. Except that wasn’t right, because I was kissing back, my own mouth hot and insistent, eager to consume him, to take everything I’d ever wanted
. It got ugly, our noses mashed, teeth clinking, lips burning.
Manning held me so tightly, I didn’t notice we were moving until my back hit the mattress. With the urgency of his hardness rubbing my most sensitive spots, his hands everywhere all at once—my hair, my face, my hips and legs—my fear fell away like a robe, baring my naked self, flushed with acute longing. I bypassed his buttons, gathering the fabric of his dress shirt in my fists as I tried to get it over his head. He yanked it off by the collar and stood. Watching me from the foot of the bed, he undid his pants. “If only you could see yourself right now,” he said. “You are my fantasy come to life, you’re so . . .”
As he stripped down, my throat closed. His tender words couldn’t distract me. It was not humanly possible that penis would fit inside me. I scooted back on the bed and away from him until I saw it there in his face—he was afraid, too. Here I was, underneath him for the first time, when he’d fought so hard to keep me at a distance. No matter how many years had passed, or how much I’d matured, I couldn’t expect Manning to switch gears this fast. I knew him. Part of him would still feel like he was tarnishing something pure.
“Manning?” I said.
“You’re scared,” he said. “I’ll slow down.”
Now, the only thing that alarmed me was that he might change his mind. I reached out for him. “I’m not,” I said. “Not at all. I’m ready.”
“Are you?” he asked, staying where he was. “Nothing’ll ever be the same afterward.”
Words could not express my need for him. It would take more for me to break through this wall Manning had put between us, this sense that I was too pure for a man like him. So I channeled my inner-Val, since she was the most confident, experienced girl I knew. In the steadiest voice I could manage, I said, “I want you so much, Manning, please—I need you to . . .”
His jaw ticked. “Need me to what?”
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 59