My chest tightened, breath sucked right from my lungs with his words. I’d never had the guts to even fantasize about hearing him say something so wrong. So dirty. Knowing how hard Manning had worked over the years to keep me pure, his desperation to ruin me only made me hotter. “Do it again,” I said. “I want it.”
He was poised to enter me, but he didn’t. “I want it, too,” he said, glancing between us, his knuckles whitening as he gripped himself. “But fuck, Lake. I wasn’t thinking straight before. We can’t take the risk.”
Doubt tugged at me—was he not committed, did he not want to stay in New York?—but I knew deep down it wasn’t any of that. Manning had promised he was looking out for me. Getting pregnant was the absolute last thing we needed in our situation.
“Put your arms around me,” he said. “I miss your warmth already.”
I melted a little, pulling myself against his chest. “We’ve done a terrible thing,” I whispered into his neck.
“I know, but you can’t punish me by running. I want nothing more than to make everything up to you. Tell me how to make it right.” He scraped his cheek against mine. “You want me to end things with her before we do this again?” he murmured. “I’ll go straight to the airport, Lake.”
He stayed where he was, almost inside me, and I wanted him. Ashamed as I was, I didn’t think I could send him home to her now. “I don’t want you to go. I’ve waited so long.”
“Then I’ll stay right here with you.”
“For how long?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I can’t end my marriage over the phone. My flight home is scheduled for Friday.”
Four days. That was all I’d get for now. “I hate her,” I said, trying to picture anything but Tiffany’s face. “I hate her for what she’s done to me, for so many reasons. But I love her, too.”
“I know you do.”
“And so do you.” The cold counter bit my skin through the sheet. “You’ve done all this with her.”
He pulled back to look me in the face. “My need for you is more than anything else. It’s all-consuming.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been with her, and that you love her.”
He took my face in his hands. The warm eyes I’d come to read so well dimmed in a way I’d also, unfortunately, come to understand better than most. My words hurt him. Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame him for loving his own wife, but I hated that I hadn’t been his first love as he’d been mine. That she would always be between us. “Lake.” He had a thick but beautiful neck that conveyed his emotions just like his eyes. The veins were pronounced but elegant, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “You asked me last night if I love her, and I didn’t answer because . . . I’m ashamed that I don’t.”
I shrank from him. It wasn’t the answer I’d expected, and I could see that it pained him to say it. “What?”
“I love her as a friend, and as a person, too—I’ve come to know her well enough to anticipate and even appreciate her tenacity to be who she is without apology. She and I have been through a lot together. But how can I be in love with anyone when you exist?” He put his forehead to mine. “I’m so in love with you, I have been for so long, that there’s no room for anyone else, not even my wife. And it makes me feel like the biggest piece of shit to admit that.”
My chest ached. Were the years of disappointment and sadness worth this moment? I couldn’t help thinking they were. There was no clear answer. I didn’t want to hurt my sister, but I wasn’t going to let Manning go now that I had him. “Promise me,” I said.
As if he felt my surrender, he pressed a hand to my back and my body arched, my breasts into his chest. I wanted him inside me, whatever the cost. “Anything,” he said.
“Promise me you’ll leave her.”
All I’d done for years was analyze and resist and dream. Now, everything I wanted was right in front of me. Tiffany hadn’t hesitated to take it from me.
So I would take it back.
8
Manning
Sitting on the kitchen counter, Lake clung to me as if I might disappear into thin air. I couldn’t really blame her. Even as I stood right between her legs, I could hardly believe where I was.
She’d begun to shake again. I wanted to gorge on her, lose myself in her, forget anything outside this apartment existed, but I worried that if Lake didn’t understand the life I was leaving behind, the worse it’d be when she was forced to face it. Tiffany wouldn’t lose just a husband, but a home, stability—and a future.
“When I got on the plane here, Lake, I knew what I was getting into,” I said. “If I arrived and saw that this was where I needed to be, I knew what I’d be leaving behind. But you don’t. You know nothing about my life there.”
“Why do I need to? Will it change anything?”
I hesitated. “For me, no. I already know what’s at stake.” Asking me to end my marriage was fine for Lake, because she hadn’t been around for any of it. I was the one who’d surprised Tiffany with a trip to the car dealership after her promotion to assistant buyer. It was me who’d fought with her endlessly over her dirty dishes and the dust I created working in the backyard and each of us forgetting to close the garage door. We were over halfway through a remodel on a home we’d bought together and for which we’d painstakingly chosen granites and paint colors and goddamn cabinet handles and God knew what else—it was always something with the fucking house. If it wasn’t the expense and energy of remodeling, it was the guilt I harbored for wearing a suit every day while other men built my home. Tiffany didn’t hear me when I told her I hated that not even a drop of my own sweat had gone into putting a roof over our heads. She even bought brand new furniture because what I made didn’t come from a store.
None of that occurred to Lake, though, because she lived in fucking la-la land where love was the only thing that mattered. And I loved her for it. I wanted her to stay there, but more than that, I didn’t want Lake to wake up one day and resent me or herself for the life she’d pulled out from under her sister. In the past twenty-four hours, I’d seen that Lake could handle herself here in New York, and if she could do that, then she could face the truths I would’ve kept from her years ago. “I hope it wouldn’t change anything for you, either,” I said, “but you should still know.”
“There’s nothing that can make me feel better or worse. Even if it’s a bad marriage.” She curled a hand against my back. “Is it?”
“In some ways, it’s the kind of marriage I thought it would be. We get along most of the time. We have fun. When she pulls shit with me, I call her on it, but I get tired of that.” Tiffany hated when I traveled and would go out of her way to make me feel guilty about it. And when I was home, she tried to manipulate me into doing things I didn’t care about, like shop, or go to rooftop bars with her friends, or sit on my ass at the beach when we had a perfectly good pool at home. I started to pull away from Lake. If we were going to talk about Tiffany, I figured I should get dressed. “I want a partner,” I said, “not someone I have to babysit or watch myself around.”
“Don’t go,” Lake said, climbing back onto me. “Don’t leave this spot. Don’t talk about her.” She nuzzled my cheek, then drew back to look me in the face. In a breathy voice, she said, “I just want you to promise me this is it for us.”
There were times at home I couldn’t picture Lake clearly, she’d been away so long. But I’d never, not one day, forgotten the unusual blue of her eyes. Anything I’d come across in that color had been like a blow to the chest, but not anymore. Now, I wanted to live in that color. “I promise you, Lake, it’s you and me now,” I said. “I wouldn’t be here now if there were another way.”
“I need more.” She moaned when I pulled her a little too far onto the head of my dick. “You owe me more.”
Her hair was tangled from my hands, her cheeks flushed from my cock partway inside her. What I needed was to either separate from her or fuck her, to feel the friction
of her airtight pussy. In that moment I’d give her whatever she wanted. “I thought the passion my parents had could only turn me bad,” I said to her, “but it’s going without it that’s put me too close to the edge. I need to be able to feel you whenever I want. What do you need?”
She breathed through her mouth, looking about as frustrated as I felt not being inside her. “Leave Orange County and come live here,” she said.
Southern California was the only home I’d ever known. I’d fought my way to a living. I had a house, a wife, and a career that was making me richer than I’d ever dreamed I’d be. I knew what Lake would say to that, though, because she’d said it before—those were just details. This, her and me, was what mattered. Back then, I’d told her it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t going to do that to her again. “Of course I’ll come,” I said. “I had more than enough time to think it over as I sat outside your door all night. What I’m more worried about is work and supporting us.”
“You cannot work for my dad anymore. I want nothing to do with them. That’s the only way we’ll work.”
I took a few measured breaths, scanning her face. I couldn’t picture myself in a city, but I already knew I wasn’t going to be anywhere Lake wasn’t. What she was asking for, it was an easy promise to make, because it was exactly what I wanted. “I’ll do anything to get you, Lake. If you want me to quit and move, consider it done.”
She gripped my shoulders. Her strength, the urgency in her voice, surprised me. “Promise me.”
“This’ll break your relationship with Tiffany,” I warned. “I can’t protect you from that.”
“It’s already broken. I can handle it. Just promise me.”
“I promise. The move, the job, the divorce, I promise, now tell me what else you want.”
“I want . . .” She avoided my eyes, struggling to get it out, and that had me hanging on her every word. Was there anything I couldn’t give her? “I want—I want you inside me.”
With that, I lost any sense of what we were talking about. I pulled her nearly off the counter and onto my dick. The sheet fell in a heap at our feet. She slid on easier this time, but it was still the tightest fit I’d ever experienced. To know I was the first man to make her feel this good, to love not just her mind and her heart, but now her body, too, it did things to me. Things that terrified and exhilarated me. I’d kept her at arm’s length for a long time because the passion between us, even when it’d been strangled, scared me.
“Why’d you sit outside my door all night?” she whispered hotly. “Why didn’t you just come in?”
“You know why. I wanted you to be sure and come to me. I didn’t sit there waiting, though. I was worried about the broken lock.”
She sucked in a breath as I filled her all the way, until I couldn’t get any deeper. “The lock?” she asked.
“Had to make sure you were safe from intruders,” I teased, murmuring in her ear. “But believe me when I say, I thought about breaking in. Intruding on you. Why do you think I was standing at the door when you opened it, fighting myself from coming in?”
Her arms clenched around my neck, her eyes squeezing shut as I started to slide in and out of her. “I want you to come in,” she said.
I growled a little, watching her take me deeper and deeper. “Look at you,” I murmured to her. “You’re perfect for me.”
“You’re too big,” she said.
“No I’m not.” I never wanted to hurt her, especially her first time, but admittedly, it turned me on to know I was breaking her in—that we’d spend a lifetime fitting ourselves together. “I’m not too big and you aren’t too small,” I repeated, “because my body was made just for yours.”
“Erase it for me,” she whispered.
It killed me that in that moment, she was thinking about the women—woman—who’d come before her. If I thought ending things with Tiffany now instead of later would make this easier, maybe I would’ve, but I owed Tiffany more than a phone call from her sister’s apartment. All I could offer was to make Lake feel good. I wanted to do that above all else. “I can erase it. I can fuck it all right out of you. Just say the word.”
She nodded. “Do that.”
I twitched inside her just remembering how she’d asked for it earlier to cover up her timidity. Her virginity. Which now belonged to me. It was my own fault she’d waited this long, but I couldn’t say I was sorry about it. Once, I’d wanted her to stay that untouched girl. Not anymore. Now, I wanted those words she’d swallowed and saved, as much as I wanted to be the only man to ever get them. “Do what?” I encouraged.
She lowered her eyes. The flush that crept up her chest turned my rock-hard erection to steel. She wasn’t the same girl I’d met six years ago, but I hated to admit that her innocence still turned me on as much as anything. So many times I’d restricted my fantasies that it had become a sort of game for me. The things I couldn’t have. I’d get so overcome with my need for Lake, that some nights, picturing Lake was the only way I’d get off.
“I can’t say it again,” she said. “I’m too embarrassed.”
“Mmm.” I angled to kiss her neck, her collarbone. “I tried so hard not to corrupt you, and now I don’t plan to do anything but. You don’t have to ask me for anything this morning. We’ll get there.” Reluctantly, I drew back from her. “But first we need a condom.”
Lake chewed her bottom lip. “Maybe we should just . . . I mean, do you really think I’d get pregnant?”
Well, fuck. I hadn’t expected her to say that, and it made my erection rage harder. I’d thought a lot about having kids in a big-picture sense but the primal urge to procreate was specific to Lake. In other words, I wanted to put a baby in her now. I had no desire to put a layer of anything between us. But one urge of mine trumped all others—protect her.
“Until you and I are here and settled, we gotta use a condom,” I said, internally cursing myself. I’d lost control earlier, and as goddamn heavenly as it’d felt, I couldn’t put Lake at risk again. “So I better tear myself away and go find a convenience store.”
Lake scooted to the edge of the counter and used her foot to open a kitchen drawer. Amidst loose batteries, chopsticks, and a laminated Blockbuster card laid a chain of Trojan packets. “Good thing Val likes to have sex,” she said.
“Good fucking thing indeed,” I said, picking them out of the junk pile. I was about to tear one off, but instead, I palmed the whole string of them, picked Lake up off the counter, and carried her to the bedroom. I’d had enough of this cold, soulless kitchen.
“Should we leave any for Val?” she asked with a half-smile.
“Nope.”
I set her down. I wanted to watch her put the condom on me, but not now. I was too eager. “On the bed,” I said.
She slid back on the mattress, watching as I ripped a packet open with my teeth and rolled on the condom. As I secured it, I had to admit I liked the apprehensive yet rapt look on her face.
I crawled over her until she was on her back, noting how her lips were already reddened and roughened from my mouth. I catalogued her freckles as I kissed my way over her right shoulder, down to her elbow. I turned over her forearm, touching the faint crescent scar from a kitten bite, and pressed my mouth to the thin skin of her wrist. Her stomach rose and fell. I inspected the lines of her palm, the downy hair on the backs of her knuckles, the delicate pink of her fingernails. I laced our hands together, turning them over.
“What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly.
“I want to know all the ways you fit me.”
“Why?”
I put her right arm back and started on the left. “Does it feel good?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Then let me do it.” I was learning her. I’d have the rest of my life to do it, but I was greedy. I wanted to know now. I’d been confined by my imagination all these years. No more. If I touched her and she twitched, or her nipples stood a little taller, or her hips bucked, I’d tuck that information
away for later.
I ghosted my mouth between her tits, and her areolas went pink and pebbled. I palmed the bottom of one breast and stretched my fingers to her collarbone. Her nipple grew into the heart of my palm.
“I’m sorry they’re small,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“My breasts. They aren’t that big.”
I looked up at her. If they were small or perky or blemished or gold-tipped, I didn’t notice. They seemed just right, and they were hers, and mine, so I wouldn’t change a thing. “Are your nipples sensitive?” I asked.
“I think so.”
“Does it feel good to have my hand on them?”
Slowly, watching me, she nodded.
“How about my mouth?” I lowered my head, taking half her breast into my mouth, sucking up until I’d reached the tiny pink peak. If I splayed my fingers wide enough, I could squeeze both tits in one hand. I’d sink my cock between them and they wouldn’t meet over the top of my shaft. These were things I needed to know. I’d known nothing up until hours ago, and now I’d learn it all.
Lake fisted my hair. I realized I’d been sucking on her nipple hard enough to make her squirm. I tugged it between my teeth, and she urged her pelvis into my chest. Gently, I felt her between the legs. She was wet enough that I knew it was working. However long it took to get her off, I’d do it, but sooner was better so I could start over again.
I slid down farther, to the bottom of her ribcage, her belly button and pubic bone. She was covered in fine light hair that begged to be caressed. It didn’t look as if she’d ever shaved, and she was blonde enough that she didn’t need to. I would show her how, though. My chest inflated as I thought of designing her most intimate parts to my satisfaction.
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 62