“Maybe not everything in this fucking world is about you, Rafe Jackson,” I spit back.
“It is when it comes to you,” he countered.
I scoffed and the color high on his sharp cheekbones went bright again.
“Goddamn you, Fallon,” he said, but then he kissed me.
I kissed him back, hard, punishing his mouth, devouring and biting. I was so furious with him. I grabbed the lapels of his suitcoat and then slipped my hands inside so I could yank his stupid jacket off. Then my fingers fumbled at the goddamned little buttons on his white dress shirt. All the while licking and biting and kissing his lips.
He eventually took over for me, yanking his shirt off over his head and exposing all his gorgeous, tan, tattoo-covered skin for me to see. I all but attacked him, grasping his pecs and then launching myself into his arms, latching my mouth onto his collarbone and sucking, then biting.
He roared and shoved me back against the wall, reaching between my legs. I was drenched for him.
He didn’t waste any more time. He gave us what we both needed when he shoved down his pants and planted that glorious cock of his deep inside me.
I clenched around him, all my inner muscles flexing and locking onto his hardness. God, I loved how it felt when he was hard inside me. I clung to him, so hard that he groaned as he pulled out and then pushed back in.
“You’re so fuckin’ tight,” he swore, breathing hard into my neck. When he’d impaled me up to the hilt, he sought out my lips again. He was pinning me to the wall with his weight and his cock planted so deep inside me.
I wrapped my legs around his waist.
“Fuck me, Rafe. Please.” It was agonizing with him just standing still like this. I bounced on him, needing friction, needing everything from him. He was the only one who could make me feel good. He was the only one who could fill my empty places. Goddamn him, but he was Rafe, and no matter how hard I tried to fight it, he was the only one I wanted.
He was the only one I’d ever wanted.
I buried my hands in his hair and yanked his head back so I could kiss him deep again. He met my lips fury for fury and passion for passion.
He lunged, filling me with his cock again and again until both of us were panting and sweat poured down his temples. But he didn’t stop.
He didn’t stop even as an explosive orgasm tore through me. He just leaned in so that his pelvis pressed even more satisfyingly against my clit as his cock lit up some spectacular spot inside me.
“Rafe!” I screamed as I came again, harder, higher, so bright I barely remembered to keep breathing through it.
And right as the apex of light hit, Rafe plunged deep and I felt the rush of seed as he spent himself inside me.
I grasped his face in my hands and kissed the hell out of him as the last of the shudders shook through me.
Slowly, the torrent and tidal wave receded, and it was just me and Rafe.
He pressed his forehead against mine, then rolled to the side so that we were cheek to cheek, his cock still planted to the root inside me, closer than two human beings could ever be.
I’d never been more at peace.
Until Rafe decided to go and open his big fat mouth again. “I get that you don’t want a check from me, so how about this. Fallon Perry, will you marry me?”
17
Rafe
“What the fuck?” She pushed me away from her with wide eyes.
“You heard me,” I said, expecting her to try to fight this, but I didn’t care. She was worth fighting for. “Marry me.”
“You didn’t just propose to me.” She shook her head. “No way would you propose to me seconds after having sex with me and all that—” She waved in the direction of the door and the downstairs beyond. “No fucking way.”
“Okay, so maybe it’s not the most ideal way to do so, but I mean it. Let’s get married. Let’s walk away from this place together hand in hand.”
“You’ve lost your mind!” She crossed the room and spun on her heels to face me with rage in her dark eyes. “Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said? I don’t want your fucking money! I want my own! Money that I can control. Money that I won’t lose when you decide you don’t want me.”
“I get it. I do.”
“No, you don’t,” she snapped. “You’ve been a blue-blooded rich boy your entire life. You don’t know what it feels like to be poor. You have no idea what it feels like to live your entire life in second-hand clothes and be looked upon with eyes full of pity. I’ve always had to need someone to get by, and I’m over it. From now on, I control my destiny. So, don’t you dare stand there and act like you get me. You have no idea who I even am anymore. And maybe you never did.”
I took a deep breath, refusing to lose my shit no matter how much she pushed. She needed me to be strong. It was damn time I truly stood there for her. For her.
“I’m not offering you a check. I’m not offering to buy you. I know how that looked, and I can see how it hurt you, but that wasn’t what I intended.” I took a step toward her, but she countered it by stepping backwards. “Being here with you has made me realize that we should have never been apart. Those years you left… well… they should’ve never happened.”
She pointed at me with strands of wild hair framing her face. She never looked more beautiful, even though fury sizzled in her veins. “I left because of you! Or have you forgotten that?”
“Me? What are you talking about? I had nothing to do with you leaving for school.”
“Don’t stand there and lie to me, Rafe. I deserve better than that.”
“Lie to you?” Confusion had me freezing in place. “You left for school. Why are you angry at me over that? Why am I getting the feeling that you’re livid over that and blame me?”
She crossed her arms against her bare chest, now just realizing that she had been standing completely naked in the room. She reached for a blanket off the end of the bed and wrapped it around herself. I took her cue to get myself in a more presentable state as well since clearly we needed to discuss some shit. Some serious shit.
“Why do you think you can just keep buying me off? You and your family. It’s all about money to you all,” she said as she walked over to a chair and sat down. Even though her anger had subsided, and she was no longer yelling, I could still see how mad she was.
“I told you,” I said as I walked to the chair across from her and sat down as well. “I shouldn’t have offered you a check. I was wrong. It’s just that… I saw an opportunity to fix something. I had the ability to actually fix something. Did I want to save you? Yes. Is that so bad? At least I could finally save someone. I couldn’t save Timothy, but I saw a way I could with you. That was my intention.”
“Why do you feel like you could have saved Timothy?” she asked. “You keep saying that his death was your fault when it wasn’t.”
I took a deep breath and decided I was done keeping this dark secret locked away inside of me. I needed to release it… I needed to walk through the fire of truth and hope that there was a way out on the other side. Maybe Fallon would truly hate me at the end of this, but she couldn’t hate me more than I hated myself.
“He called me,” I blurted. “He needed a ride home because he was shitfaced. He had left me two messages, and I didn’t pick up because I was at Sully’s party with you. I was having a good time, and I didn’t feel like dealing with my brother’s drunk ass.”
Bile rolled in my gut, and I considered running to the bathroom to puke. But I knew if I didn’t keep going, I wouldn’t get it all out. The purge needed to happen before I couldn’t function. “I just figured he’d catch a ride with another friend. I had no idea… I didn’t know he’d get in the car and drive himself.”
I looked at Fallon expecting to see eyes of disgust or of judgment but saw nothing of the sort. If anything, all I saw was compassion and understanding.
“It’s not your fault,” she said as she got out of her chair and kneeled at my feet, grabbing
my hand in hers. “You had no way of knowing he’d make the mistake of getting into his car. And that’s what this was. A mistake. Just an awful mistake.”
“I could have saved him,” I said as my heart seemed to rip apart as I spoke the words. “I haven’t told a single soul about this because I’m so fucking ashamed. I killed my brother. I destroyed my family. It was all my fault. Had I picked up my phone, he’d still be alive. But instead, I’m here trying to fill his shoes. I’m trying to be him all while his ghost haunts my ass. He should be here. Not me. I’m the second son, the second choice.”
She shook her head and squeezed my hand. “You couldn’t have saved him. And you sure as hell didn’t kill him. It was a terrible tragedy, but it’s not your fault. It was just… it was his time.”
She continued to hold my hand as she rested her head on my lap. “I wish I would have known you felt this way. I wish you would have told me so I could have been there for you as you battled this guilt. You shouldn’t have had to bear this on your own—not then and definitely not now.”
“I wish I would have had you too. But you left. And since I’m being honest, I can admit that I was devastated when you left but tried to understand that you had to do what was best for you. And I had just proven that I wasn’t the best for anyone. Frankly, the further you got away from me the better. But I was still torn apart the day you left. I had just lost my brother, and then lost my best friend too.”
She lifted her head from my lap and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “But then why did you ask for me to leave and not see you again?”
“What?” Her words made no sense. “I never asked you to leave. I wouldn’t have. I fucking needed you more than I ever needed anyone in my life.”
She stood up, still holding the blanket around her, and began pacing the room. “Your mother… Your mother…”
She turned to face me. “I came to see you and your mother met me at the door. She had told me you didn’t want me to be around any longer but didn’t have the heart to tell me. And considering you had just lost your brother, she told me I should do the kind thing and leave you alone. You were going through enough. And since your mother was such a kind soul, she said she would continue to pay for me to go to school. Just away from here. Away from Darlington and away from you.”
I stood up as shock and fury coursed through me. “I never knew!” I shouted. “I would have never… I never said a word to my mother. I thought you just—”
“Left,” she answered for me as she nodded. “Your mother always hated me. It makes sense now. This was her way to get me out of the picture. She most likely hated that your father paid my way all those years.” She paused and then studied me. “But I sent you emails. Letters. Nothing. Why did you ignore me?”
I shook my head, baffled by what she was saying. “I shut down after Tim died. I barely finished out my senior year. Mom had to help with my assignments by the end when she realized I might fail and how badly that would reflect on her, so she was checking my email, emailing my teachers for me. She must have seen and…” I felt sick when I realized my mother’s full treachery.
She must’ve deleted Fallon’s emails before I’d ever seen them. I was the only son she had left, so she’d obviously decided that if she didn’t have Tim, the least she could do was start to try to control my life the same way she’d always done his. She just moved on to me, even though I never could measure up. Jesus Christ, that woman was so fucked up.
“You just disappeared and never contacted me. It broke my heart. I shut down on everyone and by the time I came back up to the surface and you hadn’t even tried to reach out, well I thought… I thought… I thought it was for the best. I never wanted you to know that I had deep feelings for you. Far greater than just best friends. And since you were gone, I knew you were in the best place. The last thing you needed was me in your life. I thought I was poison.”
I ran my hands through my hair and was happy I was locked away at the Oleander. Because if I was near my mother right now, I would fucking strangle her.
“I would have never left you,” she said softly. “I thought you wanted me gone. And Jesus… I had deep feelings for you too. So deep that when your mother told me to leave, it broke me. I thought I wasn’t good enough for you. I was just the poor little maid’s daughter they took pity on because I was the child of the Order.”
“Wait…what?” Her words were like a punch to the gut. A tidal wave of confusion washed over me. “Child of the Order?”
Fallon nodded. “My mom was a belle once. A rejected belle. In fact, the Initiate was your dad, but he chose someone else. But even though she didn’t get chosen, she still participated in the Trials as one of the other women. And got pregnant with me by one of the members.”
“With you? Fuck! Are you telling me that my father could be your—”
“I’m not your sister, don’t worry,” she quickly interrupted. Hearing the words she wasn’t my sister was like a splash of cold water on my fire of chaos scorching every emotion searing through me. “Mrs. H told me all of it, and she swore your father didn’t sleep with anyone during his Trials but his belle. He never ever slept with my mom. But she did get pregnant, and whoever the Elder was who did it also rejected her.”
“Who was the Elder?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. If it weren’t for Mrs. H, I wouldn’t have even known this much. She felt I needed to know the truth about my past. She helped convince me to become a belle in the first place. She said it was my birthright. I was owed this money. I was owed all my dreams to be granted by the Order. I was owed everything my father denied me by denying my existence and letting Mom be a single mother with no support. Mrs. H knew you’d choose me”—Fallon’s eyes narrowed—“even though you didn’t. Anyway… she felt it was time I got what both my mother and I deserved.”
“So did the Order of the Silver Ghost pay for your schooling at Darlington Academy? Did your biological father?”
“No. Your father did.”
“Mine? Why the hell would he do that?” Every word out of her mouth sounded crazier than the last. “You just said it wasn’t him who got your mother pregnant.”
“No, but he felt guilty for how my mother was just shut out by whoever was my real father. I guess you could say that your father was one of the good guys in that pool of evil. So, to ease his guilt for not choosing my mother or something along those lines, he hired her to work for him and agreed to pay for all of my schooling. He figured someone from the Order should step up.”
“And you had no idea?”
She shook her head. “My mother kept it all secret. I’m sure she isn’t proud of it. Mrs. H told me all of this right before I became a belle. I’m still processing it myself.”
She rolled her eyes and sat back down in the chair she had been in. “It sure doesn’t help with my not feeling worthy issues. I can tell you that. I’ve always felt like I wasn’t good enough. And now I do even more. My own father wouldn’t claim me. I was never worth getting to know. And talk about a charity case… Can’t you see? I’ve been one my entire life!”
“Not to me,” I said.
She looked up at me and locked stares. “You say that, and yet you offered me a check. You offered to marry me just so that I was taken care of. You can say the words all you want, but your actions speak volumes.”
“I didn’t ask you to marry me because I think you’re a charity case,” I said, but could understand why she would think that. “Circumstances have clearly gotten in the way of us. Don’t you think it’s time we stop that?”
We both sat in silence. I waited for her to answer me. For her to say something… anything. Then finally in the softest voice she spoke.
“I thought you had sent me away.”
I gave a slanted smile. “I thought you had left me.”
“I guess we have to thank your mother for that,” she said.
“I suppose we do.” More silence, but then I broke the thick air with, “
So what do we do now? Where do we go from here?”
There was a loud knock on the door followed by an Elder marching into the room with the rustle of the silver cloak audibly reminding us exactly where we were and what we were still expected to do.
“The Trial is not over,” he declared. “You are to return to the ballroom immediately or fail the Trial and will be expected to leave the Oleander immediately.”
I stood and readied myself to tell the man to go fuck himself, but the touch of Fallon’s hand on my shoulder stopped me.
“We need to finish what we began,” she said softly. “We don’t quit. We don’t let them have any more power over what we do or don’t do.”
Fighting back my urge to pick her up and flee this place and never look back, I nodded. This wasn’t just about me. This was about her as well.
“I can’t just allow them all to touch— Jesus Christ! One of those sick fucks could be your father! So many of them were touching you! They were watching! Oh my fucking god!”
She shook her head adamantly. “I’ve been informed that my father is not present. He’s not part of these Trials.”
“But still. I can’t allow this anymore. I can’t.”
“Stop it, Rafe,” she snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you you can’t fix this? I’m sorry, so sorry about Tim. But you can’t fix this. I got myself in it and I’ll get myself out. But I would like you by my side.”
She held out her hand to me.
There was nothing else to do but to take it and trust her. I would trust her, but all the while I knew I might not be able to control myself if another man touched her and it seemed to hurt her or be against her will. She might be the woman who needed to finish this on her own, but I was still the man who would want to protect her at all costs.
Even if she hated me for it. I would not let the men of this manor and the Order break her any more than they already had. But I would also do my best not to let her down. The two impulses in me seemed impossibly at odds, but I did the only thing I could.
Opulent Obsession: A Dark Secret Society Romance Page 15