He felt a shiver move through her body, as though she was both frightened of the way she was affecting him and exhilarated by having him manhandle her. He shouldn’t have acted this way. Should have been on his knees and indulging them both in the way she moved over his face. She should be crying out again and again. And then he should be slipping out of the room.
Maybe it was because this time was different. This was a farewell that neither of them wanted. But she was too afraid to fight for them. And he had too much pride to beg her to stay, knowing that she’d leave him in the end regardless.
“Do you want my cock or not?”
“I—I want it.” He loved it when her voice got all shaky.
“Then you’re going to take it on my terms?”
* * * *
Laura didn’t know the man on top of her. It couldn’t be the one she’d married. None of that sunny, laid-back dude was left. That man who she craved had maybe never entered the building tonight. Instead, she was at the mercy of a barbarian who looked like Charlie Laughlin, even sounded like him, but there was something fundamentally changed about him.
And she fucking loved it.
Maybe everything Charlie did to her she would like? Maybe there was something wrong with her that the feel of his hand against her scalp and the prickle of pain she felt every time she tried to move her head on her own power made her so wet that she could feel the arousal dripping down her thighs.
She’d never been into the seemingly cold dominant thing, but that wasn’t this. His breath was labored, as though he’d been running. But no, he was just holding her down. There was emotional weight here. When his finger had been inside her, when he’d ripped that orgasm away and licked her off his hand with a mean look on his face, she realized that she’d caused this.
In that moment, she’d wanted to lay herself out like his sacrificial lamb. Needed to be both the sacred and the profane for him. The wife and whore.
If he needed to use her like a fuck doll in order to let her go, she wouldn’t just bear it. She’d fucking love it and never be able to come again without thinking of his long fingers strung through her hair or playing with her pussy.
He kissed her again and she tasted her arousal in his mouth. She felt too naked and exposed to him and worked the buttons on his dress shirt. She wished she’d thought ahead and stolen one of them to take with her. She knew she wouldn’t get the opportunity to do so again. He’d given her all the time and attention that he was willing to give, and she’d have to live with that.
This sure-to-be angry fuck was going to kill both of them. And it was going to be the headstone on their fucked-up failed marriage. One of his buttons got stuck and her sob of frustration ended up in his mouth. He pulled back, and pushed her fingers away.
Instead of removing his shirt, he grabbed her hair again and turned her around, so she was facing the back of the couch, the wall. He was going to deny her the opportunity to look at him.
“I need to look at you.” Her whisper was ragged and wanton. She felt pathetic begging him, but she needed to see the man who almost made her give up everything when he pounded into her.
“You want my cock, and I’m going to give it to you how I want to.” He punctuated the statement with a hard slap on her ass.
The shock of it made her pull at his grip, which didn’t fail. The impact didn’t turn her off, though. She needed him even if he was going to take her like a stranger.
It hadn’t felt like this the first time. She missed his worshipful touch from that first night they’d spent together. But maybe it was better that he was ending it like this.
“Is anyone still backstage?” His question caught her off guard.
“The crew, maybe.” She didn’t know how long she’d been back here between the adrenaline of the show, the job offer, and Charlie—always Charlie.
“Then bite down on the cushion.” She didn’t know what he meant until she heard the sound of paper ripping, and felt his sheathed cock at her entrance. “So fucking wet for me, wife. You may not want me anymore, but this pussy needs me. What are you going to do when you move away from me? Are you going to stroke it yourself?”
She bit down on the cushion to stop herself from saying yes.
“Gonna try to replace me?”
He entered her and she screamed, and when he didn’t move, she tried to push her hips back into him. She needed him to move. To fuck. To take her like he’d promised with every touch that came before this.
“Don’t move.” He pumped his hips a little, but not enough. Then, he stroked down her spine and spread her ass cheeks. “I want to see where I’m seated so far in my wife that I made her scream.”
She shook her head, but released her bite on the cushions to say, “Yes. Yes.”
As though that gave him permission, he started moving again. With every drag of his cock against and inside her most sensitive flesh, she saw stars. His animal grunts, which would have taken her completely out of the moment with anyone else, turned her inside out until her movements were shaky and writhing.
He pulled her on and off of him by the hair, which burned and ached. It made her feel used, and she hated that she loved it. She hated that she loved him, and she’d turned him into a rutting animal. Even if her body loved it, her heart was breaking.
All of her guilty conscience, the only thing that was keeping her from coming apart, fled when he reached around the front of her body and rubbed her clit. She couldn’t think. And, even though, she couldn’t see him with her vision, she could picture his face—all of his expressions. Sacred. Profane. Love and hate all mixed up.
Again, he took his finger away right before she came. He pulled her up so she was flush with his still clothed body, which made her feel even more cheap and used.
“Hold the back of the couch.”
Even though she shouldn’t want this degradation, she followed instructions. Her knuckles went white when he slammed inside her again. After another brief rub on her clit, he had her over the back of couch. Her clit rubbed against the upholstery with every stroke. She would have frozen when he touched her back entrance with his thumb had she not been so close to coming that her back teeth were grinding together.
Instead of saying a word, making him stop, she canted her hips back and gave him permission. She wanted him to overwhelm her, take her over completely. She needed him to punish her body. But she didn’t expect it to feel good. And it felt so different, so dark, but still so much pleasure all at once broke her.
She bucked and screamed, and if anyone was in the hall, they certainly heard her. But she didn’t care. Not when he slammed inside her for the last time. Not when she wished there hadn’t been barriers between them. Not when she wanted to take it all back and stay married to him.
Chapter 18
Charlie knew the day that Laura left Miami, probably for good. Not only did Carla tell him point blank that he was a stupid idiot for letting her walk out on their marriage, but he had felt it in his bones that she was really gone before his best friend’s wife plopped down in the chair opposite his desk.
“This is bad.” She said nothing else, just leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest.
Charlie looked back down at the spreadsheet he’d been staring at for the last five minutes. “What’s bad?” When she didn’t respond when he continued, he said, “I’m your boss, you know.”
“You’re really more of a business partner.”
She had a point. Both she and Jonah had a stake in the show and were credited as executive producers.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re being awkward, or am I going to have to guess?” Charlie only flirted with Carla in front of Jonah, because it pissed him off. When they were alone, they felt more like siblings.
“You look like you’ve been sleeping on a bed of nails for about a month.” She squinted at him. “So
rt of lackadaisical and constipated.”
He sniffed, although she had the lackadaisical part right. “How does one appear constipated?”
“Using that form of a verb doesn’t help.”
“Do you have a point?” He threw his pen across the desk. It ricocheted off the edge and slid across the floor.
Carla seemed to light up at his expression of exasperation. “You’re totally brokenhearted.”
“And your point?” There was nothing he could do about the fact that Laura left him. All he could do now was regret the way he’d said goodbye.
After he’d regained consciousness and the ability to use his limbs, neither of them had said a word. He tucked his used-up cock back into his pants and walked out. He’d swiped the tequila, and called a car. By the time he’d gotten to his house, he’d been too drunk to use a phone. If he’d been any more cogent, he would not have been able to resist calling Laura and begging her to give him another chance.
She would have turned him down, as well she should have.
“That this is bad.”
“I don’t see how talking about it is going to make it any better.”
Carla stood up and leaned over his desk. “I think that you need to go to New York.”
“I can’t.” He did need to get out of Miami, but he needed to get further from his soon-to-be ex-wife, not closer. “I’m flying to Chile tomorrow.”
“You shouldn’t go.” She straightened up and crossed her arms. “In fact, I’m forbidding you to go.”
“Even if I admit that you and Jonah are partners, that doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do.”
She shrugged. “I tell everyone what to do. That’s sort of my thing.”
“Can you go somewhere and boss Jonah around right now?” He scrubbed his hands over his tired face. “I just, I don’t need this right now. Us breaking up was the best thing for everyone.”
“Then why do you look like someone held you down and made you watch them drown a kitten?”
“That’s a little graphic. It’s not that bad.”
“It is.” She sat back down, and all hope of getting rid of her fled. “Laura’s mother went to rehab the night of the opening. That’s why they weren’t there.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me.” Laura was gone, and if he couldn’t have gotten her to stay, he was sure her mother’s stint in rehab wasn’t going to change things.
“I think it has everything to do with you.”
“Are you going to leave if I don’t let you explain?”
“Not a chance.” One shake of her red locks, and he knew he’d better settle in.
“Fine.” He made a rolling motion with his hand. “Proceed.”
“Laura didn’t always want to be a ballerina. In fact, we started dance together.”
“Don’t tell me that you were better.” Even though it was none of his business, the urge to protect Laura’s reputation remained.
Carla’s smile had a devious tone. “No. She was always much better than me. But she didn’t really care about dance, didn’t talk about leaving home to go to school, until she was eight.”
“What happened when she was eight?” Just thinking about what would have made a little kid want to leave home made him sick to his stomach.
“Her mom fell near the pool at their house, broke her ankle, and she got a pain pill prescription.”
“Lots of people get pain pills.” Suddenly, Charlie remembered how vehement Laura had been about refusing that ibuprofen at his house, and the full extent of the damage Laura’s family had done finally sunk in. The mother’s vacant expression, the father’s half-disgust. Mrs. Delgado was an addict, and it had twisted his wife up inside. “For almost twenty years—”
Carla nodded sagely. “Yep, and Laura was the first one who saw it. She tried to tell her older brothers, who were almost out of the house by then. They did nothing.” Carla sighed, and Charlie willed her to say more. “And when she told her father, he slapped her across the face. I was there. It was like something important changed about Laura right then. She’d been my best friend, and I could always count on her. But it was like her light switched off in that moment.”
His fist clenched hard, and he wanted to go to her parents’ house and kick her father’s ass. Even though his father was a dick, he’d never hit any of his sons. “And she turned to dance.”
“With a passion that bordered on maniacal. We lost her as soon as she realized that if she told the truth, no one would believe her. She was gone the second she realized that she could count on no one but herself.”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with me. I tried to show her that she could trust me, that I was there for her.” He shook his head to clear the creeping doubts away. “But she didn’t believe me.”
“Then you didn’t see what I saw.”
“What was that?” A desperate thread of hope was trying to work its way into the back of his mind. It got as far as his heart before he grabbed on and snapped it so it couldn’t wrap around his guts.
“I’ve never seen her care about someone the way she cares about you.” Carla got up and paced. He’d known her long enough to realize that telling her to calm down or sit down when she got worked up was one very good way to get shanked. “She lights up when she looks at you. And she tries not to look at you because she knows.”
“Knows what, exactly?” He needed his friend, his wife’s best friend to say she knows that she loves you. But he wasn’t going to shake it out of her.
“She wants you like she’s never wanted anything. Not ballet. Not her mother to get well. Nothing.”
“I have to hear her say it.”
“Then you have to go to her.”
“But I tried to go to her on opening night, and she wanted to take the job in New York. She wanted to leave me.”
“Who says she has to leave you to take a job?” Carla stopped in her tracks. “You can live anywhere. And travel from anywhere.”
“But I’ve made my home here.” Even as he uttered the excuse, he knew it was purely weak sauce. His home was with Laura.
“Dumb dumb head.” Carla flicked him on the chest, over his heart—reminding him to mind the constant ache there. “Go find her. Figure out the rest later.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You’re going to have some time to think about it.”
Carla bit her lip as though she were hiding something. “Oh?”
“Yeah, I’m knocked up again. So, we need to take a hiatus, partner.”
He smiled, and his heart lightened. He knew Carla and Jonah wanted more kids, but he thought they might wait. They were moving on with their life, growing their family.
The idea of another baby for his friend made his desire to go get Laura even more acute. He needed to be with her, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer—not as long as there was hope.
The hole in his chest wouldn’t heal without her. It was so bad now that he was willing to take any risk to get her back. He needed to hear her story from her mouth, and he would follow her around until she knew that he was a safe person to show her whole heart to. He would keep her safe from the journalists who might follow him around there. He would love her so much that none of them mattered.
* * * *
After the third show that week, Laura sat in an ice bath, holding her phone. They’d done two weeks of shows in Miami, then she and Matthieu had come to New York to rehearse the show with the new company for three weeks.
She wasn’t waiting for a call from Charlie. After she left Florida, she’d given up hope on Charlie calling her. No, today her mother was leaving rehab. And she wasn’t going home to her father. She was moving into Laura’s condo with Lola. The idea made her nervous, as if her mother was dead set on testing her sobriety by moving in with the mother who had aband
oned her.
When Laura had brought it up with Lola over the phone, she’d pushed her off. And from the brief conversation she’d had with her mother two weeks ago, it seemed like Lola had spearheaded the effort to support her mom in getting sober. Just thinking about hearing how clear her voice was had tears welling up in Laura’s eyes.
The phone buzzed in her hand, and Laura blinked. Her brother Max.
“Hermanita, como estas?” Neither of her brothers had ever called her before their mom went to rehab. They’d been avoiding each other for years as much as they’d been avoiding their parents.
And it was stupid. In the last month, she’d felt like she’d gotten her family back. With that progress and dance, she should feel like she’d gotten everything she’d ever wanted.
Except for Charlie.
She rubbed the spot between her eyes, trying to banish him from her head. “Fine, Max. How’s Mom?”
“All settled in with Lola.”
“How’s that going?” Her free hand clenched on the side of the tub. “Lola got all the liquor out of the house? And she promised not to make out with abuelo in front of Mom?”
It was as close to addict-proofing the condo as her or either of her siblings could think of.
Max’s bark of laughter shocked her, and the water and ice sloshed around. Her toes were pretty much numb, which meant it was time to get out.
“Yeah, they’re going to be fine. All making out in the bedroom.”
“Somehow, even that’s disturbing.”
“I think it’s kind of nice.” Laura wondered about the wistful tone of her brother’s voice. Because he was so much older than her, and because she’d never taken the time to get to know him as an adult, she didn’t know him well enough to prod more, even if she wanted to. “But the booze is gone. I delivered it to Maya and Javi, just as you asked.”
“Thank you.” She decided to start repairing their relationship by revealing something of herself. “It’s hard not to be there right now.”
“Are you kidding? Mom would never want you to give up your lifelong dream to babysit her. She’s incredibly proud of you.”
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