Darker the Release

by Claire Kent

  Caleb chuckled briefly, his palm stroking with luscious pressure down the length of her spine. “Why do I suspect you are too?”

  She was. She was sopping wet, her moisture leaking out around his cock and trickling down her inner thighs. Her walls still clung to his hard length, occasionally clenching with a lingering contraction. “Not me. This position was your idea.”

  With another soft laugh, Caleb started to rock his hips against her bottom, moving his cock very slightly. Then he reached around her body and stroked her open, his fingers finally pressing into her clit.

  He rubbed her swollen flesh with firm pressure as his hips established a new rhythm.

  “Oh, God!” she cried sharply, too loudly, as an unexpected force of pressure surged through her.

  “Yes,” Caleb hissed, rhythmically pleasuring her with his hand and his cock. “Good, baby.”

  She was already shaking again as a second climax swelled up thick and fast. “Oh, oh, Caleb!” Since her voice was becoming shrill, she started to hide her face in the pillow.

  “No,” he rasped. “Let me see.”

  She didn’t argue, feeling another thrill of power and pleasure at his desire to watch her come. But, still conscious of there being other people in the house, she bit her lip hard to keep from screaming.

  “Fuck, Kelly. You’re so good, so good. Come for me, baby.”

  She came hard, trapped between the sensations from his cock and his massage of her clit. She sobbed and wheezed through the pleasure as her hips rode out the contractions. And when he kept thrusting and rubbing her clit, she came again, crying out his name.

  She was nearly drained from her climaxes, and her body was deliciously limp with sensuous satisfaction. So she didn’t resist as Caleb pulled out, his cock still hard, and gently turned her over onto her back.

  She was so wet that his slide back inside her pussy caused a sloppy sound of suction. She arched up, moaning at the penetration against her tight, sensitive inner walls.

  “Caleb,” she breathed, wrapping her arms around him as he lowered his upper body close to hers. “Caleb.”

  He met her eyes deeply and kissed her hard. As the kiss progressed, his pelvis began to rock against hers again.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist and felt an ache in her chest as he paused to position them even higher. She loved how intensely he wanted to feel her, how close he wanted to be, how deep he wanted to get.

  In the last week, ever since he’d admitted that he loved her, she’d had no choice but to see how much Caleb had meant the words. How much he needed her.

  “Is this all right, baby?” he asked thickly, his face pressed against the crook of her neck.

  “Yeah, it’s good. Caleb, it’s so good.”

  As he began to fuck her with more urgency, he lifted his face to look down at hers. “Can you come again?”

  Her head tossed as the sensations overwhelmed her from his cock working in her overly sensitized pussy. “Don’t know. But don’t stop. Caleb, don’t stop!”

  He didn’t. And she watched through half-closed eyes as he let himself go, unleashing his control and taking primal pleasure in her body.

  She came again as he did and they both muffled their cries of climax in an urgent, clumsy kiss.

  He collapsed on top of her, both of them utterly wiped out. They clung to each other until Caleb’s body started to feel too heavy and Kelly became uncomfortably aware of how wet the sheet was beneath her from the mingling of their fluids.

  “Caleb,” she croaked, her voice barely working.

  With a groan, he rolled them over on their sides, obviously unwilling yet to end the embrace. She lay in his arms for a few more minutes, their hot, damp skin sticking together.

  He’d pulled her into his arms as soon as she’d gotten to his house at around six, and then he’d started to kiss her urgently, without any more of a greeting. She’d responded immediately, and they’d ended up in the bedroom.

  Now it was almost time for them to go out to dinner with his friend Wes, and Kelly could hardly move.

  She was exhausted and sore and emotionally drained, and she didn’t want to have dinner with Wes. She didn’t want to deal with his possible suspicions of her.

  All she wanted to do was lie with Caleb like this.

  But it would look far more suspicious if she didn’t go, so she didn’t really have a choice.

  “We need to get going soon,” she said at last, her voice hoarse and tired.

  He made a little groan and released his arms, which had been holding her tightly. “Maybe we could cancel.”

  She felt a little jump of relief. “Sounds good to me.”

  She felt his body release a long breath. “We can’t. Wes is going back to Paris tomorrow.”

  Her heart dropped back to the normal position. She should have known it was too much to hope for. But she just had to make it through this one dinner, and then she’d be rid of Wes for good. “Yeah. Then we better get ready, or we’ll be late.”

  She didn’t immediately make a move to get going, though. She didn’t really care if they were late.

  —

  “Is there some reason you don’t like Wes?” Caleb asked forty minutes later, as his chauffeured car drove them into the city to the restaurant where they were meeting Wes and his date.

  She kept her eyes wide and innocent. “What do you mean?” She had a sinking feeling, though, like she’d made a strategic mistake.

  “You tell me. Is there some reason you don’t like Wes?” His dark eyes scanned her face closely, in a way that threatened to expose her completely.

  “Of course not. I barely know him. I’m just tired this evening—after our round of sex before we left—so I don’t want to stay too late. I didn’t mean we have to cut it short.”

  “What did he say to you last weekend at the party?”

  She stifled a groan, realizing that she’d messed up with her casual suggestion that they not stay very long at dinner tonight. “I told you before—he didn’t say anything. Just that it was nice to meet me.”

  “It looked like he was saying more than that.”

  “Well, he wasn’t. Ask him yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

  “I did ask him.”

  Her breath hitched in her throat. “And what did he say?”

  “That he said it was nice to meet you.”

  “So why are you all obsessed about it, then?”

  Caleb sighed and leaned his head back against the seat of the car, looking suddenly tired. “I don’t know. I just thought I picked up a vibe. And he’s been asking about you a lot.”

  “What do you mean he’s been asking about me?” She let herself sound a little defensive, since that was how anyone would have felt.

  “About your background. About how we met. It’s…it’s strange.”

  Kelly knew exactly why Wes had been asking about her. He was definitely suspicious, and it made her even more nervous about dinner this evening. But she wasn’t sure how to handle it. If she sounded too defensive, then it might make Caleb suspicious too, and that was something she couldn’t allow.

  She scooted a little closer to him and lifted a hand to stroke his face. She told herself it was because physical touch might distract him, but it wasn’t really. Mostly just she just wanted to touch him. Be close to him. Assure herself that, for the moment, they were safe. “Maybe he has a secret thing for you. Are you sure he’s straight?”

  Caleb gave a huff of amusement. “Yes, he’s straight.”

  Pleased that his focus had shifted, she smiled up at him teasingly. “Well, he seems to have quite an interest in your love life.”

  “I don’t really know what that’s about. But his mom is really sick, you know. I guess maybe he’s using it as a distraction.”

  Kelly saw his expression sober at the thought of Wes’s mother, and she didn’t pursue the teasing. It was hard to work through the fact that the man was set against her somehow, and yet it was hard to hate
him completely because he was about to lose a parent—something she knew very well. “I’m sorry about his mom.”

  Caleb wrapped an arm around her. “Yeah. I’m not sure being older really makes it easier.”

  “I can’t imagine that it does.”

  They didn’t say much else until they reached the restaurant. When they arrived, they discovered that Wes and his date—a pretty redhead named Micaela—were already at the table.

  Dinner wasn’t as bad as Kelly had been fearing.

  Discussion was mostly light—about old school friends of Wes and Caleb, about their jobs, about the play that Micaela was going to be acting in at a community theater, about Paris. Wes seemed friendly enough with her, and Micaela was very nice.

  As they were eating dessert, Kelly finally relaxed, convinced she was going to make it through the evening without any sort of catastrophe.

  She glanced over at Caleb and saw he was watching her with a smile in his eyes, like he was thinking soft, fond thoughts about her.

  Ridiculously, the expression made her blush, but she gave him a laughing, ironic look in response.

  His smile broadened, and they just gazed at each other, sharing a moment that didn’t need any words.

  “I never thought I’d see it,” Wes said, interrupting their look.

  Caleb gave his friend a cool glance, but Kelly thought he looked a little self-conscious. “The list of things you’ve never thought of could fill a freight train.”

  “That’s probably true. But it makes me wonder about all the things that you don’t know.” Wes shifted his eyes over to Kelly with a speculative expression that made her gut clench.

  It was some sort of hint. To her. That he suspected she was hiding things from Caleb.

  It didn’t matter that he was returning to Paris tomorrow. This man was still a danger to her.

  She managed to give him an innocent smile. “Well, one thing Caleb doesn’t know is how to send a girl flowers.”

  “Hey,” Caleb said, giving her a mock offended look. Micaela laughed, and even Wes relaxed into a smile. “I never knew you wanted any.”

  “I don’t. I’m just saying it wouldn’t kill you to be more romantic.” She made sure her expression conveyed that she was just teasing and not really complaining. If she’d been in a real relationship with Caleb, she wouldn’t have wanted flowers. She wouldn’t have needed anything more than he’d given her.

  A girl who couldn’t tell that his feelings for her were real must be blind.

  Micaela giggled and gave Wes a little punch on the arm. “I think romance is a lost art. The most we can hope for is that they silence their phones.”

  “I’ll always silence my phone for you,” Wes told his date in mock adoration. “But I’d never send you flowers. Flowers are for hospitals.”

  For some reason, the thought evidently made him think of something because his eyes shifted over to Caleb.

  Caleb met his gaze without flinching, without revealing anything.

  Then he turned to look at Kelly. “I’ll give you all the flowers you want.”

  He probably would. She’d probably get some tomorrow, when all she’d wanted to do was change the subject from what was dangerous.

  She couldn’t help but be touched by the sincerity she saw in Caleb’s eyes. She’d managed the tricky moment just fine, but it didn’t mean everything was okay. The longer she stretched this out, the more time she was giving Wes to uncover something about her.

  She needed to hurry this up, to find out the truth before it was too late. Staring at a last uneaten bite of her cheesecake, she was overwhelmed with a kind of panic.

  Maybe it wasn’t rational. Maybe she wasn’t really in more danger now than she’d been before.

  But she had the sudden, irresistible urge to get this finished. Now.

  She excused herself to go to the bathroom, and while she was in the stall, she texted a message to Jack. Any plans made yet?

  After a minute there was a reply. One more week. Sit tight.

  She didn’t want to sit tight. Things felt like they could come unraveled at any moment.

  She needed to do something now. As soon as possible. She needed to get into those corporate records and get the personnel files they needed.

  Another week might be too long, and she just couldn’t take that risk.

  —

  She and Caleb were both quiet as they rode home in the back of the car.

  She felt nervous and exhausted both, and she was still a little sore between the legs from the way he’d fucked her before dinner.

  Everything was feeling wrong—not the kind of twisting poignancy she’d felt with him before but a kind of crushing knowledge that everything about this situation was just not what it should be.

  If only she could take the last step and bring the wrongness to a close.

  She had to think of something. And she couldn’t wait another week.

  “What are you thinking about?” Caleb asked out of the blue. He’d been staring out at the darkness through the car window, and he hadn’t turned to look at her, so she didn’t know what prompted the question.

  “Nothing, really.”

  “It feels like something is wrong.”

  He knew her so well, if he could pick up her mood through the silence. It frightened her and touched her at the same time.

  “What was Wes referring to earlier, about the hospitals?” she asked, remembering that strange look she’d caught between them and wondering about it again.

  Caleb turned his head to face her, and his eyes were defenseless, so tired. “He was referring to my sister.”

  She frowned. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

  “She died. I was a kid.”

  “What happened?”

  “She had cancer. It took her over a year to die.”

  She caught her breath, realizing he was telling her something he never told anyone, something that was closer to his heart than anything else. She remembered half-finished conversations they’d had, as he’d talked around this one thing. “How old was she?”

  “She was thirteen. I was ten. I spent so much time that year in the hospital…” He trailed off, closing his eyes.

  “Your parents let you?”

  “They were…always busy. Someone had to stay with her. I couldn’t leave her there alone.”

  “Oh, God, Caleb. You were just ten. It shouldn’t have been your responsibility.”

  “Who else’s?”

  Her throat was so tight she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t breathe. She took off her seatbelt so she could move over to him and wrap her arms around him. “No wonder you hate hospitals now.”

  “I can’t stand them. They make me physically ill.” He took a strange, shaky breath. “I don’t talk about this with anyone.”

  “I’m glad you told me.” She leaned up to kiss his jaw. “What was her name?”

  “Mallory.”

  “Is that why you went into pharmaceuticals?”

  “I guess so. Not consciously, but…if there is some way to keep that from happening, then I want to make sure we find the way.”

  He felt tense and shaky and so real in her arms. She held him tighter. “I was ten when my dad died.”

  “I know you were.” He leaned against her. “We’re alike in so many ways.”

  And that might have been the deepest truth of all.

  —

  The following day was Sunday, and Kelly had figured out what to do to get into the storage room.

  She’d had to lay the groundwork that morning by prompting a little argument over breakfast—about nothing more serious than his being grumpy with her—and the fallout was that he’d gone into his office in the city to work for the afternoon.

  He used to do that every Sunday afternoon, so it hadn’t been too hard to get him to fall back into the habit.

  She didn’t really want him to go into work. It felt like it was creating distance between them when they’d been so close jus
t last night.

  They hadn’t made love when they got back home, but she’d fallen asleep in his arms, and she’d never felt so close to anyone in her life—like they’d both opened their souls, leaving nothing unexposed.

  He’d been a little more guarded this morning, since opening up like that had been hard for him, and she’d taken advantage of it, intensified it.

  Because she had to. She had to bring this to a close at last.

  At three in the afternoon she showed up at his office. She never would have done this on a workday, since his time was usually scheduled out to the minute Monday through Friday. But it was Sunday, and he was just working on his own in his office. Some of his staff might be there, but there wouldn’t be tons of people around.

  This was the best opportunity that she would ever have to get into the storage room.

  She was going to use it.

  A couple of people were working in offices she passed as she got off the elevator on his floor, but his assistant wasn’t at the desk in the executive suite.

  That was good. That would make things a lot easier.

  Caleb’s office door was cracked open slightly, so she knocked on it.

  “Come.” He sounded professional, curt, busy. The consummate businessman.

  That was him—as much as anything else. She needed to remember it. There weren’t many limits to what he was willing to do to get ahead in business. Ignoring that reality about him would be a huge mistake.

  She pushed open the door.

  He turned his head from his computer at her entrance, and she saw his body twitch in surprise when he processed her appearance.

  “Kelly,” he said, standing up and taking a few steps toward her. “Is everything all right?”

  She gave him a little smile, not having to fake the nerves she was feeling.

  His expression softened. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was hoping you might have a minute.”

  “Of course I have a minute. Is anything wrong?”

  “No. I, uh…” She dropped her eyes and then raised them again. “I was hoping for an appointment with Mr. Marshall.”

  She saw the series of expressions flicker across his face—confusion, recognition, understanding, heat.