by Marni Mann
Thirteen days.
“I worry about you.”
I stuck my hand out of the blanket and rested it on his cheek, rubbing my thumb over his lips. His beard was growing out, and the messiness of his facial hair with his dark, edgy style was such a sexy combination. “I know.”
“Take the job I’m offering you, Rae. It’s been over a week since we talked about it, and you still haven’t said anything. Your concerns are valid, but I promise what you fear isn’t going to happen.”
“You don’t understand. I’ve worked for my boyfriend before. It didn’t work out—it was a disaster, actually.”
“Yes,” he kissed my thumb, “I do understand. I’m not some asshole who would ask you to quit a good job, then leave you unemployed in a few months. Give me a little credit here.”
I’d thought about working for him while I had been driving home early this morning. What it would feel like to have a normal job with regular hours. It wasn’t the kind of work that I really wanted to be doing at a spa, but it was for a company that built them. Without any schooling, I probably couldn’t get much closer than that and get paid the amount he was offering.
“I have to give them at least two weeks’ notice,” I said.
He smiled and leaned down, his lips drifting onto mine. His body followed, hovering directly over me. I used his fabric softener, but it smelled different on him, mixed with his cologne and the scent of his skin. I wanted to eat both smells constantly.
“Even your sleep tastes delicious,” he said, his mouth finally pulling away.
I’d showered before I had gotten into his bed, but after nine hours of sleep, a flood of tears, and even a little screaming, I couldn’t imagine that I tasted very good.
I ran my hands over his chest, down his abs and slipped them under the waist of his jeans. I met the elastic of his boxer briefs and started to move even lower. “How much time do I have?”
He gave me a quick peck. “Not nearly enough…not for what I want to do to you.”
“This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”
“Mmm.” His lips ran over my neck before he moved off me and stood next to the bed. Though he no longer touched me, I was still covered in goose bumps. “You know the second one of your fingers comes near me, it will become about you. But time isn’t going to be an issue anymore, is it?”
I shook my head.
“I promise you won’t regret your decision.” I hoped he was right. “I’ll see you in the morning, baby.” He kissed me one more time before he left the room.
I heard the front door close and got out of bed, heading for the guest room. There was only one thing I’d hidden in there. I couldn’t even call it hiding—I’d stuck the box in the last drawer of the dresser and covered it with a sweatshirt. If he looked, he’d find it easily.
I took it out of the drawer, grabbed my purse and sat on the floor. With my legs crossed under me, I removed the envelope from my bag. I’d already written Darren Ryan on the front cover, and Mom’s address.
I love you.
—Rae
Those were the only words I had written on his birthday card. The only words I ever wrote to him. The things I needed to say couldn’t be written down; they had to be said out loud, screamed and sobbed in order for him to truly understand how sorry I really was.
I held the card up to my lips and kissed his name.
I’m so fucking sorry, Darren.
Then I opened the top of the box. Inside were four other envelopes, one for each of the birthdays I had missed. I placed the one for his nineteenth on top of the pile and shut the lid.
I hadn’t missed his birthdays.
Not even close.
But I hadn’t mailed the cards…because he wasn’t there. Not at Mom’s, not in Bar Harbor. Not even in the rain.
Darren wasn’t anywhere anymore.
He was dead. He had been for the last five years.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I HATE THAT I have to wait an hour to have you.”
Hart’s voice was deep and filled with longing, and it intensified the tingling in my lower stomach. I was leaning against my car in the parking lot of the casino; he was standing in front of me. His hands had crawled underneath my jacket, his fingers drawing lines around my navel.
I’d given the manager my two-week notice a few days before. The waitlist to work there had become so lengthy, he only needed me to stay long enough to train a new waitress. Tonight was my last shift, and Hart had come up to play poker. I knew he was really just there to see me.
“Sixty minutes, then we’ll be at the house. I know you can make it.” I didn’t really mean that. I was having just as hard of a time waiting so long to touch him. His lips alone hadn’t given me enough satisfaction, even as I wiped my gloss off them now.
I wanted more.
I’d been wet practically from the moment he’d arrived at the casino. It was from the way he’d looked at me, the way his fingers had grazed my skin throughout the night, how his hand had found its way under the front of my skirt. Knowing that my smell and my wetness were all over him while he had played was such a turn on.
He opened my car door, and I climbed inside. “One hour—not a minute more.” He said it through gritted teeth, his eyes hungrily devouring my body. Frustrated sighs came out of him as he restrained himself from touching me.
I wasn’t sure if he was going to close the door and let me drive off, or if he was going to rip my clothes off and take me in the front seat. I made the decision for him, shutting the door and watching as he turned slowly and walked across the lot. As soon as I saw his headlights flip on, I drove onto the main road.
We weren’t even out of Bangor before my phone rang.
“I’m only a few feet in front of you and…” I glanced at the gas gauge, “I have a full tank of gas, so don’t worry…”
“I want you to take your left leg and push it against the door. Make sure it’s locked.” The intensity in his voice was almost startling. He was demanding without being intimidating.
I pressed the lock, lifted my leg, and pushed it against the door. I couldn’t imagine why he wanted me to do that. “Done.”
“Now take your fingers and gently touch the inside of your right thigh. Just the inside, don’t go any farther.” A smile spread over my lips as I realized where this was going and what he was actually asking me to do. “I know what you’re wearing, which means I know how far you can spread your legs, and what that fabric is going to feel like when you rub your fingers over it.”
I was in leggings; spreading my thighs wouldn’t be a problem. And he was right: the softness of the fabric was going to feel amazing against my skin…too amazing while I was driving.
I glanced in my rearview mirror as my left hand moved off the steering wheel. The thought of him giving me orders from the vehicle behind me in total darkness, where I couldn’t see his face or know what he was doing with his hands, was so sexy.
“I’ll know if you touched yourself from your breathing. So just your thighs, Rae, and do it slowly.”
My fingers moved down my jacket. I ran them over the hem of the pants, stopping before they came too close to the throbbing spot.
“That’s it.” His voice had deepened and become raspy. “It feels good, doesn’t it, baby?”
My right hand squeezed the steering wheel as if it were trying to slip away. “I want more.” Heat blasted through the vents of my freezing car. I switched it to air conditioning and loosened my scarf and the top buttons of my jacket. I wasn’t cold anymore.
“Now brush your fingers over your pussy—don’t linger there, just touch it. Gently. If you want permission to slide under the fabric, I need to hear how much you want it.”
The guy I had dated before Saint was the biggest freak I’d ever been with. Before him, I hadn’t ever explored the darker side of sex. He was into wax, matches, lighters…he had a thing for heat and how it could add to our pleasure. That, I could handle. But I reached m
y limit when he asked me to try snowballing. It was then that I immediately left him. I couldn’t heal someone who didn’t want to get better even if his wounds were attractive. I was all for trying new shit; having him squirt his man juice into my mouth and then for me to dump it into his wasn’t erotic. It was fucking gross.
Fortunately, Hart was nothing like him. His commands were forceful and naughty, and seductive. He wasn’t doing things just to experiment or shock me. And it wasn’t only his words that were persuasive; it was just as much my desire to please him, knowing how good that would make me feel, that he would reward me in orgasms that truly made my body buck to his commands.
“Ahhhh…” I moaned.
“I can just imagine how wet you’re getting. Now I want to hear it. But first, I need you to slow the car down.” I took my foot off the gas and let it coast. “Good. Now push your pants all the way down to your ankles.”
I had to arch my back and thrust my butt off the seat to slide the leggings down to my knees. I sat back down and used the heel of my boot to bring them to my ankles. “Okay, they’re there.”
“Are your panties wet?”
I didn’t even have to touch them to know. The wetness had seeped through the fabric. “Yes. Sopping.”
“I want you to keep them on, but move them to the side so your fingertips have plenty of room to explore.”
The material wasn’t really meant for coverage; they were really made for looks, so it was easy to push the flimsy piece aside. “Done.”
“Now touch yourself, Rae. Just the outside. I don’t want anything inside you yet.”
Holding them aside with the edge of my hand, I pushed my head back against the seat and sucked in my breath as my skin landed on the sensitive spot. There was so much heat, so much wetness. A flood shuddered from within me. “I wish this was your hand instead of mine.”
“Soon, baby,” he said. “Do you know how hot it is to see the silhouette of your body through the back of your car, knowing you’re touching yourself exactly the way I want you to?”
“It feels…” I was rubbing just the outside, the tops of my lips, teasing the center. “…so good.” There was nothing in front of me to look at except the road and trees and an occasional sign that told me how many more miles until Bar Harbor. And the red lights from the dashboard that reflected on the top of my hand.
“Now I want you to put your cell on speaker mode and rest it on the seat between your legs.”
I lifted my hand just long enough to take the phone off my shoulder, hit the button he had requested and place it on the seat. “It’s there.”
“I can hear it…and the difference in your voice.”
I was now rubbing circles over my clit. My back wouldn’t keep still, or my legs, or my right hand as it slid over the top and bottom of the steering wheel. I wasn’t sure if it was the position I was in, or if it was from driving and trying to keep my focus on the road while all this was happening, but the build was coming much faster than normal. “I’m close. So fucking close.”
“Finger-fuck yourself now. Let me hear just how wet you really are.”
My ass moved down the seat, and I leaned back a little to give me more room. My finger slowly entered—just one. I didn’t try to quiet my breathing or soften the moans. Hart needed to hear exactly what he was doing to me.
“Shit…you’re so fucking wet,” he said. “That sounds so goddamn good.”
It was getting harder to concentrate on the road. We weren’t far from town; the street was beginning to weave and climb, unlike the straight drive that had led us here.
“Hart…”
“I can hear how close you are. Add another finger.”
I inserted a second one, my slickness allowing it to pass in and out so easily. I could feel it dripping on my inner thighs and on the seat underneath me. I kept my eyes open, but it was hard. “Tell me I can come.”
My own fingers didn’t usually turn me on this much. They were mostly orgasms out of need; I wasn’t sopping, my back wasn’t arching, I wasn’t moaning so loud the back of my throat hurt…but all of that was happening right now. My body was on the verge. I had reached the place where I’d lost control of the build. I couldn’t feel my toes or the pedal beneath them; my hands were numb; my legs tingled…
“Come for me…”
That was all I needed to hear.
Hart’s command brought out a spark that coursed through my whole body like a lightning strike, starting in my lower half and climbing all the way to my fingers. It jerked me forward, my face looming near the steering wheel, then it shot back down into my feet.
“Wow.” The word sounded like a moan.
I wasn’t sure if that had come out of my mouth or his. Maybe both.
I caught my breath and put the car in park. We had reached his house.
I felt the chilly rush of air as he opened my door, reached inside, and pulled me out. My leggings were still around my ankles; my fingers hadn’t even dried yet. Hart plunged them into his mouth and sucked my wetness off them while he ripped away my pants and carried me in with my legs straddling him.
We got only as far as the foyer before he pressed my back against the wall. My pussy ground against his jeans as my lips crushed his mouth. There wasn’t anything gentle about either of our movements. He held me with one hand, cradling me in his arm as he reached down with the other to unbuckle his belt and drop his pants. I stayed just as busy, sliding out of my jacket and yanking off my scarf and sweater.
“I don’t have a condom,” he breathed into my neck. “We’ll have to go into the bedroom to get one.”
“Don’t use one,” I whispered.
His body stilled. He pulled his face out of my neck to look up at me. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been so sure.”
He smiled, and then he entered me. I slammed against the wall and screamed out in surprise, even though I had been anticipating it. His size was something I was still getting used to again, but his power was something entirely new. He’d been much more gentle and reserved all those years ago when we were learning each other’s bodies. What he was capable of now was much more intense than anything I’d ever had. Not just in the physical sense, though his strength and endurance were more than evident. It was an emotional intensity as well—the way his hands gripped me as if slipping through his fingers would cause him the greatest ache, the way he kissed me with so much passion. The sounds he made weren’t just moans of pleasure; they were cries filled with the deepest longing, the most gripping desire.
It made me believe no one had ever wanted me more than he did.
“You were so submissive in your car, listening to every command I gave you, and coming with your fingers. Now I want to feel you do it all again, but on my dick this time.”
My shoulder blades rubbed against the wall, chafing like it was carpet. It wasn’t painful. It couldn’t have been.
Nothing about this moment could ever feel bad.
“I’m so close again.” I pressed my head into the wall and released everything in my mind, in my body. The tension within me slackened, and I fell straight into the movement.
“Ah, shit…I just felt you tighten around me,” he said.
My hands were the only part of me that hadn’t relaxed. They gripped his neck, feeling the muscles and the strain as he plunged his body into mine. His fingers roamed my skin, pinching my nipples, then rubbing my clit with such speed that I melted into him.
“I can’t stop what’s happening,” I breathed. “I can’t control it.”
His lips pressed against my ear. “Then don’t. Let me feel you. Let me hear that fucking voice of yours.”
I gave him my voice, like thunder, letting the sounds match the feelings that were building inside me. And when they reached the absolute peak of pleasure, my body began to shudder and shake. I came down from a place I didn’t think I could reach again so intensely, or so soon, after what had just happened in my car.
Har
t had given that to me.
His body slowed, though his thrust lost none of its power. I could feel how close he was by the way he kissed me, how his muscles tightened and wracked with spasms just like mine had. His pounding slowly wound to a complete stop. He didn’t slide out of me or pull me off of him. We stayed just the way we were, limp against each other. His breath blanketed me, warming me as I glowed within his touch.
We were the calm after a beautiful storm that I never wanted to end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
WORKING FOR HART was much different than I’d thought it would be. From the moment I arrived at the spa, people asked me questions; they depended on me, they relied on my knowledge to make their jobs easier and to help the construction progress. I wasn’t just holding Jack and Coke on a tray, smiling so people would drop more dollars in my apron.
I was someone who was trusted to have answers.
Being on the jobsite meant I also got to spend more time with Shane. We had coffee together every morning as we talked about the timeline for the day, and he popped into my office whenever he had a chance. I shared a workspace with Hart, so Shane was always careful to wait until we were alone before he brought up something personal. It was usually when he wanted to discuss Brady, to hear how I was doing, and to find out if I was staying on track with my deposits. With Hart paying me even more than I had made at the casino, I was able to increase the amount I put in the bank. But as proud as I was for building my savings, the high quickly wore off when I would remind Shane of the countdown.
Nine days.
He knew I was holding myself together and it was probably only because of Hart.
And Hart wasn’t just dominating my thoughts and body; I was also consumed with maintaining his work schedule. That was why it seemed really strange the morning he kissed me good-bye and said he’d be gone all day for a meeting. His calendar completely disagreed with that; he was supposed to be on-site all day. It was even stranger when he left his keys on his desk, and a white Lexus picked him up at the end of the driveway. I asked Shane about it. All he knew was the same car had picked up Hart the last time he’d disappeared for the day.