by Eden Summers
“Sean?” She left her room and her heart sank to the soles of her feet as she rushed down the hall.
He was back there, at the wall of distant memories with only a towel covering his naked body as he scrutinized her past. He turned, taking her in with those breathtaking blue eyes that held a hint of pride. Christ. She was going to lose it—the hold on the charade, the grip on her hidden depression. She was sick of hiding, sick to death of pretending, yet seeing his respect turn to pity, or worse, revulsion, would cripple her.
“Can you stop looking at those?” She continued forward, each step empowering her frustration to claim another piece of her soul. Anger consumed her—anger at the world, at her life, at herself. The hatred never eased. Sean only helped to divert her thoughts temporarily.
“Why?” He frowned and turned his attention back to the photo frames. “You look gorgeous.”
God, she hated that. The assumptions drove her crazy. If her scars were merely emotional, maybe she could bluff her way through a relationship with this man. Sooner or later, he would find what she was hiding. Sooner or later, the fun would end.
“The guy looks like a bit of a jackass.” Sean pointed to a picture of her and Simon striking a pose after one of their earlier tours. “You’re phenomenal, though. Jesus, look at how toned your body is.”
“I said don’t.” Her brain pounded, and the ache in her leg increased from stress. Her injury reacted with her emotions, nudging its way into every part of her life. She squeezed between Sean’s bare chest and the wall and shoved at his muscled stomach. “Maybe you should leave.”
He straightened, peering down at her in confusion that slowly morphed into annoyance. “Like fuck I am.”
His gaze scrutinized her, brushing past secrets she needed to keep hidden. She had to calm down. Not just for his sake, but hers, too. She still wasn’t used to her new life. She’d been reborn from a confident, in-your-face diva, to a frail and pathetic excuse of a woman. It wasn’t an easy transition.
“Sean, I’m tired and I’m not in the mood anymore.” She stared at the ground and ran a hand through her hair. For the first time, the thought of speaking to a psychologist seemed necessary. Speaking to anyone would be beneficial. Anyone but Sean. Her head was a mess, and she couldn’t control the negative thoughts. How could she when she’d lost the body she’d based her career on and the lifestyle she’d loved? “Let’s—”
“Go to bed,” he growled. “Great idea.”
He turned and walked away, leaving her alone to bask in sorrow. She was caught between wanting something she couldn’t have, and having something she couldn’t want. The more time they spent together, the more she ached for it to continue. It was the height of cruelty, slowly pulling her toward a temptation she had to resist.
The fight left her system. She hit the lights and followed after him. When she reached her room, he lay nestled between the sheets of her bed, resting on his side with a soft frown on his face.
“You aren’t going to be hot in those?” He indicated her pajama pants with a jerk of his head.
“No. I prefer to stay warm, even in summer.” It was a lie. Another one to add to the long list.
She flicked off the bedroom light and shuffled toward him. Her room wasn’t as dark as his. The streetlights seeped in around the curtains, and her alarm clock was brighter, too. She could see him in all his shadowed glory as she climbed into bed and scooted down the mattress so they were face to face. His gaze enveloped her, touching every one of her frazzled nerves with the comfort in his eyes. The potency of his affection destroyed her. She had to roll over to her other side to break the connection.
This thing between them, the building lust and growing temptation, couldn’t work. No matter how much she wanted it to. It was too soon. The doctors told her the severity of her injury would fade over time. The bright red exposed flesh would dull to a softer shade, becoming less horrific. Maybe then her confidence would be different. Right now, revealing her true self was too confronting.
“Maybe I should’ve left my clothes on,” he muttered. “That cold shoulder you’re giving me is freezing my balls.”
Even through her melancholy, a grin pulled at her lips. “I told you, I wasn’t in the mood.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to sleep so far away from me.”
Yeah, it did. If he touched her, she’d cave. There wasn’t a way she could resist him. “I’m good where I am.”
His growl sent a shiver rocketing down her spine.
“Well, I’m not.” He scooted across the mattress, his warmth enveloping her as he spooned into her back.
He felt perfect. There was no fevered attraction. No cloying lust…well, OK, that was another lie, but above all the sexual attraction, her chest was filled was something less tangible. Something she hadn’t had the pleasure of experiencing before.
She was at home in his arms.
The sweet smell of soap on his skin, the hardness of his body. She ached to run her hands over his nakedness. To learn him by touch and taste. She knew her desire was born from the need to feel worthy again. His interest filled a part of her soul she’d thought she’d lost in the accident.
She sighed, trying to relieve the pressure building in her chest.
“Can’t get comfortable?”
“Not when parts of your anatomy are shoveling into my ass.”
He chuckled, the softness of his breath brushing the back of her neck. “I thought it would’ve felt at home after that stick you’ve had up there for the last half hour.”
She winced into the darkness and relaxed against him. “I’m sorry.” She had to give him credit for hanging around. She’d been a grade-A bitch, and he had no clue why.
“Wanna talk about it?”
Melody closed her eyes, wishing it was possible. “You rattle me.” Finally, the truth. He rocked her already unsteady foundations and pushed her toward a place she wished she was ready for. “I’m not used to being out of my comfort zone.” She turned in his arms, and blinked up at him in the barely visible light.
“Why? You don’t seem like a woman who’s easily rattled.” The sincerity in his tone spoke volumes as his chest thumped against hers.
“I don’t know. I guess you’re different from the men I’ve been with.” She was different now, too. Whatever this thing between them was—merely sex, or the prelude to something bigger—it was all new to her. New to the fragile Melody who was merely playing the role of a stronger woman.
“I’ve never been with anyone like you either.”
“You mean mentally unhinged?” She added laughter to her tone to mask the truth.
“Oh, no.” He chuckled. “I’ve been with a lot of women like that. You just make me want different things.”
“Like?”
He kissed her gently, the briefest brush of his lips against hers. It was barely a kiss at all, yet it slammed right through her.
“You make me want slow and sweet.” He kissed her nose, her cheek, then settled his lips against hers. “You make me want things I’ve never experienced with any other woman, Red.”
His tongue ran along the seam of her mouth, coaxing her lips apart. As she matched the slow glide of his tongue, she cupped his cheek with her palm, rubbing her thumb along the harshness of his stubble. She sailed along an alternate plane, one she wasn’t familiar with, yet somewhere she never wanted to leave.
“Come to dinner at my place on Saturday,” he whispered against her lips. “Otherwise, I’ll end up on your doorstep, and you won’t be able to get rid of me.”
She smiled and sank deeper into the warmth of his arms. “OK.”
“OK you’ll come, or OK you want me on your doorstep?”
“I’ll come to dinner.” It was a mistake. She needed to stop playing this game. But how could she when being with him was a balm over her fractured confidence? She wanted him. More than she’d wanted anything in a long time. He filled her with excitement. Nerves, too. The most delicious feelings she wasn
’t willing to let go of just yet.
He nudged his erection against her belly, grinding in a gentle friction that made heat burn in her sex. She shouldn’t be encouraging this, yet every kiss convinced her she could continue the charade. Just a little longer, a few more kisses, a few more days. Whatever it took to remain immersed in the goodness he surrounded her in.
His palm ran under her camisole, scorching a trail over her waist to the side of her breast. She clenched her thighs together and lowered her hand to his shoulder, holding on for dear life because he made her feel like she was falling.
“I want you,” he murmured. “I want you unlike anything I’ve ever wanted before.”
She kissed him harder, hoping the pressure could miraculously change this dream into reality.
“I want you, too.”
He grabbed the waistband of her pajama pants and tugged them down her thighs. She shuffled, ignoring the dull throb of pain from her scar as she helped lower the material.
“You didn’t wear panties.” He left her pajamas hovering at her calves and ran a hand over her abdomen, straight to her pussy.
She sucked in a breath and kicked the material from her legs while his fingers slowly slid between her folds. He knew exactly where to touch. In the one spot that would’ve made her knees buckle if she’d been standing.
He sucked her bottom lip into his mouth. “You’re always wet. Always ready. It drives me fucking crazy.”
If only she was immune to him. Life would be easier if she wasn’t smitten. She rolled onto her other side, giving him her back while she retrieved a condom from her top drawer. He didn’t stop seducing her while her focus was elsewhere. He nibbled her earlobe, rested his hand on her waist, and then kissed the sensitive curve where her neck met her shoulder.
His affection grew, softly, sweetly, building the ache in her chest under gentle brushes of his lips and delicate strokes of his fingers. Unlike their previous times together, he wasn’t trying to fuck her. He wasn’t teasing. He was passionate, caring, making her feel like this was closer to love than lust.
“I can’t get you out of my head.”
She ignored him and ground her ass into his erection as she handed the condom over her shoulder. He made quick work of sheathing himself, before he nudged his pelvis against her ass and rested the head of his shaft at her entrance.
He adored her, leisurely and attentive. His usual dominance gone, replaced with a need less potent and ten times more thrilling. There was no scratching or clawing. She learned his body inch by inch, with her mouth as well as her hands.
Not once did he touch her scar, or even come close to the vicinity. It was as if a greater force directed him in a different direction, giving him the knowledge to grip her right hip and never her left. It was perfect. Maybe too perfect, and she didn’t care. He gave her back a piece of herself by finding the old hidden Melody and coaxing her to the forefront. When they were naked, in the dark, she didn’t need to pretend anymore. He allowed her to be the woman she was born to be. He gave her the confidence to soar, right off the edge of passion into the wave of climax as he held her tight in his arms. His guttural moan followed, overwhelming her with the pride that accompanied pleasuring this gorgeous man.
With their bodies entwined, the powerful fingers of sleep began to nag at her. There were no evil thoughts to haunt her, no pain to announce itself over the throb still taking over her sex. Everything was right in the world…until he spoke against her neck.
“You’re a fantasy.”
That’s when the illusion crumpled, and the fragile Melody returned. He was exactly right. Their time together wasn’t real. It was a lie. A fallacy. A mistruth that may look like a picture-perfect vision on the outside, only underneath all the lies it was far from dreamy.
* * *
The feisty little minx had fallen asleep in Sean’s arms, allowing him long moments to watch her without the threat of being caught. That’s when he knew he was done for. He’d jumped from an obsession with one woman, to a yearning for another that was ten times more potent. He wasn’t sure if it was healthy. In fact, he knew the sudden switch had to be a bad omen, and still he couldn’t stop himself from falling for her. He was dying to spend every waking moment around her smile and flexible body, and dreading more than ever the need to fly to New York.
Nightfall ticked by, with the faint glow of the streetlight beaming through the edge of her curtains. It wasn’t until the room began to lighten that he realized he must have drifted off at one point.
Red was now visible before him, her hair in a tangled mess on her pillow. He kissed her forehead, whispered a silent farewell, and slid from the bed. Still, he couldn’t drag his gaze away. The sheet clung to her breasts, her waist… He stopped breathing. She was naked with her left leg tangled around the sheet.
“Oh, shit.” The words whispered from his mouth.
Nausea warred with the anger churning in his stomach, and no matter how harsh the image before him, he couldn’t stop looking. Red was scarred, her beautiful body marred by a massive expanse of sunken, mutilated skin.
He’d prepared himself for the trivial evidence of a long-forgotten injury. What greeted him was dark and cruel and didn’t compute with the image he held of this dynamic, enigmatic woman. Her body had been brutalized. The perfection he’d known was marred with a scar far bigger and vicious than he could’ve imagined this tiny woman enduring. The sunken, crimson flesh stretched from a few inches above her knee, widening the higher it climbed until the damage consumed almost all of the outside of her left thigh and hip. The rest of her was flawless, the same smooth skin he’d become used to admiring.
She shifted in her sleep, uttering a mumbled sound that made him flee into the hall in fear of being caught. He couldn’t face her. Not now. Since Ryan found her secrets online, Sean had gone through unending conversations in his head. She’d convinced him, with her lithe movements and what turned out to be lies of omission, that the motorcycle accident had only left her with emotional scars. Nevertheless, he’d prepared himself for some type of physical evidence of what she’d gone through. Something to explain her inability to be touched or seen naked. He’d told himself no damage, no matter how prevalent, could affect him. Nothing would.
Fuck was he wrong.
He wanted to throw up. Not from the sight, but from the pain she must have, and still could be, enduring. How could he hide that? How could he look her in the eye and pretend he wasn’t gutted for her? Christ. He leaned against the wall and scrubbed a hand over the bump on his nose. Even worse, how could he walk from her house without a word?
“Sean?” Her sleep riddled voice echoed down the hall.
He didn’t reply. Didn’t breathe. He pressed himself further against the wall for what seemed like an eternity until she mewled and the familiar sound of her sleepy inhalations reached his ears.
Fuck.
He’d screwed up. Big time. And now he had to figure out how he could look her in the eye again without showing the heartache he felt toward the battle she was trying to wage on her own.
Chapter Seventeen
Saturday night arrived in a rush of excitement and belly-fluttering nerves. Melody had never been this eager to see a guy. Ever. Sean had left early Wednesday morning, leaving her to wake up alone and suffering from a loss akin to a long-term farewell instead of a mere four days.
Those eighty-four hours made her realize there was no hope to quit her charade. She couldn’t walk away, or backtrack from the place they’d reached. She’d become addicted to the invigorating sensation he filled her with, no matter how harsh the outcome when they went their separate ways.
She wanted him. He wanted her. As long as she could keep her secrets and maintain her pride, they could continue to enjoy each other. She was going to suppress all the negativity and simply savor.
At least, that was the plan she’d committed to while driving along highway 60, her speed slightly over the limit as she rushed to see him again. The
final minutes before their reunion were proving to be the hardest. She even cranked her radio volume to the point of ear-bleeding pain to stop the delirious thoughts taking over her concentration.
“Melly. Melly. Melly. Melly.” Her sister’s ringtone was barely audible over the heavy bass of her car speakers.
“Damn it.” She pulled to the side of the road, cursing yet another delay, and rummaged one-handed through the depths of her handbag to find the source of the vibrations.
She was late. Five minutes. Maybe ten. Either way, it was too long. She’d wanted to arrive at Sean’s penthouse early, dressed in her sexiest outfit. Unfortunately, with her body issues, she had to go through her entire wardrobe, trying everything on twice before she settled on black leather, three-quarter length pants and a white strapless lace top that was noticeably see-through except for the small expanse of material covering her breasts. It was an outfit for the dancer ego—attention seeking, sexy as hell, and something she hadn’t dreamed of wearing again.
“Hello.” She raised her voice, yelling over the radio as she jammed the phone in the hands-free holder.
“What the hell is that noise?”
She lunged to turn down the music and then increased the volume on her cell. “Radio. Sorry. What’s up? I’m in a hurry.”
“A hurry for what?”
Last month, before she met Sean and his empowering smile, she would’ve lied and told Blair she had a wedding dance class or something equally lame so no one in her family was privy to the impending humiliation of another guy rejecting her. But her excitement at seeing Sean took over.
She hadn’t expected him to keep in contact while he was out of town. Instead, he’d surprised her, calling every night, every morning, and sometimes in between, to talk about everything and nothing.
She became hooked on the sound of his voice, and every time her cell rang, her pulse spiked. He made her smile, during their conversations and also at random points throughout the day when she was alone and left with her thoughts.