Then he groaned and slammed his head back against the cabinet behind him. "And that's probably not what you need to hear right now, considering what happened yesterday. I swear, I'm not going all stalker on you."
"Cole, trust me. I've had a stalker—I know what they are." Smiling, she rested her head on his shoulder. "Besides, didn't we already talk about this? If we start feeling like we're moving too fast, then we'll slow down. Right now, I think we're moving along just fine."
The hand massaging her back stilled. "We are?"
"I think so." Easing back, she lifted her head to look at him. "Everybody kept thinking that all these years, I never got serious about anybody because I was still mourning my husband. I do still miss him—and you need to understand that part of my heart will always belong to him. But I've never gotten involved with anybody else because I haven't met another guy who could make my heart flip over." She reached up and touched the tip of her finger to his mouth. "Until you. I took one look at you and everything stopped—I was aggravated as hell about it, because you were taken. But I'm not kidding. One look, Cole...and everything just stopped. And it feels right. If it feels right, how can it be too fast?"
"Rocki. Aw, hell." He slid his hands up and cradled her face. "Everything logical says otherwise. You know that, right?"
She smirked. "Screw logic."
"Hmm. I like that logic." His mouth brushed against hers. "So I guess we're going to rush things, huh?"
"Nah. It's not rushing. We're just moving at our own pace."
"Now that sounds good."
As his mouth came down more firmly on hers, Rocki wondered if she'd be able to talk him into moving at their own pace to the bedroom...in a bit. Right now, she just wanted to enjoy the moment. Wanted to enjoy him.
Beg Me
An Erotic Romance
Warning:
This book contains fantasies that aren’t going to appeal to everybody…rape fantasies, to be completely accurate. The scenes between the hero and heroine are completely consensual, but the heroine is working out some trauma and this book isn’t going to be for everybody.
Chapter One
Call her.
Drake Bennett stared at the phone, drumming his fingers on his thigh. Black hair fell into his eyes as he glared at the phone, uncertain. What did he do? Did he call her? Did he leave her alone? Would she want to talk to anybody? Maybe she was trying not to think about it. Him calling and saying something, anything, would be rubbing salt in raw, open wounds.
January 4.
The four was a glaring red on the calendar and as he stared at it, it seemed to pulse, breathe, bleed.
Call her. Call her…
“Shit,” he muttered, shoving back from his desk and pacing the narrow confines of his office.
Hell, he hadn’t even gone through it. Yeah, he suffered because she did, but would he want to be alone today?
And that decided him.
No.
There were certain times when he just needed a friend with him. This would be one of them, he thought.
It was only five. Early. He could see if she wanted to grab a meal. Nice. Easy.
They were friends, after all. Right?
The ringing of the phone was unwelcome until Tania Sinclair saw the caller ID. There had been seven other calls that day—three from other friends, four from her mother-in-law. The call from Drake Bennett was the only one she’d answered.
“Hello?”
“Hey.”
The sound of his familiar voice, low and easy, made her smile, made the knots in her belly unclench, and somehow the tension in her neck and shoulders dissolved. “Hey, yourself. How are you?”
“Hungry. Bored. Why don’t you save me from myself and get some dinner with me?”
Tania closed her eyes. She wasn’t fooled by the easy, casual invitation. Drake might have been her late husband’s best friend, but he was her friend as well. Ever since Kyle’s death, he’d taken it onto his shoulders to watch over her, take care of her…and sometimes she glimpsed the guilt and anger that slipped into his eyes for the one time that he hadn’t been there.
Not that she blamed him.
She licked her lips, staring at the calendar. Not that she needed the damn calendar to know what day it was. It hung over her like a black shadow, had for weeks.
Now it was finally here—
“Dinner, huh?”
“Yeah.” Her voice cracked. “I can do dinner. I’m starving.”
Liar. She wouldn’t be able to eat a thing. But it would get her out of the house. She could occupy her mind for a few more hours, delay that inevitable creep of the clock.
As she hung up the phone, the memory of a low, insidious whisper echoed through her mind, Beg me…
She hadn’t eaten more than five bites.
Drake didn’t point that out to her.
And when she ordered a third margarita, he didn’t say anything. She kept up a nonstop stream of chatter, and if it hurt his heart to see that over-bright glitter in her eyes, nobody but him needed to know.
Two years. It had been two years. He wished he knew if it was getting easier for her. Sometimes, he thought it was. There were days when he could look at her, and she was almost the way she used to be, happy and laughing…but then as the days got shorter, colder, as December bled to January, all that laughter died and the shadows haunted her eyes.
He wished there was something he could do.
“So. What have you been up to the past few weeks?” she asked, winding down. “I haven’t seen you since before Christmas.”
Drake shrugged. “Not much. Spent Christmas with my folks. Went skiing with some friends the day after.” Spent New Year’s Eve on the couch and thinking about you…He forced himself to smile. “Nothing too exciting. What about you?”
She grimaced. “Oh, the excitement of my life never stops.” She swiped a finger through the salt on the rim of her glass, popped it in her mouth. “I’ve picked up three new clients, had two clients drop me, I signed up for three conferences this summer and ignored every phone call that came in today…except yours.”
Then she frowned and glanced up at him. “I didn’t mean to mention that part.”
Drake lifted a brow. “About the clients, the conferences or the phone calls?”
“The phone calls.” She wrinkled her nose. “Like the clients or the conferences make much difference to you.”
Well, he couldn’t say they made much sense—he knew she did graphic-design stuff. She’d handled the website he set up for his garage, although mostly she handled business for writers and that sort of thing, so that would likely be the sort of conferences she had scheduled to attend. “How come you answered my call if you weren’t in the mood to talk on the phone?”
“Because I felt like talking to you?” She smiled and took a drink of her margarita. “And I didn’t want to talk to the other people. My girlfriends are either going to pat me on the back and try to get me to talk about things I don’t want to talk about, or just sit there and wait patiently, thinking that will get me to talk.” She put the glass down with so much force, the drink splashed onto her hand. “I don’t want to talk—I talk about it enough. And the other calls…”
She fell abruptly silent, grabbing her drink.
When she set her drink down, he reached out and caught her hand. “I’m glad you answered the phone for me.”
“I’m glad too.” She smiled. Then she giggled. “I’m a little drunk, Drake. You know that?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No.” She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of her chair. “Drunk is good. Unconscious and unable to dream, unable to remember, that would be even better. Drake?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you make it so I can’t remember?”
His throat went tight. He could barely manage to breathe. Slipping out of his booth, he moved to sit next to her. She leaned against him with a sigh. “No, baby. I can’t. I would if I
could, though. I’d take it all away if I could.”
She sniffled. Then she sighed and reached down, touching his inner forearm, tracing a fingernail over the skin there, along the lines of his tattoo. The stylized S. “You would, wouldn’t you, Superman?”
“Yeah.” He kissed her brow. “I’d undo the past three years for you if I could figure out a way.”
“How about you just keep holding me for a little while instead?”
“Yeah.” He breathed in the scent of her hair, felt the crack in his heart widen. “I can do that.”
Chapter Two
Hours later, the effects of tequila long since faded, Tania lay alone in her bed and wished she’d found the courage to ask Drake to stay with her. He would have, too. He would have sat by her bed, like he had in the hospital, holding her hand, his blue eyes gentle while he kept nightmares at bay.
But she hadn’t asked and she would greet this day alone.
Damn it, she hated January.
It had been three years since she’d buried her husband.
Two years since his brother had torn her life apart after she’d slowly started to try to live all over again without the other half of her heart.
January 5.
Three in the morning. Exactly two years after it had happened. Two years since that night. Kent—damn him. Damn him straight to hell.
Tania shuddered, a sob rising in her throat. She swallowed, trying to fight it back.
Beg me, bitch…
There had been a time in her life when words like that had made her burn with desire.
Not now, though. Now the memory of those words filled her with dread, despair…and right now, it was pissing her off.
Her life was in limbo and she couldn’t move on until she got over this. Couldn’t move on until she took her life back.
How much longer would it take, she wondered? After two years, shouldn’t it get better?
Two years.
Two years to the day since somebody she’d known, had trusted, had cared for had broken into her house and twisted her fantasies, turned them into nightmares.
Two years since she’d killed a man. The days and months and years fell away, and just like it was that night all over again, she could see it happening again—feel that first brutal shock, then the pain. The horror.
She could remember the way his eyes had widened when she’d pulled the trigger, and she remembered seeing him fall. She’d squeezed the trigger a second time, but he’d already been on the floor, bleeding out, and the bullets had buried themselves in the wall in her hallway.
Drake and some of his friends had repaired that damage before she’d even come home from the hospital—home to sleep in the same house where her husband’s twin had attacked her.
For months, she’d slept in the living room. Then the guest bedroom. It was only in the past year that she’d managed to courage to come back into this bedroom, and that was after she’d redecorated everything, after she’d bought a new bed, new mattress… There was nothing here that Kent could have tainted.
Nothing but her memories.
And still his presence lingered. Still, his ugliness ruined everything.
Two years…but it wasn’t getting better. Wasn’t getting easier.
Fisting a hand in the sheet, she tried to shove the memories away, tried to reach for happier, better memories. They existed—there were even memories involving words like beg me, bitch that were happier.
But even as she tried to reach for them, she cringed, because just the image of her husband’s face was enough to make her want to scream. His was Kent’s face. His eyes were Kent’s eyes. When she tried to think of the happy memories, from the sweet and gentle, to the fun and happy, to the kinky and hot, everything was warped by that last, awful night when Kent had broken into her home.
Yes—there were happier memories, but they were all tainted by Kent’s touch, and Tania just couldn’t find them anymore. That pissed her off almost as much as anything, because he’d ruined memories of her husband. The bastard.
“You son of a bitch,” she whispered, her voice harsh, broken.
He’d taken away a part of her—her fantasies, her sexuality, and he’d also stolen away a part of the life she’d shared with her husband, taken away those memories. With Kyle gone, every memory was precious and her attacker had taken them, twisted them.
Wiping the tears away, she sat up in the bed, clutching her pillow against her chest. “You evil bastard.”
He hadn’t just been a rapist. He’d been a thief, stealing something so precious. Taking her sexuality was awful enough, but it kept her from thinking about the memories with her husband—times she’d treasured.
She didn’t know what she hated him for more—the theft of her memories or the theft of herself. Taking so much of who she was.
Taking her life.
And she’d known him—trusted him…
“Oh God,” she whispered, swiping the tears away. “This has to get better. It has to…”
But so far, it wasn’t. There were days, sure, when she could get by without thinking of him, thinking of that night. The attack. But all it took was a certain touch, or for a man to look at her in a certain way. Or even a glimpse of a picture…
Sadly, even looking at her wedding picture was enough.
She liked her sex kinky and rough sometimes, and she’d been lucky enough to marry a guy who’d liked to give it to her kinky and rough.
Losing him, that other half of her, had been brutal. The year that followed had been awful, but she’d been dealing with it. Adjusting.
Kent, though, he hadn’t coped with his twin’s loss well.
Beg me, bitch. Don’t try to act like you don’t want it…
“No,” she whispered, pressing her face into the pillow and shuddering.
She swallowed a sob as tears leaked out of her eyes. Fought back the ugly, hated memories. And wondered what it was going to take for her to get her life back.
She shuffled into the kitchen less than two hours later, feeling like she’d been battered. Her head ached, her eyes were gritty and her throat was raw from crying.
She was spending today the same way she’d spent it a year ago, trying to cope and just get through it. She didn’t want to, but damn it, she didn’t know how to stop this ugly cycle in her head either, didn’t know how to block out the image of Kent’s face—so like Kyle’s…
A moan rose in her throat and she clamped a hand over her mouth. “Stop it,” she muttered. “Just stop.”
Shoving a hand through her hair, she muttered, “Coffee. Get coffee. Turn on the damn TV. Watch a movie.”
She was going to make it through the day. She promised herself that.
Five minutes later, she had her coffee. She had a movie picked out. She was almost calm, even. For her, considering what day it was.
It took only a phone call to shatter it all.
She was walking past the phone when it rang.
Tania froze, staring at it. Icy sweat broke out over her flesh when she saw the number.
It was a cellular number, one she’d known for years—the number she’d ignored yesterday.
And here she was, calling again today.
Because her hand was shaking so hard, she set her coffee cup down. Hand curled into a fist, she stared at her ringing phone.
“I’m not answering,” she whispered. “I’m not.”
After the fourth ring, Gail Sinclair’s voice rang in the air. “You’re awake, Tania. I know you are. I see your lights.” There was a pause, then a soft, shaking breath. “I know today is as hard on you as it is on me—well, maybe not as hard. After all, you only lost your husband. I lost both of my sons. You took both of them from me. But I know it’s difficult for you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be awake.”
Tania didn’t have to wonder how Gail could see her lights.
The woman must be sitting in her car out in front of Tania’s house. Damn it, had Kyle been the only sane person in tha
t family?
Swallowing, she closed her eyes. Told herself to walk away.
“You’ll never heal as long as you hide from what happened. I know I won’t get justice for what happened to Kent. But you need to come clean, Tania. Otherwise, you’ll still be doing this next January 5. Awake, sobbing, crying…living with the guilt as it eats you alive.”
“It’s already doing that,” Tania muttered. “But it’s not guilt that’s eating me up, damn it.”
“My son was no rapist,” Gail said, her voice breaking. “How could you tell such ugly lies? Why won’t you just tell the truth? Why—”
The phone disconnected.
The truth.
Tania laughed, an ugly, broken sound even to her own ears.
Guilt…She shook her head. Did she deal with guilt? She had some, to an extent, she supposed, but it was so lost in the pain, in the misery—she only wished her main problem was guilt. She was too busy trying to function with the rest of it, with the fear, with the anger, with the desperate desire to just get her life back…
Tania only wished her one problem was guilt.
She could cope with guilt.
Because she knew, at the end of it all, if she had to do it again, she would. She’d killed a man before he could hurt her again—that was it, plain and simple. And she didn’t regret that. She also didn’t regret knowing that Kent would never do that to another woman.
No, what she regretted was not having the clarity to reach for her gun sooner. Not having the strength to get away from him and stop him before.
Swallowing, she shook her head and whispered, “It’s not guilt that’s killing me, Gail.”
Did Gail really want the damn truth?
Well, Gail…here’s the truth. I like rough sex. I like kinky sex. Your good son—the one I was married to? He had the same tastes and we use to act out all these nasty games where he would pretend to rape me, where I would pretend to fight him. We loved it.
Bound Temptations: Stories of Temptation and Submission Page 11