by Robin Lovett
“Ah, so we will be going back to California for your work eventually.”
“We . . .” He tries it out with a frown on his face.
“This is how it’s going to work, isn’t it? You’re going to be keeping me, right? Take me home with you?” Forcing him to work out the logistics of this may be my best hope of getting him to admit how ridiculous his whole plan is.
He shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes. Eventually. But not yet.”
“What are you going to tell your sister? I’m going to have to meet her. Are you going to tell her I’m your live-in girlfriend? Or tell it more like it is—that I’m your mistress. Or maybe sex slave.”
He coughs on his sip of wine and stares at me. “What are you saying? That’s not how this is at all.”
“Sure it is. You’re keeping me with you for sex.”
His mouth flops open. “You—we—I—the sex is optional. You can stop that anytime.”
“Oh, really? Can you see me resisting you at any point? Or you me? Considering our chemistry and how you sit there all sexy and irresistible.” I nod at his bare chest and arms, stretched out and all well-muscled and delectable.
“Touché.” He nods at my outfit.
My bitterness at his being so irresistible to me spouts in random curiosity. “How did you get so fit for a rich boy?”
He frowns at his wine, avoiding my gaze. “Lacrosse. And I had a lot of anger issues to work out as a kid. Gym time helped.”
Again, I can’t help but soften to him. His home situation—no matter all the money and luxuries, it was bad. “Anger over your mother’s death?”
He looks off over the water. “Among other things.”
“What other things?”
He says, through his teeth, “None of your business.”
I won’t stand for being shut out. I’ll provoke him any way I can. “We’ve got all the time there is. I’m going to figure you out soon enough. May as well give it to me straight.”
He glares at me in warning. “You’ll figure out nothing about me. And don’t try.”
“You think you’re so mysterious and hard to figure out? Your mother’s death affected you. Horribly. It still does. You’ve never dealt with it. To the point of having panic attacks.”
“I don’t have panic attacks.” His denial is so thick, I have to find a way through it.
“Then what was that on your aunt’s kitchen floor? A hot flash?”
He grits his teeth. “I told you. I hadn’t eaten.”
“So you’re prone to fainting spells when you’re hungry?”
He rolls his eyes and doesn’t answer.
This isn’t working. I want him to tell me what he’s kept bottled up for years, but he’s sealed tight as a glass jar. I have to find a way to open him up. But I think I have to hurt him to do it—or at least remind him how much it hurts. “You weren’t traumatized by seeing your father brutalize your mother?”
He tenses like he’s withdrawing from me, but his expression cracks, some pain leaking through. “It’s none of your business. I told you too much already.” But still he’s shutting me out. I need barbs to get through to him.
I lean on my knees, my voice gentle though my words are bloody. “How often did he hurt her? Once a month? Once a week, every day?”
He cringes and his face contorts, but he says nothing.
My stomach turns to say it, but I have to get him talking somehow. “Oh, and I’m betting he hurt you too. Did he ever push you down the stairs?”
His eyes round with rage. “Shut up. Now.”
And it comes to me. His Achilles’ Heel, his greatest weakness—Penny. “He hurt your sister, didn’t he?”
He leaps to his feet and roars. “He never hurt her! I wouldn’t let him.” His shoulders vibrate with brutal anger. To watch it returning—it would be scary if I didn’t I love it so much. I want his rage. I want his anger. I want everything he’s kept hidden from the world. I want him to tell it all to me because I want to know him.
I lean back to keep eye contact with him. “You were how old when she was born? Six?” I want him to tell me how he managed it. “There’s no way you could’ve stood up to him as a child. He must have gotten to her.”
“I put myself in his way. I taunted him. I made sure he took it out on me instead of on her. Me.” He stabs his finger so hard at his chest, pointing to himself, it has to hurt.
My heart squeezes for him. How much it must have hurt him—how much it must still hurt him. “How can you be sure Penny didn’t know?” I ask gently.
“Because I know! She had no fucking idea our father was a monster until Logan showed up and told her three months ago.”
That shakes me. “You . . . you never told her?”
He runs a hand through his hair and collapses back down in his seat. “It would have done her no good to know. It helped no one.”
I sit forward, shifting closer. “You never told anyone, did you?” Except me. He’s telling me.
“No.” He rubs his forehead.
“The Tanners must have known.”
He shrugs. “Sure. But there was nothing they could do. If they’d tried to tell anyone, he probably would’ve just sued them for slander. My father was a superhero in that town. With good lawyers to keep him safe.” He turns accusing eyes on me.
“You mean my father?” I shake my head. “Maybe others, but mine would never protect a man who beat his family.”
“Yes, he would. And did. He was well paid.”
“It wasn’t him. You’ve got the wrong man. There’s more to the story than the payments and those emails you found.”
“Why do you insist on denial?”
“Why do you insist on blame?”
He sits forward, closer to me. “Because it’s the truth.”
I rest elbows on the table. “The truth you’ve constructed so you have a means to a revenge you never got. All because you can’t face the fact you feel like it’s your fault your mother died.”
His nostrils flare and the rage steaming from him is everything I’m dying for. Dying for him to feel, dying for him to give to me.
He growls, “You know nothing.”
“I know everything.” I lean across the table to him, knowing my next line is like a challenge to battle. It will hurt, and it’s a nasty thing to say. But I can’t contain my anger at him for disrupting my life and taking me away from my family all because he’s never managed to face his own pain. “I know deep inside you’re nothing but a scared little boy who misses his mommy.”
In an explosion of fury, he pushes the table away and leaps as if to come at me.
I beat him to it. I jump to him and claw at his chest. Our mouths clash and the conflict of words wages away between our tongues.
You’re wrong and I hate you, his kisses say at the same time as they confess: I need to hear it and please don’t stop.
The conflict in him, his anger at himself, outweighs his anger at me, and he gives it free rein. It cascades over me in that intensity of his that I crave, and my body screams for like a drug. I love his anger.
He yanks the cover-up down to my waist and, hands hungering over my back, presses my nipples to his bare chest. I wrench at his hair, twisting my hands in it.
He tosses me on my back and opens my legs. He wastes no time, shows no restraint or patience. He just tongue fucks me with vicious swaths that have me pulsing against his mouth and fast riding an orgasm over the edge.
He rears back, then thrusts into me on a hard plunge. Fullness—complete, unforgiving fullness—he pounds it into me again and again. Growling incompressible things, his whole body straining and working over me, with an unbridled force of will.
He spills into me—all of him. And when he collapses, it’s with a level of trust that should be shocking. Even for a joining in anger, there’s an intimacy here I never expected. An intimacy that’s softening me to him, making me feel things I shouldn’t feel—but cannot stop.
Chapt
er Nineteen
We spend the night in the V-berth below deck, the hatch open to the sky, drowning ourselves in sex so we don’t have to think about whatever the hell else is going on between us.
Sailing home the next day, I can’t decide if I’ll be glad to get her off this boat or not. Even on land I won’t be able to get away from her, so it won’t make a difference.
“Did you really protect your sister from your father all those years?” she asks me, and if we weren’t motoring into the harbor, I’d kiss her to make her forget about the question.
But I can’t do that until we dock. “My sister never knew what it was like to feel his anger. An achievement I’m proud of.”
“She’s married now.” The smugness in her voice sets my teeth on edge.
“She’s in love with the bastard, God knows why. They work together. Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.”
“But she doesn’t need you to protect her anymore. That’s why you decided that now, after all these years, it was time for revenge. You had nothing else to do.”
I stare at her. She’s trying to shock me. Again. Succeeding. Reflecting back at me things I didn’t even know about myself. The scariest thing, though, isn’t just her knowing things about me without me telling her. The real scary part is how it affects me. It makes me weak, weak and wounded, in her eyes and in mine. I want her to be wrong so badly but she’s right, and I hate her for it. Which just makes me want to fuck her again.
My hands twist on the wheel. “If you’re provoking me just to get laid again, you’ll have to wait till we get back to the house.”
“Is that a promise?” She brightens and smiles.
There it is again. That fucking smile. It oozes into me, seeping through the cracks she’s creating in my defenses. Weakness. It’s all weakness. I will not let her make me into something touchy feely. That’s just what she wants. It’s how she’s hoping to escape me.
But even knowing that, I can’t resist smiling back. Can’t resist telling her, “Yes.” So fucking weak.
But when we walk back to the house, I stop and tense like someone poured cement through my veins.
“What?” she asks.
“We’ve got company.” The front door of the house is open. Though it’s not a break-in—there’s a new pot of flowers on the porch. “She wasn’t supposed to be home until next week.”
“Your aunt?” Glee lightens her face. “This will be great. How much does she know? Does she know you’ve kidnapped me?”
“No!” I palm my face. This was not supposed to go this way.
She holds her hands behind her back like she’s about to do business. “So how much are you paying me not to tell her?”
I snap—my lack of control over the situation is more than I can handle. “I’ll pay you by not turning your father over to the police!” I say it too loud, with too much anger.
Her eyes go wide, and I have a horrible thought that I scared her.
But a laughter enters her widened eyes, and her chest bounces with humor. “Don’t you worry.” She pats my cheek and it makes me stiffen. “You forget how much I like you angry.” She gives me a mock kiss then turns to the house. “This should be fun.”
I may have blackmailed her into not saying why she’s here, but this is Daisy. She’s going to find some other way to make this situation as awkward and awful for me as possible. I’ve set up a perfect scenario for her to seek out revenge on me.
“Behave, please,” I warn.
“Me? Never.” She winks and walks across the street, leaving me to follow with a stomach clenching in dread.
I stop her before she goes inside. “My aunt’s a nice lady. Please don’t do anything mean to her. She has no idea what a twisted bastard I am.”
“You’re so sure about that?”
“She has no children of her own. You’ll see.”
“Blake!” Aunt Maggie calls from inside the house, her cheery voice calling to places in me, young places that I’d rather forget are there.
We step into the house and Aunt Maggie comes forward in a fluttering flower dress, her soft curly hair in erratic braids. “Darling, what a wonderful welcome home present to see you.”
She wraps me in a tender hug and like a time transport, I’m six years old again. It doesn’t matter that I’m now a foot taller than her instead of two feet shorter. Every time she hugs me, I’m reminded of when my mother died. Of how I went for two days not wanting anyone to touch me, but when I saw her, with her coloring—her eyes, her hair, even her smell so like my mother—I ran to her and sobbed more tears on her shoulder than I ever thought could come out of a person, or has come out of me since.
“Can you bring her back?” I had whispered in her ear, knowing it could never be, unable to stop myself from asking.
“No, sweetheart, but I can hug you just like she would.” Which, even though she’s the next best person to my mother, still wasn’t true. No one’s hugs were like my mother’s.
“Blake, how are you?” She says to me gently, not in the cordial way a person does politely before talking about themselves, no. She, like always, truly wants to know about me.
I don’t know how I’m going to be the man who kidnapped Daisy and the man who is Aunt Maggie’s nephew in the same house. That I am both these people is a contrast in me I can’t wrap my mind around.
“I’m glad to see you.” Even though having her here with Daisy is a major unexpected inconvenience, and if I’d known she was coming, I would’ve left, I am glad to see her. I always am. Things always feel more stable in the world when she’s around. If there’s one thing I always was with Aunt Maggie, it was safe.
She examines my face and brushes her thumbs over my cheeks. “You look good. Better than before. Will you introduce your friend to me?” Her gaze moves with happy curiosity to Daisy.
I move to the side. “This is Daisy Nowell.”
“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.” Aunt Maggie puts hands on Daisy’s shoulders. “I bet you are so good for him. What brings you to Charleston?”
I hold my breath. What will Daisy say? The idea of Daisy playing some prank on this woman, one of the only two people I love on this earth, makes me nervous. I will not let Daisy say or do anything mean to her. I just won’t.
But the mischief in Daisy’s eyes has lessened. She’s staring at me with surprise, and when she turns to Aunt Maggie, rather than being witty or joking, she says, “Your nephew brought me to see your home. I hope you don’t mind. It’s so lovely. I’ve been enjoying it very much.”
She cups Daisy’s face in a gesture that should be condescending but instead is drenched with affection, and Daisy seems to soften, even sigh into Aunt Maggie’s hands. “You’re so welcome, dear. I’m glad to see someone so bright and smiling with him. He’s far too serious.” She makes a mocking frown and says in a teasing voice, “How in heavens do you stand it?”
Daisy glances at me. “I rather like his frowns. I find them amusing.”
Aunt Maggie claps her hands and laughs. “I love her, Blake. I think I’ll steal her.” She grabs Daisy’s hand and pulls her back into the kitchen.
I check my phone and see more messages from Daisy’s father. He needs a call. I need a call. I could use a dose of satisfaction at his misery. It’s been three days now. Losing his daughter is sinking in, but hearing the whining voicemails isn’t enough for me.
I step outside, out of hearing distance from Daisy and Aunt Maggie.
Nowell answers the phone with a sharp, “Blake!”
The panic in his voice is already satisfying. “Good evening. You’ve called me. Multiple times. Why?”
“You can’t—I mean, please—Daisy is—don’t do this to her! Bring her back!”
“No. I don’t think so.” It’s easy to keep my voice even. His panic calms my sadistic side.
He sputters in his upset. “I—I—I’ll send the police after you. I’ll call the feds if she’s not here by tomorrow. I swear it!” He’s not thinking
clearly.
“I wouldn’t recommend that. You know what I’ll do with the information about you if I end up in custody.”
“I don’t give a shit if you turn me in. I just want her safe.”
I sigh. “It doesn’t matter if you send law enforcement. She won’t go with them.” Evidently Daisy’s call from the airport was not enough. I walk to the kitchen door and sneak my head in. “Daisy, I’ve got your father on the phone. He wants to talk to you.”
Her eyes go wide, and she leaps from her chair too quickly. It falls backward with a bang on the floor.
“Goodness,” my aunt exclaims and gets up to right the chair.
“Sorry,” Daisy mutters and jumps to me.
I lead her outside and close the door. With my hand over the phone, I warn her, “Calm him down. He needs to know you’re fine. That’s all.”
She nods impatiently. “Give me the phone.” I do. “Daddy, how are you?” She forces her voice to be calm, though I can tell by the tightness in her tone she’s anxious.
I can hear his voice yelling through the speaker against her ear, but I can’t understand his words. She turns her back to me for a little privacy. “I’m having a great time. Blake took me sailing.”
I sit on the chaise lounge to listen, relieved she’s appeasing him so well. But she’s so truthful, it bothers me. Her happiness is supposed to be fake, not real.
She smiles a bit but doesn’t look at me. “No, he isn’t forcing me to do anything. I’m enjoying myself. Honestly, do really think I’d be here if I wasn’t?” The words come so easily for her, the anxiety gone. And I realize that she’s not lying.
If I was making her miserable, she would’ve found a way to escape me. Or she thinks she would’ve. She really is enjoying her time with me. And I have to admit, I’m enjoying her.
It’s backward. And it confuses me, but I don’t know how to change it.
She talks to him more in her genuine way, but I block out her words, unable to listen. I don’t want to hear how happy she is. This call was supposed to satisfy my need for revenge, not make me realize it’s not revenge at all. Now I’m the one who’s anxious.