by Ravenna Tate
Merrick nearly choked on his drink the first time she did, and by the fourth one, he laughed out loud. Her heart soared at the sound because it was the first time they’d connected on that level. She’d been waiting for this.
He eventually led her into a quiet corner so they could talk for a moment, and the first thing she did was apologize for losing her composure.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “I thought it was fucking brilliant. It’s about time someone called these people on their rude behavior.”
“Thank you. I thought you’d be upset, but I just couldn’t take it any longer.”
He kissed her, but it was too brief. She was hungry for more. “I don’t blame you one bit. It was very rude of them. Now you understand what I’ve been dealing with all these years.” He gave her a meaningful look. “And I finally understand why you walked away from it.”
Lynda was stunned into silence. That was the first time he’d acknowledged such a thing. “Then why do you keep doing it?”
He shrugged slightly. “It’s part of the game. I like making money. I like turning companies into gold. This goes along with it, but I’m way past giving a shit what most of these people think of me. I show up at their fundraisers, I give to their charities, then I leave. And they think I’m a saint because I’m here at all, even when I say exactly what’s on my mind.”
“Will they hate me for what I said?”
He gave her a quick grin. “No, but they will gossip about it. Still, at least one rumor is finally quashed. By morning, the entire city will know definitively that we did not marry because I knocked you up.”
She studied his profile as he gazed out over the room. This was as good a time to ask as any. “Why is it you never married before?”
He jerked suddenly, as if someone had pushed him. Lynda’s glass nearly slipped from her fingers as her palms grew damp. He blinked a few times, and she counted three horrible seconds before he finally glanced down at her. “Long story.”
Bullshit. Her husband had just lied to her, and she knew it. Worse, she could see in his eyes that he knew she saw right through the answer.
But what did it mean? Had he been married before and there was no fucking record of it? Why wasn’t there? Or, was there another reason the question had rattled him so much? And what could that reason possibly be?
Unfortunately, Lynda had no further time to muse over the possible scenarios, because a large group of people with fake smiles was coming toward them. Time to play the game again, even if the only thing she really wanted to do was have a long talk with her husband.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Merrick summoned up every last ounce of concentration as he made small talk with the board members of the charity for which this fundraiser had been given. He introduced Lynda to each of them, although his mind barely registered the words he spoke. His thoughts were on Lynda’s question.
It was a legit one, and she couldn’t possibly have known it would produce such an emotional reaction. But there was no doubt in his mind she’d noticed, and this time she might not let it go. More than once now she’d seen the pain on his face because he hadn’t been able to rein it in quickly enough. She was too intelligent not to put the pieces together, which meant one thing. He had to tell her.
It was the right thing to do for more than one reason. One, she’d trusted him with the two most painful and scarring experiences of her life. And two, he couldn’t go forward with this marriage, or allow himself to fall in love with her, while keeping her in the dark about his first wife. She’d find out one day, and then he could lose her. She had to hear this from him first.
The damn fundraiser dragged on, and through it all he clung to Lynda like glue, forcing himself to smile and laugh with her. She was either a fabulous actress or had pushed his reaction out of her mind. Because to watch her now, everything was perfect. She spoke and looked like she hadn’t a care in the world.
As the evening wore on, Merrick realized two things. She was easily the most beautiful woman in this room, even if he was biased, and he was in love with her. The time for pretending it hadn’t happened was already gone. It had happened, and now he had to deal with it.
When he felt they could leave without invoking even more gossip, or insulting the hosts, he texted Tyler, his driver. His phone buzzed with an incoming text from Tyler almost immediately.
Multi-car accident on Park and 79th. Traffic at a stand-still through most of Midtown. Do you want to wait a while?
“Fuck.”
“Is something wrong?”
Merrick showed Lynda the text. “What do you think?”
She gave him a desperate look. “I think if I have to stay at this shindig one more second I might scream. I don’t like sitting in traffic, but at least we won’t be here.”
Merrick wanted to kiss her, hard. He texted back that they were leaving anyway. Once they were in the car, he rolled up the window that separated them from Tyler, intending to have that talk. They had nothing else to do for a while, and this might be easier in the car where she couldn’t get away from him.
But when Lynda shocked the hell out of him by crawling into his lap and shoving her tongue into his mouth, he forgot all about the talk and kissed her back, hard and rough. Who was he to turn down his wife for initiating sex?
She rubbed her boobs against his shirt while she loosened his bow tie. Then she kissed him again, moaning softly in the back of her throat. His cock was rock hard and throbbing now. He needed to fuck her. There wasn’t enough blood in his brain to talk.
Merrick pulled away from the kiss so he could bite her nipples through the dress. That earned him her hand shoved between his legs, where she tortured him by trying to stroke his dick through the damn pants. They needed to be naked and quickly.
He unzipped the dress, then pushed down the top over her tits. He’d debated whether to buy her a strapless one, and was glad now he had. She had on a bra, but he made short work of that and then her nipples were in his mouth, one after the other, until she cried out loudly.
“Lynda, baby … I’m going to fuck you so damn hard.”
“Oh, Merrick. I want you. I need you.” She ripped at his shirt now, tearing a couple of buttons as she dragged it out of the cummerbund, but he didn’t give a shit. He had plenty of shirts. Hell, he had plenty of everything, but only one wife. Only one Lynda.
He swung her around so he was lying on top of her, and then pulled off the dress and her panties. She helped him remove the rest of his clothes, his socks, and his shoes. Then he grasped her ankles and spread her legs wide. “Leave your heels on, baby. They’re so fucking sexy.”
Merrick licked her pussy and shoved two fingers into her wetness, groaning as the walls of her vagina contracted around his digits. “Are you close, Lynda?”
“Yes. I’m already there. Fuck me.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. Merrick sank his cock into her pussy and fucked her like he might never do it again. He was merciless, pounding into her as hard and fast as he could. When he took a break, the love in her eyes as she gazed up at him took his breath away.
“Lynda…” He kissed her, kneading her breasts and then running his fingers through her hair, tugging on it, wanting to possess her very soul. He sat up and moved her on top of him again, then helped her guide her soaking wet pussy over his dick once more.
Merrick grabbed her hips and moved her up and down until she cried out in pleasure. Her orgasm was so powerful it brought his on, and there was no way to stop it now. He yelled loudly as he pumped his seed into her, and there was no doubt in his mind that Tyler knew exactly what was going on in the back of the car, window or not.
When they finished, he held her in his lap for what felt like hours. The car inched forward, and then suddenly they were moving again. Merrick glanced out the windows at the buildings on Park Avenue. They would be home soon.
“We need to get dressed.”
She moaned in protest, and he kissed her again. “C
ome on, beautiful. Just until we get inside.”
“Then we can get naked again?”
“I promise.”
****
Merrick woke, listened to Lynda breathing softly in her sleep next to him, and debated whether to wake her up so they could talk. They’d fucked again before falling asleep, but he was wide awake now.
In the morning. He would definitely tell her in the morning. For now, he crawled out of bed and donned sweats and a t-shirt. There was work waiting in his office. Work he didn’t want Lynda to see.
Alan had come through, and Merrick was now in possession of Rey Santos’s laptop, and an external hard drive. It would have been easy for Merrick to hire someone to go through both devices, but he wanted to have a look at this first himself. He owed it to Lynda.
Rey had backed up everything on the external hard drive for the past ten years. Merrick had already finished with the laptop, and there was nothing about Lynda on it. There was, however, quite a nice collection of recent videos of Rey having sex with different women. Women who looked too young to be legal.
Once Merrick had found that, he’d contacted Pete Stephenson. Merrick and Pete had met in high school, when both had been caught trying to hack into the school’s computer system. Pete now worked for the FBI, tracking down cyber pedophiles. Pete didn’t ask how Merrick had obtained the laptop or the hard drive, which was one of the reasons he and Merrick were such good friends.
It didn’t take Merrick long to find what he’d been looking for on the hard drive. Dating back to when Rey had begun filming himself having sex with Lynda, Merrick found dozens of videos. He couldn’t watch them all the way through. It made him sick to realize the trust his wife had given this fucking scumbag.
The sex was dirty and one-sided. She didn’t even look like she was having all that much fun. Her moans were half-assed, and the look in her eyes was hollow. It was so different from the woman he made love to that she might as well be a different person.
Merrick moved them all into a separate folder, made a copy, and emailed it to himself and to Pete, using an encrypted email address the agent had given him. Then he started cataloguing the other videos. The ones where he’d bet his left nut the girls were underage. Those he also emailed to Pete, using the same secure address.
His work here was done. This was in the hands of the FBI now. What this fucker had put Lynda through was avenged. Rey Santos would be spending some time behind bars for kiddie porn.
Merrick then sent one last email. This one was to an associate of his who ran a very exclusive, and very expensive home health care agency. He wanted to make sure that Rey’s mother was taken care of in her last days, and wouldn’t even miss her pig of a son being at her side. After all, why should his mother suffer for what her son had done?
He sat back and stretched, then glanced at the clock on his desk. It was almost dawn. Lynda would be waking up soon, and he wanted to be next to her when she did. After breakfast, they’d have their talk. Then everything would be out in the open and they could move forward. No more secrets. No more issues from their pasts sneaking up to cause drama and heartache.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lynda was worried about Merrick. She’d never seen him so jumpy and distracted. He was rushing through breakfast, and that wasn’t like him. Granted, he did usually work on Sundays, so maybe he was simply anxious to get to it? She finally asked him what was wrong, and his smile was too insincere for her to believe his words.
“I have a lot on my mind today.”
“You have a lot of work waiting, don’t you?”
“No, this morning I thought we’d spend some time together, just talking.”
Now she was even more confused. Why would he be so damn nervous about talking to her? Was this about his reaction last night? Was she finally going to discover what secrets he was hiding? She had purposely not mentioned it because too much had happened this week. She needed time to process everything, and to come to terms with the realization that she had fallen in love with her husband.
His phone rang, and he swore under his breath as he glanced at the caller ID, clearly upset with the interruption. “I have to take this.”
He walked out into the hallway, and Lynda rose from the table. She headed away from him, toward her suite, because she didn’t want to overhear the conversation. Her brain was already too filled with things to ponder. If it was important enough that she needed to know, he’d tell her.
Merrick caught up with her in the upstairs hallway, looking very pissed off and hurried. “I have to go into the office for a while. Something unexpected has come up.”
“That’s all right. You have a business to run. I have plenty of designs to work on.” She didn’t, but there was no point in saying that. Clearly he hadn’t planned on leaving the apartment this morning.
He kissed her, sending desire racing through her. “I’ll text you when I’m on the way back home.”
“All right. See you later.”
Lynda did some work after he left, then took a long shower. She wandered around the library, picking a few books off the shelves to read at a later time, but she wasn’t in the mood to read now. She was bored out of her mind and restless at the same time.
Merrick might be gone all day, or he might be home in an hour. There was no way to tell. But this was part of the way he lived, and she’d need to get used to it. He’d been single for a long time. He wasn’t used to having to account for his time, or planning any of that time to spend with a wife.
Lynda went back upstairs, put the books she’d selected on her desk, then wandered into Merrick’s office. She loved this room. It smelled like him, and had an aura that radiated the same power and industriousness that her husband’s aura did. He spent more time in here than in any room in this apartment.
Who knew what these walls would say if they could talk? Did they hold his secrets? Would they be able to explain the pain she’d glimpsed on his face whenever the subject of past hurts came up? Would they reveal what the fuck had happened to him last night, when she’d asked why he’d never married?
Lynda sat in his chair and swiveled it around a few times, taking in the room from his point of view. She’d sat across from him several times while he’d been in this chair, watching him work or discussing something with him. If he were sitting across from her now, what would she ask him?
For starters, she’d go back to last evening, at the fundraiser. Why would he have reacted that way to her question unless she wasn’t the first Mrs. Merrick Dalton? Lynda had been fighting against the obvious conclusion since last night. It was the reason she’d jumped all over him in the back of the car on the way home, and it was the reason she’d done so again after they’d arrived home. She hadn’t wanted to hear the truth.
Her phone chimed with an incoming text, making her jump. It was as if he’d caught her in here, sitting in his chair, and was angry. But the text merely said he was tied up and would be at least another hour. He would text when he was on the way home. He also said he’d make it up to her once he got there.
That made her smile, so she texted back in graphic detail what she wanted to do with him and to him that evening, and a moment later he responded with a very X-rated emoji, depicting a lewd sex act. She laughed out loud, reflecting how different their communication was now, compared to their wedding night.
But had that been his first wedding night? And if he had been married before, why hadn’t he told her? What was the big secret? And why had she never found it online? That was more disturbing than anything, especially in light of what she’d recently learned about her husband and the power he commanded. Had he covered it up on purpose?
Not unless he killed her, or had her killed.
Lynda hugged herself as a cold shiver ran down her spine. No. That couldn’t be it. She would not accept that. But now she wanted to know the truth. She had to. And she didn’t want to wait until he decided to tell her.
She briefly thought about look
ing through his laptop, but he probably would know she’d done so. There was no point in searching online again because she’d already done that, before they were married, and had found nothing about a previous wife.
Maybe there was something in this office that would give her a clue? Was it worth it to go snooping? He wouldn’t be home for an hour, and the office wasn’t that large. She’d just have a quick look around. It wouldn’t take long at all, and he’d never know she’d done it.
Guilt washed over her as she opened all his desk drawers and rummaged through the contents. When that produced nothing to give her an answer, she wandered over to the filing cabinets. He kept nothing locked, which surprised her. Then again, he probably trusted her and the staff enough not to go through his stuff.
There was nothing in any of them that suggested a secret marriage certificate, or a death certificate for that matter, was hidden away. Lynda returned to his chair, feeling agitated and off balance now. She should have let him talk last night. What if, by the time he got home, he had thought about it and decided not to tell her after all?
She could ask, but the image of seeing that face rose up in her mind. The expression that meant the subject was closed and there was no point in badgering him about it. She couldn’t handle that. Not now. Not after her mind had gone there and done that. She had to know the truth.
Lynda glanced around the room, looking for something she’d missed, but there was nothing. Not unless the apartment had secret walls and hidden passageways. The door to his bedroom was still open, so she rose and walked inside. She breathed in the scent, recalling the nights spent in here making love.
It would be a violation of those memories to go snooping around for clues to an ex-wife, but at least she’d know the truth. She wouldn’t spend every night in here wondering if the evidence was right under her nose, and she’d missed it, or been too afraid to go looking for it.
Lynda started with the nightstand and worked her way around the room. She glanced at her phone several times, making sure he hadn’t texted that he was on his way home, and she’d missed it. She still had forty minutes. Plenty of time.