The Man I Desire (The Man I Need Trilogy #2)

by Loretta Steel

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘I know exactly what it was like.’

  ‘We had an affair. He wouldn’t let me go.’

  ‘You used him to fulfill some kind of sick fantasy you had about being chained up. All the time you were accusing me of being into that kind of kink, it was you. You were pulling me in.’

  ‘No, Blake. I didn’t lie to you.’

  ‘Tell me the truth. Tell me who Ezra DeSilva is.’

  ‘Mother fu-.’ I mumbled under my breath.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Uh, my mother.’

  ‘What about her?’

  He was as shocked as I when the words came tumbling out of my mouth, uncensored because I was helpless below him, handcuffed to the bed.

  ‘Ezra was my mother’s name.’

  He sprung back off the bed and I immediately regretted telling him. He didn’t look mad but I could smell the danger emanating from his pores.

  ‘Then who are you?’

  ‘My real name is Bethany. Bethany Stone.’

  ‘Why did you lie?’ he said, combing his hands through his hair in disbelief.

  ‘I needed a name. A dead person’s name to escape my past. I thought … I thought that if I could pretend it hadn’t happened … then …’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then I met you.’

  ‘You know your step-father is looking for you?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He thinks you’re in danger. He thinks-‘

  ‘Wait. How do you know all this?’

  ‘He contacted me.’

  ‘Contacted you? When? How? I mean …’

  And then it dawned on me. Blake was a private investigator. He’d been searching for me the whole time. And I never knew. How could I have been so stupid?

  ‘I hadn’t planned on falling in love with you Ezra, or Bethany, whatever your name is.’

  ‘I’m Ezra now, and … what?’

  He stood there staring at me as if he’d never known me at all.

  ‘You said …’

  ‘I fell in love with you.’

  ‘How can you if I’ve-‘

  ‘Lied to me?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I don’t know. I just feel like with you, there’s this connection.’

  ‘I feel that too,’ I said, instantly regretting my honesty.

  ‘But how can you if-‘

  ‘I’m not a bad person.’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘You’re not either, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’

  My wrists were sore and my arms ached from their position above my head.

  ‘Can you release me.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘after.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘After I’ve had my way with you, you lying wench.’

  The fear I’d felt the first time he’d used such words now aroused me more than ever.

  ‘I’m going to fuck you until you scream.’

  But what he really meant was until I begged for more.

  It was a long night, made so by his demands that I bend this way and move that way. He withdrew his cock and came on my arse. My body shuddered from the sudden heat of his seed on my cold skin.

  I was physically and emotionally exhausted, ready to fall asleep in his arms as I nestled my head between his chest and arm. I felt the heat of his breath on my neck, warm in the knowledge that I was no longer afraid to be myself with him. I had to continue to be honest with him. I knew it meant a lot to him that I told him the truth. Lying could no longer be second nature to the woman I had become. It didn’t fit in my life anymore. It would destroy us.

  I’d forgotten all about our earlier visitor until the familiar knocking came from the front door just as sleep had come to find me.

  Blake shot up from the bed. My head dropped down onto the soft mattress, my vision blurred from the sweet sensual, if a little kinky sex, that had only minutes before ended. I hadn’t told him about our unwelcome visitor, but I wished to God I had. Maybe what happened next might not have had to happen at all.

  BLAKE

  She couldn’t help herself. Keeping secrets was almost as bad as lying to me. But I had no intention of dealing with her then. I had more important issues to contend with.

  The press vans were parked outside, faced diagonally across the driveway. A group of reporters permeated the lane. There was no way out. No escape for Ezra, Bethany, whatever she wanted me to call her. They were there because of her.

  ‘Leave now,’ I ordered a young woman and her slim colleague, wearing a scornful look and a goatee.

  I tried hard not to listen to the litany of one-lined questions each of the reporters threw at me.

  ‘Could you tell us how you know Bethany Stone?’

  ‘Do you feel the police made the right decision to arrest madison Shaw, her closest friend?’

  ‘Did you know that she gained a profit from her ordeal, despite-‘

  ‘I’ve heard it all, seen it all, and read it all. It doesn’t concern me. But what does, is that you’re trespassing. This is my property, the lane and all, so if you don’t mind …’

  ‘Okay, okay, we’re leaving.’

  The man responsible for calling forward the leeches of others misery stepped out onto the grass verge and, like a sheepdog rounded them up and shoveled them away from the cottage, and back towards the lane.

  When Ezra appeared in the doorway, looking visibly shaken and timid, I pointed behind her and said, ‘inside now.’

  I meant only that they’d be wanting to snap pictures of the poor victim, Bethany Stone, and knew nothing about the woman who stood before me.

  Ezra DeSilva was more than a challenge. She was too hot to handle. But, I knew in my heart, even then, I wouldn’t back down. I couldn’t let her go, even if she’d begged me to. Because, despite the secrets and the lies, the shrunken woman before me was the one I’d wanted to protect the moment I’d laid eyes on her. I’d vowed to keep her safe, and I would. Even if that meant sacrificing one of my own rules.

  EZRA

  I hadn’t spoken to the press. But I had spoken to someone who did, regularly. I knew it would only be a matter of time before Blake found out, but I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth.

  Not then.

  Despite the fact that I had, I didn’t want him thinking I’d betrayed him because I knew only too well what that felt like.

  BLAKE

  I vowed I’d never allow myself to get too close to a woman. My own rules to dating had been to never get close enough to love a woman. To get hurt, as I’d been hurt when my sister had been taken from me. And I’d managed to stand by my ideals until I almost lost her. The day Ezra went missing I realized that I couldn’t live without her.

  EZRA

  There was something in the air that day. It was cold and a fine mist coated the space in front of me. I drew my coat up over my neck to hide the lovebites Blake had marked my throat with, and tread carefully along the icy pavement. I didn’t see him at first. His form appeared as if from nowhere. Black against the night covered in a cotton wool fog that surrounded me. I couldn’t hear his footsteps over the wind until it was too late.

  Tyler Black stood in front of me on the deserted pavement. His hair left to grow long accentuated his hillbilly look. His eyes gave away the clarity he still had, though. They frightened me more than the rope he held in his hand.

  I’d enjoyed Blake binding my wrists together, my ankles to the bedpost, gagging me with pieces of ripped pillow or using his tie as a blindfold. But when Tyler held the rope out towards me, fear replaced the dread I felt before Blake took me in hand. Tyler wanted revenge. He wanted to hurt me for pleasure. There was a huge difference.

  I turned to look behind me but there was nobody nearby. Not a soul on the early evening road, nobody to run to, nowhere to hide, out there, alone in the cold.

  I’d left Blake to sleep off his hefty workload that had taken him from the cottage
and into the bustling London streets. He had no idea I’d left the house. I hadn’t even left him a note. I’d only meant to walk as far as the local newsagent’s to buy bread and milk, something we always seemed to run out of. But with Tyler’s eyes on me, his frame too large for me to escape, having built himself up in the prison gym, I was well and truly screwed.

  I tugged the hat from my head, hoping that by leaving a print, a sign I’d been there, Blake would know something bad had happened to me and would stop at nothing to find discover my whereabouts. I only hoped in those few seconds I had to gauge Tyler’s level of anger towards me, that the hat wasn’t blown away by the wind, or that Blake would think my disappearance was an act, aimed at getting a response to our earlier argument.

  Tyler walked softly towards me, holding out his arms as though enveloping me into a loving hug. But I knew what those hands could do, and I backed away, skidding on ice and falling to the ground below him.

  He stood over me, smiled, and said, ‘Bethany. My Bethany. It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve found you at last.’

  BLAKE

  She should have known better than to run off like that. It was cold, dark, and icy. It was November, and the air was thick with the threat of snow. I hadn’t had time to shave. I’d been busy with a tight work schedule, and since Ezra had decided to help me with the paperwork side of things, my business was thriving. She’d done a good job of filing things, sorting through documents and even managed to begin working on my accounts, which were several weeks behind. I’d enjoyed having her around, and she’d seemed pleased to have been given something to do, out of the house, where she said she felt ‘oppressed.’

  She was still smarting from the fall-out but hadn’t yet formally apologized. In her own way, her tea-making and lack of speech meant she was quietly contemplating how to broach the subject and say those two words I was longing to hear: I’m sorry.

  But she never got the chance before leaving the cottage and not bothering to tell me where she’d gone.

  It was dark by the time I’d tripped over something on the pavement heading home. I’d been calling her name for ten minutes or more when I saw the item in my hand was, in fact, her hat.

  She’d never leave the cottage without it so it must have fallen from her head. But what could cause her to not realize she’d dropped it?

  Unless …

  Unless, she’d had an accident. Fallen over and hit her head.

  Or she’d been caught unaware by something or someone.

  ‘Ezra?’

  But even as I said her name, I knew she was gone. The silence was too quiet. The darkness too black. The cold too …

  And then it hit me. Black. Tyler Black.

  What if he’d found her?

  The air surrounding the cottage was still, but I could sense it. A note of urgency. The atmosphere had been interrupted.

  Then I heard it.

  The faint sound of a car tyre. The crackle of gears changing. Wheels spinning on wet tarmac.

  Where?

  I ran back, skidding and tripping on the icy snow that had fallen the night before, and early Christmas present that seemed to want to discourage me from getting to the wall, overlooking the hill.

  Then I saw it.

  Out in the distance, a lone car, traveling slowly away. Blue or green in the ghostly mist.

  Car headlights sprang on as it crawled towards the steep slope.

  And then my pulse quickened as I realized that something had been left behind.

  I ran towards the vehicle as it plodded onwards. Only realizing when I reached the marked ground where ice had turned to sludge that there was a boot on the ground.

  A suede fur-lined boot.

  A woman’s boot.

  Ezra’s.

  ‘Hey?’ I called.

  But it was too late. The car picked up speed as soon as it reached the corner and swung out onto the main road, narrowly missing a lorry entering the street.

  EZRA

  Tyler bent down and pulled me up off the cold hard ground. In one instant I was on my toes, running through endless fields that crunched underfoot. When the ice covered grass had ended I reached the verge of the hilly road. Further down it lead to a fork where I chose to turn right, dodging a car and narrowly missing being hit by a white lorry. Alas, I found myself facing The Crow, an old-fashioned pub on the corner of the street.

  I ran inside for shelter. It was warm and smelt of beer and cheese and onion crisps. I ordered half a lager and sat as far away from the entrance as possible with the toilets close by in case Tyler appeared in the doorway. I could have made a run for it if I’d needed to, except I’d lost one of my boots.

  I stayed until the dark skies became a distant figure against the pouring rain. At least the ice would disintegrate, I thought.

  I hadn’t brought my phone and I had no other way of letting Blake know I was okay. I didn’t want to annoy the barman by asking to use the phone. The payphone beside the toilets wasn’t working and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I’d just ordered a second glass when I saw Tyler stride across the small car park at the front of the pub, heading God knew where.

  I had to get out of there but didn’t know how to without arousing notice from the regulars. I couldn’t escape Tyler outside, but I couldn’t stay there forever.

  I stayed until closing and followed a group of men heading off for the night to a club. They seemed far less threatening to me than Tyler Black who, I was sure was hiding out there somewhere behind a bush or between the walls of the alley, waiting for a chance to catch me alone and off-guard.

  By the time I reached the deserted shopping center I was a hysterical mess. Shivering from the cold and with my nerves rattling around me I thumbed a taxi just as it was parking up onto the curb.

  ‘The Cottage, on the hill,’ I said, clasping the seatbelt across me and darting a look through each window, hoping Tyler hadn’t seen where I was headed.

  By the time the taxi had pulled up outside the gates, my breathing had slowed enough for me to realize I didn’t have the right amount of cash.

  ‘I’ll have to go inside to get the rest,’ I said. ‘Give me two minutes.’

  When I got to the unlocked gate I saw that all of the lights in the cottage were on. Blake stood in the entrance with his phone pressed to his ear. He darted me a look that said, ‘where the hell have you been?’ and I shook my head, hoping he understood that I meant I didn’t want to talk about it.

  I took Blake’s wallet from the coffee table and ran down to the waiting taxi driver who didn’t seem to care I had one boot missing and obviously no money of my own.

  When I returned to the cottage I gave Blake the brief, less frightening version of events before he told me to call the police.

  ‘What can they do?’

  ‘Arrest him for harassment, make sure he doesn’t come here again?’

  ‘You know they can’t keep tabs on him forever.’

  He wasn’t listening, though. His mind was ticking. He often held his ear when he was considering something.

  ‘How did he know where to find you?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘He must have known for sure you’d be here otherwise why breach the conditions of his release?’

  How could I tell him that it was probably a reporter? The one Maddie was using. They wanted a story. And what better way of adding to Maddie’s innocence plea than to create another twist; place Tyler as a spanner in the works and see what he did? It would enable the public to vindicate him for the phone calls and letters. It might have even been enough to get Maddie freed from prison.

  ‘Have you still got the VO for Maddie?’

  ‘No, I threw it out.’

  ‘So, you haven’t been to see her then?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, but I could tell his mind was already onto another possibility. One that was far more realistic.

  BLAKE

  ‘Anything co
uld have happened to you.’

  She took her coat off and flung it onto one of the hooks behind the door.

  ‘You should have taken your phone. I just bought it for you, to keep you safe. You could have called me, or texted me or-‘

  ‘I didn’t take my phone. I wasn’t thinking. I guess I was naive in thinking this was all over, that I could move on fully and never have to lay eyes on him again.’

  ‘We have to find him and put a stop to this, once and for all.’

  ‘I agree,’ she said.

  ‘You need closure.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Come here.’

  Her body stiffened, but when she saw the fire in my eyes was only a blaze of love she crept up towards me, allowing me to comfort her.

  I breathed in the scent of coconut in her hair, and with one hand on the crook of her neck brought her face gently towards mine.

  That kiss was gentle and soft. As she was becoming.

  Gentle.

  Soft.

  EZRA

  That night with the wood burner lit, the warmth emanating out into the hall, I fell into Blake’s arms. His kisses tender, his movements slow as he guided me into the living room and undid the clasp of my bra, allowing it to fall free down my arms as he levered the straps of my vest top down to reveal my breasts. He caressed them gently before his hands found their way down to the jogging trousers I’d thrown on for comfort the moment I’d closed the door of the little cottage, and the dark, terrifying night behind me.

  I stepped out of my knickers and lay down on the sheepskin rug in front of the burning wood. The scent of fire and the soft fur beneath me made me feel centered. Winter was closing in, albeit slowly, but for me, it was the best part of the year.

  Blake dropped to the floor, knees either side of me and cradled me in his arms as we made slow sensual love. It was everything I wanted it to be, except there was no kink this time. It was lovemaking, not sex.