by Brandi Evans
"Make love to me," I whispered, my lips grazing his as I spoke. "Right here. In front of all the ghosts still haunting you. We'll banish them with the one thing they tried so desperately to poison you against. Love."
He practically growled as he spun me away from him. He unbuttoned my jeans and pushed them mid-thigh, and then, he was inside me, stretching me, filling me, fucking me with a beautiful brutality.
I clawed at his powerful thighs, beckoning him closer. We're together in this. I couldn't speak the words. I was too emotional, but I prayed he could hear them.
He buried his face in the crook of my neck. His breath was frantic and hot, almost as hot as the man who produced it.
"Bree." The emotion relayed in that one word threatened to drive me over the top. "I love you."
Okay, those words did.
I cried out as my orgasm consumed me. Pleasure spread from the point where our bodies joined and traveled to all points of my being. His thrusts became uncoordinated, and I knew he was coming even before I felt the heat of his seed inside me. He came in thick, hot spurts that always made me feel closer to him than I'd ever been with anyone else.
We didn't move for a long time. Our ragged breathing was the only sound, echoing through the space like a reminder of how we felt about each other.
I turned my head and fitted my cheek against his. "You just rocked my world, Mr. Penn. Thought you should know."
He chuckled, just as I'd hoped. "It was, quite literally, my pleasure, Ms. Jennings."
"Maybe you could rock my world again when we get back to Karen and Garrett's?"
I'd chosen my words deliberately. I needed him to know I planned on leaving this cottage as we'd arrived, completely and irrevocably in love.
"There's nothing I want more." He pressed a lingering kiss to my neck before showing me to the home's only bathroom so we could clean up.
Afterward, he took me on a proper tour. We started with the room where his mother had spent the last few years of her life in a vegetative state. The space was bright and feminine. He'd turned the place into a fully functioning hospital suite. Everything needed to maintain his mother's life was right here. This couldn't have been cheap, not that I thought Max cared. It could have taken every penny of his life savings, and he still would have done it.
He stopped beside the adjustable bed with its patchwork quilt and lace throw pillows. "Mum used to tell me she wanted a big bay window in here so she could look out over her garden in the morning when she woke up, so I put one in for her. I was fourteen at the time. Dad was long gone by then, so I'd taken a job with a local construction company. I needed the income to support us and to learn the skills I'd need to do the window for her. I had to take down the wall into the living area and move it to make room, but I gave her the view she always wanted. I only wished she'd have been able to enjoy it. She wasn't ever… ever right again after the accident, after father was gone."
I took his hand and pulled it between both of mine. "How did she get hurt?"
"Which time?"
"I was thinking of the accident that led to her being in a vegetative state. Dear god, are there others?"
"Many others." He lowered the bed's side railing and sat. "Mum suffered severe brain damage after the last beating my father had given her, and as a result, she was basically a five-year-old trapped in a woman's body. She’d only been in a full vegetative state for a couple of years. One night during a bad thunderstorm, she got frightened and fought with her caregiver. She knocked the caregiver down and then ran outside—" His voice cracked down the center. "It was no one's fault. Mum just tripped in the garden and hit her head."
I went to him and wrapped my arms around him, overcome with the need to hold him, to comfort him the way he'd comforted me after too many nightmares to count.
"Can I see your room?" I asked, hoping to distract him and leave that bit of conversation behind until he'd gained some control over his emotions again.
He rested his head on my shoulder. "I didn't have a room. I slept on the couch. Or on a pallet on the floor if my father stayed up late to watch TV. Sometimes, I crashed at Garrett's or at Mrs. Higgins' house."
Fuck it all! Everything I learned about his childhood made me hate his father more.
I tried a new approach to distract him. "So, Mrs. Higgins, huh? Tell me about her."
"She and her husband, Bernie, were our closest neighbors for a long time. Their house became my second home. I had a room there, food, and attention when I wanted it. She became, in essence, another mother."
I smiled as I recalled Max's longtime housekeeper, Patricia Higgins; Tricia, as she insisted I call her. I utterly adored the woman. I'd always wondered about hers and Max's relationship. He regarded her with a kindness and affection that seemed more than that of a boss and his housekeeper.
"So that's how you met Tricia."
He directed my attention through the bay window to the field beyond. "Their house used to be right there, but when she decided to move to the States with me, she sold it. The people who bought it wanted to level it and put in a housing addition. I was so upset when I found out that I buried the new owner in ridiculous lawsuit after ridiculous lawsuit. Eventually, he threw his hands up. He sold the place to me for a small profit and cut his losses. I told Tricia what I'd done, and she proceeded to slap me upside the head for being a sentimental fool."
"That sounds like something she'd do!"
"She told me she didn't need the house. She had her memories, and the pictures, and all the things that really mattered. That the old house didn't mean a damned thing. I think I'm finally beginning to understand what she'd been trying to tell me." Finger to my chin, he turned me to face him. "Home is wherever you are."
I brushed my lips against his. "I'd be happy in a box under a bridge so long as you shared my box with me. You know that, right? If you lost every penny to your name, it wouldn't matter to me."
The smile that was for me and me alone graced his lips. "I'd always felt that, but it's good to hear you actually say it."
He kissed me again before tucking me against his side and showing me to the garden.
"Tricia took care of me as a kid, so when I got older and had some extra money, I tried to return the favor. She wouldn't let me just give her the money. She was much too proud for that, but she liked to play raffles. So, I arranged for her to enter ones I'd created. That way, she was always the only entrant. A couple thousand dollars here, a month of free groceries there, and I made sure she had everything she needed."
"That's sweet." Beyond sweet, really. Max had such a capacity for caring; I often wondered if he even knew the depths of his own generosity, especially when he turned that generosity on those closest to him.
"The ruse worked until her husband got laid off. They were on the verge of losing their house, so I offered them the jobs of housekeeper and groundskeeper at my first home."
"Would this be the home Garrett and Karen currently live in?"
"How did you—"
"Karen told me."
"Ahh."
He stopped at the edge of the property, next to some white fencing covered in pink and purple flowers. He fingered a purple petal, pain and longing painting his features.
"Did Tricia know about the abuse?" I asked.
"She'd begun to suspect it toward the end," he answered after a long moment. "At first, when I kept showing up at her place hungry, she said she'd just thought my mum was absentminded and that my father couldn't hold down a job."
He'd said it like it was something to be embarrassed about when it most certainly wasn't. He'd been a kid—a hungry kid—and he'd done what any hungry kid would have done. He'd found food. The need for fuel was a primary tenant of survival. How many people were in jail today and throughout history because their need for food had driven them to commit some criminal act just so they could have something in their bellies?
"She'd only begun to suspect the abuse after I showed up one night with a black eye
. She'd tried to get me to talk about it, but I wouldn't. I took the food she'd made and left. She didn't talk to me about it after that. When I came around looking for food, she just gave it to me. She didn't ask questions."
I looked blankly at him. That didn't sound like the Tricia I knew. Not one bit. She was friendly, sure, but she didn't pull her punches, either. The woman was always telling me I needed to put on some weight. Hell, she'd even chastised Max more than once for showing up late for dinner without calling to let her know.
"I can't picture Tricia thinking you might be being abused and then not doing anything about it. It's so outside her character."
"I didn't say she didn't do anything about her suspicions. She'd just stopped asking me about it." He turned, and we started walking again. "She went to the cops, and when they wouldn't do anything, she went to my mum, but Mum was too far gone by that point. I wasn't sure she even recognized what my father did as abuse. I mean, in her own way, she tried to shield me from the worst of it, but he'd already broken her mind so badly that she couldn't imagine being without him. I always wondered how she held that kind of cognitive dissonance."
Max held a cognitive dissonance of his own, only I wasn't sure he was aware of it. Maybe it was time someone showed him.
"You loved your mom," I began hesitantly, "but you're also mad at her."
He looked sideways at me. "Excuse me?"
"You loved her very much, and from what you've told me, she loved you, too. Your father just got her mind all screwed up—he screwed it up badly—but she still loved him, a man you hated vehemently. A part of you hated her for that, for staying here in this situation that caused you so much pain. And it's okay that you feel that way."
"My father was a monster. How could the woman who cut the crust off my sandwiches and who held me when I had nightmares love a fucking monster? No one loves monsters."
I gave him a moment to rein in his temper. He was a man quick to anger; this wasn't new information. He'd been volatile since I'd known him, and coming here, getting to know his past, I was beginning to understand where his rage came from. I also respected him all the more because he always managed to pull himself back from that ledge.
He had screamed at me once in a fit of anger. I'd been pushing him to open up more than he'd been ready for, but screaming was all it had been, a verbal outburst followed by an immediate, heartfelt apology. He'd never lashed out physically. Never even come close.
I stopped cold. All Max's relationships, the distance he put between himself and another person, the reason he'd never been able to fully commit to anyone. Max didn't think he deserved to be loved. He saw himself as the child of a monster. No, he saw himself as a monster. He didn't believe anyone would ever be able to love him.
Holy fuck, how was I just now realizing this?
"You're not a monster," I said when he turned to look at me. "You are not a monster, and I love you more than anything. I. Love. You."
He touched my cheek and then was quiet for a long, long time. There was only the serenity and quiet of the English countryside as some bird called a melodic, flute-like sound into the distance.
"How?" he asked, his voice soft and fractured, so utterly un-Max.
"How what?"
"How can you love a monster?"
"I don't love a monster," I said simply. "I love you, not a monster."
"I've got his temper. I feel it all the time, seething inside me, clawing at me with sharp, nasty teeth."
"No, my love, you have a temper. You don't have his temper." I touched his cheek as if touching something infinitely valuable and irreplaceable—because, to me, he was both. "Can you be a bit of an asshole at times? Sure. But I could say that about most people. You know what else you are?" I moved so that we stood chest to chest. "You're impossibly kind. After my attack, you nursed me back to health."
"It was my fault you were hurt in the first place."
"No, Max, it wasn't. Théo attacked me."
"Because of me."
Somehow, I resisted the urge to box his ears. "But you never laid a hand on me in anger. Never." I let that sink in a moment before continuing. "I never feel safer than when I'm in your arms. I told you that before, and I meant it."
He tightened those safe arms around me. "I'm so terrified of becoming him. I feel like I could burst at any moment. You have no idea how hard I have to work to keep the monster caged."
That explained so much. His need for control. He wasn't just trying to control his environment; he was trying to control himself. From sex to business, he needed absolute power because, if he had control, he wouldn't have to be reactionary.
"My sweet, sweet, Max. You're nothing like him." Maybe if he kept hearing it, he'd eventually believe it. "If only you could see yourself as I do. Do you remember the day we had that big press conference at Whitecliff after Giselle leaked my past to the media?"
"How could I forget? I thought I would lose you then, too."
Too.
The singular word was a reminder of the perilous tightrope we walked. Our pasts had almost destroyed us once, and I didn't want them to succeed this go around.
Getting back to my point, I said, "I'm thinking specifically about a moment in your office when you asked Todd if his son still liked baseball. What was the kid's name?"
"Dean," Max answered without hesitation.
"You gave Todd and his family your box seats for a baseball game. A monster wouldn't do that."
"I was rewarding a good employee for a good job. Don't make it more than it was."
"While that may be true…" I pushed onto my tiptoes and let my lips graze his ear as I whispered, "… a monster wouldn't do that either, my love."
Max seemed to relax a moment, but only a moment, his muscles going soft and then hard again. He pushed me to arm's length, and strides eating up the ground, he went to stand beside a pile of rocks at the edge of the garden.
"Mum planted this garden," he said when I'd reached him. "She loved it. I think it was because it was something that was solely hers. She grew most of our food in a family plot that used to be to the right of the house. She did that so we wouldn't starve. She did this because she wanted to."
"It's a beautiful garden, and it's obvious you've put a lot of care into maintaining it. That says a lot about you. It's something else a monster wouldn't do."
"I had to work in the other garden with her, so I didn't want to work this one, too. But I also knew how much she cherished this, so I'd go into the woods and find big white or light gray rocks for her to use as edging. Sometimes, I'd even paint them for her. It's one of the few good memories I have from my childhood."
I glanced at the flowerbed nearest me. Rocks of varying sizes skirted the bed. I knelt down and ran a fingertip along a long-faded blue stone with splashes of yellow and green. It might have been a painting of a flower against a blue background, but time and weather had made the identification impossible.
"I'd found about a dozen new rocks for her the day it happened."
My heartbeat kicked up at least ten beats per minute. He was about to tell me his darkest secret.
"I was sweaty and exhausted from dragging all the rocks from the forest. But I was excited, too. Mum was always so happy to get more treasures for her garden. That's what she'd call them: treasures. I walked inside the house just in time to see my father punch her so hard that her head snapped back, and she hit her head on the kitchen counter. The blood, god, there was so much of it, and I just lost it. I knocked him out cold."
"How old were you?" It seemed like a ridiculous thing to ask, but I was too stunned to truly process what he was saying.
"Twelve."
Sweet fuck. He'd witnessed his father nearly kill his mother when he was twelve? I didn't have words. Slowly, as if trying to wake from a bad dream, I knelt beside him and wrapped my arms around his biceps.
"My father was taken into custody, and my mum rushed to the hospital. There was swelling on her brain. The doctors said t
here would be permanent brain damage."
He'd said she had the mind of a child; this was why. I'd assumed the beating that had led to her brain damage had been relatively recent. For close to thirty years, Max had cared for his disabled mother? Christ.
He'd taken care of her. He'd remodeled her home and hired the best people to care for her—except no. He'd been twelve at the time, not a billionaire flush with money.
He'd been a child.
And he'd been on his own.
His monster of a father had abandoned the wife he'd all but killed and his child. Max had forfeited the rest of his childhood to care for a mother who was suddenly more of a child than he'd been.
Christ.
Christ.
I opened my mouth, and the words just came out. "I'm so, so sorry, Max. I'm sorry your father was so awful to you and your mom. I'm sorry you've had to deal with so much of this tragedy alone. But I'm sorriest of all that I can't go back in time and stop it all from happening to you. I swear, if I ever meet your fucking father, I'll kill him for what he did to you."
"You're too late for that, Bree." He turned suddenly cold blue eyes on me. "I already killed the son of a bitch."
Chapter 10
Bree
"Concentrate, Bree! Focus on what you need to do and take me down."
Slapping both palms on the mat, I rolled from the supine position. Somehow, I made it onto my hands and knees and glared at Max's head of security, willing him to disintegrate. It was official. I absolutely hated Scott Washington. He was kicking my ass upside down and sideways.
I sucked in a calming breath. Okay, maybe hate was too strong of a word. I was out of shape, out of practice, and yes, as he said, I needed to concentrate. The problem was I couldn't. At least on this. My mind was still in the flower garden beside the beautiful cottage and its ugly memories.
Max had murdered his father. He'd killed the bastard, and he'd covered it up. He'd been a child, who'd enlisted the help of another child to carry out and to cover up a murder. Holy god! I couldn't get my head around it, hence the sparring session.