Never Let Me Go

by McAvoy, J. J. ;

  “And your excuse for trying to run away? You could have come in, it’s not like you haven’t already been inside.” His voice was soft, and I wish I knew what was going through his head as he stood there looking like every straight woman’s wet dream.

  “I wasn’t running away.”

  “So, you just totally missed the hall table?” His eyebrow went up, and he was just having a grand ol’ time at my expense.

  I exhaled deeply and crossed my arms under my breasts. I only noticed because his gaze shifted for a second.

  “Do I need a lawyer tonight, Mr. Rhys-Gallagher?”

  He didn’t say anything more and moved to the side, obviously letting me walk into the master bedroom on my own. I did so with my head high, the pain still rushing through my toe.

  “Are you—”

  “Prefect,” I replied when I grabbed my suitcase by the window and side table.

  “You’re going to stay with Alaric?”

  I turned back to him, unsure of what to say when he was staring at me like that. Lust rolled off him, his eyes were only on me, despite the fact that he put distance between our bodies.

  “Where were you expecting me to stay?”

  “Wherever you wanted.”

  He wasn’t playing fair. I could feel it, the mood that was being set, the warmth that was building up in me at the thought of what would happen if I chose to stay in this room.

  Stay strong, Lulu. Stay strong. No matter how sexy he was, or how he stared…or how good he was in bed.

  Crap.

  “Dorian… I… You…” I didn’t have the words. But I still needed him to hear me. “It’s been a very overwhelming last couple of hours. My world has been flipped on its head because of you. None of this was your fault, and yet you’ve taken complete responsibility for everything. You don’t seem real to me, none of this seems real to me, and I’m scared I’m going to jinx it. I really enjoyed seeing you with Alaric today, and I want that to continue just like you said earlier. I don’t want to make any of this messier. So, you really can’t tempt me. You already know I’m attracted to you. Stop staring at me like that… It’s not fair.”

  “Not fair?” He repeated to himself, then sighed. Pushing himself off the wall, he came closer to me and stood across from me. “I’ll tell you what’s not fair, finding out the woman I’ve wanted to meet again for a year is not only the ex-girlfriend of my brother, but the mother of his child. It’s not fair that I was interested before I knew who she was to him. It’s not fair that I had to chase you down, meanwhile he left, something I can’t understand. Everything I ever wanted he had, and he walked away from it, and now he’s gone, and you’re here, Alaric is here. Everything I want is back in front of my face, but now there’s this guilt I feel. I’m incredibly happy you are here, both of you, and yet, I feel as if I’m too happy, if I enjoy this too much, if I touch you again, I’m insulting my brother. I didn’t do anything, but I’m being tortured. Does she want me? Or does she want my brother? Should I get to know her better or keep my distance so I don’t complicate things with Alaric? That is what is unfair.”

  The back of my throat ached, and I wanted to kick myself for even thinking I knew what was or was not fair. His words, the look in his blue eyes, the cool scent coming off him, all of it was making it harder for me to think straight. I just wanted to stay beside him.

  “We met once, a year ago,” I whispered, the distance between us so small I had to fight back the urge to touch him. “And then just yesterday. Granted, we slept together both times, but how can you know for sure you wanted me before you knew my connection to your family? I doubt you spent the whole year thinking about me.”

  “You have no idea what you did, do you?” he asked, and he lifted his hand like he was going to touch me, but paused.

  “Other than rock your world?” I joked, trying to lessen the sexual tension that was building.

  “Exactly.” He had to go and say.

  Damn him!

  “Dorian—”

  “My family has had addictive personality disorder, I have an addictive personality disorder, which is why I don’t drink, gamble, party, or entertain all the women who throw themselves at me. I don’t even shop for myself, because if I enjoy it, if it makes me feel better, I’m not going to be able to walk away. What do you think happened when, at the lowest point in my life, you appeared and made me feel better?” He asked, and my mouth dropped open in disbelief.

  “Are you saying you became addicted to me?”

  “If I wasn’t before, I sure as hell am after yesterday.” He looked confused and frowned. “I’m not saying this to force you or ask anything of you. I mean, I’m not expecting you to do anything more than what you’ve already done. Just don’t tell me to stop looking at you, it’s the only relief I get. It’s not logical, we barely know each other but—”

  I kissed him, basically jumping on him. His mouth opened for me as mine did for him, and his tongue rolled over mine. He lifted me up, and I wrapped my legs around him as he walked us over to the bed. The moment I was on my back and felt him on top of me, I pushed against him as hard as I could, forcing us apart. He groaned in frustration, and I giggled, turning over, trying to reach into the dresser table, but he grabbed my thighs and yanked me down toward his hips.

  “Dorian!” I moaned when he bent over, ripping my dress just so he could take my nipple into his hot mouth.

  “Get…condom…” I tried to remind him as he pulled off my underwear and tossed it to the side before moving back to kiss across my chest. And when he didn’t move to get one, I grabbed onto his hair and pulled his head.

  “I was enjoying that.” He licked, his hands squeezing onto my breast. Moaning, I kissed him, and when it deepened, I broke away. “Lulu—”

  “I need you to fuck me,” I told him, releasing my grip on his hair and sitting up. I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Breast foreplay we can do later, but right now I need you to fuck me so hard I see heaven.”

  He exhaled through his nose before saying, “You won’t be able to walk later.”

  “Perfect,” I replied. He reached into the drawer, pulling out one of the condoms, and within a blink of an eye, he had it out and on his thick, throbbing, white cock. “Well, aren’t you—uhmm.”

  Before I could get another word, he shoved me back against the sheets, lifting my leg onto his shoulder.

  “Let’s begin, shall we,” he said. My mouth dropped open, and my back rose up off the bed when he thrusted his cock deep inside me.

  He pulled back, only to ram himself back, and only to do it again. He watched me as my whole body jerked forward, enjoying this just as much as I was.

  Grinning, and trying but failing to contain my excitement, I yelled, “Faster!”

  DORIAN

  So…ah…tight…

  “Yes! Oh… Yes! Dorian!” She cried out into my ear as I slammed myself into her. She held onto me for dear life. Her breasts bounced against my chest.

  “Ah…” I hissed at the pleasure and the pain when her nails clawed into my back. She trembled in my arms for only God knew how many times tonight. I wasn’t sure when we’d died and gone to heaven, but we were too busy to even comment. My heart felt as though it was going to explode.

  Was I addicted to her?

  Yes. Because so far only she had been the one to make me abandon my reason, decency, anything for the sake of being inside her. All fucking day, I couldn’t concentrate with her smiling and laughing and brushing up against me in the car, on the street. I had to force those thoughts down. I was the one who said I didn’t want to complicate things, but the moment I saw her in the hall I wanted—no, needed to be inside her.

  Sex with her was different than any other woman I’d been with. With her, I felt like I could be the unfiltered. I could be wild for once.

  “Get on your knees,” I told her as I lifted her off me.

  She did so, turning around to put her ass up. “Like this?”

  “Perfe
ct,” I replied before easing myself inside her round ass. She gripped onto the sheets, and with a hand on her breast and the other on her waist, I enjoyed the freedom, the pleasure and peace.

  7

  Let’s Fall in Love

  LUELLA

  “We couldn’t even make it twenty-four hours,” I said, stuffing a spoonful of vanilla ice cream into my mouth as I sat on the bed beside him, wearing one of the many baby-doll lingerie pieces I’d brought for this week.

  “In our defense, we knew we wouldn’t,” he replied, taking an apple out of the spread of crackers, cold cuts, fruit, and ice cream now in between us on the new set of sheets. He rested against the grey headboard of the bed and took a bite, wearing only his black boxer briefs.

  “Even if we knew, we still should have put up more of a fight, instead of just giving in and having—”

  “Wild, amazing, Kama-Sutra inspired sex?” He asked with a grin on his face, and it was contagious.

  “Mr. Rhys-Gallagher, show some decorum please, you are in the presence of a lady,” I said, lifting my head, and snuck in another bite of ice cream.

  He bowed forward a little just to say, in a British accent, “Forgive me, m’lady, does thou prefer the term Immoral Relations?”

  I just stared at him, the smile on my face wide because I really couldn’t believe this was him. “You know, you’re completely different to the guy I see in the papers and the news.”

  “You’ve seen me in the news?” he asked, before taking another bite of his apple.

  “Better question would be who in New York hasn’t heard of Dorian Rhys-Gallagher, CEO of Rhys-Gallagher National, the Demon Butcher of Wall Street,” I said in a deep voice and leaned in as if I were telling the story of Freddy Krueger. He just watched, amused, his eyebrow raised. “You’re kinda a big deal. You were even on Time—”

  “So, you’ve kept tabs on me?” He asked, reaching over and taking my spoon, feeding himself ice cream before giving the spoon back.

  I rolled my eyes at his question. “Aren’t you hearing me? You’re kind of hard not to keep tabs on.”

  “So, how does this Demon Butcher look to the rest of the world?” He asked, wiping the ice cream from the corner of his mouth, but he kinda made it worse so…because we were just breaking all the rules, I leaned over and licked it. He was stunned for about a second, and then leaned back with a smirk. “Thanks.”

  “I’m not sure how you looked to the rest of the world, but to me you looked…dead inside,” I said. He paused mid-bite, for only a second, to give me a look I didn’t understand. He snickered before eating again.

  “What?” I crossed my legs and turned to face him. “What’s with the face?”

  “I just…” He paused again.

  “What?”

  “I’ve always wondered where the Demon in Demon Butcher came from. It never made sense, now it does,” he snickered and slid down, making himself comfortable on the pillows.

  “That’s seriously what you were considered?” He couldn’t be serious, and yet he really was curious.

  “Well, it’s not like I could ask now, could I?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, that’s funny, I can see you now, wearing your fancy suits in your big corner office, glaring at everyone, and they’re probably praying to make it out intact, and you’re just in your own world, wondering about your nickname.”

  “Glad you find it amusing, you’ll soon see how it feels to deal with people who bullshit you every single day, just so they can get something from you,” he said, putting the core of the apple back on the tray.

  “I’ll soon see?”

  “You’re rich, Lulu,” he said, and it took me much longer than it should have to remember what he was talking about.

  “Holy shit, I’m rich,” I whispered, and he laughed at me.

  “Welcome to the club,” he said, lifting the water bottle to me. “I hope you enjoy caviar because that’s what you’ll be offered the moment you enter any social gathering in this bloody city.”

  “I actually don’t mind caviar,” I said.

  He cringed and shook his head. “Whoever labeled eggs from the ovaries of a female fish an international delicacy should be thrown in the ocean.”

  “Tell us how you really feel, Mr. Rhys-Gallagher!” This was hilarious. He was hilarious and just so relaxed. I never wanted to stop talking about this stuff… This stuff was easy. “So, just to recap, you aren’t the scary, money-hungry, demon butcher, you’re actually a sweet, caring, funny guy who hates caviar?”

  We shared a gaze, and he was calmer. Actually, not as animated would be the better word choice. “I’m both, Lulu. I’m a lot of things to a lot of different people. Just like you are, and just like everyone else is. Everyone is complicated.”

  There was a soft silence between us, and I didn’t like it.

  Putting the ice cream down on the tray before moving it over to the night stand, I turned to him, and he seemed to know what I was going to ask, which was funny because I didn’t even know how to ask what it was I wanted to say.

  “What happens now?” he asked me. “Now that we’ve slept together again, despite all of the reasons we shouldn’t, and knowing that we barely know each other, what happens now? How do we go forward from here?”

  “Please don’t tell me it’s up to me,” I said, having a feeling that I knew where he was going. The smallest smirk appeared on this lip. “Dorian, you can’t just lay this all at my feet. This involves—”

  “No matter what you say, or do, whether we sleep together or not, no matter your past, I’ll always be here for you,” he said, laying back onto the bed. I was able to look down at him, but he closed his eyes as he spoke. “We’re family, we were family the day Alaric was born, so don’t ever worry about me walking away from him. I won’t. As for you and me? I’d prefer to keep sleeping with you.”

  “Would you now?” I asked, tracing my finger over his nose, down to his lips.

  “I would.” He kissed my finger. “But I also don’t want you to think you don’t have a choice. Which is why I was going to tell you it is up to you to decide. After all, the stronger party always negotiates the terms.”

  “I’m not the stronger party between us.”

  “You haven’t noticed?” His eyes opened as I laid down and cuddled up beside him. He turned onto his side, his hands gently caressing my thigh. “What exactly can I give you that you don’t already have? Money? You have that—”

  “Because of you—”

  “Because of Donovan. Not me. I was just the messenger,” he corrected.

  I tried to think of something else he could give me, and one word came to mind. But I didn’t have the guts to say it. Instead, I asked, “Well Mr. Rhys-Gallagher, oh great businessman, what should I, the stronger party, demand?”

  “Whatever you were going to ask just now and changed your mind from?” he replied.

  “How did you know I was thinking of something?”

  “What great businessman can’t read a face? Especially one as beautiful as yours.” He snickered, doing the same thing I’d done and traced his finger down my nose to my lips. “We already know each other’s secrets. We’ve already lost the fight against our lust, felt guilty about it, and did it all over again. So, let’s abandon what we think we should and simply do what we want to do. Who can stop us but us?”

  I was starting to see how, at just thirty-three, he was considered to be a Titan in the business world. He said this was my choice, but I felt like he was dropping breadcrumbs in front of a starving woman, leading them directly to where he wanted.

  “What do you want, Lulu? Better yet, what can I give to balance against what you give me? Don’t even think about it, or feel guilty about it, just say it.”

  “Love,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. It all poured out of me like a dam had broken, and once I started speaking, I couldn’t stop. “Fall in love with me. Be obsessed with me. Respect me and care about me. Miss me like cra
zy when I’m not around. But always be around. Never leave me feeling cheap or dirty. Try not to make me cry. Have no one else but me. Be patient with me when I mess up. Take my loneliness away. Let me take yours away. Show me the best and worst of yourself. Let me know it’s safe to fall in love with you.”

  My heart ached, and it beat so fast in my chest, my ears started to ring. I couldn’t even look him in the eye, and I could feel my cheeks getting warmer. I couldn’t believe I’d said all of that.

  “Only,” he spoke, lifting my chin up so I had to look. “If you see me as me. Not my brother, or anyone else. Can you see me as just Dorian?”

  “I can, and I will.”

  He smiled, it was a real genuine smile, and it wasn’t good for my already weak heart. “Then you have a deal, Ms. Thorne. Let’s fall in love.”

  DORIAN

  She slept in my arms, and I could feel myself drifting off, too. The only thing keeping me up was a nonsensical amount of joy and that small twinge of guilt in the back of my mind. I was going to do it. I was going to take my brother’s girl, his son, everything he threw away, because I wanted this joy to stay. I deserved that at the very least. So why the guilt? I thought it was just because I lusted after her so badly. But it wasn’t as simple as that.

  Since Donovan had passed, I’d wished over and over again I’d found him earlier, that I could have gotten to him before he got so sick. I wished he was still alive numerous times. But now that I had her in my arms, I couldn’t wish for the same thing, at least not as genuinely as I did before. If he was alive, I could never be with her like this. If I’d gotten to him earlier and helped him, he’d be here, and most likely with her. My guilt came from the horrible fact that I was no longer upset that he was gone. I loved my brother, and I missed him, but apparently not enough to wish he was still here.

  She muttered, curling further against me.

  I didn’t want to give this up because I knew she and Alaric were my last and only chance of escaping the numbing loneliness. I wondered why she’d jumped me when I told her I was addicted to her. However, after her demands, I realized it was because she had numbing loneliness inside her too. Alaric had been her saving grace, but she wanted more, she wanted to be loved for who she was, and I couldn’t blame her.