Spiral of Bliss: The Complete Boxed Set

by Nina Lane

  I inhaled sharply, spreading my legs around his hips. He shoved himself between my thighs, already hard through his jeans. With a sweep of his arm, he sent the desk clutter behind me crashing to the floor, pens and paper scattering.

  I pushed my hands underneath his blood-spattered T-shirt, sliding my palms over his damp skin, the rigidity of his muscles. He yanked my skirt up my thighs, his mouth close to my ear.

  “Take these fucking things off,” he hissed.

  My heart pulsed. I pushed him away so that I could slither out of my pantyhose and drop them to the floor. Dean tangled his fingers into my underwear, brushing against my sex. I fumbled for the button-fly of his jeans, but my hands were shaking too much. He stepped back and kicked off his shoes, then unbuttoned his fly and shoved his jeans and boxers off. His erection sprang up between us, thick and heavy. My throat went dry.

  “Oh, God, Dean.”

  I reached for him. He pressed his palm to my breastbone and pushed me back onto the desk. He took hold of my blouse and ripped it right down the middle. A fever darkened his eyes. I undid my bra, aching for him to touch my breasts. Panting, I twisted, rubbing my spread sex against the head of his cock as he bent to take my nipple between his teeth.

  An intense shudder vibrated to my toes. He slid his hand down my belly, beneath my underwear. His forefinger ran over my folds, spurring my excitement higher. I tightened my legs around his hips.

  I need to know you’re mine.

  His rough voice echoed in my lust-fogged mind. Didn’t he know that already? How else could I show him?

  He pulled my underwear over my legs. A gust of air brushed against my sex. Dean pushed his hands under my thighs, opening me to him fully. For an instant, his hot eyes met mine before he plunged his cock into me.

  I was ready. He’d warned me, asked me, prepared me. But the intensity of his thrust, the sheer power of it, rocked me to the core. My emotions exploded. I cried out in sudden shock, clutching his rigid arms. Sparks spread through my nerves as my inner flesh tightened around his pulsing shaft.

  He gripped my thighs, keeping me open, as he thrust again and again, a relentless fucking that shook the desk and made my body bounce. I arched upward, drenched in the fog of desire, the dawning knowledge that I was binding myself inextricably to this man, and that I did not want to be free.

  Leashed urgency pulsed through his muscles. His T-shirt dampened with sweat, smearing the remnants of his and his brother’s blood. Tears spilled from the corners of my eyes. My whole body ached and throbbed.

  “Dean!” I gasped, bucking upward to match his deep thrusts.

  “Come on, my beauty. Fuck me.” He stilled suddenly, pressing my thighs open, watching me with a seething intensity that made my heart tremble. His hair fell across his forehead. A flush burned along the crest of his cheekbones.

  His cock was halfway inside me. With a moan, I pushed forward, impaling myself on him. I squirmed, twisting to try and repeat his heavy plunges. It wasn’t the same, I needed more, needed his power… and then he thrust forward again and filled me.

  I shrieked, convulsing around him with a force that shocked me to my bones. It went on and on, an endless stream of sensation blasting light through me. And still he fucked me, urging every shudder out of me before pulling out and gripping his shaft.

  Gasping, I pushed up onto my elbows and watched as he stroked his slick cock, his movements quick and urgent. His body tensed. A groan rumbled from his chest the instant before he came, ropes of semen pooling onto my belly and mons. The smell of sex filled my head.

  I shivered and reached down to rub my still-quivering clit. Dean levered himself over me, sealing our damp bodies together, his mouth descending on mine for a bruising kiss.

  “Say it again,” he ordered, his voice hoarse.

  I brushed his hair away from his forehead, stroked my hand down the side of his face.

  “I’m yours,” I said, then looked into his gold-flecked eyes. “Say it back.”

  “I’m yours.” He leaned his forehead against mine and drew in a breath. “Jesus, Liv. What are you doing to me?”

  Falling for you. Hard.

  Oh, no. What was at the end of that descent?

  Joanna West insisted that Archer go to the hospital, then reported that he had a black eye, a split lip, numerous contusions, and a broken nose. Dean didn’t seem bothered by his own minor injuries. Certainly Archer had taken the brunt of the fight.

  Not a fight. More like a beating.

  I shuddered. I knew what had happened. Archer had never been able to surpass his older brother in any other way, but he’d quickly realized that he could get to Dean through me.

  And he’d been right.

  “What were you thinking?” Joanna West’s face was a mask of anger. “On Thanksgiving, Dean, really? Look at him!”

  She waved a hand to where Archer slouched in a chair, one eye swollen half-shut, a few white gauze bandages taped to his face, dried blood crusted under his nose, bruises covering his jaw.

  “What will people say?” Joanna snapped, her slender body shaking with fury. “Everyone saw what you did, Dean, everyone! They’re all talking about how you beat up your own brother!”

  “I should press charges,” Archer said. His voice sounded foggy and drugged.

  “Yeah, do that,” Dean challenged, his fists clenching at his sides. “See if you get any of your money then.”

  Archer’s mouth thinned. “You fucker.”

  “You fuck-up.”

  “Stop it!” Joanna pressed her fingers to her temples. “You’re not pressing charges, for God’s sake, Archer.” She pivoted to face Dean. “What’s the matter with you? Since when do you act like a barbarian because of—”

  She stopped short. And looked at me.

  My stomach roiled. Dean stepped in front of me, as if to protect me from his mother’s needle-sharp, accusing glare.

  “Enough,” he said. “Liv and I are leaving.”

  “You fix this, Dean,” Joanna ordered. “I don’t care what you do, but you figure out how to fix it.”

  “It’s not fixable, Mom,” Dean said, his voice cold. “You need to stop thinking it is.”

  “Wow,” Archer muttered. “Is the only non-bastard son admitting defeat?”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right.

  “Shut up, Archer,” Paige muttered, looking away from both her brothers.

  Joanna stalked from the room, her back as rigid as metal.

  I put my hand on Dean’s arm. His muscles were stiff with fury.

  “I need to leave,” I whispered, so low I didn’t think he’d hear me.

  He turned, his eyes pitch-black. “What?”

  “I don’t want to cause… trouble.” The ache in my head pressed harder.

  I was a good girl. I caused trouble for no one. I did what I was told to do. I followed the rules. Even when I was torn inside out, I patched myself back together in secret, in seclusion. No one would know anything bad had happened. No one would have reason to doubt me.

  “You’re not causing trouble, Liv.” Dean forced his voice to steady. “It’s not you. Not at all. It’s them.”

  “But they… they’re your family.” I couldn’t think of another way to say it. Couldn’t think past the undeniable fact that he had two parents, a sister, and a brother. Whatever else there was… it didn’t negate that fact.

  I didn’t know where my mother was.

  Dean took my arm and led me upstairs to get our suitcases. I managed to convey my apologies to Mrs. West before Dean got us both out of there and drove to a hotel near the airport.

  He sank onto the bed, his shoulders slumping. “So fucking sorry. Never should have brought you here.”

  “Was it…?”

  “We were…” His v
oice was dull, exhausted. “When we were kids, Archer and I were pretty close. I’m four years older than he is. We fought a lot, but we were brothers, you know. Taught him how to play football.”

  A sick foreboding rose in me. I couldn’t speak.

  “The affair my mother had…” Dean dragged his hands through his hair and expelled a heavy breath. “She got pregnant with Archer. I was nine when I heard her talking to her sister about it. When my mother realized I’d overheard, she told me it was a secret, never to tell, that everyone had to think Archer was my father’s biological son. She and my father couldn’t risk a divorce or the rest of her family finding out. They were helping with some outstanding debts that could have damaged my father’s career.”

  “How?”

  “The governor of California had just nominated him as a potential judge in the Court of Appeals,” Dean said. “Big deal for him. Step on the road to Supreme Court. He had to go through a whole review process, investigation, public hearing. He was already worried about the possibility of his financial troubles getting out. If people discovered the truth about Archer, it would have ruined everything, especially for the retention election.”

  “So you kept the secret?”

  “For four years,” Dean said. “Then Archer and I got into a fight one day over a video game. I was thirteen. At some point during the fight, I got so mad I yelled at Archer that he wasn't our father's real son. I'll never forget the look on my brother's face. He's hated me ever since.”

  He fell silent, staring at the opposite wall.

  “What… what did your parents do?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Everyone had to fall into line. They had to pretend they had a perfect marriage. We had to pretend we were a perfect family.”

  I saw it then, clear as glass. For years, Dean had blamed himself for divulging the secret that had cracked his family apart from the inside and created the cold silence. Spurred by guilt, he’d thrown his energy into being a success, an overachiever, the best at everything… all to make up for his mistake and protect the West family image of perfection.

  And Archer West had done the exact opposite.

  “Told you it was fucked-up,” Dean muttered.

  I shook my head, unable to speak. I knew it was part of his blood now, the urge to be the perfect son.

  Just as I’d always tried so hard to be good.

  An ache was building inside me like steam, rolling and pitching. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Couldn’t stand the thought of you knowing.”

  A lump clogged my throat. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I never should have told him.”

  “Dean, you were a boy.”

  He shrugged. “My mother… well, she never forgave me either. She and Paige have always stuck together, and they all blamed me, especially when Archer rebelled. Obviously he’s never stopped. And… then my grandfather got sick and I had to deal with him. But I’m done with it now. All of it.”

  “I can’t let you choose me over your family, Dean.”

  “No, you can’t. You can’t not let me either.”

  I swallowed hard. “You can’t make that choice if I walk away.”

  Tension rolled through him. “You’re not walking away.”

  Despite my fear, I could not prevent the surge of warmth at his possessive tone.

  “You can’t stop me,” I whispered.

  He pushed off the bed and went to his suitcase. He rummaged for something and turned, extending his hand to reveal the key to his apartment.

  “I’m going to make a copy of this,” he said. “And I want you to take it. But don’t use it until winter break.”

  “Winter break?”

  He nodded, his eyes determined. “For two weeks of winter break, I want you to live with me. Twenty-four hours a day. You and me. No classes. No work. Nothing and no one else.”

  I pressed a palm to my chest. Electricity crackled in the air. My heart suddenly felt brittle.

  “I… I thought you were going on a research trip over winter break.”

  “I leave on January ninth and get back before the semester starts.” He stepped closer to me. “I want you for two weeks, Liv. Completely. I haven’t even begun to show you everything we’re going to do together. At the end of those two weeks, you’ll know exactly where you belong. And you won’t want to walk away.”

  I stared at him, feeling as if I were poised on the brink of something both exhilarating and terrifying. Something I had never had before. Never expected to have.

  “Liv, I told you once that I’ve never been able to start a new life,” he said. “But I want to now. And I want to start it with you.”

  I felt something loosen inside me, something that had been knotted for longer than I cared to remember. The sick guilt and shame I’d harbored since Fieldbrook seemed to dissolve, as if it were being overwhelmed by the urgency in Dean’s voice, the heat we generated, the growing certainty of our belonging together.

  Belonging. For the first time in my life, I had the chance to know what that word meant.

  And so did Dean.

  My heart thumped. A wild tenderness filled me as I looked at him standing there in his wrinkled shirt and torn jeans, his face still scratched, his hair spilling across his forehead.

  I couldn’t bear to let him out of my life. And I knew I could be everything for him that he was for me. I could heal his wounds, be his anchor, treasure him. Together we could create our own world, one of warmth and affection, protected from the slings and arrows of the world.

  For despite our differences, our struggles, our childhoods at opposite ends of the spectrum… Dean and I were the same.

  We had both been weighted by destructive secrets at too young an age. We’d both been forced into actions we hadn’t wanted, and then we’d blamed ourselves when things went horribly wrong. At thirteen, our lives had changed drastically, starting us on a twisting path toward freedom and redemption.

  Dean had tried to appease his guilt by caring for his sick grandfather. I’d escaped back to Twelve Oaks. We had both worked so hard to uphold an ideal image of who we thought we should be. But even as we struggled to extricate ourselves from our pasts, we’d become inevitably tangled up in them.

  Until now.

  Our gazes locked and held. We understood each other down to our very bones. We were the only people who ever would.

  “Say yes,” he said.

  I said yes. There was no other response.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dean

  January 26

  I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH ABOUT MY brother as a boy. That is, I’m not sure if my memories are real or fabricated. I know we used to toss a football around in the backyard. I know he struggled in school. I know he liked Legos and trains.

  That’s all I know for sure. The rest is hazy, cut off by the twenty-five-year-old incident that has always been like a living thing, venomous and cold. I think my brother played soccer. I think he had a rock collection. I think he liked bugs. I think his favorite sandwich was something strange, like cheese and jelly or peanut butter and bologna. I can’t remember.

  I wait for him in front of the garage. It’s a clear day, cool, like a thousand other California days. The sound of his motorcycle vibrates through the air as he turns onto our street.

  Tension stiffens my spine. His bike roars into the driveway. He stops and pulls off his helmet. Looks at me. Even from a distance, I sense his wariness.

  Good.

  I walk toward him. He’s unshaven, his hair too long, wearing a ratty jacket and torn jeans. He’s thinner too, with dark circles under his eyes. A slight bump on the bridge of his nose.

  “My wife is here.” I stop in front of him. “You say one rude thing to her… you even look at her
wrong, and I’ll take you down.”

  His expression hardens. “Hold a grudge much, bro?”

  “Understand?”

  Archer mutters something under his breath. He shoves off his bike. “Good to see you too.”

  “I told Mom you were on your way.” I walk toward the house. He follows. “Where are you staying?”

  “With a friend in Campbell.”

  “Leave Mom the contact info. She’s been complaining she can’t reach you.”

  We go into the kitchen. Archer yanks open the refrigerator and peers at the contents.

  “Where’s your wife?” he asks.

  Avoiding you. “Went to run a couple errands.”

  “What’s her name again?”

  My jaw tightens. “Olivia.”

  “Yeah. Shakespearean, right? When did you marry her?”

  “Three years ago.”

  He pulls a soda out and twists off the top. “Going well?”

  “Fine. Heard you told Mom you were getting married.”

  “Yeah, well.” He shrugs, tilting his head back to gulp the soda. He swipes his mouth with his sleeve. “Didn’t work out. Better now than getting a divorce, huh?”

  He shoots me a smile that’s not a smile.

  “Where’s Paige?” he asks, leaning against the counter.

  “Out with Mom.”

  “How long’re you staying?”

  “Week or so. Until Dad is out of the hospital.”

  Archer doesn’t bother asking how he’s doing. I wait for him to ask for money. I hate that our grandfather left me the custodian of Archer’s inheritance, but it’s a responsibility I can’t escape. Archer has five years left to fulfill our grandfather’s conditions. If he doesn’t, the money all goes to charity.