“I can’t make her do a damn thing.”
Lou crooked a grin at him. “Nah, not if she really doesn’t want to. But you see, another thing you haven’t figured out, Lacey is a ball-busting bitch and she’s really good at pushing people around. Sometimes she likes it when she’s the one being pushed around…if you’re playing the game.” He paused and then asked, “So you up to playing Lacey’s games or not?”
Chapter Seven
Lacey’s games…
Brogan stood outside, looking up at the sky.
Lacey was still in the shower. Despite what he’d said about playing more games, Lou had instead decided to vacate the premises.
Brogan eyed the key in his hand. It was the spare key to his penthouse. He was going to give it to Lacey.
Assuming she’d listen to him.
Assuming she’d take him back.
Assuming he could get her to talk to him.
Assuming he could get his brain off his dick to have the conversation they needed to have.
Fuck, he was such a moron.
He didn’t deserve her and he knew it. He’d ignored what she needed, what she’d tried to tell him for nearly a year, all because he saw that beautiful, laughing exterior and he remembered…
Sierra.
Closing his eyes, he remembered the day he walked into their home and found her.
Her wrists slit, the note she’d written, the shame in each word.
Then came all the ugly accusations, the bitterness.
Her father still hounded him and rarely did a few months go by when one of her sisters didn’t try to call him. No doubt to tell him how fucked up he was, and how much blame he had to bear.
All because he’d pushed her to a place where she wasn’t comfortable.
She hadn’t been able to handle it and he hadn’t realized it until it was too late.
It didn’t matter that she’d been mentally unstable to begin with, and it hadn’t mattered that her father had basically asked her to whore herself out to spy on the competition. Brogan had seen a beautiful woman and he’d wanted her. He’d wanted her on his terms and it hadn’t been right for her and it had pushed her too far.
When Lacey came out the shower, the house was too quiet.
Her stomach dropped and she thought for a minute that Brogan had just left her.
But if he had, Lou would have been there.
As she paced the house, wondering at the silence, she passed by the window to the heavily landscaped, gardened backyards and she saw him, head bowed, standing there.
Without bothering to pull on anything but the terrycloth robe Lou kept on hand for the models who used the bathroom, she headed outside, her heart heavy in her chest.
And the weight only got worse when he turned and looked at her. His face was haggard and his eyes were dull, almost lifeless. As she moved to join him, he looked back out over the yard without saying a word.
Long, tense moments passed.
When he spoke, he said the last thing she would have expected to hear him say. “If I could give you anything at all, what would you want?”
Lacey closed her eyes. “I don’t want things from you, Brogan.” I want you to want me. To need me.
“I’m not talking about stuff, Lacey. I’m talking about…anything.”
She frowned and then looked over at him. The flutter in her chest might be hope. But it had been a long time since she’d felt hope. She didn’t want to believe in it. “I only ever wanted you. I want you to give me yourself, to share yourself, baby. To be with me, all the way.”
“All the way.” He nodded and then reached into his pocket. When he handed her his wallet, she took it, stared at it blankly. “Look behind my license.”
Seeing a woman’s picture was the last thing she expected.
Seeing her in a wedding dress, with her arms wrapped around Brogan, was a double-fisted sucker punch. “You…” She swallowed the pain in her chest. “You were married.”
“For two years. She’s been gone for almost ten years now.”
She pushed the picture back into its spot. “You all married young.”
“Young enough. I was twenty-five. I knew what I wanted. What mattered. She was twenty-seven. Older than me, but she didn’t know what she wanted.” He laughed, but the sound was ugly and raw, like broken, rusty razor blades ripping out of his flesh. “We married right as I was building the company—her dad was the competition. My dad used to be partners with him and when we accidentally met at a charity function, she laughed it off. Let bygones be bygones…all that shit. She wrapped me and my dick around her finger. Then I wrapped her up.”
Lacey moved toward him.
His head whipped up and the fire burning in his eyes pinned her in place. “Don’t.” He shook his head and said again, his voice gruff, “Don’t, Lace. Not right now. She used me, the whole damn time we were dating, but then…things got weird. I think it got too real for her and I fucked with her head.”
Rubbing her hand over the back of her mouth, Lacey stared at him. “Just how did you do that?”
“Because while you play games with rough sex, I push it as far as I can go,” he said, his voice taut. “I took her as far as she could go. I never hurt her, and she loved everything we did…at the time. But when she was alone, it was too much. She’d go to her dad and he’d pat her on the head about what a good daughter she was, and he appreciated how she sacrificed for me. Then she’d come back to me and I’d tie her up and make her beg and she’d love it…”
“It sounds to me like he’s the one who fucked with her head,” Lacey said when his voice trailed off. “And she didn’t have the courage to tell him to back off. Maybe she was falling for you and she just didn’t know how to handle it.”
A humorless smile curved his lips.
“Yeah, well, nobody will ever know.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” Lacey demanded.
He closed his eyes.
Something sick stirred inside her heart and it only spread when he said, “There’s a note behind the picture, Lace.”
She took it out carefully, eying the worn creases. How many times had Brogan read this?
“There was another guy she’d been seeing when she accidentally made my acquaintance. Apparently it was the man her father had picked out for her to marry. They were best friends as kids, good friends even while we were together,” Brogan said softly. “And they were still making plans to get together once I was out of the picture, or so her father likes to tell me. But then somehow, they found out about my…deviant nature. He confronted her about it, then told her he couldn’t stand to touch a woman who squealed like a whore because a guy fucked her ass. I found out later that he’d paid one of my own security men to put security cams in my house. The son of a bitch was spying on us, gave the video feed to her dad, her sisters. Everybody. She killed herself a week later.”
Lacey swallowed as she opened the note and started to read.
Brogan
It’s hard to write this, harder still knowing that you’ll get through this somehow, and I’m just too weak.
I never set out with the intention to hurt you. My father is a hard man to tell no. He’s a hard man, period. Not unlike you in some ways.
I want you to know that I never did tell him the information that he asked for. Many times I started to, but then something would make me stop. But I can’t live with myself anymore and I can’t look at myself knowing that everybody who cares about me knows what I’ve done over the past few years.
I’ve lived a lie.
I’ve embarrassed myself.
Forgive me.
Love, Sierra
An ache in her throat, she folded it back up and slid it into its spot before moving back to him. He didn’t take the wallet so she tucked it into his pocket. “This is why you don’t want to share yourself with me,” she said quietly.
“This is why I don’t want to share myself with anybody,” he corrected. “But I find that chang
ing, around you. Even if Sierra did fuck me over—”
Lacey frowned. “I don’t think she did.”
Reaching up, she smoothed her hand down his shirt and then wrapped her arms around his neck. “Brogan, I read the note of a woman asking you to forgive her. She was a woman ashamed of the lies she told you. Ashamed that everybody would know that she went into that marriage as a lie.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but then he shook his head. “None of that matters now. It’s past time to let her go. This is what matters…I fucked up with you. I wouldn’t bring you in because the last time I let somebody in, it tore me open. But that’s not fair. Not to you, not to us. I fucked up and I’m sorry. Will you give us another chance?”
Then he held up his hand.
She looked down, her heart jumping around in her throat.
And it almost leaped out when she saw the key.
“That…” She licked her lips. “What is that?”
“A key. I want you to move in with me, Lacey. I want a real chance. With you. For us.”
Chapter Eight
“That better be the last…” Lacey threw open the door and stopped, the words dying on her tongue as she stared at the woman in front of her.
“Oh sorry.” She smiled, a little puzzled. “I thought you were my…boyfriend.”
She could actually call Brogan her boyfriend. How fricking weird was that?
“I’m sorry.” The brunette somehow managed to pull off elegant and cute in the same breath. She toyed with the strap of her purse and looked around. “I’m trying to find Brogan Grainger.”
The elevator behind her dinged. Lacey smiled and said, “Well, you’re in luck.”
The woman whirled around. “Brogan.”
He’d been smiling but the smile on his face faded. “Leslie. What are you doing here?”
“I need to give you a few things.” Her voice wobbled a little but firmed as she reached into her bag. “Dad doesn’t want you to have this stuff, but Sierra gave it to me and I figure that makes these mine to do with as I choose. And…”
Sierra? Lacey started to move forward but stopped as the woman reached into her bag and pulled out a little wooden photo box. Brogan frowned, eying it as if it were radioactive. “Dad lied to you, Brogan,” Leslie said, her voice soft. “A lot. Sierra fell in love with you. She’d gone to talk to Brad that last time to tell him that she wanted to stay with you and she was going to tell you the truth, come clean and everything. I know, because she told me the night before.”
Lacey thought Brogan looked as if he’d been hit across the head. And Leslie continued to stand there, the little photo box in hand, Lacey reached out and took it. “I’ll take it for now,” she said softly. “He’ll look through it when he has time, okay?”
Leslie paused and then nodded.
She headed to the elevator, but before she could push the button, Lacey called out, “Wait… It’s been ten years. Why did you wait so long?”
Leslie stood there, staring at her feet for a long, long moment. Then finally, she turned back around, but she gave her answer to Brogan, not Lacey. “I blamed you. For a long time. Not like Dad did, but because she didn’t think you’d be there for her and support her when everything was falling apart. And then…” She shrugged and looked down. “A few years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Dad got sick while I was going through chemo. Everything fell apart and I didn’t have anybody. My husband started cheating on me and I got to thinking… You would have been there for Sierra. I don’t know what was going through her head, but you would have been there. Your mind takes you on weird trips when you’re sick. I got better, but Dad…well, he never did. We buried him two months ago. And I decided it was time.” Her eyes flicked to Lacey. “Time for me to start living again. Time for Brogan to start living…but I had to let go of some things. I figured maybe he did too.”
Lacey put the box on the mantel and, by the way Brogan was acting, he’d have been happy to just let it stay there.
That wasn’t an option, though.
For their first night together, and she meant really together, she’d ordered pizza and cracked open a bottle of wine. Now she was going to crack open Brogan.
With the pie steaming in front of them and two glasses of wine waiting, she grabbed the photo box and sat down beside him. He saw it and she watched his face tighten, ever so slightly.
“You asked me what I wanted from you,” she said, reminding him of the conversation a few weeks earlier. She put it down in front of him. “I want this. I want all of you…forever. And it involves you letting her go. But you can’t, until you see what’s inside.”
“Lacey…”
“No. Open it. You hid from me, from yourself, from everything, long enough.”
The picture on top was from their first anniversary. One of the happiest times of his life, he’d thought. Just months before things went to hell. “She started getting depressed a few months after this was taken. We went to Scotland.” He showed the picture to Lacey, then put it aside. Found a picture of them in Destin. Another from Gatlinburg. Pictures of the two of them. Most of them were of the two of them, but a few were pictures Sierra had taken of him.
“Those are the kind of pictures a woman takes when she’s in love,” Lacey said, taking one of them and studying it. Then she slid him a look. “Trust me, I know.”
His throat knotted. “I’ve been pissed off, shut down for a long time.”
“You’ve been pissed off, shut down because you were confused…and because her dad was fucked up,” Lacey pointed out. She gathered up the pictures. “You should keep these. Maybe not on the mantel, but somewhere. She meant something to you. I think she probably had something else going on for her to choose to end her life like she did.”
“She had issues with depression when she was younger,” Brogan said gruffly. “I always thought I…well, what we did…”
Lacey took his hand. “It wasn’t you. She was happy with you. You can see it in her eyes. I think she was torn up over her lies, over how her father used to manipulate her, and then the bastard she used to be with couldn’t take being pushed aside. If anybody is to blame, it’s her father and that bastard ex. They used her, Brogan. They didn’t care about what they were doing to her, they just wanted to use her. If anybody is to blame, it’s them.” She moved then, coming to straddle him, bringing the wine with her. “Let her go, baby. You loved her…she loved you, but that’s over and gone. It never should have ended like it did, but it’s done. Don’t lose any more of your life over it.”
“I won’t.” He took the wine and curved his other arm around her. “I wasted too much of the time I want to spend with you anyway.”
She dipped her head. “Good line of thinking. There’s no time to waste, right? We waste time that’s meant for games, right?”
He was chuckling as she covered his mouth with hers. “Good way to look at it.”
“I do love my games.”
About Shiloh Walker
Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell in love with vampires with the book Bunnicula and has worked her way up to the more…ah…serious vampire stories. She loves reading and writing anything paranormal, anything fantasy, but most of all anything romantic. Once upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full time and lives with her family in the Midwest.
Shiloh welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Shiloh Walker
Back from Hell
Coming in Last
Djinn’s Wish
Drastic Measures
Dreamer
Ellora’s Cavemen: Legendary Tails II anthology
Ellora’s Cavemen: Tales from the Temple IV anthology
Every Last Fantasy
Good Girls Don’t
Guilty Needs
Hearts and Wishes
Her Best Friend’s Lover
Her Wildest Dreams
His Christmas Cara
His Every Desire
Hunters: Belonging
Hunters: I’ll Be Hunting You
Hunters: Rafe and Sheila
Mythe & Magick
Mythe: Vampire
Nebulous
Never As It Seems
Once Upon a Midnight Blue
One Night with You
One of the Guys
Sage
Silk Scarves and Seduction
Telling Tales
The Dragon’s Warrior
The Dragon’s Woman
Touch of Gypsy Fire
Under Your Spell
Voyeur
Whipped Cream and Handcuffs
Print books by Shiloh Walker
A Wish, A Kiss, A Dream anthology
Back from Hell
Coming in Last
Cops and Cowboys anthology
Dreamer
Ellora’s Cavemen: Legendary Tails II anthology
Ellora’s Cavemen: Tales from the Temple IV anthology
Fated
Guilty Obsessions
Hearts and Wishes
Her Best Friend’s Lover
Hunters: Rafe and Sheila
LaceysGame Page 7