Not for the first time in her life, she wished she could just disappear.
“My grandfather has been seized with an unusual—and highly suspicious—desire to deepen the family bonds this holiday season,” Jack said matter-of-factly, surprising her. But she held herself still, waiting for the next blow. It was coming as surely as the next day’s sun. She had no doubt. “We haven’t celebrated Thanksgiving together since before my mother got sick. But this year, apparently, my grandfather wants to change all that.”
“Will there be a convenient photo opportunity?” Larissa asked. She lifted a shoulder and then dropped it when he frowned at her, as if astounded anew by her shallowness. “That’s how we express our familial bond, such as it is, in the Whitney family. We fake it for the cameras.”
Jack’s gaze seemed to penetrate even harder and further than usual, but then he shook his head. “My grandfather prefers to keep any family gatherings private,” he said with a shrug. “The better to vent his spleen without tarnishing the Endicott legacy.”
“Surely he can’t have anything to vent at you about.” Larissa wondered why it was starting to grate on her, this endless pretense that she cared about nothing, no one, not even herself and especially not him. But she kept on, as if she could not feel the chill in the room, or hear the bite in his voice. “You’re a paragon of virtue. A veritable saint of our times, dedicated to your acts of philanthropy and other mind-numbingly good deeds. What can he have to complain about?”
Jack fixed himself a drink with tense, controlled movements, and then threw himself on the sofa opposite hers, stretching his long legs out in the space between them. His eyes glittered, and the look in them made her want to squirm.
Larissa wanted to go to him, to reach out to him, but she knew better than to move. He would never accept her as anything but a sexual conquest. A thoughtless, careless whore. One whom he might be able to talk to now and then, given the similarities of their upbringing and stations in life—but only, she thought with a sudden flash of unwelcome insight, because he didn’t think she mattered enough to bother dissembling in front of her. Not like the worthy, decent heiresses that were no doubt lined up for him back in Manhattan, all good enough to marry. She wanted to wilt, or possibly die, but instead she raised her chin as if to ward off a blow. She’d do better to keep all of this in mind, wouldn’t she?
Jack took a long pull from his crystal tumbler, then stared at the drink in his hand for a moment before turning that icy, assessing glare back on her.
“My grandfather loathed my father from the moment he met him,” he said, just as Larissa had begun to think he wouldn’t speak after all, that he planned to simply freeze her to death with that frigid stare. “He begged my mother not to marry him. Pleaded with her. But she was young and foolish, and from what I understand, my father was so good at it back then.”
“Good at what?” Larissa asked softly, afraid that her voice would break what seemed like a fragile, momentary peace—that he would stop talking to her like this and return to decimating her with all his consummate skill. She preferred the dangerous pretense of this intimacy, she decided, to the bitter reality of his opinion of her.
“At pretending he had depth,” Jack said, his mouth twisting. “At pretending he was something other than a complete waste of space. But he was handsome and charming. My mother said he seemed to light up rooms when he walked into them. How could she resist?” He laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound. “She didn’t realize until later that that was only his great ego. If he was not a Sutton, and did not have so much wealth and privilege at his disposal—none of which he earned, of course—he would have been known as what he really is.” His eyes met hers. “A con man.”
When Larissa did not react, when she only looked back at him, forcing herself not to move a single muscle lest he assume she had not gotten his clear inference that she was like his obviously much-despised father, he blinked. He dropped his gaze then, scowling at the drink in his hand.
“As far as my grandfather is concerned, I was fruit of the poisoned tree from the moment of my birth.” A mocking sort of smile, ripe with self-knowledge, carved itself into his lean jaw. “And I spent the first thirty-odd years of my life proving him right. I did my father proud. I was, if possible, more useless than he had ever been. More full of myself. More of a degenerate. I wasted everything that was handed to me as if that was my job. I was such a prize.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked—carefully, because she was certain she would not much care for any of his reasons.
His dark eyes met hers. Held. His gaze was stormy, cold and gave no quarter. She felt it like his hands on her body. Like the slap of the words he’d thrown at her earlier, without any warning.
“Because I want you to be clear about what’s going on here,” he said, his words like bullets, inflicting as much damage. “My mother was the only one who ever believed in me, for absolutely no good reason, and she died before I could prove to her that she wasn’t as much of a fool to believe that as she was to marry my father in the first place. My grandfather has never forgiven me for any of it.” He leaned forward, his dark eyes intent on hers, bright with condemnation and a kind of fury. “For being born to such a father, for being such a vast and public disappointment to them both. For breaking my mother’s heart, again and again, with my antics. My marriage—to a woman from a good family, of good character—is the only possible way I can begin to redeem myself in his eyes.”
He said it so simply. Almost easily, as if he agreed with every word. Perhaps, she thought, he did.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said quietly.
“You are everything the old man detests, Larissa,” he assured her, an icy kind of satisfaction gleaming in his eyes, a terrible kind of triumph, as if he couldn’t decide whether he liked saying these things or hated them. Or both. “A trial to your parents, a stain on your family’s name. Famous for terrible and depraved behavior. Always the talk of the town in the worst possible way. You are his nightmare.”
Luckily, Larissa knew all the words to this particular song. Somehow, she told herself, that should make it hurt less. That stabbing pain was unconnected, surely.
“A useless, worthless waste of the Whitney legacy, which I fail to treat with the appropriate measure of reverence and gratitude,” Larissa chimed in. “A trial to my long-suffering father. Too exposed, too bold, too unapologetic. Tacky, amoral, stupid, loose.” Her face felt stiff, but she forced another smile, this one even deeper. “It’s as though you know me.”
“I was you,” he bit out. “Don’t you understand? There’s nothing you could ever do to shock me. I’ve already done it all myself.” His smile then was derisive, though something moved in his eyes and made her chest feel tight and hollow, all at once.
“I don’t think I’m getting the subtle subtext, Jack,” she made herself drawl, as if entirely unaffected by any of this. She felt light-headed. Her eyes hurt from the effort of holding back tears she would rather die than shed in front of him. She smirked. “Am I to understand that you will not, in fact, be proposing to me after all? Dirty, despicable me? And here I was, preparing my hope chest.”
“You’ll never trick me, either,” he continued, his eyes too dark, as if he knew just what was in her head. She had to fight off a shiver. “I don’t know what you’re after here, but you won’t get it. I know better than to believe a single word you say and my grandfather would never let you darken the Endicott name. Never. You’re wasting your time here, which is your business—but you’re also wasting mine.”
“What a lovely picture you’ve painted,” Larissa said after a moment. Her voice sounded thin to her ears, too close to weak. But she had been through worse than this, she reminded herself, and she’d survived. What was a little more pain? She should have known better than to give in to something she wanted this badly. When had that ever worked out for her?
“It’s the simple truth,” he threw back at
her. “What I can’t understand is why, when you’re as intelligent and aware as you clearly are, no matter the lengths you go to try to hide it, you would want to live the way you do. It doesn’t make any sense.”
But Larissa knew there were a lot of truths, and none of them were simple. Anger, misery and her old companion, shame, mixed in her gut. She wanted to scream. She wanted to shake him—to force him to see her the way she’d started to see herself. But that wasn’t a truth he was ready to face. And she realized that this was better, no matter how much it hurt. It would be far worse to show him the truth about herself, and have him reject it. Her. The real her. This way she kept the secret truth hidden, no matter what. And she would make sure that was safe, if nothing else. It was all she had.
“You’ve foiled all my grand plans,” she said when the silence stretched too thin, making sure she sounded bored. She ran her fingers through her hair, carelessly ruffling the short black strands. She rolled her eyes. “Whatever will I do now?”
“Do you think this is a joke, Larissa?” he shot at her, his voice hard. “You shouldn’t be here. I should never have succumbed to what I know is nothing more than a regrettable physical weakness. I know what you are, and still I brought you here.” His lips pressed together.
“I am a disgrace,” Larissa said, her voice quiet even as her eyes met his, and held. She drew the throw from her body, and set it to the side as she sat up. “A cautionary tale to young heiresses everywhere. I’m the boogeyman, aren’t I? The emblem of everyone else’s bad behavior. They look at me and don’t have to feel so badly about themselves any longer. I’m the lowest of the low. People hit rock bottom and it comforts them that they can still look down to see me.”
“Stop it,” he said gruff ly, as if the words were torn from him. As if what she said hurt him, too. “That’s not helping.”
“It’s the simple truth, Jack,” she said, throwing his words back at him. “And here are a few more truths. You hate yourself for wanting me. You hate how good we are together, how much chemistry we have. You’ve hated me for years because I made you face things about yourself you never wanted to see.”
She saw the struggle on his face then, the battle. He wanted to fight with her—whether to contradict her or to twist the knife in that much deeper, she didn’t know. She only knew that more than that, he simply wanted her. The way she’d always wanted him. Disastrously. Self-destructively. Overwhelmingly and unreasonably. She could see it written plainly across his face—just as she could see how much he wanted to fight it. She wished the wanting itself could change something. She wished it could matter more than all the rest.
“What’s your point?” he asked, his voice strained. Maybe this really did hurt him, too. Maybe pigs flew even now in great, lazy loops around Endicott Island. She was an idiot.
“You asked me to come here,” she reminded him, the crack of temper in her voice aimed more at herself than at him. But it worked either way. She stood up then, and brushed her hands over her stomach and down to her hips, ostensibly straightening her royal-blue sweater, though she knew the movement also made the material cling to her curves. She was not above playing dirty, after all. “I’m happy to leave. The last thing I need to do is sit here and help you wallow in your own self-pity.”
He stood up, too, and they were standing too close together, suddenly. She didn’t know if she wanted to hit him or kiss him. She didn’t know which one would tear her further apart. She wasn’t sure which one she could survive. Most of all, she didn’t know how to feel about the fact that even now, even knowing exactly how low his opinion of her continued to be, knowing that on some level he hated himself for wanting her anyway, her breath still quickened at the thought of kissing him again. Her breasts felt too full, her nipples pulled tight. Her core softened, readying itself for his possession.
She betrayed herself. Again.
He looked at her as if doing so tortured him. He reached over and traced the shape of her cheekbone with his thumb, holding her jaw in his warm palm. The gentleness of the gesture—the implied tenderness—was almost more than she could bear.
“Damn you, Larissa,” he said softly. Gruffly. “But I still don’t want you to go.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE WAS losing it.
Jack didn’t need another lacerating conversation with his grandfather to point that out to him. He was sprawled out in front of the fire with Larissa’s soft, delectable body on top of his, and he was still buried deep inside her. He should have thrown her out earlier as he had half intended to do, but, instead, the only place he’d thrown her had been to the floor—where she’d gone all too willingly, as unable to fight the shattering passion between them as he was. Now she had her face buried in his neck, and he could feel each shuddering breath she drew as she slowly came back down to earth.
He should not have felt so … peaceful.
He stroked her back as a besotted lover might, memorizing the delicate ridge of her backbone, the silken smoothness of her soft skin, the feminine swell of her hips and the sweetness of her firm bottom beneath his hands. He wanted her again, already. Always. Like a randy teenaged boy in the throes of his first crush. She called to him in ways he was still attempting to deny, even to himself—but there was no denying the fact that he couldn’t keep his hands off her. He couldn’t even stay away from her when he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she was no good for him.
She was addictive, and like all drugs, she would only destroy anyone foolish enough to fall under her spell. Jack knew it. He’d already kicked this habit once before.
She stirred against him then, making a soft noise into the crook of his neck that made him clench against a need he didn’t fully understand, and didn’t choose to investigate. She raised her head, and for a moment their eyes met. Hers were that always surprising, so unusual green, golden with passion and reflecting the glow of the fire. She was mesmerizing, no matter what else she was. Deadly, he thought, in the way of the sea all around them that crashed relentlessly into the rocky island shore again and again, with no thought to the consequences.
Her teeth worried her lower lip for a moment, and then she pulled herself up and off him, pulling her knees up beneath her and reaching for one of the throws that had ended up twisted around them. She pulled it around her like a shawl, with her free hand raking back that short glossy black hair that should not have made her look so ethereal.
He studied her in the flickering light of the fire, trying to see beneath the surface. Trying to understand how they had ended up here, when he had meant only to call her bluff all those nights back. It was getting harder and harder to remind himself of the ugly truth of her, when all he could see before him was her exquisite beauty, rendered in black and gold and rose tonight, as if she were a rich oil painting stretched lush and inviting across a canvas in some sunny gallery somewhere.
He winced at his sudden poetic turn. Was this what she did to him? He shuddered to think what might be next. A sonnet? A ballad? But still, he couldn’t look away from her. Her elegant neck, her delicate cheekbones, the lush perfection of her lips. He had wanted her for years. Since that damned weekend when he had tasted her for the first time, and he’d never managed to entirely rid himself of this need for more. He’d begun to wonder, with no little concern, if he ever would.
“You’re staring at me,” she pointed out, her voice smoky and low. She didn’t look at him. She kept her gaze trained on the fire, though he saw the way her jaw firmed, the way her chin rose slightly, as if she was bracing herself. “Are you waiting for me to transform into the monster you think I am? Or do you just see that anyway, regardless of what I do?”
Something moved through him then, unwieldy and raw, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to handle this. Any of this. It was as if he short-circuited when this woman was around. He lost all his famous charm, all his purpose and direction. Himself. He could see nothing but Larissa. Every angle of her face, every plane and curve of her lithe body
—he found it all equally fascinating.
She was narcotic. And would be the ruin of him, if he allowed it. There was no pretending otherwise.
“You’re not a monster,” he said, shaking off the disquieting line of thought. He sat up then, and moved to prop himself up against the nearest couch. Unconcerned with his nudity, he merely watched her, and told himself that the heat in her cheeks was from the fire. Nothing more.
“What am I, then?” she asked softly. He heard that odd, almost wistful note in her voice and felt his eyes narrow as something in him responded to that tone. As he was no doubt expected to do, he told himself. She was nothing if not calculating. Why was that so hard to recall? Unbidden, he remembered all the things she’d claimed on that first night. All the lies she’d thrown at him.
“You tell me,” he said, because why not play along with her? Why not see how far she was willing to go? Hadn’t that been the point of all of this in the first place? “Didn’t you claim you were on a mission to reinvent yourself?”
Her eyes cut to his, a sharp slash of brilliant green, but after a moment she only smiled. “I did,” she said, her voice too soft. He could not quite bring himself to believe it. “I did say that.”
“So tell me.” He didn’t understand his own sudden sense of urgency. He didn’t understand what he wanted from her. Why draw this out? Why make it about more than the physical? That he couldn’t comprehend at all. “Tell me all about your secret metamorphosis.”
He was certain she heard the bite in his voice, but she didn’t react to it. She only turned back to the fire, that damned smile of hers still clinging to her lips. He hated that smile. He wanted to see the real thing. He knew it was in there somewhere, buried deep in her usual bag of tricks, mixed in with her many illusions and sleights of hand. She was so good at using all her many smoke screens, telling all her lies. He’d seen a shadow of her real smile once, he reminded himself. Just once. He wanted to see it again.
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