by Jade Kerrion
“Starting over.” He rose and extended his hand to her. “Hi, I’m Tom Lancaster.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and something passed over her face as she shook his hand slowly. “I’m Elyse Vogel. It’s good to meet you.”
Chapter 7
Elyse Vogel.
Tom stared at her, slack-jawed. He had been prepared to wait for the truth. He certainly hadn’t anticipated her immediate honesty.
She sat down across from him and picked up her spoon although she did not dig back into her bread pudding. “Elyse Vogel is my real name. It’s on my lease, on my driver’s license.”
“So Sheridan doesn’t exist?”
She laughed softly, the sound quiet and sad. “A legal name is just the trappings of what’s real and what’s not. Sheridan is real in a way Elyse isn’t. I haven’t been Elyse in six years.”
“What happened?”
“I left home.” Her chuckle was trapped somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “I ran away. I was sixteen.” She glanced at the window, and although he knew she probably couldn’t see anything specific out of it apart from the lights of New York at night, her gaze was distant. “I’m the same age as most of my classmates who are graduating from Parsons this year. It always surprises me. They seem so young.”
“They haven’t had the experiences you’ve had.”
“I suppose not, but graduation is a fresh start for most people, and it will be for me, too. My life will be different. It’ll finally be back on track.” She looked up at him and smiled that smile that had captivated him from the first moment of their meeting—sweet and hopeful.
He had so many questions for her, but he didn’t want to linger on her past, not when it had every indication of being horrid, and not when she looked firmly toward the future. “How do you see it?”
“A real job. A blogging business to grow on the side. People to come home to; people who count on me.”
Like your daughter? Tom had seen no evidence of any child in the house. What had become of that baby? Is Frances your daughter?
It doesn’t matter, he told himself. He had made that decision on the plane ride back from Montana. He wanted Sheridan, or Elyse, or whatever she called herself, under whatever circumstances. It was time to trust his gut instincts, the same gut instincts he could have trusted when his relationship with Lynnette crumbled—the instincts that now told him Sheridan… Elyse…was the only one for him.
The nagging questions would be answered with time. The damnable lawyer’s need for logic, for answers, would have to wait.
“Is there space in that vision of your future for me?” he asked.
“Do you want to be in it?”
“I do.”
“And what about Aria?”
“What about her?” It suddenly occurred to Tom that Sheridan’s daughter would be about the same age as Aria. Frances. It had to be Frances.
“You had all kinds of concerns—rightly—about the kind of woman in her life.”
“Oh, you mean the woman who overcame all kinds of setbacks early in life to finish high school, graduate from college, and start a business? That woman?”
Sheridan laughed. “You make it sound like a bigger deal than it is.”
“It’s a huge deal given what you started out with.”
“I hope you’re not here out of a misplaced sense of sympathy.”
“I’m a lawyer. I’m not even supposed to be any good at spelling that word. I’m here because I’m amazed by you, and I enjoy being with you. Is that enough?”
“Oh, yes.” Her smile dazzled him once more. “It’s more than enough.” She put her spoon down and went over to him. Her hands cradled his cheeks and raised his face to hers. “Thank you for being the first man to really see me.”
Her breath against his lips was warm and the taste of her was intoxicating, like garden-picked strawberries and homemade cream—simultaneously sweet, fresh, and rich. He tasted vanilla and rum, and wondered if she tasted it on his breath too. Some part of his mind, always cynical, shrieked at him—demanding to know the game she was playing, telling him, reminding him that she was a prostitute—that sex was the end game, that countless men before him had paid for their turn at her body.
What kind of man takes what another discards?
Tension clutched at his shoulders. A man who can see her true value.
He shoved the wretched voice to the back of his mind and focused instead on the woman in his arms. He steadied her with an arm around her waist as he stood, and then easily hiked her up to sit on the counter. “There.” He smiled at her—their eyes level. “You’re finally tall enough for me.”
“Whatever it takes.” She opened her arms to him, her fingers combing through his hair as their kiss deepened and took on a quickened, frantic edge. She pressed against him and the faint, mewling sounds in the back of her throat shredded his self-control, as if she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
No, he had to slow it down even though his self-control was in tatters.
Thank you for being the first man to really see me.
There was nothing like a woman’s gratitude and trust to keep man’s baser instincts in check.
Tom broke the kiss. His chest heaving, he sucked in a deep breath.
Beside him, Sheridan’s breathing was as harsh and her hands trembled against his shoulders. “It’s been a while.”
He nodded.
“It’s hard to be gentle and take it slow.”
A wry smile passed over his face. It amazed him how easily she read him. He nodded again.
She slid off the counter, her fingers brushing against his chest. “I don’t need gentle. I don’t want slow.” She took his hand and led him across her condominium to the large master bedroom, dominated by a king bed. The decorations were classy—a potted plant in a corner, and framed watercolors on the walls—but not personalized.
Like an expensive hotel room, that cynical part of his mind pointed out, but her hands were on him, sliding his jacket off his shoulders, and the thinking stopped.
She shimmied out of her sweater dress and stepped out of the puddle of wool at her feet, in a matching lacy red underwear. The dim bedroom lights draped shadows over her, simultaneously accentuating and obscuring a slim, young body.
It hit him then that he was more than ten years older than her—a prime target for a hooker who wanted out of her former lifestyle. A lawyer with a family. A man who struggled with relationships.
A man ready to fall for a winsome and seemingly sincere personality, warm smile, and a nubile, willing body.
You’re the fool. She’s using you.
But her hands were on him, unbuckling his belt, unzipping his pants, and when they closed around his hard length, his hands clenched into fists to stop himself from pushing her away. When she knelt in front of him and took him into her warm mouth, her soft lips gliding up and down against him, he had to close his eyes against the friction of pleasure and the building pressure. His hands tightened in her hair, and she slowed down for a moment, giving him a chance to pull back from the edge before she drove him there again. Her hands glided up his thighs and over his buttocks before cupping his manhood. Her fingernails tickled a lazy rhythm against the hyper-sensitized skin as her mouth and tongue quickened their torment.
She was driving him crazy.
His grip tightened against her, so hard he felt her wince. “I want to be in you,” he rasped.
She eased away from him to lie on her back. He stood at the foot of the bed, staring at her. How many men had seen her like this, her eyes dilated and cheeks flushed, her legs spread? He brushed his fingers against her panties. They came away moist.
He raised his fingers to his nose and inhaled deeply the heated scent of her need. Was it real?
The trust that seemed so obvious on the plane and even in her kitchen was like mists in the rising sun—evaporating with every skillful touch of her hands and her mouth. She was good. So good. Too good. She was a w
hore in the most literal sense of the word. It was what she had done for a living.
How many men had had her?
He couldn’t do it. Not looking at her face. Not with his traitorous mind running havoc, blending images of the Sheridan he had come to know and love with the woman other men had seen in such a degrading position, and used.
An expression he couldn’t quite decipher passed over her face, and she sat up and unhooked her bra. Her blond hair spilled over her breasts as she shifted to slide her panties down the length of her legs.
Then she was utterly naked, her body partially cloaked in shadow. Beautiful, vulnerable, and utterly powerful.
His need screamed at him; his erection hard to the point of roaring discomfort. How long had it been since he had had a partner so beautiful, so willing?
Not anyone you’ve ever not paid for, that’s for sure.
With that unfathomable expression still in her eyes, she turned to kneel on the bed. In the dim light, it was clearly an invitation to take what he wanted, in a way where he did not have to actually “see” her.
How did she know what he needed?
How had she always known what he needed?
His heart rebelled at the thought of taking her on her knees. It would shatter all the trust they had worked so hard to build together.
His mind reminded him that she was a whore and mocked him for being manipulated.
For an instant, his body, his raging need, trumped both heart and mind. She arched her back as he pushed into her tight body, the warm wetness welcoming him.
The slight shudder of her shoulders stopped him.
He’s just a guy. It’s been a long time, he said so himself.
Logic, however, refused to stem the roaring ache in Sheridan’s chest. She had thought…had hoped…he would be different.
I was wrong.
He filled her and she braced herself for the rapid, unthinking pounding, the quick release, but he suddenly stopped. He did not pull out but his hand stroked gently against her spine. “And that, your honor, is exhibit A.”
She stiffened. “What?”
“Also known as how to behave like a total ass. And this, your honor, is exhibit B.” He pulled out gently. “How to treat a woman the way she deserves.”
She rolled onto her back and stared at him. His eyes were seared with regret. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “My schoolboy hormones got the better of me.”
“Were you actually making lawyer jokes?”
He nodded as he stretched out beside her. His hard erection pressed against her bare thigh. “It’s been a while for me, but it was an excuse, not a reason. I’m still working on getting things right in my head—the one housing my brain.”
“And your heart?”
“It’s further ahead than my head. It was always a bright little thing.”
Not so little. It’s a big, generous, kind thing.
His smile was pained—probably because he was aroused to the point of discomfort—but it was genuine. “Let me show you what it is to be loved.”
She closed her eyes and sank into the sensation of his probing lips against her lips and the soft warmth of his breath against her skin. His hands glided against her body, the alternating pressure between light and firm always keeping her guessing, always breathless. She sucked in her breath when he cupped her small breasts and thrummed his thumb over her nipples. They hardened into little nubs between his fingertips before he moistened them with his tongue and took them into his mouth. He nibbled and sucked until they were engorged with blood and so sensitive that she had to bite down on her lips to keep from crying out.
He shifted against her and his breath whispered in her ear. “Do you want more? Let me hear you.”
“Yes, more.” Her whisper rose on a moan. “Lower.”
His fingers glided against the wet heat between her legs. She arched against him, wanting more of him, needing more of him. “Please,” she whispered. The sexual need burned in her but more vivid, more searing was the ache in her chest, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.
No one had ever loved her like this before.
Not the man who raped her when she was twelve.
Not all the men who paid for their turn at her body.
Not even Nicholas who had been kind but not emotionally invested in her.
No one had ever really cared enough to drive her to the edge of pleasure, except the man whose tongue now caressed her most intimate parts, whose fingers entered her, toying with her, drawing out the sensations, bombarding her with a flurry of pleasure, layering them, raising her higher.
She dug her fingernails into the bedsheets to keep from falling, but a second later, she toppled with a shocked gasp. The lights around her blinked out, and when they flickered on in her brain, her eyes fluttered slowly open.
Tom was smiling down at her. “Hang in there. Not quite done.”
He didn’t enter her then. In fact, he didn’t enter her until a second wave of pleasure—brought on by the torment of his tongue and fingers—swept through her. By then, her body was so sensitized that the sensation of him entering her almost swept her over the precipice once more. “Hang in there,” he whispered. “I want to see you come.”
Their fingers entwined as he pressed her hands down into the pillow beside her head. Their eyes met as he began moving against her, his strokes slow and deep. She rose to meet him, their bodies moving in unison in an intimate motion almost as old as time.
The little waves of pleasure started rolling in, and when they finally crashed over her, she forced herself to keep her eyes open as her body clenched around him. He stiffened, his muscles taut around his chest and shoulders as he came, his release spilling into her. It was the unguarded expression on his face, however, that stung her eyes with tears.
It was more than a physical release for him. She saw it with her eyes as surely as she knew it in her heart.
Something major had shifted and changed between them in the moment when she had first led him into her bedroom and when he had finally come in her arms, and she was almost certain he had initiated the change and seen it through, despite his corny lawyer jokes.
She stroked his back as he slumped down, but gasped as he rolled onto his back, taking her with him. They were still joined. “Too heavy for you,” he murmured.
She didn’t mind heavy. Not when it was him. Not when it felt like security and love wrapped around her instead of an unwanted weight pinning her down. She smiled, the motion of her cheek against his, triggering his smile. “Thank you,” she said, and hoped he couldn’t hear the tears of relief and gratitude, perhaps even of love, in her voice.
He turned his head slightly to kiss her. Surely, he must have tasted the salt of her tears then. A concerned expression passed over his face. It did not vanish even when she shook her head wordlessly. She did not want to talk then. She was too raw. The truth—the entire ugly truth—might come out and he wasn’t ready for it.
She didn’t think any man would ever be. Not even Tom.
Sheridan and Tom had dessert much later, long after the optimal time for freshly prepared bread pudding had passed, but bread pudding, reheated in the microwave, had never tasted that good. Being ravenous probably had a lot to do with it. Sex—great sex—was exhausting, and Tom had shown her how great it could be when it involved hearts, and not just bodies.
The aftermath was almost as good—wrapped in a cozy bathrobe and snuggled on a chaise lounge, leaning back against Tom’s bare chest. He held the bowl of bread pudding and doled out the dessert with an exactness that would have made a mathematician proud.
“Not accounting for or allocating based on body weight, I see,” Sheridan noted before wolfing down an exactly square piece of bread budding.
“The math gets too complicated at that point. I’m a lawyer, not a physicist.”
“I would have thought that you lawyerly types would have the division of the spoils down to an art form.”
“I do,
but seeing how you made the bread pudding, there’s something to be said for your originating claim to all of the dessert. I’m the interloper here.”
She giggled. What was it about his straight-faced, dorky, four-syllable-words, lawyer humor that got to her? He was able to laugh at himself, and that—perhaps more than anything else—emphasized his easy-going nature. Heavens knew, a kind, easy-going man was exactly what she needed, what she deserved. A sexy man. A man who made her feel loved, and more importantly, treasured.
“I’m glad you came over,” she said in the comfortable silence between them.
He nuzzled and kissed the top of her head. His grip tightened around her.
It was all the reply she needed.
Chapter 8
In the week leading up to Christmas, the shopping frenzy kept Sheridan busy as she posted blog after blog to guide her readers through the chaos of shopping for themselves and worse, for others. Traffic hummed through her website and her Pinterest followers swelled as she posted commentary and recommendations on designers, styles, and the best gifts for Christmas.
Despite her busy schedule, she found time to stop by the stores to purchase gifts for her friends, including the newest additions to the list—Aria and Tom. She browsed several stores before finding a coat for Aria. Spun from soft, black lamb’s wool, it was the perfect weight for spring and fall.
Finding a suitable gift for Tom, however, was a great deal harder. What did one get for a man in the early stages of a relationship that was moving faster and had grown more intimate than she expected? Her search took her online and from physical store to physical store.
The perfect gift, however, found her, when she had not been expecting it. She was passing through Chinatown when she caught a glimpse of it in the store window. Her eyes widened as she pressed her fingertips against the glass. A faint smile curved her lips. “There you are,” she murmured. Ten minutes later, she was hurrying home, his gift wrapped in layers of tissue and tucked in the bottom of her handbag.
She did buy one more gift, which she slid into the prettiest gift bag she could find. On Saturday morning, the morning of Christmas Eve, she did as she had done for many years; she knocked on the door of a fifth-floor apartment in Brooklyn.