by Abby Brooks
Wyatt lifted one eyebrow and drummed his fingers against a bicep. Slowly, fighting every instinct I had, I leaned back on my hands and let my knees fall open. His gaze raked over my breasts, down my stomach, and landed right between my thighs. My core turned molten as his eyes darkened. Without a word, he gripped his shirt and yanked it over his head, exposing a muscular torso and trim waist.
I might learn to like this game, I thought as I drank him in.
“Touch yourself.”
My eyes went to his as I licked a finger and circled it against my clit. Wyatt rewarded me by slowly drawing his belt from his pants and dropping it to the floor.
“More.”
While the order wasn’t all that specific, I knew what he wanted. I slipped a finger inside, my gaze locked on his, questioning.
Is this what you want, big guy?
Wyatt undid his pants and stepped out of them. His erection strained through his boxer briefs and I gasped, my lips parting, eager for his next order. I wanted those boxers off. I wanted that dick in my hand. I wanted to know him, to give the most precious part of myself to him.
“Lay back.”
Without hesitation, I complied and Wyatt hooked a thumb into the elastic waistband, then let that last article of clothing fall unceremoniously to the floor. He climbed onto the bed, spreading my legs with his knees. My breath quickened as he kissed me, bracing himself with one hand while the other dipped between us. I hissed as he slipped a finger between my folds, dropping my head back at the intrusion, so foreign, so intimate.
“I’m on the pill,” I murmured before I lost the ability to think or form words. I didn’t want him questioning or holding back. I wanted him to take me the way he wanted me.
Wyatt nodded, then licked his lips, positioning his tip right at my entrance. I moaned. “I’ll go slow,” he whispered. “Tell me if I hurt you.”
There was pressure, and pain, and I was full, so full, in a way I couldn’t understand. My muscles shifted and flexed around him and I was nothing but a trembling bundle of nerves.
Wyatt cursed against my neck. “You feel so fucking good.” His words rustled in my hair and he captured my earlobe between his teeth.
Slowly, carefully, he began to move, rocking and rolling his hips, a freight train building up speed as he stroked his length against me. I lost myself, awash in sensations I couldn’t name, amazed as something…
powerful
coalesced inside me.
It seemed monumental. Life-changing. Life-affirming. It seemed bigger than I was, and I struggled to understand how I could contain it all. My back arched and my skin pebbled. Wyatt surged inside me and it was all so new. All so much. I squeezed my eyes shut against the onslaught of sensory input.
“Look at me, Kara.”
His voice sent another wave of goosebumps down my spine, so I opened my eyes and fell into his pale blue gaze. Something unlocked inside me and pleasure melted my bones. My body quivered and I cried out as my soul soared somewhere high above. Wyatt smiled down at me, then quickened his pace, leaving me awash in the fireworks of my first real orgasm as he chased down his own. He finished with a groan, his body quivering. I wrapped my legs around his hips and used my heels to draw him even deeper inside.
“Was it worth waiting for?” he asked as he lowered himself beside me.
I pretended to struggle to make up my mind, then turned to him with a grin. “We should have done that sooner. I should have come back after that night on your porch. You should have come after me when I disappeared. I’m ashamed of myself for putting it off so long.” I rolled over to meet his gaze and asked the most important question of them all. “When can we do it again?”
Chapter Eighteen
Wyatt
After all the years and all we had been through, there was something poetic about Kara and me coming together. While the idea of a long-term, committed relationship made me uncomfortable, if I looked at things honestly, she and I had been in one for the last seven years.
She meant something to me.
She meant a lot to me.
Of all the people in my life, Kara had the clearest picture of who I was. She knew the worst, and still stuck around. I didn’t feel judged by her. Or like I had let her down. In fact, she and I shared a mutual respect. We knew what it was to be manipulated by a parent. We knew what it was to hold someone dear, only for them let us down, and because of that I stood by her side and she stood by mine.
We were kindred spirits and after resenting her place in my life for so long, it felt wonderful to put that resentment down. I could let her in. I didn’t know what we would be to each other moving forward, but finally acknowledging we were something felt like the beginning of…
What?
A relationship?
I didn’t really know and it didn’t really matter because whatever it was, we were in it together. The thought put a smile on my face and some pep in my step as I built up my inner resolve for what I had to do when I got to The Hut. This was the day I would tell my mother the truth about my father. My nerves were on edge, but it felt good to finally have a course of action that aligned with my sense of morality.
I pulled into my parking spot in front of The Hut at the same time as Cat. “You’re looking mighty happy today,” she said as she hopped down from her red Jeep sans roof and doors.
Her statement caught me off-guard. Considering the task ahead of me, I should have been worried, or tense. Instead, a sense of freedom moved through me. “You know what? I am happy. Feeling better than I have in a long time.”
Cat lifted her hair off the back of her neck, smiling as a breeze cooled the sweat on her skin. “That’s great to hear. Someone like you only deserves happy days.”
I held the door for Cat who ducked under my arm with a murmured thank you, then found myself face to face with Harlow. “Good morning, little sister.”
“Back atcha.” She crinkled her nose, as she studied me. “You seem…better.”
I nodded. If it was obvious to Cat, it had to be a blinking neon sign for Harlow. “I am better. Where’s Mom?”
“In the office.” My sister jerked her chin in that direction. “She’s got company though.”
“That’s fine. I’ll just poke my head in and let her know I need to talk to her when she’s done.”
Six months ago, before Dad passed, I would have paused in the doorway to gather my strength for the confrontation that was sure to follow. Six months ago, I would have had time to take in what was waiting for me in that room, to think about the situation in front of me, and carefully choose my reaction.
But with Dad gone, I was comfortable to barge right in.
I had no chance to understand the situation I found myself in before I was up to my neck in it.
No chance to choose how to respond.
From behind the desk, Mom gazed sorrowfully at me, her face twisted with emotion.
The woman perched in the seat across from her flicked bleached blonde hair over one shoulder and grinned.
No one spoke while I glared at Madeline, the parasite who had latched onto my family and had no intentions of letting go.
Chapter Nineteen
Wyatt
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked the woman I never intended to see again.
Mom sat back in her chair, her breath whooshing past parted lips. “So it’s true.”
I hadn’t expected today to be easy. I knew I was going to drop one hell of a bombshell on my family. But I had thought I would get to do it of my own accord. I assumed I would tell them about the affair. About the money. About Kara’s fears regarding her mother…
Kara.
Something dark and hateful slithered into my head, and I whirled on Madeline, the terrible something coalescing into a betrayal of the worst kind. “Is this why she was at my house last night? Why she showed up out of the blue? To distract me while you swooped in to ruin the rest of my life? Was all of this a set up?”
M
adeline furrowed her brow while my mom looked even more distraught. “She who?” When I did nothing but shake my head, Mom raised her voice. “She who, Wyatt?”
Panic. Fear. Pain.
I heard it all, trembling through her words.
With my gaze locked on Madeline’s confused face, I answered, “Her daughter.”
The admission floored my mother, who dropped her head into her hands and let out a long, wistful sigh. “Madeline’s going to the press.”
She didn’t need to explain the consequences of that action. If any version of this story got out, we would be ruined. With our strong family values at the core of our marketing efforts, a story like this would devastate our brand—even though it wasn’t true.
“About Dad?”
Mom lifted her head and barked a laugh. “Yes. About that. And also about you and the completely inappropriate sexual relationship you’ve had with her daughter since she was sixteen years old.”
My jaw dropped as all the air in my lungs rushed out of me in one harsh breath. “That’s bullshit.”
Madeline rolled her eyes. “Said every child molester in the history of the world.”
“I am not a child molester.” My voice rose and I paced further into the room, aware of Cat, Harlow, and any number of guests who might be in earshot.
Madeline crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Did you or did you not sit outside my daughter’s school in your car when she was just a girl?”
“No,” I replied with force, only to remember something like that had happened. So long ago the memory might have been constructed of spider webs. “I mean, yes, that happened. Once. But I wasn’t stalking—”
Madeline raised one too-perfect eyebrow. “Did you or did you not bring my completely inebriated daughter home from a party when she was sixteen and you were twenty-one, then spend a night in her room while I wasn’t there?”
“Yes, but—”
“And then, after I caught you, you conveniently forgot something and had to go back upstairs. Presumably to threaten her into keeping quiet about what you did to her.”
The memory of Madeline stumbling through the kitchen, even drunker than Kara had been, danced through my mind. The leer on her face. Her assumption that we had slept together and her insinuation that she had been encouraging Kara to do just that for some time.
“That’s not how it happened and you know it.”
“I know my innocent little girl was hungover for most of the weekend after that little visit. I also know that you showed up to celebrate her seventeenth birthday. And shortly after that, I walk in on the two of you making out in my kitchen. Her perched on the counter, so small and delicate, trapped by your size as you literally caged her in with your arms.” Madeline even managed to make her voice crack with barely contained emotion.
“None of this is true.” I turned to my mother. “You know I’m better than this.” Rage tightened my fists, and I took a deep breath to begin my rebuttal, but Madeline’s next words caught me off guard.
“Do you or do you not have carnal knowledge of my daughter?” A smile darted across her face. She knew she had me. I had given her all the ammunition she needed when I mentioned Kara had been at my house last night.
A smart man would have lied. Or turned away. Or started yelling. Anything to create a distraction while he figured out how to react.
I, however, let images of the night before parade through my mind and, in that instant, the truth was written all over my face. The trap had been set and I walked right into it.
Mom closed her eyes and let her breath rush past her lips. “Oh, Wyatt…” I watched her faith in me crumble. I expected more from this woman who taught me to believe that love could conquer anything. How could she not see the lies for what they were?
“I need you to stop jumping to conclusions before you’ve heard my side of the story,” I said to Mom before I turned on Madeline. “What exactly do you want? Why are you doing this?”
“It’s more about what I don’t want. I don’t want the money to stop.” Madeline picked at her fingernails, looking casual enough that I knew she was about to deliver her killing blow. “And I want you to marry my daughter.”
“What?!” Mom asked in shock. “If anything you just told me is true, why…why…would you want him to marry your daughter?”
“He took her innocence,” Madeline replied as if this were sixteenth century England and I just cost her an impressive dowry.
I scowled. “Don’t pretend like she ever meant anything to you.”
Madeline dropped the ‘concerned mother’ act. I watched it fall off her as easily as she put it on. “I’m no idiot,” she said. “It’ll be easy to cut the money off from me. Wait a few months. Maybe a year. Come up with a strategy to combat the bad press so the news doesn’t ruin your business. But!” Madeline held up a finger. “If Kara is part of your family, then we’re set. There’s no way the money will stop.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” I fought the urge to pound a fist into the desk.
Madeline nodded and I didn’t like the look in her eyes. The only true thing she said today was that she wasn’t an idiot. The woman had as much cunning as she did crazy.
“It does sound ridiculous, doesn’t it?” she replied. “But that’s the thing. I’ve had so many beautiful years to get to know you. You wanna know what I’ve learned about who you are, Wyatt Hutton?” She paused and I swore I recognized Dad’s smile twisting across her face. “You always do the right thing when it comes to your family. Even if it’s stupid.”
My father’s words fell from her lips with such ease, I flinched as I remembered the day he said the very same thing to me, in that very same room. I turned to Mom who only stared at me with such hurt, such confusion, such anger…
“I can tell you two have a lot to talk about.” Madeline stood and smoothed her skirt before sauntering out of the office.
Chapter Twenty
Wyatt
Mom stared at me, nostrils flared, face white, eyes wide. “I have never felt so betrayed in my entire life.”
I clutched the edge of the desk and returned the look. “With you believing anything that woman said about me, the feeling is mutual.” I needed a chance to process everything that just happened, a chance for my emotions to simmer down so I could think clearly, but Mom was talking a mile a minute, and it was clear I wasn’t going to get that chance. This conversation was happening, whether I was calm enough for it or not.
“I just can’t make sense of it all,” she finished.
“I promise I’ll explain everything, but you have to understand that nothing Madeline Lockhart says or does can be trusted.” Saying her name had Kara’s hot on its heels in my mind and the same terrible thought from earlier wandered through.
What if Kara knew this plan from the start? What if all our interactions were designed to lead to this moment? What if the Lockharts had been playing five-dimensional chess and I hadn’t even been aware of the board?
My rational side rejected the idea, but the voice of self-doubt whispered away as I explained everything to Mom. I watched her battle her emotions as she looked for something to say. I’d had years to get used to this idea while she only had minutes.
“Oh, son,” she murmured, her voice an essay in pain. “Why didn’t you tell me? I expected this kind of stuff from Burke, but not from you. Never from you.” Disappointment flickered across her face. “And the girl? What’s her name?”
“Kara.”
Mom bobbed her head as she repeated the name, her lips curling in distaste. “What’s she like?”
What was she like? I thought back through all of our interactions, all the little things that brought us together time and again. She was a phoenix, rising from the ashes every time her life burned down around her. Instead of crumbling under the weight of disappointment, she found ways to pull herself up stronger than she had been before. She was ingenious and capable, the kind of woman who could p
lan to open a business from the time she was a child, lose all the money she intended to use for the venture, then find a way to do it anyway. A woman with an independent streak so wide she’d fail a thousand times, as long as it meant she was doing things on her own.
I smiled despite myself. “She’s nothing like her mother.”
Mom leaned back in her chair, fiddling with the ends of the red braid slung over her shoulder. “Up until today, I would have said the same thing about you and your dad.” She glanced up, tears forming in her eyes. “Apparently,” she began, then swallowed hard and swiped at her cheeks, “it’s possible to hide huge facets of our personality from the people who love us the most.”
“I’m not like Dad. Not even a little bit.” Mom drawing that parallel reignited my anger. And from the looks of it, it reignited hers as well.
“Then why did you keep this secret from me?” she asked. “Because he told you to?” Accusation laced the question, as if the mere fact that I did what my father said was enough to lock me up and throw away the key.
“Because he got in my head. Jesus, Mom! You, of all people, know what he was like!”
“You have no right to raise your voice to me. Not now.” Her presence seemed to both shrink and grow as she tried to look strong enough to cover up how much she was crumbling on the inside.
“And you have no right to compare me to him.” I took a breath to calm down and lowered myself into the chair across from her. “I admit, I made a bad decision. I should have told him to shove his secret up his ass. But he knew just what to say to mess with my head.” I waited for a response, but none came. “All I can say is that I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have told you.”