by Force, Marie
“To a film premiere in Hollywood?”
He laughs softly. “Yes, that’s the plan.”
“I… I have the kids, and what would I wear?”
“I’ve already arranged for a sitter for the kids and a stylist for you—that’s if you want to go.”
My heart beats so hard and so fast, I fear I might hyperventilate. He wants to take me to a premiere—as his date.
“Aileen? Are you breathing?”
I laugh. “Barely. Who did you find to watch my kids?”
“My assistant Lori’s roommate, Cecelia. She’s twenty-five and a nurse at the UCLA Medical Center.”
“And she wants to babysit my kids?”
“Apparently, she’s going through a bad breakup and could use the diversion.”
“What does she charge per hour?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m paying her.”
“I don’t feel right about that. They’re my kids.”
“Please let me take care of it. I asked you to come with me. I don’t want it to cost you anything.”
As I think it over, I roll my bottom lip between my teeth. I’m not used to relying on anyone else when it comes to my kids, but it seems to mean a lot to him that I let him do this for me. “I’d want the kids to meet her before I leave them with her.”
“That can be arranged.” After a pause, he says, “She agreed to spend the night.”
He says that so casually, as if he hasn’t dropped a bomb into the middle of our conversation. After another long pause, he gives me a gentle shake. “Hello? Earth to Aileen. Come in, please.”
“I, um…”
“No pressure, sweetheart. If you’d rather come home, that’s totally fine. I just wanted to give you the option of a night away.”
I want everything he’s offering with a fiery yearning I haven’t felt in… well… ever.
“If you want to think about it, that’s totally fine.”
“No.”
His brow lifts even as his face falls with obvious disappointment. “No?”
“I don’t want to think about it. I want to go with you and be… with you.” I feel overheated and overwhelmed as I take the biggest leap I’ve ever taken. Whatever this is that’s happening with him, I want it. I want him.
His low groan, the tight squeeze of his arms around me and the hard press of his erection against my bottom let me know he’s every bit as affected by what’s happening between us as I am, and there’s comfort in that. “How will I live until Saturday?” He raises a hand to my face and turns me toward him for a deep, sensual kiss that makes my head spin.
How will I live until Saturday?
His other hand lands on my leg and slides upward as he kisses me with deep strokes of his tongue.
“Mommy.” Maddie is at the door to the deck.
I turn away from the kiss and get up, thankful for the darkness that makes it so she can’t see that I’m on his lap kissing his face off. Kristian releases me, and I get up on wobbly legs to go to my daughter. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
“Logan is snoring.”
Every cell in my body hums with unfulfilled desire as I usher her back toward the bedroom. “I thought you were listening to your music?”
“I was, but then I wasn’t, and Logan is snoring so I can’t sleep.”
“Get back in bed.”
She does what I tell her while I gently turn Logan so he’s not on his back. It’s a delicate operation, but thankfully, he doesn’t wake up. “There,” I whisper to Maddie. “He’ll be quiet now. No more getting up unless you feel sick.” I kiss her and tuck her in. “Okay?”
“Okay, Mommy.” Her thumb finds its way into her mouth, and her eyes close.
I stroke her hair and rub her back, hoping to help her relax.
I’m reeling from Kristian’s invitation, the knowledge that we’ll have a full night together in a few days and the desire that beats through me like a separate heartbeat. When I’m confident that Maddie is settled for the night, I get up to leave her and return to Kristian on the deck.
“All set?” he asks, extending his hand to bring me back to his lap.
“I hope so.”
“Should I go?”
“Do you want to?”
“Not even kinda.”
I laugh at the blunt statement. “Then don’t.”
His arms encircle me as he nuzzles my neck. “I keep telling myself I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t allow this to happen, but I can’t stay away. I can’t help myself.”
“I wish you didn’t feel so conflicted.”
“There’re things… about me… Things you don’t know, and if you did, you might not want this.”
“Do you mean the BDSM?”
He goes rigid with shock. “How in the hell do you know about that?”
“I hear things.”
“Jesus,” he mutters.
“Does it make you angry that I know about that?”
“Angry? No. I’m surprised more than anything.”
“Because I know?”
“Not that so much as the fact that you’re still here.”
“Did you think it would frighten me?”
“It should.”
“Why?”
He huffs out a breath and shakes his head. “If you knew me, really knew me, you wouldn’t want me.”
I hear despair in his words, and that touches me deeply. “Remember when you said you can’t stay away, you can’t help yourself?”
He nods.
“I feel the same way.” I smooth the hair back from his forehead. “I can’t help wanting to be with you. I want to know and understand you, including the things you think will frighten me.”
“I’m not used to your kind of honesty.”
“Let me tell you what having cancer does to a person. It makes you realize life is short and precious and every minute matters. It makes you intolerant of bullshit.”
He cups my face and runs his thumb over my lips. “It makes you a refreshing change of pace.”
“Will you talk to me about the reasons you feel so unworthy of me?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t talk about that stuff with anyone.”
“That’s not going to fly with me.”
He looks at me with surprise.
“Can I tell you a story?”
“Sure.”
“I want to tell you about the man who fathered my children.”
Chapter 10
I’m still reeling from the fact that she knows about the BDSM. She also knows I’m hiding things from her, and yet she’s still here, snuggled into my arms, about to share part of herself with me. It’s all I can do to keep breathing while I wait to hear what she’ll say.
“I met Rex the summer after I graduated from college. I was at the Jersey Shore with my college friends for a week, and he came to a party we had at the house we rented. We hit it off immediately. He was charming and sweet and sincere. I was used to guys who talked a big game but didn’t deliver. That wasn’t him. He called when he said he would, showed up when he said he would, he had a good job in the finance sector, came from a nice family. He checked all my boxes, and I fell deeply in love with him over the next few months.”
I hold her hand as she speaks, needing the connection, even as the thought of her in love with another man makes me seethe. What can I say? I’m hardly rational where she’s concerned.
“We got pregnant with Logan by accident. I wasn’t ready to be a mom. I’d only just graduated from college and was focused on trying to start my career in marketing. I cried for days, but Rex… He was rock solid and so excited to be a father. Eventually, his excitement led to mine, and I began to accept that my plans had changed.
“Looking back now, I can’t believe I was ever anything less than thrilled to be a mom, because my kids are the best thing to ever happen to me. We talked about getting married, but we never got around to it between work and taking care of Logan. Rex was a good father to Logan, but during that first year,
he began to go missing for hours at a time, and when I’d ask where he’d been, he never had a good explanation. I was afraid he was cheating on me. We weren’t married. We had a new baby. I was tired all the time. Our sex life had become almost nonexistent by that point. It was frightening to me because he made most of the money we lived on, and I couldn’t conceive of how we’d get by if he left us.”
It kills me to hear her talk about being afraid or lonely. I gather her in closer to me. “Hold on to me.”
She puts her arms around my neck, and I stand to carry her inside, sliding the screen door closed behind me. I debate between the sofa and her room and choose her room, putting her down on the bed and crawling in next to her.
She snuggles into my arms. “Much better.”
Stroking a hand over her short hair, I say, “Tell me the rest.”
“I finally confronted him about his absences, and he assured me there was no one else, that he loved me and Logan and wanted our life together. For a few years, things were good, and then, when I was pregnant with Maddie, he began to disappear again, once for two days. I heard from the wife of one of his colleagues that he’d lost his job, and I panicked. I had no idea what to do or who to call. When he finally turned up, he’d been badly beaten. His face was so swollen, I barely recognized him. I wanted to take him to the hospital, but he refused. I tended to him until he recovered, and then I demanded he tell me where he’d been. He broke down. I’d never seen him cry before. He told me he’d been hooked on cocaine since before he met me, and he couldn’t lead the double life anymore.”
I gasp because I didn’t see that coming. I’m not sure where I thought this was leading, but it wasn’t there. “God, Aileen.”
“There I was with a four-year-old, a baby due in two months, a part-time job, a three-thousand-dollar-a-month apartment and a drug addict boyfriend. And how, I asked myself, had I not known? With hindsight, though, I could see the signs were all there. I just didn’t put them together. I asked him to go to rehab, and he refused. I told him he had to leave, even though I was terrified of being alone with two kids. I helped him pack his bags. He kissed Logan good night, hugged me, said he was sorry he couldn’t be what we needed, and he left. I’ve never seen him again.”
“Jesus. I don’t even know what to say.”
“I had Maddie by myself while a lady in our building watched Logan for me. The next day, I brought her home from the hospital, and the three of us have been a family ever since.”
I hold her tight against me, my heart beating hard and fast. I’ve never wanted to protect anyone from further hurt more than I do her and her kids.
“What about your family?” I ask.
“My mom died from ALS when I was fifteen.”
“That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”
“It was awful. I wouldn’t wish that disease on my worst enemy. My dad remarried a couple of years after she died and had a second family with his new wife. They live in Louisiana, and my three half-siblings are in high school now. We don’t see much of them.”
“No other siblings?”
“Just me.”
“We have that in common. I always wanted brothers. Flynn, Jasper and the others at Quantum are the siblings I never had.”
“Do you understand why I told you about Rex?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t do secrets, Kristian. That’s my line in the sand.”
I have so many secrets, things I’ve never told anyone, that it would take a lifetime to share them all with her. This would be a really good time to tell her I can’t do this. I can’t be what she wants or needs, because my secrets would horrify her. I should get up and leave. I should walk out her door and never look back. But I can’t bring myself to move, to do what I know I should. I don’t know how to share that part of myself with her, because I’ve never shared it with anyone.
We all have our secrets, as we found out recently when we learned that Henry Kingsley is Jasper’s father, and Jasper is a British marquess in line to inherit a dukedom. I come from the opposite end of the social spectrum, the side that people tend to overlook and forget about.
“Kristian?”
When she says my name, I realize I’ve zoned out and left her hanging. I take her hand, linking our fingers, unable to be this close to her without wanting to touch her. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“To do what?”
“This. A real relationship. I’ve never done it before.”
“Ever?”
I shake my head, feeling the old bite of shame at having to admit such a thing. How does a man get to almost thirty-seven years old without ever having a girlfriend? I’ll tell you how, and it’ll give you nightmares. “I keep telling myself that I should go, that I should walk away while I still can, but it’s already too late for that. I can’t make myself go when I know it would be the best thing for you and your kids.”
“Why do you say that, Kristian? I want to understand what you think is so wrong with you.”
“Everything is wrong with me.”
She sighs with exasperation as I tell her nothing and everything at the same time. “I don’t know what that means.”
I keep my gaze fixed on our joined hands, needing that connection in more ways than one. “You and your kids, you’re a family. Until I became part of Quantum, I’d never been part of a family before.”
Her eyes fill with sympathy that makes me mad. I don’t want her to feel sorry for me. But I don’t let her see the anger. As always, I bury it deep inside with a lifetime’s worth of rage. “What about your parents?”
“I never knew my father, and my mother was murdered when I was three.”
She gasps. “Oh my God, Kristian…”
“I’ve never told anyone that. Even my closest friends don’t know.”
I expect her to ask me why I haven’t told them, but she doesn’t. Rather, she releases my hand, moves closer and puts her arms around me, her fingers sliding into my hair. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
She doesn’t know the half of what happened to me.
“Do you… Do you remember her?”
“Vividly. I also remember hiding in the closet when she was killed. He never knew I was there.”
She tightens her hold on me, and in her arms, I’m the little boy who watched the life leave his mother, who was left alone with her body for four endless days until someone heard me crying and called the cops. Every minute of those four days is seared into my memory, never to be forgotten no matter how much I wish it could be.
“What happened to you? Afterward?”
“I survived.”
My heart breaks for the three-year-old who lost his mother to murder.
He raises his head, his gaze fierce. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. That’s not why I told you.”
“I can still be sorry that such a thing happened to you, can’t I?”
“I’ve worked long and hard not to be defined by the things that happened to me before I had control of my life. I don’t tell people about it because I don’t want to be pitied.”
That word… Control… It stands out to me after what Natalie told me about his sexual preferences. I’m filled with desire and curiosity. I want to know everything there is to know about him.
“I understand,” I tell him, even if the lump in my throat makes a liar out of me.
“I heard you when you said you don’t do secrets, and I respect that, but there are things I just don’t talk about because it’s shit I’d rather forget than resurrect.”
I have so many questions, but I can’t ask. Not now anyway.
“You should tell me to go.”
“Why?”
“Because you deserve someone who can be tender and sweet with you and your kids. That’s not me.”
“How can you say that after the way you took care of Maddie and me last night? Or how you made sure we had everything we needed when we moved? How can you say that when you kiss me the way yo
u do and touch me with such reverence?”
He stares at me, seeming stunned by the revelations.
“I want you to do something for me,” I say, summoning the courage I’ll need to take the next step with this complicated, sexy man.
“I’d do anything for you.”
Does he hear himself? He’s saying everything I’ve ever wanted to hear from a man—and he means every word he says to me. That alone is such a priceless gift after what I went through with Rex. “I want you to stop warning me off you. I’m a big girl, and I can make my own decisions for myself and my children. I want you in our lives, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“You don’t know everything you should to make that decision.”
“I should be warning you off me.”
“What? Why?”
“In case you haven’t heard, I’ve been diagnosed with a sometimes-fatal illness that is currently under control but leaves a huge question mark hanging over the rest of my life. You’d be crazy to get involved with me. Not to mention I have two little kids who’ll always be in the way of whatever is happening between us.”
For the first time in a while, a smile tugs at his lips. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”
“I’m not being clever. I’m simply stating that I’m not the best risk either.”
His big hand cups my face as he stares down at me. “Please don’t talk about you dying. That’s not going to happen.”
“It will someday.”
“But not any time soon.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“I know it,” he says as he brings his lips down on mine, kissing me with a fierceness he hasn’t shown me before now.
I slide my arms around his neck and fall into the kiss that sets my body on fire for more of him.
Apparently, it does the same to him, because he ends up on top of me, the hard ridge of his erection pressed against my core. I raise my hips, needing more, and he groans into my mouth.
“You make me so crazy, Aileen. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you.”
His confession makes me feel light-headed and empowered—a heady combination.
I lay my hand on his chest and begin to unbutton his shirt, wanting to feel his skin next to mine. I’m immediately hit with fears that he’ll find my body unattractive. I have scars and stretch marks and sharp hip bones. The thought has me stopping halfway through the job of unbuttoning his shirt.