Secret Pleasure

by Taryn Leigh Taylor

  “This isn’t the time or the place for this discussion.”

  “That’s exactly the problem! It’s never the time or the place. You can’t put me off because the timing’s bad. Because guess what? The timing’s always going to be bad. There’s always something else that needs taking care of. That’s why PR departments exist! And I know this SecurePay stuff is the most important thing in the world to you, but I’m your sister! I know you got stuck with me when Dad retired, but—”

  “Fine. You want to have this out now?” Max reached forward, and with the press of a button hidden somewhere on the bottom of his desk the glass wall of his office frosted over. “Let’s do it.”

  “You turned Dad in to the FBI and left the country. I’ve been dealing with the fallout and acting as the de facto Whitfield while you’ve been on vacation. Everything fell apart, and I got blindsided. And I quit just to make you see me. But you didn’t. You just walked out.”

  Max stared at her, looking a little blindsided himself, but she didn’t back down. She wouldn’t let him off the hook this time. The six feet or so that separated them felt like an unbroachable chasm. And what hurt most was that he didn’t even make a move to try.

  “I don’t understand you, Max. It’s just so easy for you to cut people out of your life, to shut down. Even Dad. I mean, I know all this shit is bad, but he’s our father. And you have to accept some responsibility for your crappy relationship because you never tried to fix it. You just...did nothing. Iced over. Like always.”

  She ignored the sudden sting of tears. He didn’t deserve them anymore. She wasn’t the little girl he’d cut out of his life. The one who cried herself to sleep. She was a woman. And Aidan was right. She was done letting her family have all of her just because she was too scared to stand up to them.

  With as much dignity as she could muster, she stood but his voice stopped her before she took a step.

  “Do you remember Arlo?”

  Kaylee frowned at the unexpected question. “Our dog?” she asked, stressing the words so he knew what a stupid question it was. “The one who died, after which we never had another pet even though I spent the entirety of my adolescence begging for one? Yeah. I remember.” Arlo’s death was also the last time Max had hugged her. The beginning of the breach that stretched between them now.

  “He didn’t die.”

  “What?”

  “Dad got rid of him to teach me a lesson.”

  Kaylee dropped back into the chair. “He was old. He died.”

  “He was five.”

  “But you told me...” Kaylee remembered Max’s solemn face when he told her that Arlo had died, that she wouldn’t see him again. The way she’d crawled into his arms and cried because her chest hurt so badly. She was eight, and she didn’t remember a time without Arlo there. Max had been twelve at the time, and she’d thought he was so grown up. He wasn’t crying. It had struck her as odd because Max had loved that dog with everything in him.

  “I lied to you because I didn’t want you to know what had happened. Mom was so hard on you, and I knew you were closer to Dad.”

  “I was close to you, Max. At least I used to be.”

  That muscle in his jaw ticked, and Kaylee hated him for his restraint just then. That icy facade that he used to keep her out.

  “That’s the last day you ever hugged me, do you know that? After that you were different. Distant. You stopped teasing me. You looked right through me.”

  “I was trying to keep you safe.”

  She scoffed. “From what? The emotional trauma of being an outcast in my own family? Because you failed, big brother.”

  “From Dad!”

  The heat of his words flared like a volcano, and Kaylee flinched. She’d never seen Max’s rage flare hot before. Cold reserve was his MO. But right now, he was here in the room with her. Fighting with her. Seeing her. And as pissed off as she was, it felt good to have this out with him.

  “He got rid of the dog because he said it made me weak. I couldn’t let him hurt you to get to me. I promised myself I wouldn’t let him know that you were important to me.”

  A little pinprick of hope burned in her chest at the idea that Max cared about her, but she squashed it with brutal ruthlessness. Words were easy to throw out as placation. Action was what mattered. Aidan was right about that.

  “Okay, this is getting way too ‘poor little rich kid’ for me. You were worried he’d send me away? Like, to boarding school in the Swiss Alps? Because I would have loved to be free of the Dragon Lady for ten months of the year. Of feeling so goddamn lonely in my own house that I used to cry myself to sleep.”

  “I wasn’t worried he would send you away.”

  Something about the haunted look on Max’s face checked her sarcasm. She could feel him slipping away, retreating, even though he hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “So long as he kept his focus off you and on me, I knew he wouldn’t take anything out on you.”

  The weird choice of words penetrated her anger. Something terrifying slithered through her brain. She wanted to ignore it, but she couldn’t. “What did he do to you?”

  Max dropped his head. It was so out of character that Kaylee’s lungs flooded with dread, pushing the air out of them.

  “Max, what did he do?”

  She didn’t recognize him when he lifted his head. There was anger edging his voice, but it was the shame in his amber eyes that put her heart in a vise. He didn’t look like the formidable man he was. Her imperturbable older brother. He looked...haunted. And starkly human.

  “First he’d send me to the closet. I always got to pick which belt he was going to use.”

  Kaylee hands flew to her mouth. No. Please no. Her stomach churned.

  He relayed the horror with such cold detachment that it made everything worse. Because she recognized it now. The shift that had happened when he was just twelve years old. A boy who had burned so bright in her memory, his fire snuffed out in a cowardly act of violence.

  The tears she wouldn’t let fall for herself earlier now spilled down her cheeks with abandon. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”

  Max’s expression was glassy-eyed, like he wasn’t quite in the room with her. He was staring at memories somewhere over her right shoulder. “I didn’t want you to.”

  “Why not? I’m your sister. I love you.”

  “Because there was nothing you could have done. And it stopped. I got big enough and it stopped, Kale. I didn’t want you to have to worry about me. I know you love him.”

  “I’m so sick of everyone trying to protect me! What about you, Max? Maybe I could have helped, but you cut me out. He hurt you like that, and you let me go on thinking he was good? Let me pander for scraps of his attention?” She knew her ire was misplaced, but she was so angry. At her father. At her mother. At Max. “I thought Dad was great, and you let me think it! I defended him to you. I took his side against you.”

  “I just wanted you to have a parent who didn’t treat you like garbage.”

  “I didn’t have a parent. I had a monster, and everyone knew it but me. No wonder you pushed me away! You probably see him every time you look at me.”

  Numbness tingled through her body. She would have picked Max over her father, but she’d never had a chance. Because Max chose to deal with it alone rather than have her on his side. Maybe not in the moment. She understood how a twelve-year-old boy might think he was saving his little sister. But they weren’t children anymore.

  And it hurt so much to know he didn’t trust her enough to tell her the truth, no matter how soul shattering.

  “Kaylee...”

  She shook her head. “I can’t... I’m sorry he hurt you. I’m sorry I...” Oh God. She wanted to vomit at the thought of Max being whipped.

  Kaylee lurched to her feet. “I have to go.”

  �
��Kale, wait!”

  His voice, her childhood nickname, the truth. It all collided in her chest, spinning like a tornado that took all her memories and upended them, reordered them. It was disorienting to see the events that had shaped her though a totally different lens. To realize that her allegiances were based on lies, that the choices she’d made teetered on a crumbling foundation.

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  She blocked out Max’s voice. If he apologized for being the victim of abuse she might throw up all over his office. “I have to go,” she repeated, a reminder to her stultifying muscles. Now was not the time and this was not the place for her to lose it. A lady is always in control of herself.

  She made it to the elevator, relieved to see that Max had paused at his office door, that he wasn’t going to follow her. She dropped her head in shame at her own cowardice as the silver door slid shut.

  Kaylee made it to her car on wooden legs, and when she dropped into the Audi’s leather bucket seat, her only thought was of escape. She jammed her key into the ignition and made her way out of the underground parking garage. Max’s confession was like a pickax in her brain, and instead of turning toward home when she reached street level, she turned in the opposite direction. She thought she was driving aimlessly until she recognized her surroundings. She’d driven straight to him—to the last person Max would want her to find comfort with.

  One more secret between them, but she couldn’t help herself.

  She was tired and emotionally drained, and her hands were shaking as the adrenaline that had carried her out of her brother’s office dissipated. And now, alone, without shock and pride to keep her emotions in check, the tears she’d managed to outrun caught up with her, stinging the bridge of her nose as she did battle with them again.

  Her father had hit Max. With a belt. For years.

  It was horrifying. Gut-wrenching. And she didn’t doubt Max’s story for a second.

  Her heart twisted. She thought of all the time she’d wasted trying to please her father, to make him proud. And now... Now she questioned those choices. Because her brother wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. And her father wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. And if all the choices she’d made in life were based on those misconceptions, what kind of woman did that make her?

  She unfastened her seat belt. Pushed open the door.

  Not the time for thinking, she reminded herself. Action. She wanted action.

  She knocked with enough force that her knuckles stung.

  It was getting hard to breathe again. The waiting made her restless, like her skin was shrinking. Thoughts crowded her brain, but she pushed them aside. Feelings warred in her chest, but she shoved them down.

  I’m fine, she reminded herself sternly, the way her mother would. A lady never feels too much in public.

  The sound of the door opening snapped her head up, and then Aidan was there.

  “Kaylee?” Aidan grabbed her shoulders, searched her face. “Jesus Christ. What happened to you?”

  “Max just...” They were the only words that came out before the sobbing broke loose as he pulled her close, cradled her against his chest as she wrapped her arms around him.

  He felt solid in a world that had just tipped off its axis. Max. Her father. But even as sobs racked her body and her chest ached so badly she thought she might split in two, there was comfort in having Aidan’s arms around her.

  He held her close, stroked her hair.

  “Breathe, baby. I need you to breathe, okay?”

  The rumble of his deep voice soothed her, even though her mind was spinning in a million different directions. She managed to nod, to heed his words. She gulped in some air.

  Max had been trying to keep her safe. It was sweet and heartbreaking and infuriating and sad and all sorts of things that she couldn’t put a name to.

  Because it meant that her father, the man she’d been so desperate to please, was a monster.

  Aidan pulled her tighter.

  Jesus, she needed him right now. Needed him to stop the maelstrom of colliding facts imploding in her brain. Her brother was a good man. Her father did a bad thing.

  She curled into him, tucking her face into his chest, greedily taking all the comfort that came from his heart beating beneath her cheek, the way his hand cupped the back of her head. Safe.

  “What the hell happened?” His voice rumbled through his chest, deep and sure. She knew why she’d come here now. Because Aidan knew her better than anyone. It was an odd realization, that a man who’d only stumbled back into her life by accident after a ten-year hiatus would hold that honor, but he did.

  He was the one who’d caught her rolling her eyes when her mother nagged her about her posture or her hair, the one who’d shared commiserating glances when she was being dragged to violin lessons or ballet class. He knew about her secret life as Lola, knew what it took to make her come, knew what she looked like when her heart was broken.

  Things she’d never let anyone else see.

  Because she trusted him. She always had.

  And right now she trusted him to make her feel better. Because no one else could.

  Pulling back, she curled her fingers into the softness of his T-shirt. “I don’t want to talk, Aidan. I want to forget.”

  He frowned at that, just the slight dip of his eyebrow and a tightness in his mouth that let her know he wasn’t happy with her nonanswer. But she couldn’t. Not yet. Not when she didn’t understand herself. Everything she’d thought was real had shifted just enough to make her lose her footing. She was too scattered to dissect it right now.

  She just needed something solid to hold on to, and Aidan was her anchor of choice.

  Imploringly, she lifted her mouth, tasting the salt of tears on her lips a split second before she tasted him. He filled her senses, filled up all the empty spots inside her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing against him, letting the pleasure of touching him distract her.

  To her infinite relief, he accepted that. He didn’t protest or push her away. He just let her kiss him, kissed her back as she clumsily yanked off her jacket and they stumbled through his place toward the stairs, banging into the railing as they undressed each other in her quest to get him to the bedroom. She just needed to get to the bedroom.

  He left her for only a second, to grab a condom, and then he was right where she needed him, in her arms, between her legs, over top of her, inside of her.

  Yes.

  He rocked his hips, pushing deep, and her world narrowed to the rasp of his beard against her neck, the rush of his breath across her skin. Kaylee closed her eyes and let herself feel everything, letting the grind of their bodies push her higher.

  He made it good for her. Even as she broke, he kept pumping his hips. She couldn’t stop kissing him, touching him. She didn’t want to stop. She wanted this forever—her body trembling under his, her fingers in his hair, holding him close as he came.

  He stayed over her, staring down at her as they both caught their breath. She felt safe there, with his body caging her in, his weight braced on his elbows and forearms, their legs tangled together. There were a million questions in his eyes, but he didn’t ask them. And she appreciated that most of all. That he understood she wasn’t ready.

  And when he lay down beside her, she tucked herself against Aidan’s body and stole the warmth and strength of being held by him until sleep came and gave her temporary respite from the horrors of the day.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AIDAN BANGED ON the door, hoping to hell his intel guy had him at the right place. Resting his hands on either side of the jamb, muscles flexing as he tried to stay calm, he reminded himself to breathe.

  Just breathe.

  Kaylee might have drifted off into a fitful sleep, but Aidan was too wound up to do the same. She’d been shattered when she’d s
hown up at his place, and he wasn’t going to let that stand.

  He banged his palm on the door again, jarring the bones in his hand, and he relished the moment of pain.

  Then the door opened, and Aidan came face-to-face with his hated nemesis.

  His oldest friend.

  Aidan had already moved before he realized it, his left hand gripping Max’s T-shirt, his right forearm angled across the man’s collarbone. He used his momentum and the surprise of his attack to spin Max and shove him hard against the wall beside the door.

  “What the fuck did you do?”

  Those cold amber eyes clashed with the fire in his own, once again reminding Aidan how different they were. Every muscle in Max’s body was coiled tight but on lockdown.

  “You’re going to want to back off, Aidan.”

  “Not until you tell me what you did to her.”

  “What I did to whom?”

  Aidan shoved Max into the wall again before he let go of him.

  To whom.

  Fucking Max.

  “I’m asking why Kaylee came home crying her goddamn eyes out.”

  Max went eerily still. “What did you say?”

  Maybe he should have seen it coming, but in all the years he’d known Max, the guy had never punched first.

  Aidan’s head snapped back and the familiar crunch of knuckles versus cartilage accompanied the pain that bloomed behind his nose, but he shook it off. Instinct brought his fist up in a right hook that caught Max hard in the jaw and sent him staggering under the weight of the blow. Aidan flexed his hand as he stepped back, lungs heaving thanks to the cocktail of adrenaline and testosterone that had flooded his body like a shot of nitrous oxide. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, ready if his opponent wanted to take this to the next level.

  Max drew up to his full height, also sucking in oxygen. His bottom lip was busted up and starting to swell. “You want to come after me, that’s fair game. But stay the fuck away from Kaylee, you son of a bitch. Don’t drag her into this.”