Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires) (24 page)

But the reality of it all was much more complicated. Watching her on that rooftop, her face shining in the candlelight, I knew it just wasn’t that simple. There’s no such thing as love at first sight. That’s what I’d tried to tell myself.

Well, I still didn’t believe it.

Dinner flew by too soon, full of small talk about the progress on my house and random wedding details. Before long, we were back in the jet, returning to Crystal Brook. It was past midnight, but it seemed as if we’d only just left home.

Claire sat across from me, her chin in her hand. “Thank you again,” she murmured.

“It was nothing.”

“No, it was. It was something really nice.”

I smiled at her. “You deserve it.”

Her grin grew, then flickered and all out died. A half second later and her eyes fell to the floor.

“This is hard,” she whispered.

My breath caught in my throat. “What?”

“This… this thing between us.” She sighed. “So much has happened. I thought that we probably couldn’t even be friends. And now here we are, doing it… and it’s still hard.”

“Because of our attraction to each other?”

She lifted her face towards mine. I was being too forward, but looking away seemed impossible.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Because of that.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say, so I just nodded.

Claire’s hands pressed against the side of her legs, one of them pushing the hem of her skirt up the slightest bit.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Claire,” I said, a bit more forcefully than I meant to. “I would be there for you.”

Her eyes grew wide.

“I want you to know that,” I said, pushing the words out “I know you’re in a fragile state, but I just want you to know that if we ever got together, I would try my hardest to never hurt you. I would take care of you. And if that never happens, I will still do my best to make you happy. I consider you my friend no matter what.”

Her lower lip trembled. “I could hurt you. There may be a day when you can’t call me your friend anymore.”

“Let me decide that for myself.”

She closed her eyes, her thin eyelids trembling.

“I’m sorry,” I said when she didn’t respond. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She gasped, the sound filled with pain and opened her eyes. Their brown depths shone with captured tears. “It’s all right. I think about it too. You know, starting a relationship again. And I want to. I want to move on. But at the same time I don’t want to, you know?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

She licked her lips and blinked fast. “It’s hard being around you because it makes me want things… things I can’t have.”

I curled my fingers around my chair’s armrest, keeping myself in place so that I wouldn’t launch myself across the jet and onto her.

“I want to beg you to let yourself have those things,” I said through gritted teeth.

She smiled sadly. “I can’t be intimate. You should know that by now. I’m not ready for it.”

I remained frozen, not sure if I was picking up on the hidden context of that sentence correctly or not.

She looked right into my eyes. “We could… we could try just part of it. You know, we could…”

“What are you saying? That we could fuck?”

She cringed slightly. “Maybe.”

“Like friends with benefits?”

She blew out a breath. “I guess so, yeah.”

I pushed my tongue against the front of my teeth, thinking hard and fast. “What would that entail? You coming to my house to fuck me and then leaving? And how often? Would there be limits? Like we can only do it once a week so that we don’t get too close?”

Her shoulders sagged, and she looked down at her lap. “It sounds ridiculous when you put it that way.”

“But is that what you were thinking?”

“Maybe,” she whispered.

I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m not as mad as I sound. I’m just… frustrated. Not at you, just at the whole situation. Have you ever done that? Had a relationship like that?”

She hesitated. “Yeah…”

“And how was it?”

She ran a hand over the top of her head. “Not very good.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t for me either.” I leaned back in my chair, letting my hands loosen from the arm rests. “I did things like that when I was younger. I want more than that now. I don’t want things to be that shallow with people.” I let out a guttural exhale. “As much as I would love to pull you on top of me right now and screw you senseless.”

I watched as her eyes dilated and she pressed her thighs together.

“I want to strip you naked, one piece of clothing at a time. Take your nipple in my mouth and suck. I want to trace my tongue down your belly and kiss the insides of your thighs…”

Her breathing was growing more shallow, her hands gripping the chair.

“Taste you, fuck you with my tongue, take your clit between my teeth. Make you come with my fingers, lap up the juices you can’t control.”

She squirmed and my cock grew harder, pressing painfully against my zipper.

“I want to watch your face when you climax, Claire, so I’ll have you ride me while I play with your breasts. Then I’ll take you again in the shower. When we’re back in my bed, I want to feel your lips around my cock, see how far you can take me in your throat.”

A sigh escaped her lips and her tongue darted out to lick them.

“Can you taste me? Can you feel the weight of me on your tongue?”

I waited and was rewarded with a nod.

“I can taste you too. So sweet. Your slick hot walls closing around my tongue. Then my fingers. Then my cock.”

Claire let out a whimper. “Don’t say things like that.”

My eyes flicked to her lips, then down to the breasts where two hard tips pressed against her shirt. Further down, to those thighs pressed so tightly together.

When I met her gaze again, I asked. “Do you really mean it?”

She shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted and tears sparkled in her eyes.

“All right.” I sighed, ending the game and adjusting the crotch of my pants. “This is tricky.”

“Tell me about it.” She pushed her hair away from her face and fanned her face with her hand. “Maybe… maybe we shouldn’t see each other at all. Maybe this was a bad idea.”

My chest burned so badly I couldn’t speak.

Claire was crying, thick tears spilling down her cheeks. “Maybe you should go to California. Or keep working on your house in Crystal Brook. Or, you know, do whatever it is you want to do. But maybe you should forget about me, Owen Burke. I’ll only hurt you more. Forget that you knocked on that door in April and met a woman who’s broken.” She shook her head violently. “It’ll be what’s best for you.”

“Claire,” I rasped, my heart breaking so much I couldn’t bear to hear another word of her awful plan. “You’re not seeing the whole picture. You don’t see what I see.”

“What do you see?” she asked through tears.

“I see a woman who is strong, loving. A woman who is funny and adventurous. She takes care of those around her and plows through life, no matter what it’s throwing at her.”

“I’m not strong,” she whispered. “Everything seems to hurt.”

“Of course it does. But you go forward anyway. You haven’t given up.”

She sniffed. The tears had stopped falling, but her eyes were still red. “How can you see all those things in me? I’ve been depressed since the day we met, Owen. Fuck, I ran away from you that first day! Twice.”

I laughed which hurt. “I know.”

“So where are you getting all of this information from?”

“I think I just sensed it. From the very beginning. On that first day, I could see a special light in you simply because it was there. It didn’t matter what had happened or how far down in a dark hole you were.”

She gazed past my shoulder, staring either at the wall or the dark window. “I wish you hadn’t seen that. You wouldn’t have had to become so disappointed.”

Did I tell her? Did I need to open up and let her know that from the day I met her I’d had a special feeling about her, something I couldn’t explain? Was it worth taking the chance? Would it change how she felt or just push her away further?

We’re meant to be together Claire. Someday. Somehow I know this.

The words circled in my head, begging to be let out. I couldn’t let them loose though. I didn’t possess the courage… or the stupidity.

So I just sat there and let her be. I let it all be.

We didn’t speak the rest of the flight. We didn’t speak on the walk to my car, and we didn’t speak as I drove it down the nearly empty stretch away from the airport and towards the interstate. The hours had escaped me. It could have been any time of the night for all I knew, but a small sense of me picked up that it had to be very late. Traffic was barely there, getting sparser and sparser the closer we got to Crystal Brook.

As we turned off the exit, Claire finally spoke. “I’m glad I met you.”

I looked at her. She was looking in my direction as well, though I couldn’t really see her face in the poor lighting.

She went on. “I’m sorry for hurting you.”

“Thank you,” I said with a thick tongue.

She sighed. “I guess we’ve said our fair share of apologies at this point.”

“Yeah. We have.”

She turned her face to the window. “So where do we go from here?”

Good question.

How I wanted to take her home, to show her how much I cared and how much I was there for her no matter what was going on.

But that wasn’t the way you offered help. I knew it. You had to show up and give a person whatever it was they asked for, not what you thought they needed. That was true care. That was true love.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Her voice shook. “To understand things better.”

The speed limit dropped, and I hit the brake to meet it as we cruised closer to the heart of town.

“Yeah, that would be nice for me too,” I ruefully responded.

I drove even slower, but there was no way to prolong the end of the night. We took the turn onto my street, the headlights sweeping across the dark bushes.

My house loomed in the night, a black blob. It had never looked so sad, so lonely as it did then. Soon Claire would be getting in her own car and leaving me to walk into that too large house all on my own.

It was hard to not feel at least a little sorry for myself.

I pulled up to the end of the drive and killed the engine. Claire opened her door and dragged herself out, moving at the speed of a sloth.

I followed her to the car, almost glad for the darkness of the yard. It made things easier in a way. I didn’t know just what was about to happen, but there was a chance we would be saying goodbye for good. After everything we’d discussed and been through, it wouldn’t be surprising if seeing me ever again proved to be too much for Claire.

I held my breath as she pulled her keys from her bag. Please don’t let this be goodbye.

I couldn’t ask her what was going to happen next. Judging from our conversation, she knew about just as much as I did.

But I also couldn’t keep living this way. Stumbling around Crystal Brook, waiting for her to return, then managing to partially forget about her for a little bit, then repeating the cycle. Over and over. I was a slave to my feelings, a slave to that idea that had been born in me the day we met. I still believed our path had been written in the stars. I still believed that, no matter what happened between us, it was supposed to be that way. The pain, the struggles. They were all leading somewhere.

I hated that conviction. It held me captive, unable to just turn away and forge my own life separate from it.

Claire turned slowly to me, the moonlight bathing her face. “Thank you again,” she whispered.

My throat ached with all the things I wanted to say but wouldn’t let myself. “You’re welcome.”

Her face tilted the slightest bit up towards mine. “Good night.”

“Good night,” I softly said.

Her eyelashes fluttered. “Owen… can I… would it be weird if…”

I held my breath, afraid to speak. A thousand erotic visions passed through me.

Slipping inside her wet heat.

Pumping hard then slow. Then hard.

Watching her face as she screamed my name.

Her pussy clutching and pulsing around me as she came.

My semen racing from my cock to live inside of her.

Babies. Watching them nestle at her breast.

Growing old together, holding hands on our front porch.

Claire shifted her weight forward just the slightest amount, bringing my attention back to her. Then she took a step and lifted up onto her toes. Her face moved slowly towards mine, then our lips met in the softest and most tender kiss I’d ever experienced. Claire fell back down on her heels and stepped away.

“Thank you,” she said, “For everything that you are to me.”

With that, she climbed into her car and drove away. I watched her go, watched the lights disappear through a row of trees.

The darkness pulsed and throbbed all around me, pressing in tight. How could it be life was filled with such agony and ecstasy at the same time?

So maybe I was helping Claire. Maybe I was giving her just what she needed.

It was just too bad that doing so felt like a knife twisting in my gut.

Claire

A
breeze picked up, sending a stray leaf in through the open window. I took a deep breath and welcomed the fresh air. It was crisp, tasting just like fall always had.

I’d been lying in bed for the longest time, doing my hardest to not think about anything in particular. So far my attempts had failed. Two weeks since I’d seen Owen and I still couldn’t keep him off my mind.

I didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t want to be the burden to him that I’d been to my family that year, but I was afraid I was exactly that. Which was why I’d texted him a few times since our night in Atlanta, but hadn’t made any plans to see him. Trying to be friends was proving to be way too difficult, and I was afraid that if I saw him, I would lose all control. I had so very little of it left.