[Invitation to Eden 24.0] How to Tempt a Tycoon (24 page)

I close the door of my closet and look at my reflection. I’m not wearing cut-offs and a t-shirt anymore. My hair is shorter than it was ten minutes ago, like I just got it cut—sort of like I’d done a couple days before my failed grad attempt—and I’m wearing pajamas. There’s a knock at my door and I turn to see Marcy peeking in.

“Happy Birthday.” Her twisty smile wobbles as she glances at the two suitcases sitting open and empty at the end of my bed.

It’s my birthday?

Oh my God.

I remember this day.

This is
THE
day.

Shit.

“You don’t have to leave today, Tess.”

“State says I do.” The words fall out of my mouth, like I’m reciting a script I’ve memorized.

“Fuck the state.”

For a woman who never drops the f-bomb, her use of profanity has way more impact than mine because I overuse profanity so much. The effect is an immediate choking sensation at the back of my throat and I turn away because I don’t want her to see what’s going on in my throat and on my face. She throws open the door, strides into the room and takes me into her arms.

“This is your home and I love you. You are welcome here anytime, do you understand?”

I nod, clutching her like a life preserver, because I’m pretty sure if I let my tears come, they’ll be so many I’ll actually flood the house and be in danger of drowning myself and everyone else around me.

After a few minutes, I disengage and go back to the closet, open it and start pulling things out.

She watches me in silence. Finally, “Chase said he’ll drive you to the bus station.”

“I can walk.”

“You’re not walking,” she says, her voice weird and broken. “I gave in on not throwing you a birthday party, I’m not giving in on this.”

“Then
you
drive me.”

She comes over to me, turns me around—gently—and frames my face, looking directly into my eyes while tears spill down her cheeks. “I can’t. I can’t even say good-bye to you, Tessa, that’s why I’m going to Houston. Right now.” She closes her eyes and more tears tumble down her cheeks. “This house will be empty for the first time in my life. I’m not about to sit around to wallow in it.

“Chase will be here.”

She shakes her head. “Didn’t he tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“He got a job in New York. He starts next week.”

My immediate thought is panic. Chase will be in New York? What the fuck? He can’t be there, that’s
my
town. Not that I’ve ever been there before but I claimed it first. That’s not fair! What am I supposed to do now? Change my mind? Change the destination I’ve chosen to begin my new life?

I move away from her and sit down at my desk, going through the drawers just to give me something to do so I don’t have to see her cry. “What about other kids, Marce? I thought social services would have a whole bunch lined up.”

“I quit.” She makes this weird half-laugh, half sniffle sound. “I need a break. It’s fucking hard.”

Wow. Marcy has just said fuck two more times than I’ve ever heard her say it before. And in that moment, with her two f-bombs and the uncharacteristic tears, I realize how hard this must be on her. She’s fostered kids since Chase was little. Twenty years of kids coming and going. Falling in love with them only to give them back to broken families.

That means I’m her last.

That thought hits me hard like a line drive to the gut when you’re not looking. I snatch air like it’s in short supply and squeeze my eyes tight to keep everything bottled up. Not that the expression on my face in any way hides my emotions.

Marcy walks over to where I’m sitting and hugs me from behind. Then she whispers something in my hair, something like, “You’re going to be okay. I know you are.” After that she lets me go and leaves. Just like that. The door shuts quietly behind her and footsteps fade softly down the hall.

I hear the back door open and close. The station wagon coughs to life. I can picture her sitting there, her eyes closed, hand on the gear shift, waiting.

I get up and go to the window, holding the curtains back carefully so she won’t see me if she looks at the window. I can see her outline, her head bowed. Then she lifts it, puts the car in gear and backs out of the driveway and drives away. Gone.

T
he pain is a force, a fucking physical force and it throws me up against the wall, making me careen into my bookshelf and closet, tripping over the items piled on the floor.

I can tell you something right now. The reason foster kids can be shitty is because they are afraid of just
this
sort of pain. The pain of goodbyes. The pain of uncertainty. Better to make everyone hate you because it makes life way easier when the inevitable goodbyes come. God help you if people should fall in love with you, like Marcy, and make you feel this god-awful, soul-rendering, bone-crushing pain.

“She’s hoping if she leaves, you’ll change your mind and still be here when she gets back.”

Chase is standing in my open doorway, his hair in disarray—like mine—sweatpants riding low on his narrow hips, his impossibly broad and much too muscular chest bare.

His presence taunts me in a way that I cannot manage right now and I stride right up to him, angry, ready to do battle.

And then time stops.

Like something out of an old black and white movie, the edges around the perimeter of the scene go fuzzy. Everyone freezes. My present-self steps away from the situation, from the youthful body of my past-self and takes everything in. I have no idea what’s happening and how it is that I am reliving my youth, but I do recognize
very
clearly that at this moment I have been given a rare and wonderful gift. I have been given the opportunity to relive my past but to do things differently. I have the wisdom and knowledge of experience from all the years in between then and now to alter my behavior and my decisions.

God!

Isn’t this everyone’s greatest wish? To go back in time and to do things differently?

If I only knew then what I know now...

Is there anyone out there who hasn’t said that phrase? Thought it? Wondered it?

This is one of those moments.

I am standing here at a crossroads in my life where I am about to do something that will impact the rest of my life and I can change it. I can make a different decision and alter my future. If I want.

Wow.

I touch the face of my eighteen-year-old self, trying to erase the scowl directed at the man standing half-naked in the doorway.

If I could say something to her, impart the wisdom of years, what would it be? What would I say? Should I tell her not to do what she’s about to do?

Because I know
exactly
what she’s about to do.

I glance back at Chase. His hand is frozen halfway through his mussed hair, his biceps flexed in natural motion, completely unaware of the effect he’s having on my young hormonal body. What would I tell him, if I could? Should I tell him to be stronger? To hurt me? To deny his feelings for the sake of my eighteen-year-old-self?

The tension in this moment is thick and murky. I know what is about to happen between these two, I know it like I know the heart line on the palm of my hand is broken. This moment is a scene I’ve played over and over in my mind. This moment shapes the next chapter of my life.

Because of what happens right now, I never get over Chase. It’s the reason I finally called him up a year after arriving in New York and asked him to meet me for coffee—just to say hello. Coffee turned into lunch and then a walk in Central Park and before we knew it, we were back in his tiny apartment—which was so posh compared to the hole in the wall I was staying in.

Marriage came ten months later before I even turned twenty. God. I was so young. So stupid.

And it all started right here. Right now. The pain of the whole relationship still courses through me

“What should I do?”

My eighteen year-old self has turned to me, her eyes huge, her face pale. “I’m so confused about him. Tell me what to do.”

I take her hands—my hands—and squeeze them. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to say until the words come out of my mouth. “Trust yourself,” I say. “There are no mistakes.”

A lone tear trickles down her cheek.

“You’re going to be okay.” I wipe the tear from her cheek. “You’re going to be happy.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Like that, I’m back in my body—her body. Like that, I lose myself and am overcome by my eighteen year old self. The anger, the hurt, the pain, the overwhelming feeling of sadness picks me up and carries me over to where Chase is leaning against the doorframe and just like I remember, I touch him.

My palms press flat against his chest. Still at first. Absorbing his warmth and strength, hoping—maybe—that some of his confidence will pass through into my hands and then into me to help me get through this monumental moment, this crossroads and the uncertainty of it all.

I’m scared shitless and I need his strength.

I don’t look into his face because I’m too afraid, so instead I watch my hands on his skin, marveling at the fact that I’m actually touching him. Finally. I notice how his nipples peak when I graze over them, how his stomach muscles flex unconsciously beneath my touch. He remains completely still as I reach up to his shoulders, the reality of just how tall and strong he is made clear by the extension of my arms. My hands continue up his neck to his face. His jaw is rough with morning beard. I touch him without looking, my eyes closed now, not even sure of what I’m doing but knowing it’s important to somehow memorize this man’s features.

I hate him.

And, I love him.

“Tess?” My name is a questioning caress, deep and low, like the lowest note on an instrument, barely audible.

In my head I say the words, “Make love to me, Chase.” But I don’t say them out loud for fear he’ll deny me. So I tell him with my hands and touch. The fingers that are so used to being clenched in angry fists, feather lightly over his hard male flesh. My ears hear only the sudden intake of his breath when I sweep my hands low, just above the waistband of his sweats. I breathe deep and smell him, his unique scent that is part soap, part yesterday’s aftershave and part Chase. Not wanting to neglect any of my senses, I lean close and press a partially open mouth to his chest, touching his skin with the tip of my tongue.

“Goddammit, Tess.” His words and tone sound reproachful but he doesn’t move so I don’t either. I stay exactly as I am, my mouth pressed to the indent of his chest, my hands resting on his hips. My tongue defying the motionlessness of my body by continuing to taste, resulting in a reaction—finally—from Chase. He grabs my shoulders and pulls me away so he can look at me.

His eyes are wild. His lips are parted and swollen. His breath comes in quick, hard panting breaths.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“This.” Before he can do anything about it, I snatch the hem of my pajama top, carrying it up and over my head.

“Don’t,” Chase says, yet his body language says something else altogether. The pressure of his fingers around my shoulders tells me to stay put. The fire in his dark eyes as his gaze flicks down to my breasts and back to my face, tells me to please touch him again and to let him touch me too. The rapid intake of breath tells me to move my hands around to the front of his sweats, untie the cord and slip my hands beneath the material. And the slight sheen that appears on his belly tells me he likes the way my hand feels wrapped around his impossibly hard cock.

The fact that his cock is impossibly hard also tells me something.

It tells me to drop to my knees, pull his pants and shorts down and to taste him, to fulfill the desires of that oh-so-important sense and to answer the age old question, what does Chase Walker taste like? I need to know so I can remember absolutely everything about him before I leave.

When his fingers tangle through my hair, holding me, guiding me, I know I’m not alone in my desire and I suck him in as far as I can, doing something I’ve only ever tried once before.

“What the fuck, Tess. What the fuck?”

There is pain in his voice. Pain and desire and sadness and need. Good. That’s perfect. That’s exactly what I want from him. I want him to finally understand me, to really get me and to know how I feel. His emotions make me squeeze harder and suck deeper until his groan becomes a chant, until he rips his fingers from my hair in order to pull me away from him. I look up to see his chest heaving, his face angry but ecstatic too, all kinds of crazy emotions all at the same time.

The fact he can’t seem to make any coherent sentences makes me giddy. The fact he’s shaking his head at me worries me, so I stand and press my naked chest against his, pulling my pajama bottoms low so that his erection is seated against the softness of my belly.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters into my upturned face, holding my head firmly in his big hands. His face is flushed. His eyes accusing and his nostrils flared as he fights for breath. “We can’t do this, Tess.”

“Why not?”

“You’re my ward.”

“No I’m not.” I shake my head as if I’ve got way more self-confidence than I do. “As of today I am my own person.” I shove my pajama bottoms down my hips, letting them pool about my feet. I stare into Chase’s eyes. Daring him to deny me. Daring him to stop me. “I want you to fuck me.”

It’s a lie. I don’t want him to fuck me. I want him to love me but I say the F-word instead of the L-word because it somehow seems less scary.

His hooded eyes shut and his whole body shudders. I take advantage of his moment of weakness to gyrate my naked body against his, my breasts against his chest, my pubic mound against his thick-like-a-tree-trunk thigh.

“Dammit, Tessa.” He grunts. Then he makes this face, one I’d never seen before, where he presses his lips together and cringes, a millisecond later, in one swift movement he picks me up and carries me the short distance to the bed where he tosses me down.