Slut (9 page)

“Good.”

We were silent again.

“My parents want me to pursue you. My dad has some business arrangement with your dad and I think they’re thinking company merger.”

“They’re still positively medieval in their thinking. It’s ridiculous. The companies can merge without the families merging.”

“Investors like to see that kind of family stability.” He sighed. “But I don’t think that’s going to work out the way they would like, is it?”

“Would you really want to tie yourself to me just to make an extra percentage on your stock option?”

“My interests and my parents’ happened to be aligned in this case. I’m not saying let’s start planning the wedding, but I was serious about getting to know each other.”

“It must be so easy to just decide you’re going to find The One and then do it.”

“It must be, because it’s sure as hell not worked out like that for me.”

“No?”

“There’s the part where you didn’t return my calls and you don’t want to be with me. So, no. I’d say it’s not worked out.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh.

I choked down my fear. “I do want to be with you. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said.”

“About Bex and Rebecca?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “And we’re the same person. They’re both part of me. You don’t get one without the other.”

“Is that who you want to be?”

“I can’t change for you.”

“I don’t want you to change for me. I want you to change for yourself. I want you to do things because they fulfill you in a healthy way. I want you to be happy. Because if you can’t make yourself happy, no one else can.”

“Wow, sounds like someone else has been on the therapy wagon.”

“I told you, I’m not perfect. We all have our demons, Rebecca. Mine was white, powdered and went up my nose.”

I laughed. “You’re going to think I’m a total asshole.”

“For more than laughing at me while I’m confessing my sins?” He arched a blond brow, but there was no rancor in his tone.

“For being glad that you have them to confess.”

“Everyone has pain. Everyone has flaws. Why do you think you’re the only one?”

“I guess that’s selfish of me, isn’t it?” I’d been realizing that more and more. So much of my behavior was narcissistic. It made me think that maybe a lot of my problems were of my own design.

“Maybe. But we’re all attuned to our own suffering. It’s much more immediate.”

“For some reason, you seem inclined to like me no matter what I say or do. I can’t help but think there’s some end goal. I mean, since we’re being honest. What do you want from me?” I rushed on. “If your father is going to cut you off if you don’t put a ring on my finger, you can tell me. I can play along.”

“That’s just it, Rebecca. I like you. All of you. Even Bex. I didn’t want to like that part of you, but she’s fun. She’s impulsive and she gives great head.”

I blushed.

“I mean, we’re being honest, right?” he said with a grin.

I nodded.

“You think that you’re the only one who’s scared? You terrify me.”

“What? How’s that?” I studied him.

“Because all of those different parts of you—I could never be as exciting as all of that. My condo is a tasteful shade of gray, for Christ’s sake. I bet your bedroom walls are red. I don’t know how I could keep a woman like you interested or content.” He shook his head. “Even getting hooked on the coke at prep school, it was something everyone else was doing.”

I slipped my hand into his palm and his fingers closed, warm and reassuring.

“You’re not like everyone else at all. You’re the first man to ever treat me like what I say or do matters,” I confessed.

“It does matter. You matter.”

If this was a tactic to get something from me, I was going to die. Literally, it was going to kill me.

He leaned toward me. “I’m going to kiss you now, because I want you to know how I feel.” Thornton pushed his other hand through my hair so that his fingers curled around the nape of my neck to drag me closer. “But that’s all this is going to be. One kiss. I’m not trying to get into your pretty little panties.”

I let him drag me close.

This kiss—I’d never had anything like it. He was a good kisser, but this was something more. Something I couldn’t quantify to save my life. It was a joining, not just of lips and breath, but…

Desire—real, honest, physical want slammed into me. It was an ache, a burn, and I felt it even in my fingertips, in my knees as they turned to nothing, and definitely in the throb between my thighs.

Only, unlike the few other times I’d felt this honest need, I felt this in my chest too. Not my heart, but more like the center of my sternum. Maybe that was my heart after all, maybe it had grown to fill up all the space in my chest, caged only by the bones designed to hold it steady.

He broke away, his broad chest rising and falling as he fought for control. Thornton pushed his hand through his perfect blond hair. “You’re going to kill me.”

“Funny, I said the same thing about you.” I wet my lips.

His seductive lips curled into a grin. “So, tell me. That was different, wasn’t it? From that night at Avalon?”

“A million times different.”

“A million times better?”

I knew where he was going with this. “Yes, it was better. But you know, sometimes things are just too rich for your blood. Like you can only handle so much chocolate in a cake before it’s too heavy.”

“Are you really denying this thing between us?”

I’d heard men say things like that before, but it was always about the physical part, never that more ethereal thing that most of them seemed uninterested in. “No, I’m not going to deny it, Thornton. But I’m definitely afraid of it.”

“I can’t promise I won’t hurt you. People hurt each other all the time. Whether through unintended clumsiness, or a myopic view of themselves, but if you give me a chance, I’ll take good care of that chance.”

“Will you promise to walk it, feed it, and let it sleep in your bed at night?”

“I’ll even buy it treats. Sparkly ones.” He nodded to my bangle.

I took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“We’re still being honest right?” he asked me.

His hair, once perfect and immaculate had fallen over his brow, and I loved it.

“I’d like to always be honest. At least with each other.”

“This is going to be harder than I thought.”

“Why?” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice.

“Because I just want to keep touching you, and I don’t want what happened at the Avalon to happen again.”

“It won’t.” This was the part I was comfortable with. Although, who knew how long that would last? Being naked with him, I’d already exposed my feelings, so it was like I was already bare. “Kiss me again, Thornton.”

He pulled me into his lap so that I straddled him and he rested his forehead against mine for a long moment, looking into my eyes.

Normally, I’d look away. I thought this was weird, but with Thornton, it was okay. He was looking at me, seeing me, and he liked what he saw. I don’t know why, but he did.

I kissed his cheek again, softly. Tenderly. I let myself enjoy kissing him just for the sake of having my lips on his skin. The knot in my chest tightened, but when the world didn’t end, I did it again.

I didn’t know where this was going to go with him. I wasn’t in love with him, I’d just acknowledged that it could happen.

This kiss, this touch, it was in truth pleasure for the sake of pleasure. It was what I kept talking about, what I kept saying I was doing, but I wasn’t really. I’d been trying to fill some empty hole—and not really the one between my thighs. It was inside my heart and my soul.

I thought closing myself off would protect that, but it wasn’t helping. It just filled it with fear. But being open, this was something else. This let everything in. Like the sizzle that ignited with his warm hands on my hips, the tickle of his breath against my ear, the joy I took in touching him.

“Just kissing,” he growled.

“Okay.” The hard ridge of him pressing against me through his slacks said otherwise. But I loved a man with control. I pushed my fingers through his hair, mussing it further, kissed down the hard edge of his jaw.

My first instinct was to give him a blow job. That was just a kiss, a different kind of kiss, but still a kiss. Yet, I knew that wasn’t what he wanted. It would ruin this. He wanted to make out like teenagers. He wanted us to feel all of this together.

I didn’t want to deny him. I wanted him to feel good, too. I wanted to meet his needs and not just my own.

I used to think that letting them have access to my body was enough, but Thornton wanted more. He wanted the connection.

And dimly, through the haze of desire and bliss that stole over me, I realized that’s what I’d been seeking too. A connection, something that made me real, even while I avoided it and hid from it.

He broke the kiss to bury his face in my neck. “This.”

And I knew exactly what he meant.

CHAPTER NINE

The loft changed something for me.

I was a different version of myself than the one who went up that ladder. I think I liked this one better.

Throughout the rest of the night, I kept looking at the bangle on my wrist and I kept remembering the way the sparkles looked like the lights on the lake and the way he kissed me, the way he held me.

But more importantly, I remembered what he said to me. That I matter.

I shouldn’t have needed someone else to tell me that I mattered. I should’ve thought I mattered. I knew that. But for someone who’d never been told, it was nice. It was affirming. It meant something to me more than any empty confession of feelings.

I wanted to hold on to that. I wanted to tuck it away in a box and bring it out when I needed it.

My father cornered me that night after the guests had all gone to bed. I was out on the main deck, breathing in the night air, watching the water and thinking about the trajectory of my life.

“You did well tonight, Rebecca Renee. I’m pleased.”

“Good.”

“Frankly, I expected more drama from you.”

I turned to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“It’s obvious that I chose Thornton for you. I’m waiting for your rebellion.”

“I like him.” I shrugged. “I liked him before. He’s kind, smart, rich, and comes from a good family.” I repeated everything I knew my father looked for.

“Is that the gift he brought you?” He eyed the bangle. “I’m surprised it wasn’t diamonds.”

“I love it. He chose it for me because he knew
I
would like it. Not so you or his mother would like it.”

He laughed. “That’s my girl. You always have to do everything your own way.”

That couldn’t be pride I heard in his voice. It just couldn’t. I never did anything right. “You’re not making wedding plans or anything are you? Thornton and I aren’t that far.”

“Christmas, you should announce.”

“Really, Dad? What if we decide we don’t want to be married?”

“And there it is,” he sighed.

“What, that I have thoughts of my own?”

“You may not believe this, but I like that you have thoughts of your own. I just wish they’d be the right ones. When I die, who do you think is going to have a controlling interest in the company? You. Why do you think I invested in
Chubbalicious
? That was your call.”

This stunned me. “I never thought I was much use to you,” I blurted.

“How could you think that, Rebecca?”

“Because I never do anything right.”

“I’m hard on you because I know what you can accomplish.” His shoulder slumped. “I’m hard on you because you are so much like her.”

Like my mother, he meant.

“I had to make you hard. I had to make you strong.”

But I wasn’t strong. I wasn’t hard. I was just this mess of a girl wearing shoes that were never meant to be mine.

“So you wanted to break me to prove that I wouldn’t?”

“Christ, girl. I know we’ve never been overly affectionate, but I thought you’d know I love you.”

“I don’t know unless you tell me.”

“I told your mother all the time. Didn’t help her any. I thought if I rooted her out of you, it would keep you safe.”

I thought about all the therapy, all the procedures. All the things he did to mold me into someone else. And I thought about Bex, the party girl looking for love in all the wrong ways and all the wrong places.

“I’m not going to drive through a guardrail, Dad. But I’m not going to marry someone I don’t love either.”

“It’s not just for the company, Rebecca. It’s for you. He is a good man. So you’ll give him a chance?”

And myself? Yeah, I would. “Yes.”

His arm slid around me in an awkward and mostly unprecedented hug and without another word, he turned and walked back into the house, tumbler of whiskey in his hand.

I needed to see Thornton.

Making my way through the house, I slipped upstairs to the guest wing and tried to remember which room I’d put Thornton in. When I came to the end of the hall, I heard a voice.

“Come on, Thornton. You know you want me.”

I didn’t recognize the voice.

“You only broke up with me because your parents didn’t approve. They don’t have to know.
She
doesn’t have to know. I’ll be your hot piece of ass on the side.”

Part of me wanted to wait to see what he’d do, but I remembered what Gavin said about testing people. If I had to test him, he’d already failed.
We
would have already failed.

I rounded the corner.

Thornton stood outside his room, wearing only a pair of soft flannel shorts. His bedroom door was closed, and a short redhead stood in front of him. Her hand on his forearm.

“Rebecca.” He looked relieved to see me and I was thankful he didn’t rush to assure me that “it’s not what it looks like.” Because men who did that were usually lying and it was exactly what it looked like.

This looked like a man telling a woman no.

The redhead smiled at me, but it was more a baring of teeth. “So you’re Bex Foxworth.”

“I am.” I could’ve asked her what her name was, but it didn’t matter to me. I reached behind Thornton and opened the door to his room. “I hope you’re having a good time,” I told her. “The staff can help you if you’ve lost your way or need a midnight snack.”

He turned and followed me into the room, closing the door behind him.

“I didn’t expect you tonight.”

“I wasn’t going to come. I didn’t think I could behave myself. But something happened and I had to tell you.”

He cupped my face. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I think so. More than okay. My father told me he loved me.”

“In so many words?”

“No, but it’s more than he’s ever done before. The reason he wants me to be with you isn’t just for the company. He said it’s for me.” I exhaled heavily. “I suppose it could be just because he wants to manipulate me and he’s finally figured out how, but I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think so either.”

“Really?” I looked up at him.

“He’s your father. I tried putting myself in his position. What I would do if the woman I loved died. If I had to raise our child alone. I don’t know that I’d have made any different choices.”

“I think you would. I think you’d tell your daughter that you loved her all the time.”

“Maybe not.” He pulled me close. “Maybe I’d be afraid the words would lose their meaning. Maybe I’d be afraid I’d lose her too.”

I inhaled the scent of him and he smelled so good. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I pressed myself against him.

“Take me to bed, Thornton.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

His cock said other things though. It was thick and hard through those soft shorts and he didn’t stop me when I pushed my hand past the waistband and wrapped my fingers around his girth.

“We did it your way earlier. Now let’s do it mine.” I dragged my cheek against his. “I need this.”

“Rebecca,” he began.

“I need this with you. Not just because I want to get laid. I want it with
you
. Do you understand?”

He grabbed my hair hard, angled my neck back so I was forced to look into his eyes. I slowed the rhythm of my strokes, teased and taunted him, never looking away from his eyes.

“Have you ever wanted someone so bad that it hurts? That it’s an ache not just in your cock, but in your heart? In the marrow of your bones?”

“We’re not ready for that.”

“I am so so ready, Thornton.” I stood on my tiptoes to brush my lips against his jaw. “I gave you what you needed earlier. Now give me what I need. Don’t deny me.”

“I don’t want to lose what we’re building.”

“Then…make love to me.” I almost stumbled over the words. I’d never said it that way before. “Make love to me and let me stay with you until morning. Let’s wake up together, have breakfast, do things that people are supposed to do when they spend the night together for the first time.”

His hips jerked forward to meet my caress and growled low. “That feels so good, but it’s my turn to confess again.”

I moved my hand faster. “Tell me.”

He leaned down against my ear. “I’m afraid you’re going to run again. Or after we do this, I’m not going to be what you think I am.”

“Will you be different after this?” I whispered against his cheek, still moving my hand over him.

He gasped, his hand covering mine, guiding my strokes. “Of course I will be. You will be too.”

“I know.” This was the first time I’d had sex with someone because I wanted to be with them. Because I wanted to experience Thornton, I wanted to be an experience too. Not just for some reputation whispered about in backrooms and at parties. I wanted him to feel all the things he made me feel.

“You don’t have to do this just because Kara, oh Christ,” he interrupted himself, hips jerking up into my hand again.

“I don’t have to, but I want to.”

His hand tightened around my wrist and I released him, but he didn’t turn me away. Instead, he led me to the bed and peeled off my clothes. And then did something I didn’t expect, but maybe should’ve.

He held me.

Even in my own head, it sounded like the most cliché thing ever.
Let me hold you.
Yeah, whatever.

But it wasn’t like that.

He tucked me against him, his strong fingers running up and down my back. His dick was still hard, but he didn’t grab my breasts, my ass, or try to pull me on top of him. I wanted him to.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m showing you that you matter to me.”

I’d thought it before, but I couldn’t help thinking that he was trying to kill me.

“This is terrifying. You’re just going to hold me? All night?”

“Maybe not all night. Maybe just for now. Maybe we’ll talk more and then I’ll make love to you when I’m sure this is more than just your gut reaction.”

“Are you testing me?”

“No. I’m giving you what you need.”

I leaned in to him, and tried to relax. It was so foreign, being in his space, him in mine and simply existing.

I think I liked it.

But I couldn’t stop looking down at his erection. It was like a lolly I’d been denied.

“You have a one track mind, Rebecca.”

“Only because I know how good it’s going to be.” I decided to tell him how I felt about this with him. He wanted this intimacy, so why not give it to him? What was the worst thing that could happen? He’d hurt me? “I’ve never wanted to be with someone so much. And it’s not just because you keep telling me no.”

He laughed. “But you are contrary like that.”

“I am. That’s not the reason though.”

“No?” The corner of his mouth turned up in a half-smirk. “Tell me something else.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “Anything.”

“I like raw broccoli, can’t stand it cooked.”

“Something else.”

“Why do you get two?” I asked him.

“Because I want two.”

“And you get everything you want?”

“Mostly,” he admitted freely.

It was my turn to laugh. I didn’t want to resist him, so I didn’t. All the games I’d played, all the manipulation demanded we go quid pro quo, that I never give him a piece of myself without getting part of him.

But so far, that hadn’t gotten me what I wanted. I supposed that temporarily it had, but what I was really seeking—no. I needed to try something new.

“Okay, pink is one of my favorite colors.”

“Something serious.”

“No, something from you first. I gave you two.” So much for different, but I felt like a bug under a microscope.

“I don’t like raw broccoli and green is my favorite color.”

“Something serious,” I lobbed his words back at them.

“Okay.” He wet his lips. “I was fifteen when I overdosed. I was at a party on this very lake when I started to seize. I fell over the side of the boat and almost drowned. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night choking on water that isn’t there.”

I hadn’t expected anything that serious. But he hadn’t held back. “You’re very lucky you’re still here.”

“Yeah. I am. If Brendan Tate hadn’t been with me, I would’ve died.”

Brendan Fucking Tate. The asshole counselor at fat camp that I paid to kiss me.

“What’s wrong?”

I must’ve stiffened or made a face. This was what intimacy was about. Those little confessions. “I knew Brendan a long time ago.”

“Did you fuck him?” he asked gently. As if it would be a hard thing for me to confess.

“No. He told me no.”