Sweet the Sin (3 page)

Now she was even more helpless, the one leg hanging over his arm and bouncing with their urgent motion. But she began to whimper as her pleasure spiraled up, the shift in position making the experience even hotter, more erotic. “Yeah,” she said hoarsely. “More. I’m not the little blossom you think I am. I can take everything you’ve got.”

He was grunting and panting now too, his face strained, damp, and dirty. His rhythm was becoming less and less controlled, and he was slamming into her, slamming her up and back into the tree with the force of his thrusts.

Her sore back was probably bruised, and her thigh muscles were aching from being stretched so unnaturally. Her butt was scraping against the tree bark, and she was sure the skin was now broken. And her pussy felt raw and overly sensitized from the rough stroking of his cock.

But Kelly had never felt so alive in her life. She felt wild and dirty and sexy as she whimpered and gasped in his arms. Tried to rock her pelvis into the pistoning of his hips.

This was who she really was. This was all she really wanted.

And nothing that happened in the woods—now or in the past—really mattered in any way.

She felt the pressure inside start to swell.

“Fuck,” she choked, her voice almost unrecognizable and her damp hair clinging persistently to her blazing cheeks. “God, I’m coming.” Her body was shaking uncontrollably as the tension built up with each of his thrusts.

“Yeah,” he said thickly, visibly holding back his own release. “Show me how you come.” His eyes were like nothing she’d ever seen in all her life. “Show me how you come when a man is giving it to you.”

He
was
giving it to her. She wasn’t making sure she came the way she normally did. All of him was big and strong and hard and too much. And all of him was pushing into her, pushing against her, pushing her over the edge.

Kelly came with a helpless sob, her body convulsing and her vision blurring. She felt him freeze, his cock buried inside her clenching muscles. Just as her waves of deep sensation started to lessen, she felt him pulsing inside her. Saw his tense face washed with an expression of helpless pleasure. Heard him give a rough, muffled shout as he finally let go of the tension.

Which is when she felt a familiar heaviness that always followed her orgasms.

Her body was saturated with a blissful languor in the wake of her climax, but she was more aware of the heaviness than normal. He was still holding her against the tree, his cock still sheathed inside her tight muscles, his hands on her thighs, his face buried in her neck, his breath even hotter than her skin.

She pushed against him slightly, just enough to get him to move back. In response, he let her slide back to her feet, and she leaned against the tree to keep herself upright.

“So what do you have to say now?” he asked, the smug smile returning to his lips, despite the pleased satisfaction reflected there.

Fuck, the man was arrogant. Not that he didn’t have reason to be. That might have been the best sex she’d ever had. But still. Nothing had changed. She was still at the edge of the woods with an arrogant stranger—and a client who hadn’t shown up.

She wanted to get away, to distract herself from the heaviness in her gut.

“Not bad.” She smiled at him, so he wouldn’t think she was regretting what had happened.

She wasn’t regretting it. It was sex. And sex would only ever be this one thing.

“We both know it was better than that.”

“Maybe. But your dog looks like he could use some water,” she said, “and I better get going, since my client was a no-show.”

He looked like he was going to say something, but stopped when she reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out her business card, which he’d tucked there.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his brow wrinkling.

“Taking my card back.”

“I can see that. But why?”

“Because my phone number is on it, and I don’t go for seconds.”

Something changed in his expression, a kindling of new interest. “What makes you think I want seconds?”

“I have no reason to think you do. But just in case.” She smiled and reached up to give him a quick kiss on the side of the mouth. “You’re pretty good. Not that you need any affirmation.”

She pulled down her skirt and smoothed her hair, so that she was respectable enough to be seen by the general public. She flashed him one more grin, since he was watching her quietly, and walked away.

She had to fight not to limp, since she was really sore, but she kept her walk even until she was out of the trees.

She was back in her car before her breathing evened out and her heart stopped racing. Her mind kept drifting back to the man as she pulled out of the parking lot, wondering who he was, what he was thinking now, what had made him what he was.

Wondering what it would be like to fuck him again and why she even wanted to.

But she kept fighting her mind, telling herself to focus on something else.

It was just sex. It was just a random man.

And it didn’t matter.

Something else mattered, though. Something she rarely acknowledged had awakened inside her from the encounter she’d just had.

She drove without conscious volition to another park—one all the way outside the city.

This one was all wooded—made up of nothing but hiking trails.

She sat in her car and stared at the sloping hills and thick trees, feeling a cold swell of panic rising up in her chest.

She hadn’t been to this park in eighteen years, and she didn’t even know why she’d just driven here.

It had something to do with that man—and nothing to do with him at all.

Maybe the man had just been teasing, coming on to her with a smug attitude that normally worked with women. Maybe it had worked with her too. But he’d implied that she was weak, guided by soft feelings, incapable of being as strong and impersonal as he was.

And it wasn’t true. It just wasn’t true. She’d lived through hell eighteen years ago, and she could face anything after that.

Including this park. This woods. A certain hiking trail.

Even this wasn’t enough to break her.

So Kelly made herself get out of the car and stood holding on to the door until her legs stopped shaking.

She was aching between her legs from the sex she’d just had, and her back and ass were burning from the scratches. It was easier to focus on those sensations than on the fear that was growing, rising as she stared at the entrance to the trails.

There were a few cars parked in the lot, but no one was in sight. She stood a long time, trying to even out her breath, before she was capable of walking. She took step after step until she reached the trail’s beginning.

It was the one on the left. She knew it.

All she had to do was take a few more steps, and she’d be on the trail, into the woods. She’d known this trail by heart when she was a child, but other memories had blotted the knowledge out in the intervening years.

A familiar panic overwhelmed her as she neared the trees—dark depths and tangled branches that hid dark secrets.

But the fear was irrational. There were no dangers on this trail today. She wasn’t going to let a silly phobia cripple her like this. She could walk this trail—at least for a little while. She wasn’t so weak and cowardly as to turn back now.

Closing her eyes, she took ten steps down the trail, almost stumbling on a large tree root.

She had to open her eyes then, and the woods were already surrounding her. She turned instinctively and took a ragged breath as she saw the clear space and sunshine opening up back at the entrance.

She was shaking all over, and she heard her dad’s voice, coming from somewhere far back in her memory. He was telling her not to run on ahead.

He’d been a scientist—not a particularly athletic man in any way—but he’d enjoyed weekend hikes with her. He would tell her all about the trees and shrubs and birds and little critters, and she would try to race him up the steeper hills.

There was a curve in the trail now, and she forced herself to keep walking, even though her vision was starting to blur. She could barely breathe, and her heartbeat pounded in her head and her feet.

She was going to throw up. She was going to faint. She was going to fall into the darkness beyond the precipice she was barely clinging to right now, fall into the void.

She heard her father’s voice again, echoing through the years.

Kelly! Kelly Bird! Slow down! Wait for me!

She was out of sight of him now—beyond a curve in the trail. She was jogging, but she tripped on a big rock and fell on her hands and knees.

She scraped up her hands a bit, and it stung.

Kelly stared down at her hands now. They were clean. Pale. Well manicured. No scrapes or cuts at all.

Kelly Bird! No joke! Stop where you are and wait.

She’d understood the edge of seriousness in his tone, and she’d stood up from her fall and not moved. She hadn’t always obeyed her parents, but she didn’t want her father to be angry.

It was their Saturday hike together. They always had a good time.

As she’d been waiting, she’d heard a deafening crack of noise, then a lot of rustling. And then—nothing. Not her father’s voice. Not the sounds of his footsteps catching up to her.

Nothing.

Dad? Dad, are you coming?

Her words had echoed through the woods, met only with silence.

So finally she’d turned around and walked back down the trail the way she’d come.

When she got around the curve, she saw her father.

He was lying on his back on the ground.

When she ran over to him, she’d seen that part of his head wasn’t there anymore.

It was blood and brains and pieces of skull, but not her father anymore.

The rest of the day she couldn’t even remember. It blurred into a vague nightmare.

But she remembered the trail, and she remembered her father’s dead body.

She’d had to wait a long time before two more hikers passed by. She’d been covered with his blood by the time the police came.

She was choking now, unable to breathe, unable to see, panic and nausea overwhelming her.

She stumbled back toward the entrance, toward safety, falling twice because her eyes had darkened over.

As soon as she cleared the trees, she bent over, dragging in desperate breaths.

It took five minutes before she could stand upright again, and her whole body was damp with cold perspiration as she limped back to her car.

She wasn’t weak, and she wasn’t a coward.

That man hadn’t been right about her. She would never surrender her self-sufficiency.

But this was one thing she couldn’t face.

She lived in a stylish apartment in a very expensive building, one she never would have been able to afford if she’d been living on just her income as a portrait artist. The doorman rushed over when he saw her, asking in concern if she was all right.

She almost laughed. She was still pale and clammy from her panic attack earlier. She probably looked deathly ill.

She reassured the kind man and got into the elevator, leaning against the wall and closing her eyes.

When she got home, she would run herself a hot bath, pour a huge glass of wine, and soak until her mind was clear and the water got cool.

So what if it wasn’t even two in the afternoon yet?

She wondered what that man was doing now, whether he was thinking about her, whether she was lingering in his mind the way he was hers.

The truth was, she wouldn’t mind seeing him again, fucking him again. Her body actually responded to the idea, as if it hadn’t been quite satisfied with their first round.

And that was just plain annoying. She could imagine his gloating smile if he knew. He would think he’d proved something to her after all.

When she unlocked her door and stepped inside, she abruptly stopped thinking about more hot sex with that man. Something was wrong. There were no visible signs of anything unusual, but something
felt
wrong.

She knew why when she walked farther in, past the kitchen, and saw that there was a woman sitting on her couch.

Her mother.

Her real mother. Not the kind woman who had adopted her.

Kelly hadn’t seen her mother in over seventeen years, not since she’d walked out one afternoon, saying she needed to do some errands and Kelly was old enough to fend for herself. She’d never come back.

The woman had aged—obviously. The long gold hair was now gray and tucked back in a severe knot at the back of her head, and her face was tightly pinched, as if she’d spent too many years frowning.

She probably had. Kelly had never known anyone as bitter, angry, and despairing as her mother had been for the months after her father’s death. She’d been cool and kind of distanced all of Kelly’s life. They’d never bonded the way she had with her father. But it was so much worse after her father’s death.

Kelly had known instinctively—from the evening when she’d been sitting at home alone, wondering if she was supposed to fix her own dinner—that her mother had abandoned her. Every once in a while she thought about her, wondering what had become of her, whether she was still alive. Whether she regretted walking out.

Evidently, she was still alive. And sitting in Kelly’s living room.

“How did you get in here?” Kelly demanded, asking the most inconsequential question first.

“It’s not that hard in this kind of place. Your handyman is sweet on you, and he now thinks your mama is surprising you for your birthday.”

Kelly swallowed hard as her body swayed. Her knees were weakening. This was just one blow too many for the day.

She carefully walked over to sit on an upholstered chair across from the couch. “I thought you might be dead.”

Maybe the words sounded heartless, but this was the woman who’d walked out on her without a word when she wasn’t even eleven.

“Not yet,” her mother said, still clipped, emotionless.

“So what are you doing here?”

“I’ll get to that soon enough.” She glanced at Kelly’s leather bag, which she’d dropped on the floor. “You were meeting a client?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve made a success of yourself—which can’t have been easy with such an idiosyncratic line of work.”

Kelly shrugged, finding it hard to be pleased at the approval when her mother was studying her like a pinned insect. “I do all right.”

“Your client didn’t show up?”

“No, he—” She broke off and sucked in a sharp breath. “How do you know he didn’t show up?”

“Because I was the client.”

Kelly was too dazed to put any pieces together. None of this made sense. “I spoke to a man—”

“An acquaintance of mine, since the voice needed to be male. But I arranged for the meeting in the park.”

“But why? You didn’t show up there.”

“No. I didn’t intend to.” Her mother folded her hands in her lap in an ironically ladylike gesture. “But you met someone else there, didn’t you? A man with a German shepherd?”

Kelly gasped again, her mind whirling helplessly, trying to figure out what was happening here. “Yes. How did you—”

“He always goes to that park on Saturday mornings with that dog of his.”

“You wanted me to meet him? Why? Why do you give a damn what I do?”

“You’re my daughter, aren’t you?”

“Am I?” There was bitterness in Kelly’s tone now—a bitterness she couldn’t hide. She’d had no fantasies about her mother being here for any sort of peacemaking or family bonding. She’d never really thought her mother was particularly fond of her, and she’d been sure of it after her father died. An obsessive need for justice had consumed the woman, hardening her softer feelings, until she’d completely tossed her daughter aside, leaving her alone in a little apartment to make her own way in the world.

Kelly had learned that lesson well, and any maternal feelings her mother had ever had were obviously completely deadened now.

“You’re my blood,” her mother said, pinning her with a cool gaze. “And that’s more important than you think.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll hear you out, but I’m an adult now, and I make my own decisions about my life.” Kelly was pleased when she sounded calm and confident, since she felt nothing of the kind. “Who was the guy in the park?”

“His name is Caleb Marshall.”

If Kelly expected the identity of the sexy, arrogant man to be significant, she was sorely disappointed. She blinked. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

“Yes. If you loved your father at all, you would know who it is.”

Kelly actually jerked in response to the brittle words. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that justice for your father was never important to you, and you’ve evidently tried to wipe the memory from your life completely.”

Justice was important to Kelly, but she was too jaded now to believe anything like justice was possible in the world. And her mother was right about her wiping the trauma with her father completely out of her life. She made a point of never thinking about it—any more than she had to—since it simply hurt too much.

Today had proven that, if nothing else did.

“What good would it do to dredge it up now? And what does Caleb Marshall have to do with it?”

It was strange to associate a name with the man she’d fucked a little while ago. He didn’t feel like a Caleb to her, although she wasn’t sure what name would suit him better.

Her mother’s face was ice cold as she bit out the next words. “Caleb Marshall is the CEO of Vendella and Co.”

If she’d been slapped across the face, Kelly couldn’t have been more stunned. She saw white for a moment as her brain tried to process what she’d just been told.

She’d known the man was a business suit power player. She wasn’t surprised he was an executive at some big company. But not Vendella. She couldn’t even take it in.

Vendella had killed her father.

Her father had been a research scientist for a pharmaceutical company called Vendella and Co., which, as it turned out, was not an enviable position when results didn’t come back like they wanted.

“Yes,” her mother went on. “He’s the CEO.”

“He’s too young,” Kelly gasped, clinging to the threads of reason. “He’s too young. Eighteen years ago, he’d have been—he’d have been in his twenties. Way too young.”

“He wasn’t the CEO then. He is now.”

This piece of information allowed Kelly to take a full breath. “Then it wasn’t him. It wasn’t him.” She was leaning over in her chair with her arms hugging her stomach.

If she’d just fucked the man who gave the order for her father to be killed, then she might have to go drown herself in her bathtub.

“Are you really so naïve? You think only one man was responsible? Marshall wasn’t the CEO then, but he was working for Vendella. He was a project manager. He managed your father’s project.”

Kelly lost her breath again and leaned over farther. “So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying his entire career is thanks to the success of that one project. What do you think would have happened if your father had gone through with exposing those damaging findings? Caleb Marshall would have been ruined. Are you going to sit there and tell me Marshall wouldn’t have done anything to stop that from happening?”

Kelly thought about Caleb, the man who had just fucked her hard and rough against a tree. That man was powerful. Ambitious. Frighteningly intelligent. Used to getting anything he wanted.

She could fully see him being utterly ruthless if something stood in his way.

Her father.

She raised her hand to her mouth.

“You see it now too,” her mother said. “It’s in his nature.”

“Do you have…proof?” Kelly had trouble speaking, since her throat was closing up.