You Really Got Me (27 page)

He felt like a pig for doing it, but curiosity won out and he stroked his hand down between her thighs. Sure enough, her panties were soaked and she opened her legs a bit to make it easier for him to touch her there. She wanted it. Holy shit, she wanted it bad, her smooth folds all plump and wet.

And she wasn’t the only one ferociously aroused. His cock throbbed painfully in his jeans. He flipped her over, gathered her up in his arms, and kissed her hard. Her mouth opened immediately to him, and the kiss went fierce and brutal.

“Do it,” she urged him, her voice low and tight. “Fuck me. You know we both want it.”

Crude works like that from Kendall inflamed him even more.

“Yeah,” he said through a tight jaw. “I know. We do. But I’m not going to.” He sucked in a long breath. “Just want you to calm down.” It was working. He could already see that she was calmer, her breathing easier, although now she was aroused. Even though she probably didn’t want to be.

Hell, so was he, but right now he just needed to talk to her. To talk some sense into her. If she’d listen to him. He’d known showing up with a warrant to obtain DNA samples from her brother wasn’t going to do anything to increase her trust for him. Goddammit.

“I’m not out to get your brother, Kendall. But you’re not doing him any favors by protecting him in this situation. He needs to come clean with the truth about what happened, and face the consequences of his actions.”

“What!” Her head jerked back. He held her tighter.

“Just listen to me. Be still and listen. I’m not saying he did anything. But whatever happened that day that he’s not telling us, if somehow he got her in trouble, or…I don’t know, Kendall. We still don’t know what happened, and he’s the one who might have the missing information.”

She sagged against him, hair falling over her face, and he wished he knew what was going on in her head.

“You know,” he said carefully. “Sometimes we repeat patterns. Things we learned from our parents growing up.”

After a brief silence, she said, her voice muffled a bit, “What are you saying?”

He hesitated. “Aren’t you acting just like your mom?”

“What?” Her head reared back again.

“Covering for Kevin. Enabling him.”

She stiffened. “He didn’t do anything to Natalia, Jason.”

“I wasn’t necessarily talking about that,” he said evenly. “Just…everything. I know it’s not easy to think about or accept but…think about this. When someone is spiraling out of control, whether it’s alcohol or some other form of addiction or dysfunction, and you keep enabling them, when you prevent them from hitting bottom, from hitting a crisis point, you also prevent them from learning from that crisis. Which might be the only thing that stops that downward spiral.”

She’d been calm and still long enough that he eased her pajama bottoms up over her hips. He held her hip with one hand and tipped her chin up with the other, forcing her to look him in the eye. “Think of your parents,” he said quietly. “If your dad had had to take responsibility sooner for his drinking, maybe he would’ve gotten help. Maybe that accident would never have happened. Maybe they wouldn’t have died.”

She closed her eyes, but not before he saw the pain flash in them.

“That was
not
your fault,” he bit out. Christ. “Please, Kendall, trust me. Okay?”

She closed her eyes and a single tear leaked from beneath the long fan of her dark eyelashes on her cheek.

“I told you before. We need to know everything. We need Kevin to tell us the truth about what happened that day.”

She sank her white teeth into her bottom lip, kept her eyes closed.

“You have to let him grow up, Kendall. He has to take the consequences of whatever he did.”

“He didn’t kill her.”

“Then he needs to tell us. He needs to man up and take responsibility.”

She bowed her head, rested it against Jason’s chest. He hated seeing her in a frenzy of emotion, but he hated just as much to see her like this, defeated. Hopeless.

He stroked her silky hair. “You told me about your family. About your mom and dad.” He tensed, not wanting to broach what he had to. “You know your mom was enabling your dad’s problem. His drinking.”

She stayed where she was, still breathing in short ragged pants.

“You know you’re doing the same thing for Kevin.” It was harsh, but it had to be said. “If you don’t make him step up and take responsibility—what will happen next time?”

Her body shook against his.

“Let him do it, Kendall. It’ll be okay.”

Her head reared so fast she almost caught him on the chin and she glared at him. “How can you say that?” she demanded. “It won’t be okay. It’s a nightmare. I trusted you enough to…to submit to you.” Her words came out strangled. “And then you do this to me. How could you?”

Her words hit him like a punch to the gut, stealing his breath, sending pain radiating through his body. He’d been afraid of this.

He’d known he had to earn her trust. He’d tried to take things slowly. But yeah, he’d been so afraid this was going to make a difference. That if she knew about his past she was going to believe certain things of him. And if he arrested her brother, she was going to believe the worst of him.

And hadn’t he wondered those same things himself? Was he being fair and impartial in this case? How could he, when his emotions were so involved with Kendall now? But it wasn’t what she thought.

He’d never felt like this about anyone else. Someone he had so much in common with. Someone who needed what he had to give. A Dom was nothing without a sub, and he’d be nothing without her. Yeah, he wanted to look after her, but he needed her too. She’d restored his confidence, made him feel strong and powerful, helped him understand who he was. They helped each other be who they really were. And the fact that she really didn’t trust him, when her trust was what had made him feel whole again, hurt like a sonofabitch.

“Clearly you
don’t
trust me,” he said quietly, gently lifting her off him to stand on her feet. He too rose to stand. “I thought we had something amazing and special together. Something I’ve never felt with anyone else. But if you don’t trust me…we don’t have anything.”

She stared at him for long, agonizing moments, moments during which thoughts spiraled through his head, hope that she would tell him she
did
trust him, that she’d overreacted. But then in a whirl of fury and indignation, she stormed out of his home, the door slamming behind her.

Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Jason turned and slumped back down on the couch, eyes closed. He’d known Kendall wasn’t going to be happy about taking DNA samples from her brother, but he had to do it. He had to do his job. He wasn’t trying to excuse what he’d done, he wasn’t being bureaucratic, it was just the truth.

He was doing his job.

And he was trying to do the best he could. He knew how important this was. A woman was dead. He had to find the killer. For everyone. The weight of responsibility was heavy on his shoulders, the guilt of past mistakes ate away at him inside, and Kendall’s anger and lack of trust sliced through him like a knife.

Fuck.

He lifted his head with difficulty and rubbed his face. Maybe this was still part of that bizarre dream. But no. It was real.

Dreams of Kendall had become the norm lately. She’d gotten inside him, inside his head, inside his soul. He found himself thinking about her, wanting her, wanting to look after her, most of the day, every day. He was caught up in something he’d never experienced before.

He cared about her. And…he thought she cared about him. Again, fuck.

He trudged heavily up the stairs to return to his cold, empty bed.

Just doing his job. Even though he knew it was tearing her apart. The thought of hurting her hurt him too. Fucking mind-boggling, but there it was.

If only she would trust him!

He’d tried to explain it to her, how important and sacred it was to be given that kind of trust. And now that he cared so much about her, it meant even more. But it meant she didn’t care about him, and Jesus, that felt like a knife stabbing into his gut.

Chapter Twenty-One

Kendall stared straight ahead at the road in the dark night as she drove.

She was crazy as a shithouse rat. A loony tuna. She’d officially lost it. Going to see Jason in the middle of the night. Blaming him. Although he was in charge of the investigation. They were barking up the wrong freaking tree looking at Kevin as a suspect!

And then he’d spanked her.

God, that should be humiliating. It had been frustrating to get so aroused when he’d been doing that, but she didn’t feel humiliated. Somehow he’d known exactly what she needed, and she’d ended up relaxed, calm, a little floaty, even. The tension had disappeared from her body, her thoughts had cleared.

She hadn’t wanted to listen to what he was saying, but somehow she had.

Okay, this wasn’t entirely Jason’s fault. She chewed on her bottom lip as she negotiated a curve in the road. Kevin wasn’t blameless in this either. Even though she knew with all the certainty in her body he was not guilty of murder, he’d been acting immature and selfish. He’d been hiding something, whatever it was. Her gut tightened as did her fingers on the steering wheel. And yeah…she needed to take some responsibility too.

Jason’s words about letting go replayed in her mind. About how she was enabling Kevin by protecting him. Once again, his words had wounded, so she’d dug deep for the anger that would protect her from the hurt. But the words that had come out of her mouth had hurt her as much as they hurt him. She’d seen him flinch, his eyes close, then open, seen his mouth tighten as a steel band was constricting around her chest.

Maybe she
had
tried to protect Kevin too much. Maybe she’d been wrong to try to protect him from the mistakes he’d made. But she’d been so desperate to keep the only family she had safe, like she hadn’t been able to all those years ago. Kids made mistakes. Was it so bad to want to save them?

She stopped at the highway, checked for traffic both ways, then checked again. It was dark and she was distracted. She wanted to be careful. Then she pulled onto the highway and picked up speed again.

She firmed her lips, closed her mind to bad thoughts, repositioned her hands on the steering wheel. Get home. Get home. She had to get home and then she could pull out all these thoughts and examine them and analyze them and deal with them.

She braked and slowed, put on her turn signal. As she neared the turnoff to the winery, she prepared to move off the highway onto the s
houlder–shit! There was a car parked there. In the dark. No lights. What the hell?

She veered and steered around the car, shooting a glare at the vehicle and only catching a glimpse from the corner of her eye of the man sitting in the car.

Oh no. Oh no no no. She did not just go to Jason’s place in the middle of the night with a news reporter sitting outside their house. Nausea churned in her stomach almost painfully. How stupid could she be!

She had to get out of her car to open and close the gates, and she hesitated. Nerves jittered. There was a killer out there somewhere.
Was
that a reporter sitting there on the side of the road? It was the middle of the night and that seemed a bit extreme even for reporters desperate for some juicy scandal. She didn’t want to get out of her car.

She gripped the steering wheel tighter. Some people never gave up. But they weren’t going to get anything from her. So she threw open her car door. With shaking fingers she unlocked the gate and hustled back into her car, quickly drove through then locked the gate behind her, all the while casting nervous glances over her shoulder.

Once in her bedroom, for a long time she sat on her window seat, staring out at the moonlit vineyard, the rows of vines perfect stripes climbing up the gentle hills in the distance.

She liked being in control. Her life had felt out of control even before her parents had died, when she’d tried so hard to make things right by being the perfect student, the perfect daughter, then felt guilty because no matter what she did, no matter how many A’s she got, no matter how many awards, it never made things better. After their death it had been even worse, and it had taken a long time for her to regain any sense of being in charge of her own life, of having any influence or power over what happened to her, and to Kevin, and to the winery.

She twisted her mother’s diamond rings back and forth on her right ring finger. She thought about Jason and the things he’d said to her. She recalled all the times her mom had covered for her dad. A wave of remembered emotions swept over her—nausea, helplessness, inadequacy. Resentment. Guilt. Lots of guilt. She’d tried so hard to be the best at whatever she did, to try to make things better—but it never worked.

She remembered Dad’s drinking getting progressively worse. Her parents had argued the night of the accident, before they’d left Santa Barbara, her dad insisting on driving. She’d offered to drive, thinking that might ease the tension, thinking that might please them, knowing deep inside that her father shouldn’t be driving. The winding road through the mountains required careful attention. She didn’t even like to drive it, but she’d known it was better that she did it sober and inexperienced than him. She remembered how he wouldn’t let her, how nauseous she’d felt about it, getting in the car that night, and she remembered the crash, the huge, terrifying bang and flash of lights, the screeching of metal on metal, her mother’s scream, and then the darkness. That sick feeling returned now, rising up inside her, hot and churning.