by Tessa Bailey
There was that word again. Deserve. The need to address it was like a spoked wheel turning in his throat, but something else snagged his attention and wouldn’t let go. “Wedding planner. Is that how you met her?”
“Yes,” Peggy said after a moment. “She planned my wedding. She planned all four of them. And I didn’t show up to a single one.”
Elliott stumbled to a halt, his pulse speeding up so fast, he got dizzy, vision doubling. “Four?” he wheezed. “Four, Peggy?”
“That’s right.”
When she stopped on the path and turned, her eyes tightly shut, he could see she hadn’t planned to make the confession. Maybe wished she hadn’t. But now that it was out there, she was hardening herself, ready to embrace it. A player who’d been injured, but was ready to get back in the game and ignore the potential damage that could be done. “Four great guys and I couldn’t commit to a single one.” Pain sliced across her features. “I gave them all different reasons when I broke it off. I’m scared of getting old and boring. I want to focus on my career. I don’t want kids. But you know what it was, Elliott? You know what it really was?” She braced herself, and he got the distinct impression she’d never told the next part to anyone. “They were all too nice to me. I couldn’t stand it. Every time they complimented me or bought me a gift, my fucking skin would crawl. I hated it. And I hated me for hating it.”
“Peggy,” Elliott managed. This was his doing. All of it. Lamps were flipping on all over his pitch-black room, revealing monsters and shortcomings and screwups. They were everywhere. They’d been there this whole time, waiting to be illuminated. “Ah, baby. What have I done to you?”
“That’s not the worst part,” she half whispered, half laughed. “The worst part is I let you.”
“I told you…” His words emerged choked. This was why he avoided relationships of any kind, even when he was an active part of them. There was no way to circumvent the inevitable destruction he caused. The memory of a phone ringing caught him in the neck, that devastating stretch of time where he tried to remember if he’d done his job as a husband, a father.
Being hit with the certainty that his lack of caring had killed someone for whom he’d been responsible, knowing he was more than capable of doing it again, had torn him down the middle. Rendering him incapable of being healthy for Peggy.
“I told you to stay away.”
Peggy moved into Elliott’s space, peering up at him from beneath her eyelashes. Seduction mixed with curiosity. Could she see the cracks in him? Yes, she always could. Always knew exactly where to insert the crowbar to pry him farther apart, but nothing compared to now, because she’d finally shown her own cracks. Fissures that he’d hammered into her, sure as they were standing there.
I’m cancerous. I didn’t send her away in time.
“So are you going to let me?” Peggy breathed, walking closer until Elliott was forced to back up, his knees hitting the edge of a wooden bench.
“Let you what?”
“Get you out of my system.” Her answering smirk said, Keep up. “Remind you what you’ll be missing when I leave again?”
She shoved him hard and he allowed himself to fall back onto the bench. A battle went live in his chest, complete with cannon blasts. One side fought against the critical need she stirred in his belly. But the opposition was far stronger, because it had the desire to soothe her on its side. To take the deeply etched hurt he’d seen in her eyes tonight and obliterate it, make her forget every single negative thing in her mind. And above all, he was so fucking jealous over four unknown faces, his cock was swollen with the urge to erase them from her memory bank. Forever.
The years that separated the last time he’d been inside of her were nothing, nothing, compared to how damn good they were together. You didn’t just find someone else to take the place of perfection. Hot, rough, perfection.
But as Peggy’s knees planted on either side of his thighs, the things she’d said—not just tonight, but that afternoon—replayed in his mind like a determined broken record. Like you hate me. I deserve it. They were nice to me. I hated it.
“Peggy, slow down a minute.”
She unzipped his coat and rubbed her hands down his chest, all the way down to his lap, where she ran a knuckle along the seam of his fly. “It doesn’t feel like you want me to slow down.”
God in heaven. “Want is a different animal than responsibility.”
Her eyes flashed. “I’m not your responsibility.” She cut herself off at the end of the last word. “You know what? My mind is my own, but this unsatisfied part of me is your doing. You made me need something and left me with no way to get it. Or feel it.” The touch of her hand left his erection and he almost—almost—growled at her to put it back, had to battle his instinct to keep from making the order. Instead, he watched as she slipped her skirt high on her thighs, revealing the top of her stockings, so close to her pussy—and his dick pulsed hotter. “I want the wrong kind of sex, Elliott. The kind only you gave me.”
“I was, am, the wrong part.” He was vehement. “Not you.”
She carried on as if he hadn’t spoken. “The difference between then and now is this Peggy finally figured out the score. Just show me one last time, so I can walk away knowing without a doubt I’m better off.” She unzipped his jeans and slid her hand into the opening, massaging his aching shaft through his briefs. “Do that for me, Elliott?”
I’m not prepared for this. Proving beyond a shadow that he was a negative influence on her mind, her body…God, her heart. Letting her go. None of it. He hadn’t woken up this morning with the willpower for something like that—and it was possible the willpower he’d employed to send her away in the first place had only been an illusion to begin with, because having her on his lap, her voice in his ear, was like seeing again after a three-year bout with blindness.
“Peggy…”
She must have heard the hesitation in his voice because her eyelids flickered, a huhhn sound leaving her lips, then she grabbed his hand, pressing the palm up against her panties. Damp material greeted him. Elliott and his balls constricted hard enough to grit his teeth. “Finger me, Coach Brooks,” she murmured. “Wet me up. Make me shiny. Isn’t that how you like me?”
“Yes.”
Elliott was fast losing any notion of self-control, but he dragged it back with determination. There was no stopping the bullet train that was their sexual chemistry, or the pounding, driving need inside him to take her, especially after seeing her so disillusioned, but he could make the encounter good for her. Make it healthy. If he did any more damage, especially after witnessing the aftereffects, he would never forgive himself.
He pressed the heel of his hand to her clit, chafing the silk up and down. “Maybe I did one or two things right in my life, huh?” Knuckling aside the edge of her underwear, he pushed his index finger into her heat, issuing a low curse between her breasts. “Seems impossible, but I must have, if I’m about to have your slippery pussy ride me again. God knows that’s the sweetest reward life has to offer.”
“No.” Her breath hitched. “No, you stop that. I don’t need to be told I’m pretty or I have a nice body.” She nipped at his mouth and he nipped back, both of them bearing their teeth. “You rip off my panties, fill me full. Hold me down while you take and take a-and repeat the Our Father.”
How many times had he done that?
The question reverberating in his mind, Elliott slid his fingers free of the tight spot between her thighs, a lodgment the size of a fist jammed in his throat. He’d made her the embodiment of sin. He’d foisted that on her when she’d only wanted to comfort him in a dark time, offering her body and heart as a way to forget. Because she’d felt something for him. A feeling he’d returned, but hadn’t known how to handle. So he’d twisted it, turned it into something shameful. Goddamn him.
“Peggy, no. That wasn’t right of me—” Elliott cut himself off as a necklace winked back at him from the V of Peggy’s coat. Was that a
diamond hanging from the chain? Urgency bit him in the sternum, making it impossible to go another minute without getting a look, and before he knew his own intentions, Elliott had pried apart her coat, snatching up the necklace. “What the hell is this?”
Color stained her cheeks, but she lifted her chin defiantly. “The heads I’ve hunted.”
“These are engagement rings,” he gritted out. “You wear them around your neck?”
“Yes.” She tried to jerk away, but Elliott held fast to the piece of jewelry. “I’ll be buried in them, if I want.”
The blinders he’d been wearing since Peggy left were long gone, and he might as well have been standing right there in the moment she drove away, watching her leave from his garage, the smell of her still on his skin. If he hadn’t shut himself off as her cab kicked up dust, he would have gone after her. Dragged her back and admitted everything. How badly he needed her. All of it. And those long-buried admissions clashed with his jealousy now, so righteous he could barely think straight around the desire to take. To claim.
“You want my fuck, baby?” he gritted out. “You take them off now.”
She glided into his space, bringing their mouths a hair apart. “Go to hell.”
“I’ve been there. I own property in it.” Holding her gaze, Elliott twisted the necklace—and snapped the chain, feeling the night wind howl in response. But the sound was nothing compared to Peggy’s reaction. Oh no. He would remember it until the day he took his last breath.
The way a sob seemed to surge up inside of her, fleeing her mouth in a terrible rush. She was a suspect in a courtroom hearing a not-guilty verdict. She quite simply broke, falling against his chest in a way he never expected from positive, bubbly Peggy. “Please, Elliott. Don’t do this to me. I haven’t…” Her voice bathed his ear in heat. “I haven’t been able to. Not since you. And it hurts, it hurts, I hurt everywhere.”
“You haven’t what?” He tried to duck down and meet her gaze, but she evaded him by pressing her face into his neck. “You haven’t had an orgasm, Peggy? Since…”
She shook her head.
A ringing began in his ears, too many reactions to count clashing in his chest. Responsibility, shame, pride. Pride that he hated, because she’d been in pain, but couldn’t deny nonetheless. He fixated on responsibility, grabbing on like a rescue raft being tossed into the ocean.
Give her what she needs.
Chapter Fourteen
Peggy kept expecting to be embarrassed. Maybe she’d simply filled her quota for humiliation that day already, but somehow admitting her inability to climax to Elliott only seemed inevitable. Like she’d just been waiting for the right moment in the dark when their facades came down, so she could be honest.
Honesty. Was she ever honest with anyone? Even her best friend only received half-truths and evasions, her family only seeing the happy-go-lucky baby sister. Maybe sexual release wasn’t the only thing she could share with Elliott alone. Maybe it went hand in hand with the truth. Sex, honesty, Elliott. All the times in between when she couldn’t succeed in finding pleasure…it was possible she’d just been weighted down by her constant pretense.
Vanity reared its head to save her. Probably from placing too much importance on this last time with Elliott. Ruining herself forever. Because after this, it would be over. No more lying or fronting or pretending she was fine when her chest felt split down the middle. Admitting your problem was the first step toward correcting it, right?
“This isn’t why I came back here,” she whispered against his neck. “I didn’t drive all this way just so you could orgasm me. So don’t get a big head about it, okay?” His hands were everywhere, big and commanding, teasing over her bottom, roughing up her thighs with scrapes of his calloused palms. God, nothing had felt that good in so long. “This is about m-me moving on. I don’t want your pity.”
“No?” His mouth opened on her neck, delivering the exact amount of suction to make her legs jerk, to start a miserable/wonderful quickening at the juncture of her thighs. “Let it be about pity for me, then. I might come on occasion, but it’s never near as satisfying as when I did it in your pussy. Not even close. And the idea of looking for someone else? Fucking laughable. I haven’t glanced at another woman since you drove away. They might as well be invisible.”
“Stop.” Behind Elliott’s head, Peggy’s hands curled into fists that shook with the urge to strike out. The impulse stemmed from the center of her chest, colliding with the flare of unwanted pleasure that he’d been celibate without her. “I don’t want to know it was hard for you. You’re the one who kicked me out.”
Beneath her body, his muscles went tight, his breath going shallow. “Baby—”
In a panic, Peggy cut him off with her mouth. For a few beats, he resisted, that stubbornness radiating from the hard lines of his body, but she couldn’t allow him to say whatever it was. Premonition told her it would be counterproductive. Ha. Such a technical term for taking a scalpel and carving words into someone’s heart.
His resistance abated in seductive degrees, his right palm sliding beneath her skirt on a dark groan that increased in volume as he found her wetness again. Yes. Elliott had this way of fingering her that she’d never been able to mimic, no matter how many times she attempted it alone in the dark, her head tossed back on the pillow. A man testing out the goods. That was the only way she could describe the manner in which he shoved his index finger deep, his brow furrowing as he drew that single, blunt digit in and out. Sampling her resistance, checking for the right amount of wetness…and always, always, being over-the-top satisfied with the results.
Elliott’s jaw fell as he added his middle finger, curving them inside her to find the gathering of devastating nerve endings on her front, inner wall, and exploit them. “Why aren’t you stroking me off right now?” His chastising tone flowed from the top of her head down, down, like warm water. “I’m about ready to rip through these briefs. Were you waiting for an invitation?”
“No.” A buzzing current replaced her blood, lightning flickering in her veins. She couldn’t get her hands on his erection fast enough, was dying to hear his approval, his pleasure, punctuate the air between them. And it did. It did. As soon as her palm dipped beneath the waistband of his underwear and began to rub that ruddy trunk, he gave a gritted curse, hips jerking.
“Shit.” His fingers crammed deep inside of her with that single word, forcing a tight-lipped cry from her mouth. “Your skin on mine. That’s what was missing. Skin on skin.” Barely able to stay upright under the weight of lust, Peggy closed him in her fist and pumped his flesh, tight and slow, loving the way his jaw loosened. “That’s right. You remember how I need it done. How to make me so hard, I have to concentrate on not coming the whole fucking time I’m inside you. Because that’s what you need. Isn’t it? You need me to sweat and get angry and shake over how good your pussy feels. You get off on my torture.”
“Yes. Yes. The things I do to you are bad.” She released his rigid length in favor of quickly unbuttoning her top, shoving the sides open to give him a view of her braless breasts. He loved it. Loved them on display, because his fingers began working her center with fervor, his eyes glittering with the kind of lust that swelled her nipples, the nub between her legs. “Can I ride you, please?”
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Elliott rasped, and she swore—she swore—a flicker of regret crossed his face, but she ignored it, using her sliding grip on his huge arousal to make that unwanted emotion vanish into nothing but blatant hunger. “Having a front row seat to me giving in to temptation?”
Heat seared her from all sides, firing even hotter when his thumb started fondling her clit, dragging a ragged moan past her lips. The way he looked at her, perusing every inch of her with a hooded expression, turned back time to when she was his downfall. The downfall of mankind. “I bet if I check your pocket, I’ll find a condom. Won’t I, Coach?” She tucked her fingers into his jeans and closed them around a foil square
, euphoria making her light-headed. “Did you hate it? Did you hate going into the store and buying this, knowing you shouldn’t use it on me, but secretly hoping you would?”
“Yes. All right? Yes.” He levered his body forward to catch one of her nipples in his hot mouth, abusing it with his tongue as he sucked. Her center clenched so tight, she knew if she didn’t get Elliott inside her soon, she would climax right there on his lap. And she needed so badly to have that completion while filled, every inch of her crowded and stretched the way only he could do it. “Can’t stop thinking about how hard I used to fuck you. How hard you used to let me. Just driving you up the bed until you were bent in half, that blond hair tangling around your ankles.”
Holy shit. Peggy shoved at Elliott’s shoulders, putting his back up against the bench, his expression rife with lust and anticipation as she applied the latex, sucking in a breath when she felt him pulsing against her fingertips. Using the bench’s wooden back for balance in her left hand, she moved higher on his lap, guiding his erection home with her right. “Oh God, oh God,” both of them groaned in a seemingly endless loop, as she sank down—
With only half his erection inside her, Peggy started to shake, the orgasm she’d spent so long chasing, busting through the dam of her middle and drowning her, dragging her under the churning relief. She felt Elliott’s hands in her hair, his powerful grip steadying her, mouth blocking her scream with a kiss. The kind of kiss you gave someone you might die without. Fast, slow, heads turning, bodies twisting. A full body kiss. “More. Elliott. More.”
He searched her eyes a moment before laying another one of those bruising, soul-crushing kisses on her mouth. Reeling over the sensation of ultimate fullness—possession—she wasn’t prepared when Elliott shoved her hips down, impaling her completely. Another crest of pleasure sailed through her, making her quake on the thick perch of his manhood. Her muscles were already brutally sore from the first time, she realized in a far-off way, before Elliott’s harsh voice pierced the fog around her.
