Beach Reads Box Set

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

  She screams my name and creams all over my dick, bucking her hips and clenching her trembling thighs so that when I start to come, my hips are trapped in the cradle her body has made for mine.

  “You’re going to end me,” I groan.

  “No baby, this is where you begin,” she pants, and when I pull out next, she hops down, whips around and falls on her knees.

  She cups my balls with her hand and fists my pulsing dick with the other and puts me into her mouth and sucks me so hard her lips hollow.

  I push her hair back off her face, and she looks up at me. Her eyes water when my dick hits the back of her throat, but she doesn’t quit. I love you, I mouth down and she winks before she closes her eyes and hollows her cheeks.

  When I come, she catches what she can on her tongue. I pull her up, turn the water on and rinse her clean.

  By the time we get out of the shower, we’re right again. I’m hoping that tonight’s dinner won’t be a disaster. I mean, it’s just food and a few friends. What could go wrong?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Let Them Eat Cake

  Confidence

  “I’m so glad he didn’t cancel.” The woman next to me looks down the table to where Hayes is sitting. “These flood watches are so tedious,” she says to me like she expects me to agree with him.

  I force the sincerest smile I can muster. I’m sure it looks more like I’m suffering from a bout of constipation. And the churning of my stomach says that if I’d been able to put anything in it since this morning, I might actually be unable to evacuate it from my body.

  Tedious is the very last word I would use to describe this dinner or this day. I can’t believe that, on my first visit to Houston, the weather has taken such a huge turn for the worse. Hurricane Harvey has dumped historic levels of water on the city of Houston. The flooding has been catastrophic for a lot of the city. And yet, here we sit.

  The dining room has a glass dome in the center and the clatter of the driving rain against it reminds me of the way it beats down on the corrugated metal roof of our mobile home.

  I push the food around my plate as my appetite refuses to cooperate. I’ve never heard of, much less eaten, some of the things they’ve served today. I’ve always been an equal opportunity eater. But today, not even my mother’s chicken fried steak could tempt me.

  “Where did you say you were from?” The woman who hasn’t bothered to introduce herself demands.

  “I didn’t,” I say and smile. I refuse to accommodate this woman’s snobbery. If she wants to know, she’ll have to introduce herself like a normal person would.

  “Oh. Well.” She smiles coldly. “I’m Davina Bain. Our families have dined together for almost twenty years,” she informs me and then glances around the table with distaste.

  “Though, I have to say that the quality of the attendees has been diluted since Hayes got back. He was raised in Italy. And in the countryside or something dreadful.” She frowns disapprovingly. “I heard he’s taken up with some nobody he met in Europe.” She says it like it’s a total scandal. “Anyway, you’re such a pretty thing. Who are your people? A girl that looks like you is exactly what he needs to soften up his image,” she says and look at her like she’s an alien.

  “Did you really say that?” I ask and she must mistake my anger for something else because she pats my hand.

  “Don’t mind all the talk about him hurting that girl,” she says, her smile thin and empty. “He’s richer than Croesus. It’ll make a couple of black eyes a year worth it.”

  It takes Herculean strength to keep my hand in my lap when all I want to do is slap her. I’m reminded of something I learned from the sharp bite of my father’s rage. There are devils walking around in skin that makes them look like normal human beings.

  “Who are your people?” she asks, her eyes scanning the table while she sips her soup.

  “I’m Confidence Ryan,” I tell her. “I’m from Arkansas. I’m the nobody he met in Europe,” I inform her with a smile. And I enjoy the momentary flash of panic in her eyes as she realizes who she’s been talking to. It’s gone as quickly as it came and in its place is a smug, disdainful frown.

  Her eyes, once friendly and bright, dim. She sniffs as if something distasteful wafted into her nose.

  “Well,” her eyes flick over me as if she’s trying to find what she missed in her initial assessment. “At least you look the part,” she says before she turns away. Dismissing me in a way that feels eerily familiar. It’s reminiscent of the way Hayes looked at me that night in Italy. Like I’m beneath her. That memory still makes me queasy. Being with Hayes’s family and friends tonight has made me queasy. I look around the huge table. Almost everyone is engaged in a one-on-one conversation. Except Hayes, who’s watching me with a scowl. His stepmother made the seating chart—who has a seating chart for regular dinner?—and when Hayes took his place at the head of the table, I was unceremoniously asked to vacate the seat next to him for Mr. Jones and shown to a seat all the way at the other end. Hayes didn’t say a word. Between that and the rain, I feel stressed out on a level that has me wishing I could go for a run. And I hate running. With a passion.

  “You understand, don’t you? It’s protocol,” his stepmother said as she led me to my seat. I didn’t answer because I knew she didn’t really care if I understood. She’d made her feelings about me plain when I saw her right before dinner. She leaned in, pretending to hug me and whispered in my ear, “Don’t get too comfortable. I’ll be damned if the next Mrs. Rivers is another nobody from nowhere.” Then she’d pulled away and smiled brightly and said, “We’re thrilled to have you, dear,” loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  I don’t know if I’m going to tell Hayes any of this. What would be the point? He can’t do anything about it, and I can see that he’s trying hard to continue the tradition of his family. Even if they are dumb and useless ones.

  We haven’t had a moment alone since we came down for dinner. And now, I’ve been dismissed as lacking by a woman who spent the first forty-five minutes of dinner telling me all about the piping for her new window treatments.

  “Most of them are fine,” the woman next to me murmurs in my ear.

  “Excuse me?” I turn to look at her. She’s a pretty woman in her late sixties with skin the color of hazelnuts, eyes the color of coffee, and a warm smile.

  “But some of them are a bunch of stuck-up assholes.” Her whispered words are colored with humor. “We’re only invited because the previous Mr. Rivers and my husband were friends. It’s only since Hayes got back that we decided to come at all. Trust me, honey, you’ll be glad they don’t talk to you,” she says with a wink.

  “I like you.” I stick my hand out. “I’m Confidence. Yes, that’s my real name,” I say before she can ask.

  “I’m Mary Hassan, and what a fantastic name,” she compliments sincerely.

  “Thank you,” I say in kind.

  “Well, I know a little something about sitting at tables you weren’t exactly invited to, so I can empathize,” she says. “And, I have three grown daughters. You look about their age,” she says. And I think how lucky those girls must be.

  Those girls are lucky to have a mother whose eyes light up when she talks about them.

  “Do they live in Houston?” My heart jumps in hope that maybe I’ll make some new friends.

  “No. My oldest and her husband are in DC. My middle and youngest both live in the UK,” she says.

  “Wow, that’s amazing. I just took my first trip out of the country this summer. I can’t imagine living overseas. What took them there?” I ask.

  “My baby got a job; she’s a lawyer—”

  “Oh, me, too,” I say excitedly.

  “Are you? I should introduce you. They’ll all be here for Christmas. Just three more months,” she says happily.

  “I’d love that. I’m moving here. My best friend lives here actually, but I would love to meet more people,” I say gratefully.

  �
�You’ll love them. My middle is married to an earl and lives in England,” she tells me proudly.

  “Really? What is that like?” I ask, looking around this room and thinking I can barely handle these entitled rich people. How would I deal with aristocrats?

  “She had a hard time with some of the people in his circle. She’s not what a countess looks like over there, but she’s won them over now,” she says.

  “That sounds like a hard transition,” I muse.

  “It was. But for her husband’s sake she worked her way through it. And now, she’s just like one of the locals. She even teaches a coding course at the local high school,” she says. I smile at the pride in her voice and reach for my drink to avoid having to speak.

  Hayes is no earl. But around here, he’s like royalty. And given my less-than-warm reception, I’m worried about being his partner. I think that’s where we’re going. He wouldn’t have asked me to move in with him if he didn’t think so. I wouldn’t be considering it if I didn’t, too.

  She touches my arm. “I saw you come down with Hayes. You make such a beautiful couple.”

  “Thank you so much.” I glance down the table at him just as a man dressed in one of the dark blue valet uniforms rushes into the open doors of the dining room and bends to whisper in his ear.

  Whatever the valet says can’t be good. Hayes’s jaw clenches, and his brow furrows. Then, he tosses his napkin down on the table and stands up.

  “Excuse me, everyone,” he says. I watch him in hopes that he’ll make eye contact with me. He doesn’t.

  I war with myself, watching the door, and unsure whether or not to follow him. Mary touches my arm again and I glance at her.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “What were you saying?”

  My eyes dart back to the door for a second and when I look back to her, she’s smiling sympathetically.

  “That’s one of the benefits of being someone’s other half,” she says. “You don’t have to wait for them to say they need you. You just go because you know they always do.”

  She cocks her head to the door. “See you later,” she says.

  We share a smile, mine full of gratitude for this unexpectedly kind woman being here tonight. I start to stand up and she touches my arm.

  “We own Palmyra, it’s a Middle Eastern Restaurant in Rivers Wilde ,” she says. “Come visit me, I’m there on weeknights.” She squeezes my hand and I squeeze hers back.

  “Oh, that’s my favorite! I’ll come see you,” I promise.

  “I’m so glad he has someone like you. He’s going to need you.” She nods at the empty seat at the head of the table.

  I want to ask her what she means but at the moment, I’m more concerned about Hayes. I walk out of the dining room, and the weight of the stares on my retreating back are heavy. The whispers are loud and I’m sure everyone is wondering who the hell I am. I want to turn around and yell, “I’m his,” but that would just delay. And something tells me I need to get to him as fast as I can.

  I step into the hall and look both ways down the long, dark passage. I have no idea where he went. I’m turning left when a loud crash of glass has me turning right. I run down the hall. Muffled, but loud voices spill into the dark around me.

  “You can’t keep doing this, Dare,” Hayes says.

  My hand freezes on the door knob. This is his younger brother. The one Poppy mentioned earlier.

  “I didn’t realize I couldn’t come to my own family’s home,” the other man slurs.

  “I didn’t say that. I just wish you would lay off the alcohol and only God knows what else you’re putting into your body,” Hayes says, his voice tight with restrained anger. “Confidence is here, and I’m trying like fuck to make sure she wants to come back.” I know he’s been on edge about my visit. But it’s jarring to hear the anxiety so clearly in his voice.

  “Well from what you told me, it sounds like she lives in some shit hole mobile home in the middle of nowhere.” I’m startled by how much he sounds like Hayes. The drunken slurring of his words is the only way I can tell the difference. That, and the ugly insult in his tone.

  “Shut up,” Hayes snaps.

  “I’m sure she got one look at this place and realized she hit pay dirt. She isn’t going anywhere. Trust me,” he says.

  The words and the ease with which he flings them feels like a lash across my heart. Is that what everyone thinks?

  “Dare,” Hayes says, the warning in his voice making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’m caught between wanting to go in and needing to hear how Hayes will respond.

  “Oops, I forgot. You fucked her and forget you begged me to run a background check on your little gold digger” Those words hit me like scalding water. I cover my mouth to muffle my gasp of pain.

  “Dare, don’t say another fucking word—”

  “What? Only you can say she’s good enough to fuck but not good enough to bring home,—” he starts before his voice abruptly cuts off and the sickening sound of crunching bone fills the air.

  “You broke my nose, you asshole!” the drunken voice screams before more glass crashes to the ground. And the telltale sounds of a tussle—grunts, curses, furniture scraping the floor, glass shattering—fill the air. I open the door and see two men, both big and tall, on the ground in a hopelessly well-matched tussle.

  I know I should call for help, or step in to stop the fracas. Yet, I do neither of those things. Instead, I just watch the two men fight. My eyes remain on Hayes, the man I love. He still looks exactly the same, but at the same time, so different.

  I can’t move.

  I can’t breathe

  He ordered a background check? He knows every ugly thing about me. Anger, betrayal, and fear whirl. My head spins as those thoughts mingle with the sounds of chaos. The sounds of my childhood. Of furniture breaking, grunts of pain, the crunch of fists, the slap of skin on skin. I’m caught between the devil and hell—I don’t know which direction in this house of horrors to turn. But somehow, I manage to run until I get to our room. I sit on my bed and try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do.

  * * *

  I’ve just started to drift off when our bedroom door opens. My eyes snap open and I stare unseeingly at the wall as I wait for him to say something. He slides into bed with me. I can smell sweat, blood and liquor on him. His body is cool, the stubble on his face is slightly damp as he presses his cheek to mine and wraps his arms around me. A fraught and angry energy emanates from him. And like the fool I am, all I want is to soothe him. I lift his knuckles to my lips and kissed the sore, stiff, red joints..

  He turns me around, and without saying a word, kisses me.

  We make love for an hour, maybe more. We find a calm that always exists in the sanctity of our bodies’ communion. When we are together like this, it’s easy to forget that anything else matters

  We roll out of bed and shower at 2:00 a.m. I kiss his bruises without asking how he got them. He accepts my kisses without offering any explanations. We go back to bed and do it all over again. I fall asleep on him, sated but dreading the reckoning the sunrise will bring with it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Pride

  Confidence

  My phone beeps with a new email and I look over at my window and see the first hints of sunlight peeking through my curtain. Hayes stirs beside me and I decide to ignore my phone. I snuggle into him. “Good morning,” I whisper into the back of his warm, muscled shoulder.

  “Morning,” he mumbles sleepily, his arm snaking behind him to pull me closer. “I need to tell you about last night.” His voice is partially muffled in his pillow, and he turns to face me. His eyes are clear, and I realize he’s been awake longer than I realized.

  My heart falls. I’m dreading what I know I must say. What I must do.

  “I already know,” I confess.

  His muscles tense. “What do you know?”

  I gaze at him.

  I love him.

  But I can�
��t be with someone who thinks those things about me.

  I push out of his grasp and sit up and pull the covers over my chest. I stare at my fingers, twirling the rings the way he does all the time.

  “You know why I wrote that thesis?”

  “Huh?” he frowns, his brow furrows at the abrupt turn in our conversation.

  “I wrote it because I love the river. But I wanted to protect my people from the destruction it always causes,” I choke on a sob.

  “Hey … baby.” He starts to sit up and put his arm around me. I shake my head and climb out of bed, taking the sheets with me. I sit on the large window seat, and a tear splashes on the blue gray fabric I’m cocooned in. The tiny moist spot bleeds to form a quarter-sized stain. I wipe at my eyes with a brutal pass of my hands.

  I take a shuddering breath and stare at my hands while I try to collect myself. Growing up, I watched year after year as the river banks swelled when the rain overwhelmed it. And its lazy, tranquil flow would transform into a beast. It laid waste to every single plan, hope, home, heart that was in its path. When it receded, it would leave everything covered in mud and dirt. Some things would never recover. Like me. Now, I look back at him. He’s watching me with a perplexed expression on his face.

  “I know rivers, but you made me forget the danger. I forgot to cage my love for you. And now, I’m drowning in it,” I whisper.

  “Confidence, you need to stop speaking code. Tell me what the fuck is going on?” He raises his voice in frustration. “Why are you crying? And why can’t I touch you?” he asks, his voice even louder, and he sounds as angry as I feel. I glance at him and it pisses me off that he doesn’t look panicked or worried.

  “You’ve ruined everything!” I shout, suddenly overwhelmed with anger, sadness, disillusionment, despair.

  “You need—”

  “I don’t need to do anything,” I say in defiance.