Dirty Little Secret

by Wood, Vivian

My mind keeps wandering back to the first time we kissed. Not the first time that I kissed him, but the time a few days back when he kissed me like he meant it.

  The heat between us.

  His mouth pressed against mine, seducing me with strokes of his tongue.

  For just a minute, he owned me. Dominated me.

  For a heartbeat, I was ready to be ruined by him.

  How he made this deep sound in his chest — a growl almost — that made my breasts ache, made me clamp my thighs together.

  So much promise there, in a simple kiss. A chill rolls down my spine, just thinking about it.

  Lost in my thoughts, I spend the day slowly emptying the last of the papers from the library. I try not to spend too much time at the windows, looking for signs of Aiden.

  It’s better if I let him come to me. The past few weeks have proven that, time and again. I just have to try to be patient.

  When I finally do see him again, it’s almost early evening. After taking the last armload of papers upstairs, I find a stopping place. There is maybe three more days of work ahead, catching up on the papers I have already moved to the ballroom.

  Done for the day, I head back to my apartment. My mind is on what I have to do for the next few days. I make a mental checklist for myself as I walk down the wooded path. When I come out the other side into the clearing, I stop in my tracks.

  My heart pounds.

  My brain threatens to overheat.

  Aiden is right there in front of me, shirtless, high up on a ladder that leans up against the house. He’s facing away from me, scraping at the exterior, his body practically glowing with sweat. His back is about the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.

  Little rivulets of perspiration mark his lower back, tracing their way down into the waist of his black boxer briefs, peeking out of his jeans.

  Oh my god. The things I would like to do to him right now…

  He stiffens for a second, feeling my gaze on his back. Then Aiden turns his head, scowling at me.

  “What?” he barks.

  My eyes widen. “Nothing!” I manage, dropping my gaze.

  I rush past him to the door of my apartment, pushing inside. Once I’m through the door, I close it behind me. Standing with my back against the door, I try to control my racing heart.

  Why is he mad?

  I didn’t do anything, except be caught standing there staring at him. That wouldn’t have fazed Aiden at one point.

  Which means… he is close to breaking. All he needs is a little nudge to get him to tip over that point, the point of no return. God, I really need him to get to that point already.

  Wandering over to the window, I move the linen covering just a bit to see Aiden. I can only see part of his leg from here.

  Frowning, I let the linen drop.

  This is stupid. I shouldn’t have to wait around for him to get emotional enough to jump me. But what can I do?

  A sly thought sneaks into my brain. Make him angry. Angry enough to make him DO something to you.

  I know, I know. It’s not like me. But I read an article recently about being more assertive in relationships, how it’s really a turn on to men. And it honestly wouldn’t even be very hard. I just need the right clothes and a savage remark. He’s at the edge already, looking for a way out.

  Maybe if I just… give him a nudge…

  That won’t be so bad, right?

  I run to my room, stripping. I change into my favorite pink bra and panties, lacy and see through. Then I add a long t-shirt over the top, a slightly sheer one that I normally wear with a layer underneath and leggings.

  I let my hair down and put on just a touch of mascara. Too frazzled to look in the mirror, I leave my bedroom and rush to the door again. Taking a deep breath, I open the door.

  What am I going to say that will push him over the edge?

  I search my mind for what made him mad in the past. Stepping outside as I ruminate, I find that it doesn’t take Aiden very long to notice me. Specifically, the clothes I am wearing.

  He turns around on the ladder. “Where are you going?”

  My mouth turns up at the corners. “Out.”

  “Dressed like that?” He looks me up and down, his gaze so intense I can almost feel it burning me. “Who are you going to see?”

  Ah. He’s jealous. An idea rises in my mind and I put my hands on my hips.

  “Carter,” I reply. “I wanted to dress up. You know, impress him a little.”

  That does it. His face darkens like the sky before rain. “You don’t need to impress anyone, Olivia. Especially not him. And especially not wearing… that.”

  I turn away and start slowly walking toward the wooded path. “Why? I think I look kind of… sexy.”

  My cheeks redden, but my words only seem to drive him more crazy. Suddenly Aiden is climbing down the ladder, his face dark as a thunderclap. I keep walking, although it’s much slower than I would move if I actually aimed at not being caught. When he reaches me, he grabs me by the forearm and spins me around to face him with a flick of his wrist.

  My eyes go wide as he pulls me up against the hardness of his body. He glares down at me, as if he can force me to submit to his will just with a look.

  He’s nearly right. God, until this moment, I forgot how much bigger he is than me.

  Aiden jerks my arms behind me and shackles both of my wrists with one hand. “You’re not going anywhere, little girl.”

  Swallowing, I can feel myself begin to tremble as I retort. “You don’t have any say in it, Aiden. Who are you to tell me what to do with my body?”

  His eyes seem to crackle with malevolence. “You’re not throwing away your virginity on Carter.”

  “I am,” I spit back. “It’s mine to do with what I wish. And because you don’t want me—”

  He lurches down and puts his lips against mine, his kiss as punishing as it is sudden. I resist at first, which only seems to make him more intent. Struggling against his grasp, I refuse to open my mouth under his tongue and lips.

  But inside, my heart sings. He’s shirtless and slick from sweat, his chest heaving.

  What is that old adage? How men want what they cannot have?

  Aiden definitely wants me right now. I can tell because I’m pressed tightly against his groin. I can feel his thick erection, so large it is frightening, and only growing harder every time I struggle.

  He wins though, despite my defiance. He cups my jaw and gets his tongue in my mouth, which is pretty damn hot. I love the way he tastes, like mint and sweat and lust. The hand holding my wrists lets them go in favor of pressing me against him, grinding us together hard.

  Aiden steps back several times, taking me with him. Then he backs me up against the house, pinning me in place with one of his warm thighs. He grabs my tee shirt and rips it down the front, exposing my bra.

  He must like what he sees, because his lips find my collarbone, sucking on it for a second before moving down to my breast. It feels incredible. My eyes close for a second. My head drops back to rest against the house.

  I can feel his mouth as it hovers over my breast, teasing. Arching my back, I thrust my breast forward to meet his lips. Aiden closes his wet mouth over my nipple, biting it and sucking it hard through the sheer pink fabric.

  I stiffen, feeling my pussy grow wet. It’s like there is a flow of energy going from my nipple to down between my legs, and the connection is slowly growing stronger. Every time his tongue moves against my skin, abrading it the slightest bit, I grow more restless.

  Needing more from Aiden but not knowing exactly what, I wrap my legs around his back. He groans against my breast, which causes little vibrations to escape his mouth too. Those vibrations cause gooseflesh to break out all over my body. He cups my other breast, kissing down into my cleavage.

  Then one of his hands slips from my outer thigh up to my inner knee, caressing its way up toward my pussy by slow degrees. He stops his hand just below the vortex between my legs, moving it to th
e top of my thigh and squeezing it hard. I gasp at the sensation, wriggling against him. My arms are around his neck, my fingers ploughing through the thickness of his dark hair.

  “Please…” I whisper, even though I don’t know exactly what I want. My whole pussy throbs with need.

  Aiden kisses my nipple again, then bites it. I shiver as a river of feeling flows over me, dragging me down and putting me at risk of washing away completely. Then he stops, looking at me with his intense, dark gaze.

  “Please what?” he says, his voice gone to gravel.

  I’m too shy to answer right away. I blush red, though I’m already so flushed right now that it hardly matters.

  While he waits for an answer, he runs his lips up the column of my neck. I swear, I catch fire in that moment, going from a pool of gasoline to a full blaze. He is the match that, once struck, has now changed some essential part of me. There’s no returning to the girl I once was, untouched by Aiden Moreland.

  So I burn. It’s not aimless, not without purpose, either. I burn for Aiden, the flames reaching higher and higher until they threaten to raze down the entire world around us.

  It feels like I have waited my entire life for this moment. My heart pounds in my ears, its chant encouraging me.

  Go on. Do it. This is. Your chance.

  “Please,” I plead with him, working to find the words. “Take me. Break me. Do what you want with me. I’m yours.”

  Aiden stiffens and straightens, peering down into my eyes. He scans my face, an unspoken question hanging in the air between us.

  He huffs out a breath. “You want me to be your first?”

  “I—”

  A cry comes through the woods from the direction of the main house, a man’s voice. “Olivia! Aiden! Someone!”

  We both freeze, our attention turning to the voice.

  “Is that Carter?” I whisper.

  “Help! I need help!” the voice shouts.

  Aiden lets me slide down before he steps away. It’s like something shifts in him, the sex god that I was just with retreating, the Navy man stepping forward into his place.

  I clutch at the edges of my ruined shirt, my eyes wide. Aiden glances back at me, hesitating for a moment. “Go,” I urge, moving toward my apartment. “I will follow you once I throw on a sweater.”

  He turns and breaks into a jog, his mind on whatever is going wrong at the main house. I run into my apartment and shove the first sweater I find down over my head. Then I sprint to the main house, just in time to see Aiden and Carter lifting an obviously ailing Margaret into the back seat of Carter’s silver Mercedes.

  Oh, God. At Margaret’s age, almost anything could be wrong. I get tears in my eyes as I realize that she might not be okay.

  Aiden looks around as he circles the car to get in the passenger side. He spots me and mimes a phone, which I assume means he will call me, I guess.

  And then they are gone, the Mercedes taking off down the gravel path in a whoosh of dust. I stare after them, only realizing when they are gone that I am shaking like a leaf.

  Chapter Twenty

  Aiden

  When Carter and I drive Margaret to the hospital, we are only concerned that she has fallen and twisted an ankle. It’s only later that we discover that she’s had some sort of mini-stroke shortly before that.

  Inevitably, this prompts Carter to call the entire Morgan family to come to St. Luke’s Medical Center. After waiting impatiently for hours, the doctors tell Carter and I that Margaret hasn’t broken her ankle. They will be keeping her for the next few days to monitor her and change her medications, though. She’ll need a lot of rest, I guess.

  As the family begins to arrive, I fade into the background. When I walk out of the hospital and hail a taxi to the Morgan estate, I feel little relieved that something worse didn’t happen to Margaret. She is already practically a ghost, hobbling around the ground floor of the mansion all alone.

  I can’t stop picturing the family, her nieces and nephews pressing their faces eagerly against the windows of the house. My aunts and uncles, if my mother’s tales were true.

  I get a bad taste in my mouth after that thought.

  What will happen to the estate without Margaret? It really doesn’t bode well for my search for my true father, I guess. I stare out the window of the taxi, my own thoughts making me feel morbid.

  By the time I get back to the big house, Olivia comes running out to the taxi to meet me. As I hand the driver a wad of cash, she demands information from me.

  “What happened?” she says, gripping me by the elbow. “Is Margaret okay?”

  I sigh, pulling her along as I head for the front porch of the main house.

  “She is resting comfortably. We thought she had maybe broken her ankle, but it’s just a bad sprain.” I hesitate. “There is some bad news, though.”

  Olivia looks up at me with wide eyes as we climb the porch steps. She looks like she’s preparing herself for the worst. “What?”

  “She had an attack. What did they call it? A transient ischemic attack. Sort of a partial stroke, but not as serious.”

  Her eyes bug out and they fill with tears. “What does that mean? Can she… is she…”

  I interrupt her, holding up a hand. “I told you, she’s okay. She’s just resting. They are going to keep her for a few days.”

  She lets out her breath in a rush, blotting at her eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be.” It seems natural to pause and draw her into a hug. And she lets herself melt against my body, all too willing, sniffling. She fits in my arms perfectly.

  I rest my chin against the top of her head, for a second forgetting everything else but how amazing holding Olivia feels. For something that is supposed to be wrong, her small body pressing against mine feels fucking right. She makes a soft sound against my chest, somewhere between a sniffle and a sigh.

  Though I don’t want to, after a minute I push her back a little. She wipes at her eyes again, shaking her head.

  “Sorry,” she apologizes, her voice raspy.

  I favor Olivia with a soft smile. “It’s okay. I think it’s been a long day for all of us.”

  She bites her lower lip for a moment then sighs. “While you all were gone, I tried to work. And I came across something that I think you should see. Come on, it’s upstairs.”

  She offers me her hand as someone would offer their hand to a small child, which makes me smile. I take her hand, wrapping my larger one around it. She tows me inside and upstairs to the ballroom in silence.

  Once we step into the ballroom, she lets my hand drop. I feel the absence of her hand keenly for a few beats of my heart, but I keep it to myself. Olivia moves around the stacks of paper to her desk, then returns to where I stand in the doorway with it. I glance at her expression as she hands me the paper but her face is unreadable.

  I glance down at the paper, studying it. It’s just a cheap piece of paper, with a string of numbers printed at the top which I think means it’s been faxed. The printing on the actual document is small, but I see that it’s titled “Certificate of Live Birth” at the top.

  Everything else swims in my vision, looking like I’m holding a photocopy of something written in an ancient language. I try to scan down for a name, but it’s useless. I thrust the document back at Olivia.

  “Read that off for me, will you?” I can’t even look at her, because I am so fucking ashamed.

  She takes it back from me and clears her throat.

  “Certificate of Live Birth for Aiden Maxwell Moreland. Born in Newark, New Jersey on November 1st, 1989,” she announces.

  God damn. It’s my birth certificate, then.

  “Oh my god,” I mutter, looking down the page. “What the fuck?”

  Olivia is chewing on her bottom lip like she’s keeping a secret. Glancing at her, I wave the piece of paper in front of her face. “What the fuck is this? Someone knew that…”

  I halt, groaning and putting a hand over my fac
e. I have to tell her the whole truth now I guess, since she already found out this much. She hovers sort of anxiously, her eyes glued to my face.

  “My mother told me before she died that Thomas Morgan was my father. No more, no less.” I blow out a breath. “I don’t even think she knew that he died.”

  Olivia’s eyes go wide. I can see her trying to do some math in her head.

  “Whoa. Is that how you ended up out here?” She pauses and then shakes her head. “No, you moved out here years ago. And your mom only passed away a few months back.”

  My heart drops into my stomach at the mention of my mother’s death, but I give her a wan smile. “Upon reflection, she did give me the pamphlet for the National Park and told me that this specific location was hiring. She also impressed upon me the fact that she had some of her best moments here in Washington.”

  Her lips lift at the corners. “That’s actually really sweet. She wanted you to at least have a chance to experience what she did by coming out here.”

  “Yep.” That’s all I know to say.

  She quirks a brow. “If Thomas is your father… that would make Carter your half-brother.”

  The back of my neck heats as I think about Carter. “Yeah, in theory.”

  “God, the first time I saw you two together, I thought that it was funny how much alike you looked. I guess I wasn’t crazy then.” A small smile plays on her lips. “I guess there is a little brotherly competitiveness between you two then, only he doesn’t know that you’re brothers?”

  I look down at the ground. “You could say that.”

  “Ah.” I can see the gears turning behind her eyes, she’s thinking and drawing conclusions. But for once, I can’t tell what they are. “Well… that makes more sense.”

  “What does?” I ask.

  She colors. “Well, earlier when I mentioned that I was going to see Carter… you pounced on me.”

  I suck in a breath. “I think that had more to do with you and less to do with Carter, honestly.” I pause, then the words tumble out of my mouth, unheeded. “I guess I just don't like thinking of you losing your virginity to anyone else.”