Flawed

by Tracy Wolff

  But all good things must come to an end and eventually he stops rubbing me. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t whimper a little at the loss of his thumbs digging into all the sore spots on the bottom of my foot.

  His only response to my involuntary protest is the look he shoots me, jaw clenched and blue flames dancing in the depths of his eyes. It’s a look designed to make me hot—to make me want—and it succeeds.

  Oh God, does it succeed.

  Instead of taking advantage of the fact that jumping his bones is suddenly the only thing I can think about, Miles just calmly checks the butterfly bandage on the heel of my hurt foot before gently lowering it back to his lap. Then hands me the bowl of popcorn.

  It’s a poor fucking substitute for what I really want in my mouth at this moment, but beggars can’t be choosers. At least he sprinkles the M&M’s on top and then shakes the bowl, so that they can get all gooey and melty amid the hot popcorn.

  I don’t know how, but this man really doesn’t miss a trick.

  As the movie progresses, I pretty much eat my weight in popcorn from the bowl—though I do alternate between shoving pieces into my mouth and tossing them the small distance to Miles’s open mouth. Which is why—by the time the movie is two-thirds over—the bowl is empty.

  And my cheeks are wet again.

  For the love of God, why is the love-and-die movie an actual thing? Why?

  I find myself rooting for them—for Lou and Will—even though I know how this is going to turn out. Even though I’ve read the book, too, curled up on my bed and sobbing like a baby all through the Mauritius trip.

  It’s just so hopeless, this quest she has to convince him to live. Hopeless and romantic and so, so beautiful. And when he tells her that it doesn’t matter, that he loves her but nothing she does is going to convince him not to die, I pretty much turn into a broken, sniveling mess.

  Miles shifts, then, letting my feet drop to the floor as he wraps his arms around me and pulls me into his lap. As he does, one hand tangles in my hair, keeping my cheek pressed to his shoulder as the other hand strokes soothingly up and down my back.

  We watch the rest of the movie that way, with me piled on top of him and him wrapped around me. It’s hot and sticky and maybe even a little uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t trade it for a second. It’s what I’ve been missing from the moment I opened the door to my irate father this morning, the comfort of another human body pressed against mine, making me feel less alone in this nightmare.

  Making me feel like somehow—someday—things are going to be okay again. That thought, combined with Will’s trip to Switzerland, is all I need to go from silent tears to full-on sobs.

  Miles holds me through all of it, rocking me gently and murmuring soothing nonsense in my ear as the movie draws to a close.

  I’m not sure how long we sit there like that, with me curled on his lap, my face pressed—hot and wet—against the curve of his neck.

  Long enough for the ending credits to scroll across the screen.

  Long enough for my seemingly never-ending tears to eventually dry up.

  More than long enough for exhaustion to slam through me like a freight train.

  I collapse against him, my body melting into his so completely that for the first time in my life, I’m not sure where I leave off and he begins.

  It’s hot and sticky despite the air-conditioning and eventually I expect him to push me off his lap—or at least to complain. Instead he climbs to his feet with me still clutched in his arms. I’m a little drowsy and a lot wrung out by this point, so I don’t complain. Don’t tell him I’m too heavy or that I can walk or that he doesn’t have to do this.

  Instead I cling to him—arms wrapped around his neck, legs wrapped around his waist—as he carries me up to my room.

  I’m pretty much a control freak at the best of times, and I should be nervous as hell that he’s carrying me. Not that I think he’s going to drop me, because I don’t—the arms wrapped around me are made of steel, as is the chest I’m currently pressed so tightly against. But still, handing over the reins to him like this, letting him take care of me when I’ve taken care of myself for so, so long, should feel strange. Uncomfortable. I don’t even like taking help from Chloe and we’ve been best friends since freshman year of college.

  I’m not nervous, though, and I’m not uncomfortable. In fact, it feels good to let him take care of me. Feels good to give up that responsibility, even if for just a little while.

  When we get to my room, he crosses to the unmade bed and settles me against the cool sheets. Immediately I feel bereft, cold, and I refuse to let go, my arms still wrapped around him like a limpet.

  “Don’t leave me,” I murmur, the words barely audible as my lips are pressed against the stubble on his cut-glass jaw.

  “I won’t,” he soothes, even as he untangles himself from my octopus clutches. “I’ll be right back.”

  It’s all the reassurance I need, and I fall back against the bed, my eyes drifting closed practically as soon as my head hits the pillow. I’m pretty out of it now, only vaguely aware of Miles walking across the room, and then of water running in the bathroom.

  But when he comes back and strokes a cool cloth over my hot, tearstained cheeks, I shudder at the first touch of his fingers against my skin. “It’s going to be okay,” he tells me softly. “I promise you, I’m going to make sure everything’s okay.”

  I nod, and although I don’t believe him—not really—the words are as comforting as the cloth. I reach for him, tangling my fingers with those on his free hand even as I curl myself around his arm.

  “Please,” I say, pressing kisses to the back of his hand. “Stay. Just for tonight. Please, just stay.”

  He doesn’t say anything at first and panic starts to race through me, destroying the sweet lassitude that has taken me over in the last few minutes. “Please,” I repeat again, my free hand sweeping along his thigh and over his already half-hard cock.

  I pause, squeeze a little, reveling in the sudden sound of a harshly drawn breath in the nearly silent room. I’m exhausted, totally and utterly worn out, and I don’t want to be alone. Not tonight. So if sex is what will keep him here…I’m game. Because no matter how worn out I am, fucking Miles Girard will never be a hardship.

  He groans a little, then pulls away and I whimper. I actually whimper, as I reach for him again.

  “It’s okay,” he tells me again, his voice a deep rumble/growl that is somehow both comforting and sexy as hell. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t make any move to touch me, but the reassurance in his voice is enough to have me relaxing.

  There’s a soft rustle—clothes hitting the floor, and then he’s leaning over me. Grabbing my hand and giving a sharp tug that has me spinning onto my side before I even know what’s happening.

  “Wha—”

  “Ssssh,” he says again, stroking one callused hand down my arm, my hip, the side of my thigh. “I’ve got you.”

  The bed sags just a little as he climbs on next to me. And then he’s there, his long, lithe body resting against mine as he wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me even closer.

  My back is to his front now, and I can feel him everywhere.

  His hard, chiseled chest pressed against my back, with only the thin cotton of my tank top separating my skin from his.

  His hips pressed against my ass, the long, heavy weight of his cock pressing insistently at me.

  His heavily muscled arm wrapped around me, holding me close. Sheltering me. Making me feel calm and safe and settled in a way I almost never feel, even when disaster isn’t all around me.

  It’s that feeling that turns me on when I thought I was too exhausted to feel anything else. That feeling that has my nipples peaking and my breath catching in my throat even as I wiggle my hips against him.

  He groans deep in his throat, then shifts a little so that his suddenly much harder cock is actually pressed wher
e it will do some good. But then his hand is on my waist, stilling me—stilling both of us—and he’s whispering, “Go to sleep, Tori.”

  “But—”

  “Go to sleep,” he says again, and his voice is so deep, so comforting, so soporific that I can’t help but do exactly as he says.

  Chapter 12

  Miles

  How the fuck did I get myself into this? I wonder as Tori shifts against me, that sexy-as-hell ass of hers rubbing against my dick for the fifth time in as many minutes. She’s sound asleep—as in totally-out-of-it, dead-to-the-world territory—but that’s not a surprise after the day she’s had. I’m just amazed she lasted as long as she did without breaking down in hysterics. God knows she deserved it.

  Every time I think of that asshole Parsons I want to beat the shit out of him. He’s probably sitting somewhere right now, drinking champagne and toasting all the publicity he’s getting from this sex tape, while Tori is devastated, exhausted. Completely wrung out.

  I’m not okay with that. I’m not okay with him getting off scot-free while her whole world is turned upside down. I’m not okay with him fucking her over like this just because he doesn’t like taking no for an answer. And I’m sure as shit not okay with the fact that Tori is so, so hurt and messed up right now because of some dick who doesn’t even deserve the right to touch her.

  As she shifts against me, her beautiful body setting every part of me aflame, I remind myself that she’s fragile right now. That she’s been hurt. That I have no business lusting after her. But as she rubs her ass over my cock and presses her tits—her beautiful tits with their hard little nipples—against the top of my forearm, it becomes more and more difficult not to wake her up and finish what we started downstairs.

  Any other day I’d be buried balls-deep in her by now, fucking her long enough and hard enough to make her forget about Parsons and her asshole of a father, to make her forget—at least for a little while—about the sadness that is always apparent at the back of her eyes.

  But this isn’t any other day. This is the day Tori’s whole world got ripped away from her and I’ll be damned if I use the crazy chemistry between us to take advantage of her fear or her loneliness—no matter how many sexy little sighs she gives or how many times she grinds back against my cock. If I did, I’d be no better than Parsons and definitely no better than Brandon, the guy who raped my sister and got away with it for far too long. I absolutely, categorically refuse to be that guy.

  It’s bad enough that I already took unwitting advantage of Chloe’s pain by using the money his family paid to keep her quiet. I’ll be damned if I take advantage of Tori, too.

  With that thought in mind, I shift around a little, pressing my hips backward as I try to put some space between us before I end up jizzing my shorts like some fifteen-year-old with his first girl. But Tori’s having none of it. For every inch I put between us, she moves that much closer, scooting back and back and back until I’m balanced on the very edge of the bed and she’s pressed right back up against me again, so close now that the hard ridge of my cock is nestled right between her cheeks.

  Which is conducive to me sleeping in absolutely no way ever.

  And still I hesitate to untangle myself. Still I hesitate to leave her alone when she so clearly doesn’t want to be.

  It’s a stupid move on my part, especially since it’s going to doom me to a damn uncomfortable night—one where, instead of sleeping, I spend most of my time trying to keep my hands—and my cock—to myself.

  What I should do is get out of this bed and head down to my workshop so I can get some work done—and so I can distract myself from Tori. It’s hard to believe that I haven’t set foot in there since she showed up this morning, even harder to believe that I haven’t given the desalinizer more than a cursory thought. Usually I can’t get the thing out of my mind. How to make it cleaner, faster, easier—most of the time the ideas chase themselves around in my head at all hours of the day and night. The fact that I haven’t even given a thought to what is soon going to be the biggest jewel in the Frost Industries crown doesn’t bode well for me getting it finished in time.

  It also doesn’t bode well for what Tori does to my self-control.

  The smart thing to do right now is to extract myself from this situation—and from her—as quickly and as quietly as possible. If I’m going to pull an all-nighter, it might as well be in the lab, where I’m comfortable. And where my defenses are back in shape. It’s only when I’m here in bed with her that everything gets shot to hell and all I can think about is want want want.

  I’m about to say fuck it, about to slide off the side of the bed and crawl across the floor if that’s what it takes to keep her from waking up. After all, I have a ton of work to do to get this prototype up and running before the next board meeting; I can’t afford to be distracted. But before I can do anything more than put a foot flat on the floor, she whimpers. High-pitched and haunting, it freezes me in place. And has any thoughts of leaving her here, alone, flying right out of my head.

  She’s been through hell today and if a little human comfort is what she needs, then it’s what I’m going to give her. And if I end up with fucking blue balls in the process, well then, that’s the way it’s going to have to be.

  It’s the resolve in that thought—the inevitability of it—that finally lets me relax. That has me pulling her even closer, so that we’re sharing one pillow even as our bodies are pressed together from the neck down.

  As I do it, as I tighten my arm around her waist and snuggle her into me, she sighs, and her entire body relaxes—almost as if the full body contact is, even asleep, exactly what she’d been waiting for.

  As we lie there, her warmth seeps into me and a sweet, syrupy lassitude creeps through me as my breathing syncs up with the slow, steady rhythm of hers.

  There’s a part of my brain that wants to run calculations on the desalinizer, that wants to work out the latest problem with saltwater conversion. But there’s another, bigger part that just wants to lie here with her. That wants to savor this moment, savor this night, savor the feeling of Tori burrowed so close to my heart.

  And in the end, that’s exactly what I do. Seconds slide into minutes slide into hours as I lie here, holding her. Sheltering her. Breathing in the sweet cinnamon-and-vanilla scent of her. Eventually, dawn streaks across the sky outside her bedroom window and only then, when the dark threat of the night has passed for her, do I slip into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  —

  I wake up to a raging erection and heat sizzling through my bloodstream. Tori is stretched out on top of me, her tiny body doing the best it can to cover me from shoulder to calf. She’s soft and warm and her lips are just a little bit wet where they’re pressed against my throat. Her nipples are hard, her body restless, and her fingers tangled with mine on either side of my head.

  It’s a novel experience, waking up with a woman on top of me, her hands and body pinning me to the bed. But from the way my dick is rock-hard and ready before my brain even knows what’s happening, it’s definitely not a position I mind finding myself in.

  “Tori, baby.” I whisper the words softly against her temple. And if my lips happen to drop down a little and graze the sensitive skin at the top of her ear as I do, well then no one needs to know about it but me. “Wake up.”

  “I am awake,” she murmurs, her hips moving sleepily against mine. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”

  Fuck, she feels good. My hips rock against the heat and wetness of her once, twice, before I manage to control myself. But it’s a close call as all I really want to do right now is slide inside her. She moans when I stop, her entire body shuddering as she turns her head and skims her lips along the line of my jaw.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispers, her hands clenching tightly on mine. Then she’s moving, her legs sliding off mine and onto the bed, until she’s straddling me, her knees next to my hips and her pussy pressed even more tightly against my suddenly ra
ging cock. And fuck. Just fuck. I want to be inside her so badly that I break out in a sweat from head to toe. And can I just say, restraint and chivalry really fucking suck—especially when there’s a beautiful woman on top of me who’s giving every indication that she wants me inside her.

  And not just any beautiful woman. Tori, with her quick brain and multicolored hair and delicate curves that seem to be made just for my hands. For a moment I think about untangling our fingers and sliding my hands up her stomach to cup her beautiful breasts. I want to feel her nipples against my palm and the soft resilience of her flesh beneath my fingers. Want to hear the catch in her breath and see the way those big, melted-chocolate eyes of hers go all blurry.

  But this is Tori, I remind myself even as I rock my hips up to meet hers—once, twice.

  Tori, who has been through hell and is just looking for comfort, no matter what this feels like.

  Tori, who is my sister’s best friend and who, on a normal day, can’t stand that I even exist. No way would she be okay with the fact that only two very thin pieces of fabric—and my even thinner self-control—are all that is keeping me from sliding inside her. Taking advantage of her vulnerability and her need for human contact just because I can would make me no better than Parsons.

  It’s that thought, more than any other, that finally gives me the strength to lift her off me. That gives me the strength to lay her down on the bed and slowly untangle our bodies. Once there’s some space between us, it will be much easier to think—and hopefully, much easier to break the sensual spell that seems to be holding us both in thrall.

  It’s a good idea in theory, but I’m not counting on her looking up at me with eyes that are wide and desperate. I’m not counting on the high-pitched, breathless sounds of protest she makes—sounds that slam straight through my bloodstream and right into my cock. And I’m sure as hell not counting on the way her hands clutch at the bare skin of my shoulders and chest as she tries desperately to hold me in place.