by Jordyn White
So not only did he leave me in the middle of all that, but he’s calling back whoever it was? As I tuck myself back into my top, I’m trying to keep my cool. Maybe he has a good reason. Maybe he does. But I’m burning. I guess I know my place.
I climb out of the hot tub. The phone is back to his ear, and whoever he’s trying to get a hold of has his full attention because he doesn’t so much as look at me crossing the patio to the opposite gazebo. No, his attention is on the call and nothing else.
As I snatch up a towel, I hear him mumble, “Pick up.”
I plop down on a couch and start drying off, my cheeks on fire. I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to be hurt. But I am. It doesn’t help that my body’s still worked up from what he was doing to me. But is he such a workaholic that even if he gets a call in the middle of sex, that’s going to take priority?
I try to settle my emotions. I don’t need to feel slighted. This isn’t a real relationship anyway. What he does is none of my business. I don’t even know what’s going on. He could have a perfectly reasonable explanation. I just need to calm down.
“Hey,” he says to whoever’s answered the phone. “Are you okay?”
My ears perk, wondering why he would lead with that kind of question. I really look at his face for the first time since he jumped out of the hot tub. It’s tense with concern.
Okay, maybe there really is something going on.
“Oh.” He closes his eyes and lets out a silent breath of palpable relief. The in-control man I’ve been so used to makes a reappearance. “Yes. That’s no problem.”
He looks at me now, finally, an apology in his eyes.
He comes over, continuing his conversation. “Let’s make it tomorrow evening.” Sitting next to me, he places a warm hand on my knee. “Do you want to bring your stuff here or do you want me to go over there?” He squeezes my knee, holding my eyes. “Sure.” Now he smiles at whoever he’s talking to. “That sounds great. See you then.”
Once he’s off the phone, he immediately turns his attention to me. “Emma, I am so sorry.”
“Who was that?” I don’t sound jealous, right? I didn’t mean to.
“Corrine.”
“Your cousin?”
He nods. “She has questions about some investments she’s handling.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve been teaching her how to evaluate her numbers. She’s still learning.”
“I see.”
I feel weird. This isn’t what I was expecting. It turns out there wasn’t a previously-known problem that he needed to rush over and handle. I really am just low on his list of priorities.
Well, what did I expect? Why do I keep making situations like this more than what they are? Do I just suck at men?
“I owe you an explanation.”
I try to keep my voice casual. That’s what this is, right? Casual? No problem.
“No, you don’t.” I start to get off the couch. “You don’t owe me anything.”
Yeah, okay. That totally didn’t sound casual.
He grabs my wrist to stop me from leaving. “Sit down. Please. I want you to understand this.”
I sit back down, hopeful in spite of myself. My constant inner dialogue, the one that’s been telling myself to keep this relationship in perspective, totally isn’t working. It’s not my fault. I blame Rayce this time. He looks way too vulnerable right now for my heart not to open up as well.
He holds my hand. “I always answer when family calls. Always.”
“Okay,” I say slowly, still feeling like I’m missing something. I get wanting to answer for family, but even in the middle of sex?
“It’s because...”
He stops, apparently struggling to say whatever it is.
He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, resting his elbow on his knee. “I don’t usually talk about this.”
I soften. Whatever it is, this is a big deal to him. But he’s been understanding about the thing I’m struggling to tell him. I can do the same, even though I’d really like to know what just happened.
“Listen,” I say softly, “it’s all right. I’m not mad. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about.”
He straightens and drops his hand. “I know I don’t.” Our eyes meet and I feel that connection I’ve felt so many times in the last twelve hours. “I want to. It’s just... not easy. For me.”
I scoot closer, our thighs, hips and shoulders touching. I tuck his hand inside both of mine. “Then tell me later. If you want to.”
He slowly laces our fingers together. My heart pinches at this gentle intimacy. “The last thing I want is for you to think I wasn’t into that and would rather take a phone call then be with you.” He holds my eyes and shakes his head. “Because I wouldn’t.”
I squeeze his hand, believing him.
He takes a resolute breath. “The reason I answer the phone when it’s family is because the day our parents died, my mother called me from the boat.” He swallows hard. “And I didn’t answer.”
“Oh, Rayce. I’m so sorry.” How horrible to think there could’ve been one more chance to hear their voices. But I see something else on his face. “You’re not blaming yourself are you?”
“I did,” he confirms. “But that led to nothing but trouble.”
Now I feel like an ass. I shake my head. “I’m sure. Feeling responsible for something like that could really screw a person up.”
He nods. “It kind of did. For a long time, I—” he stops, his eyes searching my face. This can’t be easy to talk about, and I don’t blame him. But I want him to know he’s safe with me, the way he’s made me feel safe with him.
“I’m listening.”
He nods slowly, his eyes still searching my face. It seems like he’s weighing his words.
“I wasn’t myself,” he says carefully. “After they died.” He stops himself again, then shakes his head. “I felt...” He looks out to the ocean.
I wait in the silence, wanting him to confide in me. “You felt what?”
“I just felt...really...” His eyes go soft on the horizon. “... lost.”
My heart aches for him. As mad as I’ve been at my father, I’d be devastated to lose him so early in life.
“I wasn’t myself,” he says again. What does he mean by that?
“How so?”
He frowns slightly, then sits back, holding my hand more loosely. “I don’t know. Things were just more difficult than they needed to be because I thought I could’ve stopped it.” He seems to have changed course.
I get the feeling there was something he was going to say that he decided not to say. I’m disappointed, wishing he would trust me with whatever it was.
“Maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part,” he continues. “What do they call that stage of the grief process? Bargaining? Anyway, I finally talked the whole thing over with Connor and the truth is, even if I’d answered the phone, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. The autopsies indicated they died from blunt force trauma, not drowning. We think they were injured by the boom when their boat capsized. But...” His eyes hold mine. “I am always, always going to wonder. And I will never miss a call from family again.”
Yeah. I get it now. “That’s why you keep your phone with you all the time.” I didn’t realize how much I’d been noticing that.
He nods. “My family has a different ring tone so I know it’s them.”
“And here I thought you were just a workaholic.”
He smiles, and it warms my heart to see it. I hate him being in pain, and I’m glad this isn’t such a painful topic that he can’t smile right now. “Well, according to my family I am a workaholic, but no. That’s not what it was. I’m perfectly fine ignoring work under the right circumstances.”
He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me against his warm chest. “I want to make sure you didn’t think I wasn’t into it. If you’d left me for a random call I would’ve been annoye
d as hell, too.”
“I wasn’t annoyed.” I’m such a liar.
He chuckles. “What word do you want to use then? You were definitely something.”
“I was...” I don’t want to say. Because I was annoyed.
Giving me a heated, mischievous look, he rubs his hand along my outer thigh and says in a playful voice. “Hurt? Frustrated? Still horny as hell?”
His hand travels up the curve of my side, and my nipples peak beneath my damp swimsuit. I grin. “‘Horny’ is such a crass word.”
“What word do you prefer?”
“I refuse to say.”
He laughs and I join him. I love these games we play.
“Then I’ll say it.” He nudges his nose along my jaw, then brushes his lips lightly on the side of my neck. “You make me horny as hell.” He’s slowly lying us back, settling on top of me. “Over and over and over again.”
He presses an impressive erection alongside my seam and I instantly react to it. I angle back against him, more than ready to pick up where we left off.
“But if I’m the only one horny here,” he teases, starting to lift himself up.
I tighten my grip around his waist to keep him in place. “Don’t you dare leave.”
He grins, eyes on mine. “I won’t.” He settles his weight on me, his cock just to the left of my hardening bud. “I won’t,” he says again, still holding my eyes.
He cups my jaw with one hand, and we descend into a deep, heated kiss. He makes it so damned hard to keep my head screwed on straight. In spite of my better judgment, I’ve let him draw me in, one inch at a time. I’ve told myself I didn’t want this, but it’s exactly what I wanted.
I’ve been wanting to fall into Mr. Rayce Rivers from the start.
So I do. For a brief, blissful time, the guilt and worrying and wondering disappears. In the warm California sun, on his luxury patio, I wrap my legs around his waist as he ravages my neck and my mouth and my breasts. Keeping in each other’s arms, we work out of our clothes and join together again. I’ve lost count of how many times. I don’t even care.
I just need him. He’s slick with my need for him. I’m still surprised at how much he fills me, in every way. My body responds to his, yes. I’m almost delirious with the pleasure he draws out of me. My head arches back and my fingers dig into his shoulders as he lifts me in a swell of ecstasy I’ve only ever experienced with him.
But the rest of him fills me, too. He fills me in all the places I didn’t know were empty, and brings light to all the places that had been in shadow.
I won’t let myself think the L-word, though it’s tried to surface more than once. It only shows how out of my mind I am. Plus it’s not love if you’re hiding things, not the best version of it anyway.
As we build together, he starts to lose control, too. Diving as deep as I can take him, he clutches me to him, grips the back of my hair, groans deep and low. This. This is what I love. I’m not alone in my hunger for this.
He thrusts deep and hard, commanding an orgasm from my body and getting it. I’m a shuddering mass of splintering light. His body hardens as he comes with me. The edges of our bodies blur into one.
After, when we’re trying to catch our breath and my body is humming with the aftereffects of being with him, that’s the part I mentally return to, and the part that scares me: just how much he joins with me.
Every time we’ve been together, afterwards I have to try to bring myself back to reality. Because no matter how he makes me feel, I have to remember that for him, I’m probably just another woman he’ll be able to say he had once. A weekend romp. The thought of him holding someone else like he has me, of being so tender and gentle makes me wonder, but... well... he’s had lots of women so he probably knows how to treat them.
No matter how he makes me feel, I have to remember, this is the boss having a fling and no more.
A little voice in the back of my head whispers, This is different. This isn’t a fling. It means something to him, too.
But I don’t trust that little voice. Why should I? I said I would never sleep with my boss again, and not even two months later, here I am. This is exactly why I’m supposed to keep a distance between myself and the things I know are bad for me.
But I just... don’t know...
He pulls up on one elbow, looking down at me and giving me that tender smile that makes me feel so cherished and special.
Is this bad for me?
Or is he the best thing that’s ever happened?
I wish I knew how to tell.
We had breakfast so late and snacked by the pool so much that by the time we’re ready for a genuine meal it’s practically dinner time. I thought sure he’d insist on ordering in, but it wasn’t hard to persuade him that we could make something simple instead.
Rayce pulls a box of pasta out of the pantry, then holds up a can of tomato sauce. “One can or two?”
“Two. This sauce freezes well, so then you’ll have it.” He brings the items over to the counter next to me. I pull out a deep pan and set it on the stove.
“What else do we need?”
“Onions and garlic, if you have them.”
As he heads to the fridge, I’m drawn to the way the colors of the sunset are playing on the white walls in his living room. Almost the entire, massive space is reflecting orange, yellow, and the slightest tint of pink. God, that’s beautiful.
“Onions, no. Garlic, yes,” he says, setting a bulb on the counter.
I don’t respond, because I’ve realized something. It’s sunset.
Sunset.
He grabs the cans and takes them to the counter behind me. I hear the whirring of the electric can opener. “Is this lunch or dinner?” he asks, in a playful tone.
But all I can think about is the fact that it’s sunset and I still haven’t told him what I said I would. He won’t make me, either. I know perfectly well that he won’t ask or push and I could just go on not telling him.
A little longer. I could have this fantasy for a little longer.
“We’ll call it linner,” he says.
But if I don’t tell him now, I’m not sure I ever will. I sense that if I justify waiting, then I’ll just keep on waiting, and why? So I can try to keep him in spite of the fact that he probably doesn’t want me beyond a fling anyway. And even if he does, he won’t want me once he knows. How is that fair to him?
“Why does ‘linner’ seem like such a little kid word,” he says, “while ‘brunch’ is so grown up?”
My body is buzzing with dread. I don’t want this to be over.
He sets the opened cans on the counter next to me. “What else, babe?”
Babe. I can’t do this to him.
I turn toward him and spit it out. “I slept with my boss.”
He gets this self-satisfied look and starts to grin, as if to say, Damn right, you did.
“Not you.”
His grin falls and he blinks at me. “What?”
“At my last job. I slept with my boss there, too.”
His expression darkens. My stomach drops because I know this is going be a deal breaker. But I just keep going because if I’m going to spill it, I’m going to spill all of it.
“It didn’t feel like it has with you but I did sleep with him and we had an affair for two weeks and I knew it was stupid but I did it anyway—” I can’t stand the look on his face so I walk away and run my hands into my hair, grabbing at the roots and pinching my eyes shut and I just keep talking. “—and then when I broke it off with him, he fired me and accused me of stealing from him but I swear I didn’t. It was a loan and he said I could pay it back when I could but when I ended it he said I had to pay it all right then or it was theft—”
I’m on the other side of the island from him now, pacing and rambling like an idiot and he’s just watching me with this dumbfounded expression like he can’t believe I’m saying any of this and I knew this was going to change his opinion of me, I just knew it. I have to
get out of here but I can’t shut up.
“Then I found out he was married and I think he was afraid I’d tell, but I said I wouldn’t and who was going to believe me anyway because he was this great, adored man, just like you.”
I gesture in his direction and he flinches slightly, still looking stunned.
“He came from another location to cover for my boss because she was on maternity leave and everyone thought he was so fucking great and I did too because I thought he wanted to help me, but no. So I had to sell my car and almost everything I had to pay him back and he made me promise to keep quiet about everything or he’d still come after me for it, and I don’t know if he would have but fuck him because I paid him back anyway. And then Aaron and Pierce had to come down to rescue me because I had nowhere to go and no job and no money and no car —”
My voice cracks over the lump in my throat, but I swallow that down hard because I will not cry about this like a broken little bird, even though that’s exactly what I am.
“—and Aaron told me not to take the job with you and he was right, because the whole thing before was my own stupid fault. I shouldn’t have borrowed money from him to start with and I shouldn’t have slept with my boss and now I’ve fucking done it again! And on top of it all I’ve been lying to Aaron and Pierce to cover up what’s been going on with you and it was all for nothing because we both know this isn’t going anywhere anyway so let’s just—”
I throw my hands up and look around the kitchen as if I’m going to find the answers there.
“—forget the whole thing!”
And now I’m out. I rush to the counter, snatch up my purse, and somehow manage not to run down the hall. Once I’m out the side door, I do run across the darkening driveway. As the shaft of light from the open door narrows and disappears, I run through the opening in the hedges. Here, at last, I come to a full stop.
Aaron’s car isn’t there. There’s no car. No nothing.
Because I came here with Rayce.
I gape... then pitch my purse across the lot. “Motherfucker.”
Chapter 29
Emma
