Intrigue Me

by Lacee Hightower

  No reason for alarm my ass!

  Cold shivers slid through me as I stared at the deep blue lace. Every single thing about this screamed three fries short of a Happy Meal. I snatched the blindfold from Clinton’s hand, anger rippling through me, and twisted it between my palm.

  “Take me home, Clinton. Please.”

  “Ma’am.” Clinton looked into the mirror again. “It’s okay. You’ll see.”

  You’ll see? What the hell? If he has it his way, I won’t be able to see a damn thing.

  A warm blush prickled my cheeks at thoughts of role-play with Tage. Raging images flashed through my mind, heating everything between my legs as I visualized being tied and bound, open and vulnerable. Was that what this was about? Was this his so-called privacy issue? For all intents and purposes, Tage could be running a harem full of a dozen or more females. Be an agent for the secret service. Have a dungeon right inside his house. Dating for a few weeks eight years ago didn’t mean I knew him today.

  I didn’t.

  I shook my head at a stoic-looking Clinton, then stuffed the blindfold into my purse.

  “I’m not wearing the blindfold.”

  “I understand, ma’am.”

  Thirty some odd minutes later, a gust of warm Texas wind hit my face, the muggy breeze no relief for the sweep of nervous perspiration beading over my brow. Clinton held the car door open, taking my hand and ushering me inside, only to quickly disappear with nothing but a curt Enjoy your evening, Ms. Montgomery. More mental images filled my mind, proclaiming nothing but eeriness. Unexpected. Out of the blue.

  Inside the large open room, the air was heavy with masculinity, smelling of leather, the outdoors, wealth and importance. Testosterone. Male. A cool chill coursed through my veins as I stared up a lovely sensual painting of a nude woman lying on top of a bed, as flowers were being brought to her. Mesmerized by the intensely beautiful portrait, my feet nearly left the ground as a pair of strong palms wrapped around my waist.

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

  Tage’s lips brushed the back of my hair, subtle hints of musk and woodsy florals waking every one of my hot spots. He rested his chin on my shoulder, sending another whiff of the seductive cologne up my nostrils. Holy freaking shitballs, he smelled like hot, toe-bending sex.

  Feeling strangely calm, I released the breath in my throat. “Very.”

  “It’s Edouard Manet. Olympia is the name of the painting. It was first exhibited at the 1865 Paris Salon, only to later be acquired by the French government. The name ‘Olympia’ was once associated with prostitution, and the painting actually caused quite a controversy for a time.”

  “How did you get this? It’s so beautiful.”

  “It’s only a hand-painted reproduction, doll. The original lives in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.”

  With his arms still around my waist, we stayed like that for long minutes, both immersed in the sensual artwork, an energy trailing down my spine and flooding my head with twisted, crazy thoughts of sex. A few ticks passed, and he laced his fingers through mine, spinning me around to meet his hard chest and that beautiful corn-blue gaze. “Sa vacker,” he uttered in a low tone of voice that dripped with seduction. “You’re so beautiful. More stunning than any woman I’ve ever seen. Yet your eyes … there’s so many ugly secrets behind them, aren’t there, Ava?”

  His gaze had hardened, his features angry, cold, and emotionless.

  “Secrets?” I asked, perplexed. We both knew our history. If anyone held secrets, it was the man looking down at me like he’d just as soon kick me in the throat. Anger beamed in his eyes, along with what seemed to be a touch of discomfort, or uncertainty.

  “Tell me something, Ava,” he bit out. “Were you ever going to tell me I had a daughter? Or did you plan to simply stick with your story so I’d never know any different?”

  My blood turned to ice as he slammed a hard fist on the table.

  “And before you respond,” he added with a harsh sternness to his tone, “be very fucking careful with your answer.”

  My stomach suddenly ached, my hands shaking. Senior year was staring me in the face.

  “I’ll make you feel real good.”

  “Mama, I love him. I want this baby.”

  “Ava, your baby has Down syndrome.”

  “Y—you bastard,” I spat out. “How dare you! You ruined my senior year. Playing me and fooling me with your phony promises when I thought you were different. You used me, Tage. Left me feeling awful inside, pregnant, while you left Farmersville and went on with your life like nothing ever happened. I was fortunate enough to hide my pregnancy and keep the rumor mill from rolling, but, thanks to your father, we were forced to move right after graduation, and my mother died three weeks later. For that, I will always blame you. And now … you bring me to your home after pleading to see me. But yet, you wanted me to wear a blindfold, and you accuse me of having secrets? Who are you? Haven’t you hurt me enough in the past? Haven’t you hurt our…”

  On the brink of falling apart, I stopped speaking. Thinking of my beautiful little girl who I felt privileged to be a mother to. Who I loved more than any one thing in this world. The awkward conversation I’d be forced to have with her one day. Would she understand? Would she be hurt? Would she blame me? I couldn’t stand that thought.

  “Ava.”

  Tage’s brows were arched, his eyes drilling into mine, assessing. Studying. Raked with greed. I pushed a hand against his upper body, meeting nothing but hard lines of sinewy muscle, a pounding chest, and a distant reminder of mild commands and a firm knowingness to a woman’s body. My knees weakened with thoughts of him above me … full of his thick erection … his hands on me … sensual Swedish words falling from his lips.

  Standing tall in a black t-shirt stretched tight over his chest, and faded jeans hugging his hips just right, his liquid gaze was revoltingly heartless and cold, showing no empathy, no compassion. My chest was pounding, my body aching. “Take me home, Tage. Now.”

  “Take you home?” Sizzling hot rage seethed in his eyes. “Perhaps I’ll consider it after you make me understand why you’ve kept my daughter from me all these years. And abortion? Really, Ava? How fucking classic! Tell me why I was good enough to fuck, but not good enough to be a part of our child’s life. I deserved to know her, goddammit. The lies end today. Right here. Right fucking now.”

  My heart sank at what he’d just said. Did I understand him correctly? I couldn’t have.

  “Kept you from her? Abortion? Have you lost your damn mind? You’re clearly delirious, because I did none of those things, Tage. You walked away. You made that choice. Your father made it perfectly clear that I wasn’t good enough for you and that you had no intentions of being strapped down. And what he did to my family was reprehensible.” Bitter tears stung my eyes as I looked down to see my hands trembling. “My parents deserved to stay in the small community they loved. In the house my dad built from the ground up, without threats. I—I don’t want you or your family around my daughter.” My heart was racing a hundred to the minute, my eyes growing misty.

  “Our daughter, Ava. Ours.” His chest expanded on a deep breath. “I no longer associate with the infamous Nathan Morgan, nor do I know anything about any fucking threats. I do, however, know damn well that I plan on being around my daughter, with or without your blessing.”

  My eyes went wide, my tone rising. “Your father promised to ruin my reputation, along with my father’s. He said you would never want this child, or me. My mother was only weeks from her last breath, Tage. My dad had no strength left to fight someone like Nathan Morgan, and my mother was clearly too weak to move. But my dad sold the house they both loved, the house my mother should have spent her final days in. We moved three cities over to avoid your father.”

  With an uneven intake of breath, he responded, “I knew nothing about threats or ruining anyone’s reputation. Only that you aborted my child and wanted nothing further to do with me. I was banned from ca
lling you or seeing you, yet I called for weeks, Ava. Even after I left Farmersville.”

  He had? Why hadn’t anyone told me?

  His hands fell deep into his pockets as hurt flickered in his eyes. “All these years I’ve lived with the idea that you ended our child’s life before it began. Christ, Ava,” he added, gazing at me with disappointment and regret, his face bending into a frown. “My father is a selfish, heartless bastard. I know that. You know that. But Michael Kavanagh claimed you aborted because I was part Swedish. He said you no longer had an interest in me and most definitely didn’t want the child. He also demanded money. So, you’ll have to forgive me for not placing all the blame on dear ole Pops this time around.” There was a threatening ring to his voice that made my heart thunder.

  How could this be true? My dad claimed Nathan Morgan promised to wreck my reputation and turn my life upside down, demanding we leave Farmersville, or otherwise deal with the consequences. Why would my own father tell such outrageous lies? Why would he keep a father from knowing his child, or demand money from anyone? Had my mother known any of this? Had she betrayed me as well? Had they both kept me from speaking to Tage on the telephone?

  Nothing made sense.

  Tears bit at my eyes. Right now, I had no earthly idea what was true, or why anything happened the way it had.

  Would my dad really do something so awful?

  “Tage, I’m telling you, I thought you left Farmersville because you didn’t want our baby, or me. I don’t understand any part of this.” Grief bled into my chest. I didn’t know which hurt more. The fact that Tage had believed I would abort our baby, or that my own parent would do something so unforgivable.

  Both made me sick to my stomach.

  A lone tear trickled down my cheek. Melli was the love of my life. Precious and dear, she was my heart, my reason for making every day a special one. Regardless of the excruciating fact that she had special needs, she was worth every single second of all the tears I had shed. All the prayers I’d rattled off between sobs. Abortion never entered my mind. Not even once. Sure, in the beginning I wished for things to be different. To be normal. I wondered why me? Why her? How am I going to do this alone? Then, before I knew it, all the what-ifs had diminished and been replaced with whens. Truth was, I didn’t consider the slight upturn of her eyes or her shorter than normal neck to be unusual or abnormal. They were all parts of her beauty. Facets of her character.

  My lifeline … my daughter … Melinda Dawn Montgomery.

  “My God, Tage,” I whispered. “I loved Melli from the minute I knew she was inside me.”

  Tage’s piercing stare bored straight through me, his eyes such a heavy reminder of our daughter. “Why did you name her Melli? And why did you give my daughter another man’s last name?”

  A knot formed in my throat as sentiment raced through me. “I named her Melinda after my mother, and Dawn because she was born right as the sun was coming up.” His jaw tweaked as his eyes drilled through mine. “Legally, her name is still Kavanagh. But after we left Farmersville, Lance and I started exchanging phone calls and talking online. I confided in him about the pregnancy, and oddly enough, we started dating a few weeks later. Once we married, I just started listing her name as Montgomery. It seemed simpler for her. For all of us,” I added through a choking sob. “I did what I thought was best. I didn’t think you wanted her, Tage.”

  “And yet I did.”

  My chest felt like someone had a heavy hand against my me, squeezing and sucking the air from my lungs. “They lied,” I whispered, a hundred different emotions filling my head. “Or, namely, my father, I guess. But why? He knew I loved you. Tage. I wanted to come after you so many times. I wrote a dozen letters, dialed your number over and over, but I was scared. My heart was broken. I—I…”

  Tage lifted his hand to my face and brushed my cheek with the pads of his fingers. There was a touch of something warm in his eyes that made me want to forget everything and just melt into him. I wanted his arms around me, his warm lips against mine.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could get the words out, I was being pushed into the hard wall, his strong arms pinning me between his, tempting me into soul-deep, crushing need. He leaned over, kissing into my mouth with his sinfully luscious lips, while his fingers pushed painfully through my hair, rolling it into uncomfortable tight balls.

  “I still don’t want you,” I breathed against his lips.

  With a sigh, he drove his body against mine in a delicious way that shot off tingles of desire through every part of my body. “I can tell.”

  “Y—your…” I swallowed hard. “Your demeanor is lewd and insulting.”

  He mulled over me with a hardened expression, this man the ultimate perception of sensual, hot, and salacious all in one package. “Quite possibly,” he responded chillingly, “but something tells me you like … lewd and insulting. If my instinct isn’t failing me, I believe my little sensitive advice columnist may hold a shimmer of nefarious tendencies of her own.”

  A shiver slid through me, followed by a feverish ache in my core as he pressed the heaviness of his body and very prominent erection against me. Still confused by what was happening, still broken over the past, there were a hundred reasons not to be here and a thousand new red flags of caution. But dammit to all out hell, I couldn’t help it. Just being around him made me crave things that held no semblance of sense. I wanted to surrender. I wanted him to take me. Seduce me. Control me.

  Subdue my smaller body with his much larger one.

  I pulled in a slow edgy breath, annoyed, yet so aroused. All I could think of was the emptiness in my core and how badly I wanted it filled with the thick cock that was pressing into me.

  He lifted my cheeks and held them possessively between his palms. “Let’s talk about what happened between us all those years ago. Discuss what’s going on between us now, and the fact that I want you and my daughter in my life, and that I’m a sexual sadist, and what that involves.”

  Overwhelming surprise stormed my chest. I couldn’t breathe, all the oxygen sucked straight from my throat. Huh? What? A sadist? A million different scenarios suddenly played through my mind. Knives, fire, dark dungeons.

  Dominance was one thing. Spanking, playing, control, and turning the power over to a man followed by mindless passion, were all things I had craved for years, read about in depth and daydreamed over. But being caned, whipped, led around like a pet—even though all those things seemed interesting and came across as erotic and romantic in books—was a whole other separate lifestyle all of its own.

  I swallowed deep, lifting my chin from his grip. I wanted this man. More than my next breath. Sweet mother of fuck, I did. But he’d still hurt me. He’d still walked away without banging on my doorstep and demanding an explanation. Still left town without any kind of goodbye. He may have called but he could have called again. He could have thrown rocks at my bedroom window until I opened it. In my mind, he could have tried harder. Now I was beginning to understand, the pieces all coming together. Maybe he held no real feelings. Maybe his heart was stone.

  I refused to fall into the clutches of a sexual sadist. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  “You’re out of your damn mind.”

  But so damn beautiful. So capable of making me fall apart.

  He studied me, the heat in his gaze blistering hot, his eyes persistent and unwavering. Sweet Jesus, the things he did to my body, my mind. He cupped both my jaws with his palms—tightly this time—then slid them into my hair.

  “See me again, dammit,” he said low in his throat, pressing his cock that was hard and thick, against my fluttering belly. “Spend some time with me. Let’s figure out what this connection between us means, if anything, discuss limits, and how to handle the first meeting with my daughter. Otherwise, we’ll say our last goodbyes until we meet again … in court.”

  My nerves tingled as I trembled from head to toe. I couldn’t refuse him. Not even if I tried. Just the way
he looked at me unraveled me in all the right ways, in all the right places. With a deep breath, I nodded.

  “Okay. I’ll introduce you to Melli. At my home. Under my terms.”

  For several seconds, he stared at me, silent, then leaned forward. With a low groan that made me hot from the inside out, he teased my bottom lip with his tongue, his hands brushing my back, neck, and arms, with only the slightest inkling of strength. With his breath quickening, he pushed his fingers back into the sides of my hair like he’d done before, forcefully, intensely. Heat spread like hot lightning through my body as he drew me closer, dragging my lips to his and licking deep into my mouth with slow, familiar, hungry strokes. My defenses were shot, if they’d ever been there at all. His kiss made everything else around us disappear, filling me with delirious lust and shameless need. My core clenched uncontrollably, adrenaline spiraling through me like scalding wildfire.

  I pressed closer, sliding my palms up the long length of his arms and stopping at the top of his wrists that were firm against my temples. I sank into his body, short-winded, dissolving into hard, tight muscle and layers of sculpted stone. My thighs tightened as the hammering of his erection stoked the blazing rush of hot fire in my sex. Every inch of my body was burning, craving, wanting, needing. He licked into my mouth gently, then forcefully, with long, relaxed, faultless laps of his tongue with nothing but unabridged confidence, power, and perfection.

  He growled and pulled the back of my head closer. Every part of my lower body throbbed as he confirmed that every kiss from my past had been nothing but judgments of error. Soft sighs slid up my throat, followed by heavy moans rising from deep in his chest. This felt wonderful, perfect, right. Like where I was meant to be. Where I needed to be.

  But then way too soon, he was pulling away, his piercing eyes back to hard and cold.

  “Next Saturday. Spend an hour with me,” he uttered roughly. “Introduce me to my daughter. If you feel nothing by the time I leave, I’ll walk away.”