The Cumberland County patrol car crept up the concrete, silent and predatory. The cop inside it wasn’t looking at him, but Connor froze even though he hadn’t done a damn thing. His throat clamped shut, his reaction Pavlovian—a response ingrained in him after years of encountering men in uniform bearing unfriendly faces. He could see each one of them in that set of headlights, in the engine that idled in the rain, the wipers that slowly canvassed the windshield: the cops who had carted him back home after his first break-in, his second and his third. The investigator who looked at their ratty apartment with blatant scorn when Patricia reported Travis missing. The cruiser he’d sat handcuffed in when he’d stolen his grandfather’s car. Sheriff Roger and his sneer from the other side of the bars as Connor sat in a cell.
That was who Connor really was. He could hide from his past for a time, pretend he’d left it all behind him, but it was still there. It didn’t matter how far he’d taken things with Gabby today. Eventually, the truth about the past would have come out, and he would have lost her anyway.
Another firework screamed into the air by the shore, and the cop bolted out of the car. Connor turned on his heel, knowing his shot to get the hell outta Dodge when he saw it. He kept his eyes on the ground and the wet gravel that spat up under his feet, his shoulders bunched up by his ears as he found his way home.
“We were waiting for you.”
Connor looked up. His grandmother was sitting on the porch swing. She had a pile of knitting on her lap.
Dinner. Of course. Crap.
“Sorry, I lost track of time.” He reached for the door. “I’ll get started on the dishes—”
She held up a hand to stop him. “I’ve already got your grandfather on that. Go change out of those wet clothes and come back here.”
She was using that tone again, the one he didn’t dare defy. With a sigh, Connor went into his room and twisted off his drenched clothing. He hadn’t realized how soaked he was until he was finally in warm, dry clothes again.
The rain had finally let up when he returned to the porch, the sky clearing just in time to showcase the purple glow of the sunset. His grandmother nodded to the spot next to her on the swing. Connor sank down onto it.
“I know that look,” she said.
“What look?”
“The one you’ve got on your face right now. It’s the look of a man who’s regretting something.”
He winced. “Grandma, I—”
“I don’t need the details, and I’m sure you don’t want to tell me them, either. So sum it up. Ten words or less.”
Connor closed his eyes. Opened them again. Bent his head back and stared at the part of the roof that hung over the porch. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his grandmother calmly resume her knitting. Her movements seemed to say, any time, now.
“I tried to be someone else,” he finally said. “But I couldn’t.”
She dropped her knitting to her lap. “Why would you ever try to do that?”
“I couldn’t let Gabby know the person I used to be.”
“Who were you, then?”
He swallowed. “Someone I thought she deserved.”
She sighed, a heavy sound of someone who’d been a parent once already and was too old to have to do it all over again. Guilt ate at Connor like a festering wound but then she said, “You know, just because your parents made the choices they did, it doesn’t mean you aren’t worthy of love.”
Her words cut right through him, a gut punch that left him short of breath. It took a minute before he could reply.
“I wanted her to think I was, but I couldn’t take the risk. I had to be someone different.”
“You’re acting like there are only two options. That Connor or this one. Black or white. One or zero.”
His brow shot up at her mention of binary language. She didn’t flinch.
“That’s right, I actually know a thing or two about technology.” She smiled and picked up her knitting again. His eyes followed the movement of the needles, loop by loop. “No one is all one thing, honey, and I’m betting your Gabriella isn’t either.”
Something about the idea of her being his Gabriella made Connor’s chest go tight with wanting.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he said.
“You’re never doing the right thing if you’re not being yourself. But you’ve always been like that, ever since you showed up at our door. It’s like that quote you have tacked to your desk at work. ‘Make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge.’ You’ve tried to be an island, not needing anyone, but that doesn’t work for very long. Eventually, we need someone to see us for who we are.”
His gut twisted again, this time not with the waves of anger or resentment he’d come to know so well. He didn’t recognize the feeling at first, but he thought it was something that resembled hope.
An engine rattled down the road. Connor looked up to see Dean pulling up in front of his house, a pile of driftwood in the back of the truck. The bonfire. He’d forgotten all about it. He’d agreed to go when he thought Gabby might go with him. Maybe there was a chance she still would, and he could come clean, and they could start over again.
He turned back to his grandmother. “Do you need me to—”
“Go.”
He kissed her cheek and leapt down the steps, palming his phone as he walked to the curb. He got into the passenger seat and dialed Gabby’s number.
“Where’s your girl?” Dean asked.
She didn’t pick up. The call went to voicemail. “Just drive.”
He still hadn’t reached her an hour later, when they’d built up the driftwood into a plume of orange that crackled against the night sky. He must have tried her number every fifteen minutes, but she wasn’t answering.
Connor shoved his phone into his pocket, walked over to the abandoned lifeguard stand pushed up tight against the dunes and looked around. The scene in front of him was one he’d been a part of too many times before. In the parking lot, a strange mix of country and hip hop blasted from competing cars’ speakers. A keg sat at the back of someone’s SUV. Dean had disappeared shortly after they’d gotten there, and was most likely wrapped up in a beach towel with God knows who.
Connor wanted Gabby like that, here with him. He wanted her giggling as he tugged her away from the crowd, wanted to press her down in the night-cooled sand. To see if all of her skin glowed the way her face did, shining in the moonlight that bounced off the waves. To get her so hot that she lost all sense of modesty or control, get her even more frantic and desperate than she seemed to be every time they were together.
He thought about her then, how she’d been more than willing to push things a step further. The way she’d unbuttoned his jeans on the dock, and her hitched breath as she found the stiff shape of him inside. How she’d pleaded for more in the tent at the park. The hike, and how she’d taken his hand and pushed it into her shorts.
Could Gabby be different from the girl he’d imagined?
He was sure it had all been him, so absolutely certain that she’d want someone different from who he was, but she’d been just as eager as him whenever they were alone. The things he’d said about his behavior being out of line and inappropriate were what he thought Gabby would want to hear, but the truth was she’d told him she wanted to be bad. That good was overrated. That she didn’t want him to behave. And she seemed to have no problem getting down and dirty in public. As a matter of fact, not only did she like it, she begged him for it, even when only shadows and some poorly constructed fabric hid them from the eyes of everyone around.
Connor wanted to make her beg. To coerce her into telling him about her dirtiest fantasies then act them all out. He wanted to let loose with her, to show her the side of him he’d kept on lockdown.
Maybe he didn’t have to try so hard to be someone else for her. Maybe he coul
d actually be himself.
He called her again, but no dice.
Tomorrow. He would go to her house tomorrow. Then he’d let himself be the version of Connor he really was and tell her everything.
Chapter Eleven
By the time Gabriella kicked off her blanket the next morning after a lousy night’s sleep, she was angry at the world. At her mother for demanding so much of her only daughter, and her father for barely being a part of her life. At Nana for telling her to be true to herself, when it was a feat that obviously was completely impossible. Her fury extended to her M.I.T. peers and their complacent acceptance of life without passion. To Kevin, and all the ex-boyfriends before him, who never gave her what she needed. She could kill Jamie for bringing Connor into her life. And as for Connor Starks? Well, damn him too for having been so close to what she thought she wanted. What she knew she wanted. He dangled it in front of her and then took it away without any explanation as to why. And, in that moment, she couldn’t stay quiet about what she wanted anymore.
Gabriella put on her glasses, stomped across the floor and grabbed her phone. It was warm from where it had sat charging on her desk, baking in the early morning sunlight. She didn’t bother to check the string of calls she’d missed—they were all probably from Jamie, harassing her for going off the map.
She began typing an email to Connor that fringed on the edges of madness, although she was sure it was just the caffeine deprivation and lack of sleep. She told him that another person lived and breathed inside the one she appeared to be—the one who got the perfect grades and wanted the career. That she hungered for someone to be as wild and reckless as she wanted to be. For a man to hold what she wanted at bay until she was desperate and shaking and begging, the way he did to her on the dock and in the park. Her words rambled on, streams of consciousness unbefitting of a PhD candidate, but she kept going nonetheless. Her hands shook as she wrote that if he felt what happened on the hike was wrong, then she didn’t want to waste any more of his time. That it wouldn’t work, that he shouldn’t call her again, and that she was sorry too.
She hit send and immediately felt dazed, as if she’d been released from a long imprisonment, but she was still trapped. Because what difference did it make if Connor knew what she wanted? He obviously didn’t want the same thing.
Gabriella splashed some water on her face, mechanically brushed her teeth and hair, and stumbled downstairs to the kitchen. Despite wearing nothing but her tank top and pajama shorts, sweat bloomed over her skin. The air was sticky and hot, with no land breeze to offset the humidity. She wrenched open the fridge door and stood in front of it in an attempt to cool off. It didn’t help.
Then a distant rumble caught her attention.
No. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t take seeing him now. Her masked rider, like Connor, was everything she couldn’t have and shouldn’t have wanted. Part of her longed to turn away and hide, but the rest was consumed by her insatiable curiosity, wanting to watch all that power and heat race by.
Unable to help herself, she turned from the fridge and crept to the front door, pushing it open as the sound of the bike’s roar grew louder. He turned the corner, slowed and came to a stop in between her house and Jamie’s.
Her heart slammed against her rib cage, her breathing tight and shallow. Her brain sputtered through questions about what he was doing out so early, when the sun had barely tipped past the edges of the shore, and why he was here. Her limbs locked in place, she stared as he cut the bike’s engine, the air between them seeming to bend in the simmering heat. But then she noticed something different about him. He wasn’t wearing his leather riding jacket or gloves—all he had on was a white tank top and jeans. Golden muscles gleamed with sweat beneath the shorn edges of his shirt. And surrounding his left arm was a tribal-looking tattoo.
Connor’s tattoo.
Gabriella started to panic, feeling slightly sick as she watched him dismount and pull off his helmet. His dark hair was wet, sticking to his forehead and neck as if he were fresh from a shower. He dropped the helmet onto the seat and glared at her. His perfect face was filled with anger.
She clutched the screen door, clinging to it as if her legs had suddenly become useless and it was the only thing holding her up. He silently peeled open her grandmother’s gate and stalked toward her. His boots fell heavy on the porch steps, his eyes burning into hers as he loomed in front of her, all man and muscle and sweat. He was as lethal and fierce as she’d always imagined her rider would be, and Gabriella was too awestruck, too confused and embarrassed to know what to say.
“You were going to dump me in an email?”
“I…I thought you didn’t drive.”
“I said I didn’t have a car,” Connor spat out. His upper lip twitched, his eyes flashing. “Fixing bikes was my old job. I rebuilt this one myself. And don’t change the subject.”
He took another step closer. Gabriella couldn’t move. The tension between them was menacing. It was her fantasy come to life, but all wrong.
“You weren’t even going to talk to me?” he demanded. “I should just never call you again? Pretend like this week didn’t mean anything?”
She backed inside the house and he followed, letting the screen door bang shut behind him as she stumbled back into the kitchen. She had to turn away from him—she couldn’t bear to see him like that, with his stare so wild and angry and cutting into her. She dropped her head and braced her palms on the counter.
“I’m sorry. I thought you didn’t…” she stammered. “I just wanted—”
“You think I felt what happened between us was wrong? You couldn’t tell how crazy it was making me, wanting you like this?”
He moved in behind her, and his closeness stole her words. Connor pushed his body flush behind hers, and Gabriella’s mouth fell open. It was fear and relief and a fierce kind of wanting all mixed together. She could feel every line of his body, every hard drag of muscle. His mouth was at her ear, his face sweaty, and she reeled at the sensation of his hot breath, his damp skin and stubble rasping along her neck. He took her hands in his and forcefully anchored them to the countertop.
“You want to know what it feels like to lose control, Gabby? Well, now’s your opportunity. Here’s your last chance to say no.”
She couldn’t say no, couldn’t say anything at all. She simply writhed against his implacable form when he bit down on the junction between her shoulder and neck, sucking hard on the skin there. She whimpered, and Connor chuckled as he shoved her forward harder, trapping her between his body and the counter.
“That’s what I thought,” he growled. “Do. Not. Move.”
He released her wrists, and she had no time to process it all, to consider how she was about to be taken, before his fingers slipped into her top. He found her nipple and stroked his thumb over it as the palm of his other hand covered the space below her navel, fingers spanning to create the most delicious pressure. His thick length jutted out hard in his jeans, and she ground back against him, greedy for more. But even with his body holding hers prisoner, Gabriella was still pissed off. Why didn’t he tell her who he really was? Why had he held back all this time, instead of doing this?
“Is that all you’ve got?” she challenged. “Is that the best you can do?”
Connor moved quickly to her side and braced both of his legs on either side of her thigh. She’d only just registered the movement when his hand came down, fast and stinging on her rear. She grunted, a lewd noise that left her throat raspy and raw.
“You want more? You want it rough and dirty, just like I do?”
He punctuated his words with another smack, and she cried out from the sharp twist of pain and pleasure that ricocheted through her body, from the feeling of finally. Of yes.
“Is that what you want, Miss Ivy League? You want me to turn your ass red?”
“Fuck—” Another smack
. “Yes. I want that.”
“Open your legs wider.”
She complied, and he bent her farther over the countertop, holding her in place as he landed a swift blow to the sweet spot between her thighs. She choked out a sound that was a gasp and a groan at the same time. She couldn’t believe how good it felt. Connor slid his hand under the elastic of her pajama bottoms, fingers riding down the curve of her ass until he found the stretch of fabric that had surpassed damp long ago. He pressed and stroked, making her curse when his middle finger rubbed against the sopping cotton.
“I knew it. I knew you’d be drenched for me.”
She turned to glower at him. “What have you been waiting for, then?”
Connor glared back. The look in his eyes was defiance, fury and sex all rolled up into one. He moved behind her again, shoved his free hand into her hair and wrenched her head back. It shouldn’t have felt so good to be overpowered that way, but fuck, it did.
“I waited because I thought it was the right thing to do. Because I was trying to be a gentleman.” He released her hair, and Gabriella almost lost her balance as he wrestled her shorts and panties down her legs. “I was waiting on the pier when I really wanted to taste you. Waiting at the park, when I wanted to push my fingers inside you and make you scream louder than the fireworks.”
She groaned with the thought of his restraint. He grabbed her by the hips and turned her around to face him. With one swift move, he hurled her up onto the countertop, her thighs sweaty as they skidded over the Formica. Connor tugged her clothes from her, throwing them to the floor, and she trembled as he stared her down, fingers at her waist hard enough to bruise.
“You have no idea what you do to me. How hard it’s been to behave myself around you. But I’m through with being good. I don’t want to wait anymore.”
He grasped her by the knees and shoved her legs apart, eyes blazing as he bent down, his mouth open in an erotic promise. Then he extended his tongue and slowly licked up her slit. Gabriella gasped and clenched her eyes shut.
The Duality Principle Page 10
