by Stacy Gail
“Since I was eighteen.”
“Tomorrow we’re getting tested to make sure we’re safe, because I don’t want anything between you and me.”
“Safe is good.” Helpless to stop herself, she watched him roll on the protection before she reached out, greedily stroking the impressive length of his iron-hard cock, and she silently moaned as a fresh surge of wetness pulsed in her cleft. “No, wait. This is good.”
“Just good?” His hand dropped back to her cleft to massage her clit until she couldn’t stop herself from writhing helplessly with the pleasure. “Did you say just good?”
“Better than good.” She had no idea what she was saying, because the tension inside her was swelling, swelling, and she was so damn close… “I’d say magnificent, but I wouldn’t want you to get…cocky.”
“Your friends would be jealous as hell if they knew how cocky I am.” His breath hissed out of him when her fingers tightened, before he determinedly removed her hand. “Need to be inside you, Sunny. Right now.”
“Yes.” She couldn’t stop herself from shuddering when he pushed her knees wider apart, her intimate folds throbbing and achy as she trembled on the vicious edge of purest satisfaction. “I need you, Ice.”
“Fuck, yeah, you do.” With his eyes locked on hers, he thrust into her depths, spreading her, filling her. She tried to hold onto his eyes, enthralled with that intimate sense of sharing as their two bodies became one, but she couldn’t. The sensations that his stroking had built to a crescendo suddenly exploded in every cell, and the power of it flung her head back while it tore her beautifully apart. Her cries ripped at her throat until it hurt, but she hardly noticed.
She’d discovered heaven on earth with Ice inside her, and she never wanted to leave.
Instinctively she wrapped her arms and legs around him, trying to hold on to the bliss he gave her because it was that freaking good. Then his hand once again came between them, rolling against her clit even as his thrusts grew deeper, more urgent, more earth-shaking.
“More.” His teeth were bared, his beautiful face as hard as stone as he pounded into her, a true fucking, and it was magnificent. “Give me one more, baby. I want you to come with me.”
“You’re killing me,” she whispered between panting breaths, because he was a man who knew how to get what he wanted, and right then he wanted her to come. The pressure built again, so dizzyingly fast all she could do was hold on for the ride. “Oh, God. Oh, God…”
“There it is. Yes, Sunny. Yes.”
She barely heard him as she came a second time, the waves of pleasure deep and lush and never-ending. His moans mingled with hers as he plunged into her one last time before collapsing onto her, his face against her neck and his breath coming fast and hot against her damp skin.
Yes.
They stayed that way for what seemed like forever. She would have been content to just drift along in the euphoric afterglow with a tingling body and an empty head. Then he stirred, and she dragged open eyes she couldn’t remember closing to find Ice looking down at her, his cock still rooted inside her all the way to the hilt. He looked so serious as his gaze slid over her face, as if seeing her for the first time, that it kicked off a mini panic attack.
If he was going to make noises about regretting this, she’d kill him.
“On a scale of one to ten, I’m giving that a solid nine-plus, and the only reason I’m not giving it a ten is because I don’t believe in perfection.” Keeping her tone light, and hating that she needed to guard against a potential blow after the most spectacular sex she’d ever had, she lifted a hand to his hair. “Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on perfection. It just means I’m dedicated to a life of trying to achieve it, over and over and over again.”
His quick smile made her relax. “Who knew dedication could be so damn sexy?”
“I aim to impress. Feel free to applaud.”
“I would, but I’m too busy thinking about how I can get myself a ten. Maybe making you come three times in a row would do it.”
“Ambitious man.” Not that she minded.
“This should have happened a long time ago.” He caught her caressing hand and brought it to his mouth. “Should’ve just gone for it, and to hell with the consequences. When I think of all the goddamn time I’ve wasted…”
She frowned. “What do you mean? What consequences?”
“Oh, nothing big. Just the end of your life as you know it.”
Like that, the afterglow vanished. “What?”
“Guess that’s a bit of a mood killer, yeah? Sorry about that.” A short breath escaped him before he gently pulled out and rolled them so that they were both lying on the sofa, facing each other. “Maybe I’m just exaggerating shit.”
Um. “Are you?”
He was quiet for a long moment. “When I first met you, you were…what? Fifteen? Sixteen?”
What did that have to do with anything? “Let’s see… I was a high school junior, and it was at my mother and father’s annual Christmas gala, so…close to seventeen.”
“Yeah, that means sixteen. Since I was already in my second year in college, from a legal standpoint that meant you were off-limits. But that didn’t stop me from taking one look at you and thinking it’d totally be worth getting my ass thrown in the slammer for fucking the mayor’s daughter.”
Nothing could have shocked her more. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “It was instant, like… I don’t know. Like lightning hit me the moment I locked eyes on you. I gave serious thought to just going for it—grabbing you up and giving you an immediate and on-the-spot education as to what banging was all about. My old man even encouraged me to do it. Said it was normal for kids like us to get together like that.”
“Holy crap.” If she’d been upright, her jaw would have dropped all the way to her knees. “I remember that night like it was yesterday. You and your father were perfect gentlemen.”
“Lying’s the preferred hobby of the Eisen family, though I’ve long since sworn it off. At the time, though, I even lied to myself by swearing there was no way I’d ever be hot for a kid like you,” he drawled, and there was something in his rueful smile that tugged at her heartstrings. “Then you showed up in California a couple years later. You were exactly as I remembered you, with your serious smile and your perfect grades and your polished moral compass. Kindness radiated out of everything you did and said, and you seemed oblivious that you’d walked into the heart of a fucking snake pit.”
That wasn’t how she remembered it at all. “What snake pit?”
Again he was quiet for a long time, and she had the weirdest feeling he was editing his response. “My world was a snake pit, Sunny. A luxurious, golden snake pit.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Around the time you showed up at Stanford, I’d started waking up to how foul things were around me—I don’t want to go into details,” he added when she opened her mouth to question him. “But calling it a snake pit is accurate. I couldn’t make you not be there, so I decided to take you under my wing and protect you from the worst of it like you were my kid sister—never mind the fact that being crazy-horny for you twenty-four seven was about as far from brotherly as you can get.”
As curious as she was by the whole snake-pit thing, she tabled that in favor of another question. “I was legal at that point. Why think of me as your kid sister when I was old enough to screw around with?”
“Like I said, I’d begun to see that my perfect world wasn’t perfect at all. It was a fucking nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from.”
“Ice.” Concern filled her at the darkness edging his tone. “Tell me.”
“It’s something you’ve probably already figured out,” he said, shrugging a dismissive shoulder. “You know what my old man’s business is, right? Inquiring Minds tabloid and a slew of other cheap-ass publications of the same ilk that are distributed internationally?”
“Of course
.”
“My world was built on a never-ending river of misery brought about by those rags, Sunny. The older I got, the more I realized it. The trips around the world. The private schools. The house parties filled with all kinds of debauchery, and all the pampered, elitist shit that made up my life when we first met… It was all built on the backs of people who were careless with their secrets. And I was careless with those people. A shit ton of people, truth be told. I’ll go to my grave hating myself for the damage I’ve caused.”
Her heart began to thud against her sternum. “What kind of damage?”
“The kind you’ll never have to worry about,” he said with such fierceness she had no choice but to believe him. “I kept you protected from that shit then, and I’m keeping you protected from it now. It’s a cesspool I helped create, but I won’t ever let that shit touch you.”
“Wait, you’re protecting me now? What is there to protect me from?”
“It’s nothing for you to worry about, Sunny.”
Funny how that didn’t help. “So you’re not going to tell me what I have to look out for or worry about?”
“I’m telling you that you don’t have to worry, period. You’re under my protection, and that’s that.”
That was hardly a good enough answer, but the habit of keeping her family’s secrets kept her from poking at that potential landmine out the fear of it exploding in her face. “I’ve always been in awe of your world—the best private schools you attended with the children of famous people, the international getaways on private yachts and planes. It was all so glittery and exclusive and surreal. It never seemed like a snake pit.”
“It was, because like a fucking moron I dutifully reported every last detail of that exclusive world to my old man—the very bastard who’s famous for making a living from people’s deepest secrets. Now are you getting the picture of just how fucking awful I was back then?”
“Did you say reported?” Again she froze, while fear bloomed like a sickness in every corner of her soul. “Did you, um… Are you saying you were a snitch, or whatever…?”
“What the fuck do you think I am, Sunny? Swear to Christ, at the time I had no idea what I was doing. It was just how I lived my life. Dear old dad would pick me up from school like any other loving parent. I’d get in the car, and he’d be so fucking attentive—‘hey sport, how did your day go? Did you make any new friends? Was there any trouble at school today? Did you hear anything interesting?’ Fuck.” Bitterly he shook his head. “I fucking loved our drives home from school. I was the center of attention, and the more I shared, the more attention I got. Fucking idiot.”
“Don’t.” Pain swelled in her chest at the obvious self-loathing in his voice. “You didn’t know.”
“’Course I didn’t know. That’s just normal shit that every parent says. Except nothing is normal with Damien Eisen. Stupid bastard that I am, it took me over two decades to see what that soulless fucker had actually been doing to me all that time—harvesting whatever information he could get out of me.”
“Harvesting…” In silent desperation she cast back through the years, trying to remember if she’d ever hinted at her family’s greatest secret. But no. It was buried so deep it had never left the cage that had always kept her truest self locked away. “Are you sure that’s what he was he doing? Maybe he was just being an attentive parent.”
“Sunny, think. The old man made sure he planted me in the same schools, camps and resorts as kids of the wealthy and famous and politically powerful. Shit, that’s why we met. Damien saw something interesting in your father, so he made sure our paths crossed.”
Panic dried her mouth so much she had to lick her lips in order to speak. “Oh? Something interested him? Like what?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
She tried another route. “Why did he want us to meet?”
“I don’t what he was fishing for when it came to your dad, but generally speaking, my old man put me in situations where I could be used as a window to spy through. He’d pump me for whatever information I’d happened to stumble across, and then he’d turn right around and publish it in that fucking rag of his. Or worse, he’d get information so juicy he’d use it to turn that person into one of his spies.”
A stab of horror hit her square in the chest. “Blackmail?”
“Whatever works to get people to dance to his tune, that’s what Damien Eisen does—he finds their weaknesses and he drills the fuck down. The shit that sonofabitch has done to my mom…” He shook his head, and the fury in his eyes was so dark and dangerous it frightened her. “You know she’s a junkie, right? I mean, the whole fucking world knows. I’ve lost count of how many times she’s been in rehab.”
The viciousness in his tone was now tinted with pain, and it made her eyes sting. “Yeah, baby, I know,” she whispered, reaching out to stroke his cheek. “She’s still so beautiful.”
“A ruined beauty, with half her brain cells fried and the other half hiding from what she knows is going on.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just like the old man placed me in positions to get dirt on the rich and famous through their kids, Damien turned my mom into a fucking smackhead so he could put her into exclusive rehab facilities. She delivers dirt on whatever celebrities are there trying to get clean, and he rewards her with the best drugs money can buy. And the whole obscene cycle starts all over again.”
“My God,” she whispered, horrified. “Ice.”
“One day it’s going to kill her, Sunny. She’s going to die, and he won’t even give a shit that he was the one who murdered her by inches. Just as long as he sells other people’s secrets in that rag that he doesn’t actually have any right to… Ah, fuck it.” Again he shook his head and looked at a point past her shoulder, as if he couldn’t quite stand for her to see the demons tearing him apart. “I just hope there really is a hell. Sonofabitch deserves to have his ass landed right in the godforsaken center of it.”
“Yes, he does.” The rage in his voice, again directed more at himself than his father, was so painful to listen to that she tried to shift his focus. “I’m proud of you, you know that?”
“Proud?” That had his blistering gaze shifting back to her. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“I heard every word. I also remember when you cut your father out of your life. You dropped out of law school, sold your car, cut all ties to your former world and opened up Skull and Bones Ink. You did all that because you wanted to sever every possible tie you had with him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” He brushed a hand over her hair. “I couldn’t tolerate taking another damn dime from that disgusting excuse of a human being. Every last cent of it is blood money, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I think you did an incredibly difficult but healthy thing, cutting your father out of your life and starting Skull and Bones Ink. Not everyone has the strength to get rid of toxic people, especially when they’re family.”
“I decided to jettison that asshole long before I started up Skull and Bones Ink. In fact, that leads us right back to our first date and what didn’t happen in Hawaii.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“I’ve almost lost you a couple times.” His arms tightened around her before he reached down to hitch one of her legs over his hip. “When I kidnapped you to Hawaii, I’d just had it out with my old man. No way in hell am I going to go into all the details now,” he added before she could ask. “Long story short, I believed I was finally in control of my life, but I was wrong. It only took Damien twenty-four hours to prove how wrong I was.”
She didn’t want to ask. She definitely did not want to ask… “What happened?”
Damn it.
“Ethan happened.”
Her blood chilled. “Ethan?”
“I got my best friend killed, Sunny. Ethan’s dead because of me.”
Just when she thought she’d heard it all. “What are you talking about? We were in Hawaii wh
en we got word Ethan had died in a car accident in California.”
“Those are the facts, but they’ve got nothing to do with the truth.” She heard him swallow as he once again looked at a place past her shoulder. “Fact is, my best friend, the brother of my heart, killed himself because my old man made it front page news that Ethan’s father—big-time action hero of summer movie blockbusters—liked to cross-dress in the privacy of his own home.”
Her breath stuttered to a halt as she at last connected the dots. “Oh my God, did you…?”
“Yeah.” The admission was as bitter as poison. “Ethan had shared that nugget of information years ago, just as I’d shared it with Damien, long before I’d ever suspected he was pumping me for information. Hell, I’d completely forgotten about it. Then suddenly there it was, splashed all over the front page, in every grocery check-out lane in the country—the secret Ethan had carelessly shared with me. The secret I’d carelessly shared with Damien. The secret no one had a right to know.”
“Ice.” Shock mingled with a tidal wave of anguish for the hell Ice had gone through for years, in silence and alone. “All this time I thought it was just a car accident that had killed Ethan—a matter of going too fast and misjudging a curve.”
“He meant to do it, because earlier that day his father had attempted to take his own life. Ethan succeeded where his father had failed, and he did it because he couldn’t handle knowing he was the one who’d aired his father’s secret to the best spy Inquiring Minds had. Me.”
“Stop right there.” She leaned in and kissed his mouth closed, her heart aching. “Don’t do that to yourself. The responsibility for this is on your father, not you.”
“That may be, but you’re not getting it, Sunny.”
“What am I not getting?”
“This wasn’t about Ethan, or his dad. Not really. Yeah, they were ruined forever, but that was just collateral damage. It was all about controlling me. The old man could’ve outed Ethan’s dad years ago, but he didn’t. Instead he chose to do it right when I tried to break free from Damien Eisen’s grip. He did it to show me how easy it was for him to get at me through the people I cared about. Ethan’s dead because of me.”
