We agreed to ignore what happened between us, to pretend like it never happened, because that way it’s easier to live with ourselves. We don’t have to face what we did, the betrayal. We don’t have to carry the weight of it.
“Motherfucker,” Roman roars, so loud I can hear him over the rain. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I’m on my feet straight away, running through the cabin, almost slipping down the hallway in my socks.
I knew Millie was right when she teased me about sleeping in socks.
Up the stairs, I sprint, running down the hallway toward the sound of Roman shouting.
“Fuck.”
I push the door open to find him standing shirtless at a punching bag, sweat sliding down his body. His chest muscles bulge and his back muscle, from this angle, are like a sheet of pure rock. Everything is tight, beads of moisture sliding down into the crevices of his ripped body. Tanker sits on the other side of the gym, head resting on the treadmill.
“Oh,” I say, as my eyes shoot up and down his body.
He’s wearing baggy gym shorts, light blue, and they show me how excited he’s getting as his manhood hardens and makes the fabric tent.
“What’s up?” he snarls, taking a step back.
My eyes flit to his knuckles, grazed and bloody. He’s not wearing any gloves, just pounding bare-fisted at the bag like some kind of savage.
“You were swearing,” I say, trying to look anywhere but at his enflamed manhood.
But that just means looking into his glinting wolfish eyes, into the desire burning brightly there, calling to me.
“Was I? I didn’t realize.” He smirks. “I was imagining this punching bag was those fuckers who hurt Tanker. I guess I got carried away.”
A shiver courses through me as his mouth twitches again. It’s that smirk, so cocky and confident, so filled with certainty that he could claim me at any second he wanted. He knows that I’d start to gasp and shiver if he shoved me up against the wall now, pushing his finger inside of me and pumping his hand.
Oh, God, he’d make me cream on his predator’s touch.
“As long as you’re okay,” I murmur.
“Sure. I’ll do some writing after this.”
“Really?” I say, unable to stop the excitement from flaring in my voice.
He tilts his head. “Oh, no, not like that.”
“What do you mean? You’re not writing?”
“That’s what I call sitting in my office and staring at the screen. Writing.”
I interlock my hands, wishing I had a reason to stay.
And then Tanker the little fate-fueled dog pads over, whining softly and pawing at my leg. I lean down and tickle him behind the ear, hugging him close.
“Why don’t you write?” I ask as curiosity gets the best of me.
He lets his hands fall to his sides, a reverberation moving through his whole body. It makes his chest become even more pronounced as he turns to me. I think he’s going to lunge at me for a crazy second – his expression so possessive.
But then he reaches toward the nearby windowsill and pulls down a gym towel. The glass is clouded, distorting the pattern of the relentless rain. He wipes his face down and lets the towel drape over his shoulders.
“I don’t have an answer.” He laughs without humor. “I sit down and try to access that zone, the mood, my muse, whatever-the-fuck. I don’t know what to call it. But I used to be able to slip into it until it was like I was the character, whoever they were. I was experiencing the story. And the writing was just a formality. It was a way… to get something that had already happened down on the page.”
He glances at me, his face tight. His voice has become even deeper like he’s going to let out a bestial roar any second. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t even make goddamn sense to me.”
“Maybe you could try forcing the words out,” I murmur. “Don’t worry about accessing that place, whatever it is. Just worry about getting the words out. Or is that too simplistic?”
He shakes his head slowly. His eyes never leaving me. I daren’t look down to see if his manhood is still making a huge outline in his gym shorts. If his lust for me is overriding the seriousness of the moment. I know it might. He’s ready to brutally fuck me until I’m creaming all over him.
But can I be that confident, sassy, sexy girl he needs?
Or will I turn into a withering crying mess because I can’t please my man?
No.
This is all wrong. This can’t happen. We agreed.
“If I could get rid of this feeling. Maybe…”
He trails off, shaking his head slowly. I almost cry out and ask him what feeling, and maybe what, what. I almost throw myself at him and claw at his chest, pressing my lips against him as though the harder I do it, the less real the future becomes.
But instead, I step back letting out an anxious shaky breath.
“So you’re alright?” I murmur.
He smirks, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. They are steady and intense. “Yeah, I’m fine. Are you, Rayla?”
No, of course, I’m not.
I’m being torn apart from the inside with need for this man, every inch of me screaming for his touch, for his hot breath over my skin, and his possessiveness and jealous words again.
But that was before Millie called, before we were reminded of how wrong this is.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I’m fine. See you later.”
“Bye.”
I feel his eyes on me as I leave the room. Or perhaps I’m just imagining that wishing it into existence so I can pretend I’m not alone, so I can pretend he wants me as badly as I want him.
He said he wanted a family. Said he felt the same crazy instant connection.
Now he seems to be able to separate from me so easily, to let me leave the room without kissing me, holding himself back.
I try to tell myself it’s good. It means we can hold the line.
But the words shimmer through me with the energy of a lie. Because even if I know it’s good, it feels wrong, so freaking wrong to be separated from my man.
I need his body against mine, his hand grinding between my legs, his finger rubbing my clit as I buck against him.
I bite down, bowing my head, telling myself to accept it. It’s over. We have to stay strong.
For Millie.
Chapter Fourteen
Roman
I was going to tell her, maybe with her I’d be able to write. I was going to ask her to sit in my study as I write. She wouldn’t have to do anything, just sit there, maybe read a book or even just scroll through her phone. But sit there looking like Rayla, with her perfect hair and her shy sassy smile and the beautiful certainty of her curvy body… making me certain we’ll have a family, a future, a forever.
Maybe with her sitting, watching, I’d be able to draw something out of me.
But as I sit here, staring at the screen, all I can think about is the fact she’s elsewhere in the cabin.
Sighing, I push back from the desk and look across the room at Tanker. He’s in a tight ball right beneath the wide windows, like a painting with the rain streaking down the glass.
“I thought you were supposed to be scared,” I say.
He cocks his head, half-opens one eye, and then rests his chin on his paws.
I stand and wander over to the door. “You sleep, boy. There’s something I need to do.”
Walking down the hallway is a mistake. So is heading downstairs and poking my head into the living room. These are all steps toward acting on my heated desire again.
The wide mantelpiece is covered in ornaments from my travels from all over the US, with playing cards from Vegas, a bottle from Vermont, and a World War Two service pistol an old man gave me in Texas.
Rayla stands at the mantelpiece, gazing down at a bayonet knife.
“I won that shooting pool in Arizona,” I say, my eyes moving over her.
She’s wearing another dress this morning, a long
one that goes from her heaving chest down to her toes. But the fabric is light, the sort that mists over her flesh, showing the outline of her hips and legs beneath.
Turning, her smile comes alive. Her features bloom and I have to stamp down on something deep inside to stop myself from leaping across the room.
“Are you serious?” she says.
I nod and stroll into the room, knowing I’m coming too close, dangerously close. But I can’t stop myself as I reach over and heft up the bayonet – the blade that would be attached to the end of a rifle.
“I was playing the drifter, down there to research a novel about meth gangs. This biker was out of his mind, and this was all he had left to bet. We played and I won.”
“And then the biker had nothing?”
I nod, hefting the blade. “I wanted to slip him some money, but he was half-dead from that shit as it was. Losing that pool game bought him one night of freedom from his goddamn drug.”
I know I’ve said too much, given away too much of myself in the rumbling of my tone. I want to snatch it back as I study her, but of course, she’s too perceptive and alert to let something like that slide.
“You don’t like drugs, I take it?”
“No, I do not.” My voice rumbling with rage. “But we don’t need to talk about that. I don’t judge people for what they do. But I’ve seen what drugs can do to people, how bad it can fuck them up.”
She stares, and I feel the past pounding at the locked trunk inside of me. Usually, I can keep it tightly contained, but it’s like Rayla has stomped all over my defenses, making things susceptible and vulnerable when they never were before.
She’s making me human again.
“My parents were drug addicts. They raised me in a crack den. I moved out when I was twelve and now they’re both dead. They both fucking OD’d. Okay? There, there it is.”
She flinches at the anger in my voice, and for a moment I think she’s going to step away from me. But then our closeness blooms and she steps forward, coming so close I could reach out and touch her if I wanted.
And I do want to. Badly. Achingly. More than I’ve ever wanted to touch anything or anyone before.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs, reaching up and laying her hand flat against my chest.
I feel her touch burning through the fabric of my T-shirt. I’ve changed out of my gym clothes, but it doesn’t matter. There could be miles of fabric separating us and our bodies would be alive to each other, effortlessly sparking and primed.
“You can talk about it if you want,” she whispers.
My fingers twitch as my mind wars with my body. I need to think of Millie, of how shy and reserved she was during her childhood, of how happy she was when she told me she’d made a new friend at college. I need to think of her face turning cold when she learns what we’ve done.
“I don’t need to talk about it.” Reaching up, I lay my hand atop hers, adding more pressure so her palm blazes through my T-shirt, hot against my skin. “They never should’ve been parents. I learned to fight for everything I got. And I learned…”
“What?” Her voice is soft, coaxing.
“To never let myself feel,” I snarl.
“Is that why you were never very close with Millie’s mother?”
My daughter’s name sends a shockwave through the room, shattering the moment, and I let Rayla’s hand drop. I pace over to the window, my hands behind my back, staring out at the lake as it warps and shifts in the storm. The water flows endlessly over the shore, swilling up great masses of reeds and grass and mud.
“Do you really want to talk about that?”
“I’m just wondering…”
She trails off and a long moment passes. I don’t move, but I hear Rayla walking over to the couch and dropping down. I hear Tanker walk into the room and leap onto the couch, his little paws scrabbling at the fabric. I hear Rayla talking to him in cute baby babble, showing me know what an incredible mother she’s going to be.
“I guess we’re going to try and ignore this, then,” she says after a long time.
“What do you want to know?”
“You know how you said you felt about me?”
We should stop. We’re getting too close to dangerous territory. But I’m pulled in too deep, submerged in my obsession.
“Yes.”
“Did you feel the same about Millie’s mother? She said you weren’t very close. Millie, I mean. You told her that.”
I nod. “She asked me a question when she was ten years old. She asked if we’d had a fairytale relationship. So I told her the truth. No, no we did not. Millie is the best thing that ever happened to me, better than any success in my writing career, better than any story. But she was not planned. I told her that, and I told her I loved her. I didn’t regret her one bit.
“But no, no, no, Rayla. I’ve never felt for anybody what I feel for…”
I clench my fists tight, squeezing them so that the tension moves through my forearms and my shoulders, even my neck. Everything is tight and ready to blow.
“I don’t understand it,” I growl. “One look at you and I knew. I knew straight away. It’s like I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet you. I have this emptiness inside of me, Rayla, this fucking hole. Maybe it’s because I was raised like an animal and had to claw my way up for a chance to be something more. Maybe it’s because I’m broken. But when I looked at you, the second I laid eyes on you, there was no hole. There was just…”
“Peace,” she whispers.
She’s far closer to me than I thought, her voice purring beneath the rain.
I turn and stare down at her. She’s a touch away, her hands clasped in front of her, her bottom lip prisoner to her teeth.
“You need to stop doing that,” I growl.
“Doing what?”
“Biting your goddamn lip. It drives me insane. It makes me think...things I shouldn’t be thinking. It makes me think you’re soaked down there, and all I’d have to do is…”
I step forward and raise my hand, gliding it along her thigh. She whimpers and shivers as I get higher and higher, as I bring my hand to her sex and rub my finger against her clit.
“Oh, fuck,” I growl. “You’re so receptive. You’re so damn horny. Your body needs my seed, doesn’t it, angel?”
“Yes, yes,” she moans. “I need you so—”
The alarm blares through the cabin, ringing so loudly even the storm seems quiet. I step back as a thought occurs to me, pounding into my head, twisting through me, and making me ache inside.
Meeting her eyes, I can see Rayla’s having the same thought. It’s written into her expression, etched into the way she’s looking at me, into the wideness of her eyes and the fear quivering there.
“Is it Millie?”
Chapter Fifteen
Rayla
I sit in the living room, staring down at my feet, as guilt barrels through me. Twisting up my insides, crushing through everything I am, through everything I thought I was.
A loyal friend, a good person.
But it happened again. My desire for Roman exploded and suddenly it was like I wasn’t even in control, with the need pounding through me, deafening me to everything else. When he pushed his hand against my sex, my resolve melted and my core grew sopping wet, and then as he rubbed, I knew I was going to cream soon for him.
But then the alarm blared. Somebody was in the house.
“Of course it wasn’t Millie,” I murmur, shaking my head.
One of the doors blew open in the storm, setting off the alarm. Roman has fixed it and adjusted the alarm’s settings now.
“She would’ve used her key.” Roman laughs gruffly from the other side of the room. “I guess we’ve got guilty consciences, don’t we?”
I look up, my gaze roaming over him. He sits in the armchair, leaning back, his strong jaw tense and his iron hair messy from where he keeps rubbing his fingers through it. He holds Tanker in his lap, absentmindedly stroking him. When our eye
s meet, he turns to the window, to the lake, as though he can’t stand to look at me.
Shivers course me because I know why he can’t look at me. He gets too excited, the same way the excitement blares up inside of me when I look at him.
“Yes, I’d say so.” I sigh. “It’s so wrong, isn’t it, Roman?”
“But it feels so damn right. That’s the most twisted part.”
“Maybe she’d be okay.”
He looks at me coldly. “Do you really believe that?”
“I don’t know,” I say, anxiety making my tone shiver. “Millie is the most accepting person I’ve ever met. She’s kind and loving and caring and—”
“And even if all of that’s true – and it is, I know it is – she’s got every right to hate us both. Forever. You know that. We’re the two closest people in her life and if we’re together. It’s going to be a big change for her.”
“So then why do you keep…”
I leap up and wave my arms, as too much emotion rushes through me, making it difficult to speak.
“Keep what?” he growls.
“Keep tempting me,” I cry, letting out a shaking sigh. “If you know this can’t work, why do we keep doing this? We should just forget. Just ignore each other for the rest of the trip and then make sure we never see each other again.”
“Yeah. That’s what we should do, for Millie’s sake.”
I fold my arms. “Fine, then we’ve got a plan.”
He rises slowly, giving Tanker time to hop onto the arm of the chair. His body is heaving as he walks over to me.
Stopping just short, he stares. “I said we should do that, not that it’s what I want to do. Not that I think we can do it. I don’t know if I can resist you. I… I need you, Rayla. But maybe…”
“What?” she murmurs.
“It’s so difficult being around you because I’m an animal. I can’t stop thinking about how sexy you are. But maybe we should say – no more sex stuff, not until after we’ve decided what to do with Millie.”
I can see how difficult it is for him to say that, his mouth a firm line, his features twisted. He glares at me as though he’s going to go back on the agreement before it’s even started.
Trapped with My Best Friend's Dad: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 258) Page 7
