SILK Volume Two

by K. M. Scott

  That sweetness I love in her slips away, leaving a frown on her beautiful mouth. “I think I better go.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather just tell me what’s wrong?”

  She says nothing and stands to leave. “I have to go home, Ian.”

  Fuck if she hasn’t called my bluff. I no more want her to leave than I want her to keep secrets from me, but if I have to choose between the two, I’ll deal with the secrets if only she’ll stay. I jump up from the couch and stop her.

  “Don’t go.”

  She hangs her head and whispers, “I have to. You don’t trust me.”

  I don’t want to let her go, but she tugs her hand from my hold, and for a long moment, I stand there watching her leave like the jackass I am as my mind plays tug of war over begging her to stay and letting her walk out.

  With every step she takes, I feel like I’m losing part of myself. Why did I do this? Do I really need to know every thought she has every minute of the day? What am I? Some insecure teenage boy?

  “Kristina, stay.”

  I walk toward the door to catch up with her, but something about her is different now. She doesn’t want to stay.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed like that. Stay and we can talk about Rome and how much fun we’re going to have together there.”

  Kristina turns to face me with a look that chills my heart. Part anger, part sadness, her expression tells me I’ve made a mistake. “I’m going to go home now. I love you, but I need to go.”

  She leans forward and kisses me deeply, making me hate myself all the more for the bullshit I’ve caused tonight. I want to feel her beneath me as I make love to her. I want to show her I know I made a mistake and can make up for it.

  I hold her hand, not ready for her to leave, and quietly say, “I’m sorry.”

  “I know. I am too. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  And with that, her fingers slip from my hold and she walks slowly to the elevator as I stand there knowing I fucked up. I could run after her and plead for her to come back, but my silent accusations have made her walls go up, and there’s nothing I can do tonight to bring them down.

  I open my eyes and how much I miss Kristina floods my brain before I can even put together a coherent thought about anything else. She should be next to me, making that adorable snoring noise she makes when she sleeps and blushing when she realizes I’ve been watching her and loving that cute pout her mouth does.

  Scrubbing the sleep from my eyes, I stretch my arms and legs, missing the ache in my muscles from making love I always have after spending the night with her. God, I’m such a fuck!

  The need to call her presses down on me, so I roll over and grab my phone from the nightstand. Three rings and the worry that I’ve fucked up worse than I thought begins to dawn on me. My call goes to voicemail and just hearing her gentle voice tell me she’ll call me back as soon as she can makes me wince in pain.

  I don’t leave a voicemail and instead go straight for the text. Not that it’s my best way of communicating by any means, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Tapping away with my thumbs, I do my best to tell her how much I miss her without unraveling emotions all over her phone.

  I’m lying here in bed missing the feel of your body against mine.

  She doesn’t text back immediately, and my demons begin to take over. I’m sure she’s with someone else. That guy she met at the bar she told me about. The guy who I saw kiss her on her doorstep that night. It doesn’t matter who he is. He isn’t me.

  Five minutes later, I’m out of bed and dressed to go to her place. I screwed up and I know it, so I need to do something about it.

  My phone vibrates against the top of the nightstand, and relief floods my mind. I look down to see her text back to me.

  I miss you too.

  Snatching my phone up, I quickly text back. Come to me. We can spend all day in bed. I need you.

  I hit SEND and wait for her reply. Minute after minute ticks by, but she doesn’t answer. I feel like she’s punishing me, but if she is, I deserve it. I silently will my phone to vibrate like I have some control over any of it. Hell, I barely have control over myself.

  After the tenth time of me telling my phone to give me her text, it vibrates and I look down to see what she’s said.

  I think it might be better for us to spend the day apart.

  Each word feels like someone’s stabbing me in the gut. Apart. I hadn’t been wrong. She was hiding something from me.

  Knowing me like she does, she has to expect me to do something. My legs move even before I make the decision to go to her. Grabbing my coat, I have to slow myself down so I don’t run full speed directly to her apartment. As it is, I’m barely able to keep myself to a walk as my feet pound the sidewalk toward her building just blocks away.

  Ten minutes later, I’m in front of the brownstone where her apartment is and look up to see her staring down at me from her living room window. She doesn’t look frightened or angry that I’m there. And she doesn’t look surprised.

  If anything, she looks pleased to see me.

  I tear up the stairs from the sidewalk and find the front door open for me. She unlocked it knowing I’d come. I take the stairs inside by twos and in less than a minute I’m at her door. I hear her. She’s waiting for me to knock, to come to her.

  Two sharp bangs on the door and she opens it. “Why are you here?”

  “You know why. For the same reason you came to my apartment that other night.”

  She bites her lower lip and knits her brows like the thought causes her pain. “I don’t want to think of that night.”

  “Let me in, Kristina. Let me show you how much I missed you.”

  Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath in and lets it out, her shoulders sagging from her inability to stay angry at me. Without a word, she steps aside for me to come in.

  I walk past and wrap my arms around her when she closes the door, needing to feel her against me. She doesn’t move away to deny me this pleasure and leans her head back against my chest like she needs this too.

  Quietly, in a small voice, she says, “Tell me how much you missed me.”

  Sliding my hand up the front of her neck, I feel the warmth of her skin against mine. I’m overcome with how much I missed this. Dipping my head, I press my lips to the shell of her ear and whisper, “I woke up this morning and my skin hurt because I needed you so much, but I didn’t feel the ache I always feel after we make love.”

  She covers my hand with hers and whimpers softly as she arches her back. Her breasts graze my arm, and I feel her nipples hard from excitement. I love how responsive she is to my touch and my words.

  “I feel like a part of me is missing when you aren’t with me. Like someone’s torn away something necessary and I can’t go on without it, Kristina.”

  “Whatever this is we have between us makes me crazy, Ian.”

  Turning her to face me, I lift her chin so she has to look at me. “There’s nothing wrong with being in crazy in love, Kristina.”

  “I don’t want to be crazy. Crazy gets people hurt. I don’t want to hurt you or have you hurt me.”

  I place a soft kiss on her lips and whisper, “Sometimes love hurts. That doesn’t mean it isn’t love.”

  She asks with a frown, “Why did you act like that toward me last night?”

  I don’t know why I acted like that. Because I thought she was lying. Because I worried she was holding something back. Pressing my forehead to hers, I answer her as truthfully as I can. “Because I’m fucked up and being with me means you see that. I just want to know you won’t run away because of it.”

  “I would never hurt you intentionally, Ian.” She leans her cheek against my hand and looks so sad. “I swear.”

  “I know. You’re sweet and gentle and I’m a fucked up mess without you.”

  “Maybe we should take a couple weeks off.”

  Grabbing a fistful of her hair in my hand, I tug hard as my fear
s threaten to overrun me. Her eyes fill with tears, and I frantically say, “No. I don’t want to take any time off from us, Kristina. Tell me you don’t want to either.”

  “Please let go. You’re hurting me!”

  I loosen my hold on her hair and kiss her hard on the lips. She fights against my kiss for a moment, but then her mouth softens and meets my passion with hers.

  “Tell me you don’t want us to end,” I say with a lump in my throat. “Don’t leave me, baby.”

  Kristina grabs at my shirt and tears it off me. Buttons fly everywhere and she sobs against my chest, “I hate the idea of losing you. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you.”

  “Then why did you say we should take some time off?” I ask as I begin to undress her.

  Shaking her head, she fumbles with my pants to get them off while I tug her jeans down her legs. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just thought maybe if we weren’t together that we wouldn’t get hurt.”

  We’re caught up in this cycle of madness and need, and I know it’s spinning out of control. I don’t want to stop it, though. I can’t. The idea of my world without Kristina makes me break out in a cold sweat. I need her. I love her. And even though I know she’s hiding something, I don’t care.

  All I care about is being inside her.

  She wraps her arms around my neck, clinging to me as I push her back against the hallway wall. Open and needy for me, her body envelopes me as I thrust my cock deep into her cunt. We fuck with abandon like Kate and Sean, and as she whimpers my name over and over, I begin to feel like I’m flying.

  This is the high she gives me. The high I’m desperately addicted to. The high I can’t do without.

  Panting as I take her toward her orgasm, she pleads in my ear, “Ian, promise you won’t ever let me go. Please promise.”

  The fear in her eyes warns of some problem we’ll have to deal with eventually, but at that moment, I don’t care. I don’t care what she’s done. All I care about is having her in my life. I grip her hips tightly as the first sweet squeeze of her cunt on my cock tells me she’s just about there and answer in a groan, “I promise. I couldn’t live without you.”

  She throws her head back as her release tears through her, and as she bucks wildly against me, I come with one last hard plunge into her, the two of us drenched in sweat and holding on to one another.

  When her body ceases to tremble, she rests her head on my shoulder and says in barely a whisper, as if the words are too frightening to speak out loud, “I thought I could be without you. I was wrong. What are we going to do, Ian?”

  I gently stroke her back. “There’s nothing to do. This is what we are.”

  I’ve never said more truthful words than those. There is nothing the two of us can do. Maybe her therapist was right and she becomes addicted to people. I thought that was bullshit psychobabble, but I’m as addicted to Kristina as I am to how she makes me feel. I don’t know anymore. Nothing I’ve ever been addicted to ever felt like this.

  A little more than a week later, the story of our love exploded and hit the New York Times bestseller list. Silk by T. Anderson, some unknown erotica writer who self-published the story Kristina inspired that first night as I watched her movies and fell for her, hit #5.

  I stand in my kitchen after letting her in and casually announce the news. “Silk hit the Times list.”

  Kristina’s face is the purest example of confusion as my news sinks in. “Do you mean our book?”

  My smile stretches wide at that. “Yes. Number five.”

  “Oh my God! Ian! That’s wonderful! How, though? You used a pen name no one knows.”

  I take her in my arms and kiss her sweetly, loving her naiveté. “You did this. First you inspired me and agreed to be my muse, and then you mentioned the book in that interview. That’s what did it. My beautiful muse, you did this.”

  Kristina leans back and I see she has tears in her eyes. “I did this? Me?”

  “All you.”

  Hugging me, she says, “Oh, Ian, I can’t believe it. But it wasn’t just me. Your story is why people bought it and made it a bestseller. It’s you, not me.”

  I tip her head back and look down into those beautiful blue eyes I love. “It’s us. We did this. And I think I’m going to write another one.”

  “Do you know what the story’s about?”

  “I don’t know yet, but as long as I have my muse, I know it will be great.”

  She hugs me tightly to her again as I think about Rome and how the next chapter in our story will unfold. It will be there that the next book comes to be.

  I stay in bed late after three nights of celebrating Silk’s success with Ian. What had begun as a torrid love affair has morphed into something so consuming, so part of me that even being away from him makes me uncomfortable. But I’ve done exactly what my therapist said to and let things happen naturally. It’s just that natural for Ian and me isn’t really natural.

  In less than twenty-four hours, we’re scheduled to fly to Rome, and I still haven’t told him I can’t go with him. I’ve tried. I really have. But every time I think it’s the right moment to dash all his plans for us, he says something cute or funny about how much he’s looking forward to our trip. How can I break his heart like that?

  Closing my eyes, I curse my bad luck. For the first time ever, I have everything I want in life. It’s just my luck that fate says I can’t have it all at the same time. I can’t turn down the role I’ve wanted so badly. That would be career suicide, and I’d be crazy to let that opportunity slip through my hands.

  But the mere thought of losing Ian makes me feel hollow inside. If only I’d told him when I found out. Now when I have to ruin the Rome trip, he’ll know I’ve been holding out on him and essentially lying for days and days. He gave me the chance to tell the truth that night, but like a fool I didn’t take it.

  Now I’ve made things ten times worse.

  Desperate for some sound advice, I call Sienna. Unlike Priscilla, she always has clever ideas. She’ll know what I should do.

  “Kristina, I was just thinking about you,” she says as she answers the phone.

  “Really? Why?”

  “A bunch of reasons. First is that guy I met that night when we went out just left my place. Oh my, that man knows how to fuck. Honey, you must get yourself someone like him.”

  I smile at the knowledge that I already have a man who knows just how to take care of me in that respect. Ian and I may be crazy together, but when it comes to sex, he’s exactly what every man should be.

  “I’m happy you’re having a good time, Sienna.”

  “A good time doesn’t even begin to describe it. All we do is fuck. I love it! He hasn’t said anything about dating or a relationship and I couldn’t be happier. Tell me things got better for you since that night. What happened with that banker you were talking to that night? Is he pinching your pennies these days?”

  I can’t help but giggle at the cute way she says things. Cute and blunt. “No, nothing happened. He just gave me a ride home. He wasn’t really my type, you know?”

  “Yeah, he did have a sort of boring thing going on. You’re too sweet and fun for that kind of life. I’m not getting a three-piece suit and tie vibe for the kind of man you need. You need a little freakier, I think.”

  “I’ll be sure to work on that, Sienna.”

  “So why are you calling me at eight a.m.? Did you just send some hot guy home?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just needed some advice.”

  I hear the rustling of her sheets and comforter as she sits up to listen to what I have to say. “Advice? Is something wrong?”

  “Yes and no. I need to figure out how to break bad news to someone.”

  “Do it like you tear off a Band-Aid—fast. Just say what you have to say and then deal with their reaction. How bad is the news we’re talking about here?”

  “Bad. It’s going to disappoint this person a lot. I feel terrible about it t
oo.”

  “Life is full of disappointment, Kristina. Adults deal. It isn’t Cilla, is it?”

  “No.” That would be easy. Cilla can be difficult at times, but nothing ever seems to bother her for long. She’s got a thoughtless streak in her that comes in handy at times like this.

  “Because if it is her, I say do it slow and torture her. She left me hanging last weekend when I went out to LA to see her, so I’m still pissed at her.”

  “Sorry. I can’t help you there. This isn’t about her. It’s about someone I really care for and don’t want to hurt.”

  “That mystery man you were trying to get over that night we went out?” she asks, her voice full of curiosity.

  I know I shouldn’t mention anything even vaguely about Ian, but I say, “Yes, but I can’t tell you any more than that about him.”

  “Nothing? You’re not good at keeping secrets, Kristina. I’ll get it out of you.”

  “Please don’t try. It’s bad enough I might be hurting him by giving him this bad news. I don’t want to betray him too.”

  “Why would telling me about some guy betray him?” she asks now very curious.

  “Because he asked me to keep our relationship a secret,” I confess, knowing she’ll think the worst, which she does.

  “He’s married. That’s it. Married. He’s a married son of a bitch who’s cheating on his wife with you,” she pronounces.

  “He’s not married,” I say with a chuckle. If Ian is married, his wife sure doesn’t seem to be much a part of his life.

  “Are you sure? He doesn’t want anyone to know about you two. Sounds like a married man to me.”

  “No, he’s not married and I can’t tell you any more about him. I just need to know how to break bad news without hurting him.”

  “Are you breaking it off with him?”

  “No. I just need to cancel a trip we planned on taking because of work.”

  “Oh, that’s not a big deal. You can take a trip anytime. Just tell him you need to reschedule.”

  If only it was that easy. I could have done that if I told him when I found out about Vancouver. Now it was too late.