Eight Ways to Ecstasy

by Jeanette Grey

  Her lip wobbled, and she took her hands back from his, leaving his palms cold. The pain behind his ribs cut deeper.

  “This was—” She pointed at the rabbit and the albums and the boxes. “This was amazing. But what if it’s me?”

  What?

  She shook her head. “What if I just can’t trust anyone?” Mashing her lips together, she pointed shining eyes up toward the sky. “I was so afraid of turning out just like my mother, you know? Ending up with someone who tried to control me or told me I wasn’t good enough. But what if it’s just the opposite?”

  “Kate—”

  “She’s old and alone now, and she might always be. It hit me when she was here last week. She let this thing that hurt her scar her, and maybe—” She looked back at him, and her smile was horrible and aching. “Maybe that’s what happened to me. Maybe I just can’t.”

  She had to be kidding him. She had the biggest, most generous heart. She’d shown it to him so many times.

  “I don’t believe that. Not for a second.” He reached out for her, but she didn’t just pull away. She stood, and oh hell—if she ran away from him again. If she didn’t give him a chance, after he’d laid himself out for her like this…

  “But you said it yourself. You keep doing this thing where you won’t let me in, and maybe you’re getting better at that. But I keep doing this, too.”

  “What?”

  “Finding reasons not to trust you.”

  And he had said that. In anger, he’d thrown it at her, and apparently he’d hit his mark.

  “Kate…” What could he say? What could he do?

  Except give her the final piece. The one he should’ve started with.

  He rose to his feet. And his heart cracked open all over again, but he forced out the words. The ones he’d all but thrown at her in his outrage the last time she’d been here.

  “Kate. I love you.”

  Like he’d never loved anyone before. Like he hadn’t even known he could love.

  The corner of her mouth wavered. “But what if that’s not enough?”

  And that was it. Collapse. All the air was crushed out of him, and the hand he’d extended toward her fell with the weight of the stones crashing in on him. Filling his ribs, and maybe he’d never, ever breathe again.

  Wrapping her arms around herself, she took a single step backward, but it might have been a hundred. “Thank you. For showing me all of this.”

  It had always been hers.

  “I’m not saying no.”

  “It sounds like you are.” He couldn’t even stop the edge that bit into his tone.

  Voice creeping higher, she gazed at him with overflowing eyes. “Can I just have some time? Please?”

  Time. Fuck. That was what he’d asked her for when he’d first returned. Well, this was the seventh of their nights.

  And just like that, he regretted every single one. What if he had given this to her that very first night? If he’d been open with her the way she’d wanted him to?

  Would it even have mattered?

  With a hollow echoing inside him, he met her backward step with one of his own. “Take all the time you need.”

  But he didn’t have much hope.

  “Will—will you be all right?”

  No. Not ever again.

  Did it count as a lie to shrug? “I’ll muddle through.” Then he took a deep breath. Because there were still things he was supposed to tell her, for all that it felt he had nothing left. “I’ll keep busy, anyway.”

  She tilted her head to the side in question.

  “I’m slated to take over my father’s company next week.”

  “Oh.” It came out in the barest gasp of a breath. “But I thought you didn’t want to.”

  He hadn’t. For the longest time, it’d been the last thing in the world he’d wanted to do.

  But that had been a different him. A different world.

  “It’s time,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “To face my responsibilities. To fix my father’s mistakes.” To do things right—to do what his father had never managed to do. “It’s time I live the life I was meant to lead.”

  Not because he’d been forced to, but because he chose to.

  “That’s—” she started, but he cut her off.

  “And I want to live that life with you.” It took everything he had to back another step away. “But in the end, that choice is up to you.”

  Chapter TWENTY-SIX

  Time. It was one of those things Kate could never seem to get enough of. There weren’t enough hours in the day, weren’t enough weeks left in the semester, weren’t enough days until her portfolio was due.

  There wasn’t any of it left with Rylan. She didn’t owe him another second.

  But she did owe him an answer.

  Fingers and toes half-numb, she fumbled with the key to the art department’s darkroom, nearly dropping it twice before she managed to get the lock to turn. She chuckled darkly at herself, throat raw and eyes dry. Lord knew how she’d even managed to get here. The train ride over from Rylan’s house to campus was a blur; she’d been completely zoned out. Thinking.

  She’d asked for time to think, and Rylan had told her take as much of it as she needed. After all the time they’d already spent. Seven nights, and he’d had to guilt-trip her into giving him the last one, and then he’d had to use it to—

  Hell. He’d used it to bare his soul. All those days and nights they’d spent together, she’d wanted nothing more than for him to let her into his world, to prove that he could really give himself to her. That she could trust him.

  And then tonight…

  He’d spread out his entire life for her, answering questions she hadn’t even known to ask with photographs and ancient toys and stories. He’d told her about his plans. His responsibilities. He’d talked and talked, all these words he’d never said to her before—three words she still couldn’t believe he’d chosen to say.

  He’d talked until her head had spun. Until the only person in the room she couldn’t trust was herself.

  Letting her bag fall to the counter, she braced her arms against its edge. Squeezed her eyes shut tight against the urge to cry.

  He’d done so much for her. Taken command when she was a wreck about having forgotten her mother’s visit. Helped her escape, after, when she’d so desperately needed to. He’d touched her…

  God. The way that man had touched her. From their very first night, he’d shown her all these things about what her body could do and be and feel, and he kept doing it. Sex with him wasn’t a pain or a chore. It was a revelation.

  She wanted to trust him. He’d done exactly what he’d said he’d do—he’d earned it.

  But she didn’t know how. After all this time trying to protect herself, how did she let this person in? This person she…loved.

  She bit down hard on her lip and sucked in a deep, ragged breath. She’d loved him for so long now she’d almost forgotten what it was like not to. Even when she’d tried so hard to deny it. She’d never really stopped.

  And yet that hadn’t kept her from snapping at him the other night. Her reasons that had been all-consuming then—they seemed so feeble now.

  Releasing her lip from her teeth, she bit back a broken echo of a laugh, and it burned her lungs. The fact that she loved him was probably why she had snapped at him. It was just like he had said—she was so damn hurt, so scared. She’d take any excuse to run.

  She’d keep running. Unless she could find a way—a reason not to.

  She lifted her head and loosened her grip on the counter, blood rushing back into her hands and making them sting. Swiping the back of her wrist across her eyes, she took a deep breath.

  Time. Rylan had given her time.

  And she had work to do.

  Her portfolio was due so soon, and by all rights she should be in the studio right now, figuring out a plan and starting the entire project over again. But even she could only fool herself so much. She was a w
reck, and anything she tried to paint right now would be an angry, emotional mess. But there were other things she could do. She’d been meaning to develop all the rolls of film she’d shot for a while now anyway. Maybe there’d be something, somewhere, in one of the hundred-odd frames that she could use.

  Relying on muscle memory, she got to work. It had been so long since she had done this, but it all came back to her. Unspooling the film and loading it into canisters. Mixing up the chemicals. The scent of the developer grounded her almost as much as the physicality of it all, and her hands got a little surer. The shakiness Rylan had left her with beginning to bleed away.

  By the time the negatives were ready, it was the middle of the night, and a part of her was ready to collapse, but she was so close now. She flushed, remembering what kinds of pictures were hidden somewhere in those frames. This facility didn’t get much use, but it was probably for the best that she was doing this now, when no one was going to walk in.

  In the end, she just about overloaded the developer bath making all her contact prints and proofs. She didn’t let herself watch the images slowly emerging from beneath the grain of the paper, forcing herself to wait. When they were finally done, she drained them off and dumped the wet sheets into a spare tray and took them out into the main room. Into the light.

  Her heart fell as she started to pin them up. Each photo of a church or a “sacred space” was as lifeless as the last. God. She’d fucked things up with Rylan and she was fucking things up with school and her career and—

  And then she her fingers fumbled on the first image she’d taken of Rylan at the museum. He wasn’t even looking at her. But the lines of his face in profile, the slope of his shoulders and the strength in his stance, relaxed as it was, his focus on a painting…

  She raced to see the next and the next. He was just…beautiful. In black-and-white, he was a study in contrasts, dark hair and clear eyes, the gleam of the black leather of his jacket and the pinpoints of stubble on his cheek and jaw. He was a work of art in his own right, and he was surrounded by even more of it.

  But the pictures she’d taken of him hadn’t just been in galleries.

  Her whole chest seized at the first flash of skin, and in a breath she was back there. In his bedroom in the soft morning light, asking him to bare himself for her, framing each new piece of himself he revealed. The camera loved the swells of muscle, the dips and hollows of abdominals and collarbones, and she loved…She loved…

  And then there was a picture of her.

  And it wasn’t that she was particularly averse to seeing herself in photographs in general. But this was different, and not just because you could see her breasts. The images weren’t as refined or as well-focused as the ones of him, an amateur’s hand clear in the composition. But all the skill she’d acquired in a lifetime hadn’t been enough to make her photographs of cathedrals come to life, while these glowed.

  They’d traded the camera back and forth for a while there, and there were images of her and images of him.

  Images of them. Blurry and overexposed and barely recognizable. Lips pressed to lips, a soft chin and a roughly chiseled jaw and a flash of tongue.

  Images of her sex. Splayed open and strange, a broad hand against a pale thigh, and she should be embarrassed. Once upon a time, she’d have been mortified. But with him, she hadn’t been. Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to call forth an ounce of shame.

  With him, she’d been free to be herself, to be naked in every possible way.

  And she’d pushed it away. She’d shut down on him and for what? To protect herself? Her throat went raw.

  God, what had she done?

  She sifted through the rest of the pictures until she found a close-up of his face. He was looking right at her through the lens, eyes warm, this faintest hint of a smile coloring those soft, full lips, and it just about cracked her open.

  She pinned the last of the photos up with shaking hands, then staggered back. Collapsed down into the chair in the corner and dropped her face into her palms, but there was no burning those images away—the ones of him and the ones of them. They were beautiful. They were…

  They were…

  She lifted her gaze, and the world went stunningly, startlingly clear.

  They were sacred.

  Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  “You ready for this?”

  Rylan caught his sister’s gaze in the mirror on the back of his office door. She was as well composed as she ever was, not a hair out of place, but he recognized the strain around her eyes.

  He turned back to his reflection and recognized it in his own.

  It had been a long week since he’d offered Kate his past and his whole goddamn life, and he had yet to hear a word from her. It was a cold stone sitting low in his gut, weighing him down with every step, but he hadn’t let that keep him from moving forward.

  Kate was the one who’d put paid to his fantasies of leaving it all behind. He was here. And he had work to do.

  Straightening his tie, he gave a single sharp nod. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  It was just the two of them today, with Lexie’s temp off taking care of something else, and that was for the best. It’d been the Bellamy children against the world for the longest time. He chuckled to himself beneath his breath. If only Evan were here, the picture would really be complete.

  Rylan shook off that particular line of thought. Evan was pursuing his dreams on the other side of the country. Lexie was realizing hers here.

  And Rylan…

  Rylan was embracing the person he’d always been meant to be. The one he wanted to be.

  For one last, long moment, he studied his reflection.

  How many times had he looked at his own face and seen his father’s stubborn cruelty and his mother’s selfish faithlessness?

  Today, he was choosing to see other things. Beneath the stubbornness lay strength. Beneath the urge to run away was the will to stay.

  They may have dictated this life to him, but he alone could make it his own.

  Turning away from the mirror, he squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. “We have the votes?”

  “We should.”

  They’d been scrambling the last couple of weeks, working around McConnell’s machinations and shedding light on his plans. It had taken some work and more than a few promises of favors, but they had the support they needed.

  He had the resolve.

  “Let’s do this.”

  The focus his father had instilled in him took over, crowding out everything else around him. Adrenaline surged through his veins, and people parted for them as they made their way down the hall. The doors to the executive elevator swept open in front of them.

  And all the energy and the power simmering in his bones suddenly boiled over.

  “Hey.” Jordan stepped off the elevator and strode toward him. “Headed to the big meeting—?”

  Before he’d even decided to do it, Rylan’s fist was connecting with his face.

  “What the—”

  Behind him Lexie shrieked, but Rylan didn’t hear it. Jordan came up clutching his jaw, a hell of a bruise already starting to bloom, and Rylan’s knuckles stung, but the red tide over his vision didn’t fade or recede. He curled a hand in the fabric of Jordan’s shirt and got up in his face.

  His voice came out dangerous and low. “You touch my sister again, and I will end you.”

  “Rylan!”

  He released Jordan and shoved him back, not breaking stride as he stepped into the elevator. Lexie rounded on him as the doors closed behind them.

  “What the hell,” she sputtered.

  He pinned her with his gaze. “You do whatever you want, with whoever you want. But someone hurts you and they have to take it up with me.”

  He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told his father his intentions. He was taking care of this family now. This company and all the people he was responsible for.

  With a nod, he turned to the ele
vator operator who’d been studiously not looking at them this entire time.

  “Ninety-fifth floor, Marcus.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As they started to rise, Lexie stared at him. “You’ve really changed in the past year, haven’t you?”

  Rylan’s heart panged.

  He’d thought his father’s crimes had been what had changed him. That the sting of betrayal had been what had given him the strength to leave it all behind.

  But really, he’d always had one foot out the door. Resenting the choices he’d never gotten to make, he’d always been ready to run.

  Whether or not Kate could ever love him—could ever trust him—what had really changed him had been wanting to be worthy of her.

  He let out a long breath. “I’m certainly trying to.”

  “I wasn’t sure if I should bring chicken soup or whiskey, so I brought both.” Liam flashed Kate a hopeful half smile as he stood in her doorway, two brown paper packages clasped in his hands.

  Kate chuckled and stepped aside to let him in. “Coffee would’ve been more appropriate, actually.”

  “I don’t know. Somebody doesn’t show up to class for over a week and they’re usually either dying of the plague or on a bender.” He stopped dead in his tracks about three feet in the door, and Kate’s heart rose up into her throat. “Though I guess there’s more than one kind of bender.”

  Her pale imitation of a laugh rose up into something higher. Definitely more unhinged.

  “Truer words.”

  A bender wasn’t a terrible way to describe her past week. Except instead of being drunk on booze she’d been high on paint and color. Lost to the sweeping arcs of brushstrokes over collarbones and shoulder blades. The dabs of cerulean in brilliant blue eyes.

  “Jesus, Kate.” Liam turned to her. “Did you seriously do all of these this week?”

  She scrubbed a hand over her eyes. “This isn’t even all of it.”

  There were drawings, too. Studies she’d done to prepare for taking a brush to canvas. Lines and planes sprawling out across paper as she’d fought to solve the puzzle of a single face and how it went together. How to put it together once she’d taken it apart.