‘Take me as I am, Jon. Or don’t take me at all.’
He lets go of me and steps back, holding his hands up in surrender, and I’m struggling to understand what’s happening now. ‘Then I’m outta here, darlin’. I’m gone.’
He turns and starts to walk away and for a second I can’t move; I can’t do anything, because I wasn’t expecting this. But, I’m free now, aren’t I? He’s walking away and that leaves me free, to be with Neal and know that that’s exactly what I want. Except, I don’t know if it is. Not anymore. I know I don’t want him to walk away, and an almost suffocating panic suddenly takes over, but I still feel like I’m frozen; numb. Like I’m rooted to the spot and I can’t move a muscle.
He doesn’t turn around, he continues to walk down the corridor and I feel something so strong rip through me, a fear so raw and so brutal I can’t ignore it, even though I’m scared of its consequences.
‘I can’t give you Kate.’
He stands still, but he lets a couple of beats pass before he turns around to face me.
‘I can’t give you her. Because she doesn’t exist anymore, and you really need to start accepting that. Kate is dead, but Kira is alive. And she wants you, Jon. She really wants you. Kira Hardy, not Kira Blu. The woman, not the escort. But Kate, she’s gone. And if you really can’t accept that then it’s probably best you keep walking.’
He stays where he is, doesn’t move an inch, and my stomach lurches so low I almost can’t breathe.
‘You can’t have Kate. But you can have me.’
He walks slowly back towards me, and for the briefest of seconds I’m thrown right back to that day when all of this started; when that kiss we’d tried so hard to avoid happened and a spark was lit that refuses to be extinguished.
‘Kira Hardy,’ he says quietly, and he’s in my space now, so close I’m breathing him in. ‘That’s your name, huh?’
But even she isn’t real, and I know that. I’m Kira Blu. I’ll always be Kira Blu. I can’t be anyone else. I can’t let myself be anyone else.
‘Kate Reynolds is gone, Jon. And she’s never coming back.’
He rests his hand against my cheek and tilts my face upwards, and I close my eyes as his mouth touches mine until I’m drowning under the weight of his kiss; of the memories it’s resurrecting.
‘Come on,’ I whisper, pulling back slightly and taking his hand as I head for the room Neal told me to use. And yet, there’s a brief second when I contemplate using another one, but what would be the point? He has cameras in all of them. This is going to happen, whether I’m one hundred per cent happy with it or not.
Pulling him inside I close the door behind us and slide the sign to In Use before I back up against the wall.
‘You can take what you want now, Jon.’
He stands in front of me, his eyes boring into mine and all I can think about is how different this feels. With Neal there’s this intense attraction, this burning need to be with him. When I look at him; when he touches me the atmosphere’s electric. But this is different. This is calmer. This has the overwhelming feeling of familiarity; of safety. This is something I’ve known before, something I never really stopped wanting. This is tearing at my heart in a way I knew it always would, if I ever saw him again. This is too fucking real.
My breath hitches as he reaches out to touch my cheek with the back of his hand, trailing it over my skin, and his eyes are still locked with mine. I can’t break the stare. He’s looking at me and touching me and I’m slowly being cast back to a time when this was all I wanted. Him. Time together. Time to plan an impossible future but talking about it was a beautiful escape we both craved.
‘Do you like doing what you do out there?’ he asks, his palm now resting against my cheek. ‘Do you like taking it all off in front of so many people? Do you like fucking another woman while men like me watch? Does it excite you, knowing you help us create dirty, depraved fantasies we ache to live out?’
‘It’s who I am now.’
He smiles and laughs quietly, pulling his hand away from me. ‘You really aren’t the woman you used to be, are you?’
‘You knew that the second you found me. You knew that when you agreed to pay me just so you could be with me. You knew who I was, Jon. This shouldn’t be a surprise.’
‘You gave me no choice darlin’. I paid you, or I didn’t see you. You held the power, and you used it. You knew I couldn’t walk away.’
‘You always had a choice, Jon.’
He touches me again, his hand resting lightly against my neck. ‘You were so detached, when I fucked you in those soulless hotel rooms. You were distant; cold, even…’
‘I had to be.’
‘You did a great job of keeping it up for all those years.’
‘When you do something, day after day, night after night, for as long as I did it becomes second nature.’
His fingers brush my collarbone, dropping lower as he slowly starts to loosen my shirt. ‘But your guard’s dropping now, Kira.’
He pulls my shirt open and covers one of my breasts with his hand, pressing lightly, and I feel my nipple harden against his palm as his mouth almost touches mine.
‘You make it so every man who sees you out there wants you. They watch you, doing what you do, and they want a part of that. A piece of you. All those years as an escort, kid, they weren’t wasted.’
‘I’m good at my job.’
‘You’re not at work now.’
But I am. He thinks I’m not, but I am. Kira Blu is out to play.
I take hold of his wrist and pull his hand away from my breast. The line that separates work from reality in my world is so blurred now there’s no distinction, but I chose to have it that way. And maybe the real reason I like that line so blurred is because I always knew this would happen; that he’d find me again and mess with my head and make me think I still want something I could never have.
I move away from the wall and he turns to face me as I back away, his hands in his pockets, and I glance down at the familiar tattoo of an eagle on his left forearm. I’d been with him, the day he’d got that tattoo. I remember laughing when he’d winced with pain, and I told him to stop being soft; told him I’d tell everyone how he’d cried like a girl when the needle first hit his skin. We’d been nothing but friends, back then. Simon was supposed to have gone with him, but he’d been called away on business by his father so I’d gone with him instead. And we were still nothing more than friends, at that point, but we were friends who were starting to realise they wanted to be more than that.
His eyes drop as I slide my short leather skirt down over my thighs and step out of it, kicking it away, and all I’m wearing now is the shirt and the boots and I watch as he rakes a hand through his messed-up hair, his eyes slowly moving up until they finally meet mine.
I shrug the shirt off and move my legs a little further apart, sliding a hand between them, touching myself, sinking into my own wetness. And then I pull my hand away and touch my breasts, first one, then the other, circling my nipples with my wet fingers and I hear him moan quietly, but he doesn’t move. Not yet. But it’s working. I’m reeling him in, giving him no option but to enjoy the show, and forget that I’m anything other than the escort I became to escape everything my old life ever was. Everything it never was. Everything it could have been.
‘Kira…’
‘Ssh,’ I whisper, walking over to him and placing my fingers against his slightly open mouth, and he takes my hand and kisses my fingers before yanking me to him, his hand on my bottom pressing me against him as he kisses me long and hard and deep. His tongue touches mine, his hand splaying out on my bottom and I can feel his cock, rock hard and throbbing against my hip. And I want him, so fucking bad it terrifies me. ‘It’s time to play.’ I smile, and he laughs, and he lifts me up and carries me over to the couch in the corner, laying me down and I stretch out, opening my legs wide and he groans again. But I’ve got him, right where I want him now. He’s stopped talking
about reality and just who I might or might not be anymore; he’s playing, too.
I close my eyes and pull my legs up, arching my back as I touch myself again, but within seconds I feel him pull my hand away and replace it with his own, and I gasp as he touches me, as his fingers sink into me. But I keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to look at him yet, I need to keep them closed. Just for a few more minutes.
And then I feel his other hand start to work its way up my thigh, stroking my skin in touches that alternate between feather-light and firm as he moves upwards, and I know it’s him now. I know this isn’t Neal, it doesn’t feel the same. Neal feels different; exciting, new and beautiful. This feels warm and familiar – and safe. And it’s that feeling of safety that overwhelms me as he continues to stroke my clit and caress my skin and when his mouth meets mine in the softest, most gentle kiss I feel the mask start to slip as tears stream down my face.
‘I love you,’ he whispers, and still I keep my eyes closed because if I open them something’s going to happen I can’t control. ‘I love you, Kira.’ And as he pushes inside me I feel everything I managed to become when I ran from my old life shatter around me. What I thought was unbreakable is now falling down around me as he kisses me and holds me and I wish with every beat of my heart that I could find that detachment I managed to hold on to for all those years; why can’t I be that woman now? Why is this so different? But it is. I can’t push aside what I still feel for this man. I’m trying to picture Neal, trying to pretend it’s him inside me, but it doesn’t feel the same.
I bury my fingers in his hair as the kiss deepens, and the tears are still falling as he continues to thrust into me, slowly and gently and I pull my legs further up around us, keeping him close to me. His skin’s warm against mine, his smell so familiar, a mixture of musky cologne and stale cigarettes, the taste of him intensifying that feeling of safety sex with him has instilled.
He shouldn’t have come here.
But he did.
He came here.
He found me.
Something I always knew he’d do.
And now I’m faced with a reality I’ve been trying to ignore for far too long…
Neal
I feel my heart break – a real, physical pain – as I watch him, and Kira. Together. And there’s a huge part of me that’s screaming so loud, so fucking loud at me to get in there and stop this; to pull her away from him and get him out of here. But it’s too late. The damage is done. I’m watching my beautiful girl have sex with a man she was once in love with. But that love, I don’t think it ever died.
I thought she’d try and pull up those barriers, and she did, at first. She had them pulled so high around her I really thought we were gonna be OK; that we really would get through this. That all I’d have to do would be to watch her fuck him quickly then we could move on. I thought we were heading towards that. But something happened in there, in that room. I can’t hear what’s being said, all I can do is read their body language, see their facial expressions, but that was all I needed to see to know that something happened in there. Something changed. And it happened way before he started fucking her.
I briefly look away from the screens in front of me, all of them showing him and Kira together, and I take a deep breath before turning back to face them. And he isn’t fucking her. She isn’t fucking him. They’re not even having sex, they’re making love. And with a realisation so harsh it physically knocks the breath right out of me, I know that’s something we’ve never really done, me and Kira. We might think we have, but we haven’t. Not really. We’ve never made love. Not like that.
‘Shit!’
I throw myself back in my chair, dragging both hands through my hair. I’ve never felt so defeated. So sick. So empty and lonely and tired. I want that woman with every fibre of my being but I don’t think I can have her. Not fully. Not totally.
I slide my chair back towards the desk and flick the screens off. I can’t watch any more. I don’t need to. I’ve seen all I need to see. I’ve seen everything I never wanted to see. I’ve seen enough to know that, no matter how much I love her; how much I need her, I can’t fucking have her.
Does she still want me?
I don’t think that matters now.
Even if she does, I’m still walking away.
Kira
He pulls out of me and I sit up, draw my knees to my chest and hug them tight, resting my chin on them as he sits back against the couch, his chest still rising and falling as he tries to catch his breath.
He throws his head back and lets out a small sigh, and I don’t know whether that’s a sigh of resignation or realisation. I don’t know all that much anymore. Except that things are a hundred times more complicated than I ever thought they were back home.
This man here, he’s so different to Neal, but maybe that’s why I was attracted to him – to Neal. Because there was nothing about him that reminded me of the man I loved but couldn’t have.
‘I’m sorry, Jon.’
He turns to look at me. ‘What have you got to be sorry about?’
‘Everything’s such a mess.’
‘It was a mess a long time ago, Kira. It’s been a mess for as long as I can remember.’
I drop my gaze and watch my fingers as they wind nervously together. ‘If I’d just listened to you. Back then. If I’d just been brave enough to face up to everyone and…’
‘Hey, come on. I wasn’t exactly brave either, was I? I could have said something, I could have forced your hand, but I didn’t. I kept quiet.’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference.’
I get up and walk over to the other side of the room, to the pole in the corner and I stop in front of it, reaching out to run my fingertips over the cool steel.
‘It could never have happened. You and me. Everything was always stacked against us.’
I feel him come up behind me, feel his hand rest on my hip and his lips brush the back of my neck. ‘Maybe it was. Then.’ His mouth brushes my skin again, moving down to my shoulder, his hand stroking the curve of my waist. ‘But now…’
He doesn’t finish the sentence. And I know why. Both of us know why.
I reach back and bury my fingers in his hair, closing my eyes as he continues to kiss my shoulder, working his way back up and I turn my head slightly and catch his mouth and we’re kissing again – hot, hard kisses that cause my skin to prickle and my heart to race.
With his hand still on my hip he swings me around and pushes me back against the thick metal pole, the coolness of the steel sending a shiver rushing through me and I gasp out loud in shock, and then I laugh, and so does he. And suddenly the only memories I can remember are the ones where we’re doing this, we’re laughing. We’re happy. But then he looks at me, right at me, his eyes burning deep into mine and nothing’s funny anymore. This – it isn’t funny. It’s messy and complicated and it’s playing with people’s lives. But it’s happening. And I’m not sure there’s anything any of us can do to stop it.
I reach up behind me and grasp the pole, holding on tight as I wrap my legs around his hips and he holds on to me to steady me, thrusting into me so hard my back slams against the metal. He’s back inside me, and it’s beautiful and wrong and everything I want. He’s everything I need, I think he always has been. I just couldn’t go back, to that life, and that’s exactly what he represented in my mind; the past. And I can’t go back there. But can I really keep on running? For the rest of my life? Because that’s all I’ve been doing since Simon gave me no other choice.
His fingers dig into my hips as he pushes deeper into me, and I can feel him, there inside me, moving and thrusting and I don’t know whether I want him to stop or stay there forever. I just know that, if I stay here, with Neal, I’m still running. I’m still fucking running, and Jon, he won’t ever go away. He’ll always find me, he’ll always be there, and I know that. Now. He won’t ever let me go. Because I won’t let him.
I wrap my legs tighter
around him and I feel his fingertips dig deeper into my flesh as he continues to fuck me, every thrust of his cock pushing me further and further towards an inevitability that was always coming for me. It always has been. It was just a matter of time.
‘I need you, Kira,’ he murmurs, and I feel that beautiful ache, that glorious pain start to take over as he explodes inside me, and I take it all; I accept the power he still holds over me. ‘Jesus Christ!’
I need him, too. And I’m crying again, for that life I could never have with this man. I’m crying because I could have had it. I could have loved him; been loved by him, for all these years. Everything could have been normal and ordinary and the tears won’t stop falling, they’re crashing down my face so fast and so hard I can’t breathe as years of pent-up pain and frustration spill out of me until I collapse into his arms, and he holds me tight, rocking me like a baby, stroking my hair, whispering to me that it’s all going to be alright. It’s going to be OK.
Obsession (Forbidden #2) Page 28
