Being Me (Inside Out Trilogy)

by Lisa Renee Jones

  The lobby is crowded, warmed by a gas fireplace framed in stone, and furnished with clusters of rich brown leather chairs and several paintings I personally selected. People mill around everywhere, drinks in hand. Mark and I make our way through the visitors, mingling and prospecting for new sales. Ryan finds us quickly, looking stunning in a striking red silk tie that contrasts with his pin-striped suit as dark as his neatly groomed raven hair.

  He takes my hand and kisses it. “You look lovely, Sara.” He leans in near my ear. “Far better than any of the many masterpieces here tonight.”

  My cheeks heat with the compliment I don’t deserve, considering the expensive dresses and suits being elegantly worn by the guests. “I should have changed.”

  “Nonsense,” he says. “You look marvelous. Why don’t we head upstairs to the demo unit? There are a number of guests there you can impress with your knowledge of art.”

  Inside the twentieth-floor apartment, I spend the next half hour happily chatting with guests and I try to lose myself in the thrill of discussing the art I’ve chosen for the project. It’s a difficult task, since the Chris Merit cityscape I purchased from a local resident for my blank wall is a constant reminder of him.

  When the crowd clears I find myself alone, seduced into deep thought by the dimly lit elegant space and soft music humming in the background. I find myself dreading the empty apartment awaiting me. “It’s a wrap,” Ryan announces, and I turn to find both him and Mark walking toward me. “The lobby is clear and we’ve locked up here.”

  Leaning against the mahogany railing spanning the middle of the ceiling-to-floor window, I feel a charge in the air—the sensation of being prey to not one lion, but two, as they each stop beside me, sandwiching me between them.

  “The night was a success, Ms. McMillan,” Mark says in praise. “You’ve proven to be quite the asset.”

  Even the caged animal I have become these past few days, more now than ever, hungers for this man’s compliments, and I tell myself it’s about my job and nothing more. “I’ve tried.” My voice comes out shaky and affected, and I can feel how losing Chris has made me revert backward, angry at how easily I still fall prey to a need for approval from men like Mark and Michael.

  Ryan brushes my hair over my shoulder, and despite the gentleness of the touch, it’s too intimate, and I tense, jerking my gaze to his. “Poor Sara,” he murmurs. “You have such pain in your eyes.”

  “I’m . . . I’m fine.”

  “No,” Ryan insists gently. “You’re not. I’ve watched you bleeding emotionally all week.”

  “You have to let him go.”

  Mark proves his ease at stirring my defenses one again, and I turn to him, finding him closer than I’d thought. My thigh brushes his and I feel it like a second jolt. “No,” I choke out. “I can’t.” I back up and Ryan’s hands go to my waist. I’m that caged animal again, a deer caught by two predators.

  Mark claims the space I’d created and his legs press to mine. “You can’t or you won’t?”

  The urge to bolt is stilled when Ryan leans in, his chin nuzzling my hair as he whispers, “He let go. You have to, too.”

  I’m shaken by how right he might be, and how wrong I burn for him to be. “It’s too soon.” It’s too soon.

  Mark’s hands settle on my shoulders, branding me. “I refuse to watch you hurt like this one more day. Let go, Ms. McMillan.”

  He leans in, his head slowly lowering, the punishingly sensual line of his mouth nearing mine. “Think about it,” he urges softly. “To feel nothing but pleasure. To expect nothing more.”

  Ryan’s thumbs stroke my waist. “To stop hurting,” he adds.

  The heat of Mark’s breath teasing my cheek, the spicy, powerful scent of him overwhelms me, and for just a moment I am weak enough to want what these two men offer me. Chris doesn’t want me. He has all but kicked me out of what he’d called my home. Stay until the Rebecca thing is over. Just thinking about it slices through my very soul.

  “Just let go,” Mark murmurs, his fingers settling on my cheek at the same time Ryan slides his hand to my stomach. Warmth spreads through me and then transforms, twisting and turning inside me, spiraling into the acid depths of darkness, to a place I remember too well. A place Michael took me two years before.

  “No!” I shove against Mark. “No. No. No.”

  “Ms.—”

  “No, Mark. Let me go.” Ryan’s hands slide from my body and a bit of relief washes over me, but Mark is still touching me, somehow holding my arms. “Let go!”

  They both step away from me as if burned, and I dart from between them in a rush of adrenaline. I all but run to the exit stairwell and start down the stairs. Ten floors down, I regret the walk, but I keep moving, despising what Mark and Ryan have stirred inside me. How they’ve tried to steal what hope I have left for Chris and me. How I was almost weak enough to let them convince me I could do no better than submitting to their control.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, on shaky legs, I draw a calming breath and exit, promising myself I will not lose it until I’m alone, when I know I am already a volcanic mess, burning alive from the inside out.

  I manage well enough until I step onto the automatic door sensor and Mark appears beside me. “Sara—”

  “Leave me alone, Mark.”

  “I’ll take you to your car.”

  “No. I don’t need a ride.”

  “I was trying to help,” he says defensively as we step outside. “I can help.”

  The instant I see the valet area is clear of people, I whirl on him. “What happened up there shouldn’t have happened.” Anger radiates from deep in my soul, lacing my words. “It can’t happen again. Ever.” Urgent to get away from him, I turn to my right and stop dead in my tracks to find Chris standing there.

  “Chris,” I gasp, my gaze hungrily drinking in the sight of him in all his leather and denim glory. His presence is a sweet relief, filling empty spaces, allowing me to breathe again.

  He glares over my shoulder at Mark. “What just happened that can’t happen again?”

  “You’re ripping her to shreds, Chris,” he replies with unmistakable contempt.

  Chris’s green eyes sharpen and he takes a threatening step around me and toward Mark. I jump in front of him, pressing my hands to his chest to stop his progress. Touching him is heaven. “No. Don’t.”

  His lashes lower, his eyes resting on my face. “What happened, Sara?”

  Mark answers before I can. “What happened is that she’s melting away to nothing over you, asshole.”

  Chris’s head lifts, the fury deep in his eyes as he fixes them on Mark again. “We both know what this is about and I suggest you don’t go there.”

  “You suggest,” Mark repeats with disdain. “You’re good at suggesting what you can’t do yourself.”

  Chris starts for him again and I wrap my arms around him. “No. Please.”

  The two men stare at each other, Chris’s chest heaving under my hand. “Walk away, Mark,” Chris warns. “Walk away now before I don’t let you.”

  “Mark, please,” I plead over my shoulder.

  He hesitates. “If you need me, Sara, you know how to find me.” I hear his footsteps and Chris remains stiff, on edge, until I assume Mark is gone.

  Chris’s attention slides to me for an instant, his fingers untangling my arms from around him, banding my wrist as he starts walking, all but dragging me toward the Harley parked near the door. “Chris—”

  “Don’t talk, Sara. Not now. Not when I’m this pissed.” He stops at the bike and shoves a leather jacket my size at me. I stare down at it. He bought me a jacket? “Put it on, Sara.”

  “I’m wearing a skirt. I can’t ride the bike.”

  “Get on, or I’ll rip the damn thing to put you on this bike.”

  I put the jacket on. He shoves a helmet at me. “And this.”

  The instant I place it on my head, he tugs me forward and I yank my skirt up, sliding my le
g over the bike. Chris shackles my wrists and pulls them around him. I begin to panic. I’ve never been on a bike. What if I fall off?

  He revs the engine, rolls backward, and then in a roar of escalation we are on the highway, the cold ocean air blistering my bare legs. Chris speeds up and I bury my face against him. We travel the twisting roads, and he speeds up, faster and faster still. He won’t slow down. He won’t stop. He’s going to kill us.

  Twenty-nine

  “Terrified and furious” doesn’t begin to describe my state by the time Chris brings the bike to a screeching halt just off the coastline, in the midst of twining trails and massive trees with towering trunks dimly lit by moonlight and stars. My heart is in my throat, my breath heaving, and my legs frozen to the bone.

  He frees my hands and I scramble off the bike, stumbling and yanking off my helmet. “Are you crazy!” I scream, tossing it away and shoving the mess of my hair out of my face. “Were you trying to kill us, or just punish me, Chris? Have you not punished me enough?”

  “Who’s punishing who?” he demands, setting his helmet on the bike and advancing on me.

  My hands go up and they shake with the volume of adrenaline and emotion pulsing through me. “Stay back. Just stay back. I can’t believe you just did that to me.”

  He grabs my arm and turns me, pushing me against a tree, my fingers digging into the bark, his hips against my backside. Anger and arousal and a sense of needing him ignite all at once within me. “Did you fuck Mark, Sara?”

  “No!”

  His hand slides up my waist, under the jacket, and over my breast. I squeeze my eyes shut against the delicious roughness of his touch I don’t want to react to. Not when he’s angry, not like this.

  “Did he touch you here?” The question is gravely spoken by my ear, accusation etched in its depths, and I struggle to remember how I’d feel if I’d seen him with Ava.

  “No. Chris—”

  “Did you tell him no, Sara?” He yanks my skirt up, his hand framing my hips as he arches his pelvis against me.

  “Yes,” I pant, impossibly alive with his touch, arching into him, the thick pulse of his erection nestled against my bottom. My body doesn’t care how angry and hurt I am.

  He tears my panties. “Did he do that?”

  “No,” I breathe out.

  His hand curves around my hip, his fingers gliding into the slick heat of my sex. “Oh yeah, baby, already dripping for me. Or did he get you ready for me?”

  “Enough!” I shout, driven to my limit by his crassness. I shove ineffectually against him. “Let me off this tree, Chris.”

  “Not until I’m ready.” He squeezes my breast, strokes the slick, sensitive flesh between my legs, and I moan uncontrollably.

  “Did you moan for him, too?”

  That’s it! I elbow him hard in the side and he grunts, loosening his grip enough for me to twist around to face him, shoving against his chest for more space. “Have you not hurt me enough?” I demand, yanking my skirt down over my exposed, cold backside, and I blast him with everything I’ve felt these past six days.

  “When is it enough? When, Chris? When you’ve totally ripped out my heart? I didn’t fuck Mark, but I could have. You said we were over. And damn you, you made me believe home was with you, then the first time life gets rough, you snatch that home from me and tell me I can stay until the Rebecca thing is over. Like I’m at a hotel. Do you know how that felt? Do you know how much it hurt me?”

  For several beats we just stand there, staring at each other, the moonlight revealing the same anger carved in his face that I know must be mine. An anger I watch transform and soften the amber speckles in his green eyes, turning them to the gray of shadows and torment. His hands go to the tree, framing my face. “Sara.” My name gusts from his lips like an ocean wind, and he buries his face in my neck, the earthy male scent of him I’ve missed so desperately washing over me, filling my senses.

  My arms wrap around his neck, my lashes lowering. His arm circles my waist, holding me close. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, his tone dark and tormented. “I’m so sorry, baby.” He cups my face, staring down at me. “I’d bleed for you, Sara. I would never intentionally hurt you. Never.”

  “You shut me out, and—” My throat constricts. “I was supposed to be there with you. We were supposed to go through this together.”

  “Losing Dylan”—he hesitates, seeming to battle within himself before he continues—“it brought back old demons I thought I’d dealt with.” He buries his face in my neck again, as if he can’t bear for me to see his face. “Do you know how I felt when you saw me like that?”

  Anguish pours off him and into me and my hands settle on his head, cradling him against me. “I love you, Chris. I can deal with anything except you shutting me out.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  A heavy weight of doubt settles in my heart, and I wonder if we can make it through this. “You don’t know that,” I whisper. “You don’t trust me enough to believe in me, in us.”

  He lifts his head, letting me see the shame in his eyes, exposing what he’s tried to hide. Shame I understand all too well and would never wish on Chris. “You have no reason to feel what you’re feeling right now. Not with me,” I say.

  “There’s a part of me that lives in the belly of hell. You don’t belong there. I can’t take you there with me.” His forehead goes to mine. “And yet I can’t stay away. I can’t let you go.”

  “Don’t,” I breathe, my hands press to his chest, the muscle flexing beneath my touch. I wish I could pull the pain from within him, heal him the way he does me. “Don’t let me go.”

  “I’m not,” he vows, framing my face to stare down at me, his voice sandpaper rough as it shivers down my spine and into my soul. “I can’t, and I can only pray you don’t wish I would have.” He claims my mouth, and it is as if he is claiming me again for the first time. I offer all that I am to him.

  His tongue presses past my lips and teeth, finding mine and stroking, and I feel him everywhere, the heat of how much I need him burning away the cold night. Everything fades away but the two of us touching, kissing, melding our bodies together. I am blinded by passion, by the relief of his return, by his body next to mine. Time stands still and somehow my blouse is gaping, my bra open, and I’m pressed against the tree with Chris suckling and licking my nipples. My skirt is at my hips and I stroke the thick ridge of Chris’s erection, nearly desperate to feel him inside me, craving the connection I thought I’d never experience again.

  “Chris—” I pant and yelp, the bark cutting into my back, penetrating the haze of desire overcoming me.

  “Ah. The tree.” Chris pulls me from the tree, kisses me hard on the lips, and then shrugs out of his leather jacket, spreading it on the ground. He skims my jacket from my shoulders, spreading it on top of his. I shiver in a gust of wind and he takes me down to the ground, his big, warm body blocking out everything but him. Protecting me. He’s always protecting me, even from himself.

  Our breath mingles, teasing me with a kiss yet to happen, with the depths of passion I feel for Chris expanding within me. Still, he doesn’t kiss me. He caresses my skirt up my hips again, his touch leaving goose bumps on my bare skin that have nothing to do with the night air and everything to do with the man. I reach for his waistband; that craving for him inside me reignites, becomes urgent. He echoes my silent plea, shoving down his pants, and I moan with the feel of the hard length of his cock thick between my thighs.

  On his elbows, he pins me in a sizzling stare as he enters me and it’s as if my soul sighs when he is finally buried deep in the depths of my body, stretching me, filling me.

  “I thought I’d never be inside you again and it almost killed me.” His voice trembles with a vulnerability that means even more than his confession.

  He begins to move, a slow, sensual slide of his cock followed by another, watching me, me watching him, and we are making love, impossible and breathtaking lovemaking. We swa
y and meld together in a sweet, arousing dance, but it’s not the harmony of our bodies that reaches deep and claims me, it’s what passes between us as we stare at one another. He is as much a part of me as skin and bone, and it terrifies and completes me.

  Chris dips his head and touches his lips to mine, teases my tongue with his, trails his lips over my jaw, over my shoulder, to my nipple. Every lick and taste, and tease, is tender, gentle, a contrast to the hardness of the past week and the man who’d been tied to those poles in the club. Suddenly I need him to know that I see both, I love both.

  My hand slides into the silky long strands of his blond hair. “Chris,” I manage hoarsely through the delicious friction of his tongue against my nipple, my sex clenching around his cock. “Chris.”

  His mouth comes down on mine, harder now, more demanding, a raw, hungry need in him rising to the surface. “You belong to me,” he growls. “Say it.”

  “Yes. Yes, I belong to you.” His mouth finds mine again, demanding, taking, drawing me under his spell.

  “Say it again,” he demands, nipping my lip, squeezing my breast and nipple, and sending a ripple of pleasure straight to my sex.

  “I belong to you,” I pant.

  He lifts me off the ground with the possessive curve of his hand around my backside, angling my hips to thrust harder, deeper. “Again,” he orders, driving into me, his cock hitting the farthest point of me and blasting against sensitive nerve endings.

  “Oh . . . ah . . . I . . . I belong to you.”

  His mouth dips low, his hair tickling my neck, his teeth scraping my shoulders at the same moment he pounds into me and the world spins around me, leaving nothing but pleasure and need and more need.

  I am suddenly hot only where he touches, and freezing where I yearn to be touched. Lifting my leg, I shackle his hip, ravenous beyond measure, climbing to the edge of bliss, reaching for it at the same time I’m trying desperately to hold back. Chris is merciless, wickedly wild, grinding and rocking, pumping.