I stared at my mother with barely contained irritation. “I’m visiting the house I grew up in. I still have stuff here, or did you sell it all for more space?”
I pushed past her into the moderate space of her three-bedroom house located in San Rafael, a city north of San Francisco.
“At least you’re not embarrassing,” my mom said with a flat tone as she looked me over. I had on jeans, as normal, but I’d paired it with a nice sweater Hunter had bought me. I’d also done my hair and makeup, as Kimberly had instructed. She’d said the worst thing for a person with heartache was to mope. If I did myself up, looking good on the outside would make me feel better on the inside.
Turned out, she’d been completely wrong. But looking better on the outside made people think I was doing okay, and left me alone. That was enough.
“It’s Sunday—aren’t you supposed to be at a garden party or something?” Only then did the murmur of voices drift to me from the living room.
“I’m having a small soiree here. I thought it might be nice for Sean to stay here while he’s in town. More homey than a stuffy hotel in the city.” My mom lifted her chiseled nose in the air. She’d had two nose jobs, both gifts from two different boyfriends.
“Sean is…new?” I asked.
“Yes.” My mother smiled with plump lips she was not born with. “I met him at a party the other night. He’s an investment banker.”
“Huh. And how does his wife feel about you?”
She rolled her eyes. “He plans to get a divorce, so it doesn’t really matter. All I have to do is hold on for a few months, and then snatch him up. After that, it’s off to New York for me. He’s just out here on business.”
“Oh, right.” I shook my head. The story was always the same, and my mother always believed them.
She surveyed my outfit again.
“Don’t worry, I won’t be in your way. I just want to get a few things and then I’ll be gone.”
My mother made a noncommittal sound and swished her blond hair away from her eyes. Without another word, she sauntered off toward the living room.
The woman was a knockout, even in her fifties. It was too bad she always went for wealthy men with wives and kids. She kept believing they’d leave their old lives and start over with her, but she always got turned down. If she kept on, she’d end up lonely and alone.
Not that I was doing any better. What did they say about a living in glasshouse with a pocketful of stones?
I slunk into my room and swiped my old teddy bear off my bed. The one thing my mom had done for me was keep my room as it was. I wasn’t welcomed around all that often, as I cramped her style, but she did leave me just the tiny bit of my past that I clung on to with both hands in times like these.
I hugged my bear to my chest and dug my face into his soft, old head. Fresh tears fell, wetting his matted fur.
I longed for the past, when I would wait with this bear until my dad showed up for our weekend together. He loved me more than the breath in his lungs. We’d have such fun together, picnicking or watching a movie. Whenever I was heartbroken, or simply had a bad day, he’d just sit and listen to the sad tale, then hug me close, promising that someday I’d meet someone who would treat me like the treasure I was. Little did I know at the time that he was that man. He was the epitome of unconditional love, and now that he was gone, I felt like I didn’t matter to anyone at all.
I heaved myself off my childhood bed and wandered into my mother’s room. I exited to the backyard through her sliding glass door and found the old tire swing hanging from the oak tree in the corner of the brown square that used to be lawn. I settled myself onto it gingerly, monitoring the bend of the branch overhead. Satisfied that it would hold, I gently swung with my bear in my arms and let the tears come freely.
The sliding glass door rolled at the other side of the yard. Laughter rumbled through until my mother’s high-pitched, excited chatter floated nearer. “See, there she is. She must’ve snuck out here, the little minx!”
I gave one of those shudder sighs that said my body hadn’t recovered from the constant crying, and wiped my eyes on my sleeve. There was no telling who she was sending out to find me. Probably the cousin, nephew, or junior associate of the man she was dating. If she got me hitched with money, or even the prospect of money, she’d assume all her troubles would be over.
I rested my chin on the tire swing, waiting for the bachelor of the moment to saunter in front of me, thinking I was as easy as my mom.
“There now. Can I get you something? Are you sure you don’t want some wine? Or sparkling water?” my mother asked, a few paces behind me.
“No.”
Cold washed down my spine as I snapped my head around.
Hunter stood next to my mother in one of his tailored suits. Straight and tall, handsome and broad, he looked like a million dollars while standing in the wilderness of my childhood backyard. He slid his hands in his pockets as my mom winked at me and walked back. A few people looked out the sliding glass door at Hunter before my mother shooed them back into the house and closed the door.
Hunter’s deep brown eyes, always hooded as though just emerging from the throes of climax, gazed at me with regret and uncertainty. “Need a push?”
Aware that my face was probably still stained with tears, and worried it was streaked with worse, I turned away to wipe my eyes and nose on my sleeve. “No,” I said with a hoarse voice. “I don’t trust the branch to hold up.”
I heard his six-hundred-dollar shoes crunch on the brittle, dead grass. He stopped in front of me, looking down on my face.
“What are you doing here?” I asked softly, not daring to meet his eyes. I knew better than to ask how he found me—the man could get whatever information he wanted, one way or another.
“Brenda doesn’t put my coffee in the exact same place on the desk every time she brings it to me. She also doesn’t smell like lilac on a fresh spring morning. She doesn’t have the low, sultry hum to her voice, or the uncommon beauty I look forward to. Her hips don’t sway in a completely unassuming way that still manages to catch every male eye in the vicinity. I don’t want to look up from my work when Brenda walks away, as I always do with you. I don’t want to touch her, or kiss her, or watch an embarrassed flush creep up her face. And I certainly don’t want to do that with some other random admin after my cock or my money.”
I blinked up at him, barely daring to believe what I was hearing.
“I missed you as soon as you walked out of my office,” he continued. “I’ve not got anything done since you left. I might as well have stayed home. But home wouldn’t have you there. And with you is where I want to be.”
“But…your contract…” New tears were flowing now. Tears of hope. I was desperate to believe him.
He stepped closer and brushed his fingertips along my chin to lift my face. “I can’t have you near, because you distract me, but banning you from my life completely derails me. A contract can’t fix what’s wrong with me. It was to prevent the feelings you are forcing me to feel. I can’t go back to the way things were. I can’t pretend I don’t have feelings for you, Livy. So I find myself in uncharted waters.”
“What does that mean for us? For you?”
He bent to brush his lips along mine. “I’d tell you to run, but I would chase you. I am chasing you. Come back to work for me.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
His eyes softened as his lips turned up into a grin. “Good. I hoped I wouldn’t have to beg.”
“I didn’t know begging was something you did.”
“It isn’t. Neither is breaking my own rules and getting attached. Or kissing. Yet with you, all I seem to do are things I usually don’t.” He bent and gave me a slow kiss. “Show me your bedroom. This is where you were raised?”
“You’re not going to do a personality flip again, are you?” I asked, gingerly getting out of the tire swing. With my luck, the branch holding it would break in half and cr
ack me on the head.
“I hope not, because then I’d have another miserable week. I don’t think I could go through that again.” His strong arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer. “I’m sorry. For everything. You are a saint for sticking with me.”
“I didn’t really have much choice. Last week wasn’t much better for me.”
“I know,” he whispered, touching his lips to mine again. He opened my mouth with his, flicking his tongue inside.
I fell headfirst into the kiss. My surroundings dropped away as I focused completely on his touch.
“Show me your room,” he murmured against my lips.
I led him through the sliding glass door and my mother’s bedroom until I could shut the door to my room with him inside it. Unable to wait, I pushed him against the door and captured his kiss again, sinking into the feeling of his lips moving against mine. I unbuttoned his shirt before sliding my palms along his smooth, muscled skin.
“Here?” he asked in a heavy voice. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I pushed off his jacket before undoing his pants.
His hands slid up my sweater and covered my breasts. “Your mom won’t come in?”
“That’s what locks are for.” I giggled, turning the catch on the handle.
“I feel scandalous.” He pushed down my pants before sucking in a breath as I took his hard length in my hand.
“Says the man who orders his admin to bend over the desk.”
“Hmm.” He walked me backward. “We’ll do that tomorrow.”
I turned us and pushed. He fell back onto my bed. I knelt over him and took his erection into my mouth. I tickled the tip with my tongue before sucking it in. He groaned.
I backed off, trailing my lips against his shaft, before sucking again. I took him deep into my throat, loving his hasty release of breath. I worked my hand in tandem with my mouth, seeing his muscles start to flex. I stopped and climbed on top of his body. I braced over him as his head came up and his hands grabbed my hips. I sat down.
A spark of color made me pause. “Oh, holy— Hmm.” I smiled with my eyes closed, just feeling his size fill me up. I moved my hips in a circle. My smile melted as the sparks turned into bursts, lighting up my body.
His palms slid up my chest and cupped my breasts. His thumbs rubbed my nipples.
I blew out a breath as my sensual beginning turned into a harried gyration. I rocked forward and back, my hands braced on his chest and my head back. “Oh, Hunter,” I said, bucking now. Working him inside of me. Feeling the friction.
His fingers clutched my hips. He lifted and then pulled back down. My body crashed onto his.
“Oh shhhhhii—” I rocked forward again, then back, before he picked me up and pulled. The tightness in my body started to pool in my core. Heat blazed, white hot. I rocked, then sat as he thrust up into me. My breathing turned ragged. Our movements were sloppy and fast, but perfect. Wild.
“Harder,” I begged, face pointed upward. Muscles flexed. Fingers dug into him. “Harder!”
Hunter sat up and encircled me in his strength. He trapped me to his chest and bucked up into me. His size pierced me, forcing the breath from my lungs. My bed screamed against the floor. The end slammed into the wall.
“Oh… Oh!” I held on. Almost there. Another thrust. One more.
“Ahhh!” Fire spilled over and coursed through my body. I let out a glorious moan as an orgasm lit me up. I shuddered over Hunter as I felt him shake beneath me.
I grabbed his face and gave him a deep kiss, sucking in his tongue as I trembled on top of him. His hands slid up my back languidly. He lay down, controlled the whole way to the bed. His abs held both our weight. I had no idea why that impressed me as much as it did.
I snuggled my face up to his neck and just breathed in his familiar smell. Lord how I’d missed it.
After a while, he said, “I fell in love for the first time when I was barely sixteen. It was to one of our maids, a girl three years or so older. She was a beauty, with heart-shaped lips that always seemed to be pouting. I lusted after her immediately, of course—I was basically a constant hard-on at that age. I would’ve been entranced with any pretty girl, but as I was homeschooled, she was the only one I was around for any length of time.”
Hunter’s hand reached out slowly and traveled down my arm until he clasped my hand. “I barely flirted before she noticed me, and a short time later I was sneaking her into my room. I basically fell into intimacy. She wasn’t a virgin, nor was she interested in taking it slow. Our first time making out, I felt all the intimate places on her body. The second, we both stripped down to our skin. The third I lost my virginity. Just like that. I loved it, though—as you would expect from a sixteen-year-old. I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing, but she was always willing.
“After a while I wanted to spend more time kissing. Or just being together. She never did. Thinking back now, I realize I missed out on a lot of sexual enlightenment. Don’t get me wrong, she taught me the ropes on how to please her, but when it came to me, she just lined me up and let me hump away like a rabid animal until it was over. Sex couldn’t have been that much fun for her, but that realization came later. Too late.
“We kept on for a few months before my mother figured out what was going on. She sat me down one day and said that it wasn’t exactly prudent for me to be fornicating—that’s the word she used—with the hired help, but I would do as I pleased. She asked me, simply, that I use protection. Not only for safety, but because I was much too young to be having a child. I told her that Denise—that was her name—was on the pill. My mom never spoke against that, but she still asked me in her levelheaded way to take charge of my own fate. Use protection.
“My mother is a sensible, reasonable woman. She was always fair with me, even when I was being Satan’s helper. I did as she asked. And oh, the fights that caused with Denise. She raged at me, and fought with me, and denied me, saying I didn’t trust her. This just made me dig in my heels all the more. I don’t respond well to that behavior. I’m too stubborn. Besides, my mother was right—I needed to take charge of my own fate. Denise started seducing me all over the house, often away from my bedroom—I suspect she was trying to get me away from my stash of condoms. I always had one on me, though.
“After a while, she stopped trying to get me to go unprotected, and instead, didn’t want me as much. By this point, she was my world. Maybe it was all the drama that blinded me, that made everything so much more exciting, but I saw stars when I looked at her. I was completely in her power, and, I thought, thoroughly in love.”
Hunter took a deep breath. His hand was shaking in mine. “And then one day she sat me down and told me that she was pregnant. We’d been intimate for about a year. I was seventeen. I asked how, and she said one of the condoms must have leaked.”
Hunter’s voice dripped with emotion now. He hugged me tight. “I was terrified at first, not to mention worried about what my mom would say, but I was determined to do the right thing. I offered to marry her, and she accepted.”
He paused for a moment. I just waited quietly. Finally he went on. “After it all sank in…I was ecstatic. I’d never been happier. Something struck a chord in me as far as her pregnancy was concerned. I can’t explain it. I just remember feeling so euphoric. I’d created life, and she was growing it inside of her. I was blown away.”
He squeezed my hand. “But it didn’t last. My mother and father were having screaming matches by that point. They hated each other, and finally, she kicked him out. That’s when the whole, ugly truth came out. I got to Denise first, but he had more money. Even though he knew I was sexually active with her, he seduced her. Or maybe he just let her seduce him, I don’t know.”
Hunter’s voice dripped with scorn. “I thought it was my baby, and that I was going to marry her. I’d bought her a ring, fantasized about a family and being a good father… Nope. He’d bought her a bigger ring, and then flaunted her in front of my mother—while in
directly flaunting her in front of me. It was then, as Denise was telling me that I had always been plan B, and terrible in bed, that she also revealed it wasn’t my baby at all. It was my father’s. He’d taken not only my first love, but what I thought was my baby and my future. He’d taken everything happy in my life for his own, and sneered that we could still share her if I wanted.”
Hunter wiped moisture from his cheek. His voice shook with suppressed emotion. “I was a stupid kid. I’d had no experiences in life until that point. Sure, an adult would’ve seen her actions for what they were, but I wasn’t an adult. My father knew I loved her. He knew I thought that baby was mine, and that I’d proposed. He knew, and he didn’t give a shit. He let me go on thinking it until what he needed conflicted, and then took it.”
“What happened to the baby?” I asked in a soft voice, holding his shaking hand in both of mine.
“She miscarried at six months. They couldn’t save it.”
“And your father—how did he take it?”
Hunter scoffed. “He never loved her. She was young and pretty, so he dressed her up and wore her to business functions like a coat. Outside of the public eye, however, he didn’t concern himself with her or the baby. He had another mistress soon after they were married. She was a prop.”
“Did you ever talk to her again?”
“A few times, just to check in. I offered to take her away from her soulless life with my father, but he had all the money, and I had an allowance. She wanted to stay with the money.”
“Unhappy but rich.”
“Exactly.”
“And now?” I asked in a gentle voice.
“She got a settlement from my dad and married again—a younger man with some small wealth. She didn’t try for any more kids—or if she did, she didn’t carry to term.”
“And so, you haven’t kissed a woman since her?”
Hunter traced a line down my back. “I wanted to forget and move on. I’ve always been haunted by that experience. I was so, so happy, Olivia. When I saw her start to show, and kissed her stomach—with other women, that’s all I could think about.” His voice dropped again. “Until you.”
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