“You’ve always hated me, haven’t you?”
Bree looked up, blinked, cleared the tears. Her mother was presumably the sane one. It was her father who’d been mentally deranged or whatever the hell was wrong with a man like that. Didn’t that make her the guiltier of the two?
Her mother shook her head very slowly. “I know I deserve the way you feel about me. But I always loved you.”
Bree believed that. “You were so weak, it didn’t matter whether you loved me or not.”
Closing her eyes, her mom absorbed the words like blows, holding her belly against the pain. “I deserve that,” she whispered.
Bree hadn’t said them to hurt. She wasn’t vicious anymore, not like she’d been in the moment she’d picked up the ax; she was simply drained of all feeling. “I’m sorry, but right this moment I don’t feel anything about you at all. You’re not even worth hating.”
She longed to go to Luke, wrap herself in his warm jacket covered in the scent of him. But she’d screwed that up. She’d lost him.
And if she didn’t get to work, she’d lose her job, too. She sure as hell couldn’t stay here. She pushed to her feet, her knees wobbling, and tossed the ax back into the wood pile.
“Will you ever forgive me?”
Wrapping the ratty robe tighter around herself, she turned to her mother and said the only thing she knew to be absolutely true. “I’m not sure. But I do know I’ll never love you.”
“ARE YOU OKAY?” RACHEL WHISPERED THE WORDS LOUDLY AS BREE pushed through DKG’s front door.
“I’m fine.” She was always fine. Isn’t that what she told everyone?
Rachel came to the door of her office. “I mean after that thing with Denton Marbury?”
“Why didn’t you ask me about it yesterday?” Bree had kept her head down, working in her office the rest of the day, but Rachel could have come in. She usually did. Bree didn’t mean the question rudely. She just needed to know.
“I figured you needed time to process. I know you don’t like to talk a whole lot.”
Rachel was so nice. Like a mother fish flitting all around the edges of her school of baby fish, keeping them safe, checking on them, circling them to keep them close.
She was a born mother. No one would ever hurt Rachel’s children. Especially not their father.
“Oh, well,” Bree said. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.” It was her stock answer. She crossed the roundhouse to her office. She remembered that day last year, just before Christmas, when Rachel had walked in to find her crying. Bree had tried to say she was fine then, too. Rachel wouldn’t let her alone. Suddenly all the stuff about her father dying and her mom wanting her to come home had simply spilled out. All those things that she’d kept bottled up inside. Just as they had this morning with her mother.
She kept everything inside until it spewed. Until she couldn’t control what came out of her mouth. Because nothing had ever been fine, and she’d always lied about it.
What would happen if she talked?
What if she’d told Luke last night? What if she’d told him about Marbury and how he yelled at her and suddenly she felt like a little girl again, unable to defend herself, unable to stop it, the same way she’d felt in the dollhouse with her father? What if she told Luke that when her father decided she was too old to punish her any longer, she actually felt abandoned, rejected, no longer wanted or loved or special? That when she grew up, she found men who would treat her the same way and make her feel special again, even when they were hurting her? Especially when they were hurting her.
What if she’d told him everything? Would that have made him stay? Or driven him away forever?
Bree made it to her office before her limbs collapsed under her. In desperation, so she didn’t have to think, she grabbed her watering can. There was still a bit left in the bottom of it. She moistened the earth in the philodendron’s pot; it didn’t need much. Breaking off a couple of yellowing leaves, she threw them out, then wiped off the dust dulling the shininess of the new leaves. Nurturing the plant had given her such solace in the past. It was so healthy. Because of her. Because she cared for it, babied it. Like a child.
“How are you doing, Bree?”
Erin stood in the office door, her smile too bright as if she, too, were nervous about what might come spewing out of Bree’s mouth.
“I’m fine,” Bree answered. I just told my mother that my father molested me as a child and I hate her for not stopping him. So everything’s peachy-keen. She clenched her fists so the words didn’t escape.
But Bree wondered what her life would have been like if her mother had nurtured her daughter the way Bree nurtured her philodendron.
Then, very rationally, very thoughtfully, no spewing involved, Bree said, “You know, on second thought, I don’t really think I’m fine at all.”
The world didn’t fall apart. Erin didn’t yell at her or tell her she was stupid or call the men with the white coats. She simply said, “Do you want to talk?”
Bree was never honest. She never told people what she thought. She never revealed her secrets or her fears. Not to anyone. Not even to Luke.
Jesus, forget about her mother’s nurturing, Bree didn’t even nurture herself as well as she took care of her plant. She just took what everyone dished out. As if she deserved it. Did she deserve Marbury?
Maybe it was time to be honest. To say enough was enough. She would never grow if she didn’t. “Marbury makes me feel uncomfortable.”
Erin closed the door and took the chair across the desk. “I’m sorry about letting him get out of hand yesterday. Sit down. Let’s talk.”
Bree sat as ordered as if it weren’t her own office. “It wasn’t just yesterday. I always feel that way.” She felt otherworldly, as if she were having an out-of-body experience, her soul hovering near the ceiling and watching the two women below.
“You should have told me, Bree. You can always tell me anything. We’d have gotten someone new long ago.”
Bree wanted to open her mouth and say all the things she’d thought since coming to work at DKG. But she was scared. She was always scared. She could have been a controller if she wasn’t so scared. Or a partner at an accounting firm. Or a CFO.
Instead, she was a bookkeeper who had to borrow the down payment on her condo. She would always be a bookkeeper. She would always run out to a club when she felt bad and find the first man who wanted her, let him do anything he wanted, and she’d still feel bad in the morning.
Luke was the only one who hadn’t tried to make her feel bad.
“It’s okay, Bree, you can say whatever’s on your mind. This is closed-door here.” Erin sounded like a therapist.
“I could do a better job at it than Marbury,” Bree said and waited for the sky to fall on her head.
It didn’t.
Erin didn’t call her crazy or snort out loud with sarcasm or incredulity. She didn’t even laugh. “I believe you. Shall we give it a try?”
No, no, no. She was scared. What if she failed? What if she screwed everything up and they had to pay thousands and thousands of dollars in back taxes and penalties? All those forms. All those governmental agencies.
But dammit, she had to grow up. “I could take more classes and do online research.”
Erin leaned forward. “Tell me, honestly, how much of the work do you already do that Marbury simply transfers to a form?”
“All of it.” The truth. Bree almost sagged with the relief of saying it. “I know I should have said something before and saved the money on Marbury’s fees.”
“Maybe you didn’t know you could do it until just this moment,” Erin answered.
Bree realized how smart Erin was. Because Bree still didn’t know for sure that she could do it. She simply knew that she didn’t want to be merely fine for the rest of her life. She didn’t want to keep on living like a frightened mouse. She’d taken a lot of risks, but never the right risks. She had never stepped beyond her fears. She had only lived w
ithin them.
She’d moved in her father’s shadow for thirty-five years, always afraid, wanting to be special but knowing she wasn’t.
But he was dead. She’d held her mother’s hand and watched him die. It was time to forget. It was even time to forgive. It was time to become DKG’s accountant instead of just a bookkeeper.
“I think you can do the audit, too, better than Marbury ever could.” Erin smiled. “How about I call him and say we’ve found another accountant?”
“No,” Bree said, then took a deep breath. “I’ll tell him.”
It was time to be strong. It was time to start living outside her fears.
36
SHE WAS SEATED ON HIS FRONT STOOP, THE PORCH LIGHT HE’D left on shining against the blackness of her hair, and shimmering in a halo around her head.
Luke couldn’t analyze the emotions that coursed through his body. Relief, joy, fear, hope, remorse, all of that, sure. But the only thing that mattered was that she was here.
Usually, he would have parked his car in the garage, but he left it on the driveway and walked up the path to her. He stopped a foot from where she sat on the step above him.
“You’re a caretaker,” she said softly.
“Yes.” His heart contracted in his chest. Having no way to help her had been eating at him, but he thought of the years ahead without her, and that emptiness would eat at him even worse, until he was a shell of a man. “Tell me how to do this so we can both get what we need. Because I’m not willing to lose you.”
She rose to stand several inches above him because of her shoes and the steps. “Maybe you should take me inside and make love to me the way you want to. The way you’ve always wanted to and I wouldn’t let you.”
He closed in on her, cupped her face in his palms. “It isn’t the way we had sex. It’s the things we did outside of that. The things we couldn’t say to each other.”
She laid a hand over his, holding his palm to her cheek. “You mean the things I couldn’t say. Will you give me another chance to try?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “We both deserve another chance to get it right.” Then Luke took her inside and let her feed his soul.
In his bedroom, he undressed her with a tenderness she’d never before allowed him, slipping the buttons of her blouse from the holes. “God, you’re beautiful.”
“Tell me more,” she whispered to him. After he’d pushed the blouse from her shoulders and unhooked the front clasp of her bra, she put his hands to her breasts, held her palms over them. “Are they too small?”
“They’re perfect.” He pinched her nipple. “Does that feel good?”
She hummed her satisfaction. “I like the pleasure and the pain. Do it harder.”
He pinched the nub more tightly. She put her head back, moaned, and the scent of her arousal rose to swirl in the air around them.
“Tell me how it feels,” he begged.
She dropped her head, held his gaze. “It makes my flesh burn and my body wet.”
Her skin bore a rosy hue in the bedside lamp he’d turned on. He trailed a finger down to the waistband of her skirt, noting that she’d followed his order, wearing a skirt instead of slacks.
Gathering the material in his fingers, he tugged it up, slowly, revealing her thighs, then the tops of her stockings, and finally the neatly trimmed thatch of hair between her legs. “No panties.” He smiled.
“I was hoping you’d call me at work and ask me to touch myself for you. You told me one day you would.”
He would. He wanted it, calling her up, ordering her to the restroom to touch herself while he could hear her.
She seduced with the erotic lilt of her voice. “It made me feel all wet and sexy thinking about it, especially when someone walked into my office. Like I had this special secret.”
He loved that she’d dropped another barrier, telling him what she wanted and how it made her feel. “Put my hand on you,” he said.
She guided him down, cupped him against her warm, wet center. He rubbed her with the heel of his hand.
She leaned in close, lips to his ear. “I want to masturbate for you. I’ve always loved doing it.”
Christ, she’d made him wild when she spread her legs for his pleasure. “Take everything off first.”
“Except the stockings,” she said. “I like the stockings. They’re naughty.”
He luxuriated in her desire to do these things for him. As he shucked his clothes, she dropped the skirt and crawled onto the bed, flopping back against the pillow. The stockings, sheer black against the pale skin of her thighs, were a heady sight. His cock was already hard, a vein beating in time to the rapid pulse of his heart.
He stood in front of her, stroking himself, the ache growing in his balls. “Do it for me now.” He liked the pleading quality of his voice, a man desperate for a woman.
She trailed her fingers up her thighs, pulling her feet together as she did and spreading herself like a feast before him.
“Your pussy is gorgeous,” he said with awe, the way he’d always felt when he first saw her naked each time she was in his bed, when he got his first glimpse of her lush sweetness.
She caressed herself from vagina to clit. Then she raised her fingers to her lips and licked the juice from them. “Do you like the way I taste?” she murmured.
“I’d fucking die for the taste of you on my tongue.” The head of his cock purpled with need. “I want to watch you do this for a room full of men.”
“You do?” she asked, not losing her rhythm.
“Yes. I want them all to see how sweet you are. And know that you’re mine.” He didn’t want to give up some of the kinky things they’d done or dreamed of. He simply wanted her emotions to be different about it. “Would you like doing that?”
She rolled her hips, rubbing herself at the same time. “I liked the way you fucked me at the club. I like to be watched. I’d like all of that. But only with you doing the touching.” Then she laughed. “Or me.”
He climbed onto the bed, going back on his haunches, still stroking himself slow and steady. “I want to lick you to orgasm for a crowd.” Finally, he leaned over her, between her legs, close but not touching. “My sweet dirty filthy little slut, I’ll fuck you in front of them until you scream my name.”
She raised her gaze to his as he poised above her. “You can spank me and tie me up, too.”
“Damn right I will.” He’d even tie her to the hook in his ceiling, but this time he’d make sure she didn’t fall. It all felt different now. She felt different to him. She’d changed since last night.
“It feels good when you slap my bottom, then slide down to touch my pussy. You do it so perfectly.”
His balls filled to bursting with the light of excitement in her eyes, the breathiness of her words. He’d loved her moans when he did those things to her.
“And I like it when you call me late at night and talk me into an orgasm.” She touched his cheek. “There are no limits to how much fun we can have.”
Something shifted inside him. “Why is it suddenly fun? It never was before.”
Her eyes deepened to midnight blue. “I want to make it fun for you. I want to change,” she whispered. “For you.”
He held still above her. “You can’t do it only for me.”
She put a hand to his face. “You made me see that I want to. You made me see that I don’t want to lose you.” She rose on one elbow and put her lips to his. “I want to be different for me,” she whispered against his mouth, “as well as for you. I might get scared and fall down again. I might hurt you when I don’t mean to. But I’d rather run that risk than not have you at all.” She let herself fall back down against the pillow. “You have to help me, Luke. I need you to help me. I was always asking for your help, even if I never said so in words.”
For the briefest of moments, he wondered if she was simply repeating the thoughts he’d telegraphed to her. But in the next moment, he felt the truth deep inside. She trusted him.
Before the night was over, he knew she’d tell him everything.
He put a hand to her pussy, touched the sweet, wet flesh. “I’ll always help you, baby.” Slipping a finger inside her, he worked her G-spot until she writhed beneath him. “Do you like this?” He knew before she answered that she did, but he wanted her say it.
“It’s good, Luke.” She rolled and pumped to match his rhythm, then gasped. “Make me come with your mouth.”
He didn’t wait for another invitation. It had always been about what he wanted. Master, do you want this? Master, do you want that? Master, make me do it. Master, whatever you say. “Tell me how badly you want it.”
She cupped his cheek with her hand, closed her eyes and bit her lip a moment with a sudden wave of pleasure, then whispered for him, “I love your tongue on me. The way you find the right spot and don’t let up until I want to scream. You never miss, as if you know my body by taste and touch. As if you know me.”
After all these months, she was finally saying what he’d always wanted to hear. It wasn’t about his prowess or his ability to stimulate her body, but because he knew her inside and out.
“I’ve been dying to taste you.” He crawled down her body, trailing kisses over her breasts, her abdomen, the pubic ridge, and finally the sweet, succulent lips of her pussy. “Christ, this is the prettiest pussy I’ve ever seen.”
She laughed. “Yes, it is.”
The flesh was plump and pink with arousal. He parted her and blew warm air on the burgeoning button of her clit. She wriggled and murmured nonsense. Testing with the tip of his tongue, he gave her the tiniest amount of what she’d asked for, flicking back and forth.
“Harder,” she whispered. “Lick me and suck me hard.”
She would always want things hard, the pinches, the licking, the fucking. It would always be an element of her desire. But now it no longer had the desperate feel to it, a way to blot out the past or give in to a ritual.
He worried her clit with his tongue, then sucked the nub into his mouth. She flooded him with moisture, the sweet, hot taste of desire.
“Oh, oh, oh,” she chanted, letting herself go in a way she never had for him without being punished first.
What Happens After Dark Page 28
