Deceiver

by Robin Lovett

  I have to breathe hard to keep my anger in check. She’s way too close to the truth. “Is it so hard to believe that a woman might actually like me?”

  “Yes, when you’re such a crab to be around most of the time.”

  “Maybe she likes crabs.” I’m startled to find I really do think it might be true.

  Penny’s brows go up. “Is that true?”

  “Look, it makes no sense to me either, but for whatever reason she likes trying to make me laugh. She—” I’m really not into giving my sister hints about my sex life, but if it makes her believe it and quit asking questions? “—she’s okay with me angry.”

  A slow smile creeps over her face. She glances at Logan, who’s come out to stand by the door, watching her like a protective guard dog. One wrong move from me and he’ll be between us. “I suppose I can believe that, but I’ll be asking her about it,” she cautions.

  The day is too filled with family nonsense for me to get Daisy alone to warn her or threaten her—whichever it is. But I make sure she and Penny are never alone together, at least.

  At night, going to bed with Daisy, since there’s no believable way for me to not stay in the same room with her, there’s an anticipation rolling through me. It’s been more than twenty-four hours, more like thirty-six.

  She crawls into bed naked with no apologies, and doesn’t cover herself with sheets.

  I have no hope of resisting her. I hadn’t planned to, but now that I’m faced with it, with being so intimately connected to her again, the hair on the nape of my neck stands on end.

  “I’m waiting,” she says her voice rasping like sex, her skin gleaming and begging for my touch. She even parts her lips and licks them with a delicate tongue, a move that has me aching to see her mouth around my cock again—which is exactly her intent.

  My defenses are slipping, and not just my physical restraint. What sex with this woman does to me . . . not just my body, but my insides . . .

  I don’t understand it, but a fear builds in me, a fear of her, a fear of being hurt.

  She sits up and soothes me. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just sex.” I can’t tell if she’s lying to herself, to me, or both. If it’s a ploy or if she really believes it.

  But this is Daisy—of course it’s a ploy. Everything she directs at me is a calculated ploy. Which means it’s time for me to unsettle her.

  I strip off my clothes and crawl onto the bed. Her eyes follow my movements like a starving person. “You want me.”

  She purrs before I even touch her. She may be trying for a ploy, but God, she wants me more than she even cares about manipulating me.

  I lean over her with a hand on either side of her head. “But why? Doesn’t it bother you how much you want someone who’s forcing you to be with him?”

  She flinches, the desire in her eyes faltering. “You’re not forcing me to do anything. I’m choosing—”

  “But doesn’t it bother you that you do choose it? That if you were really free to make all your own choices, you wouldn’t even be here with me, let alone having sex with me?”

  Her gaze wanders side to side, and she won’t look at me.

  “Your life has been so boring, hasn’t it?” I taunt, lowering my mouth to her ear. “No challenges for you to overcome, ever. Poor little spoiled rich girl with the perfect parents.”

  “Shut up,” she says, but it’s a whispered protest. Her breathing quickens.

  “Admit it, you like this. Me keeping you. That’s why you’ve never really protested, never really fought to get away from me.”

  “I haven’t fought because you blackmailed me,” she spits out and the spark of vehemence in her eyes has me hardening to fuck her. I have to make this quick.

  “But this is you, Daisy. If you wanted away from me, you’d be working a lot harder to do it. But you’re not, because . . .” I stop, leaving her in agony to guess.

  Air stutters in and out of her lungs, and her gaze morphs from pissed off to nervous. But she doesn’t tell me to shut up. She’s scared of what I have to say, but she wants to hear it too.

  I make her wait for it, until she can’t stand it.

  “What?” she snaps. “If you know me so fucking well, just say it.”

  “Because you like it.” I lick her ear and she whimpers. “You like having to work for your freedom, to have a true obstacle in your way for the first time in your existence. So instead of fighting it, you’re perpetuating it, making it so I’ll never want to let you go.”

  She sucks in a loud breath. “It’s so I’ll batter through your defenses, asshole. It’s so you’ll actually start to feel something beyond your obsession with revenge.”

  I lift my head to stare in her eyes and am filled with triumph. There it is. Her plan. “Is that what you think?”

  Her mouth pops open in a gasp, realizing she just admitted her escape plan to me. Which isn’t really an escape plan at all.

  “It won’t work,” I say through my smirk. “It’s only making me more obsessed with you.” I run a finger down her neck, between her breasts, and I follow it with my eyes. “You think after you get me so physically addicted to you, that I’ll let you go?”

  I circle her nipple with my fingertip, a light torture touch that has her arching into me and moaning, despite herself. “You may have convinced yourself it’s a ploy for me to let you go, but it’s not. Your body knows better. It’s so I’ll keep you. Because you’ve grown as addicted to me, as I have to you.”

  She turns her head away from me, her eyes closing, her breath stuttering. I’ve scared her. And she likes it, or she’d tell me to stop. She made it clear I can trust her to do that, at least—even if I can trust nothing else from her.

  “You’ll say you’re trying to get away from me,” I say. “But you won’t. Not really. Because you like being kept.”

  “Do it, then.” She gasps.

  I pull her hands up beside her head and hold them to the bed, the way she likes. “I swear to never let you go. No matter how hard you fight.” I nip at the side of her neck.

  “Bastard,” she whispers, still unable to look at me.

  “And you are going to keep fighting me, aren’t you? Even though you know I know your secret. That the only person you’re really fighting against is yourself, and how badly you like feeling trapped.”

  She shudders, as though hearing my words and feeling her inability to move her hands has made it hard for her to breathe.

  “Shall we see how much you like it?” I say. “But then I’d have to let go of one of your hands, and you wouldn’t like that, would you? So maybe you should tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “How much you like it. Tell me, are you wet for me, sweetheart?”

  She whimpers, a high pathetic sound, like my question is a form of torture.

  I nip at her ear. “Answer me. Or tell me to stop. Those are your two options.”

  She whimpers, this time like a begging sound. Begging for what, I’m not sure.

  I transfer both her wrists to one of my hands. “Here, let me help.” I slide my free hand down her belly, and in a voluntary move that sings through my blood, she spreads her legs for me.

  I touch her and suck air through my teeth—the hot wetness at the tips of my fingers, arches my back and has me hard and throbbing to be in her. I can’t help brushing my distended cock against her thigh.

  She lifts her leg and rubs me there again.

  I sink my fingers between her folds and she gasps and begs, “Please.”

  “Please what?” I’m sweating, wrecked inside by how taxing this game is for me. Taunting her turns me on as much as it does her.

  She opens her gaze to mine and lets me see all the tortured desire I’ve awakened in her. “Please fuck me.” She wraps her legs around my hips, lifting her pelvis, positioning herself for me.

  I jerk my hand away from her, and thrust into her.

  Swallowed by her, I lose it—the track, my plan, my manipulation. I
was supposed to be toying with her, I was supposed to be proving my dominance over her, but it’s gone.

  She meets my thrusts, pounding into me, her skin slapping against mine.

  It’s violent and relentless. She comes around me, gripping me, clenching me in the most blissful grip there is.

  I suck on her lips with mine. Her mouth gapes against mine, and I swallow her ecstatic cries. I’m on the verge of coming in her, but decide it’s not enough.

  I pull out of her and flip her, bringing her to her knees. I run a hand down her back and drive into her, pumping against the backs of her thighs, unsure if I’ve changed position because I like it, or because I want her as desperate for my mouth on her as she was the last time I did this to her.

  Her arms collapse, propping her ass higher in the air for me. Her cheek rests against the sheets, her lips gaping with the rasping cries from her throat, her brows straining with the pleasurable agony I’m pounding into her.

  But her mouth is so open, begging to be filled, and I remember how much she likes having me in her mouth. I can satisfy her there too.

  I lean over her, and balancing one hand on the headboard, place two fingers of the other in her mouth. She wraps them with her lips and sucks like the greedy woman she is. She moans in gratitude and swallows my fingers totally into her mouth, stroking them with her tongue.

  It’s a dual stimulus. The sensations on my fingers mix with the other almost like her tongue is stroking my cock—even though it’s moving between her thighs. It has me thrusting and coming and losing the ability to watch her as the climax sears my vision away.

  But as I come down and open my eyes again, I catch her hand inching beneath her, reaching for herself.

  I grasp her hand and stop her. “What are you doing?” Though I know exactly what she’s doing. Her clit is still throbbing with the need to be touched, just like last time in this position. But I want to hear her say it.

  She moans around my fingers, still in her mouth.

  I breathe against her cheek. “You’ll have to let go of my fingers to tell me what you want.”

  But the deeper moan from her chest is pained enough that I take pity on her. Letting her keep my fingers in her mouth, I move my other hand beneath her. I touch her, and I give her what she’s craving.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I wake in the morning to find him heavy in sleep beside me.

  With us endlessly going at each other through the night, I hope we didn’t keep Penny and Logan awake across the hall. I’m so tired, and slept so little, I should still be asleep.

  But I’m not.

  He was right. I hate him for knowing it, but he was right.

  I hate him for forcing me to know, but it’s true.

  I like being his captive.

  The confusion it spreads through me—the lack of understanding about myself—makes me want to curl into a ball. But it’s so lonely.

  So I do the thing I shouldn’t, the thing that will mean—more than even my hunger for his sex—that he is right.

  I cuddle up to him, to his heat, to his strength. And he does the unthinkable. He wraps his arm around me. Whether he’s awake or asleep I can’t tell, but he holds me with both my arms flush to his chest, my cheek resting over his heart.

  He nuzzles into my hair, letting me pretend for a moment that there’s something real between us. Even in his torturing of me last night, he still proved again and again that he can read me and know what I want before I even ask.

  It’s impossible not to be moved by it—to not suspect he’s forming some attachment to me. He’s planting in me an attachment to him, one that I’m trying and failing to resist.

  We emerge reluctantly, not speaking, from the bedroom. The family decides to take a beach day. Blake tries to protest, saying we’re not going.

  “I’m going whether you are or not,” I say to him in front of everyone.

  He gives me a pointed look and pulls me to the side. “You go nowhere without me. That’s the rule.”

  Aunt Maggie calls to him. “Don’t you dare make her change her mind, Blake. I’m taking her whether you want to go or not.”

  I smirk at him, and he growls at me, “You won’t get your way next time.”

  I pat his cheek. “Of course I will. I’m not leaving you, remember? So you have nothing to worry about.”

  This doesn’t console him, and only makes him angrier, since he has no control over the situation. One point for me.

  He may have me figured out, but it’s mutual. We know each other’s weaknesses intimately now.

  I spend half the ride to the beach chatting with Penny about her proposed charity, making plans for one in Nashville for as soon as I’m allowed back, which if I get my way won’t be long. Blake can’t forbid me to return in front of Penny—it would give too much away.

  The beach is a wide expanse of sand, flat and endless, the sun a bright force overhead, the waves a force against the shore. Blake catches me staring at it and says, like it’s a threat, “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “But I’m not done talking to your sister.”

  “You need a break from my sister.” He grasps my hand and I follow him, a little intrigued by how angry he is.

  “What’s wrong? Don’t you want us to be friends?”

  “No, I don’t want you to be friends.”

  “Why? I’m not leaving you, remember? You see her a lot. I may as well—”

  “I promised I’d never lie to her. And every time you talk to her, look at her, it’s like reinforcing the lie over and over again.” He stops and notices we’re holding hands.

  I stare at it too—our fingers interlaced, his palm covering mine. I wonder what he’ll do. “It’s not my fault you’re lying to her.”

  He drops my hand like I’ve stabbed him, and he starts walking again. “You’re making it worse for her.”

  I pad after him, my soles smacking on the wet sand. “I’m making it worse for her? You’re the one causing this whole damn mess.”

  “Just”—he groans and tenses, walking faster—“don’t rub it in her face, okay?”

  “How is me talking to her rubbing it in her face? You’re uncomfortable because you’ve worked so hard to protect her and now you’re the one that’s going to hurt her when she finds out.”

  “She’s not going to find out!”

  “Yes she will. She’s smart. She knows something’s up.”

  “She’ll only know if you tell her. Which you aren’t going to do, remember?”

  “You can protect her from everyone else. But you know the one thing you can’t protect her from?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You can’t protect her from yourself.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  I pull on his hand to stop him. “The only way you can stop this is by telling her the truth. You know you have to.”

  “No. She can’t know. It would—”

  “It would mean you’d have to let me go. She wouldn’t stand for you blackmailing me into staying with you, would she? She’s the one person you’d actually listen to.”

  “You’re wrong. Not even she can take this from me. She doesn’t know how—no one knows what—the kind of—how much he—what things went on.” He stumbles over words like he has too much to say and no way to say it.

  “We only know what you tell us.” Encouraged he hasn’t dropped my hand, I hold his a little tighter.

  He stares out at the water. His breathing elevates as he stares at the surf, as though there’s something scary about it, the gentle wash of the waves up the shore. One reaches our feet, tickling over our toes then sliding back out to sea.

  “You can tell me,” I say. “I want to know what happened.”

  “Why do you care?”

  I don’t want to answer that question for real any more than he wants to hear the true answer, so I say, “It doesn’t matter. I just want to hear it from you, not guess about it inside my head.”

>   “You have no idea what you’re asking for because you don’t know.”

  I step closer. “I know that as a child you protected your sister so well from a man who murdered your mother that she grew up not even knowing he was violent.”

  He sucks in a breath so big, it puffs up his chest to twice its normal size. Then he holds it.

  “Tell me. What did you do?”

  “Kept quiet, mostly,” he blurts. “Well, provoking enough to keep him coming at me instead of at her, but quiet about the things he said to keep quiet about. Quiet enough to keep us alive.”

  “Quiet about what?”

  “About my mother. About what he did to her. He knew I saw.”

  “Quiet enough to stay alive? Did he try to kill you?”

  He finally looks at me, and it’s haunting. It’s not anger, it’s not darkness, it’s like there’s something living behind his eyes that he wants to get out, but he’s terrified to show it. And that makes me terrified to know it.

  But I squeeze his hand harder. “What did he do?”

  “It wasn’t the trying to kill me part that was hard to bear. That part was easy.” He glances back at Penny with a stricken look, then he covers his face. “Jesus, why am I telling you this?”

  I don’t answer. I just keep on the same track. “Easy part compared to what, Blake?”

  “He said he’d do it to Penny if I told anyone.”

  “Do what to Penny?”

  His teeth clench, the muscle in his jaw grinding.

  I caress his cheek, wishing I could soothe the muscle, ease his jaw open until he feels free to tell me. “What did he do?” I whisper. “It’s okay to tell me. He’s dead. And I won’t tell anyone.”

  His gaze fixes on the water, like he can’t look away but can’t really see it either. Like his eyes are far away, seeing everything and nothing at the same time. “You know the lake in front of the estate?”

  “Yeah.” My breath clogs in my throat—guessing and wanting to save him from what he has to say next.

  “He tried to drown me in it.”

  I force my voice to work, even though it threatens not to. “And he threatened to drown your sister if you told anyone what he was doing to your mother?”