Deceiver

by Robin Lovett

  For a moment, an unguarded moment, there’s pleasure—like relief or a surge of joy—but she covers it. As quickly as it was there, it falls and is replaced by something closer to confusion.

  She looks at the others, who are still talking. After a moment they notice her anxiety.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Layla.

  Daisy doesn’t say anything, she just looks at me.

  “Blake!” Penny leaps from her chair. “What are you doing here?”

  I feel like I’ve invaded a sanctuary, a safe place for women, where a man like me should never come. “I’ll go,” I say, and turn around toward the guest house.

  “No!”

  The voice that says it—it can’t be Daisy’s. She has no reason to want to see me, but I turn around and she’s on her feet. Longing etches her features—longing for something. Not me. Not the man who used her so horribly. That can’t be right.

  * * *

  Penny whispers to me, “I had no idea he’d be here. I’m so sorry.”

  I don’t care. I’ve lost my mind, but I don’t care.

  When I look at him all I can see is the man who gave me everything he had, who trusted me with his anger and the most scared parts of himself. I don’t see the man who took me and blackmailed me for a crime my father didn’t commit.

  I should, but I don’t. However blind that makes me.

  “Your ability to make an entrance hasn’t changed, Blake,” Layla jokes. “You’re as much of a wet blanket as ever.”

  “Layla, please.” Penny’s worried eyes flicker between Blake and me.

  Blake’s expression is contrite, but also full of heartache. “I’d just like a minute. That’s all.”

  “Layla, it’s fine,” I say, even though I shouldn’t. “I’d like to talk to him.” To find out what he might say, to find out who the man is now and if he’s come to terms with his deceptions. His look is vulnerable enough. It kindles a hope in me that he has.

  “Are you sure?” Penny asks.

  I nod, even though it feels like my head is going in a circle. I can already feel it hurting—my heart that he riddled with holes. There’s no way I can escape this without more hurt. But it doesn’t mean I’ll stop.

  Layla and Penny each say something to Blake as they pass him. I can’t hear them, and I don’t want to.

  I sit and he sits in the chair beside me. I don’t take my gaze from his, searching for some sign of change.

  “Thank you.” His face is so open, so honest. Not mired in darkness.

  “For—what?” My voice catches, failing to sound easy.

  “For not sending me away.”

  “I want to hear what you have to say.” I want to see you and touch you and talk to you.

  He reaches for my hand, but stops himself. “I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  She’s listening. She’s sitting next to me. She’s not condemning me.

  She nods but expresses nothing, waiting to hear what I will say.

  I clear my throat and take a deep breath, trying to not feel how much pressure is riding on this. Trying not to consider that if I get this right, there’s a chance, however unlikely, she might see me again.

  She sits there, all open and honest, still a beacon of all the good things she’s been from the beginning. I’m relieved I chased none of those things away from her, no matter how hard I tried. There’s a skepticism, though, a cautiousness that wasn’t there before.

  She sits and waits and I hate it. I want her provoking me with questions and taunts, breaking through my defenses and exposing my weaknesses like no one else can. Making me feel like the whole person I’ve never been.

  I didn’t realize what a gift it was—her tenacious mischief, her untiring efforts to unsettle me. I miss that. I want it back enough to give up everything to have it.

  But I can’t hope for it again until I get this right.

  “I need help,” I say, deciding straightforward is the best way to go. “And not just the kind of help you were giving me, but professional help. My personal issues are too far-reaching for me to hope for a—a—” I try to search for a word, the right word. “A—loving life without it. My anger issues and the defenses I’ve formed from my past are invading my life in a way I don’t want to live it.”

  She takes a deep breath but says only, “Go on.”

  “What I did to you was—” I run a hand through my hair, frustrated at myself. None of the words I can think of encapsulate how horrible I was to her—none of them are accurate. I hadn’t planned this conversation. I wish I’d known she was going to be here, I would’ve practiced.

  She sits forward, and I can’t believe the words that come from her mouth. “It’s okay. You’re doing great.”

  And there she does it again: shocks me, gets me in the way it hurts the most. It would be easier if she were angry. But no, she has to go and be the warmhearted person with all the compassion I have never deserved to get from her.

  “Daisy.” My breath shudders, my heart skipping. “I can’t believe I—there are no words for—it was unforgivable and—I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I spoke to your father and . . .” I swallow. “He is a great man. A great father. And I never ever should’ve—I was so blinded by my—my—” My mother. And how I miss her.

  I glance at her for cues, to see if I’m still on track.

  She’s staring at me with those desperate eyes—the ones that need something from me more than I have a right to be needed by her.

  I shove away my hesitation. “What I did to you and your father was a crime, and you’d be completely within your rights to press charges against me, and I welcome it. It’s no less than I deserve. Slandering him and manipulating you like that was inhuman, and I’m not worthy to be standing here and telling you any of this. But here I am.

  “And then, even in spite of everything—my blackmailing you away from your home and your family—you still treated me with the decency you did. I didn’t deserve it. And you still gave me . . . you gave me . . .” Yourself. The world. Myself. Love.

  I lean closer to her. As close as I dare come. “I have no right to say this, but I’m going to, because it’s the truth. You’ve made me hopelessly, ridiculously in love with you.”

  She cracks a sly smile. “It’s just the sex, and you thinking I’ll make your life easier.”

  “No!” I’m on my feet before I realize it. “You’re a thorn in my side, harassing me constantly. Now that I’ve experienced you and your joy in my world, I know I’ve been living my entire life wrong—too serious, too stilted, too joyless and loveless. I miss your obsession with exposing me to all my problems. The way you irritate me is the most attractive thing I’ve ever found in a woman.”

  She stands too, getting in my face. “You think I do that just to turn you on? Just to get you to fuck me like you do?”

  I lower my face to hers, reveling in the depths of her eyes, the closeness of her mouth and the warmth radiating from her skin. “No. You do it because you like how I make you feel when I fuck you and get angry at you. You do it because being around all the intensity of me, all the twisted fucked-upness that is me, you get high from it. It turns you on so bad you don’t care how bad I am for you. You want me anyway.”

  Her lips gape, her breasts rise and fall with rapid breaths. “Yes,” she breathes, and it’s music to my soul.

  I run my finger along her collarbone to the hollow of her throat. “Except now I’m going to get help. Soon I won’t be bad for you anymore. Soon I’ll be as good for you as you are for me. And then what will you do?”

  “Love you.”

  The air fists in my lungs like a truck squeezing its brakes. I’m not sure if she said what I think she just said, but . . .

  She puts her hand on my cheek and guides my head down. Her lips meet mine in a sensitive assertion. She meant it. She meant what she said.

  The explosion that shakes my core shatters through my hesitations and my intentions to be careful with her
and to do the right thing and say the perfect words. It blasts through them all and takes down my fear of being undeserving of her, of this.

  I want her—all of her. Heart, body, soul, mind. And she is offering herself to me.

  I will not refuse her. I will take everything she has to give and give her my whole self in return.

  * * *

  He wraps me in his arms and kisses me like he always does, my favorite way—like the earth could fall out from under our feet and it wouldn’t stop him.

  It’s all there in the aggression of his mouth, the biting of his lips and the slicing of his tongue. I am everything to him in this moment, and he isn’t going to hold back.

  He moves me to the table and there’s a clanking of glasses. He pushes them across the table, not breaking contact with my mouth, and sets me on the surface. He’s between my legs, wrapping them around his hips, sliding his hands up my thighs under my skirt.

  There’s a pained desperation to him, a fear and anguish. He’s afraid of something. Afraid of what this means, afraid of me—afraid of losing me, of losing himself. But it doesn’t inhibit him—it makes him more ravenous. Like if he touches all of me, enough of me at once, then maybe we won’t disappear.

  He sucks at my neck with abandon, then burrows his face between my breasts, trying in vain to breathe and slow himself down. But I don’t let him.

  All of me is aching to feel him, to know him again, all of his rage and fervor, to have all of everything that is him moving inside of me. I rock against him, pulsing my hips against his, where he feels so good, where I feel so good.

  He groans and grips my ass, rubbing me harder.

  “Fuck me now,” I moan into his ear, scratching at his back, starved for him in a way that has my body weeping for him.

  “Too—fast—” he grumbles, but as hard as he is, it’s not him he’s worried about.

  I grasp his hand and slip it between my legs. His fingertips meet my molten center and he swears, loud and long. “Daisy.”

  I pull open his belt, yank down his fly, and his cock is velvet steel, and I’m already feeling him in me, before he’s even there.

  Our breaths matched and racing, he gets me naked under my skirt and—

  He surges into me, penetrating and deep, reaching into me so I swear there’s no part of me he’s not touching.

  I hold him, cling to him, beg him with my hands in his shoulders and my teeth in his neck—give it all to me.

  He does.

  I didn’t think he could be more—I thought I’d had the most of him, perhaps on the boat, definitely in his aunt’s house. But I was wrong. There is more to him—so much more, I’m ashamed I didn’t know.

  This time it’s not just an unleashing, it’s a baring. He opens himself to me and the tidal flood that comes out of him is so much greater than any of his anger fucks ever were.

  He thrusts into me with a wanton savoring and a soul-moving inhibition. Like he would go slow if he could, but he’ll never stop if he has to. And the emotions pouring from him—his mouth stays heavy over mine, clinging to my lips, murmuring things through them.

  Things I never thought could come from him.

  “Beautiful—my Love—I need you—I want you—I love you.” He creates a litany of all the things I never would’ve believed he’d say.

  He breaks me open, but it’s not like before, not like when he overcame me with his intensity and took away my thought and reason. This time it’s easier—this time I give it away. My senses aren’t stolen from me, I let them go, I let him have them.

  And he thanks me for it—showering me with a sensitivity that I didn’t think I wanted—but when he gives it, it’s more intense than even his anger.

  All his pain, all his rage, his obsession with revenge, he’s put it all aside and left his heart exposed to me. A heart strong and whole, beating with the sureness of someone who has loved and been loved . . .

  He’s nowhere near as broken as he thinks he is. Beneath his wounded exterior, he is whole.

  And wholly mine.

  I come in waves of pleasure cresting against him like the ocean against the sand, and he soaks me in until he comes too, in a body-wracking surrender.

  He gives over to me, clutching me as though I am his life and breath. And I suppose I am. As much as he is mine.

  He’s still in me, the aftershocks of my climax still shaking my body. “Will you stay with me?”

  I may have come, but he’s still hard as stone inside me. My insides grip at him, on reflex, craving for him to thrust into me again. I’ll do anything he asks. “Yes.”

  He pulls out of me, and does up his pants. He pats down the hem of my dress to cover me. “We’re not finished.” He eases me down from the table. “But I’d rather get you in a bed.”

  I am longing for him naked, for me naked, to be skin against his skin. “Yes.”

  He leads me, his arm wrapping me, around the far side of the house, past the garages to the guest house.

  He holds the door open. “Will you come inside?”

  The exterior lamp by the door catches on his face—so much vulnerability. He’s still afraid I’ll say no, the hurt is already creeping over his face.

  I step past him into the house.

  He follows me in and closes the door. His expression completely changes with the fierceness of how he wants me, how he loves me.

  To be desired so passionately by a man—even one with all his flaws and his mistakes—I could never turn away from it. Not when I crave him with a fierceness to match.

  He doesn’t touch me. He keeps his distance as though waiting to see if this is okay.

  My breath moving too fast to form words, I nod.

  He rushes me and lifts me in his arms. Cradled to his warm chest, he carries me up the small staircase to a bedroom that I never want to leave.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I wake in the morning, and she is nowhere. The bed is empty. The bathroom is empty. I search the guest house and find no one.

  She is gone.

  The sinking feeling in my gut is like my heart rolled out and bounded to the floor. I could kick it with my foot, except it would be cement. Given a chisel and a hammer I could fracture it into a thousand pieces. If I did that, it would hurt less than it does now.

  A soft murmuring comes from outside. A quiet, feminine sound.

  My breath catches in my throat, and I walk to the front window—to see her sitting on the front step.

  “Hi, Dad . . . Yes, I’m fine . . . I was visiting Penny . . . On their estate, yeah . . . Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about . . .”

  I’m eager to listen. Any thought of not eavesdropping is squelched by my need to know what it is she’s going to say.

  But I shouldn’t.

  I’ve done enough wrong things. This would be just another dishonest thing on my lengthening list. I can’t do that to her. I can only hope that when she’s done she might come back inside and tell me.

  I retreat to the kitchen and pray.

  * * *

  My father’s caution is no less than I expect. “He may have some positive qualities, but he has a lot of things to figure out in life.”

  And I want to help him do that. That voice in me rears up with undeniable strength. He’s growing and changing and wants to change more. He has so much to overcome, yes, but he’s come so far with me. I’m helping him. His sister is helping him. His father is gone. For the first time in his life, he can be his own man. I want to be a part of that change, to encourage him as he heals.

  “He’s going to get professional help,” I say. “He’s committed to this. To me.”

  “All right.” He sighs. “Be careful with yourself. Your heart is very precious to me and I don’t want to see it broken.”

  “But it’s my heart. To give away or keep as I choose.”

  “I know.”

  I hang up, a strange mixture of relief and nerves. I’m forgiving Blake, he’s re-earning my trust. It ma
y take some time, but I have faith in him.

  Because the most solid truth of everything is that Blake was dealt a terrible hand in his childhood, and he’s doing the best he knows how to correct it. He’s making mistakes, but I can love him for his mistakes too—his reasons for manipulating my father make sense—and how he’s asking forgiveness.

  I sit on the porch and watch the sun rising over the lake, the only sound the tweeting of the birds in the trees. It’s so quiet, it makes the whispers of my injured heart like a shouting match inside my head.

  “Daisy?”

  I turn slowly to look at him. “’Morning.”

  “A little coffee with your daydreams?” He holds out a cup to me.

  “Thanks.”

  He sits beside me and follows my gaze to the sunrise, to the lake. “I forget how beautiful it is here.”

  I press a hand to his jean-clad thigh. “I’ll help you remember.”

  He looks at my hand touching him as though it’s a strange object. Almost reverently, he brushes his fingers over mine, then lifts them and kisses them. “You’re still here,” he whispers, and looks at me, his eyes full of infinite questions.

  “Did you really think I’d leave?”

  “You have every reason to.”

  “And what reason is that?”

  He tilts his head, as though I’m an anomaly. “I can’t decide if you’re stupid, naïve or just . . .” He stops to swallow and his eyes stray to my lips.

  “Just what?”

  “ . . . really, really in love with me.” He looks away before I can respond. He sips his coffee.

  “I want to know what’s ticking inside that head of yours. I’m not a mind reader and I’d appreciate it if you’d help me out a little.”

  “You ask a lot of questions, you know?”

  “And you have a lot of secrets, so forgive me for being hungry for answers. I want to know everything there is to be known about you.”

  “You don’t want to know it all.”

  I kiss his cheek and snuggle into his side. “I’m a big girl. If you lived it, I can hear it.”