“I said I hate that you’re keeping my favorite toy from me.” I bent down and kissed him before walking toward my desk. “But you’re right. I’m going to have to start reserving three hours for your appointment if we keep this up.”
I returned to my chair with my notepad and glasses. Xander watched me as I slipped them on. I smiled at him. He knew I had a weakness for his dimples and I knew he had a kink for my glasses and garters. I watched him make an adjustment at the front of his pants as I settled into my chair.
“Where did we leave off last week?”
“Guilt,” we said in unison.
“You’re harboring way too much guilt, Xander. And the person you want forgiveness from can’t give it to you. You have to learn to forgive yourself.”
“It’s a lot easier said than done.” He slumped into his chair, massaging his forehead with his fingers as though a headache were building. As soon as Xander stepped into my office for a session, his demeanor changed. Talking to me about his past sickened him, but he refused to seek help elsewhere.
“Can I ask you a question?”
He stared at me as if to continue but didn’t respond.
“What happened after the accident? How come this isn’t all over the newspaper somewhere?”
He stiffened and broke eye contact. He covered his mouth with a fisted hand, and the silence stretched on for quite a while. “My dad made sure no one ever knew I was the driver.” He turned back to me, then said, “And I let him, so how could I not feel guilty?”
“Do you wish you would’ve taken responsibility?”
He snorted. “Every. Single. Day.”
“I know this is going to be a long road for you, but I feel like you’re regressing. All the progress you made before we went to California evaporated when we came back.” Something changed with Xander after his meeting with Marcus in California. But after almost a week, he wasn’t letting me in on that front.
“I’m not regressing. I’ve just been facing the fact that I impacted a lot of lives.”
“Continuing to blame yourself will not bring her back.” And it wouldn’t help the insomnia that had become increasingly worse in the past week.
“But you’re biased. You want to believe I’m blameless so you can keep fucking me.”
What?
“So you think I can’t separate my personal feelings from my profession?” I put my notepad down and glared at him.
“I think—no—I know you didn’t want this thing between us, but you can’t control it, so you need to make it okay for yourself to be with me.”
“I want to make it okay for you! I want you to see that people make mistakes—huge ones—but that doesn’t make you a bad person.” I stood and walked across the room.
“And what if that mistake ruined lives? Cost someone their life?”
“Xander, listen…” I sat on the coffee table, facing him. “You don’t have to explain to me how much at fault you were in this accident.” He gave me a look when I said accident. “You have to figure out a way to forgive yourself. Covering this up was a shitty thing to do, but it’s too late now. What is it going to take for you to realize you’ve already atoned for your sins? Twelve years of remorse for something you never intended.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “When everything gets taken away from me. Turnabout is fair play in any situation, Avery, and I feel like it’ll be coming my way soon.”
And I felt like he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was hard for him to embrace happiness, and that was something I fully understood.
The Walls Have Ears
Avery
As usual, Xander was awake when I got up for work the next day. I rolled over and straddled his naked form, leaning my forehead against his.
I loved looking at him in the morning, with his hair all messy, a slow, lazy smile on his face that revealed his dimples as his good morning greeting.
He ran his hand over my back and over my ass, gripping it and pulling me against his morning wood.
I grinned. “Is this one of the times you’ll let me make you come?”
“You’ll just have to try and see how much I’ll let you have.”
I reached down and curled my fingers around him. It excited me to get my hands on his cock. I wrapped my hand around his hard length, the heated flesh throbbing against my palm, and then I whispered into his ear, “I want you to give it all to me. Every inch of your hard cock.”
He growled, his cock twitching in excitement. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
I shifted on his lap, positioned him at my entrance and slowly slid down his long, thick member. His head fell back against the pillow and he grunted as I began to move. It wasn’t long before he dug his fingers into my ass and met me stroke for stroke. His hip punched up as I came down.
I didn’t think I was going to come so quickly, but his cock was pushing me over the edge. In the midst of my pleasure-induced haze, I’d slowed down. Xander wasn’t having it. He smacked my ass and flipped me over so my back hit the bed as he took over with fierce determination. I shrieked as he slammed deep within me. He smothered my cry with a kiss that took my breath away.
He broke away from the kiss, and we stilled when a sound came from the next room. He shrugged and continued fucking me, grunting way too loudly. I shushed him, and he looked at me like I was insane.
He slowed his pace and said, “Do you think the walls have ears?”
“Ellie’s home.”
He shook his head, smiled at me like I was being ridiculous, then dug his fingers into my hips and sped up.
I reached up and pulled his head down. Before our lips met, I turned his head and licked his dimple. He drew back, his rhythm slowing again as he stared at me. He shook his head and smiled again. “Does that do it for you, baby?”
I bit down on my lip and nodded.
He grinned, then shrugged. “Whatever gets you there.”
Then he took off again. Fucking me into the bed. Fucking me out of my mind. I came with Xander’s hand pressed over my mouth to muffle my shouts as he shivered and spurted hot cum into my pussy. How he managed to come so silently, I’d never know.
~*~*~
I walked into my office on cloud nine. Xander had fallen asleep in my bed after our fuck session, so I took a shower and rushed to work. My first appointment was with Ian, and when he walked in, I floated down from my cloud. He looked stressed, anxious, but weirdly, there was a hint of excitement in his voice when he said, “We need to talk.”
“Okay, sit down.” I gestured at the chair, but he shook his head.
“All right… do you mind if I sit?” I motioned to my chair.
“I think you should.” I sat in my favorite wingback and leaned back as Ian began pacing, which I noticed was a nervous habit of his. He’d done it quite a few times since he started coming to my office.
“What’s on your mind today, Ian?” He stopped his frantic movements, put his hands at his hips, and stared at me.
“We’re sort of friends, right? I mean, I tell you my secrets and I talk to you more than anyone in my life.”
“Where are you going with this, Ian?” I narrowed my gaze, hoping he wasn’t trying to declare there was anything but a doctor-patient relationship between us.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but you deserve to know.” He met my gaze.
Why so cryptic? “Ian…”
He took a deep breath, then said, “Xander’s lying to you.”
I snorted. Not this shit again. “Ian, we’ve talked about this. My relationship with Xander holds no bearing to our sessions.”
“Not even if he killed your parents?” he blurted out.
My eyebrows furrowed and I narrowed my gaze as Ian watched for my reaction. “What are you talking about? A drunk driver killed my parents, and she died too.”
He stepped forward. “Do you know her name?”
I shook my head, placed my notepad on the table, and stood. “I
don’t remember her name. I was young and heartbroken when I read the details. I haven’t thought about it in years.”
What is Ian trying to do?
I couldn’t understand where all this was going and how it benefited him to make this up. He stepped closer to me, reached out, placed his hands on my arms, and looked me in the eye.
“Her name was Jessica Rowling-Pierce.”
Our gazes locked and I tried to find some flicker of deceit in his eyes but couldn’t. I rose from my seat, walked back to my desk, and powered up my laptop. Ian had followed close behind me. As I waited for the search I typed in to come up, my eyes kept colliding with his unwavering stare.
The old news headline appeared, and the pressure I felt in my chest was unreal. The implication of Jessica being the driver gave Ian’s story validity. As I scanned the short column about my parents’ death, the only thing that stuck out to me was the name I hadn’t wanted to find in it.
Jessica Rowling-Pierce.
“She wasn’t the driver, Avery. My dad made it seem like she was so Xander wouldn’t have to face what he’d done.”
That went with what Xander had told me, but he never gave me the impression that our tragedies were so closely entwined. I fell back into my chair and covered my mouth with both hands as my eyes began to sting. I shook it off and asked, “Why are you telling me this now?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I swear to you, Avery, I didn’t know they were your parents.”
“How’d you find out? Does Xander know?” I narrowed my eyes as I looked at him anxiously.
He nodded. “I overheard Xander and Mom talking last week at the manor. Xander had just found out he’d… that he was responsible, and Mom knew all along.”
I braced my forearms on my thighs and hung my head. I needed a moment to take it all in. I needed a moment to compose myself, because I’d gone from floating high half an hour ago to plunging at full speed into the cold concrete. I looked up and Ian was watching me.
“Are you sure he knew? Because if you’re making this shit up to—”
“I’m not. I heard them talking.” He held up his hands and shook his head.
Turns out the walls do have ears after all.
He stood there watching me as I stared at the wall.
“What are you going to do?”
What kind of question is that? I couldn’t even come to grips with all the emotions I felt.
Ian had just turned my world upside down, and now he was asking me how I was going to put it back together. I shook my head.“I don’t know, Ian. Since you had a few days to mull it over, maybe you can tell me?”
“Don’t do that, Avery. It was only a week. I wasn’t trying to keep this from you. Xander’s the asshole, and you can’t let him get away with this. He should pay.”
I rolled my eyes and hung my head again. I wasn’t interested in getting in the middle of their melodrama. I wanted to know how to handle the man I loved—left in my bed this morning—betraying me. Lying to me.
“We could take this to the press. It would ruin his career.”
I tilted my head up slightly and threw him an annoyed look. “You can’t be serious.”
“What?” He looked at me like we were supposed to be co-conspirators in a plan against Xander and I’d just turned down his golden plot for revenge. “Everything’s been handed to him, and he never pays for his wrongs. It’s not fair what he did to you. What he did to Jessica.”
I stood and crossed my arms. “And you think it would be fair to have my parents’ death dredged back up and dragged through entertainment news?” I took a step around my desk and faced him.“Do you think it would be fair to me when the media figured out the same woman photographed on the red carpet with Xander was the daughter of the couple hekilled?” My hands shook and my head pounded from all the effort I was making not to cry.
“I’m sorry, Avery.” He reached out for me, but I walked away.
“If you came here to help me, great. But if you came here to get your ultimate revenge on Xander, then fuck off.” I sat behind my desk because I needed the distance. If Ian thought I wanted to handle this his way, he was way off.
“I didn’t mean to upset you. I know this has to be rough for you, and I was trying to help. I apologize.”
I nodded.
“Do you want me to go?”
Affirmative.
I nodded again, and he was out the door as a blur passed in front of my eyes.
Fucking tears.
Lie To Me
Avery
I pulled into the driveway just as Ellie walked up the steps and opened the door. She stood in the doorway, waiting for me, but I wasn’t interested in small talk. I needed to find Xander, look him in the eye, and see if he’d lie to my face.
Ellie frowned as I strolled past her with purpose. I heard her shut the door but didn’t look back. Xander was in my kitchen. He looked up, surprised to see me back so soon.
“We need to talk. Now!” I tilted my head toward the bedroom and continued down the hall. What a fucked-up mess. I didn’t really even know where to begin. I paced my room and wondered why the hell he wasn’t at my heels.
Does he not understand now?
I stalked back into the kitchen and found Xander whispering aggressively with Ellie. They stood unusually close for two people who rarely spoke to each other, and Ellie kept shaking her head as Xander appeared to accuse her of something. Finally, Ellie spoke loud enough for me to hear.
“I didn’t tell her.”
“Didn’t tell me what?” I snapped.
They jumped apart and stared at me, wide-eyed and baffled.
Guilty looks?
“Ellie?”
Utter silence emanated from them both. No one ever wanted to speak up. I was always the one who had to pry things out. My profession seeped into every aspect of my life.
“Okay, I already know I can’t trust him. But you too?”
Xander flinched, a hurt look crossing his face.
Ellie gave me a glassy-eyed look. “I’m sorry, Avery.”
“What’s going on?”
Ellie was choked up. Xander took one look at her, sighed, then confessed. “I knew Ellie before we met.”
I looked at him suspiciously, then back at Ellie. “How?”
“I never wanted you to find out.” Ellie sniffled. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”
“What, Ellie? Just tell me.” Someone needed to come clean because the atmosphere was littered with lies, and I could almost smell the deceit in the air.
“I’ve been stripping at a club downtown.” She glanced down at her hands.
What is happening? It was the day from hell.
And why was I so fucking emotional? I didn’t like to feel out of control. I couldn’t even describe all the feeling that raged inside of me, and it just kept adding up.
“Stripping? Why would you be doing that?” Everything was falling apart. I woke up this morning happy, jubilant even, and now…
Now this.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to make it on my own.” She wiped her eyes as she continued to hang her head.
“You don’t need to do that! You know I’d do anything for you. Give you anything.” My voice shook with my warring sentiments—betrayal, anger, and hurt.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.”
Xander put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder to comfort her and she shrugged it off.
“And you?” I pointed at Xander. “You knew. You saw her there.”
He nodded, his lips forming a tight, straight line.
“And you said nothing,” I deadpanned.
“It was before we met. Before I knew she was your Ellie,” he explained.
“There’s more,” Ellie whispered.
Xander glanced at her like he wanted her to shut the fuck up, but I wasn’t going to have any more secrets.
“Talk, Ellie.” I kept my eye trained on Xander to make sure he wasn’t trying to intimidate her.<
br />
“I went home with one of the men at the club. It was stupid, but I thought he was different.” Ellie looked at Xander, and he had this devastated look on his face. Plus, he refused to look at me again.
I watched the looks that passed between them and prayed I was wrong. I hunched over, holding my stomach as a sick wave threatened my breakfast.
“You slept with her,” I whispered. Not a question. The truth was written all over their faces.
“I’m sorry, Avery. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how,” Ellie said remorsefully.
“Listen,” Xander said as he approached me. He reached out to touch me, and I shoved him away. “It was before we met. Actually, she gave me your card, but I had no idea about the connection between you.”
I shook my head vigorously because I couldn’t stomach any more. “Get out.”
“Avery, please. Let’s talk about this.”
“No! Get the fuck out!” I stormed into the room, grabbed the clothes he’d placed in one of my drawers, and tossed them at him as he entered the room.
“Baby, I swear I never meant to hurt you.”
“You’re a liar!” He took a step back when he realized how dangerously upset I was. I took a calming breath. Tears threatened, but I defeated them, and looked into his eyes.
“I talked to Ian today.” My voice was calmer than I thought possible, considering the anger raging through me.
He took another step back, furrowing his brows.
“You didn’t just… fuck Ellie. You killed my parents.”
He froze, the color draining from his face as his mouth flapped open and shut. Speechless.
“Lie to me again, Xander.” I closed the distance between us, stomping over all his things. “Look me in the eye and lie to me. Tell me you weren’t driving the car that crashed into my parents’.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, then covered his face with his hands.
“Go.” It came out as a whispered sob. Before I completely broke down in front of him, I rushed out of the room, grabbed my keys, and left the house of liars behind.
Make it Stop
Lie to Me (Sexual Misconduct Volume III) Page 2
