by Roz Lee
“Sean Flannery?” His heart almost leapt from his chest. “Why on earth would you want to meet him?”
“Are you blind? Look at him. I was so pissed at you the day he came to the house I hardly noticed, but I’m noticing now. He’s gorgeous. Listen to his voice. See the way he handles himself? He’s a natural on-screen personality.”
“You do know he has a job,” he warned.
“I know, but Ray Walters is going to retire at the end of the year, and we’re looking for someone to replace him.”
“I repeat, Sean has a job—one he loves, I might add, so what makes you think he would even listen to your offer.”
“I didn’t say I was going to make an offer. I just want to talk to him. You know, get a feel for the guy, maybe ask a few questions.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. He’s having what could be his best season ever. A guy doesn’t just walk away from that.”
Sean’s segment ended. Ashley reached for the remote, rewinding the taped interview back to the beginning. Bent tried to remain calm. Damn, she was right. Sean had an easy, relaxed way about him on camera. He was quick on his feet, answering the reporter’s questions then transitioning from one subject to the next without hesitation. He could see him taking over the anchor seat on the weekly sports-talk show.
Ashley’s attention was on the screen for the better part of Sean’s interview, then she hit the pause button and turned to him. Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she crawled into his lap. She wrapped one hand around his nape, toying with the hair above his collar while the other stroked his tie in a suggestive manner. His dick twitched, anticipating the same sort of treatment.
“Please, Bent? The team has a day off next week, right? Invite him over for lunch.”
“He won’t come.” Please, God.
“Why ever not? He’s your friend, isn’t he? Ask him, for me? Please? I could call him myself, but I don’t want him to know what I’m thinking yet. I just want to spend some time with him in a casual atmosphere, see what he’s like. See if he’s all show for the cameras but a jackass the rest of the time.”
“You think he’d be my friend if he was a jackass?”
“No, I don’t, but how well do you know him?”
Well enough. “He’s a great guy, you can take my word for it. But he isn’t interested in leaving baseball.”
“Then we’ll have a nice lunch together, and that will be that.”
“No.” The last thing he wanted was to bring the two of them together.
“Then I guess I’ll have to make the call myself.” She sighed, and he recognized he was fighting a losing battle. She hadn’t gotten where she was in her profession by taking no for an answer.
“Okay, I’ll ask, but don’t be surprised when he turns me down. We haven’t always been on the best of terms.”
She stilled in his lap, and he knew he’d said too much.
“He’s the one you fought with, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. Like I said, he’s a nice guy, but we’ve had our differences.”
“I saw you walking off the field with him earlier. It looked like you were getting along okay.”
“We have our moments.”
“Then you need to spend some time together off the field. This lunch will kill two birds with one stone, as they say.”
More likely kill two relationships. For a split second, he considered telling her the truth, but then he remembered why he couldn’t. Time to change the subject. He asked, “How’s work? Any light at the end of the tunnel?”
“Work is fine. Crazy. Exciting. I love what I do.”
“Don’t let them take advantage of you.”
“I won’t. I promise.” She kissed him, slow and sensuous. “Make love to me, Bent. I need you.”
He reached for the remote, clicking the button to remove Sean’s face from the screen. He was his past. Ashley was his future. He laid her back on the sofa then covered her with his body.
She was soft beneath him, and he wanted her with every fiber of his being. But even as he took her breast in his mouth, another image flashed through his mind, an image of a hard-muscled chest with flat nipples he’d learned could be sensitive, too. As he worked his way down his fiancée’s body, he tried to banish the memories of being with Sean, but they’d become a part of him, and he hated himself for it.
Ashley deserved all of him, not the half-man he’d become. But every time he thought about telling her, he remembered what he had to lose if she didn’t understand, and he chickened out.
Half a man in his heart, his body responded wholly to hers. Another sin heaped on the pyre of guilt building inside him, ready to spark into flame and consume him, body and soul.
You’re a sick bastard.
Sick or not, he needed her, needed to be inside her, needed to feel her heart below his palm when he closed his hand over her breast. He wanted her.
She opened for him, offered her essence to him. He took it greedily, lapping at her folds, burying his face in her wet pussy, biting and sucking until he was drunk on her scent and her juices. She clawed at his scalp, begging him for more. Out of his mind with lust, need, and crazy-assed guilt, he drove into her hard. She cried out, her head thrown back. The pain of her fingernails digging into his ass was fuel to the raging fire burning inside him.
He couldn’t stop, couldn’t temper his thrusts, even though a tiny rational voice in his head screamed for him to ease up on her.
She’s not Sean. She’s not Sean. She’s not Sean.
“Bent!” Her body convulsed, quivered with the powerful spasms gripping his cock. Garbled sounds came from her throat, but he still couldn’t stop. He pounded into her tight sheath, hard, punishing thrusts that rocked her body in increments toward the arm of the sofa. His ass burned where she clung to him, dragging him along with her until pleasure blinded him. He erupted inside her, shaking and shuddering his release, pouring his heart, his anguish, into her, one scalding spurt at a time.
Gulping air into raw lungs, he held himself above her, his one concession to her femininity. His shoulders screamed with the effort imposed upon them, but he absorbed the pain as penance for what he’d done. Still hard, he rocked his hips, reveling in the feel of their mingled fluids bathing his cock.
“I’m so sorry, babe. So fucking sorry.”
“What is it?” Concern laced her voice as she framed his face with her hands. Her thumbs brushed his cheeks. He thought he might die when he realized she was brushing tears from his cheeks.
“Bentley.” Her voice had hardened, and he realized he’d fucked up royally. “Tell me. What’s going on? What do you mean, you’re sorry?”
She wiggled out from under him, reaching for any scrap of clothing she could reach from the pile on the floor. She found his suit coat, pulling it over her like a shield. My God, she looked so vulnerable it broke his heart to look at her. He scooted away, grabbed his pants. Not trusting his legs to hold him, he pulled his pants on without trying to stand.
“Bentley. Tell me what’s going on in your head. Is it what we just did? You didn’t hurt me. I swear.”
God, how could she still be thinking of ways to excuse his behavior? Because she doesn’t know the half of it, that’s how.
“I fucked up, Ashley.” He sucked in a deep breath, held it then used it to push the next words out. “I cheated on you.”
She sat like a statue, curled up under his coat, staring at him as if he’d grown two heads. Her post-coital glow faded to a deathly pallor. Her mouth opened and closed then she uttered the one word he dreaded most.
“Who. Who, Bentley? Who is she?”
“Not she. He. Sean Flannery.”
“Sean Flannery,” she repeated without emotion. “You slept with Sean Flannery?”
Nodding he looked away, unable to watch as she processed the information. “I’m sorry. It…it just happened.”
Silence rang in his ears. He barely dared breathe, waiting for the inevitable.
“Are you telling me you’re gay? Don’t bother trying to convince me, because I’ll never believe it.”
“I’m not gay.” He jerked his gaze to her. “Not gay. I swear it.”
“Then why, Bent? Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I had to. I don’t understand it any more than you do. All I know is, I had to. And God help me, I liked it.”
He hated the confused look on Ashley’s face, but it felt good to tell her, even if doing so meant he would lose her. Keeping it from her was killing him.
“Make me understand. Tell me everything, Bentley.”
He nodded. “Let’s get cleaned up, put some clothes on then I’ll tell you.” Her pink-tipped toes peeked out from the hem of his coat. Reaching out, he touched her big toe, marveling at how feminine it was with the daisy/star thing painted on it. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.”
Famous last words.
“Wait here.” She stood, slipped her arms through the sleeves of his coat. Her arms crossed tight over her middle, acting as a belt. “I’ll be right back.”
When she was out of sight, he pulled on his shirt. Gathering the rest of their scattered clothes, he took them to the laundry room. He paused, listening to the hum of the shower running in the bathroom above him.
Fuck.
He scrubbed his face with his hands, freezing when he caught the scent of her on his fingers. Her sweet surrender a few minutes ago washed over him in a hot wave, followed by a red tide of shame and humiliation for the way he’d repaid her trust. He’d taken her with the same physical abandon he would have taken Sean, and then she’d crushed him by saying he hadn’t hurt her.
Like hell.
On his way back to the den, he started to grab another beer but opted for a soda instead. Selecting a bottled water for Ashley, he went back to wait for her.
A few minutes later, she returned, wearing a pair of cut-offs, and a T-shirt. Over the last few months, more and more of her clothes had ended up at his house, something he once thought intrusive now added a level of security to their relationship he had played false. She took the cold bottle he offered her. After settling in the far corner of the sofa, she screwed the top off and took a long drink.
“I don’t know what to think, Bentley. Explain it to me.”
Unable to look at her, he sat on the edge of the sofa, his elbows braced on his knees, staring at the soda can clutched in his hands. “I don’t think I can explain because I don’t understand how it happened myself. It goes back over five years, but nothing happened between us until a couple of months ago.”
“Before or after you asked me to marry you?”
“After.”
She tensed as if he’d struck her.
Yeah, I waited until we were engaged to fuck someone else.
You deserve to lose her, asshole.
“How many times?”
Does it matter? Once was too many.
“I don’t know. More than once. Less than a dozen. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I tried to stay away from him, Ashley. I honestly did. I hate myself for wanting him, but it’s like….”
“Like what?”
Like he’s part of me.
“I feel the same things for him I feel for you.” He sat up, placed the soda can on the coffee table then faced her. “I love you. I know you probably don’t believe me right now, but it’s true. I love you more than I love my own life. I can’t imagine living my life without you.”
“But,” she prompted.
“But I love Sean, too. I can’t imagine living my life without him, either, though I know I’m going to have to.”
“He doesn’t feel the same way?”
“We agreed to break it off.”
An awkward silence filled the room. Ashley’s gaze bored a hole straight through him. He refused to look away, letting her see what she would on his face, in his posture.
“God damn you, Bentley.” Her quiet curse sounded as if he’d reached in and yanked her guts out with his bare hand. The hell of it was, he knew he had.
“I’m sorry. That’s all I know to say. Now you see why I can’t ask him to come over for lunch. He’d never come anyway.”
Another heated silence hung between them, only this time he prayed for her to do something—yell at him or throw something. Anything but look at him with pain in her eyes.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
He nodded. “I wanted to from the beginning, but I never found the balls to do it. I was going to, the day we set the wedding date. Then…I couldn’t. I know it was cowardly. I broke it off with Sean a few days later—on the road trip.”
Closing her eyes, she let her head fall back. “I don’t want to imagine you…with him, but it’s all I can see.” She looked at him again. “I don’t know what to think, what to do. Part of me wants to hate you, but another part of me says I never can.”
“Sean said the same thing. Don’t worry. I hate myself enough for both of you.”
“Why do you hate yourself?”
“Because I’ve hurt the two people I love most in the world, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. I can’t change the way I feel. Believe me—I’ve tried. I’ve put you both in the middle of something neither of you deserve. I’m fucked up, Ashley. No one knows that better than I do.”
“What do you want to happen? If you had exactly what you wanted, what would it be?”
“Does it matter? We live in the real world. What I want doesn’t matter as much as what I can have does.”
“Did you tell him what you want?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“You told him, but you can’t tell me.”
Her words sliced him to the core. “I told him I wanted it all. Both of you.”
“What did he say?”
“Goodbye.”
“He let you go? Just like that?”
“It wasn’t easy for him, but he knows how much you mean to me.”
“He wants you to be happy.”
“So he says.”
“But you aren’t happy.”
“No. Half my heart died when…when we said goodbye. The other half will die when you leave me.”
“Who said I was going to leave you?”
“Do you have a choice? I’m in love with two people, and one of them is a man. What kind of woman wants to stick around for that?”
“The kind who loves you and wants you to be happy.”
Hope surged through him like lightening. He lifted his gaze to hers, searching for anything to indicate he hadn’t imagined her intent.
She shook her head, a wry smile lifting one side of her mouth. “I must be insane, but I think I want to meet Sean Flannery. Convince him to come to the lunch we discussed. You can tell him I’m thinking about offering him a broadcasting job. Tell him anything, except don’t tell him I know about the two of you. I want to see what you’re talking about with my own eyes. Maybe then I’ll know what to do.”
* * *
Oh, Bentley. Her heart ached for him, but a little part of her couldn’t help wondering why she wasn’t enough for him. But then again, she’d always felt as if he was holding back some portion of himself. It hadn’t been enough to keep her from falling hopelessly in love with him, but it had always been there, a small invisible gulf between them.
Now you know. He loves someone else—not in place of you, but beside you. She didn’t know where her need to meet the man who held part of her fiancé’s heart had come from, but everything in her told her it was imperative—for Bentley’s sake and her own. If they were ever going to have any kind of real marriage, she had to know who stood between them.
He tore himself in half for you.
All the more reason you have to meet Sean, see for yourself if what Bentley says is true.
And if it is?
You have to find a way to fix the problem.
One thing was for certain. She wasn’t going to give up her half without a fight.
Chapter Twelve
Sean sat in the shade of the cabana, watching Bent at the grill. The day was hot, and his former lover wore nothing but loose swim trunks hanging low on his trim hips along with a pair of flip-flop sandals to protect his feet from the stone patio.
They hadn’t touched in months, and they never would again. Seeing the play of sunlight on his lover’s broad shoulders made him ache with need. Every movement reminded him of the man’s strength, the way it felt to give himself to him, and the heady sense of power that coursed through him when Bent submitted to him.
His teammate reached for his beer on the granite counter next to the built-in grill and lifted it to his lips. It was all Sean could do to remain in his seat when what he wanted to do was press himself against that wall of heated male flesh. He’d kiss those shoulders, wrap his arms around his slim waist then trace every line of his six-pack abs before slipping his fingers past the elastic waistband on his trunks. But he couldn’t do any of the things he wanted to do with the man’s fiancée sitting across the table from him. Not to mention, he still didn’t have a clue why he was here.
All he knew was Randolph had mumbled something about a possible job offer. What the fuck? He didn’t need a job. He had one. But after days of asking, he outright begged, and Sean had acquiesced. Though God only knew why. Playing nice with the affianced couple was pure torture for him. The groom-to-be looked like he had a live wire stuck up his ass—a prospect Sean was beginning to think held merit. The man deserved to be put through an equal amount of anguish.
“Thanks for coming today.”
The soft, feminine voice startled him back to reality. Tearing his gaze away from the man at the grill, he prayed Ashley hadn’t noticed the way he’d been ogling her fiancé.
“Thanks for having me. Bent’s the only person I know in Dallas.” He could afford a little bit of kindness until he knew why he was here. Besides, there was no indication she knew anything about his relationship with her fiancé. She was more of a pawn than he was. At least he knew his lover was fucking her.
“You’re welcome anytime. With his schedule, he doesn’t have much time to make friends outside of his teammates, so we don’t socialize much.” Her gaze wandered to their grill master. “He’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time. It can’t be because of the way he’s been playing the last few weeks, so it must be because you’re here.”
