by Piper Trace
After showering, she grabbed a short, silky robe and wrapped it around her naked body, too distracted to pick out an outfit. Dropping heavily onto her bed, she stared out the window for a long time, mulling over the idea of asking Ford for enough of her salary in advance to pay John back immediately.
She hadn’t wanted to do that, and she knew it would cause an issue with Ford. He’d give her the money—she was sure of that—but it would change things. It was important to Ford that she had the free choice to leave at any moment, and if she borrowed money, she’d be beholden to him. She didn’t think Ford would continue their…relationship, for lack of a better word, if she owed him money.
And she wasn’t ready to give that up. Charley and Ford were giving Evie the only real happiness she’d had in years, maybe ever. To feel loved and desired and safe…well, she just couldn’t bring herself to change things.
She pondered how to get the money without altering their deal, but after an hour she gave up in frustration. If Ford gave her the money it would change the delicate balance between them, and Evie didn’t want that to happen. She had more than herself to think of—Charley was a part of this too. If she altered her relationship with Ford, who knew what effect it’d have on Charley and Ford. And she was not going to be the cause of Charley’s fresh heartbreak.
She left her room in search of both men, seeking comfort and an answer that wasn’t there. But she wanted to see them, needing to be reassured of her safety and theirs.
Instead of turning right out of her room and heading for the stairs, as had been her plan, she went left toward Ford’s room, her heartbeat racing. If he was in there, he might be angry at her for seeking him in his private quarters. Her eyes lingered for a moment on the spot in the hallway where Ford had made her suck him before demanding she fuck Charley alone. She shivered. So many things had gone on among the three of them. They’d been connected in ways that were beyond her wildest imaginings only weeks before. No wonder their feelings had grown so intense so quickly.
At least they had for her and for Charley. How could Ford remain unaffected?
She rapped hesitantly at his door, entering when she heard a distant, “Come in.” Ford was in his bathroom. She’d never been in his room before, so she followed the direction she’d heard his voice.
Upon entering the bathroom, she was struck by two overwhelming sights. The first was the architectural masterpiece that was his en suite. If Evie could imagine what the master bathroom might look like in the penthouse floor of a luxury Las Vegas hotel suite, she still couldn’t have come up with the reality of Ford’s bathroom.
First, it was huge—half the size of her last apartment, it seemed. And second, there were mirrors and marble everywhere. Even the intricately coffered ceiling had been fitted with mirrors. The room was partitioned into two areas, the first being a dressing area with thick, marble counters on both sides of the room, topping drawers that lined up under the stone slabs, adding order and linear aspects that were repeated over and over in the parallel mirrors. The effect was an elegant, breathtaking space of a caliber she’d never seen.
Yet all that shine and glitz was overshadowed by something else…the other sight that had swamped Evie’s senses with pleasure the second she’d stepped into the room. Ford, leaning on one of the counters on closed fists, wet from a shower. A towel was slung low around his waist and water beaded on his skin. His hair tousled in a messy, sexy way she’d never seen, shiny and wet. He looked at her through the reflection without turning, keeping his muscled back to her.
He held her eyes, his expression heavy, before dropping his gaze back to his own reflection. His eyebrows fell into a scowl, and his mouth tightened with disgust as he looked at himself.
She leaned against the door frame, not saying a word, and instead just drank him in, content to stand there. Finally, he glanced up at her again and, catching her eyes, he watched her watch him.
He was clearly troubled, and she assumed his unease was due to the bullet hole in his two-hundred thousand dollar car, so he caught her off-guard when he said, “Evie, don’t look at me like that. Please. Not you.” He averted his eyes again.
She blinked. “Look at you like what?”
“Like you might do anything for me.” The words came tight through his clenched jaw. He looked down at himself and straightened, crossing his arms across his tanned, chiseled chest. “You’re in danger, and I think we both know that you being here is only making it worse now. Yet, I can’t seem to bring myself to make you go, for your own safety.” He took a deep breath, flexing his jaw. “I want you to do it.”
He met her eyes, his words harsh and demanding. “I showed you the things I want. I want to hurt you. You can’t want that! You don’t deserve that.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing, his face miserable. “I let you see all of me—” His face darkened and he glowered, looking away. “But still you won’t leave. Even after what I did to you. After what I’ve made you do with Charley…” He cut his words off, dropping his head. His posture highlighted his straight shoulders and corded back, bunched with tension. “Is it my money? Is that why you’re staying? Because being with me isn’t worth five-hundred thousand dollars, and it’s certainly not worth the danger I’m putting you in.”
Evie closed her eyes in a slow blink. “I’m going to try not to take offense at what you just said, due to your complete lack of skill in having a relationship with a woman, friends or otherwise,” she said dryly. “Ford, you have problems alright, but your sexual kinks aren’t one of them. Your biggest problem is your hatred for yourself.”
He squinted his eyes and frowned, his face a confused scowl.
She continued before he had a chance to deflect her words. “You don’t ever let people know the real you because you think you can’t be accepted—that you’re not worthy of love. And since you only let people see the shallow stuff—your looks, your money, your body—you think they only want you for it. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
He raised his eyebrows and pulled the corner of his mouth back in a skeptical expression, and she could see him mentally shrug off what she’d said as bullshit. “I appreciate your theory, Evie, but I have a hard time believing it. That’s not the reason I don’t get close to people.”
“Why then? Because you’re bored? I don’t buy it.” She let her voice harden. “I’ve known you for a while and I’ve never seen you as happy as you are now with Charley and me. You need this—you need people around you. Why do you do this to yourself? What’s so wrong with you that no one can love you?”
He raised his voice in response to her heated words. “You don’t understand. You didn’t grow up like I did. People being paid to love you, to care for you. Everyone knowing before you walked into a room who you are and that you are to be coddled and sucked-up to. It makes a person feel inhuman.”
He pulled himself tall again, turning around now to face her, leaning his towel-covered ass against the polished marble counter. “The ironic part is that people act like that because they think you’re special, or they’re told to treat you like you are, but it doesn’t make you feel special in the long run. It only ever made me feel worthless.”
His shoulders seemed to hunch at his admission and his voice lost its edge. “After years of that it made me feel like I wasn’t worth honest emotions, real reactions, true judgments. And then I guess no one seemed real anymore.”
She crossed her arms, mirroring his hostile posture. “No, you’re right.” She pressed her lips together and nodded sharply. “I don’t know what it’s like to have everyone fall all over themselves to take care of me and make me happy. In fact I’m not sure I’ve ever had one person want to do that for me in my entire life. Ever. So you’re right. I don’t understand.”
He closed his eyes, his voice pained. “I’m sorry, Evie. I wish things had been different for you.” He shook his head, looking away, silent for a moment. “Our lives have been so different and yet, in a vital way
, so similar. We’ve both felt so alone.”
“I did feel alone.” She paused. “Until…” She trailed off, unsure if she should finish the thought.
But he’d caught it. “Until what?”
She shrugged, but his voice took on the tone. “Until what, Evangeline?” He was suddenly angry, his face reddening. “Until what? And don’t lie to me.” The volume of his words had risen again, and now his crossed arms rose and fell as his chest heaved. “You can’t mean until me. You can’t mean until I paid you to have sex with me and then hurt you, because that’s bullshit.”
She closed her eyes before speaking, reluctant to let him in on her special, private memory. “Until you took my hand in the library,” she whispered finally.
He blinked and his body stilled. He looked at her blankly.
“When John called and was berating me. When he said he was going to come to the library, and I was scared. You know how I hate to be scared now, but you didn’t then. And yet you took my hand. You put your arm around me. You somehow knew I needed something, and you were there for me. You took up for me. Protected me.”
She sighed. She was in this far…may as well finish her confession. “And then later when you spoke to me like you owned me. Like I was yours. And you trusted me enough to share your most private sexual desires.” She softened her expression, knowing he’d have a hard time accepting what she was saying. “Those memories. Those are when I didn’t feel alone anymore.”
She watched him for the rebuke she was sure she’d get for being too familiar, too attached to him. For layering feelings that he didn’t have for her over his actions. But he just sighed heavily, dropping his crossed arms to fist his hands together in front of him, staring grimly at his fingers.
“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he said, looking away as if he was talking out loud to himself. “I had a plan, but I don’t recognize what this has become.” He pulled his hands apart and cupped his elbows, his forearms crossing protectively over his bare midsection. He looked suddenly vulnerable, and he raised his eyes back to hers as if seeking for her to make everything make sense for him again.
The silence expanded, but she forced herself not to speak. She’d laid herself bare and she wasn’t going to help him now through the frightening stillness. He was going to have to fill it.
Finally, he closed his eyes, his velvety voice coming tight from his throat. “When you did everything I told you to, when you let me do anything I wanted to you and you not only stayed, but you made me feel like it was okay, that’s when I knew you were mine.” She drifted toward him, drawn closer by his honest words, his beautiful face in profile as he spoke without looking at her. “But that’s when this problem started.”
“Problem?” She bristled, stopping in mid-stride and refusing to come any closer.
“This need. I want you around me all the time. I want you, not just to control, but just to be with me. I want to take care of you in every way.” He shook his head, scrubbing at his eyes before running his hand through his damp hair. “But I had to pay you so I could have that feeling. I thought paying you would make it right for me—for both of us—but it didn’t. It’s just another thing that makes me feel worthless.” His posture stiffened and he refused to look at her again, his shoulders hunched in on himself. “I can’t understand why you’re still here.”
And then he did look at her. Glared at her, and then broke her heart.
“I can’t love you. I can only hurt you.” He spit the words out with precise enunciation, as if she might not understand them unless he spoke slowly. “I want to hurt you, Evie. Do you understand that? I want to. It gets me off.” He looked up, shaking his head as if trying to rid it of his feelings. “And now you’re in real danger and I’m not even strong enough to stop needing you in my life. In my bed.”
“I think you mean ‘over your desk’,” she mumbled, and then smirked in spite of her mind swirling madly with his words, some that filled her with joy and some that cut through her like a searing hot knife.
He dropped his hands to either side of his hips, clutching the edge of the counter hard enough to whiten his knuckles. He looked disgusted with himself.
She stepped toward him again, coming right up in front of him. All of his body language screamed back off, and she ignored it. She made her voice soft. “Do you really think I’m only here because you pay me? Because you’re rich? Because of how you look?” He didn’t answer, but tilted his head up enough to look at her from under his lashes, his face bleak.
She dropped her arms loose to her sides in an open posture to contrast his closed one. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t like the way you look, because I do. I like it a lot. But none of those things are why I’m still here.”
She reached out and touched his shoulder with just one finger. He flinched away almost imperceptibly, but she noticed it, as in tune as she was with his body. She pressed her fingertip more firmly against his bare skin and traced her nail down his arm, leaving a white scratch line. Making him feel her touch. This time he didn’t pull away.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, his solid, masculine frame easing its tension under her fingernail scrape as if in surrender. Leaning forward, she molded her body against his to speak directly next to his ear. “But none of those reasons are why I let you do those filthy things to me,” she said, her voice sultry.
His lips parted and a soft moan escaped. Dropping his head toward her, he gripped her shoulders first, as if thinking about pushing her away. Then scooped his arms around her in a vice grip, hugging her for a long moment. She could feel his hot breath against her shoulder through the silk of her robe, his embrace so complete that he didn’t even raise his head to get an unhindered breath.
Finally he pulled back and met her eyes, his green ones seeming to plead with her to make him believe. And she noticed a flicker of fire had started to light the malachite flecks of his irises, causing a twinge of desire to flutter low through her. She had a flicker of her own—a small oven bursting to life with one heated look from this man.
He stood up straight, lifting her easily and turning to place her on the counter. He spread her legs, shoving her robe up high on her thighs when he did so. He pressed himself to her, and there was no denying his mood had shifted, his agitation morphing into something erotic.
Now he was in the dominant position. Slowly, as if he knew the carnal effect he had on her, he licked his full lips. “So tell me then,” and his voice had become his familiar commanding one. “Why would you let me do those filthy things to you?” he whispered, his questioning words sexy and low. But then he seemed to catch himself and pause, searching her eyes. It was as if he’d only then realized he wanted a real answer and not just naughty talk to stoke his fire. “Why do let me use your body the way I do?”
Evie didn’t even know where the words came from, she just let them fall from her lips, honest and unfiltered. He deserved to hear the truth. “Because I love how it makes me feel. Because I’d never known what it was to feel safe and truly connected in trust with another person until I gave myself over to your will. And you taught me how a little pain can make the ecstasy that much more satisfying.” Hesitantly, she touched his cheek, marveling, as always, at how intoxicatingly gorgeous he was. She leaned her face closer to his. “Because of your confidence and your drive, and the way you hold your mouth when you’re teasing me. Because you’re mysterious and distant, and yet fierce in your need for me. The way I feel utterly cared for by you. And because you brought me Charley.”
A smile flickered across his face and he dropped his eyes, as if he couldn’t hold her gaze while she spoke of him in that way. He pulled his hands from her hips where they’d been resting and grabbed her wrists. He kissed her fingers one at a time, his lips and tongue lingering over her fingertips, sending shivers through her and stoking that fire into an inferno, one finger at a time.
“And because you always give me as much pleasure as I ever give to you, maybe
more.” Her voice was starting to reflect a breathy quality as her respiration kicked up along with her lust.
“As I take from you,” he murmured against her hand, turning her wrist out and trailing his teeth against the soft underside, gently biting. Every nip got slightly more aggressive, reddening her skin, and every stitch of pain reminded her that she was his.
His bites seemed to have a direct effect on her pussy, which grew warmer at his treatment. Her core ached with a need she knew only Ford’s mastery could sate, and that both terrified and thrilled her.
“What?” she mumbled, losing her place in the conversation as Ford’s lips worked against her skin.
“As I take from you,” he repeated. Halting his gentle assault on her wrist, he met her eyes again. “You said I always give you as much pleasure as you give me. I corrected you. I take my pleasure from you. I take it.”
Ire flashed in her, and she fought the urge to shake him. Leveling her eyes at his smoldering ones, she chose her words precisely. “Make no mistake. You may ‘take’ it, Mr. Hawthorne, but you take it only because I give it to you freely. Because I want you to use my body for your sexual satisfaction in whatever way you need it. You.” He blinked, looking lost. “And not because of your money, or your face, or your body or your cock. But because you’re Ford. And you’re my Ford, our Ford, Charley’s and mine. And because you make me feel like no one else I’ve ever been with.”
His face softened, revealing a vulnerability that made her heart hurt.
“I hope you heard her.” Charley’s deep voice reverberated through the room and Evie and Ford whipped their heads around to see Charley step into the doorway and lean casually against the frame, taking up nearly all of the opening with his bulk.
The ease that comes along with Charley seemed to spill through the room ahead of him, his lopsided smile radiating a warmth that was even bigger than him. He stood slowly, meandering toward them with his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the floor at his feet as he walked.
