by Ana E Ross
***
Where could Erik be? Michelle wondered for the millionth time as she paced back and forth in the family room. This morning he’d told her he had something special planned for them tonight, and had even booked a room at a hotel in town. It had been three days since Cape Cod, three days since they made love. She’d been so filled with anxiety that she was barely able to get through the day. She’d dropped Precious off at Felicia’s then hurried back home to pack and get ready for Erik.
It was during that time that her brother had called to let her know that he’d discovered something about their father—something that puzzled him. He’d promised to tell her all about it tomorrow night when he came for dinner.
After hanging up the phone, Michelle had decided that she wasn’t going to wait. She was going to tell Erik everything about her father tonight, and had called to tell him that they needed to talk before leaving for the hotel. She could not let him publicize their marriage with that hanging over her head. She needed to be absolutely honest with him.
He should have been home five hours ago. It was almost midnight, now.
She’d called him several times but he never picked up. Filled with worry, she’d called Felicia a short while ago to see if she’d heard from him. She had, but he’d told her not to speak to Michelle.
At that point, Michelle knew for certain that something had gone dreadfully wrong. Erik would not ignore her for nothing, not after everything they’d shared. The only thing Michelle could think of was that he’d learned the truth about her father. That was the only secret she was hiding from him, the only bit of information that could destroy her.
She was scared, so scared of losing the best thing that ever happened to her. Erik was her life, the air she breathed. She loved him with everything in her that was sweet and good, and wholesome. Never in a million years did she imagine she would find a man who could love her so deeply and passionately. One who cherished and adored her. She was the happiest she’d ever been in her entire life. It was only natural to be scared of losing her husband and Precious, a child she loved as her own.
Sheer fright swept through her as a million possibilities flooded her mind. What if her father was back and found out she was working for Erik? What if he’d shown up at the hospital drunk, and demanded money to stave off embarrassment? He’d tried the same thing with Robert, years ago. Robert had threatened to beat him up if he set foot at his practice, or at his home again. Erik was a different story. He was not accustomed to dealing with men like Dwight Carter. And she had brought this filth into his world, his life.
Michelle collapsed onto the sofa and wrapped her arms about her belly. She should have known it was too good to be true, too good to last. She’d forgotten who she was, where she’d come from in the space of four short months. She was a girl from the inner city, a nanny who’d secretly married the father of her charge, and who was stupid enough to fall in love with him.
The fact that he’d married her and told her he loved her brought her no solace. He was in love with a woman he didn’t really know, a woman who’d lied to him. She’d seen the hurt and betrayal in his eyes, heard it in his voice that night in Cape Cod when he told her what Cassie had done. That’s when she should have spoken up. God, she wanted to, but he was all talked out. He just wanted to make love. She should have been stronger. She should have insisted he hear her out.
As a feeling of utter defeat descended on her, Michelle got up and slowly walked up the stairs. When she got to her bedroom, she unzipped the dress she would have worn to dinner tonight and let it fall to the floor. She slipped on a nightshirt, crept into her bed and cried, for deep down in her gut, she knew it was over. She’d ruined Erik. There was no way he would trust another woman again. Not after Cassie.
And definitely not after her.
***
“Wake up, Michelle.”
Michelle jumped awake at the rumbling voice. Her eyes popped wide open and her body went numb when she encountered the cold contempt in Erik’s eyes.
He’d switched on the bedside lamp and was sitting on the side of her bed, glaring at her. Tension distorted his face. She’d never seen him like this, and it scared her that a man who she knew to be the gentlest creature on earth could be filled with so much rage.
“Erik—”
‘Hush! Don’t say a word!” He placed a finger against her lips. “You knew. You knew all along. You took me for a good ride, Mrs. Michelle Carter LaCrosse. Did you think I was so stupid I would never find out? Or did you think you were so good in bed that I wouldn’t be able to resist you even when the truth came out?”
His hand crawled sedately down her chest and over the thin material of her nightshirt, but his eyes remained cold and deadly. He squeezed a breast, pinching the nipple until it hardened. With deliberate leisure, his hand trailed slowly down her body. He made a fist and pressed it into her stomach.
“Erik—”
“I said not to talk, Michelle. You had three months to tell me everything. You are going to listen now. I am Cassie’s husband,” he said with deadly calm. “Precious is Cassie’s daughter, and this is Cassie’s house. You thought you could just waltz in here and claim it all?”
She read the sparks of ruthlessness in his eyes. This was definitely about more than her withholding information about her drunken father. “What did I do, Erik? Why are you looking at me with such disgust?”
“You knew where he was all this time, didn’t you?”
“Who, Erik? Who?”
“Your father, Michelle. You knew where he was.”
Michelle’s mind whirled in a crazy mixture of confusion. “No. I don’t know where my father is.”
“Don’t lie to me, Michelle! I’ve had it with deceitful women. I can’t take anymore lies.”
Trembling, Michelle tried to push his hand off her stomach and ease away from him. She was too vulnerable lying on her back in the middle of a bed with an angry man bending over her. She couldn’t fight in that position.
Reading the intentions in her eyes, Erik grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back into the mattress. He fought the need in his body, the pain in his heart, the burning in his soul. He’d just spent the last two hours sitting on his wife’s grave, begging her to forgive him for bringing the daughter of the man who’d killed her into her home, into their child’s life, and most treacherously for loving her and for marrying her.
As he gazed at that woman now, all he wanted to do was make love to her. He wanted to bury his sorrow inside her, because as much as he despised her lies, his love for her was a thousand times stronger.
“You told me your father was dead,” he said. “Then you told me you lied about that. You didn’t give me the full story, Michelle. You withheld vital information.”
The words stabbed at Michelle’s heart. So he’d found out? How? And why did it make him this bitter? “No,” Michelle blurted out. “I didn’t give you the whole story because I was ashamed of him. He’s a drunk. He’s always been a drunk. And when I found out that it was a drunk who killed Cas—”
“Do not speak my wife’s name, Michelle. You’ve lost that privilege.”
“I’m your wife, Erik.”
He uttered a contemptuous laugh. “Do not remind me of that. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, Michelle?”
“No.” Tears pooled in her eyes. She’d hurt him. She swallowed the bile that rose to the back of her throat. “I’m sorry.” She placed a hand on his arm. “I was going to tell you the whole story tonight. I swear, Erik. I was going to tell you that my father is a drunk. That’s what I wanted to talk about before we left for the hotel.”
Erik wanted to believe her. He really did. Maybe Detective Garret had made a mistake. Maybe there was another drunk named Dwight Carter who just happened to have two children with the same names. It was a small world. Anything was possible. Damn, look at the situation he’d found himself in. Like Garret had said, it was a one in a million chance.
He g
lanced down at Michelle’s slender hand on his arm and the heat they generated sent a surge of lust through him. His gaze shifted to her face, drenched with tears. He stared at her trembling lip. Lips that were sweeter than honey. Lips that aroused him at just the mere thought of them. He splayed his hand down her body, sliding it over the cotton material of her nightshirt.
He skimmed over the mound at the apex of her thighs where he’d come to know Nirvana again and again. He dragged his hand down her smooth thighs, then with unsteady fingers he caught the hem of her shirt and dragged it up along her body. He jerked it over her head in one fluid motion then discarded her sexy little red panties just as easily.
His eyes flinched as he gazed at her loveliness. How in God’s name was he going to survive without her? He loved her. He needed her. Her pull on him was stronger than his loyalty to Cassie, stronger than the fight in his body.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Michelle saw the raw need in Erik’s eyes, felt it in his touch. He was hurting and he wanted her to make it stop. She’d had hungry sex, grief sex, regret sex, and worship sex with him. It was time for them to have angry sex.
Desire licked through her body as she watched Erik rise from the bed and unzipped his trousers, pushing them along with his boxers down to his knees. Her eyes immediately settled on his thick shaft, rising menacingly from the dark curls at his groin.
Her heart began to pound against her chest and the familiar moistness settled between her thighs. She’d been subjected time and time again to his strength, his power, and the unrelenting passion with which he loved. And she should be afraid. But she wasn’t. She wanted him. She wanted him with every little neuron in her body. She was his wife and wives were supposed to ease their husbands’ pain. She would ease his pain. She would make right whatever wrong he thought she had done him.
“Erik what did I do to cause you such pain, to make you so angry?” she asked.
He grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her toward him, positioning her buttocks on the edge of the mattress and throwing her legs over his shoulders. “You knew it was possible and yet you said nothing.”
“What are you talking about?” Frustration inched through her.
He leaned into her, swung his hips and pierced her, forcefully pushing his way completely to the hilt. Michelle cried out as her slick flesh parted to receive him. She clutched at his shirt, her fingers digging into the flexed muscles of his arms as he filled her.
Dropping his body on hers, Erik pinning her to the mattress and began to move with earnest strokes inside her. He curled his fingers through her hair and held her soft mouth prisoner with his own as he pumped fiercely into her. Their grunts of lust filled the air. Their tears melded into a river of hopelessness.
Fire coursed through his veins at the velvety moistness of her clutching at him like a bloodthirsty parasite, sucking the very life out of him, pulling him toward the end of the universe. She wasn’t supposed to feel this good. She wasn’t supposed to be this delicious, this irresistible. His body had betrayed him, just as she had.
“How could you do this to me, to us?” His voice rang with pleasure and torture as he licked at her salty tears.
“Do what?” Michelle wrapped her arms around his neck, and sank her teeth into his shoulders as she was consumed with the conflicting agony of intense pain and primal desire.
“Your father killed Cassie.” He began to ride her harder.
Doom descended on Michelle. Her body tightened around him. He must be mistaken. Her father was a drunk, not a murderer. “Erik, it can’t be true. He left Manchester before—”
“He came back. And he ran her down with his car that night.” Rising upward, Erik pumped deeper into her.
The pleasure was so intensely passionate, they both became lost in the rhythm that melded their bodies together, even as their world fell apart around them.
With his groin locked securely to Michelle’s, Erik’s back arched upward, and when she saw his eyes close and his mouth convulse, Michelle knew he was near the edge. He wrapped his arms around her, and holding her tightly against his heart, he groaned then dropped his head into the softness of her throat. She felt the terrible trembling in his body as he growled then poured his ache, and his seed inside her. She cried out his name and exploded with him, their juices fusing in a cauldron of love and hurt.
The sound of Erik’s sobs tore Michelle’s heart to shreds. As her mind reeled with questions about the accusation he’d made about her father, she broke down and wept, for her pain for Erik was greater than any she’d ever felt from her father’s hands.
After a long while, Erik got up and pulled his clothes back on. He stood at the side of the bed and gazed down at his wife, the woman he loved.
Yes, he loved her.
But the image of Cassie dying in his arms yanked him back to the fierce reality. Michelle had lied to him. She had deceived him.
Michelle sat up in the bed and pulled the sheet around her shattered body. What they had just shared was nothing short of a desperate need for survival. They were both drowning and they knew it.
“I know you would have come forward if you’d know it was your father who’d killed Cassie,” Erik began in an unstable voice. “What I want to know, Michelle, is whether or not you suspected it could have been him.”
Michelle hung her head. She couldn’t bear the iciness in Erik’s eyes. Gone was the lust, the desires that had just obsessed them. “Yes, it crossed my mind the first time you told me about the accident. But after I did some checking, I realized it couldn’t be because he’d already left town when it happened. I didn’t know he’d come back. I’d already moved to South Carolina by then, Erik. I was gone for a year and a half. I didn’t even know about Cass… what had happened until you told me about it.”
Erik wiped his hands down his face. The smell of her lingered on his fingers. “Why couldn’t you have been totally honest with me? Why couldn’t you have just trusted me?”
Michelle pulled the sheet tighter around her body. “I was afraid of losing you. Afraid you could never love the daughter of a drunk seeing it was one who killed Cass… your wife.” She saw no need to tell him that the man who’d raised her, the man who’d killed his wife, may not even be her father after all. It didn’t matter. She’d lied. “Who told you it was… my father? How do you know it’s even true?”
He walked over to the window and turned his back to her. His voice was heavy with sadness as he told her what Detective Garret had told him.
Fresh tears sprang to Michelle’s eyes. Dwight Carter had taken the life of another human being—Erik’s wife, Precious’ mother. He had hurt the two people who meant most to her in this world. Then he ran because he was a coward. He’d always been a coward. That was his yoke to bear. Hers was that she should have been truthful with Erik from the beginning.
She pulled her nightshirt back on and walked over to where Erik stood staring out into the night that was as black and brooding as the shadows hanging across their hearts.
She hugged her stomach and rubbed her hands slowly up and down her arms. “You know what my father did to me and Robert as kids, Erik. You know he stole my money and wrecked my life. But what he did to your family trumps it all. He robbed Precious of her mother, and you of the woman you loved. For that I hate him even more, and I’m sorry for not being totally honest with you.”
Michelle gazed up at him. His lips were drawn into a thin line and his jaws were tight and hard. She wished he would say something. Anything. She swallowed. “I love you, Erik. I didn’t lie about that. You have to believe me.” She touched his arm. “How are we going to deal with this mess? How can we fix it?”
Her voice was a distant murmur. His misery a steel weight around his neck, hauling him into a sea of sheer despair. That bastard had hurt her, too. He so longed to make up for all the pain in her life, erase all her bad memories and give her the world. But the facts remained—her father killed Cassie, and Michelle had lied to him.
Erik pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks. His fingers slid across the surface of the blue-velvet box containing the ring he was going to give her tonight. Panic tugged at his heart, and anguish spread through his stomach as he gazed at her. She was an angel. His angel.
He remembered the day she stormed into his house, into his study, into his life, and into his heart. Instinct had warned him to send her marching back down his driveway. He had known she would change his life forever, but he never expected it would be like this. He hadn’t wanted to be hurt again, to love again. But he did love. And he did get hurt.
And this was worse. This was so much worse than when he had stood in the cemetery, twenty-six months ago, and watched them lay Cassie’s body into the ground. This was worse than watching his little daughter weep for the mother she could never have again.
He remembered Precious’ tearful words as they left the cemetery to go back to their perfect house, on the perfect street, in the perfect neighborhood that wasn’t so perfect anymore, because Cassie Rebecca LaCrosse wasn’t there.
“Daddy,” Precious had cried as he wrapped her in his arms. “I miss Mommy so much. Why couldn’t you make her better, Daddy? You always make people better when they’re sick. I want my mommy, Daddy. I want her back.”
Erik remembered the pain in her wide brown eyes. He remembered the torture in her voice, and how she tried to be so brave throughout the memorial service because she knew her mother hated tears.
He remembered a whole lot of things, and he squeezed his eyes shut as tears of bitter regret seeped through his lids. This was the worst, because the woman he loved now had betrayed him. And by loving her, he had betrayed the memory of the woman he used to love. He was trapped in a cocoon of defeat with no way out.
