Misadventures with My Ex

by Shayla Black

  Then it’s over. Blinking, I realize the magnitude of what I’ve ceded to West. Worse, I can’t take it back.

  Seemingly gratified that he’s taking me apart, he calmly watches my chest heave and my body shudder while he dons a condom. “You’re flushed and beautiful.”

  No, I’m destroyed.

  Then he kneels between my sprawled legs and gathers my thighs in his palms, settling himself in between. He laves his way up the side of my breast before lying on top of me. Our chests press together. Our faces are so close, I can smell my musk on his skin.

  “West…” His name is a plea for mercy. If he keeps at this, he’s going to turn me inside out. I’m going to free-fall back into something dangerously close to love.

  His smile says he knows it. And that he won’t give me an ounce of mercy.

  “You look like this in all my fantasies, you know.” West slides a hand between us to fit the head of his cock against my slick opening and nudges gently, letting me feel exactly how swollen I am. “Lovely. Yielding.” A grin plays at his lips before he plants his palms on the mattress and surges inside me with all his strength. “Mine.”

  He fills up every inch of me, his cock burning a path through my body seemingly made for him. Ten seconds ago, I would have sworn I barely had the energy to move. But he’s like a lightning rod inside me, jolting every sated muscle back to screaming life.

  I don’t even think before I throw my arms around him and plant my mouth over his.

  With a groan, he sinks deep there, too, sliding his tongue along mine, filling me in every way he can.

  Arousal seeps back under my skin, pooling between my legs, greedy and growing with each and every one of his slow, rough thrusts.

  “You’ve always been mine,” he insists as he burrows impossibly deeper.

  I shake my head. But I can’t push a “no” past my lips when he’s claiming my mouth again.

  He tears his lips free. “Yes. You’ll always be mine.”

  “For thirty-seven days.”

  “Don’t fool yourself.”

  Then the talking stops and the seduction starts again. West is not only perceptive but relentless, seeming to know exactly where to touch me and when, what to whisper in my ear, how to use every touch to further weaken my defenses. I’m breathless, clinging and sobbing, as the pleasure licking flames under my skin converge into a blaze where we’re joined. With long, strong, systematic strokes, he undoes me a little more with each moment.

  Suddenly, the peak I was sure I was too sated to have before he tunneled inside me becomes the most devastating orgasm of the night. Maybe of my life. Black spots dance in my vision as I howl out in sweating, grinding, unceasing pleasure. My only anchor in the world is West, rocking above me as he juts and jolts through his own crest, shouting my name.

  Wilting against the damp sheets, I try to dredge up the energy to get away to the bathroom and put distance between us. I have to. The ecstasy proved utterly destructive to my protective walls. I feel myself wide open and bleeding out for West.

  I close my eyes, but tears still leak from the corners. If I don’t get some time and space away from him, I’m going to break down and admit that I’ve missed him, that I need him. That I don’t think I ever fell out of love with him.

  Above me, he shifts. I hear the nightstand drawer opening and frown. Is he ready for another round and reaching for a fresh condom? Does he think I’m not already in a puddle at his feet?

  Then I feel him tug my wrist just before something constricts around it, holding it in place.

  I open my eyes and glance up my arm in disbelief. The son of a bitch tied me to the bed.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Preventing you from escaping to the shower. On Sunday, I stupidly gave you the opportunity to hide in the bathroom. I’m not letting it happen again. Now you can’t run while we should be talking.”

  Is he kidding?

  That resolution is back on his face. He’s not kidding at all.

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  My response is childish; I’m aware of that. But now that he’s stripped me so bare, I’m afraid that whatever he has to say will change everything and I’ll be forced to decide whether to trust him again. I’m not ready. I don’t know if I’ll ever be.

  He clenches his teeth. “Then you can listen. I didn’t leave you because I didn’t love you. Or didn’t want to marry you. Despite what you think, I always intended to slide that wedding band on your finger. The morning of the wedding, my mother called.”

  “And told you that you couldn’t marry me or you’d be disinherited. I get it.” That shouldn’t hurt anymore, but it does.

  “No. That was her first threat. I told her I didn’t care. First, she didn’t have the power to make that happen. Second, I’m smart. I can make my own money.” West heaves a frustrated sigh. “Back then, you kept asking me why only Flynn and Genevieve were attending our wedding from my side of the family. I’m going to tell you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s ancient history.”

  “That’s still haunting us today. Remember how we met?”

  “At that crappy bar where I used to work. So?”

  For the first time, he hesitates, like he’s finally reluctant to open a can of worms. “My grandfather sent me to meet you. To romance you.”

  My thoughts race, and I can’t think of a single reason I would have been on Hanover Quaid’s radar. “Why?”

  “Your dad started working on a story for the network to air on the evening news. It was an exposé about building superintendence and maintenance practices in Southern California that supposedly put workers and apartment dwellers at risk. We’d just started property management in that market, and he was looking hard at us because we were struggling to comply with the seismic building codes that seemed to change day by day, city by city. We knew we’d get there, but my grandpa was convinced that if you and I were an item, your dad might back off the story long enough for us to catch up.”

  Betrayal I swore I wasn’t capable of feeling for this man anymore stabs me in the heart. “So none of what we had was even real?”

  “It was real, honey.” He winces. “But at the start, I wasn’t honest or ethical. I’m sorry for that. But I can’t regret anything because it led me to you.”

  Bullshit wrapped in pretty words. “Your scheme worked. My dad backed off the story shortly before we married. And once he did, you called the wedding off.”

  “No. That’s not what happened. There’s more. A lot more. About two weeks after we hooked up, I called my grandfather and told him you were everything I wanted. Independent. Gutsy. Prickly. But somehow funny and warm and interesting. I admitted that I was falling for you.” He cups my face as if willing me to believe him. “Eryn, I had never met a woman like you, and that’s saying something since my mother paraded a few hundred in front of me whom she thought had the pedigree to marry the next Quaid heir. I hated them all. They were so into appearances. Vain. Vapid. Self-absorbed. You weren’t just new and shiny. You were genuine. You would never marry for money. Or prestige. Hell, you barely knew who I was.”

  “When we first met? Only vaguely.”

  “Exactly.” He nods enthusiastically, as if he’s glad I’m seeing this his way. “Once I told my grandfather how I felt about you, he was totally in favor of us. Whoever made me happy, that’s who he wanted me to marry, so I had his full support when I told him I intended to propose. While you and I were planning the wedding, he learned he had colon cancer and that he’d let it go too long. Within weeks, his health started to falter.”

  “When you told me that he was terminal, I asked you if you needed to go home and be with your family. You said no.”

  “Because my grandfather pointed out that it didn’t change his prognosis. He loved me and I loved him. We knew it. We both agreed you were more important. So I stayed. But my mother started putting pressure on me to come home to assume the reins of Quaid Enterprises before m
y worthless uncle, her rival, did. In the last conversation I ever had with my grandpa, he made me promise to stay in LA and marry you. He swore he’d make it long enough for me to make you my wife and have a week’s honeymoon.”

  West’s face twists as he fights tears. Despite my resentment and confusion, I can’t stop myself from reaching out to comfort him. “West, don’t say anything else. The explanation doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “I need to keep going. I owe you this.” He frowns and sucks in a breath, gathering his determination. “My grandfather did his best to keep his side of the bargain. He used all his grit to last nine days after what would have been our wedding. He was the toughest man I ever knew.”

  Despite how furious I am, my heart hurts for him. His grief is so palpable that it moves me. I stroke his arm, cup his shoulder, silently giving him my strength. West looks as if he needs it badly.

  “Thanks.” He squeezes me in return. “Like I said, the problem was my mother.”

  “You said that before. I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple. She wanted me to marry someone who would look good on my arm, who would ensure the board chose me over my uncle when the vote to replace my grandfather went down. She was looking for a pretty, well-bred bride to ‘guide.’ Her philosophy was if she could control my wife and my wife could pussy-whip me…”

  “Then she could control you, too.”

  “Precisely. She never planned on you. On the morning of our wedding, she discovered I intended to marry you. She went nuclear.”

  “How did she find out?” He’d been so careful to keep everything a secret, and until now I never knew why.

  “Social media. Echo posted that she was excited it was our wedding day. She tagged me. My mother saw.”

  “So if she didn’t threaten to disinherit you, what did she say?”

  “She threatened to confront you, spill the fact that you and I met under false pretenses. She intended to convince you that I was scamming you. Somehow, she had obtained the emails my grandfather and I exchanged, plotting the best way for me to meet you, stressing that I needed to accelerate our relationship so I could get to your father fast. And if that alone didn’t persuade you to end our engagement, Mom had a whole spiel planned to ‘prove’ that I intended to leave you at the altar. Since you’d always found trust difficult, I worried…” He rakes a hand through his hair. “That you would believe her. And you would leave me.”

  Back then? I want to say he was wrong and that I wouldn’t have listened to his mother for a minute. That I loved him too much for that. But I don’t know. Even then, I thought West was almost too good to be true. When he walked away from me, it seemed to prove all my instincts right.

  “As soon as I hung up on my mother, I planned to drive over to your place and confess everything before the ceremony. But my grandfather collapsed. They rushed him to the hospital. That’s when I called to tell you that I had to leave and hopped on a plane. Grandpa spent his remaining days in a coma, and I spent them trying to keep my uncle from seizing control of the company while grieving the imminent loss of the man who’d always been my father figure and worrying I’d lose you forever. I always intended to come back and marry you. Always,” he growls with conviction. “During my grandfather’s funeral, she let me know that if I even called you—much less married you—before the board voted me in as CEO, she would make your life absolute hell. And she can do it. By the time I had full control of the business, so much time had passed. You had moved, changed your number, switched jobs.” He stares at me, letting me see his stark pain. “You were gone.”

  When I realized West wasn’t coming back, I did my best to remove every reminder of him from my life. “Why did your grandfather target me in the first place? Why not Ella or Echo?”

  “Math. Ella was older and less likely to take an undergrad seriously. Echo was underage. That left you.” West takes my hands. “And I’m grateful. Yeah, what my grandfather and I planned wasn’t right, but I knew Quaid Enterprises wasn’t doing anything wrong…just learning a new market. We couldn’t let your dad’s segment about us air, or it would be a financial disaster for the company. We knew we’d eventually be vindicated, but with only a few months in LA under our belts, we couldn’t take a chance. Since I was attending UCLA and you were working around the corner…I didn’t see the harm in flirting with you. But I also didn’t expect to fall like a ton of bricks. So things got sticky. I wanted to tell you everything. I’d always planned to after we were married. I’d hoped by then it wouldn’t matter because you’d know I loved you.”

  Right now, I don’t know anything except that I have to think all this through. “I need some time to myself, West.”

  He shakes his head. “We’re finally getting to the truth. If I leave you alone, all you’ll do is build up more walls between us. I’ve come too far to lose you again. I still love you, and I am not giving up on us this time. In fact, I’m never giving up on us again.”

  His speech is so heartfelt, it’s hard not to believe him. On the other hand, he was the man I thought I was going to spend my life with and he utterly broke my heart. How do I get past that?

  “If all of this is true, you’ve had this knowledge for three years. I’ve had it for less than fifteen minutes. I need to wrap my head around it. Alone. Just one night. Please.”

  WEST

  The last thing in the world I want to do is leave world-weary Eryn alone with her thoughts for a whole night. But after the ways I fucked up then barged back into her life…if that’s what she wants, how can I refuse her?

  For what seems like the hundredth time, I toss and turn on the sofa, try to reshape my pillow to find some semblance of comfort. Nothing. Sure, I would have been more comfortable in one of the spare bedrooms, but I couldn’t be that far from the door in case Eryn decided during the night to leave me for good. Not that she wouldn’t be justified.

  Looking back, I see a hundred ways I should have handled things differently…like been more honest with Eryn once I realized I was in love with her. I should have believed more in the strength of our love. I should have lived up to the promise I made Grandpa and stayed in LA to marry Eryn. But I was twenty-one and overwhelmed by how quickly my life was unraveling. If I had a do-over… But I don’t. I can only deal with my reality now.

  And I’ve made a goddamn mess.

  I glance at my phone. It’s four a.m. in Vegas, which means it’s after seven in New York. Flynn is back there keeping tabs on Mom this weekend. Maybe he’s awake. If not…it won’t be the first time one of us has woken the other up for a crisis.

  On the fourth ring, my brother answers with a groggy “’lo.”

  “Can you talk?”

  I hear sheets rustling as he fumbles upright. “West?”

  “Yeah. If I’m interrupting something…”

  “She’s asleep. Let me find someplace private…” He stands, and I hear his footsteps on the creaky floors.

  “So it’s going well with your ‘distraction’?”

  I hear a door shut. “She’s a way to pass time—albeit one with a really banging body—but nothing permanent.” He sounds surprisingly bummed by that fact. “By the way, thank you for moving Quaid Enterprises to Vegas once you took over.”

  “With West Coast operations booming, I didn’t really have a choice.”

  “True, but I’d forgotten how freaking cold it gets back here. I’ll take the summer heat in Nevada any day over this shitty-ass winter. I was downtown last night, cutting through the courtyard of the 9/11 Museum to get from Greenwich to West. The reflection pools are sobering enough, but the stiff wind cut through my coat and I had to get naked to get warm, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Despite everything, I chuckle. “Pansy.”

  “Hey, I like sun. Sue me,” Flynn grouses. “Okay, I’m in her kitchen, searching for the coffee. What’s up?”

  I take a deep breath. “I told Eryn everything.”

  “And what was her reaction?”
>
  “I’m not sure. She wanted to be alone tonight.”

  Flynn doesn’t say anything for a long time. “Can you blame her?”

  “No. But I have to do better this time. I have to figure out some way to prove to her that we’re strong enough to get past this, that I’ll be here for her, that—”

  “She has to forgive you first.”

  “And I don’t know if she ever will.”

  “Given the way things went down, she must feel like everything and everyone else was more important to you than her.”

  And that I utterly let her down. “Yeah.”

  “You want her back?”

  “Absolutely. I want to marry her.” The more time I spend with Eryn, the more I know I’m meant to be with her.

  “Then you gotta make her feel special, bro. You’ve got to find some way to prove that she comes first and that you’ll never let anyone else come between you two again.”

  Easier said than done, especially since I need an epic way to convince her. “I also have to get past this board meeting next Friday, squash Eddie’s claims once and for all, then tell Mom she can either accept the woman I want to marry or get out of my life.”

  “Watch yourself. She won’t take that lying down.”

  “I’m prepared for that.”

  “Are you? Really? Think of the most devious thing she could do to undermine you. Then multiply it by a hundred. I’m not sure your creativity stretches that far.”

  I’m not sure anyone’s does. “I’ve got some ideas. Is Mom still planning to winter in Vegas?”