by J. Haymore
“You’ve got to stop this,” I say to him. “This can’t continue.”
“I wanted to make sure you were safe even when I wasn’t certain there was a threat. Now that we know Mick is out there, there’s no way I’m not going to do everything in my power to keep you safe.”
“Does that mean you’ve been spying on me?” I glance up at the ceiling. “Did you install cameras in here?”
His lips twist in disgust. “God, no. Of course not.”
“Then what do you intend to do?”
“Hire a couple of bodyguards. Ensure security is as tight as possible. The intention is—always has been—to keep you safe. Not to spy on you.”
He’s right. I’m not happy about it, but he’s right. I need to accept his protection—at least until the issue of Mick is resolved. The fact that the FBI doesn’t believe his motives had anything to do with me—it’s too much for me to handle on my own. I press my fingers over the bridge of my nose. “Okay. But only until they get Mick, understand?”
“I understand. It doesn’t mean I agree.”
“Ethan,” I groan. “What do you want from me?”
His gaze is direct. “Do you really have to ask me that?”
“Yes!”
“I want you with me. I want you back in my bed. And I don’t want it to end when we leave here.”
I stare at him through narrowed eyes. I want him so bad, I can hardly see through the haze of desire.
“I want you in my life, Tara,” he continues. “Here in Hawaii, and when we get back home. I want it all.”
Justine
March 2, 2013
Imagine me releasing a very long, very deep sigh.
Ethan and Big-Boobed Bimbo were getting serious. I had no other option—I had to take decisive action. I would have preferred not to, of course. But Ethan gave me no choice. There was nothing else I could do to nip the “thing” they had going on between them in the bud.
The cute little sister was collateral damage. I had no idea she’d be in the car that night, though in retrospect it would have been logical to assume so. She lived, which is good, I suppose—though I’m guessing, after studying her medical records, that she’s going to be a cripple for the rest of her life. Anyway, it’s fine that she survived. She did nothing wrong, after all. But now Ethan seems excessively interested in the child, and it’s bothersome.
Oddly enough, he’s never approached her. Never introduced himself to her. It was difficult to ascertain his motive at first. But last week, he had a new, high-tech security system installed in her building, which I’m finding difficult to penetrate.
It’s almost like he set up that system to keep me out. Me, specifically. Like he’s afraid for her safety, afraid that I’ll try to do something to her. But why would I do that? She’s nothing to me.
If Ethan would only leave her alone, then I could leave her alone too. But he is having her tailed, having her watched and protected. It’s ludicrous, really. But since he’s insinuating himself into her life, then I need to as well.
And it’s so boring, Diary. All she does is stay inside her apartment and feel sorry for herself. Oh, the angst!
Poor little orphan. Her boyfriend dumped her, and she’s dropped out of college. She seems to have only one friend, a boy bimbo, a masculine version of her sister, but even their interactions are dull, as far as I can tell. I know he’s trying to convince her to go back to school in California—that info came from listening in on one of their phone conversations.
For all I know, Little Sister and Boy Bimbo are having secret kinky sex on every horizontal surface in her apartment, but I wouldn’t know, since I can’t get my eyes and ears inside. Yet.
I need to go, Diary. I need to hack that damn security system.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I am pulled in so many conflicting directions. Love and hate, desire and disgust, wanting to be alone and wanting to curl up in another person’s embrace, the compulsion to lock myself away, and the need to break free.
Love and hate… I told Ethan I hated him two days ago. The day before that, I was pretty sure I was falling in love with him. But what do I feel now? It’s a confusing swirl…but I do believe him. I’m starting to understand why he did the crazy things he did. And when it comes to me loving him or hating him, love smothers everything else.
Love, dammit. I despise myself a little for feeling even a hint of that emotion for someone who’s done to me what Ethan has done.
It terrifies me.
Desire and disgust. I home in on that one. “How can I possibly go back to your bed,” I ask him, “now that I know about your relationship with Emily?”
“My feelings for you have nothing to do with her.”
He’s said that before. “That can’t be true.” But a part of me believes it is.
“I told you,” he says quietly, “at first you were all tangled up together. I was fucked-up and confused. But I don’t see her when I look at you. I don’t see anyone but you. I can’t see anyone but you.”
“I feel the same way about you,” I whisper. “But you hurt me, Ethan. Your lies…destroyed me. I feel like…” I suck air into my constricted lungs. “I want so badly to believe you. But a part of me is screaming that I shouldn’t trust you.”
“My feelings about you aren’t a lie. If you trust me on anything, trust me on this. I care for you…a lot.”
He rises, steps forward, and lifts me from my chair. Gathering me in his arms, he sits where I just was. He holds me so tight, he traps me there. Like a rabbit in a snare that will only tighten if it tries to move.
But I don’t want to move. And though that little niggling kernel of distrust flares coldly within me, my body melts against his.
He presses his lips into my hair. “I’m sorry I hurt you, baby. So fucking sorry. I never want to hurt you again.”
“Do you mean it,” I whisper, “when you said you want this to go on beyond Honolulu? That we can be together in LA too?”
“I mean it,” he says. Tenderly, he pulls a lock of hair off my cheek and tucks it behind my ear.
And then he’s kissing me. His lips are soft against mine, and so gentle.
I groan into his mouth, long and low. It’s only been a couple of days, but they have been long, exhausting, draining days. I’ve missed him so much. Missed the taste of him, of having his strength surrounding me. The way he kisses me makes me feel so desired. He makes me believe he really isn’t thinking about Emily.
I jerk back, my sister’s name on the tip of my tongue. I don’t say it, but he reads my mind anyway.
He pulls me against him and buries his face in my hair, clinging tight as if he never wants to let me go. “I wish I’d met you without her being involved. Then you’d know then that how I feel about you has nothing to do with her. I need you, Tara.”
I slip my arms around him and press my cheek against his chest. I want to believe that so much. Yet I cannot forget my sister. I have been so ingrained with the certainty that I was never anywhere near as good as her that this is so hard for me to accept. Emily was beautiful. She was popular. Everyone loved her. She had a new boyfriend almost every week. She was well on the way to becoming famous. And I can’t help but think, no matter how Ethan tries to tell me otherwise, that I am second best.
“I’m scared,” I tell Ethan truthfully. “What if you’re just convincing yourself of that? What if you’re putting me in her place somehow, and you eventually find me lacking?”
“Never,” he whispers. He bends his head, and his lips brush my hairline.
“You liked her…very much.”
“I did. But she’s gone. We both need to move on.”
“It’s so hard.” Especially now that I know of the link between them.
“Let me help you.”
“I’m not sure I can touch you anymore—be with you—without thinking of you doing the same things with my sister.”
He reaches out and gently grasps my chin, then turns me to fac
e him. “You had a long-term boyfriend.”
I shudder when I think of Daniel. “So?”
“I don’t like to think of him fucking you,” he says plainly. “I hate it. I hate that he touched you, that he had you in a way I haven’t been able to yet. I hate that he was part of your life at all. I hate it.”
I think about Daniel and how it was between us. We were together for over two years. We met during the orientation at our dorm. I thought he was handsome, in a polished, East Coast kind of way, and he was always ready with a quick comeback and witty sarcasm. He was so different from me, and I’d thought we’d complemented each other.
Late in the semester, he invited me to the movies with a group of friends, and we started dating after that. We were both business majors. We shared classes, did homework together, spent all our free time together.
I thought he was the one.
Then his true colors came out after the accident. He flew out to California after spending Christmas with his family in New Hampshire on the pretense of offering me support.
He came into my hospital room, took one look at me, and his face blanched. Still, he tried…a little. Our conversation was strained that day, and I cried to him about Emily most of the time, wanting his comfort, but he didn’t know what to say to me. He seemed bemused… Flabbergasted… Aloof.
I’d been groggy from the pain meds and from all the crying, and I ended up drifting off to sleep. When I woke, he was gone, and Aunt Jo was there. He didn’t come see me again until the next afternoon, when our conversation was as awkward as the day before, even though I did my best not to break down that time.
The day after that, he told me it wasn’t going to work out. That he’d been thinking about it for a while, since school started that fall, actually, and he was sorry, but he needed to focus on his classes and his life. He couldn’t see how I was going to be well anytime soon, and he needed to move forward, not backward.
And he left. I never saw him again after that, or talked to him. I transferred to a school in California, and he stayed on the East Coast.
“Daniel was different from you,” I tell Ethan now. With Ethan, it has been consuming. With Daniel, it was the excitement of a new college, new independence, a new boyfriend. We were drawn together by all the things we had in common, but we didn’t mesh. Ultimately, we weren’t compatible at all. Ultimately, he was an asshole who shut down at the first sign of difficulty.
“Exactly,” Ethan says quietly. “Emily was different from you. Daniel is out of your life; Emily is out of mine.”
“But she wouldn’t be out of your life if she hadn’t died,” I whisper.
“Daniel might not be out of your life if you hadn’t had the accident,” he counters.
I swallow hard, thinking of all the things Ethan knows about me that I never shared with him. But even if I can’t agree with it, I see why he didn’t tell me about his relationship with Emily. I believe his reasons behind the invasions of privacy. Most of all, I understand his conflict about me, with this crazy chemistry we have, with our basic need for each other. I feel the same way.
And he’s right about Daniel. It’s easy to see myself still together with him if the accident hadn’t changed everything.
He continues, “We can’t live our lives thinking about mights and could haves. All we’ve got is the truth. Emily and I are over. You and that asshole Daniel are over. All that matters is the here and now.”
“It’s not…easy.”
He runs a finger down my cheek, and I shiver. “Look at me, Tara.”
I do. His expression is serious, his lips tight, a deep furrow between his dark brows, which are pulled together over the straight line of his nose. This close to him, I see how the black fringes of his lashes frame his startling blue eyes and how his jaw is starting to darken with a hint of an afternoon shadow.
His focus is on me. Only me. It’s so intense that I truly believe there is no one else but me occupying his thoughts right now.
I tighten my arms around him, wanting him so much. Wanting all those horrible feelings I’ve had to just go away once and for all.
“Kiss me again,” I whisper to him.
This time when he presses his lips to mine, it’s with firm, determined pressure. He pulls me tighter against him and teases my lips open with his tongue. I’m helpless under this sensual assault. I can feel it—my body conforming to his, my skin willing to accept whatever he chooses to give.
He tastes so good when he touches his tongue to mine. And then he explores my mouth as he pushes his bandaged fingers into the hair on the sides of my head, holding me to him as if he’s afraid I’ll pull away.
But I have no intention of pulling away. My pulse is racing, my body needy and prickly, and there’s an aching well of need inside me. I need this. I need Ethan.
His kiss turns hard, almost frantic. “God. I need you,” he whispers between firm kisses. “I need you, Tara. Don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave me.”
I cling harder to him, and at this moment, I am in perfect agreement. I’ll never leave him. Everything is out in the open between us now, and it’s going to be okay. He tore a wound inside me when he pummeled me with all those revelations. But it’s a wound that can heal. It’s not going to fester; it’s not going to kill me. It’s already scabbing over, and I’ll get past it. I’ll move on. I’ll be okay.
And I’m going to be with Ethan… We’re going home together. There’s no longer a deadline to our relationship.
I moan softly into his mouth and pull his shirt up, plunging my hands beneath because the need to touch his skin, all that warm, hard, male flesh, is overwhelming. It feels so good under my palms, my body shudders, and my fingers dig into the firm muscles of his pecs. Then my left hand inches upward until my fingertips graze over the bandage covering his stitches. I touch the scar on his shoulder.
I stop the movement of my fingers, just rest them there on the raised lip of his wound. Emotion wells in my chest. I don’t know what it means or where it comes from, but it’s so heavy and thick, it’s hard to breathe.
He almost died for me. Before I even knew him. The concept is still so outrageous, my brain can’t really process it.
He pulls one hand out from my hair and presses my hand against him. My palm is over his heart, my fingertips on his scar. He says nothing, just holds me there, his solid hand over mine.
When he moves away, it’s to slide his fingers down my side to the hem of the Coast Guard sweatshirt. He tucks his hand underneath the cotton, then, with long, sure fingers, explores my body the same way I just explored him. When his fingertips move against the bottom of my breast, he gives an appreciative “mmm,” clearly pleased I’m not wearing a bra.
He moves up until he’s cupping my breast, then kneading it. I gasp, and my body bows when his fingertip moves over my nipple, which has tightened into a taut bud.
“So sensitive,” he murmurs. “I want to take you to bed, Tara. I want to make love to you.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Take me anywhere.” Just take me with you.
He groans softly and kisses me again, like he’s never tasted anything so good, like he’s starved for me just like I’m starved for him. His hands keep moving over me, covering all the places he can reach, until my skin is achy and needy, and my entire body is a sizzling fuse, just waiting for that moment to explode.
It’s crazy he can do this with just kisses and touches, just by the way he caresses my breasts. Reaching that sweet ridge of pleasure, I know exactly what I need to jump over. I press myself against him, move my butt over the hard ridge of his erection.
Teased and on edge, I wiggle and twist this way and that.
“Shh,” he tells me. “Patience. I want to enjoy every inch of you. Taste every inch of you.” He licks the edge of my lips. “Then I’m going to fuck you, and I’m going to love it. You’re going to love it. I’m going to take you and make you mine and give you so much pleasure you’re going to lose your mind from it. So much
pleasure you’re never going to look at another man, never let another man touch you ever again.”
His words, his promises, his touch. They consume me. God, I want him to take me and make me forget everything but him. He’s all I want. He’s the one who can wipe it all away.
“Yes,” I whisper against the rough skin of his cheek. “Yes. Do it. Please.”
His hand glides down my waist, then cups my butt, shifting me on his lap. Trailing his fingertips around to my front, he murmurs, “You look so sexy in these Coast Guard clothes.”
I laugh, my body shuddering against his. But when I peek up at his face, there’s nothing but dead serious intent as he slips his hand under the waistband of my sweats.
There’s plenty of room under the baggy pants, and he takes full advantage, sliding his hands down my stomach, cupping his palm over my hipbone then moving to my ass, moving up and down the curve of it. “You’re so soft.”
“Mmm.” My lids are half-closed. His touch feels like the gentlest, most erotic massage as his fingers press into the flesh of my behind.
“So beautiful,” he murmurs. “I love the look on your face. I love how you show me how you feel about what I’m doing to you. I love the trust there. I want you to look at me like that forever.”
Trust? He’s being presumptuous again. A little voice in my head warns me not to trust him. But the voice is small and easily quashed. I do trust him. That he cares for me. That he never wants to hurt me again. That he wants me.
His hand slides over my front, then up under the sweatshirt again. He kisses me—a hard, demanding kiss. A kiss of ownership. There’re no gentle questions here—this is the kiss of a man who knows what he wants. And what he wants is me.
His hand returns to my breast, kneading, pinching my nipple hard enough that I gasp, the pleasure/pain sensation so strong that it zings through my body, and my core clenches tighter. He flutters his fingers over my nipple as if to soothe the burn, then pinches it again, and I groan and arch into him. He does it again and again until I’m mindless, a creature of feeling and nothing else. Until the ache between my legs is so intolerable, I cannot keep still.
