“Well…I haven’t really decided yet. I suppose I could be anything I want to, really.” And for a second it really did seem like all the possibilities in the world were laid out at my feet, begging me to choose between them.
“Wrong, silly,” Astrid cried victoriously before wrapping her small arms around my stomach and pressing her rosy cheek to the fabric covering my belly. “There’s a baby inside you. You’re a mommy! That’s what you’ll be forever and ever and ever.”
Even after Astrid’s mother collected her and thanked me profusely, the child’s words echoed in my ear as if she were still whispering “forever, and ever, and ever, and ever…”
“Wait,” Madeline yanked me into the present, impatient of my sidetracked silent daydreams. “If Cam really wasn’t there when you went to the agency, then how accurate could his account be?”
“I did tell him about it later,” I assured; a little offended she’d assume I’d keep something so important from him.
“So this is exactly how it happened?” She demanded skeptically.
“The important stuff anyways.” I looked away, avoiding her eyes, but her stare and silence burned me as if she’d set fire to my lie. “Well…the agent did ask me why I’d chosen adoption.”
Her emerald eyes sparked like fireworks, delighted by my seemingly harmless admission. Madeline was a shark. She could smell a drop of blood in the water from miles away.
“What was your answer?”
“I told her that I was too young to be a mother. I wanted Cam’s child to have a better life than I could provide, and neither one of us had any sort of reliable support system,” I breezed through my reply. That, at least, was an easy answer to give.
“And those were the real reasons?” She leveled me with the calculative edge that sliced right through my deflection.
“It was the truth.”
“But not all of it?”Her eyebrow quirked as she took a shot in the dark and hit a bull’s-eye.
My flinch betrayed the truth she’d just uncovered.
Nancy Drew looked nearly delighted as she laid out her plot, “In The Girl in the Yellow Dress, Adley doesn’t tell Cam about her decision to put the baby up for adoption until she admits to going to the agency weeks after it happened. He never really knows what made her make the choice.”
And how could he, when I’d made all the decisions for us. By the time I told him, my mind was set in stone, beyond questions or explanations. It was never his choice. I never let him have it.
I took a deep breath. “I gave up so much after I found out I was pregnant. I left my family without a second thought. That’s how much I loved him.”
“So you decided to give up your baby because you were unconsciously punishing him for taking away your family and ruining your body.” Madeline cut me off, rambling out an excited version of her own explanation.
“Jesus! Is that what you really think of me?”
“You just take so long to get to the point that my mind starts to run laps around yours.” She didn’t look all that apologetic.
I forced down my irritation, but my voice still clicked with sarcasm, “I’m so sorry. This isn’t really something I like to think about. I’m just kind of blurting out everything that comes into my head. There isn’t a point. I was under the impression you wanted my help.” Each word was an angry snapping turtle; I took another deep breath before continuing, “No, giving up my baby never had anything to do with punishing Cam. If he’d had a family to give up for me, he would have done it.”
I strained to compose myself. Maybe Madeline was right – not her convoluted theory of punishing Cam – but about my obvious absence of a point. It was hard to find the right words to say the thoughts I’d never even considered vocalizing. While I floundered, Madeline found strength. She was staring at me with creepy, unblinking doll eyes, like she thought if she looked hard enough, she could wrench free all my deep dark secrets.
“But Cam didn’t have a family to give up, and I guess, that was part of it too. I didn’t want to have to ask him to give up anything for us, not when he’d been given so little to begin with. So because he would have sacrificed everything, I couldn’t let him. Cam is the best person I’ve ever known. He deserves all his dreams, and –,” the coming words were so hard I choked on them. “And, I guess, I thought I did too. Or at least I deserved the opportunity to try and be something more than who I had been in the past.”
As was usual, Madeline didn’t speak a word in the aftermath of my confession. I couldn’t stand it though, not then, not while my own judgments glared back at me.
“Do you think I’m a selfish monster?” The irony that I was the one directing that question at the queen of narcissism wasn’t lost on me.
Her expression puckered once with distaste before she hit me with a bland stare.
“Honestly, you could tell me about a series of bank robberies you committed, and I wouldn’t give a damn. I’m not prying into your past with a moral compass, Adley. I need to understand the facts. Everything else is just…information.”
A knock reminded us of the outside world as Fran gave her the heads up that she was due in hair and make-up.
“Do you mind if I’m done for the day?” I hadn’t moved from the couch even as the actress headed on her way, assuming I’d follow.
A million thoughts trekked across her face, most of them involving how my absence would affect her, before she finally nodded her reluctant consent. The pros of being free of me moping around all day clearly outweighed the cons.
My head collapsed into my palms as soon as she was out the door. My life had become one sadistic trip to the dentist after another, except instead of pulling teeth, Madeline was pulling memories out of my very soul. Teeth would have been less painful. At least at the dentist’s office you get that fun gas that makes needles about as scary as a puppy.
Showing weakness here wasn’t an option. It was what they wanted. Madeline wanted to take, and take, and take, until there was nothing of me left.
I needed the money, I told myself for the millionth time.
Maybe that would matter again in a few more minutes, but at that moment, defeated, alone, and faced with my deepest shame, I could find no strength. I didn’t want to stand up. I couldn’t let myself move.
Because if I did, I was walking off that lot and never coming back.
Chapter Twelve
Adley
I was still sitting there when Declan barged in without even a hint of a courtesy knock. I couldn’t say I was surprised. Courtesy wasn’t his strong suit.
“Hey,” I said numbly. I was tired – so damn tired of rifling through emotional baggage day after day. It wasn’t worth it.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, bobbing his head towards the open door. “Come on.”
“I’m not in the mood.” I meant it, and that was really saying something when it came to sex with the Greek god offering it. I eyed the stretch of his jeans contouring around his hips, trying to stir up my libido.
His gray eyes narrowed. “You sure do think a lot of yourself. I’m not trying to have sex with you. Now, come on.”
He turned on his heel, departing swiftly and leaving the door open in his wake. I stared at the hole leading to the outside world, more annoyed at his audacity than anything else. With a drained sigh, I moved to close the door, except that when I got there, it seemed a whole lot easier to follow Declan than return to my wallowing. At least if I was following his orders, then I wasn’t having to make any decisions of my own.
I stayed a few steps behind him all the way to the limo. Once we were wrapped inside the quiet luxury of his car it didn’t take him long to find his voice.
“Now, aren’t you glad we have our own set of wheels?”
My jaw dropped.
Suddenly all the pieces fell into place. He was being nice to me. Declan, Mr.-I’m-so-charming-and-famous-even-my-scowl-makes-girls-swoon, had come to set that day (his off day) with the sole purpose of
doing something nice for me. I wanted to recoil from the notion. Even the smallest bits of kindness were a slippery slope. First, he shows a little consideration, and the next thing I know, we’re getting a dog named Lila together and cuddling.
He’d purposefully come, made a point to be with me, offered his acceptance with silence, all because, just like Fran, he’d thought it would be hard for me. I wanted to hate it. I wished for revulsion.
I told my face to frown. I swear, I did, but it just wouldn’t cooperate. I couldn’t spite him for what he’d done, no matter what it meant.
“Quit staring at me like that,” he said without looking at me, a pout worthy of a four-year-old on his face. It was as if he could sense my sudden awareness, and by knowing, I’d forced him face-to-face with the ugly truth as well.
“You’ve never minded it before.” The seductive hitch in my voice didn’t go unnoticed.
Whatever contriteness I’d seen evaporated into thin air, and he turned to me with a smirk I recognized all too well. There was the Declan Davies I’d come to know and…well, appreciate.
“Don’t mind us, Lazarus,” he spoke at a louder volume meant for the driver, but his eager eyes never left me.
A nervous giggle bubbled out as the privacy partition took it’s time cutting us off from the third party in the front seat.
“What?” He questioned my amusement.
“I just realized I’ve never known his name. In my head I always call him ‘driver’.”
Declan made a face. “Do you spend a lot of time thinking about my driver?”
“Well he does have a certain silver fox appeal.” I grinned, but only for a second, because in the next, he was on me.
He played me hot and cold; his hands hot, squeezing my ass with a demanding firmness; his mouth – well, I wouldn’t exactly have called it cold – more like soft, the gentlest of pressures. The shallow kisses were nice – different than before – and I sighed, content to let him work his masterful skills on me. His tongue swept across my bottom lip twice, each time retreating as I tried to open up to him.
He was teasing me…again. At his house, it had been fun to try a new way of doing things (and Declan sure did know a lot of them), but it was my turn to be in control. I shoved him backwards, pressing him into the leather, and I climbed into his lap, situated on either side of his thighs.
I stole his smirk as I felt the hardness already waiting for me. He wasn’t as in control of the situation as he’d like me to believe. I could tease too.
“I can’t decide if that smirk makes me want fuck you or kick you out of the car,” he exhaled a shaky breath.
I surrendered to a full blown smile. “We both know how that’ll turn out.”
He started to retaliate with words, but I couldn’t have that, not when it would only turn into the vicious cycle of verbal jabs we were helpless to resist when it came to each other. And because I knew how much I craved getting the last word, I knew he couldn’t help himself from chasing it either. There was only one thing he wanted more. A roll of my hips proved me right.
He groaned. “You don’t play fair, Ms. Adair.”
I didn’t plan on starting any time soon either. I took his mouth prisoner, kissing him exactly how I wanted to be kissed and daring him to contradict me. He let me stake my claim above, as his hands fondled my breasts. My back arched, unintentionally grinding into him again. My lips broke free with a gasp at the intimate feel. My gasp of pleasure split our lips, and I reveled in the erotic tingles stimulated by the intimate friction.
I was so distracted by unbuttoning his jeans that I barely noticed he’d done the same to mine. It had become a competition. Who could drive the other one crazy first?
I took his hard length in my hand, pumping slowly as I studied the unguarded emotions contorting his face. Seeing what I could do to him, this beautiful man who was desired by so many, had me panting, almost getting off on it as much as he was.
“These need to go.” He made a few feeble attempts to remove my jeans before the pleasure drew him back to me, his desperate hands and mouth everywhere at once, like I could disappear at any moment and he’d never get the chance to touch me again.
Suddenly the limo came to a quick stop, not with enough momentum to really jostle anything inside the car, except for a girl not firmly secured by gravity. I landed on my ass, staring up at the man I’d just been seated on with wide eyes. It would have been embarrassing and maybe even a little painful if we both hadn’t realized the advantage of the new position at the same time. It was like a sign from God…well maybe not God, exactly.
We had become perfectly situated for the removal of my jeans.
“Aren’t you going to ask if I’m okay?” I asked, trying to summon up a little incredulity, even as I assisted him in the removal.
“Adley, I have no doubt that if you were in any way injured that I, along the rest of the population of Southern California, would know about it.”
There was no time to celebrate his victory over my jeans. He was already greedily reaching for my panties.
I swatted him away, and gave a pointed look to the (very tinted) windows that surrounded us.
“We’re in public.”
“Well, we’ll just have to invest in some skirts then, won’t we?” He growled, but didn’t make another attempt to get rid of them as he hauled me onto his lap.
His pants were at his ankles, and even though he wore a slight pout at my denial, his thick erection was standing at attention, pressed into my belly and begging me to do something about it.
In one swift, deliberate movement I pulled my panties to the side and sank down on him until he was fully inside of me.
“Oh my f-,” he let out a nonsensical cry.
He stared at me with surprised awe, and I liked it so much I did it again, using my legs on either side of him to raise up before sheathing him inside of me again. The next time, I swiveled my hips in just the right way and pressed my body fully against his, letting a lightshow of mind-blowing sensations bombard a million sensitive nerves.
“Yes,” I cried again and again, each time I rammed downwards. My hands gripped the leather seat behind him so hard, there was a good chance my fingernails were permanently branding the upholstery.
“I’m about to come,” he warned, his eyes closed as if the mere sight of me bouncing on top of him had the potential to finish him.
I was helpless to my own body as it went wild against him, trying to suck out every bit of pleasure he could offer me. My voice was a plea, “Not yet.”
“Bloody fuck, you’re going to kill me,” it was nothing more than a moan. His body had ceased movement altogether, trying to hold off the inevitable.
But I was far past the point of needing his participation. My hips rolled with frenzied strokes, striving for the perfect bliss that built in my belly like a coming freight train.
“Adley,” he gasped, eyes popping open wide as his fingers dug into my hips using force to try and hold me in place.
But I couldn’t stop. It felt so, so good, and I was close enough to taste it. Just a little more…
I knew I’d lost him the moment he released his hold, letting my body buck freely as his shuddered and groaned. Finally satiated, he held me still against him, his face nuzzled in the little bit of cleavage my tank top allowed.
“I blame you,” he accused, his lips rubbing against the sensitive skin of my breasts as he spoke. “That should be illegal. You should be illegal.”
I pouted. I was still burning up inside, while he got to be all relaxed and happy.
He chuckled. “Don’t worry, little sheila, I’ll make it up to you.”
And then he lay me backwards on the unused bench seat, stretching my body until only my legs hung off facing him. He lowered his head between my legs, and did just as he promised.
“No, that should be illegal,” I corrected afterwards, gulping down the musky air circulating around us. The stars in my vision began to clear.
&
nbsp; He nudged me back to our seat, and when I resisted his pull to cuddle up beside him, he rolled his eyes and reversed our positions so his head rested in my lap. I had every intention of shoving him off, but when my fingers made contact with his unruly hair, I couldn’t help but to admire the smooth texture. His dark eyelashes settled on his cheeks with a content sigh.
Free to stare at him all I wanted, my eyes carefully traced his face.
It was funny. As handsome as he was, the perfection wasn’t what really attracted me to him at all. My favorite feature had become the one blemish – the single imperfection – that marred his skin. In my eyes, that small birthmark was who he really was. He wore his faults and shortcomings where everyone could see, not as something to proud of, but as something we had no choice but to accept as the imperfect creature he was – that we all are.
“Declan?” I whispered. Anything louder would’ve felt inappropriate.
Gray eyes peeked up at me.
“Why do you always pester me about my past? Do you just like to rile me? Are my buttons really that fun to press?”
He cocked an eyebrow at the suggestive double entendre of ‘pressing my buttons’. Thankfully, it was a little too obvious to earn a remark, even from Declan.
“Riling you up is just a perk. It’s mind-blowingly sexy.”
“You’re twisted,” I interjected.
He reached up to twirl a golden lock of my hair around his finger, focusing on it instead of me as he spoke, “I’ve never been one for mysteries. Riddles do nothing for me. I’m not one of those blokes with an inherent need to figure things out…But you’ve been an enigma ever since the moment you opened that marvelously foul little mouth of yours. You fight your past like you’re slaying a dragon, and at first, I thought I needed to understand you. But your truths always turned out to be even more perplexing than the idea of you I started with –,”
Someone I Used to Know Page 17
