by Pam Godwin
I go back for another scoop and pretend my swollen cock isn’t painfully throbbing against my zipper.
She holds her hand out, shaking her head. “I need to…” She darts to the fridge and rummages inside. “I need something filling and healthy or I’ll eat the whole pie. Where are my protein drinks?”
I could tell her I shoved them to the back, but I’m not saying shit while she’s bent over like that, with her fuckable ass filling my vision. Encased in denim, her cheeks are perfectly round and firm and molded in the exact size of my hands. Her waistband slides low, exposing a sliver of skin, Venusian dimples on either side of her tailbone, and…
What the hell is that?
Edging closer, I bend down, zeroing in on a faint white welt of twisted flesh. An inch in length, the scar is jagged and wide. Not something sustained on an operating table, but rather from sharp force trauma.
I reach for the hem of her shirt. “What happened—?”
Her head flies up, catches the glass shelving, and scatters condiments and produce. The collision sends her falling back on her butt. I grab her arm to catch her, but she jerks away, dropping a protein bottle and shoving down the back of her shirt.
“Shit, you startled me.” She climbs to her feet, tugging on that damn shirt.
“Turn around.” I make an impatient swirling gesture with my finger. “Show me your back.”
“Excuse me?” Her neck stiffens, and her eyes blink rapidly.
“You heard me.” My voice is low and sharp, brooking no argument. “While you’re lifting your shirt, you can tell me how you got the scar.”
CHAPTER 12
DECKER
Once again, I’m demanding answers, but this time, Laynee’s going to give me something. I don’t care if it takes all night. I’m finished with her secrets.
“I don’t have to tell you shit.” Her eyes spark with equal parts fury and fear.
“Laynee,” I say in a softer tone. “I’m not the enemy. I won’t hurt you.”
A chiming ringtone blares from the counter behind her.
She whirls toward the phone and connects the call. “Violet?”
My pulse hammers in my ears as I fight to keep my agitation in check. I suspect her publicist is calling about Laynee’s trip to L.A. tomorrow. The trip I’m going on whether they like it or not.
“I haven’t been ignoring you. No, that’s—” She sighs into the phone. “Fine. I’m listening.” She casts me a glare and marches out of the kitchen.
Fuck this. I’ve been nice. I’ve been patient. I’ve followed her exhausting rules and given her miles of time and space. It’s not working.
I turn toward Reese, who’s watching me with a guarded expression.
“Tell me that’s not a knife wound on her back.” I point at the doorway she disappeared through.
“You’ve only been here a month, man.” He sits back and crosses his arms. “You need to be patient.”
Not answering my question is an answer in itself.
“She doesn’t respond to patience.” I charge toward him, bracing a hand on the back of his chair and the other on the table in front of him. “Who hurt her?”
His lips press into a line, and he averts his gaze.
If Laynee Somerset was attacked or hospitalized, it would’ve been in the news. When I arrived in Savannah, I spent the first couple days scouring the Internet and acquainting myself with everything the media says about her. I learned that her ex, Blake Harridan, allegedly cheated on her, but she refuses to confirm the speculation publicly—or privately with me. She’s the most clammed up person I’ve ever met, and it’s driving me to madness.
How does a superstar, one who’s photographed as much as Laynee, hide a suspicious scar from the press? I have a thousand other questions, but I’m starting with that one.
Stepping away from Reese, I snatch his laptop off the table and carry it to the island. When I glance down at the screen, my ass clenches.
“Chics with dicks?” I stare with dumb shock at the website of leather-clad women with huge plastic cocks.
“That’s not…” His chair screeches on the wood floor behind me. “It’s a harness with—”
“I don’t care.” I open a new tab in the browser and search on images of Laynee.
“What are you doing?” His footsteps approach.
“Looking for answers.”
“You won’t find them on-line.”
He stands behind me and shoulder-surfs while I flip through hundreds of red-carpet photos taken of her over the past twenty years. Almost every gown she wore in her twenties was open-back. I zoom in on the images and find unmarred skin instead of a scar. One in particular, snapped at the Oscars six years ago, shows the full-length of her spine, damn near exposing her ass crack. Increasing the magnification, I study the high-resolution image. No scar.
“You need to stop this,” Reese says behind me.
“If you’re not going to be helpful, go the fuck away.” I point at the doorway without removing my eyes from the screen.
Something happened to her in the last six years. Narrowing my search, I look through galleries of photos taken during that time frame. Every image confirms that six years ago she stopped wearing backless gowns or any kind of revealing clothing. There are no bikini-on-the-beach pictures, nothing that exposes any part of her back. And she already admitted she uses body doubles to do the nude scenes in her movies.
Dread curls in my stomach.
“What happened six years ago?” I turn toward Reese and give him the full brunt of my glare.
He drags a hand down his face and spins toward the sound of heels clicking through the doorway.
Laynee steps into the kitchen, clutching the phone to her abdomen, gaze locked on the laptop. “What are you looking at?”
“How were you injured six years ago?” My voice is abrasive, but it can’t be helped. I’ve reached my limit.
She moves to the sink and fills a glass with water, draining half of it in one gulp.
I shake with the urge to bend her over my knee and spank her until she screams her secrets. But her stiff-as-a-board posture tells me that would be a terrible mistake.
“Talk to me, Laynee.” I close the laptop and shove it aside. “I’m assuming the worst here.”
She grips the edge of the counter and stares blankly out the window over the sink. The empty silence continues long enough to confirm she’s not going to answer.
“I’m just gonna…” Reese inches toward the doorway. “I’ll go get you some more holes for your jeans.”
I glance down at the ripped-up denim on my legs. I came to Savannah with the threads on my back and a change of clothes in my bag. Now I have a wardrobe worth more than my annual income from Infidelity, thanks to Reese’s enthusiasm in shopping on Laynee’s dime. I wear the shit he hangs in my closet. He has excellent taste, though I’ll never admit that to him. But sometimes I put on my old jeans, like today, just to annoy him.
“Sit down.” I direct him to the chair beside the kitchen table and pace through the room. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll tell you what I’ve pieced together, and you’ll fill in the blanks and correct my assumptions.”
If Laynee doesn’t talk, maybe Reese will.
He lowers into the chair, and she faces me, hugging her arms around her waist.
I approach her slowly. “In the past two years, you’ve only had sex with two men.” My chest constricts with irrational jealousy. “I assume neither of those men saw you naked.” Given the way she conceals that scar.
She stares at the floor and gives a weak nod, reinforcing my suspicion that it’s not just me she hides her body from. She wears clothing like armor, the same way she uses Reese as a barrier against intimacy.
“Why those two men?” I ask. “What did they do to earn your trust?”
“First off, they never had my trust.” Her arms tighten around her mid-section. “They accepted my deal, so I gave them an hour inside my body. It’s
as simple as that.”
Her words make me feel so insanely, barbarously possessive of her. I’ve never experienced that primal reaction with anyone, and I haven’t even fucked her. But that isn’t the real issue. She’s discussing sex with verbiage like deal and gave them an hour.
I’ve kissed this woman. She’s brimming with passion and raw sexuality. When I eventually enter her body, I have no doubt she’ll scream and writhe and unravel around me, and it’ll last a helluva lot longer than an hour.
“Explain the deal they accepted.” I bend my knees, trying to catch her lowered gaze.
“They let Reese suck them and fuck them while I watched.”
Exactly what I expected. They surrendered to her on a psychological level, submitted to Reese physically, and therefore proved themselves safe enough for her to have sex with. While she kept her clothes on.
The image of her with other men makes me want to punch something, but I breathe through it and focus. Something doesn’t add up. “Reese fucked them? Not the other way around?”
“Yes,” she mutters to the floor.
I glance at him, noting the tension in his shoulders. “Reese is a bottom.”
Her head shoots up, eyes on the other man. “No, he isn’t.”
“That’s weird. I’ve only known him a month, yet I know he doesn’t like to do the fucking. You’ve known him for how long?”
“Don’t do this.” Reese’s expression tightens.
“Laynee.” I grip the counter on either side of her hips. “How long have you known Reese?”
“Ten years.” She looks at Reese accusingly. “Why does he think you’re a bottom?”
“It’s not…” He picks at something on his jeans. “It’s nothing.”
“Reese?” She straightens, staring at him with bright damp eyes.
“We’re good.” He tips his head back and sighs. “Let’s just drop it.”
“No, we’re not good.” She pushes my arm away and moves toward the island, bracing her hands on the surface. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was trying to help.” He shrugs.
He’s an enabler. Was. I’m taking control of her fears going forward, and we’re fixing this my way.
“You two can work out your communication issues later.” I lean against the counter beside her and hook my thumbs in my back pockets. “Before those two men, you were with Blake Harridan. You married four years ago. Divorced two years later. Because he cheated on you.”
“Congratulations.” Acid laces her voice. “You know how to Google.”
I’ve never wanted to bring unholy hell upon a person I’ve never met, but I’m burning to do exactly that now. “I’ll kill him.”
“Please, don’t.” She rubs her head as wariness leaks into her expression. “My involvement with him has done enough damage to my reputation.”
“He was a nobody when Laynee met him.” Reese folds his arms on the table, his voice clipped with disgust. “Just an extra in one of her movies. She propelled his career and made him who he is today.”
And the bastard thanked her by cheating on her. I don’t know if it’s the scar on her back or her fear of men, but I have a godawful feeling that adultery wasn’t his only crime.
I step into her space and lower to her height. “When did you meet him?”
“A month before we married.” Her face crumples. “I’ve made some really poor choices when it comes to men.”
If she’s only known Blake for four years, he’s not responsible for the scar. And she just said men. Multiple poor choices.
“Who were you with before Blake?” I ask.
Pale lines bracket her mouth before a stubborn mask slides down, shielding her emotions. “How about we put you on the spot? Who have you been fucking for the past twenty-eight years, Decker Gabrielli?”
I consider her question for a moment. She already knows my secrets, so I have nothing to hide. “I didn’t have sex thirteen of those twenty-eight years.”
Confusion etches her face before her blue eyes pop wide. “You lost your virginity at thirteen?”
“Grew up in a rough neighborhood. Single mother. Poor supervision.”
She nods as if she understands, but she doesn’t. How could she? She and I come from two very different worlds.
“According to your profile,” she says, “you’ve never been in a committed relationship. Does that mean you’ve never been in love?”
“Not even close.” I rub the back of my neck. “I rarely sleep with the same woman twice.”
“Why?”
If I tell her I avoid relationships because committed women are needy and boring, it’ll give her one more reason to keep me at arm’s length. Instead, I dig deep and give her a truthful, more vulnerable answer. “I’m searching for the one I want to chase forever. The one I can’t walk away from.”
Her lips part. Her eyes shine, and her perky tits rise and fall with her breaths—all of it fills me with immense pleasure. I could spend the rest of my life watching her react that way. While she’s bouncing on my cock.
“I need to go.” Reese rises from the chair. “I’ll be late for a date.”
“Chic with a plastic dick?” I ask.
“One can hope.” He walks around the island, grabs his laptop, and kisses Laynee on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.”
She watches him leave and shakes her head. “I should’ve known. I mean, I know he likes to be ordered around. It turns him on. But I didn’t associate that with…positioning and…sexual partners.” She scrapes a hand through her hair. “God, I can be so oblivious sometimes.”
“I know a thing or two about being oblivious.”
“You?” She laughs bitterly. “Nothing gets past you.”
I pace through the kitchen and debate the wisdom in correcting her. It would mean baring my insecurities. Maybe that’s what we both need. A little humble pie would do me good, and it might help her perceive me as something other than a threatening shadow looming over her.
Lowering onto the stool at the island, I leave enough room between my spread legs and the counter for her to stand.
“Come here.” At her hesitation, I soften my tone. “Please.”
She steps into the V of my legs and leans her butt against the counter, arms crossed over her chest.
“I had this one student at my school.” I place a hand on the edge beside her hip and rest my thumb on the waistband of her jeans. “A nine-year-old boy with a wicked-sharp sense of humor and this huge infectious smile. God, the kid was always smiling.” I swallow past a tight throat. “Then one day, he stopped smiling.”
I inch my thumb upward until I make contact with the soft skin of her waist.
She doesn’t yank my hand away, and instead slides her fingers across my shoulders. “Go on.”
“His mom lost her job. Single-parent family. Money was already tight. The kid had so much passion in the sport, and I loved teaching him.” I smile in memory. “He reminded me a lot of myself. When his mom couldn’t pay for his lessons, I took him on pro bono.” Old pain flares in my chest. “The boy’s smile never returned. I thought it was related to problems at home.”
“Decker,” she whispers, guiding my forehead to rest against her flat stomach. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I need you to understand.” Gripping her hips, I lean back to see her face. “That boy spent all his free time at my gym. It was his escape from the harsh reality of his shit life. I was his teacher, his mentor, his protector. I looked him in the eye every fucking day, and I didn’t see what was happening to him. What was happening in my own fucking gym.” Emotion roars through my veins and thickens my voice. “Do you know why he stopped smiling, Laynee?”
“Yes. I know.” She caresses my face. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I didn’t do those…unspeakable things, but I didn’t prevent it, either.”
“You stopped it, Decker. I read the reports Infidelity sent over. One of those boys trusted you enough to tell you.
I know you’re the one who turned in Adam Lamont and funded the lawyers for those kids.”
My stomach cramps with remembered horror. I’ve never felt more like a failure than I did the day I learned what was happening. “I can’t do that again, Laynee. I can’t look at you and be with you and not know what’s happening to you.” I press a hand against her lower back, directly over the scar. “Tell me who hurt you.”
She stiffens. “It’s in the past.”
“It’s not.” Anger rises through my tone. “It’s right fucking here. A living, breathing thing wedged between us. I want it gone.”
“I’ve worked so hard to do exactly that.” Her voice cracks, and she pulls in a ragged breath. “It’s cost me time and job opportunities and money…so much fucking money to keep it out of the media and make it disappear.”
“Is that why you refuse to tell me? You think I’ll sell the story?” I grind my teeth. “You don’t trust me.”
Her hands slide through my hair, and her eyes travel over my face. “I trust you, and that’s the problem. Apart from Reese, every single person I’ve trusted has hurt me.” She smiles sadly. “You’d have better luck with me if I didn’t trust you.”
Jesus, fuck. What am I supposed to do with that? “You trusted the person who gave you that scar?”
She lowers her arms and slips from my grasp. Tugging down the back of her shirt, she exits the kitchen, as if the conversation is over.
I stalk after her, determination steeling my spine. I could rip off that shirt and sweep her to the floor in two seconds flat. An armlock would have her squealing answers to my questions in the two seconds that follow. She’s learned a few self-defense maneuvers over the past couple weeks, but she’s nowhere near my skill level. Physically overpowering her would certainly choke any trust she has in me.
But that’s not what I want. She needs some control in her life. I can give her all the control she wants within the limits I set for her, and one of those limits is the goddamn wall she’s erected around herself. I’m going to break through it, starting tonight.
