“What?” The absence of his body heat sent a shiver through me. I sat up and clutched the edges of my blouse over my breasts. Humiliation burned in my cheeks, chased away the lust, and left me with an aching emptiness. I’d been hurt before, but nothing ever hurt like those four words. I already felt unworthy. The cold steel in his gaze cemented the truth of it.
“Get out.” His tone held a world of implications. His shoulders hunched as he tucked his shirt into his pants and did up the fly.
“But I’m not done with—” The protest died on my lips at the sight of his face. Brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, lips pressed into a thin, tight line.
“Just go, Dakota.”
If he wanted to hurt me, he’d succeeded. I slid off the desk, forgetting about the pain in my ankle and the torn front of my blouse. Without a backward glance, I walked straight past him and out the door. Tears blurred my vision. I grabbed my purse from my cubicle, boarded the elevator, and rode to the lobby in a haze of humiliation.
CHAPTER 10
Dakota - Then
ON A RAINY Saturday afternoon, I sat in the family dining room, surrounded by a plethora of utensils. There were items I’d never had a need to use, and some I couldn’t identify. Mrs. Seaforth breezed in and out of the room a dozen times while I worked. She was a tall, willowy woman with a pinched mouth and eyes the same shade of green as Sam’s. On the last visit, she paused at my elbow to inspect my work.
Once each spring, Mrs. Seaforth threw a charity ball at the mansion. It was a decadent extravaganza for which my mother prepared months in advance. She labored over recipes and presentations, working with Mrs. Seaforth to devise the perfect menu. Gardeners tidied the landscaping. Extra help came in to clean the house. Crockett did small odd jobs around the property. I spent hours polishing the silver table service. It was boring work but provided extra cash above the paltry allowance my parents gave me.
Sam and I were both eighteen now. Graduation and college loomed in front of us, mere weeks away. He would be off to Princeton, while I had a scholarship to the local university. Neither of us had mentioned the upcoming separation or what it might mean for our relationship. The idea of losing him so soon after finding him made my chest ache, and my thoughts turn gray.
“Do be careful, Dakota.” Mrs. Seaforth’s cultured voice held a note of disapproval. “This silver has been in my family since before the Revolutionary War, and it’s worth a fortune.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be very careful,” I replied, too lost in hazy daydreams about Sam to take offense at her patronizing tone.
“Of course you will, dear.” She patted my shoulder, her gaze catching her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror above my head. She turned her head from left to right, assessing her image. “And I will do an inventory when you’re done.”
“As well you should,” I replied, cheerfully pretending to miss the insult. Once she’d left the room, I ran an admiring finger over the butter knife in my hand. Intricate curls and flowers adorned the handle. It was truly remarkable. Not for the first time, I wondered what it would be like to own something so precious and valuable. My musings were interrupted by a low, masculine voice in my ear.
“What are you doing?” Samuel leaned over the back of my chair, his lips so close I felt the buzz of his lips on my neck. He pressed a kiss on my pulse point, raising gooseflesh across my shoulder.
“I’m working. Go away.” I gave him a playful shove, propelling him back a step. A wave of giddiness swept over me, the way it did every time I saw him now. Just being in the same room with him elicited tingles of excitement in my deepest recesses.
“Let’s go.” He jingled a set of car keys on a leather fob in front of my nose.
“Your car? You got it back?” He nodded, eyes shining with adventure. Nothing pleased me more than seeing him happy.
“No more Rockwell.” He removed the knife from my hand and curled his fingers around mine, tugging me to stand next to him. “I want to take you for a ride before it starts raining again.”
“But your mother?” I gestured to the table and the mountain of silver to be polished.
“We’ll be quick,” he promised and touched the tip of my nose with his forefinger. “She won’t even know you’re gone. Don’t say no.”
How could I ever deny him anything when he looked at me with those grass-green eyes full of promise? We’d gone from casual acquaintances to constant companions in the space of a few months. He waited for me at my locker between classes and gave me a ride home in the limo after school. After the first few times, I gave up the pretense of hiding my address and let him take me to my doorstep. Often times, he kissed me goodbye when no one was watching. I lived for those kisses, and I lived for the time we spent together.
***
Samuel pressed the accelerator to the floor, and the car purred in response. It was a beautiful automobile, sleek and sexy, just like Samuel. I snuggled deeper into the soft leather seat and stared at his profile. He shot a sideways glance at me, full mouth curved into a smile, before downshifting and easing into a curve. The sleeves of his sweater stretched tight over his biceps. His confidence sparked a new awareness inside me. He filled the car with his maleness. In contrast, I felt small and utterly feminine beside him.
“What?” he asked, shooting me another glance.
“Nothing,” I said, a blush heating my cheeks.
“It’s got to be something.” He released the gearshift long enough to brush a finger over the side of my face.
“You’re such a guy.” I bit my lower lip to hold back a smile.
“Are you just now noticing?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. “I must not be doing it right.”
“I thought you didn’t care about material things, about stuff.” I waved a hand to encompass the interior of the car.
“I said I don’t care about the money,” he corrected. “But in case you haven’t noticed, this is a car, and cars are things of beauty. Works of art.” The layers of richness in his voice set off a mini explosion inside me. His hand drifted down from my face to rest on top of my thigh. “Like you.”
It had begun to rain. Fat drops pinged the windshield. He pulled onto a side street, and I recognized the park not far from the college campus. The rain began to fall harder. He parked the car beneath a spreading elm tree in a remote picnic area, where we were completely sheltered from view. Once he shut off the engine, we were left in insulated silence. A deep growl of thunder rolled in the distance.
“One, two, three, four…” I counted in a whisper and waited for the following flash of lightning.
“What are you doing?” I felt his curious gaze on me, sliding over me, warm and caressing.
“Counting the seconds between the thunder and the lightning.” I winced as a second crack of thunder shattered the silence. “I hate storms. My dad always told me to count and then I’d know how far away the storm was.”
“Does that work for you?” As he spoke, the hand on my thigh drifted down my leg, his fingers curling to stroke the delicate skin behind my knee.
“Not really.” The way he watched me, like I was something delicious to eat and he was starving, made my panties dampen.
“Are you scared now?” His voice deepened, impossibly deep for a boy. But he was a man, I reminded myself. In a few short months, school would be over, we’d graduate, and then head off to our respective colleges. Knowing everything between us might end gave our relationship an urgency.
“A little.” I tore my gaze from him long enough to watch the rain pour in sheets over the windshield, obliterating everything from sight and secluding us in our own personal cocoon.
“Of me or the storm?” His hand tightened around my knee, the warmth of it searing my skin.
“Both,” I whispered.
“Come here,” he said, the words both a command and a request.
“Shouldn’t we be getting back?” A tremor of excitement shook my hands. I clenched them in my lap to keep him from seeing. He was
going to kiss me, and somehow I knew this time would be different. This time I wouldn’t stop him or ask him to slow down or tear myself away like I had all the other times, because I wanted it. I wanted him in a way I’d never wanted anything before in my life.
“In a minute,” he said, his voice lower still. “Come here, Kota.”
I leaned toward him, drawn by his words, his voice, and the light in his eyes. I couldn’t stay away even if I wanted to. He exuded magnetism, pulling me in like the moon orbiting the earth. When he shifted, I shifted.
“Samuel, I…we…” My voice broke when his lips brushed the corner of my mouth. It was the sweetest of touches. A fine layer of gooseflesh raised on my forearms. The next kiss landed beneath my ear. The next one on the curve of my neck. “Oh, um, okay.”
“Dakota?” One of his fingers skimmed my collarbone, caught the edge of my sweater, and tugged it over my shoulder, taking my bra strap with it.
“Yes?” I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the sensation of his touch on my bare skin.
“Less talking. More kissing.” With methodical thoroughness, he worked his way from my neck to my shoulder and down the slope of my breast. When his lips brushed my nipple for the first time ever, I slammed my thighs together, undone by the sudden jolt of aching pleasure in my sex.
He slipped an arm around my waist, lifting and sliding me over the console onto his lap. He was so powerful, so strong, and so safe. I let him move my legs until I straddled him. One of his hands left me long enough to adjust the seat back as far as it would go. For the briefest of seconds, it occurred to me he’d done this before, with some other girl. How else could he know exactly where my legs should go and how to move the seat to allow him room? Somehow it didn’t matter. He was here. With me. And no one else mattered.
Neither of us were virgins. The way he pressed my hips down onto the hard ridge of his cock made it perfectly clear. I’d been with one boy in a misguided and awkward encounter the previous summer. The ensuing embarrassment had left me unwilling to try it again—until Samuel.
Everything about him suggested sex, sex, sex. I dreamed about him, doodled his name in the margins of my notebooks, and blushed every time someone mentioned him in casual conversation. He’d become the air I craved to survive. I wanted him to touch me, hold me, be inside me. Our previous encounters always ended with both of us frustrated and aching. He wanted to wait for sex until after I turned eighteen. All I wanted was him.
He seemed to be obsessed with me for reasons I never understood. We had little in common besides our sense of humor and loneliness. But when he looked at me, the way he was looking at me now, I felt desirable, admired, wanton.
“I want you, Dakota,” he murmured in my ear. His big hands roamed restlessly up and down my thighs beneath my skirt, bunching it up toward my hips. I’d gone straight to his house after school and hadn’t bothered to change.
“I want you too.” I cupped his face in my hands, the stubble of his jaw tickling my palms. Our mouths found each other, snapping together, drawn like two magnets of opposing polarity. His tongue swept over mine, seeking and taking and tasting.
We kissed until the windows fogged over. We kissed until my lips felt swollen and tender. We kissed until every inch of my body ached with the need to have him inside me. When one of his fingers tested the edge of my white cotton panties, I didn’t stop him. His finger slipped through my wetness, and a whimper of pure delight broke loose from my throat.
“Tell me this is real, Samuel,” I whispered against his mouth. “I need to know I’m not dreaming this.”
“It’s real, baby,” he said. He stroked me, up and down and in small circles, whipping my hormones into a frenzy of lust.
“I want you inside me.” With my hands buried in his hair, I arched against him, needing to be closer.
“We need to be careful,” he said, his voice rough with desire. “I don’t have any condoms.”
“I do. In my purse.”
“You do?” He drew back, an expression of wary disbelief knotting his brow. “Should I be worried?”
“Mom,” I answered. My mother, sensing the growing infatuation between us, had given a very impressive speech about abstinence and the responsibilities of parenthood. Then, in her practical manner, she’d given me a packet of condoms and asked if I needed to see a doctor.
“I love your mom,” he sighed into my neck.
“Ew, gross,” I scoffed.
He wasn’t as practiced with the condom as I’d expected, so maybe my worries about other girls were unfounded. It took a good bit of maneuvering to get it on, given the size of the car’s interior and the size of Samuel, but we managed. The second his erection nudged my entrance, my sex began to pulse and I lost all sense of time and space. I rocked against him, once more gripping his hair. He slid into me, slowly at first, his eyes locked with mine, then shoved all the way in with an expression so heart-wrenchingly intense that tears stung my eyes.
We moved together, awkwardly at first, and then settled into a rhythm. My thigh bumped the gearshift. I’d have a bruise there tomorrow. His knees thumped against the dashboard. It didn’t matter. Ripples of heat flashed over my skin. The delicious fullness of his cock inside me, the way our bodies joined together, the slow and controlled thrust of his hips, kept me teetering on the brink of a powerful new sensation.
“You feel wonderful,” he groaned. “So good. So tight.” He jerked up, burying himself to the root. “I can’t hold back anymore.”
His declaration and the shift of his legs beneath me sent an undulating wave through my womb. My legs tensed. He slid his hands up my back, buried his face in my neck, and shuddered. For those few seconds, I owned him. When he cried out my name, I came and realized he owned me too.
***
By the time we returned to Sam’s house, the rain had stopped, and orange and purple streaks layered across the sky. Time had gotten away from us. A small seed of foreboding took root in my chest. I pushed it away, too euphoric from our tryst to spoil the moment with worry. Samuel parked the car behind the garage. We ran to the back door of the house, holding hands, skipping over puddles, and laughing until we stepped into the mudroom.
Mr. Seaforth greeted us, a furrow between his brows and an intimidating downward curve to his mouth. His eyes roved over me. I lifted a self-conscious hand to smooth my hair. Samuel looked fine except for a few creases in his shirt. Me? Probably not so much. The smile on Sam’s lips slid away at the sight of his father.
“Dakota, go to the kitchen. You’re mother’s waiting for you.” Mr. Seaforth had a deep, quiet voice edged with steel. When he spoke, everyone listened. I was no exception. “Samuel, in my study.”
My gaze bounced from Samuel to Mr. Seaforth and back again. Dread tightened my throat.
“It’s okay,” Samuel said. Our eyes met. He exuded calm. His lips smiled at me, but his eyes remained somber. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
“Um, okay.” I ducked my chin and headed to the kitchen, uncertain what to expect. Sam’s hand brushed against me as I turned away, his little finger quirking around mine in a brief caress.
My mother stood in front of the giant pantry doors, hands on her hips and lips pursed in thought. She was a big woman, nearly six feet tall with platinum hair and hands the size of softball mitts. Her Swedish heritage showed in high-set cheekbones and fair skin, two traits I inherited from her. When I trudged into the kitchen, she greeted me with a cautious smile.
“And where have you been?” she asked, eyebrows lifting to her hairline.
“With Samuel,” I said. “We went for a ride.”
I slid onto a stool at the kitchen island to watch as my mother finished counting her supplies. It was a big industrial kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. Copper pots and pans hung from hooks in the ceiling. The scent of fresh bread wafted from one of the ovens.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked when she didn’t say anything more.
&nb
sp; “What do you think?” She closed the pantry doors and turned to face me, placing her capable hands on the counter. “You were supposed to be working, not running around with the boss’s son doing God knows what.”
The heat of a thousand flames rushed into my cheeks. I looked down at my hands and chewed on the inside of my cheek. Mom had a way of shaming me with just a look. It was her superpower. She used it now.
“I know. I’m sorry. We only meant to be gone for a minute and we—we lost track of time.”
“You like him, don’t you?” She smiled and smoothed a hand over my hair, tucking a strand back behind my ear.
“I do.” The hopefulness in my voice strained my throat.
“So do I. He’s a good boy.” She sighed and patted my cheek. “Go clean up the mess in the dining room. You’ll owe Mrs. Seaforth an apology tomorrow. She’s already gone to bed. Not feeling well this evening.”
“I will.” I smiled back at her, warmth replacing my earlier dread.
While she closed up the kitchen, I stole down the corridor toward the dining room. It was a rambling house with labyrinthine hallways, having rooms and additions built on by each generation of Seaforths. With thoughts of Samuel clouding my head, I made a wrong turn and ended up outside Mr. Seaforth’s study. The sound of two raised voices halted my footsteps. The door was cracked open an inch. Golden lamplight spilled onto the patterned carpet of the hall.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Samuel said. “I’m eighteen. I can do what I want.”
“As long as you’re under my roof, spending my money, you’ll live by my rules,” Mr. Seaforth thundered.
“It’s always about the money with you.” Sam’s voice held the same steely edge as his father’s.
“Try it and see how far you get without it,” his father scoffed. “Do you think that girl gives a shit about you? I hate to break it to you, but without my money behind you, she’d never give you a second look.”
Pretty Broken Girl Page 5
