Addicted to You

by Serena Grey

  Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Addicted to You

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Lost in You

  Acknowlegdement

  Connect

  Books

  SERENA GREY

  www.serenagrey.com

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  ADDICTED TO YOU

  Copyright © 2015 by Serena Grey.

  All rights reserved.

  Raven§Press

  To everyone who ever picked up a book, and was lost in the magic within.

  She’s in love with him.

  He doesn’t want commitment.

  Rachel and Landon’s story continues in this sequel to Drawn to You.

  After walking away from Landon, Rachel tries to forget the man with whom, despite her best intentions and her better judgment, she has fallen hopelessly in love.

  But Landon is not going to make it so easy. He wants her and he’s not willing to let her go.

  One week changed everything for her, but how can she love him, knowing that he’ll never feel the same.

  AIDAN is running around the playroom with his arms spread wide, making a whooshing sound like he’s an airplane. His toys are all over the floor, but he manages not to trip on them. I’m on the sofa reading a comic book, and Sue is sitting by the window, close to my train set, with her nose stuck in a novel. She’s Aidan’s nanny, and all her books have drawings on the covers of people kissing.

  I’d like to go downstairs, maybe to Mr. Hayes office. He’s the manager of our hotel, and sometimes, he lets me walk beside him in the lobby when he greets the guests. He says the Swanson Court Hotel has a reputation for ‘sterling’ service, which means that you have to give people what they want before they ask for it. Sue says I can’t go downstairs because Mom will be back soon.

  Aidan suddenly stops running and comes to peer at my comic book. I close the page I’m reading because there’re zombies in it, and he’s only four years old.

  He makes a face and reaches for the book, and I stretch my hand up, holding it high enough so his fingers can’t touch it.

  “I wanna see,” he complains, sticking out his lower lip.

  Sue looks up at us. “Let him see, Landon,” she says, frowning in my direction. She’s really tiny, with short red hair, like a boy’s, and she just wants Aidan to be quiet so she can go back to reading her kissing book.

  I start to think of a way to distract Aidan, but the door opens before I come up with anything.

  “Mommy!” Aidan squeals, forgetting all about me as he runs towards her.

  Mom scoops him up in her arms. “How’s my darling little boy?” she says with a bright smile as Aidan settles his head on her shoulder. She buries her nose in his hair and sniffs, before turning her smile to me and holding out a hand. “Landon, come say hi.” Her voice is soft and gentle, like her, most of the time. Today, she’s wearing a white, flowy suit, and her curly blond hair is around her shoulders. She’s beautiful. Everybody says so, even in the newspapers.

  “Hi, mom.” I get up and walk towards her outstretched hand, wondering if she’ll let me go downstairs to Mr. Hayes. She ruffles my hair and smiles down at me. “Your Dad is coming back tonight. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  I forget about going downstairs. “When is he coming?”

  She shrugs. “He’ll be here around seven in the evening, maybe.”

  I look down at my new watch. My grown up wristwatch. That’s what my dad called it when he gave it to me before he traveled. “Five hours. Cool.”

  Mom laughs. I know she’s happy too. My dad is away on business. He didn’t travel so much before, but now he wants to expand our hotel, so he has to go to different cities. Sometimes, they fight on the phone, my mom and dad, especially when he’s gone for very long. I heard Dad tell her that she listens too much to the ‘trash’ people say. They were fighting when he said that, but they made up. They always make up when he comes back.

  “Will Daddy tuck me in tonight?” Aidan asks.

  “Of course,” Mom tells him, chuckling. “They haven’t been any trouble?” She’s talking to Sue, who has quickly hidden her kissing book under some cushions.

  “No, they’ve been rather sweet.”

  Mom looks at Aidan, who’s still resting his head on her shoulder, looking as cute as an angel, then at the comic book I’ve tucked under my arm. Her eyebrows go up. She doesn’t like the ones with zombies. “I doubt that,” she replies Sue with a sigh.

  They start talking about something else, then Donna, the maid, comes to the door holding the phone receiver. “Call for you, Mrs. Court,” she says to my mom.

  “Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Buckley.”

  Mom sighs and sets Aidan on his feet, before going to the door to take the receiver from Donna. Mrs. Buckley is mom’s friend Auntie Thelma, who mom laughingly calls a busybody. I don’t like her, and I don’t think Mom does very much either.

  She takes the receiver with her, talking as she leaves us in the playroom. Aidan starts to run around again, singing a silly song he made up, so I leave him there with Sue and follow Mom to her sitting room. It’s my favorite place in our whole apartment. It has billowy lace curtains, a reading nook with lots and lots of books, and a soft sofa that smells just like Mom.

  She is standing by the windows with the receiver to her ear. “No, it’s fine,” I hear her say. “Thanks for telling me.”

  From the sound of her voice, I know something is wrong. She stands still for a few moments, then starts to press the buttons on the receiver. When she puts it to her ear and starts talking again, her voice is angry, the way it always sounds when she’s fighting with Dad.

  “Someone saw you!” she says accusingly. “You had dinner with her and then you went upstairs together. Do you know how embarrassed I am? How am I supposed to believe you when the same thing keeps happening all the time?”

  I don’t understand everything she says, but I can tell that she’s mad at Dad. After a few more words, she tosses the receiver at the wall, then puts her face in her hands as it clatters to the floor. She’s sobbing loudly. I wish Dad would come home right now. He’ll tell her he loves her and she’ll be happy again.

  “Mom?”

  She spins around and sees me, then she quickly turns away again, but not before I see the tears on her face.

  “Mom…” I try to think of something to say. All the things Dad usually says to make her smile, but now I can’t remember anything.

  She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. When she turns around again, she’s smiling. She doesn’t want me to know she was crying, but I already saw, and her eyes are still red. “Hey sweetheart,” she murmurs. “I thought you were in your playroom with Aidan.”

  “It’s Aidan’s playroom. I’m not a baby.”

  That makes her smile. “Okay.”

  I go to pick the receiver from the floor and place it on the coffee table. “You were fighting with Dad.”

  She smiles again. “Don’t worry about it sweetheart. It was just…” she sighs. “It was nothing.”

  I nod. “He’s coming home today,” I remind her, hoping it will cheer her u
p. “You can make up when he gets here.”

  The smile disappears from her face. “No,” she says, her voice changing. “By the time he comes, we’ll be gone.”

  MOM is speeding. She hardly ever drives, except when we’re at our house upstate and she doesn’t want the chauffeur. She didn’t want him today. She made Donna pack up a case each for Aidan and me, and she put them in Dad’s green Ferrari and buckled us in the back.

  Aidan is looking at me, his eyes wide. His tiny hands are tight around Alfred, his bear. Even he knows that something is wrong. “Are we going to see Daddy?” he asks hopefully.

  I can’t think of anything to tell him, so I ruffle his hair. He likes that. “Where’re we going?” I ask mom.

  She doesn’t reply. We’re already out of the city, but we’re not going in the direction of our house.

  “Where’re we going?” I ask again.

  “For God’s sake,” she snaps at me. “Keep quiet and let me drive.”

  “You’re scaring Aidan,” I tell her. I’m scared too. I don’t want my parents to get a divorce.

  Mom doesn’t reply. Instead, she starts to drive faster, till it feels like we’re flying over the highway.

  Aidan peers out of the window just as we zoom past a big truck. “Mommy?” he cries.

  “Now you’ve upset him,” Mom snaps.

  I fold my arms. “I didn’t upset him. You upset him.”

  “Landon…”

  “I want to go back,” I announce, hoping she’ll turn around. “I want to wait for Dad.”

  She glares at me in the mirror, and I frown as deep as I can.

  “Well, we’re not going back,” she says.

  “I don’t want to leave. If you’re getting a divorce, I want to stay with Dad in the hotel.”

  “I want daddy,” Aidan cries.

  Mom starts to cry. I can see the tears running down her face in the mirror. I know she really doesn’t want to leave. If we go back and wait for my dad, everything will be okay.

  But she keeps on driving, and I start to wish that anything would happen, anything at all, to make us turn back.

  GOODBYE Rachel.

  Landon’s last words to me before he drove away. They keep playing over and over in my head, and with every second that passes, I can feel the distance between us stretching, growing wider, triggering a frantic desire to run after him, to tell him I was wrong, that he’s everything I want, everything I need.

  You can’t give me what I want.

  Regret floods me, deep and painful, at the thought that I said those words to him.

  I could have told him what I really wanted. I could have told him that I was in love with him, and I would have. But I knew what his reaction would be. He’d told me himself.

  As soon as a woman starts to demand more than I can give, I walk away.

  He would have walked away from me too.

  And I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.

  I did the right thing, I tell myself desperately. Being without Landon is a better option than being in love with a man who would never love me. Being without him is a better option than having to pretend that I don’t want more than he does, that I’m not aching for something deeper.

  Being without him is a better option than waiting helplessly for the day he’ll tell me that he’s done with me.

  Only right now, it doesn’t feel like a better option. It feels like torture. It is agony, squeezing at my insides, tearing at my heart, and leaving scars that I’m certain will never go away.

  My memories don’t help. Landon is everywhere in my head. The first time I saw him at the Swanson Court hotel, when the elevator doors slid open to reveal the last thing I’d expected to see on the other side. A man with the physical perfection of a Greek god, and such undeniable sexual magnetism. Without even touching me, he’d made me forget everything but how attracted to him I was. He’d thought I was a hooker, and I’d played along. The result had been the most intense sexual experience of my life up to that point.

  I remember Landon at his club, letting me think that he still believed I was a hooker, then the next day in my boss’s office… I almost smile at the memory. “I want to fuck you again,” he’d said. I’d been so angry, and yet, despite all my best intentions, I’d ended up in his office, half-naked on his desk, surrendering my body to his expert touch, letting him have his pleasure, and taking mine, because when I was with him, it was impossible to deny that my body was totally his.

  So many memories. All of them painful now. How long will it be before I stop thinking about him?

  Staring unseeing at the door to my apartment, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hands. I have no idea how long I’ve been standing here, but I can’t seem to bring myself to unlock the door, to step over the threshold and go on with life. Life without Landon Court.

  I want to find a way to erase the last thirty minutes. I want to avoid the aching emptiness growing inside me. I want, more than anything, to regain the physical connection and the pleasure of being with Landon. Not the man everybody saw, the billionaire hotelier and ruthless businessman the press made him out to be, but the man I’d glimpsed inside, the man Landon Court really was, the caring, sensual, and incredibly gorgeous man who, from the very first, made me feel things, both physical and emotional, that I’d never known I was capable of.

  The man I now had to live without.

  Isn’t this what you wanted? The voice in my head is harsh and taunting. Why else would you tell him that you want more than he can give? Why else would you agree to meet with your ex? You wanted to show Landon that you didn’t care. You wanted to leave on your own terms, not as one of the women he had to walk away from because they wanted ‘more than he could give.’

  If it’s what I want, then why is it tearing me to pieces?

  Goodbye, Rachel.

  “He can’t give you what you want,” I whisper to myself, trying to find even the slightest sliver of strength inside. “You’re in love with him. He walks away from women who want commitment. You’re doing the right thing ending it now.”

  The pep talk works somewhat. I take a deep breath and unlock the door to the apartment I share with my cousin Laurie. It’s a small place, comfortably furnished. My home and sanctuary, and yet, right now, all it does is remind me of Landon. He was only here a few times, to pick me up for a night at the theater, to spend the night with me, in my bed, drugging me with his touch, making me lose myself in the kind of pleasure only he could give… but he has left his mark somehow, the same way he’s left a mark on my heart.

  Closing the door behind me, I lean back on it, and will my thoughts to find another direction, something else to focus on instead of Landon Court. At that moment, Laurie emerges from her room. She’s already dressed for bed in a thigh length t-shirt. The name of her boyfriend, Brett’s gym is written on the front in big, bright lettering. Her curly hair is in a long braid, and as always, it’s difficult to look at her without being reminded of how physically striking she is.

  There is a touch of sadness on her face. It’s been there since Brett told her they needed ‘some time apart.’ That, and the T-shirt, clue me in to the fact that she’s probably having a bad day.

  “You’re back.” She smiles, then she sees my face and the smile disappears. “Rach.” Her voice rises in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

  Her concern makes tears rise in my eyes again. I’d like to tell her that there’s nothing wrong, because - what’s the point in compounding her pain with mine? But I’ve never been able to lie to Laurie. She knows me too well.

  “Hi.” My voice is shaky.

  “What happened?” she asks, coming towards me.

  I shake my head, words catching in my throat.

  “Hey.” Laurie puts an arm around me. “It’s going to be okay. Whatever it is.”

  No, it won’t. “I need to lie down,” I manage, pulling away and heading to the solace of my room. She follows me, watching from the door as I toss my bag on my chair and col
lapse crosswise on my bed, my eyes on the ceiling. In the dimness of the room, I give in to the tears, doing nothing to stop them from sliding down the side of my face.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?” Laurie’s voice is gentle. “Did Landon do something?”

  I don’t answer. Inside, there is another surge of pain, followed by the now familiar temptation to go back to him and let him know that I was wrong. That I can’t live without him and I don’t want to try.

  Goodbye, Rachel.

  Laurie comes over to lie down beside me. She doesn’t say anything, but the silence is soothing. We lie side by side for a long while, saying nothing. I wonder if she’s thinking about Brett. The thought that we’re both nursing broken hearts is infinitely depressing.

  It was your choice to walk away, I tell myself, willing the tears to stop. It doesn’t work. I should be able to let him go, I think miserably. We were never going to last forever anyway. We weren’t even supposed to last this long. It should have been just one night. It should have ended the moment I walked out of his apartment without leaving my number.

  It should have ended when we returned from that week in San Francisco. It should have ended before I got to the point where I fell so hard for him, but I’d wanted him too much, and he’d been so relentless in his seduction and in his unwillingness to let me go. Now, even though I’d tried to convince myself that I could live with whatever part of himself he gave me, I know I can’t. I want more. I’ll always want more. More than he can give, more than he wants to give.

  “I shouldn’t have fallen in love with him,” I say softly, breaking the silence in my room. My voice is still breaking, and my eyes are stinging. “It was too soon, and we agreed that it was going to be just sex.”

  “You don’t get to choose when, or how, or with whom to fall in love,” Laurie whispers, her voice gentle. “Sometimes it just happens and before you know what, you’re reeling.”