The Complete Tempest World Box Set

by Mankin, Michelle

  “I understand, Mom. You don’t have to decide tonight, do you?”

  “Actually, I already have.” She looked me in the eye for a long moment, and I knew she was trying to communicate a truth even deeper than our present circumstances. “When you love someone you have to do what’s best for them. Put their needs and wishes above your own. Sometimes that’s easy to do, and sometimes it’s really, really hard. But then those hard times are the moments when love is proven genuine.”

  “Yes, I know that.” And I did. I really did. She was the one who’d shown all of us that by her example. She didn’t just say the words. She walked them out. But I’d messed up. I’d looked at James, seen his good looks, and I’d been swept away by his persuasive words. It was just too bad for me that I’d misread him so completely.

  “It’s just so difficult,” my mom whispered. “Worse to say goodbye than it was with your father because then I didn’t realize how terribly lonely I would be.”

  I started crying again then. This time she comforted me, both of us grieving, a slow process we’d begun two years ago after the accident, but now underwent in earnest for the husband and father that would be taken from us way too soon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dizzy

  April jumped when I called her name. She spun around surprise sparking life into eyes that were reddened, dull, and lifeless. I completely abandoned my plan to play it casual.

  I crossed the hospital corridor and yanked her into me. I didn’t care how it looked. I didn’t even worry about where she’d put her hands. I just knew she was going to fly into a million pieces if someone didn’t help her hold the fragments together, and I didn’t want that person to be anyone but me.

  She didn’t fight me. She didn’t resist at all. Her hands landed lightly on my shoulders. To my relief I didn’t flinch. She swayed and I caught her, sweeping her into my arms and cradling her to my chest. She blinked up at me in gratitude.

  “Did he?” I couldn’t speak the words. I sucked my lip ring into my mouth. “Is he gone?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.” Her voice sounded hoarse as if she’d overworked her vocal cords. She buried her face in my chest. I could feel the wetness from her tears soaking into my shirt. I couldn’t have cared less. I wasn’t thinking about anything but comforting her. I tightened my grip wishing I had magic wings to fly her far away from her pain.

  After a moment she lifted her head, studying me intently as she touched my face with gentle hands running her thumbs across my eyebrows and skimming her fingertips across my bottom lip. Mapping my features as if she never wanted to forget them. “You can let me go now, Diz.”

  “No way.” My gaze delved deeper than hers. “Not a chance in hell.”

  I could feel it. The moment she gave in. Her body relaxed, betraying her. All of the fight finally gone. “Then take me out of this place. Please,” she pleaded.

  I was out the automatic doors of the hospital entrance before she had finished speaking. The valet took one look at my face and ran to get my car. Within a few moments, he was back slamming the brakes and bringing the Panamera to a screeching halt in front of us.

  Reluctantly, as always when it came time to release her, I set her down, though I took my time, savoring the contact of her sexy curves sliding against me. Once she was in and settled into her seat, I closed her door and shoved a wad of cash at the valet. I rounded the hood and got in behind the wheel. “Where?” I asked glancing her direction.

  She was staring out the front windshield, but I knew she wasn’t seeing anything. “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “Just somewhere. Anywhere. I just need...” she emphasized that one word drawing it out as she turned to give me a longing look that revved me like the Porche’s engine, “to be with you. Wherever, ok? I want you, Dizzy, more than I’ve ever wanted or needed anyone. Take me somewhere safe. Where it’s just you and me and no one has to know. That’s where I want to go.”

  Bloody hell. That definitely exceeded my wildest expectations. I wanted her right then. I gripped the steering wheel tighter instead. One step at a time, I cautioned myself. The number one priority right now was getting her far away from where we were, and I knew the perfect place.

  April was completely silent as I drove over the Lion’s Gate Bridge. She stared out the side window and didn’t even glance my way during the zillion and one stop lights that slowed us down and kept me from opening up the throttle.

  Finally, I turned in, the tires crunching over the gravel drive. The water of the Indian Arm lay spread out in front of us, the surface smooth as black glass. The quaint Deep Cove shops were dark, but the stars twinkled overhead like a dreamy canopy as I exited my side and opened the other door for her.

  She looked up at me with such undisguised desire that my pulse kicked up faster than one of King’s frenetic drum solos. She unbuckled her seat belt and clasped my outstretched hand, glancing around at her surroundings as I pulled her out.

  In the bright moonlight I watched a look of wonder erase the grooves of worry from her face.

  “I haven’t been here since I was a kid.” A nostalgic smile curled her beautiful lips. “George used to bring us here to kayak. There are usually sea lions just off the shore, and you can see starfish at low tide.”

  I led her across the sand to a secluded alcove on the far side of the beach. The driftwood I remembered from times when I’d come here to think was still there, and I pulled her down beside me on the log that was wide enough to be a bench.

  She immediately shifted, turning to face me, reaching for the buttons on my shirt. I could feel her trembling, and I didn’t want it to be hurried and desperate so I captured her hands and brought them to my mouth. I meant to brush soft kisses onto her palms, but as soon as my lips touched her skin she sighed, and I couldn’t help myself. I nipped at the fleshy spot below her thumbs, her skin salty to my taste.

  “Dizzy,” she spoke my name more seductively than any woman ever had, and the soft look on her face completely sank me. This was it. She was giving herself to me. This was what I had wanted from the beginning, from the first moment I saw her at PTU, and now that I had it, I realized it wasn’t enough. I wanted more.

  My fingers tightening around her wrists, I pulled her so I could position her between my legs. Her back was to my chest, facing the water. I needed her restrained. I couldn’t have her touching me while I tried to regain control.

  “Diz,” she called, craning her neck to one side so she could see me. “I thought you…we…” her voice trailed off as uncertainty extinguished her confidence.

  “Kitten.” I breathed the endearment in her ear, unable to resist a lick and a nip of the fleshy lobe near my mouth. She groaned, and I shuddered. “I want you so badly that being with you is all I can think about. All I have thought about for quite some time. But not now. Not tonight. Not when you’re so upset that you’ll regret it.”

  “You’re wrong. I won’t regret it.” She turned all the way around so that she could straddle me. “I’ll relish it.”

  My hands instinctively went to her ass to keep her from falling backward onto the sand. Hers came toward me. I didn’t shrink away. I didn’t even think about stopping her. With her, I didn’t want to avoid contact. I actually craved her touch.

  She framed my face and I never knew a gesture like that could feel so erotic. Her eyes shone in the moonlight, and my pulse pounded steady and strong in my veins. I massaged the sexy globes nestled within my grasp. “Mmm,” Her lips parted with pleasure and she moved seductively on my lap while threading her soft hands into my hair. I nearly came that felt so good. I couldn’t even remember that I’d ever been touched that way.

  “I want you.” She held my gaze, and even though I couldn’t see her well in the starlight, I could hear the sincerity behind those simple yet profound words.

  “And I want you, too,” I groaned with my pulse beating in my ears competing with the quiet lapping of the water against the shore behind us.

/>   “Good.” She brushed her lips over mine, prodding at the closed seam with her tongue. I fused my mouth to hers and touched mine to it. Low appreciative sounds trickled from the back of her throat as she rocked her hips over my rock hard erection. I swore I could feel her heat.

  “April,” I moaned, beginning to take her mouth brutally, slanting my head one way, then the other, frustrated when I couldn’t get as deep as I wanted. A forest fire of need blazed through my body out of control. I wanted to burn my name into her soul. Brand her so the whole wide world would see that she was mine. Touch her deep enough that she’d never be able to let me go.

  “Yes, Dizzy,” she encouraged in a breathy voice, neck arching as I traced the taut tendon from her neck to her shoulder with my tongue. “Yes. But only tonight.” Her hands were buried deep in my hair, her fingernails scraping deliciously against my scalp. “Just this once. So I can always remember what it feels like to be with someone who I...”

  “No.” I froze with both hands on her ribs just beneath the swell of her breasts.

  “What’s wrong?” She wriggled in my hands seeming to want to force them higher.

  “I thought I wasn’t above having you any way I could get you, April, but I was wrong.” I took her hands and trapped them between our bodies holding her to me while looking into her eyes willing her to listen. Willing her to understand that I needed for her to want me, just me, and not just how I could make her feel. “From the first time that I saw you, I knew you were different. And I don’t want you like this. Fast and forgotten. You’re not like the others. You’re not just a means to an end. You… are… the one I didn’t realize I needed. The new beginning I thought I could never have.”

  “No, no.” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m so selfish.” Long gossamer strands escaped her ponytail and stuck to my stubble like Velcro. Avoiding my eyes, she carefully removed them, tucking the pieces behind her ears and trying to free herself so she could scramble off me, but I grabbed hold of her. I wouldn’t let her go, not just yet. She needed to know all of it to decide. It was time to lay everything out in the open.

  “You’ve got so much on you right now. I can’t even imagine how you feel. But you gotta know the love you have with your family is special, how lucky you are to have something like that.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “They’re my strength, but why…”

  “I only told you part of the truth about my childhood the other day. I didn’t just get knocked around as a kid. There was other stuff that happened. Sexual stuff.” Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. I had to continue. Get it all out fast before I lost my nerve. “When my mother couldn’t pay her drug dealers in cash or services they took their payment from me. They wanted my sister, too, but I always made sure she was hidden. I did the sick stuff they wanted thinking that’d be it, but it wasn’t enough. They held me down, and did stuff that no kid should ever have done to them. I’ll never forget. Believe me, I’ve tried.” And tried and tried. Every single time I got the urge to set up a hookup, I was trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t a victim anymore, that I was in control, and that I wasn’t truly and irrevocably messed up. “Lucky CPS finally put us with our uncle. But I’ve never been able to tolerate anyone touching me during sex. It turns my stomach. That’s why I went cold on you in the hallway. Back and shoulders are the worst. Besides the obvious places, because that’s where they put their hands when they pinned me down.”

  “No, Dizzy.” Her voice broke. “Oh, no,” she said softer, tears in her eyes glistening beautifully in the moonlight. She was so tenderhearted. So sweet, my hope of salvation.

  “I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to feel sorry for me. I certainly didn’t want to burden you with my shit when you’ve already got so much to deal with, but I need you to understand how significant it is that I want to be with you. That I want you to touch me, that I like it.”

  “Dizzy. Shit.” She reached for me, hands seeming to come at me in slow motion. It meant the freaking world to me that she wanted to touch me after I told her all that horrible crap. She ran her fingers over my face as if I was some kind of special gift.

  But her next words brought my hopes to an end.

  “I wish I had met you before James. I wish I could be the fresh start that you deserve. I wish thinking happy thoughts made them come true, but they don’t. They just don’t, Dizzy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  April

  At home on my leather couch, Brutal Strength’s music blasting out of the speakers, I rocked back and forth to the beat, knees to my chin, trying to process it all, to make sense of my suddenly even more complicated life.

  Dizzy was at the edge of my every thought and breath. It had been trending that way for quite a while now, but it was so much worse since his declaration at the cove. I could hear his velvety groan in my ears, the voice that beckoned me down the road to ruin.

  Remembering made me feel hot even in the chilly room. I remembered his taste, like cinnamon with a sharp edge of danger. I ran my fingers across my lips recalling how his mouth had felt there. The hint of mint in his cologne. His warmth. He’d saturated my senses. Every time I closed my eyes I saw his handsome boyish face and his sexy as sin smile. My attempts at sleep last night had been largely fruitless.

  I’d avoided James, crawling into bed next to my brothers on the sleeper sofa after Dizzy dropped me off two blocks from my home at my behest. He’d said little after I turned him down. Though his disappointment was deafening in the silence, ever the gentleman, he circled the block driving past me until he was sure I’d gotten inside the building safely.

  But even he couldn’t protect me from the danger within. The trap I’d set for myself. The one I could never escape. The beautiful dream he’d offered was just that. A dream. A frivolous fantasy for a foolish girl.

  I stood and yanked the iPod out of the dock, plunging the room back into its oppressive silence. Music couldn’t soothe me today. I couldn’t write either. I’d tried, but the words were trite and tired, and the sentences were all twisted, so I deleted every one of them.

  The second visit to the hospital had been harder than the first because now my brothers knew. There’d been no change. All the IV’s had been removed. Now we played a macabre waiting game with no prize at the end.

  I sighed. At least James was gone. He’d left first thing this morning.

  My cell buzzed on vibrate mode, shimming its way across the surface of the coffee table. I picked it up and turned it over, answering immediately after I saw who it was. “Mel, how’s Seattle? Are you ready for the competition?”

  “I think so,” she said, “but things are a bit weird. Sager’s here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s his home town after all.” I could almost picture her shrugging her shoulders while twirling a lock of hair. “How’s your dad doing?”

  “The same.”

  “I’m sorry, Sweetie. How’s your mom holding up?”

  “As well as anyone could, I guess. She wasn’t too happy when I told her about James going out of town. She doesn’t understand the pressure he’s under with his job.”

  My mind drifted to the words spoken earlier at the hospital. Words that had stuck with me all day, rolling back and forth through my mind like a puzzle that needed solving.

  “I only wish I had one more day with him, when he was whole,” my mom had confided as she’d held George’s hand. “I’d take even one more hour if I knew that’s all I could have. I’d give anything to rewind the clock so I could relive and savor every single moment we did have. So I could hold him again, make him laugh, hear his voice saying my name one last time.”

  “April?” Mel called.

  “Huh?” I sniffed quietly.

  “Are you ok?”

  “Sure, yeah. I’m fine.”

  A long pause. “Alright if you say so, but you know we’re friends.”

  “Yes, the best.”

  “Agreed. And you
know you can tell me anything, and I won’t judge.” A longer pause with a clicking sound. She was biting her nails. She kept trying to stop, but couldn’t seem to help herself whenever she got really nervous. “Even if you’re having trouble in your marriage. Even if there’s something going on between you and Dizzy.”

  Shit. Fucking shit.

  I couldn’t tell her about James, and no matter how much she fished, I knew I couldn’t tell her about Dizzy either. “My marriage is what it is, Mel, and since…” I trailed off. I still couldn’t say my baby’s name out loud. “I’ve told you that before. As for Dizzy, well…where did you get a crazy idea like that anyway?”

  “I’ve noticed him looking at you…like a lot. And something Sager said made me wonder.”

  “Speaking of looking.” I seized on that to redirect her. “What happened between you and Sager last night? What was he so anxious to talk about?”

  The longest pause. “There really wasn’t much talking going on. April, I slept with him, and it was amazing.”

  Whoa. “I thought you liked Dizzy, Sweetie?”

  “I do, but I wanted to make him jealous. Only Sager…well…”

  “Spill it,” I prompted.

  A nervous laugh. “Let’s just say that he figured things out, and he let me know that he didn’t like being used.”

  “No one does.” I thought about what I’d offered Dizzy last night versus what he was really seeking, guilt pricking my conscience. He’d been right to stop. There was more between us than I’d been willing to admit. There were so many emotions careening around inside my heart where he was concerned. Desire. Longing. Connection. Disappointment. Regret. All tangled together in a confusing knot.

  “Hey, I gotta go, April. I need to run through the course before they close it down for the race. But keep me updated about George. You know I can be right back in Vancouver in just a couple of hours. I really wish I hadn’t let you talk me into going ahead with this event.” More clicking.