Being Me (26 page)

Footsteps sound on the opposite side of the door, and I turn as it opens and Chris appears, his blond hair rumpled, as if he’s been running his hands through it. His green eyes fall on me and the hard glint in their depths softens instantly. He pulls the door shut behind him and drags me against him, murmuring softly, “I understand why you left. I understand everything.”

I cling to him, holding on for what feels like dear life. “I should have told you.”

“You would have.” He pulls back to look at me. “When you were ready. We all have to deal with our inner demons in our own way, in our own time.”

My fingers trail over the stubble on his jaw, and I understand too well what he’s telling me. He hasn’t told me everything, either, and I can’t bear the idea that there is still something else, some dark secret that could potentially tear us apart when I’m not sure we’ll survive what is already before us.

“Your car’s ready at the back door, sir.” Chris and I turn to the uniformed guard who has appeared beside us. “The press has been cleared.”

Chris shakes the man’s hand and it’s clear this isn’t their first meeting. “Thanks, Max. You’re a good man.”

We exit to a parking lot and slide into the car. I settle under Chris’s arm, seeking the warmth of his body, the protection I’ve sworn I don’t need, too many times to count. But I need it tonight. I need it and him, in ways I’ve never needed another human being. It’s both comforting and terrifying to realize that the very thing I’ve feared would happen has happened. I don’t know who I am without Chris anymore. I don’t know where he begins and where I end. He says he’s mine. He says I’m his, but no matter what Chris says, he isn’t really mine at all. He’s still a prisoner of his own inner demons and now, I worry, of mine, too.

•   •   •

We don’t speak on the short drive back to the hotel, both of us lost in thought. The cold reality of what has just happened seeps into my mind and crawls through my body. Despite it being eighty degrees outside, I shiver, and Chris runs his hand up my arm. I turn into him, settling my ear on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, trying to lose myself in the steady rhythm. But my thoughts find a way inside the rhythm. My father finds a way inside my head. I should be beyond his reach, incapable of feeling anything where he is concerned, but I am not. My mother is dead. My father couldn’t care less if I’m dead. Michael is the son my father wanted and he would justify anything Michael did as necessary, even forcing himself on me.

By the time we are walking through the hotel lobby, I am one big ball of explosive emotion. I am clawing my way out of my own head but there seems to be no escape, and this damnable, pinching pain in my chest won’t go away.

We step inside the elevator and Chris wraps me in his embrace, settling my hips against his, his hand at my back. I run my fingers through his blond hair, searching his face, and I find exactly what I fear. He is worried about me, about us, concerned that my past, my weakness with Michael, means I’m too fragile to be a part of his life. It wasn’t hate I’d worried about from Chris. The hate was mine. I own it. I’ve lived it. No. What I feared from Chris was this: pity. Him looking at me like I’m a wounded animal. I push away from him and try to step out of his reach. His fingers snag mine and he pulls me back. I see the question in his face and I plan to answer it, just not here.

The elevator doors open and I rush forward, seeking privacy before I explode. The instant we are in the room, I whirl on him. “Don’t look at me like I’m some helpless pup that has to be coddled, Chris. That’s not what I need now. I need what you needed today. I need an escape. I need to know . . .” So much. Too much. “I need . . .” I have no more words. I just need.

Stretching behind me, I unzip my dress and shove it down my body, leaving myself in my thigh-highs and heels, and the dangling rubies. I’m desperate to push Chris over the edge, to make him take me the way he always does—passionately, completely.

Chris pulls me hard against his body, and he is hard where I am soft, strong where I am still weak.
Yes
. This is what I need. “Fuck me, Chris. Take me to that place you go and don’t be gentle.”

He runs his hand down my hair. “Not tonight, Sara. Not after you just told me that bastard forced himself on you.”

“It was two years ago, Chris.”

“Which you had to relive tonight.”

“Don’t do this. Don’t treat me like I’m breakable, or Michael wins.”

“I’m not treating you like you’re breakable.”

“You are, and if you do it now, you always will. It’ll change us.”

“No. One night is not a lifetime.”

“This isn’t just one night. It’s this night. It’s the night that—” The pain in my chest cuts off my words and I shove it away. “Pain that is pleasure. Pain that is an escape. I need just what you need tonight.”

“No, baby. I’m not going there with you tonight.”

“You mean you’re not going there with me ever!” I charge. “You’re afraid to take me there now. This isn’t going to work. He’s already ruined us.” I shake my head. “I need out of here. I need to go home.” I tug on my arms, but he holds me easily. “Let go. Damn it, let go!”

“Sara—”

My hands close around the sleeves of his jacket. “I
knew
this would happen. I knew if I told you, you’d be afraid to be you.” My cheeks are wet with tears. I don’t know why the hell I keep crying. “Just let me go, so I can get all the hell over with in one night, Chris. Let me go find my way of dealing with this again. My way without you.”

He backs me against the desk, his hands on my hips, his expression unreadable. He’s still so damn in control. I’m naked inside and out, and he’s no closer to letting down the wall this night has erected, than when I was fully dressed.

“Just let me go now, Chris.” My voice is a barely audible. I am defeated and beaten. “Please.”

His expression softens and he wipes my tears away. “Sara, baby, you aren’t alone. And I’m not going to shut you out.”

“You will. You are. You tried to shut me out today before you even knew about this. How can I believe you can go those places you need to go with me when you didn’t even believe you could earlier today?” My fingers close around his lapels, and the absolute torment I’m feeling is like gravel in my throat, and I barely find my voice. “And what if I need to go there now? I need to escape. I need to feel something other than what I’m feeling right now, Chris.”

He stares down at me, and I see the shadows in his eyes, I see the turbulence, a deep sea of emotions I don’t understand, and I fear we are both drowning. It’s too much. Everything feels like too much. “Chris,” I whisper, and it’s a plea for him to make this ache inside me go away. A plea for him to take me away like only he can do.

Suddenly, he’s picking me up and carrying me toward the bed. We go down on the mattress and he quickly shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it away. And then he’s on top of me. The weight of him, the sweet wonderful weight of him, is all that keeps me from completely losing my mind.

He raises up on his elbows and our eyes meet, and I am lost in the fiery depths of passion this man stirs in me. “Sara.” He whispers my name and the air around us shifts and I feel Chris everywhere, in places he isn’t touching me. A shudder runs through me and I pull his mouth to mine, drinking him in, burning for him.

Then his lips leave mine, and I physically ache with the loss of the connection. This man can hurt me so deeply. He could
hurt me in a way I’m not sure I’d recover from, and it’s too late to stop it from happening.

As he starts to undress, I sit up to watch him. His gaze sweeps the jewels dangling on my nipples, bringing a welcome heat in contrast to the icy pit in my stomach. And I think that tonight just might be a new beginning for us, instead of our final destination.

All sinewy muscle and masculine perfection, Chris presses me back down onto the mattress, his hands covering my breasts, fingers flicking the rubies. Little darts of pleasure rush from my nipples to the V of my body, where the thick ridge of his erection settles.

My hand curves on his face. “I need what you needed earlier today.” My voice is raspy, urgent, etched with the weight that today has been, and all it has revealed. I barely recognize it as my own. “Take me there, Chris. Please.”

“Where I needed to go was where I ended up. I was shutting you out, like I shut everything out, and you pulled me back. You made me see what was important. What’s real. You made me see you.” His lips brush mine. “See me now, Sara.”

“I do see you.”

“No. You don’t. You see what happened tonight and what you’ve decided that means for us. See me now, Sara, like you
made me see you.” He kisses the corner of my mouth and his lips travel down my jaw. “Really see me.”

“I’m trying.” My hands slide to his hair. “But, I—”

He kisses me, a soft caress of tongue against tongue. “No buts. Either you see me or you don’t. Either you let me in or you don’t.” His mouth touches mine again, a feather-light, barely there brush. “Let me in, Sara.”

Confusion ripples through my mind. Am
I
shutting
him
out? Isn’t it he who has shut me out? No. Yes. I don’t know. His fingers caress my nipple, and his mouth travels my jaw to the delicate curve of my neck, and I can barely think. His breath fans hot against my ear, and his voice is a low, deep, sensual promise. “I’m right here.” His words whisper in my ear and travel down my neck, over my skin, and settle in that deep hole inside me that only he can fill.

My hand slides to his face and I pull his mouth back to mine. “Part of you isn’t enough, Chris. You can’t hold back because of what you found out tonight. You can’t.”

He strokes his tongue against mine, and it is sweet velvet seducing me. “Taste that. That’s me. That’s us.” His tongue strokes mine. “Us, Sara. Forget everything else.” His mouth comes down on mine again, and I fight the passion consuming me. I fight because he didn’t tell me he wouldn’t hold back. He didn’t say what I needed to hear and I know why. Because he never says what he doesn’t mean. But it’s a worthless battle I cannot win. Not when his hands are on my breasts and his mouth is caressing a path down my neck.

The last of my will to question who we are together and where we are going is lost when his tongue flicks the ruby
strand. He suckles my nipple, tugging on the attached ring, and oh God, his other hand slides between my legs, applying pressure to the jewels attached to my clit. I moan and my hands slide into his hair, and he lets me. Some part of my mind registers this as abnormal, as him allowing me control I don’t normally have, but I can’t seem to process. Not when his mouth is doing the most amazing things to my nipple and his fingers are pressing inside me. His thumb strokes my clit, and he seems to have found the exact right spot to send sensations spiraling through me. I gasp at how quickly I am on the edge and he swallows it, kissing me. I shatter at the touch of his tongue against mine, pleasure trembling through me in a long wave of sensations.

“Sometimes pleasure is just pleasure,” he promises against my mouth.

“And that’s enough for you?”

“We aren’t even close to the place I call enough.”

And with that promise he slides down my body, and spreads my legs to lick my swollen clit.

I gasp. “No. I can’t. I’m too sensitive. It’s too much.” Everything is too much tonight.

“I’ll tell you when it’s too much.” He licks me again and I feel him tug away the jewel, replacing it with his mouth. I shudder with a mix of pain and pleasure. No, it’s all pleasure. It’s pleasure and I am lost to the way he licks and strokes and teases me until I am impossibly on the edge again. So close, and yet I’m not there. I need to be there. I’m desperate to get there again. And
this
is pain. It’s pain and pleasure and it’s Chris, pushing me, taking me there. Always taking me someplace I don’t know I can go.

He is not so far out of reach, and neither is my release. My
sex clenches and spasms, empty and needy, and I whimper. Chris answers my cry, covering my body with his, but he doesn’t enter me. He strokes his shaft over the sensitive V of my body and I whimper again, my lashes fluttering.

His hand slides to my face. “Look at me when I enter you.” His voice is rough, intense. “See me, Sara.”

“I do.”

He presses inside me and thrusts, burying himself deeply, completely. “Feel me.”

“Yes.”

He lowers his mouth a breath from mine. “But do you feel us?”

My hands slide around him, holding on to him. “Yes.”

“I’m not sure you do.” He brushes his mouth over mine. “But before tonight is over, you will.”

•   •   •

The sound of the phone ringing on the nightstand permeates the sweet, sated state of my slumber. I’m immediately aware of the sunlight glimmering through the hotel window and the wonderful weight of Chris’s leg draped over mine, his hard body curved around me.

Chris reaches over me and grabs the phone. “I need the car at nine fifteen. Right.”

I roll to my back while he listens to whatever he’s being told. I stroke my hand over the shadow on Chris’s jaw, letting it rasp along my fingers before tugging a strand of his sexy, rumpled blond hair, which is all the sexier because I know my fingers helped create the disarray. Memories of the night assail me in a mix of hot and cold, ice and fire. The lovemaking had been
nothing shy of amazing, but there is so much more to Chris, and to me, that I need to know still exists.