Kept by Him (13 page)

“Mom?” She couldn’t even say her dad’s name. He’d started it all. He’d been with another
woman, broke her mother’s heart—she could barely touch him without wanting to vomit.
And she’d opened that door …

She awakened in bed with a soft cry, dazed and frantic at the sound—the same soft
cry she always made, when she had this very dream. She shuddered on the bed as she
scanned her surroundings, immediately recognizing that for the first time in too many
years, she was not in her bed.

Panic began to well until she saw Daniel was sprawled beside her, face down, his blond
head angled toward her, an arm over her stomach, and before she thought better of
it, she grabbed his arm and put its heavy deadweight more firmly around her, and slipped
into his arms until her heart calmed down.

But sleep eluded her.

She stared at his face in the dark, the shadows still allowing her to see the rises
of his cheekbones, his perfect nose, his full mouth, his every male feature. She cared
so much about this man, he could hurt her without even trying to. She was genuinely
so connected to him, that to sever it as horrifically as her parents had might feel
like a death to her, too.

Growing up, she had absorbed every detail about this man. By the time she’d moved
in with his family, she knew that Daniel was grumpy in the morning until coffee. She
knew when he was tired, and how women looked at him so much that he’d grown used to
it and never looked back. She knew he thought it annoying when he ventured out and
occasionally found a fan who screamed “I love you! Marry me, Daniel!”

She knew his favorite drinks and foods, knew his greatest friends, his different smiles.
He’d been her hero and confidant and when the press had gone on and on about the “Ice
Maiden and the Prince” being an item, she’d in part yearned that someday it could
be true.

But she’d been wounded and alone, and she’d needed him so powerfully it had frightened
her. She’d needed a nest, and he’d given it to her, allowing her to slowly build her
walls and to grow numb. She’d become stronger, slowly but surely, and even at nineteen,
she’d known she had to depend on nobody if she wanted to survive. And Monica had not
aimed to survive. She had wanted to thrive, and nobody would stop her.

True, Roland was not Daniel. But Roland was kind and elegant, distinguished, worldly
and traveled, and Monica would never burn with rage if he looked at another. She wouldn’t
be consumed by hurt if he went to bed with another. She’d move on. For he would be
a luxury to her, not a necessity like … the man she was in bed with.

She studied him with an awful knot in her chest, his muscles glorious even at rest,
his lashes resting against his cheekbones. Her mind went back and forth for hours,
until she rose to get dressed.

“Daniel,” she said softly as she sat on the edge of the bed, watching his eyelids
flutter, his gaze sharpening with alarming precision the instant he noticed she was
dressed. He pushed up on one arm, scraping the other folded which had been across
his face, his triceps flexing.

“What time is it?” His voice was bedroomy, grazing along her skin.

“Six a.m.”

“Come back to bed, baby,” he said, draping an arm around her.

“I can’t.” She wiggled him off and impulsively clasped his face between her hands,
softening her voice. “I can’t do this, Daniel.”

He groaned and turned his head to nuzzle her palm with his lips, lightly nipping her
before he tried gathering her against him again. “I can’t think right now, Monica.
Come back to bed with me. This is the first good night’s sleep I’ve had in years.
We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

She resisted him, edging off the bed. “It
is
tomorrow. Daniel, I shouldn’t have spent the night.” Her voice wanted to crack on
the last sentence when he slowly, slowly opened his eyes, and she couldn’t even hold
that gaze.

It took every ounce of strength in her being to find the same girl, the same woman,
who’d stood up before both judge and jury and related how she’d found her parents
dead, after an hour’s shouting match and then another several of silence, how she
had found them in the master bedroom with their wrists slit. Dad had also cut his
throat. Or maybe mother had done it, she wasn’t sure.

Nobody was sure.

She felt the cold go through her again and said in a soft but toneless voice, as she
stared at his throat, “I can’t do this. You’ve always known I can’t. I merely didn’t
want to leave without telling you that whatever this is, it’s over.”

“Look at me when you talk to me,” he said, and then he gently grabbed her face and
pulled it to him, her jaw cupped in his palm from ear to ear, thumb on one side, four
fingers on the other. “That’s better. Now tell me, Monica.”

She clamped her teeth and, pushing his arm away, stood back at the ill-concealed anger
in his voice. “I’m trying to fix this. It was wrong of me to ask you to sleep with
me. We can’t do this anymore.”

“Why did you ask me, Monica? You really think I’m buying that you wanted a fuck buddy?
Sex wasn’t the driving force here, princess, you just used it as an excuse to come
to me at last.” He uncoiled from the bed like a snake, suddenly coming to his full
height, his eyes and voice sharpening as he edged closer.

She held her ground, but inside she was shaking with the truth of his words, with
his nearness, with the pain of being at odds with him minutes after being warm and
content in his arms and in his bed.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Monica,” he said, his eyes fiercely tender as he
stroked a loose sable hair and rubbed it between his fingers like it were precious.
“Only the fact that the man you’re in love with is right here, and you want him with
every bit of your being.”

She stiffened when he stroked his thumb along her lower lip, his voice dropping further.
“Who is it you think of when you pleasure yourself? I know, Monica. I know who you
think of, because it’s you who I think of, too.” He turned her face up to his when
she tried to avoid his flaming green gaze. “Every woman to me is a mirage of you,
but my God I’ve been eating grapes all my life and my body gets even hungrier when
all it wants is this … fucking … red … apple … and I want you to feed it to me, my
love. I want you to feed me every day of you, just you … my one obsession, my one
sole addiction.”

She stepped back, her heart pounding, her systems trembling awake at his words. “Please
don’t touch me. I can’t think when you touch me.” She raised her arms to hold him
back, forcing herself to meet his gaze and the roiling force of the emotions flaming
inside him, bearing herself to hold the weight of this startlingly new misery she
was opening up inside her.

“You’re right. You’re right, Daniel,” she agreed, watching his face tighten at her
admission. “My problem isn’t me, and it’s not them. My problem is for how long, how
much, I’ve been trying to get over you.” His body tightened like a bowstring at the
admission, and he took a hungry step forward, but she halted him with her hand again.

“Please, don’t. Don’t touch me.” She drew in a ragged breath. “Daniel, I thought if
I caved in and found a way to be with you, it would ease. If you’re hungry, and eat,
you feel it eased … but it doesn’t.” She shook her head. “My taxi is waiting. I just
wanted to explain why I left and why I … can’t do this anymore. I need to step back
and breathe.” He was staring at her with anger and frustration, holding himself as
still as a statue with his hands tightly fisted at his sides. She impulsively cradled
his jaw because she had to touch him, could not help it. “I can’t bear to think of
us killing ourselves for each other like my parents.”

He caught her wrist and squeezed fiercely in a stunningly fast move, hissing through
his teeth, “Have the balls to love me, Monica.”

“I can’t! You can’t feel for someone like this and not hurt each other, Daniel. You
can’t feel this without doing something crazy. It’s so obvious to me now. I can’t
even look at you without feeling … without feeling …
undone
!”

His eyes flashed with more hunger, more need, more frustration. “Baby, you undo me,
too. The problem with your parents wasn’t that they loved each other too much, it
was that they loved themselves
more
and were too damned proud to fucking forgive when the other screwed the hell up!”

The words, though oddly true, stung fierce as whiplashes. “How
dare
you judge my parents!” she gasped, then she was storming down the hall, unable to
look at him any longer.

“Monica, I’m sorry…” He came walking behind her.

“Fuck you, Daniel. I don’t even want to be your friend anymore.”

“Damn you, I’m sorry.” Fiercely he grabbed her mid-step and spun her around. “We might
hurt each other sometimes, that’ll be inevitable, but we’ll work it out. Hell, it’s
my
turn, Monica! Jesus, you’ve made me stand back and watch other men take
my
place at the side of the woman I love for years!”

“I don’t
want
love, I’ve never wanted love. The only reason I came to sleep with you was to see
if sleeping with you would get it
out
of me!”

“How’s that fucking working out for you, huh? Is that all you made it out to be?”
He caught her face between his hands and dropped his head to hers, nuzzling her softly,
making her knees liquefy as he nibbled her nose. “Come with me to the Fall gala next
weekend. As mine. My partner. My woman.”

Every effort in her body was focused on suppressing the shiver his touch, his words,
his presence, elicited. “I can’t.”

He lowered his head and grazed her lips with his, seducing her with his words, his
warm breath. “You can’t, or you won’t?” he urged.

“I can’t. I’m going with Roland.”

He pulled back with a jolt, stunned, and Monica quickly took this advantage to put
even more distance between them. His face had gone blank, and her chest throbbed in
a way she had never imagined it could possibly hurt. She felt like she had physically
hurt him, like she had physically struck him with a paddle.

His voice was completely alien, a whisper full of pain and anguish and anger. “He’s
not even what you want, damn you.”

“But he’s what I
choose,
Daniel.” Her voice shook uncontrollably. “You’re the prince of this city, whether
you like it or not. You’re … you’ll forget about me. And maybe we can be friends in
a couple of years, like last time. I can’t do this, please understand. Good-bye, Daniel.”
She pushed the button on the wall so that the heavy doors parted, and then she walked
through them and out of his life.

*   *   *

The instant the doors closed behind her, Daniel spun around in a blinding rage. He
grabbed the remote for his intelligence system, and slammed it impulsively into the
wall, then he charged down his hall, all the while hating her, loving her. Hating
her cowardice. Hating his own.

He was soon in the shower, leaning his head against the cold marble wall, cursing
her to hell, cursing his life to hell, wondering why in the hell he had to be in love
with the one woman who didn’t want him, who didn’t need him, who didn’t want to love
him.

He groaned and slammed the heel of his palm into the wall, dying of sheer frustration.
Before heading to the office, he stopped by Graves’s place. He was his best friend.
The last time Daniel had been here, he had found out he was sleeping with Chloe, and
he’d smashed Graves’s face in. Now he arrived to find his friend partially dressed
in slacks and an open dress shirt, Chloe in a similar shirt that almost swallowed
her up. Upon seeing her brother, she came up to him with her big concerned eyes, just
like his, and wrap her arms around him just like he needed her to. “Danny, what’s
wrong?”

He was just silent, putting his head against hers. She was little and sweet, his sister,
and he wanted to sag from the goddamned tension of battling with Monica this morning.
Chloe was so warm, so giving … why couldn’t Monica love him like she loved Graves?
Goddamn it, why couldn’t Monica love him,
period
!

“Danny, talk to me.”

He dragged in a breath, then scraped a hand down her hair, missing the tender softness
of Monica’s body against him, the way she went when she put down all her walls and
put the damned Ice Maiden to bed, so there was only Monica in his arms, warm and taunting,
hungry and wanting …

“I need a date for Saturday’s gala, Chlo. Would you mind if I stole you for a couple
of hours that evening?” he asked her, then he glanced Graves, who watched, dark and
somber, from the kitchen.

“No, I don’t mind,” Chloe said warily.

Daniel waited for his best friend to say something. Graves was wild about her. Daniel
never imagined a man more worthy of his sister, but he took care of her, protected
her. They took care of each other. Sought and cuddled each other. “That all right,
Graves?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah, man, of course.”

“Of course it’s okay,” Chloe said at the same time Graves brought three cups of coffee.
“But why would you go with me when you could take anyone?” she asked.

Daniel grunted. “Not anyone.” The misery in his chest began to tighten at the reminder.
“I’ll pick you up Saturday at eight then.” He kissed her forehead and stood, and she
caught his hand.

“It’s her again, isn’t it?” Chloe asked, her eyes searching his expression.

Daniel just nodded and headed for the elevator.

“Are you talking about who I think you’re talking about?” Graves asked.

“Yeah.” Daniel waited for the elevator.

“The Ice—”

“Yes,” Daniel cut him off, raising a hand. “Her.”

Graves nodded, no judgment in his hazel eyes. He wasn’t a very talkative man, and
thank God for that. Monica was a topic that always hurt to speak about. She had been
the “big white elephant in the room” with his friends his entire life. No one dared
mention her—at least rarely. She was a hot button for him, and nobody pressed it.
Especially Graves, his closest friend. He knew what loving Monica had done to him
in his twenties. Daniel hadn’t loved a woman ever since, had never again allowed himself
to be vulnerable with one.