My Soul To Keep (Soul Series Book 1) (30 page)

“You were already spoiled, Rhyson, and it had nothing to do with me,” I say, hoping to thin the air that thickens around us when he touches me. “Where’s Grip? You promised I’d get to see a session.”

“I
may
have invited you over a little early.” He pushes back into me, sliding an arm around me again. “You think I want to share you with Marlon?”

“Rhyson.” I step back again and take a deep breath. “We need to talk about—”

“You said soon.” His voice, his eyes declare he means to hold me to it.

“I know.” I lean against the pool table. “But it’s a big step, and we need to talk about what this could look like.”

“It looks like us together.” He frowns. “It doesn’t have to be this complicated, Pep.”

“That’s easy for you to say. There aren’t photographers lined up at my door when you come to my place.” My phone ringing interrupts. I pull it out of the slit pocket of my skirt. “Geez Louise. It’s the bill collector for my mom’s hospital. I need to take this.”

“No.” Rhyson reaches for the phone. “Let it roll into voice mail.”

I pull back, shaking my head.

“Believe me, I wish I could, but they’ve called like three times today, and I’ve been ignoring.” I walk across the room toward one of the leather couches. “It’ll only take a sec. I actually meant to call anyway to make sure they got the payment I made after Christmas. I don’t want them bothering Aunt Ruthie about it.”

“Pep, I think you should wait.” Rhyson’s frown gets heavier every time the phone rings, but I answer anyway.

“Hello.” I sit on the leather couch and rest against the cool cushions.

“Hello. This is Central Financial,” the representative says from the other end. “Am I speaking with Mai Lin Pearson?”

“This is her daughter, Kai. Mai Lin passed last year, but I’m responsible for the medical debt.”

“That’s why I’m calling. We received your last payment and will be sending an electronic receipt reflecting the zero balance.”

“I did just make a payment, but it wouldn’t have brought the balance to zero.” I give a brief laugh. “That would be awesome, if it did. I’m hoping I can soon though.”

“Ms. Pearson, we received a payment for forty thousand, two hundred and four dollars and thirty-two cents last week.”

My heart stops, like the sun pausing in the sky overhead.

“That’s not possible. There must be some mistake. I didn’t make that payment.”

“It was made online.”

“Who made it?”

I already know there is only one person who has that kind of money so easily at his disposal and could have made that payment. Who didn’t want me to take this call.

“Ruthie Sherman was the name on the debit card. I believe she has access to this account too. I see a history of payments made by you both. You’re both listed as responsible parties.”

“Yes, but she . . .” I trail off. Aunt Ruthie and I talked about finances when I was home. She’s barely making ends meet with Glory Bee. There’s no way she paid this off. This representative doesn’t have the answers I need.

“I’ll be on the lookout for that receipt.”

“It should come to the e-mail we have on file.”

“Thank you.” My lips are numb, but I manage to get the words out.

I sit on the edge of the couch with my phone in my lap and frustration rolling up from my feet and over my legs until it reaches my heart. Rhyson looks way too casual for someone who knows we’re about to fight. He leans over the pool table, knocking a ball into the corner. I feel like one of those balls, rolling around at his behest, under his control. Being played by him.

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

I don’t even bother with all the exposition. I don’t want the lies or the excuses. Let’s just cut to the part where he went behind my back and did something he knew I would never ask him to do.

Rhyson doesn’t budge from his position, bent over the pool table, pole sliding between his fingers before knocking the ball.

“What was me?”

“Did you pay off my mother’s medical bills?”

He drops the pool stick and faces me, arms folded over his chest.

“Is the fight we’re about to have in lieu of a thank you card?”

“You shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t ask you to.”

“You should have. You could have.” Rhyson leans against the table, the frown on his face showing me he’s as frustrated with me as I am with him. “At any point I could have erased that debt, and would have gladly done it. You know that.”

“I don’t want your money, Rhyson.” I cross the space between the couch and the pool table until I’m standing close enough to see how dark and stormy his eyes have become.

“Oh, so you can accept money from the good people of Glory Falls Baptist Church, who can’t afford to help, but you can’t accept it from me, who won’t even miss it?”

“It’s not like that.”

“It
is
like that. You were fine with
them
collecting money at Christmas to help with the bills, but when you hear I gave enough to pay it off, it’s a problem.”

“I just needed to do it on my own.”

“No, you just needed to do it without me.”

He pins me to the spot with those knowing eyes. The ones that know I can barely stand being this close without touching him. The ones that tell me he feels the same.

“You know I don’t want your help.” I drop my eyes to the floor and my voice almost to a whisper. “Not with my career. Not with my bills.”

“What is this actually about, Pep?”

“You’re not listening to me.”

He lifts my chin, taking my eyes captive again.

“You’re not telling the truth. Tell me what it’s actually about.”

“You’re getting too close.” I force myself to keep looking at him, even though it will show him more than I want him to see. “Too deep.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know how close and deep I want to be with you.”

His words wrap around me as surely as his arms would, and the squeeze is too tight. What should comfort, constrains, and I need just a little room to breathe, to figure this out.

“Rhyson, I just want a little space to make it on my own.” I look up, some of my frustration dying. “To do things for myself.”

“You know what I think this is really about?” He cups my chin, eyes softening, and strokes my jaw with his thumb. “That step on your front porch.”

“What?” I pull back a few inches, hoping it will put distance between his words and the truth I don’t want to admit to myself. “It was just a step.”

“Not the step itself, but what it represented to you. Your mother depended on your father and wanted him so badly, she left that step like that for over a decade because he said he’d come back to fix it. You don’t want to depend on me for anything. You don’t want to need me for anything. You don’t want to trust me, but that’s what a relationship is about.”

“We aren’t in a relationship.”

Yet.

“Now who’s lying? I’m not in this by myself, Pep. You may not want to call it a relationship, but I don’t want anyone else.” He presses his hand just below the small of my back, resting at the curve of my butt. “And neither do you.”

Desire fogs any rational thought, but I’m not ready to let this go. Not until I can make him see my point of view. If he doesn’t understand, we’ll never make it anyway.

“Rhyson, how did you feel when your parents controlled you?”

“What the
hell
do my parents have to do with this?” He barely opens his lips to let the words out.

I shake my head sadly. “You don’t even see the parallel, do you?”

“There isn’t one.” Rhyson’s eyes harden. “How can you compare me doing that for you to what my parents did to me?”

“It’s not what you did, it’s that you took away my chance to do it for myself. That you took away my choices. It’s as much a control move as what they did to you.”

“That’s not true.” Rhyson’s eyes go from hard to soft in a few blinks. “I don’t want to control you. I want to
be
with you. I want things to be easier for you so you can focus on your career.”

“My career. My life. My responsibilities. So maybe you’re right.” I place a hand on his chest, looking up to study his face. “I don’t want to
need
you.”

“Well, I need you.” He pulls both my hands into one of his over his heart. “I think about you as soon as I wake up and before I go to sleep. I want to call you whether I find out I’m performing in Times Square or if I beat Marlon at Madden. Little things, big things. It doesn’t matter.”

His voice falls so far, I’m leaning into him to catch his next words.

“I want to share everything with you. I want to kiss you all the time. I want to kiss you right now.”

I shouldn’t have come. All the things I felt and fought, the things I suspected he felt too, he just spewed all over me. And as much as I want to be, I’m not sure I’m ready. I’ll never forget seeing my Mama in bed for days after Daddy left. And even though she got up, I suspect a part of her never left that bed, but just stayed there, waiting. We had to leave the house where she grew up and where I spent my first years, because Daddy left us with nowhere to go. Mama learned to stand on her two feet, and I’ve done the same. I just didn’t count on Rhyson sweeping me off of them.

“We’re obviously on different pages about this.” I pull my hands free and turn to leave, but he steps in front of me, blocking my grand exit. “Let’s talk later.”

“Enough talking.”

The heat of his body grabs me before his hands do. He traps my chin between two fingers, taking my mouth in a paradox of rough and tender. I want to move. To slide away from his body pressing me into the pool table. But I can’t. Not with his hand caressing my back. Not with his tongue in my mouth. Not with his erection pressing into my stomach. I can’t. I won’t. I have been denying myself this, and I’m so damn hungry. My mouth opens under his, ravenous and wet and hot. His groan vibrates against my lips.

“Yes. Good God, yes, Pep.” His words slip down my throat.

I strain up on tiptoes, clawing my fingers into his dark hair, forcing him closer. He lifts me onto the pool table, planting himself between my knees. His fingers skim my bare thigh, working up my leg until he reaches a damp patch of silk. He pushes my panties aside, rubbing his hand into the wet flesh there before sliding one long finger and then another inside of me. I rock into these fingers which have awed millions with their skill. They own me. I’m the instrument in his hands. He’s playing me. Plucking at me. Strumming me.

He tugs at the wide neck of my sweater until it falls away from my shoulder, slipping his hand in and cupping my naked breast. He brushes his fingers over my nipple, and I lose my mind and every inhibition. My head flops back and I stretch my legs wider, offering him anything he wants.

“Are you kidding me?” His question burns the vulnerable curve of my neck as he drags his lips to my shoulder. “You come here wearing no bra and think I won’t . . .”

He abandons the words, his dark, untidy head disappearing under my sweater, and before I have time to regain even millimeters of sanity, my nipple is in his mouth and he’s suckling me. Not gentle. Not soft. My breasts are so small, he almost eats me whole. Every draw, every suck, every bite sends a power surge to my core until my knees hold his hips in a desperate grip, and my nails rake across the flat surface of the pool table behind me.

His mouth at my breast. His fingers inside me. His clean scent surrounding me. I have nowhere to hide anymore. I am exposed. I want to spread myself wide open for him. That voice that has been telling me I can’t rely on him. I can’t trust him. I can’t
need
him—that voice is stunned into silence by his thorough possession of my body, by the inferno between my legs, blazing a hole right through my soul and scorching my heart.

His hands push at the sweater from inside, urging my arms above me until it is over my head and discarded on the floor. The cool air embarrasses me, reminds me how little I have to offer up top. I scoot forward, covering my breasts and ready to bolt before he’s disappointed, but he presses one wide palm to my chest, pushing my hands aside.

“Let me look at you.” His eyes are so hot on my neck, shoulders, nipples, that heat simmers under my skin. “Damn, you’re beautiful, Pep.”

“I’m tiny.” I drop my eyes to my knees. “Are you a breast man?”

“I’m your man.” His finger traces one pert nipple until it tightens and strains forward. He tips up my chin, holding my eyes with his. “At least I want to be.”

He pushes me back until I’m laid out on the pool table, knees apart, arms flung over my head, bare nipples pointed up and in the air. He flips the skirt up over my stomach and tugs at my panties until they slip past my ankles. Before I have time to think of a way out, his fingers spread me. He tucks into the juncture at my thighs and kisses away the last of my resolve. I’m not going anywhere.

He is relentless. He bites my clit. Oh, God. No one has bitten me like that before. He licks and mouths and slides his tongue inside of me. Everything flammable below my waist incinerates, and the world goes dark before light bursts behind my eyelids. My toes clench, the muscles in my legs tighten, and I release a scream that punches a hole into the silence around us.

His breath comes heavy. His hands move quickly, urgently, sliding on a condom. He braces his hand on the table over my head. He’s going to—

“Ahhhhhhhh.” That’s me. Losing my breath as he slides inside. He pushes in slowly, savoring every inch of me he possesses along the way. He’s so thick. I’m so full. It’s too much, almost more than I can take, but my body is greedy for him.

“Okay?” He looks down at me, his forehead clumped into a frown. He’s holding back. “Pep, are you okay?”

I’m not okay. I’ve lost so much of myself to him already, and I don’t know how I will fix this. I only know I need him moving inside me. Taking me. I push my hips into him, and he groans, his eyes scrunching closed.

“Pep, you’re so tight.” He leans up, eyes pinning me to the table. “This feels . . . ahhhhh. Fuck.”

His strong thrusts scoot me up the table. I hook my ankles around his waist to lock us together and I receive him. I keep my eyes open as long as I can, watching his full bottom lip clamped between his teeth. Watching his face fight the pleasure engulfing both of us. I watch until his mouth drops open and his head falls back and his neck strains against the avalanche of sensation. I can’t watch anymore because I’m coming again myself. Toppling over this precipice into the inescapable pleasure I’ve denied myself for weeks. For months. For what feels like forever.