Secrets and Sins: Raphael: A Secrets and Sins novel (Entangled Ignite) (13 page)

Silence echoed in the room. Out of habit, she stiffened as if waiting for the rejection, the confidence-bruising comments. The sharp sting of pity.

“I didn’t know you had dyslexia,” he murmured, his thumb absently rubbing back and forth over the inside of her knee.

She waved away his words with a flick of her wrist, hurrying to cut off the condolences as if she had a disease. Not from him. She couldn’t bear to hear that “Bless your heart” tone from him.

“I’m not ashamed of it…now. But when I was a girl—a painfully shy little girl from a wealthy family and attending one of the most prestigious private schools in Boston—it was…”
Horrible. Devastating. Terrifying
. “As far back as I remember, I was different. I tried to hide it with little tricks like memorizing, asking questions, bluffing. Math, reading, spelling—they were the stuff of nightmares to me then. The letters, the numbers, they didn’t appear the same to me as they did to the other kids.”

“But art wasn’t,” he interrupted. “Pictures, drawing, painting. You excelled in those.”

She smiled, nodded. “Art was my…savior. I wasn’t different in art class; I was better. Not that being able to draw meant much to the kids I went to school with or my father. In my world, ‘different’ meant ‘bad.’ It meant relentless teasing, being ostracized. And to a girl of seven, eight, and nine, those kids’ acceptance was nearly as important as pleasing a critical, domineering, impossible-to-satisfy father.”

“Father” seemed to echo over and over as if bouncing off the walls of the bedroom. She almost cringed as her words replayed in her head like a sound bite. God, she hadn’t meant to admit so much. To reveal so much.

Even now she could hear her father’s caustic criticisms like a blade slicing into her brain.

I don’t give a damn about drawing. A monkey can draw with its feet.

It’s ABCs, Greer. ABCs. Maybe we need to send you back to kindergarten with the other babies to learn how to read.

You’re an Addison. We don’t have idiots in our family.

Her dyslexia was moderate, but to her father it’d meant damaged. Dysfunctional. Stupid. Though she was a woman of twenty-six now, those words from the man who was supposed to believe she was perfect even when she wasn’t…call her beautiful even though she’d been more duckling than swan…love and accept her even when the world didn’t…those words from her father had burrowed deep in her heart, her soul. Forever changed how she saw herself and other people.

The nine-year-old eventually grew to adulthood and came to recognize who and what the man and woman who’d raised her were. But there were still moments—such as now, when she was splaying herself open without a safety net—the old doubts resurrected like ghosts refusing to go into the light. If her own father couldn’t love her, how could others? If her own father couldn’t find something in her worthy of his loyalty, how could she expect others to? Like Gavin. Like Aubrey. Like her mother.

Like Raphael.

“I met your father once,” Raphael murmured. “About five years ago. We were hired to test the strength of the security and information system at his bank’s headquarters and fix the weaknesses. He was one of our first big clients.” He paused, rubbed his thumb over the mark. “He was also an arrogant shit. And I was thirty at the time. I can imagine how terrifying a nine-year-old would’ve found him.”

She stared at him. Snickered. Then burst into laughter.
An arrogant shit
. Yeah, that about summed up Ethan Addison to the—

Warm, firm lips pressed to her knee. Directly over the scar.

Her breath snagged in her throat, held prisoner by the heart that had soared there to join it. On pure reflex, she tangled her fingers in his tousled hair—whether to pull him away or hold him there, she couldn’t decide.

Pleasure zinged from her joint, up her thigh, and powered straight to her sex. Deep inside, she pulsed with impatient need. Her feminine muscles clenched as if in urgent demand to be taken, to be filled as only he could do it. Her inner thighs tensed in anticipation of finally wrapping themselves around his narrow hips as his cock nudged, then penetrated, the empty sheath that hadn’t forgotten the delicious stretching his width caused.

All this from a kiss to her knee.

Jesus, what would happen if those beautiful lips traveled higher? Would she spread her legs wider and welcome him? Would she lift her ass, silently beg him to taste, to touch, to fuck? Would she come unglued for him as he sipped from her sex, curled his tongue around her clitoris, slid his fingers deep in her spasming core, easing and agitating the terrible, exciting ache?

She squeezed her eyes closed, flexed her fingers in his dark strands, and swallowed a groan.

Yes. Oh, God, yes. She would do each of those things. And more.

Those amazing lips lifted, and before she could draw another breath, swept over the mark on her collarbone. Even though only his lips touched her, she was overwhelmed by him: his nearness, his scent, his heat. His long hair tickled her chin and jaw, and she had to force herself to remain still or she’d do something incredibly insane like nuzzle the thick strands.

His mouth swept over her chin.

“Raphael,” she whispered. That’s it; all she said was his name, because she didn’t know what to say after that.

Stop. Don’t stop.

Enough. I can’t get enough.

No more. More.

His lashes lifted, and his eyes ambushed her, ensnared her with the desire and compassion darkening his navy eyes to nearly black. He brushed his mouth over the old injury again, and a curious melting unfurled in a closed-off section of her heart.

The meaning behind the caresses wasn’t lost on her.

She’d never had a mother’s kiss take away her pain; her hurts and childhood spills had been left to various housekeepers and nannies. The old saying about kissing boo-boos had always seemed like sentimental drivel. But now…now she believed. No, the sweet stroke of his mouth over the marks couldn’t erase the past or the memories. But after tonight, when she looked at the scars, it would be this moment she remembered. The delicate press of firm lips. The soft huff of his breath against her skin. The storm of hunger softened by the gentle rain of affection.

He’d gifted her pleasure for pain.

And she longed to offer him the same.

She loosened her grip on his hair and eased away from him, at the same time palming his shoulders and nudging him back.

Disappointment flared in his eyes before they blanked, became unreadable. She didn’t waste time explaining that she wasn’t rejecting him. Instead, she scooted down the bed and showed him.

His sharp inhalation delighted her ears like the most beautiful aria. So she parted her lips and dragged the tip of her tongue up the Barbie versus Matchbox injury. He fisted the sheets next to his hips, and she couldn’t squelch the surge of pride and satisfaction that swirled in her chest. Next, she moved to those fists—the scarred knuckles. She trailed a kiss over the very thin pale lines. Back and forth. Back and forth. Until those long, elegant fingers capable of breaking into the most convoluted security system and drawing forth the most devastating pleasure slowly straightened, then turned over to cradle her cheek.

She skimmed up his body until they were nose to nose, eye to eye. Eyes that were no longer inscrutable but hot, fierce with hunger. Trembling, she cupped his head, tilted it forward, and pressed her mouth to the most tragic wound of them all. The one that had to cut the deepest. Even if he would never admit it.

His hands slid over her scalp, twisted in her hair, and dragged her down until their breath mingled, mated. The moist blast of air from his parted lips caressed hers seconds before his mouth did. He took her. There wasn’t any other way to describe it. With a low, rumbling moan he
took
her. Consumed her. Dragged her under. Helpless to respond, she opened her mouth to his invasion, and his tongue swept inside, ravaging, tasting, devouring. He slanted his head, demanding she give him even more.

Executing a quick flip, he covered her as soon as her back hit the mattress. She widened her legs, cradled him in the vee of her thighs even as she wound her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. Oh, God. She shuddered, savoring the heavy weight of him. This was a first. She closed her eyes, memorizing how his hard, sculpted frame countered her smaller, more slender body. The width and length of his truck’s backseat had prevented them from experiencing this old-fashioned but perfect position.

Stop! Are you nuts?
a small—very small—voice of sanity scolded
. This is crazy. It’s—

He sank his strong teeth into her bottom lip. Tugged. Licked.

To hell with crazy
.

Gripping the nape of his neck, she arched toward him, became the aggressor. She didn’t wait for him to dip into her mouth, but followed him, challenging him to surrender to her this time. Tiny bites stung her scalp as his fingers tightened in her hair, breathing the flame burning inside her into a conflagration.

“Please,” she whispered, desire roughening her voice to a sandpapered rasp. She clutched at his shoulders as he abandoned her mouth and slid down her body, taking his wild, addictive taste with him. But he didn’t pay her plea any attention. Lust hardened his features, tautened the golden skin across his sharp cheekbones, emphasizing the sensual fullness of lips still damp from their kiss.

He inched down her body, hooked his fingers in the waistband of her boy shorts, and, with his hooded gaze pinned to her face, slowly drew the material down. Air kissed the skin across her hip bones and low on her abdomen. Her heart thudded a molasses-thick beat, pulsing heavy desire through her blood, clogging her veins. She couldn’t move, could only breathe passion.

“I’ve been dreaming about tasting you. Not knowing how you feel against my tongue has been driving me crazy. My only regret from that night is not putting my mouth on you.” He paused in sliding down her shorts, cupped her sex over the blue cotton.
Oh, God
, she silently cried out, bowing into the caress. Just one touch, and he’d shoved her toward an orgasm looming just beyond her reach. One. Touch. “So how about it, princess? Will you come in my mouth? Will you let me find out if reality lives up to fantasy?”

She blushed. Even with his hand pressed between her thighs. Which didn’t make sense. It wasn’t the first time he’d uttered such erotic words to her.
That night
, some of the things that had come out of his mouth as he’d touched her, thrust into her… She shivered. The raw comments should’ve embarrassed her. Instead they were like fuel tossed on the fire already burning under her skin. He did that to her. This man who was the opposite of everything she’d been groomed to seek in a partner, a lover.

And he was the only man who treated her like a woman. Whose sole focus was pleasuring her. Who allowed her to see how she—quiet, reserved Greer—affected him.

He empowered her.

“Princess?” He ground the heel of his palm against her clit, dragging a groan from deep in her throat. “You have to say the words.” His voice lowered, roughened. “I want to hear them.”

Yes. God, please
.

When he didn’t continue what he’d started, she grimaced. Her agreement reverberated in her head like a bell, but she hadn’t spoken the words aloud. She parted her lips…

Axl Rose suddenly wailed “Welcome to the Jungle” into the heavy quiet.

Raphael stiffened above her as the angry Guns n’ Roses anthem pealed from somewhere in the house.

“
Fuck
.” His head dropped forward and another curse rolled from him. Muscles coiled and relaxed under his skin as he rolled off the bed. He tunneled his fingers into his hair, sweeping the strands out of his face as his narrowed gaze zeroed in on her from beside the bed. “That’s Chay. He wouldn’t be calling this time of night unless it was important.”

She nodded; it was all she could manage. To go from being covered by the furnace heat of his body to nothing but cool air? She felt…naked. She still wore her T-shirt, and he hadn’t removed her panties, but she still felt…naked. She drew the sheet up, hiding beneath the cotton barrier.

Raphael cast a look over his shoulder in the direction of the door and the relentless ringing of his phone. But he didn’t leave.

“Do you want to know why that story about Gavin agreeing to a period of abstinence was so hard to swallow?” he growled. Tension vibrated in his still form, in the fisted fingers at his sides. She couldn’t respond, couldn’t force air past her suddenly constricted lungs to say anything. “Because he had this,” he swept a hand through the air, indicating her body. “He had you. Your passion. Your heat. Your love. Free and clear. Anytime he chose to lose himself in you, he could. I’ve been inside you, Greer. I know how sweet you are. How you can squeeze the breath out of a man, make him believe he’s died, and thank God for it.” His harsh breaths filled the room like a dull roar. “No man willingly walks away from that. Definitely not by choice.”

With one last glittering stare, he exited the bedroom.

And she expelled the air she’d been holding.

As the indistinct, low rumble of his voice reached her from down the hall, she rolled onto her side, trying to rein in the need still throbbing in her body like a drum. And the hurt pulsing in her heart like an open wound. She closed her eyes.

Saved by the bell.

Chapter Fourteen

Greer stared out the tinted passenger window of Raphael’s truck, not really noticing the businesses and buildings lining Comm Ave. The shops and apartments congealed into a brown-and-gray blur, just background noise to the two thoughts dominating her brain.

One: She and Raphael had sex in the backseat of the same truck they rode in.

Two: She and Raphael almost had sex last night.

The first had her studiously avoiding glancing toward the rear of the car. The second…well, the second had her studiously avoiding glancing in the mirror. Or at the silent, brooding man behind the steering wheel.

If she had a desk in front of her, she’d bang her head against it. Repeatedly. God, how could she have been so stupid? So reckless…again? Because the consequences from the first time hadn’t been life-altering at all.

Great. Now she was getting sarcastic with her own self.

She sighed and shifted her errant attention from the South End landscape to her lap where she clenched the straps of her purse. The last few months had taught her a valuable lesson. One bad decision had led to another and to another like a domino effect. Agreeing to marry a man she didn’t love out of obligation and insecurity had resulted in a broken engagement. A broken engagement and draining confrontation with her parents had led to sympathy drinks at a neighborhood dive bar. And the drinks had led to sex in a car with an almost-stranger. A compelling, sexy, charismatic stranger who had shown her in exacting detail what the big deal about sex was, but still…

She slid a side glance at Raphael. A gray slouch hat that only pretty-boy models and rock stars could get away with drew his hair away from his face, revealing his striking profile to her—she admitted it—hungry gaze. Strong facial bone structure, olive skin, and a full, wide mouth hinted at a Mediterranean heritage. She could easily imagine Raphael in an ancient coliseum with helmet, sword, breastplate, and shin guards, meeting and defeating other warriors who dared strut out to engage him in battle. He was fierce. A survivor. A fighter. A protector.

A rusty, long-forgotten emotion rustled in her chest. It’d been so long since she’d felt the stirring, it creaked and groaned from disuse.
Need
. Not physical need, although it seemed that insistent desire was never very far when it came to Raphael.

No, this yearning burrowed deeper, yawned wider. It was the need to love. The need to give her heart freely without fear of rejection. Without fear of betrayal. Without fear of losing herself.

All her life she’d observed the scarring repercussions of one-sided love. Her father had rejected not just his wife’s devotion but also his son’s and daughter’s until, unlike their mother, they’d stop offering it. The pain of being slapped down and away had come at too high a price, and at some point she and Ethan had refused to pay the cost any longer. But for her mother, the constant infidelities, inattention, or other small cruelties hadn’t dimmed her consuming passion. At the detriment of her own wants, desires, and identity, she’d poured everything into her husband, leaving nothing for her children or herself.

If passion—if
love
—did that to a person, Greer wanted nothing of it. The emotion poets waxed about and singers crooned over imprisoned. It humiliated. It hurt.

Yet…yet as much as she might want to deny that craving to love, to be so damn vulnerable, existed inside her, she couldn’t.

And in that instant, Raphael became that much more dangerous.

Staring into his strength, his forceful personality, his fiery passion, he quickened that need she’d squelched long ago. Even as her brain acknowledged that when all this—the threats, stalking—was over, he would walk away from her.

Or worse.

He would ask her to stay out of responsibility, duty, or pity.

And if the temptation proved too great, and she agreed because of their baby, because the damn flicker in her chest swelled into a flame, one day the love would break her, strip away who she was, and shred her into pieces.

Because he didn’t love her back.

No!
The power of the objection tore through her like a mental slap to the face. Images flashed in her frontal lobe in a harsh, vivid slideshow of memories.

Her mother staring after her father’s ramrod, unyielding back, crushed as he walked away to whatever business dinner or current secretary of the month had superseded his family.

Ethan, crumbled, devastated, as their father ordered him out of the house and the family until he “returned as a man.”

Her, accepting Gavin’s proposal, as relief, not joy, raced through her. With her dependable,
safe
friend as her husband, she wouldn’t have to worry about an emotionally lopsided marriage like her parents’.

Her, stoic but so hurt as she sat in Raphael’s office as he firmly stated he didn’t believe her about being the father of their baby.

She blinked rapidly, driving back the tears.

Damn good thing she wasn’t in love with him.

“What’s wrong?” She didn’t turn to look at him, but she felt the weight of his stare on her cheek like a brief but heavy touch. “Between the sighing and the way you’re strangling that bag like it called you fat, something’s up,” he said.

She shook her head, returning her gaze to the window. “Nothing.”

“Oh, shit,” he muttered.

The women in his family must’ve taught him well, because he refrained from saying anything else. Ten minutes later, he pulled the SUV into a parking space in the lot outside her OB/GYN’s office. She’d chosen this doctor because of her proximity to Ethan’s South End home. Fortunately, Dr. Katherine Jensen had turned out to be kind, funny, and professional. She’d soothed over some of the fears Greer had walked in with. By the time she’d left the office, she’d breathed a bit easier knowing Dr. Jensen would be with her when the time came to bring her baby into the world. But now as she stepped out of Raphael’s truck and headed toward the brick medical building, she had a whole new reason for her attack of nerves.

And he strode beside her.

“Damn.” He halted, patted the front pocket of his black jeans. “I left my phone in the car. Wait for me. I’ll be right back.” She nearly rolled her eyes as he stared her down until she nodded her agreement. As he jogged back toward the SUV, her own cell hummed in her jacket.

She removed it, glanced down at the screen. “Damn, not now,” she breathed. Her pulse kicked up, pounding at the base of her throat. She swallowed and hated the reaction her mother was capable of eliciting from her.

Her mother.

The last words her mother had spoken to her had been, “Oh, Greer.” The disappointed lament had accompanied a shake of the head right before her father had bared his perfectly capped and veneered fangs and struck, spilling his cold, burning venom into her veins. Celeste had stood by, duplicitous in her silence as he’d called Greer a slut, an idiot…worthless.

The ringing stopped, and the missed call notification scrolled across her screen.

She heaved a sigh, then a “damn it” as the cell trilled again. With a growl, she swiped her thumb across the answer bar.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Greer.” Celeste Addison’s cultured voice with just the right amount of warmth and remorse emanated in her ear. “Sweetheart. How are you?”

How am I? How
am I?
At best there’s a malcontent against the wealthy out there who believes I escaped justice. At worst, a deranged stalker wants me and my baby hurt or dead. How am I?

“Fine, Mother.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “And how are you and Dad?”

Stiff. Formal. As warm as an icicle in the abominable snowman’s Frigidaire. Either her mother didn’t hear the cold in Greer’s voice or she chose to ignore it. After all these years, Greer still didn’t know which option was the truth. If denial were a pageant, Celeste would win the Ultimate Grand Supreme title.

“We’re doing as well as can be expected in light of all the…unpleasantness.” Celeste sighed. “There are still a few reporters who camp outside the house and call your father at the office. But what can we do…?” Her voice trailed off, and in the silence that followed, Greer could practically feel her mother’s expectation reaching out to her, urging her to apologize for the inconvenience her actions had brought them. Greer gritted her teeth against the “I’m sorry” that automatically wanted to tumble off her tongue from years of habit.

“Well, anyway,” Celeste continued, a slight note of nervousness entering her voice. “I was calling because I spoke with your brother.”

“Yes, Ethan told me he called you.”

“Greer,” she murmured, a note of hurt replacing nerves. “You should’ve called us. I was terrified when Ethan told me you were in the hospital. Just terrified.”

Guilt. Her mother wielded it like Thor’s hammer. And in spite of Celeste’s abandonment and her condemning silence since Gavin’s death, the tactic worked. Greer fisted her fingers, squeezing tightly as if the action could act as a tourniquet against the oily shame worming its way beneath her skin.

“Dad ordered me not to contact him or you. I didn’t think you would want to hear from me.”

Celeste’s silence boomed in Greer’s ear, a deafening percussion that echoed in the heart she’d believed closed to her mother. “Well, yes.” Her mother paused, and Greer could imagine her twisting her fingers, the nervous gesture her tell. “But that was…
before
.”

“Before what?” she asked, the answer already clenching her belly, leaving behind a dull ache. It shouldn’t hurt this damn much. She’d expected this call. So why couldn’t her heart grow a pair?

“Sweetheart, Ethan told me about the baby,” Celeste admitted, voice husky with emotion. “Greer, come home. Now that you’re pregnant, this changes everything. Your father will welcome you—”

“It’s not Gavin’s.”

“—back. Wh-what?” she whispered.

“The baby isn’t Gavin’s,” Greer repeated. A subzero numbness invaded her chest, plunging her heart into a deep freeze.

“Of course it is,” her mother protested weakly. “It has to be! I’ve already told—”

“Dad?” she finished, bitterness a sour tang on her tongue. “Sorry to disappoint you and him again, but this proves I’m the slut he accused me of being. Sorry to…” Tears—stupid, useless,
pathetic
tears—clogged her throat, tightening around the caustic words. “I have to go.”

“Wait, Greer!”

Eyes squeezed shut, she paused. Hope that stank of desperation rose up inside her as she delayed hanging up for…what? For her mother to say, “I don’t care whose baby you’re carrying.” To say, “I’ll stand by you.” To say, “I love you…”

“You can’t be sure, sweetheart,” Celeste babbled. “You can
claim
the child is Gavin’s. No one would question—”

“Good-bye, Mother.”

She ended the call, her mother’s protests still echoing in her ear. Her arm dropped to her side like a leaden weight. Disgust, pain, rage, shame surged from her, ready to raze every organ or nerve in its path. The rounded edges of the phone bit into her clenching fingers.
Why do I do it to myself, damn it?
What she wouldn’t give to anesthetize her dumb, bleeding heart. Only an idiot does the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome. Twenty-six. Twenty-six years old, and she was still learning the same fucked-up lesson.

Hope is for suckers.

You can claim the child is Gavin’s.

A bitter laugh bubbled past her lips. As though her child was a ticket back into Boston society’s rarefied, unforgiving circle. A pass for her mother back into the Wellses’ good graces. That’s all she and her unborn child were to Celeste. Things to be used.

It shouldn’t have been possible for her to hurt more. Her mother’s call had been like ripping a sliver of skin off an exposed nerve.

“You okay?”

She didn’t turn around at the low, gravelly voice behind her. Shame kept her facing forward.

“How much did you overhear?”

“Enough.” His solid presence at her back was both pleasure and torment. A pleasure because even though inches separated them, she could feel him there. And a torment because she wanted to lean back into that strength. Borrow some. And that would be the most stupid thing she could do. Come to rely on someone who would not be there.

Or worse.

Come to
want
to rely on someone who would not be there.

Hell. This day was just getting better and better.

She stepped forward. And walked away.

…

Raphael swept his thumb over the face of his cell, scrolling through his emails. He responded to a few, deleted some. Then he played a rousing game of
Angry Birds
.

Anything to keep from looking around the waiting room crowded with pregnant women.

Jesus, the memories.

The last time he’d been in a room full of expectant mothers Yolanda had been at his side. He’d been happy—blissfully so. Naively so. He’d discovered later she’d alternated inviting him and the guy she’d been seeing behind his back to her prenatal appointments. Shit, even now he cringed imagining what those nurses and the doctor thought of him with his sappy grin, holding Yolanda’s hand, delighted about his woman and child.

His grip tightened around the phone. Apparently his heart wasn’t an atrophied husk in his chest. Because it hurt like a son of a bitch.

Next to him, Greer flipped through a magazine, probably pretending to read. She appeared relaxed, composed. The icy socialite she was. But he noted the tension in her shoulders, the punishing grip on the glossy pages. Not that he could blame her—not after overhearing that fucked-up conversation in the parking lot. He’d stood behind her unnoticed for most of the call and had clearly picked up her mother’s end of the exchange. Particularly that part about claiming the baby was Gavin’s. Rage poured through his veins, firing him up as if the heat in the car was on full blast. What the hell kind of mother did she have? Was forced to grow up with? Hell, from the revelation about the puppy to what he’d overheard, Medusa probably had more mothering instincts than that bitch.