Taking Him (Lies We Tell) (20 page)

“What does it matter? It’s ancient history.”

“If it’s ancient history, then why were you still a virgin?”

His anger burned hotter. “Shit, because I wanted to be, okay?”

“Your rules, Hunter. You didn’t want me to touch you. You didn’t want me to move. Or speak.” The words became relentless, inexorable, and he wanted to run from them, escape them. “That’s not normal, Hunter.”

“Of course it’s not fucking normal, Ellie! I told you I was screwed up, didn’t I?”

“You don’t get the connection, do you?”

His mind blanked. “There is no connection.”

She was so close to him now, and it felt like she was slowly peeling back his skin, exposing soft tissue, sensitive nerve endings. “It’s her you see when you look at me, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Yes, it is.” Ellie’s eyes glittered like she had tears in them. “She still wants you too. I wondered why she seemed so territorial and I couldn’t work it out. But it makes sense now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said forcefully, trying to unclench his hands. “She’s always trying it on with me, but I have absolutely zero interest in her.”

“It does matter, Hunter! She abused you!”

He was moving before he’d even realised he’d done so, taking hold of her arms, gripping her. “There was no abuse,” he said fiercely. “None. I wanted it. I begged for it. I was fucking in love with her for Christ’s sake.”

Ellie made a little sound of pain, and he realised abruptly how tightly he was holding her, how his fingers were digging into her skin. Self-loathing, disgust, shame, guilt, welled up inside him like a thick, black tide, choking him. He was so screwed up. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her and yet look what he was doing. What a prick.

Hunter released her, horrified by the marks his fingers had left on her pale skin. “Jesus… I’m sorry, Ellie. I’m so sorry.”

She said nothing. For a long moment she stared at him then rose up on her tiptoes and put her arms around him, her warm body pressed to his with nothing but the cotton sheet between her bare skin and his.

“Don’t,” he said roughly, his hands dropping to her hips, wanting to wrench her away because he didn’t want the warmth or the soft pressure of her arms. Ellie’s presence felt like too much, burning like acid on an exposed wound. But she was twisted so tightly around him, he couldn’t pull her away without hurting her. And he couldn’t hurt her, not again.

The heat of her began to seep through the sheet and he realised he was shaking again. Like an old man. A hot, volatile emotion caught in his throat, making it hard to speak. “Let me go,” he forced out. “Ellie…please…”

But she didn’t. With one hand she pulled away the sheet between them instead, her bare skin burning against his, and turned her head into his neck, pressing kisses to his throat and collarbone.

Hunger began to build inside him, a desperate, intense need that he couldn’t seem to stop. The need to escape these feelings, this shame and guilt. Be free of them for one goddamned moment. And there was only one place he could do that. In bed with Ellie.

His hand caught the back of her head, tangling in her hair, pulling her head back, covering her mouth with his. A raw, desperate kiss that went on and on until there was nothing in the all the world but her.

She gave a soft moan as he pushed her up against the wall, hauling her leg up around his waist. Then she arched back, lifting her hips, and there was no thought. No reflection. No memories. Only need. He couldn’t wait, pushing into her hard and deep.

She gasped then lifted her hands, took his face between them. Looked into his eyes.

And he stopped, deep inside her, caught by her silver gaze.

“I won’t let you shut me out again,” she said hoarsely. “I won’t let you, do you understand?”

Perhaps he should have felt threatened by that. Certainly a week ago he would have. But he didn’t now. Instead he felt something he didn’t even have a name for that threaded through his desire and passion for her like gold thread, holding everything together.

He began to lean into her, wanting to kiss her throat, drive them both mindless, but she wouldn’t let him. “Look at me,” she murmured. “Look at me, Hunter.”

And he did. Looked into her eyes as he moved, as the pleasure built and the heat of her body set him on fire.

And as he burned, he kept on looking until there was nothing left of him but embers.

“Didn’t you have some kind of family staying?” Ellie eyed Kara’s suspiciously un-slept-on looking couch. The brightly coloured Indian throw was immaculate.

Kara gave her a blank look. “Family? Oh, yeah. My, uh, aunt. She left yesterday.”

“Why does that sound so bloody suspicious?”

“I have no idea. And more to the point, what’s that on your neck?”

Ellie had put a hand to the bruise Hunter had left on her neck the previous night before she could stop herself. “Nothing,” she said, collapsing on the couch. “I just bumped myself.”

Kara, standing at the breakfast bar in the apartment’s open-plan kitchen-lounge area, gave Ellie a look. “You bumped your neck? How the hell could you bump your neck?”

Ellie picked up the fringed end of the throw and toyed with it. Should she tell Kara about her and Hunter? She wanted to. She wanted to tell everyone. But then again what should she say? Because it wasn’t as if she and Hunter were in a relationship or were planning a future together or anything. All they were doing was sleeping together. A lot. Whenever they could get their hands on each other for the past week basically. And that wasn’t anything to announce. They hadn’t talked about it but they both knew that in five days, Ellie would be leaving for Tokyo.

Currently she was trying not to think about that. She was too happy with the novelty of going to sleep in Hunter’s bed every night and waking up in his arms every morning. Of being able to touch him whenever she wanted, kiss him whenever she felt the urge. Being as close to him as she possibly could. Yeah, happy. If only she could ditch the need that constantly hummed in the background. The need for more.

He didn’t talk about his past and what had happened with Elizabeth Chase, and she didn’t ask him. She’d initially been full of thoughts of how to help him, heal him, but as the days had gone by, she’d found approaching the subject more and more difficult. He denied that he’d been abused, denied that he’d been taken advantage of. Denied that it still affected him.

And in the end, she’d accepted his denial because she didn’t want to rock the boat. Didn’t want to disturb the delicate equilibrium they’d reached with each other. The subject was too volatile and far too heartbreaking.

What was the point when she was leaving anyway?

“Hey, here’s your wine.” Kara put down a narrow, tall-stemmed wine glass covered in gold leaf on the rickety wooden coffee table, then flopped down on the couch beside Ellie. Holding up her own glass—a heavy glass goblet, mismatched, like everything else in Kara’s apartment—she said, “And here’s to neck hickeys.”

Ellie, in the process of lifting her glass, pulled a face. “Kara.”

Her friend lifted an eyebrow. “Dude, are you going to tell me or what?”

“Or what.”

“Not an option.”

“Bah.” Ellie took a sip of the cheap red she’d picked up on the way to Kara’s place. “Okay, well, it’s no biggie.”

“No biggie? It’s Hunter, right?”

Despite her best efforts, Ellie blushed. “What makes you say that?”

“Bitch, please. You’re staying with him, you’ve had the hots for him for years, and you’re leaving in five days. All the vital ingredients needed for a hot sex Hunter soufflé.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Aha. I was right then?”

Ellie sighed. “Yes, okay, you’re right. We’re sleeping together.”

Kara gave her a triumphant grin. “I knew it! Right on, babe! That is freaking awesome.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not awesome?” The grin on Kara’s face slowly faded when Ellie didn’t smile back.

“Oh, no, it’s awesome all right. Don’t get me wrong. I just…” She stopped, not quite sure why she should even be prevaricating about it when she had everything she wanted.

“Just what?”

Ellie fiddled with her drink then looked up at her friend. Kara was giving her a concerned look from over the top of her glasses. Was there something different about her today? Yeah, there was. She’d taken out some of her piercings, the eyebrow one and the little diamond she wore in her nose. And her hair had begun reverting to its natural gold, the blue colour almost gone. And, bloody hell, she actually had brown eyes instead of the coloured contacts she almost always wore.

“Hey, what’s happened to you? You look…normal.”

A tinge of colour crept into Kara’s cheeks. “We’re not talking about me, babe. We’re talking about you.” Pushing her glasses back up her nose, Kara glared at her. “So why is the hot Hunter soufflé not awesome? With a body like that, surely it’s impossible not to be.”

“Sex isn’t everything.”

“Then clearly you’re not doing it right.”

But Ellie didn’t feel like joking around. This was too serious. Too painful. And she was afraid. She stared down at the wine in her glass. “It’s not enough,” she said after a moment. “I want more.”

Kara let out a soft breath and put her wine glass down on the table. “Oh babe. That was always going to be the danger, wasn’t it?”

It had been. She’d been too hungry for him, had spent too long waiting for him to really think about it. “I’m an idiot, huh?”

The look on Kara’s face softened. “No. Yes.”

“I’m bracing myself for some ‘I told you so’s’.”

“Would I do that to you? Besides, I never said don’t go for it.”

“No, I know you didn’t. But…well…”

“Well nothing. Come on, Ell. You’ve been in love with him for years. Might as well get something out of all that waiting, right?”

Ellie took another gulp of wine. Yeah, she may as well admit it to herself. She
had
been in love with him for years. And she’d done a fabulous impression of ignoring it, pretending it was all just about the sexual attraction. But of course it wasn’t. Sure, the sex was great but it was the man himself that fascinated her. That made her hungry for more.

An incredibly complicated, kind of screwed-up, passionate man. Who’d had a horrible thing happen to him and, whether he liked it or not, needed her help.

A moment’s silence filled the apartment. From outside the sounds of the city, cars, sirens, construction sounds from a building site, drifted in.

“Does he want more?” Kara asked.

Ellie gave a short laugh and she knew it sounded bitter, but she couldn’t help it. “No, I really don’t think he does.”

“So you’ve talked about it?”

“No.” That was another thing she hadn’t spoken to him about. Another subject she’d been too afraid to broach.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to. What’s happening now is good and I don’t want to upset it.”

“But you don’t know—”

“There’s no point.” Ellie shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, a big ball of misery catching hard under her breastbone. “I’m leaving for Tokyo in a few days and that’ll be the end of it.” Maybe if she said it enough times, she’d believe it.

Kara was silent another moment. “You could stay. Or ask him to come with you.”

“Give up my job to stay here when I don’t even know if a few nights in bed is all he wants? Yeah, right.”

“Okay, dumb idea. What about asking him to come with you?”

“Why would he give up his job, his whole freaking life, to come to Tokyo?”

“Uh, because you’re awesome?”

“Not helpful, Kar.”

“True, though.” Kara sighed. “Look, you’re going to have to talk to him. You know that, right?”

Ellie bit her lip and took another big sip of wine for good measure. “I don’t want to.” She finally managed to say it out loud. “I’m scared. What if he says no?”

Or more importantly, what if he was too screwed up to accept what she wanted to give him? Accept that he needed her, because she was quite sure of that. He did need her. Every night he pulled her into his arms it felt like he was losing himself in her, escaping from something. And afterwards he’d hold her, his face turned into her neck, his breath warm on her skin. Just holding her. But he didn’t talk, at least not about the stuff she wanted to talk about. He hadn’t shut her out, but it wasn’t like he’d welcomed her in either.

Kara’s brown eyes were serious. “He might. But he might say yes too. Don’t sell yourself short, babe.”

“I’m not.” At least she was trying not to. She wanted to be able to give him what he’d always given her. A place of safety and trust. Thing was, if he didn’t trust her enough to be able to open up now, given what he’d already told her, would he ever be able to do so?

Vin scowled at the plans spread over his desk. “Don’t say it.”

“I told you so,” Hunter said, to mess with him. “Expensive isn’t always the best.”

“Yeah, well, it should be.” His friend muttered a curse. “So I’m going to need another solar panel. Shit, it’s going to ruin the whole bloody roofline.”