Truly Madly Yours (15 page)

“I already feel good.” She held out her arms for him as he stepped between her thighs.

“Then I’m going to make you feel even better.” He planted both of his palms by the sides of her head and kissed her like he wanted to consume her. When he raised his mouth again he said, “I’m going to set you on fire.”

Delaney looked up into his beautiful face and she wanted him to make love to her. She wanted to know what other young women her age knew. She wanted Nick to teach her. “Yes,” she said to anything he wanted.

He smiled as his skillful hands eased her panties from her legs. She felt the cotton slide down her calves and then her underwear was gone. His palms drifted up the insides of her thighs, and one of his thumbs touched her where she was slick. The pleasure was indescribable. His fingers brushed her moist flesh until she wanted to scream.

“More?”

“Yes,” she murmured and her eyes slid shut. “More.” His touch felt so good it was almost painful, the building pressure in her groin intense. She wanted it to end, yet at the same time continue forever. She wanted him naked and on top of her, filling her arms with his warm body. She opened her eyes and gazed up at him, standing there between her knees, looking down at her through heavy lids. “Make love to me, Nick.”

“I’ll give you something better than love.” He knelt on one knee and softly kissed the inside of her thigh. “I’m going to make you come.” Delaney froze, extremely grateful she was surrounded by darkness. When she’d said yes, she hadn’t meant
that
. She would have clamped her legs together but Nick was in the way. She wasn’t sure what he would do, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t do
that
.

But he did. He slid his hands beneath her behind, then raised her to his hot open mouth. Shock held her still. She couldn’t believe what he’d done. What he was doing. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she couldn’t get the words past the warm pleasure swirling through her body. She couldn’t control the shiver tingling up her spine and instead of pulling away, she arched her back. His tongue and mouth gently caressed between her legs in much the same way he’d kissed her breasts.

“Nick,” she moaned and touched her hands to the sides of his head. The pleasure grew and tightened and each touch of his tongue pushed her toward the peak of climax. He moved one of her heels to his shoulder and tilted her hips. He took her more fully into his mouth and drew on her sensitive flesh. The incredible sensations built and coiled in her body, then shoved her over the top.

The stars above her head blurred as she felt herself pulled under wave after hot wave of ecstasy. She called his name over and over as heat flushed her thighs and breasts. Involuntary contractions shook her, and when it was over she felt changed. She was shocked by what she’d done and who’d done it to her, but she wasn’t sorry. She’d never felt so close to anyone else in her life, and she wanted him to hold her.

“Nick?”

He gently kissed the inside of her thigh. “Mmm.”

At the touch of his lips, she suddenly became very aware of her embarrassing position. She felt her cheeks burn as she slid her foot from his shoulder and sat up.

He stood and cupped her face in his hands. “More?”

She was naive, not stupid, and she knew what he was asking. She wanted to give him the same awesome pleasure he’d just given her. “More.” She pulled his T-shirt from the waistband of his jeans and released the buttons of his fly. His hands wrapped around her wrists and stopped her.

“Be still a minute,” he said right before a beam of light struck him full in the face. “Shit!”

Delaney glanced over her shoulder and was blinded by two headlights gunning toward them. Pure adrenaline shot through her veins, and she pushed Nick and jumped off the hood at the same time. Her dress lay at his feet and she reached for it just as Henry’s silver Lincoln slid to a stop beside the Mustang. She pulled the summer dress over her head but her hands shook so bad she couldn’t button it. “Help me,” she cried to no one in particular.

Nick turned, and he reached for the buttons at the waist of her dress. He whispered something to her, but she couldn’t hear him over the pounding in her ears.

“Get away from her!” Henry bellowed the second he opened the car door.

She managed the top two buttons but was helpless to control the panic welling within her. She glanced at the ground and saw Nick’s big foot in the crotch of her panties. Distressed little sobs filled the top of her lungs.

“Get your filthy damn hands off her!”

Delaney looked up just as Henry reached them. He shoved Nick and pushed her behind him. Both men were of the same height, same build, same flashing gray eyes. The Lincoln’s headlights lit every excruciating detail. The stripe on Henry’s dress shirt, the silver in his hair.

“I never thought you’d sink this low,” Henry said as he pointed at Nick. “I’ve always known you hated me, but I never thought you’d sink this low just to get back at me.”

“Maybe this has nothing to do with you,” Nick said, his brows lowered on his forehead.

“My aching ass this has nothing to do with me. You’ve hated me all your life, and you’ve been jealous of Delaney since the day I married her mother.”

“You’re right. I have hated you all of my life. You’re a son of a bitch, and the biggest favor you ever did my mother was deny you ever slept with her.”

“And you finally got your revenge. The only reason you screwed Delaney was to get back at me.”

Nick folded his arms over his chest and rested his weight on one foot. “Maybe I screwed her because she makes me hard.”

“I should beat the hell out of you.”

“Give it your best shot, old man.”

“Oh, God,” Delaney groaned as she finished the buttons on her dress. “Henry, we didn’t—”

“Get in the car,” Henry interrupted her.

She looked at Nick, and gone was the gentle lover who’d made her feel beautiful. “Tell him!” A few moments ago she’d felt so close to him, now she didn’t know him at all. He appeared relaxed, but it was an illusion. Or maybe she did know this Nick. This surly man before her was the Nick she’d grown up with; the man who’d picked her up earlier had been the illusion. “Please, tell him nothing happened,” she pleaded with him to help her out of the worst of it. “Tell him we didn’t do anything!”

One knowing brow rose up his forehead. “What exactly do you want me to lie about, wild thing?” he asked. “He saw you sitting on my car like a hood ornament. If he’d been a few minutes earlier, he would have seen a hell of a lot more.”

“You got your revenge, didn’t you?” Henry grabbed Delaney’s arm and pushed her toward Nick. “You took an innocent girl and you made her dirty just to get even with me.”

Delaney looked into Nick’s hard gaze and she didn’t know what to believe. She wanted him to care just a little bit, but the eyes that stared back at her were so cold. Several minutes ago she would have said Henry was mistaken, but she didn’t know what to think now. “Is that true?” she asked as one tear ran down her hot cheeks. “Did you use me to get back at Henry?”

“Is that what you think?”

What he’d done to her was so private, so intimate, she didn’t think she could bear knowing he’d used her. She wanted him to tell Henry he was wrong, that he’d kissed her and touched her because he wanted her, not because he hated Henry. “I don’t know!”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

He didn’t speak for what seemed like an eternity, then he said, “Believe Henry then.”

A sob caught in her throat and she stumbled toward the Lincoln. Her chest felt as if it were caving in on itself, and she managed to get into the car before the second tear slid down her cheek. The cold leather beneath her bare behind reminded her she was completely naked under her dress. She stared out the window at both men, and above the pounding of her heart, she heard Henry threaten Nick.

“You stay away from my daughter,” he yelled. “You stay away or I’ll make your life hell.”

“You can try,” Nick said, his words barely audible through the thick glass. “But there is nothing you can do to me.”

“We’ll see about that.” Henry moved to the driver’s side of the Lincoln. “Stay away from Delaney,” he warned one last time and slid into the front seat. He slipped the car into reverse, and the headlights shone on Nick for a few short seconds. And in those few seconds, his T-shirt glowed a bright white, the soft cotton untucked at his waist, and the top button on his jeans was undone. He leaned down to pick up something, but Henry cranked the wheel and the car turned toward the road before she could see what he’d retrieved from the ground. But she didn’t have to see, she already knew. Carefully, she tucked her dress beneath her bare behind.

“This is going to kill your mother,” Henry seethed.

Probably, Delaney thought. She looked down at her hands and a tear fell on her thumb.

“She went to your room to tell you good night, but you weren’t there.” The Lincoln turned onto the main road, and Henry gunned the big engine. “She’s worried sick. She’s afraid you’ve been kidnapped.”

Delaney bit her lip to keep the customary apology inside. She didn’t care that she’d worried her mother.

“Just wait until she learns the truth is worse than anything she could have imagined.”

“How did you find me?”

“Not that it matters, but several people down at the market saw you crawl into Allegrezza’s car. If you hadn’t left the gate open at Angel Beach, it would have taken me a lot longer, but I would have found you.”

Delaney didn’t doubt him. She turned her gaze to the passenger window and stared out into the dark night. “I can’t believe you hunted me down. I’m eighteen and I can’t believe you drove around town looking for me as if I were ten years old.”

“And I can’t believe I found you naked as a two-bit hooker,” he said and kept up his verbal battering until he pulled the Lincoln into the garage.

As calm as possible under the circumstances, Delaney got out of the car and walked into the house. Her mother met her in the kitchen.

“Where have you been?” Gwen asked, her gaze sliding from Delaney’s face to her feet then back up again.

Delaney walked past without answering. Henry would tell her mother. He always did. Then together they would decide her fate. They would probably ground her as if she were a child. She moved up the stairs to her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She wasn’t trying to hide. She knew better, and even if she hadn’t, tonight’s lesson showed her the futility of independence.

She looked at her reflection in the cheval mirror. Mascara trailed down her cheeks, her eyes were red, and her face pale. Otherwise she looked as she always did. She didn’t look as if her world had shifted beneath her feet and now she stood in a new place. Her room looked the same as it had hours ago when she’d sneaked out the window. The pictures stuck to the mirror, and the roses on her bedspread were the same as they’d always been, but everything was different. She was different.

She’d let Nick do things to her that she’d never imagined in her wildest dreams. Oh, she’d heard about oral sex. A few girls in her math class had bragged about knowing how to give blow jobs, but until tonight, Delaney had never believed people actually did that sort of thing. Now she knew better. Now she knew a man didn’t even have to like the girl he was with. Now she knew that a man could do incredibly intimate things to a woman for reasons other than passion or mutual attraction. Now she knew what it was like to be used.

When she thought of Nick’s warm mouth pressed to the inside of her thigh, her pale cheeks turned red and she turned her gaze away from her reflection. What she saw embarrassed her. She’d wanted to feel free. Free from Henry’s control. Free from her life.

She was a fool.

Delaney changed into a pair of jeans and T-shirt, then washed her face. When she was finished, she went to Henry’s office, where she knew her parents would be waiting for her. They stood behind the mahogany desk, and by the look on Gwen’s face, Henry had filled her in on every excruciating detail.

Gwen’s blue eyes were wide as she looked at her daughter. “Well, I don’t know what to say to you.”

Delaney sat in one of the leather chairs opposite the desk. Not knowing what to say had never stopped her mother before. It didn’t stop her now.

“Tell me Henry is mistaken. Tell me he didn’t see you in a sexually compromising situation with that Allegrezza boy.”

Delaney didn’t say anything. She knew she wouldn’t win. She never did.