I FEEL HER questions build as I lie still under her, the painful thud of my heart mocking the calm, controlled exterior I’m trying to project. But she cut my restraint to shreds. I close my eyes, flashbacks going off behind my eyelids. Brooke embracing this club when I knew it was her first experience. Dancing for me, her beautiful stare displaying her every feeling. Her sexy striptease and how she instinctively heightened my desperation for her through a hint of denial...
She gave me everything I said I needed and it still wasn’t enough to keep me in control. Because she’s perfect. Too perfect. Still as dangerous as a steel blade to my throat.
Panic rolls through my stomach. I don’t need her to be any more of a temptation. I can’t allow this connection to get away from me. And yet in less than three days she’s managed to bewitch me so thoroughly, I’m already hard again. Desperate to touch her again and again and again...
But good sex is an emotional experience. That doesn’t mean I can allow this woman to undo the barriers I’ve spent years constructing. Barriers that make me the man I am. The man I want to be.
I don’t want to hurt her but, from her pensive silence and the wounded expression I caught on her face as I pulled her down to the mattress, I guess I already have with my messed-up need to stay detached.
Yeah...real detached, dickhead.
I wanted her so damned much that I almost lost my mind. Almost lost complete control. With every ragged breath I try to claw it back. But the sick sense of dread tells me it might be too late.
‘Why didn’t you come inside me?’ she asks, her question jabbing between my ribs.
I bide my time, my fingers toying with her short silky hair, which smells like sunshine and sin. I could lie. Construct some excuse that won’t expose the very heart of me and how I’m too twisted and ruined for any woman, let alone a woman like Brooke. But she’s smart, and after everything she’s given me tonight she deserves more than the scraps I’ve given her up to now.
Her gentle reassurance earlier over lunch all but slayed me. I want you to know that you can talk to me, if you need to. That you can trust me.
But no amount of talk will change what I did, or return what I lost. This post-coital emotion is as pointless as my regret. It changes nothing.
She must feel the defeated exhale that recoils my chest under her head.
‘I don’t have any infections and I’m on birth control, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ She looks up, a pinch of confusion settled between her brows and a glimmer of hurt lingering in her eyes. ‘And you were wearing a condom so...you know...double protection.’
I’ve hurt her. Hurt and insulted her.
Fuck.
I rest my hands on her back, stroking her warm skin so I can find the strength to formulate the right words. ‘It’s not that. It’s not you.’ Shit, that’s the best I can come up with...?
Bile reaches the back of my throat and I swallow the shame down hard, feeling small and stupid. Of course my weird withdrawal is partly a safety thing. Habit I’ve formed over seventeen years because I made that mistake with Julia. But how can I tell this incredible woman all my shameful secrets? How I was once young and reckless enough to act without thought for the consequences? How I got Julia pregnant and naively, arrogantly, believed everything would work out? How I’d then landed myself in prison and she’d lost our baby. How Julia herself almost died.
Pain shoots through me as if my terrible cascade of mistakes happened yesterday.
All that I am, all that I do, prevents me from feeling like I’m freewheeling back towards those bleak days. That dark place of grief and impotence and utter self-inflicted aloneness.
Brooke stares, peeling away layers of me with the questions banked behind her emotive eyes. ‘Didn’t you enjoy yourself?’ She nibbles at her lip, and I tug it free with my thumb and kiss the exact same spot.
‘Of course I did.’ I roll onto my side to face her, keeping my hands on her, keeping her close.
She frowns, calling bullshit. ‘It’s just that you were so...quiet.’ She offers a hesitant smile. ‘I’m seriously impressed—I’d need to be gagged to stay that silent at the height of pleasure.’
I slide my hands from her hips to grip her backside, pressing her against my semi-hard dick. ‘Well, that could be arranged...’
She laughs a sexy, throaty chuckle and rolls her eyes. I take a deep, shuddering breath. She was amazing—embracing something new, giving me her trust and her passion and a safe space where I might release my own.
But I can’t. I don’t let go completely. I gave her my standard moves. The contained version. No feelings. No risk.
The spasm in my throat chokes me. I’m an arsehole and I don’t want to be responsible for damaging this amazing woman’s self-esteem. She did absolutely everything right and stayed true to herself. It’s me who’s the coward. Emotionally crippled.
I cup her face, tilting her delicate chin up so our eyes connect. ‘Can you imagine how little privacy there is in prison, or in a barrack room full of soldiers, for that matter?’ I ask. ‘You learn to be quiet. I guess it’s just become habit...’ It’s a half-truth that slashes fresh shame through me.
‘Oh. I didn’t think of that.’ Her finger traces some of the ink on my chest, her eyes darting. ‘So what about...you know...the pulling out? Have you had a bad experience or something? Because the way we did it, there’s zero chance of unwanted pregnancy.’
‘I know.’ I wince. I want to talk about this as much as I want to take up knitting to keep her company. I don’t really owe her any explanations. She had a good time. I could hide my weird behaviour behind the kinkiness she already knows about.
But...
Every second we stare in silence––something I usually embrace because I’m not one for meaningless chatter––my heart thuds faster until I fear I’ll pass out. Now I’ve crossed the line with this woman, when she’s embraced my kind of sex, I should give her something in return, even if it’s just peace of mind that my reservations and rules are about me and in no way a reflection on her.
This is why it’s easier to walk away at this stage.
I hold her close, stroke my hand up and down her back. ‘Everything about tonight was amazing. You’re perfect. Delicious.’ I press a kiss to her unsmiling lips. She won’t be satisfied with platitudes, no matter how true or heartfelt. And they are.
Brooke is like rich, dark chocolate... Addictive and decadent.
This time my sigh is loud. ‘I don’t normally talk about this...’ But I care about Brooke. She’s confessed her own issues about her relationships, her fame and her past betrayals. I don’t want her to regret what happened tonight.
‘I was careless once, as a youth,’ I tell her. ‘My girlfriend, Julia––the one I told you about––got pregnant, but she lost the baby while I was in prison.’ I rip out the words as quickly as possible to limit the damage, but they still shred my throat like the slash of razor blades, their power as potent as the day I heard the devastating news.
Brooke gasps. Shock transforms her stunning face. ‘Oh, Nick.’ She grips my waist more tightly. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She buries her face against my chest. It’s both comforting and claustrophobic, because it exposes the memories.
My mother visited me in prison. I’ll never forget her expression of pain and disappointment, which as it turned out was to be only a fraction of mine. I can never forgive myself for what I did, because Julia, my mother and my innocent child all paid the price for my immature recklessness. For my mistake.
‘It was a long time ago.’ I swallow my resurfaced shame, shoving the memories and the feelings of helplessness back down my throat like a jagged pill. But how easy it is to relive the scalding self-disgust and remorse.
If only I’d been there for Julia, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened. We had everything—we loved each other. We were going to be parents. Discovering I was going to be a father, albeit a young one, had given my life a purpose for which I’d been searching. I got a job and started saving for our own place. And then in one rash second I turned that bright future to ash.
My incarceration added untold stress to Julia’s pregnancy. She visited me, stood by me, but I know she faced questions from her parents, who thought she deserved better. Losing the baby was my punishment. A punishment Julia didn’t deserve because it was my fault.
And that’s the end of this well-travelled path. It’s always the same. The buck stops with me.
‘Let’s shower and get out of here,’ I say, jumping into action as a distraction technique. I disengage from her, stride to the bathroom and flip on the shower, hoping the hot water will block out the brutal home truths in my head.
This is what happens when I don’t keep my guard up. I remember. I relive. But I can never atone. All I can do with my control is keep myself safe from feeling again. Keep those in my sphere safe with distance from me and try to close the lid on the past.
Brooke joins me under the shower, silently watchful as we soap up and regard each other for long, uncomfortable moments. I might as well be washing in acid for the effect of her quiet scrutiny, even though she’s likely only deciding how best to respond to my revelation.
‘You’re still punishing yourself, aren’t you?’ Her expression is one of concern and understanding.
But I don’t want her compassion. I want her desire, her playfulness—even her fucking trust is better than this torture. Because she’s forcing me to look internally. And I know exactly what lies at the centre of my cold, black soul. Shame and guilt and blame.
I close my eyes for a second and duck my head under the spray. This was the risk of allowing her too close. The very thing I feared. She’s intuitive, perceptive, emotionally intelligent. She sees what I’d rather hide, just as she’s honest and open about her own need to protect something of herself from the public.
She slides her hand around my waist, her fingers flexing against my skin. It’s torture that I crave. ‘You don’t blame yourself for...losing your child, do you?’ she whispers.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ I flick the water out of my eyes and stare.
I do blame myself. It was my fault. I behaved like a hot-headed thug and landed myself in jail. I left my girlfriend alone to deal with the fallout of a difficult pregnancy and the demands of her disapproving parents, who by then understandably hated my no-good guts. I don’t blame them for trying to break us apart. They were protecting her, as I’d failed to do. I can never move past the feeling that if I’d been by her side, instead of abandoning her and putting her in an impossible position, we might not have lost our baby.
‘I don’t know how I’d feel, Nick. I wouldn’t presume to understand that kind of heart-breaking grief. But I know blaming yourself changes nothing. For you, I wish it would, because I understand now that you’ve spent half of your life trying to make amends. That’s sentence enough, surely?’
I stare, too raw from her words to do or say anything. Warm water sluices us. I can’t move, because all I want to do is...
What? Fall to my knees and hold her until this pain and regret dissolves? It won’t work. The threads of it are woven through me at a cellular level. There’s no washing away that degree of blackness.
‘Did you and your girlfriend stay together...after?’ Brooke asks, her voice low, as if coaxing a scared animal. And she’s right. I’m caged by my past mistake. And now I’m trapped by my weakness for Brooke.
I shake my head. ‘No. But I don’t blame her for anything. A criminal who knocked her up and then wasn’t there at the worst moment of her life is hardly worthy of regret.’
The frown is back between her brows. I’m not hiding a god damned thing from this woman. ‘But you said you fought protecting her. It must have been a terrible time for you, too.’
I reach for the shampoo to stop myself from touching her again, the need like nettle stings on the palms of my hands. I lather up my hair and pass the bottle to Brooke, who’s looking at me with caution and puzzlement, as if there’s a way to fix this. Fix me.
‘I could have walked away from the fight,’ I say, hating the weakness I’m forced to admit. ‘Protected her that way. I made the wrong decision that day and I have to live with the consequences.’
I wanted to be there for Julia, for my child. But I’d rendered myself powerless by landing in jail. When she lost the baby and I was eventually released, I knew from the look on her face that I’d killed her love, and she could never forgive me, and that made two of us.
And now that powerless feeling threatens again, because this woman sees through me. She sees my pain and regrets, probing close to a place I fight hard to protect with everything I have. Because, if I don’t protect that place, there’s a risk I could become that man again.
Brooke’s stare fills with compassion I don’t deserve. ‘You made a mistake, Nick. One. There’s not one person on this planet who hasn’t done that.’
I swallow hard, fighting to get the words past my tight throat. ‘One is all it takes.’ Then I wish I hadn’t spoken at all. Because I feel myself opening up with this woman like a damned flower in the sun. She is the sun. I need to resist, because I’ll burn to ash if I allow her to lead me to look too closely at myself.
Brooke looks down with a nod and then peers up at me from under her lashes, as if testing my reaction to her candour and how far she can push. ‘I understand that, and I don’t want to cause you more pain, but I hurt for you.’ She rests her small fist over her breastbone, as if she too is heart-sore. ‘I think you are punishing yourself. And I wish you wouldn’t. You both lost so much. It must have been a devastating time for you, too.’
I shrug. ‘I’m a big tough guy, can’t you tell?’ I never gave myself time to think about my own feelings, too consumed by the pain I’d put everyone through. As soon as I left prison––as soon as I’d reconnected with Julia and discovered that it was less painful for her just to move on, that my consolation was too late and unwanted––I knew I was alone. No baby. No girlfriend. No prospects.
My mother tried to be there for me, but I pushed her away too. I couldn’t stand the disappointed look on her face that told me I’d also let her down. So I learned detachment, a habit I’ve never quite shaken. I don’t blame my mother. She lost the son she thought I was and a grandchild in quick succession.
Brooke says nothing. Her eyes are so full of understanding, I can’t bear to look at her. She makes sense, but all it does is remind me of the reasons I would normally be headed out the door by now, out of her life for good. No explanations necessary.
Because who the hell would want this emotional closeness when it’s laced with the pain of a million shards of glass?
Water pounds us. Rivulets of suds pour over her pert breasts and stomach, between her legs in a caress I ache to mimic, if only to shut out the recrimination in my head. Frustration and helplessness rip through me. I lash out before I can stop myself.
‘We fuck one time and now we need to share our feelings?’ I say, my tone icy as I trace the line of suds over her collarbone and the curve of her breast with my fingertip, stopping at her hard nipple.
I want to lick them off. To lose myself in pleasure. Now I’ve had one taste of the woman who’s burrowed so far inside me, I may never get enough. But I’ll find the discipline I need to control this. I always do. It’s a fight for life.
Disappointment wars with arousal in her eyes. ‘I get it. It must be very hard to talk about this.’ She tilts her chin. ‘But even big tough guys like you feel things strongly. Someone in your line of work needs to keep everything together, to be in control. I understand that, and I reap the benefits. But you need to let go every once in a while. We all do.’
She steps close so her nipples brush my chest and my cock grazes her mound. ‘What happened between us in there––’ she tilts her head towards the bedroom ‘––that was you holding back physically because you think it will protect you emotionally.’ Her eyes meet mine, new resolve glittering. ‘Does it work?’
I want to laugh in her face. To say, yes, yes it does. It always has in the past. But not with her. She’s different. I can no more lie to her that I can fight the urge to crush her lips under mine and block out the truth. I do just that, drawing her face up to mine so she has to cling to my waist for balance while I kiss her quiet.
My tongue delves inside her mouth and the sensation of falling spins my head, just as it did when I finally pushed my cock inside her tight warmth and I thought I’d never survive.
She grips my wrists and tears her mouth from mine, panting. Her eyes flash with pain and challenge and anger. ‘I’m safe, Nick. Next time, I want you to come inside me,’ she says, declaring in her determination that there’ll be a next time.
‘I never fuck without a condom,’ I throw back, my tone flat. ‘Not going to happen.’
‘Neither do I. That’s how I know it’s okay for you to let go with me.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because you’re safe with me, just like I’m safe with you.’ She looks down and I follow the path of her stare, watching her hand wrap around my hard dick.
I stifle a groan. How can I want her again so soon and after literally tearing out my heart for her? I can’t leave this time as I normally would. I tell myself it’s because she’s a client. That I’m still on the clock. But it’s a lie. She’s dangerous. Addictive. All the more reason to resist her pull. And I’m an expert at keeping people at an arm’s length.
I slide on what feels like a smirk, when everything inside me wants to fight the inclination.
‘If you really want me to come inside you—’ I slide my fingers around her slender neck, drawing her mouth up to mine once more so there’ll be no more talking ‘—you can always get down on your knees.’
Her pupils flare. Instead of walking away as I half-expected, she smiles, still fisting my cock. ‘With pleasure, but I want it all this time.’ She drops to her knees without hesitation, looking up at me through those endless lashes as she angles my cock towards that full, pouty mouth of hers. Her tongue flicks over the head, a tease. But there’s no humour in her eyes, only steely determination and terrifying perceptiveness.
‘You like to watch.’ She laves the head of my cock with laps of her tongue. ‘But you don’t want to be seen yourself.’ Her gentle caresses to my balls taunt me. Make me crazy both to deny her and give her my all, as she wants.
Before I can speak, she takes me inside the blissful haven of her mouth and I have to bite my tongue to stop the groans of satisfaction that want to rip free. I brace my hands on the walls of the shower cubicle and curse under my breath as I watch her swallow me, her stare all but stripping the skin from my body.
Then she pulls back. I free a grunt of protest.
‘But I see you, Nick.’ She pumps my length and my hands curl into fists. ‘I see you and I want you just as you are. So give me everything.’
And then she’s on me again, moaning while she sucks. Taunting me with her own pleasure-seeking abandon. Pushing me closer and closer to the edge of that cliff of control and the treacherous chasm beyond.
I focus on my frenzied desire for her, watch fascinated as she gives me head I’ll remember for the rest of my life. I should have known that, even while I try to manage this thing between us, she’d bring me to my knees. She’s a siren and I’m battling overwhelming currents.
But this is better than digging through the past.
I cup the back of her head as she bobs over me, her tongue working my shaft and hitting all the right places as she watches the pleasure I can’t contain contort my face.
‘Brooke,’ I growl in warning as my balls rise up and fire builds in my groin. My valiant attempts to contain the rapture tense every muscle in my body, and I’m all but spent.
She smiles, perhaps at my use of just her first name, and shakes her head. Eyes that are glassy with arousal widen in warning. Her sucking grows stronger. Her hands grip my thighs, telling me she wants this almost as much as I do. There’s no place to retreat, even if I could.
I grit my teeth, staving off the inevitable. I’m going to come in her mouth and I don’t think I’ll be able to hold all that euphoria inside. She’s tearing me apart, strip by strip, and part of me—that part already addicted to Brooke Madden—wants to explode for her, spill out all my ugliness and be done with the endless, lonely and soulless fight.
She moans out encouraging noises. The erotic sound, muffled by her full mouth, vibrates through my cock.
I curl my hand into a fist in her short hair as bliss grips me, slamming into me harder than ever before. And with a roar I’m not even aware of, until it echoes back from the shower walls in shockwaves, I release myself in racking spasms down her throat.
I gasp, fire streaking along every nerve. I open my eyes and she’s still sucking me, triumph glittering in her pretty eyes, deservedly so. I’m undone, physically demolished.
And emotionally I feel like, where this woman is concerned, there’s nowhere left to hide.