Текст книги "Seven Nights to Surrender"

Автор книги: Jeanette Grey

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chapter NINETEEN

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“What?” Rylan shot her a cheeky smile. “You’ve never had room service before?”

She tossed her napkin at him. “Not what I meant.”

Honestly, she wasn’t sure she ever had had room service. It was always so expensive. But Rylan had insisted, and at the time, her legs hadn’t felt up to working. Even now, an hour after he’d turned her to jelly, her whole body was still thrumming, a warm glow of satisfaction radiating from the very center of her.

Yeah, staying in for dinner had been a good call.

Still. “Eating dinner in bed. Naked.” She cocked her brow at him. “This is something you do all the time?”

He was sitting opposite her on the bed with their dinner plates between them. Somehow or other, they’d managed to split the sheet so it draped over his lap with enough left over for her to tuck the other end under her arms. All the important parts were covered, but it still felt illicit. Obscene.

Sexy.

Shrugging, he took a bite of his sandwich and chewed. “It’s not exactly a first. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say I do it all the time.”

That dip was coming in her stomach. The little lurch that happened every time he reminded her that she was one of many.

Only then the corner of his mouth curled upward. “Can’t say it’s ever been this much fun before, though.” He wiped his fingers on his napkin before reaching out to drag the back of a knuckle down the bare length of her arm. “Or that the view has ever been so good.”

The anxious dip turned into a flutter. She dropped her gaze to stare at her own sandwich. He did this to her every time. Made her feel like she was special, when really she was just one of the herd.

“Hey.” He gave her a second, then hooked his finger under her chin to tilt her head up. “Where did you go there?”

“Nowhere.” She tried to smile.

Those piercing blue eyes stared back at her. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Don’t have a lot of practice, I suppose.”

He cupped her face and swiped his thumb across her lip. “Good. I like you like this. All fresh-faced and innocent.”

She shook her head. Kissed his thumb before batting his hand away. “Says the man who’s been doing everything in his power to corrupt me.”

“Not everything.” His eyes twinkled. “But a lot of things.” His grin receded as he poked at what was left of his pile of fries. “Haven’t pushed it too far, I hope.”

It didn’t quite lilt up as a question, but she heard it as one all the same.

And she could do this. She could talk about the things they’d done. There didn’t have to be any shame to it—even if something cold and uncomfortable threatened to unfurl in her lungs. “I—I don’t regret anything. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s something a guy likes to know.” His one shoulder quirked upward and then settled back down.

“I don’t regret it.” She put more conviction into the words this time, because she didn’t. No matter the heartbreak that was bound to come. It had been . . . amazing. Like nothing she’d ever experienced before. She was glad she’d get to hold on to that. “You were really good to me.”

He made a little huffing sound and tore at the bread of his sandwich. “I am never going to stop being angry about the fact that anybody ever wasn’t good to you. If you—” He cut himself off, fingers clenching into a fist before he relaxed them. “I hope you never let anyone treat you like that. Not ever again.”

Right. The little dip in her stomach was back, twisting her insides up. He was talking about the other men she’d sleep with, after she left.

“I won’t.” It sounded too solemn, but there it was. Out on the air between them.

She’d promised it to herself once before, but it had been an abstract then. Now she knew how good she could’ve been getting all along. How terrible the bad had been by comparison.

“Besides.” Her voice threatened to crack, and was she really going to do this? “There were only a couple of other guys,” she blurted. “Before.”

Apparently, she was.

Rylan paused. “Yeah?”

She’d told him that much their very first night. He’d prodded her then, clearly wanting her to tell him more about them, but she’d shied away. Now, though . . . She’d let him inside of her, had given up the one thing she’d been the most afraid to. She could give him just a little bit more.

“One was a hookup,” she said, testing the words on her tongue. “I don’t think I even got his name.”

A month after things between her and Aaron had fallen apart, her friends had decided that enough was enough. They’d told her it was damn well time for her to pick herself up. Get back on the horse. Move on.

So they’d taken her to a club and bought her drinks all night. She’d caught a guy’s eye, and she’d been so starved for the attention, she’d let him dance in close behind her. And when he’d asked her if she wanted to get out of there . . .

“I was . . . drunk. Not so drunk that I don’t remember it or anything, but enough that I was maybe not making the best of decisions.” She focused hard on picking at the crust of her bread so she didn’t have to meet his gaze. Or show that her hands were trembling. “He was . . . fine. But he’d been drinking, too. Everything moved way too fast.” She shrugged. “And when he was done, that was kind of the end of it.”

It’d been the end of her interest in sex. Right up until she’d met Rylan.

“Asshole,” he said, quiet but intense. It made her shiver.

But it also made her want to tell him everything else. She wanted him to hear it all, to know it all. She hadn’t done anything wrong. But God. What she’d let herself become. How little she’d accepted for so long. It made her gut twist and clench, made her throat ache, even after all this time.

“The guy before that . . . Aaron.” She gave up on her dinner. She’d more or less had enough of it anyway, and just thinking about this made her stomach turn to stone. She pushed her plate away and curled her hands together in her lap. “He was my first. First really long-term relationship, you know? I’d dated here and there in high school, but nothing serious. Definitely not anybody I’d . . . have sex with.”

Rylan made an encouraging noise.

She drew her knees in close to her chest, hugging them tight. “He was smart. A business major. Really practical and driven.” Goal-oriented was how he’d put it. The exact opposite of her with all her dreams about galleries and art. “Took me on nice dates and stuff.” She paused when Rylan put his sandwich down, something in his gaze darkening. But he didn’t try to interrupt her, so she soldiered on. “After a couple of months, he started wanting more, and I did, too.” A dark chuckle bubbled up in her throat. “I was a twenty-year-old virgin, you know?”

Part of her had been terrified, as much by the relationship as by the sex. Her parents’ marriage had been less of an example and more of a cautionary tale, and she’d carried the metaphorical scars with her for years. Still carried them, really.

Another part of her had just wanted to get it over with.

“He wasn’t awful in bed or anything, but when he . . . did stuff, it never worked. I’d get turned on, and we . . . had sex. But.” Her tongue had gone all twisted up, and her face felt hot, her neck cold. Why couldn’t she just talk about this stuff? “I couldn’t come.”

“What?” Rylan looked at her with confusion, a displeased furrow coloring his brow. “He never fingered you or ate you out?”

The heat on her cheeks deepened, flowing down her chest. God. He said it like it wasn’t dirty or weird or wrong at all.

Maybe because it wasn’t.

“He did,” she said. “Sometimes. It just didn’t do anything for me.”

“And you never took things into your own hands?”

Her laughter choked off with the force of her embarrassment. “Until you made me, I didn’t even know that was something I could do in front of a guy.” Not without him thinking she was a slut, or a pervert. Or who knew what else.

He’d finished up his sandwich by then, and he leaned over, the sheet sliding off his lap as he twisted to set his plate down on the floor. Sitting up again, he scooted closer to her, letting their bare legs brush beneath the covers. “Kate.” He coaxed her to unfurl herself and took her hand in his, the skin warm and vital and strong. “I told you. There is nothing in this world sexier than a woman feeling pleasure.”

A lump formed at the back of her throat. Because he really meant that, didn’t he? He’d shown her as much with every kiss and every touch, had told her in a dozen silent ways, and this wasn’t the first time he’d said it out loud.

“I mean it.” His voice grew in its fervency. “You deserve someone who makes you feel amazing.”

It was the deserve part that hit her like a punch to the chest. She shook her head without even meaning to, this automatic denial.

He squeezed her hand tighter. “You are beautiful and sweet and so fucking talented. You deserve—” He cut off, a flash of bitterness flitting across his face, but it was there and gone in a second. “You deserve someone who can give you everything.”

Someone like you? The question pressed at her tongue, but she swallowed it whole. Nearly choked on it. Because he had. He’d given her this unreserved support, had shown this faith in her. And here in this bed, he’d taken care of her in a way that no one ever had before.

Because he thought she was worth it.

Her lip wobbled, her breath coming harder as the realization crashed over her, and she tried to tug her hands back, to get herself under control. She’d already accepted that she’d fallen for him, but what he was saying here, this kindness in the face of her sad history—it just made it hurt even worse. Her face crumpled, and his eyes went wide.

“Kate?”

She shook her head, but her voice wouldn’t work. “I just—”

An impossible, unbearable warmth wrapped itself around her heart. She closed her eyes against it, but in the next breath, he was shifting across the bed, pulling her bodily into his arms, and the heat inside her went supernova. It burned through her, changing her.

Something that wasn’t quite a sob broke past her lips, and he held her tighter. She swabbed at her eyes, but it didn’t help. God, this was awful, breaking down on him, and because what? He’d been nice to her?

Muttering quiet assurances into her hair, he rocked her back and forth. “You’re okay, baby.”

But she wasn’t. She was extraordinary.

A new kind of light seeped into her heart.

He treated her this way, gave her his time and his body, opened her up with such patient, tender care, because he thought she deserved it.

“I just—” she tried again. She opened her eyes, and the world was still upright, the ceiling and the floor still exactly where they were supposed to be. It was her that was floating. The tear that escaped her felt like it glowed. “I didn’t realize how badly I needed to hear that.”

He practically forced the breath from her, his arms squeezed around her so hard. “I’ll tell you every day,” he said, and he didn’t even bother to correct himself. To put a time limit on it. “You deserve the entire fucking world, Kate.”

She didn’t have to ask him if he meant it.

And that was it. The whole rest of the story came rushing out.

Burying her face against his chest, she said, “It wasn’t just the sex with Aaron.” He hadn’t been outright abusive or anything. It hadn’t ever gotten that far. But . . . “He started out so nice, but he put me down in all these subtle little ways.” The shame of it all crept up on her again, that she’d tolerated it for so long. Had fallen into the same damn trap. “Like these offhanded remarks about how I dressed or the classes I took or what I was going to do after I finished college.”

When you’re still waiting tables and I’m on Wall Street . . .

“And it just got worse and worse, until I was believing it.” She’d always believed it. “That he was better than I was and I was lucky to have him.” That she didn’t have any right to expect more of him. More affection or more time. More patience with her body.

Rylan’s voice was murderous. “He’s lucky I don’t know where he lives.”

“I could tell you,” she said weakly. If it would get Rylan to come to New York, he could beat up as many asshole ex-boyfriends as he pleased.

“Don’t tempt me.”

She bit her lip. “When I found out he was cheating on me . . .”

Rylan’s huffed-out breath was almost a growl.

And it was that—his fury on her behalf—that gave her the strength to tell him the rest. “There was this part of me that was ready to forgive him, because it was probably my fault.” She’d been bad in bed, not attentive enough. Not good enough for him. “Until I remembered, until I realized . . .”

It was all hitting her again. A dizzying kind of pain and a stab of regret.

Rylan stroked her hair, patient. He was always so patient with her.

“It was the same damn thing that had happened to my mom.”

Her crazy, wonderful, amazing mother, who had given up her own dreams to put her husband through school. To raise a daughter who’d come too young, and she’d never complained. Not until . . .

“My dad did the same thing, only it was so much worse.” He was so much worse.

The tiny insults and the idea he’d given them both that they’d be lost without him. Scatterbrained creative types who always messed things up. Who made him so angry sometimes . . .

But they’d stood strong. He’d gone on to some other woman, and they’d been just fine all on their own.

Kate hadn’t learned her lesson, though.

“After I found out about Aaron, I called my mom, crying, and she reminded me how guys just . . . change sometimes. They start out great and then there’s this whole dark ugly other side to them.”

It had been like turning on a light. She could suddenly see all the little ways she’d been broken down over the year she and Aaron had spent together. She’d dumped him the very next day, swearing she’d never let the wool be pulled over her eyes again. Her self-esteem might have taken another beating, but she’d promised herself it was the last time she ever accepted so little from a man.

And then Rylan had come along. He’d shown her what she’d been missing.

“My dad did it to my mother, and Aaron did it to me. They started out so nice and then they turned into these assholes, and I . . .” She could say this out loud. Thanks to Rylan, she could. “I deserve better.”

She’d found it. Right here.

But Rylan’s throat bobbed, and his hands went still, the little caressing motions he’d been making against her spine suddenly stopping. For a long moment he said nothing, and she sat there.

Bare for him the way that he had been for her that afternoon. And waiting. Waiting . . .

He sucked in a long breath, then let her go, his gaze burning as he took her face between his hands and kissed her. Her cheeks and her brow and her eyes and finally, finally her mouth. Drawing back he swore, “You do. You deserve the best.” He hugged her again, and it was the warmest embrace she’d ever known.

For what felt like forever, she shook in his arms, letting him soak up the old, lingering hurt that had been weighing her down for so long. He murmured vague apologies into her hair, and she let him.

She felt more warm—more loved, sitting there, naked and held by a veritable stranger than she had in her entire time with Aaron. Maybe her entire life.

“You know what?” she said, once she’d gotten her breath back.

“What?”

“I wish it had been you.” Christ, she did. “That you’d been my first. That you’d shown me how—how incredible it could be.”

How differently would things have gone with Aaron, with that random one-night stand, if she had known? Would there even have been anyone else? If she could’ve had Rylan first? If he’d pushed away all the damage her father had done with careful hands and kind words.

If she could have kept him?

He made a little shhing sound, stroking his hand up and down the bare stretch of her spine.

She buried her face against his neck. “You just—you make me feel really safe, you know?”

Like she could let go. Like she could touch and be touched.

Like she was worth it.

“Yeah,” he said, clutching her close. “I know.”

Aiming the remote at the TV, Rylan clicked the volume down to almost nothing. For the past half hour, he’d been slowly softening his voice as he narrated the romance taking place in French across the screen. But Kate’s breaths had finally evened out. As the television went quiet, she snuggled in closer but otherwise didn’t stir.

He left the screen on as he lay there with her. The pale blue light washed across her skin, making her face seem to glow. Her head was resting on his shoulder, her hair soft between his fingers. Beneath the sheet, all of her nakedness was pressed to all of this.

And he didn’t deserve this. Not the tiniest fraction of it. His heart squeezed, and he had to pull his hand back from her hair, had to cover his mouth with his fist to keep the grunt of distress from falling from his lips.

This whole time, he’d been sitting around, feeling morally superior to the jackasses who had dared to touch her and not make her come. God. When she’d told him the rest of the story, it had felt like the floor was falling out from underneath him.

Like the moment when his father had been subpoenaed. When Rylan’s eyes had been opened.

He was just like his father in so many ways. Since birth, people had been telling him that. Every step of the way, he’d been groomed to fill the old man’s shoes, and it had chafed. The path that had been laid out for him, each decision he should’ve gotten to make on his own already predetermined. But it had been worth it. His father was a paragon, a monument, everything a man could hope to be. Everything Rylan was supposed to be.

When Kate had talked about her dad, her ex, those men who had seemed to be so good and who had turned out to be dark and ugly . . .

That day in his father’s office, when the doors had burst open and the agents had filed in.

Dark and ugly. Those words didn’t even begin to explain it.

Suddenly, all his father’s faults had been laid out. His charm was his philandering, his business sense his greed. Aggression turned to cruelty and callousness, and Rylan had seen them all. He’d seen them in himself.

When Kate saw them in Rylan. When she found out who he’d been in line to become . . .

His lungs squeezed so hard he could scarcely breathe.

When she found out he’d been lying to her all along.

He bit down into his knuckle, trying to force the bile back into his throat.

Rylan hadn’t lied to Kate. Not once had he said something explicitly untrue. But that wouldn’t save him. He was just as bad as her asshole of an ex, as her dad. The ones who’d made her look at a man who was extending his hand and believe he was a threat.

Rylan was that threat. He was a liar.

And he hated himself even more than he had before.

A shiver ran through him. Kate shifted, and he froze. All she did was slide her knee across his thigh, though, letting her hand rest higher on his chest.

She trusted him.

Fuck. He curled his hands up into fists, digging his nails into the meat of his palms, but it didn’t help. A good man would wake her up right now and tell her everything. He’d let her make her own decisions. He’d watch her walk away.

And Rylan just . . . couldn’t. Her face would crumple, and it would kill him. She’d been so skittish when she’d met him, and the idea of putting that fear in her eyes again made him want to take every single thing back. Every word and every touch. And he would never do that. Not in a million years.

What was he supposed to do?

Except be as good to her as he could.

They only had another couple of days, and if he could keep his conscience quiet, he could spend those days with her. He could shower her with all the affection and care she deserved. Then at the end of it, she’d go, and she would never have to know. She could keep some kind of faith that maybe there was a guy out there who wouldn’t screw her over.

He couldn’t decide if it was the most selfish plan or the most selfless one he’d ever had.

Her body gave another little restless twitch, and his heart ached. But he didn’t wake her. He didn’t let the confessions welling up inside his chest pour out.

His decision had been made.

He’d do what he had to do. He’d stay quiet, and he’d adore her the best he could. He wouldn’t hurt her. Not any more than he had to.

Picking up the remote again, he turned the television off, bathing them both in darkness. With a murmur, she turned over, and he followed, fitting his front to the curve of her spine. He buried his face against her hair and wrapped her up inside his arms, closing his eyes and breathing her in.

But sleep didn’t come to him for a long, long time.