Текст книги "Breaking Him"
Автор книги: R. K. Lilley
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CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
“If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.”
~Emily Brontë
I have no excuse for myself. No justifications that don’t ring hollow.
I let him keep me there.
I could have escaped, could have fought him harder, could have easily talked Bastian into getting me away. It would have made the brothers come to blows, but it would have worked.
I didn’t do any of that.
This was the whole problem, the entire reason I was so stubbornly devoted to hating Dante’s guts.
Because when I didn’t, I was too weak to fight him. Just a few days in his proximity and I didn’t even have the will anymore.
Without the hate, I forfeited all of my power against him. I lost and he won.
Even knowing it was temporary, transient, even knowing it was all a lie, that when it finished I’d be in much, much worse shape than when we’d started, I let him keep me there for another day.
It’s no secret how we spent that day. We locked ourselves in my room and barely came out even to eat.
The day went too fast and the morning came too soon.
The sun rose and drama was not far behind it.
Something had happened between Bastian, Leo, and Adelaide in the middle of the night, the details of it shrouded in mystery, but word had it that Dante’s mother was throwing a fit to end all fits, so much so that the reading of the will was postponed.
I was in the kitchen pantry scraping together the ingredients to make crepes when Dante told me the news.
“God, she’s crazy. I can’t stay another day. I have work. I need to leave tonight.”
His answer was to grab me and kiss the breath out of me. “No,” he said simply.
I bit back a smile. “You know there’s a term for what you’re doing here, right?”
“Kidnapping,” he supplied without an ounce of shame or remorse.
But a few hours later he changed his mind completely, did an abrupt about face.
I was soaking my sore, overused body in the bath. He’d gone downstairs to grab some water, but I fully expected him to join me when he returned.
He burst in the door, looking agitated. “You need to get packed. You need to go. Now.”
I sat up, completely caught off guard. “What? Why?”
“It’s my mother. She’s gone crazy, and she’s on her way over. I don’t want you here when she gets here.”
I waved an unconcerned hand in the air. “Who cares? I can handle her.”
Because what could she even do to me at this point?
He set his jaw. “I’ll start packing for you, but you need to get ready fast.”
My dismay was turning to anger as he shuffled me out of Gram’s house like a bomb was about to go off.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked him as he peeled out of the driveway.
We were just pulling onto the main road when Dante’s mother passed us, careening around the corner like a maniac.
I watched her go by, staring at the strange tableau.
Tiffany was sitting in the passenger’s seat, and she stared right back.
“She won’t follow us. My dad’s still there, so she’ll go after him,” Dante reassured me.
“What the hell?”
“I don’t want her coming near you when she’s like this. She’s deranged right now. Capable of anything.”
We were silent for a long time. “Why are you always trying to protect me?” I finally asked him quietly.
He turned his head and looked at me, something bleeding out of his eyes, something intense and so tormented that I had to look away. “Because it’s my job.”
I didn’t say the thing I was thinking, but my thoughts felt so loud I knew they spoke to him without the aid of my voice.
Who’s going to protect me against you?
I thought he was taking me to the local airport, but as he drove for a while, I realized he was headed the opposite way, straight out of town.
“I know this is a silly thing to ask your kidnapper, but where are you taking me?”
His mouth twisted and his hand went to my leg, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Seattle. We’ll get a hotel there. I’ll let you fly out in the morning, but not yet.”
He glanced at me, his brilliant ocean eyes deeply unhappy. “I’m not ready yet,” he stated, squeezing my knee.
I wasn’t ready either, but I didn’t tell him that.
It was just over a two-hour drive, and we took it in silence.
I, for one, kept my piece because I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what subject could be broached that wouldn’t lead to something volatile or hurtful.
I didn’t feel like messing up the fragile, temporary truce we seemed to actually be succeeding at.
His motivations were a mystery to me, but whatever they were, he barely said a word, the only part of him communicating was his constant hand on my knee, and it spoke in a continual, soothing stroke and occasional tight squeezes.
I didn’t touch him back. I reclined my seat, brought my arms up to my chest, and stared straight up, wondering what to do with myself.
I wanted to turn my brain off. I wanted to be numb. I wanted to take back every inch I’d ceded to him in the last few days.
I wanted tomorrow to never come.
Dante wasn’t messing around. He checked us in to a Four Seasons, and I smirked when I realized he’d booked the Presidential suite.
“Doesn’t the waste of this make your frugal, little conservationist heart bleed a little?” I took the dig at him, voice mock sympathetic, as the bellhop situated my bags. The suite was spacious, beautiful, and had to cost a small fortune. It was very un-Dante to flaunt his wealth in such a way.
He just smiled ruefully, eyes aimed out the window at the spectacular harbor view. He waited for the bellhop to finish, handed him a bill, closed and bolted the door behind him, and dragged me to bed.
We didn’t leave the suite until morning.
Dante woke up early with me and while I packed and got ready, he just sat on the edge of the bed watching me, his unhappy eyes following everything I did with uncanny focus.
Finally I stopped, staring at him. “What? You’re making me nervous. Shouldn’t you be getting dressed?”
He was wearing nothing but his boxer briefs. He was leaning forward, the muscles of his torso bunching and flexing with his every breath.
Superficial creature that I am, it distracted me to an extreme degree. Contrary creature that I am, I was trying not to show it. “What?” I asked again.
He just kept staring.
With a huff, I went back to getting ready. The closer I got to actually being ready though, the way he was looking at me, the way his eyes were screaming at me, and the screaming was getting louder and louder, until they were trying to melt me from the inside out, became too much.
“Stop it,” I told him, zipping up my suitcase. “I need to leave soon, and you need to stop looking at me like that.”
But he didn’t stop. And it was too much.
I was stepping into my shoes when I said, “I’m ready.”
A desperate sound escaped him, and that was too much.
Too much. Too much. Too. Much.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” he spoke, each word gutted. “If I could forgive you, could you forgive me?”
“What?” I could barely get my voice to work for that one word.
“For all of it. Everything. Every last horrible thing we’ve done to each other. I’m so tired of this war. I’m so done lashing out at you, and I’m ready now. Ready to forgive you. Even for the worst of it. Especially for that.”
I was shaking. “You’re ready to forgive me? Oh, that is rich.”
“Yes. I’m ready. I can forgive you. Can you forgive me?”
It was so completely out of left field that I had no response. The idea of him forgiving me was so implausible on its own.
And the idea of me forgiving him was so completely and wholly foreign that it had never even crossed my mind.
Could I forgive him?
I didn’t know. I’d never tried.
I’d just assumed it was an impossible task, and one he’d certainly never asked me for before this moment. “I think we’ve proven that what you’re asking is impossible,” I finally said, cutting each word out of myself in big gory chunks.
I’d backed so far away from him that my back was to the wall. My hands were in fists at my sides.
He stood up and my whole body jerked. I put my hands up as though to ward him off, but he didn’t take even one step forward, and when he spoke, he spoke passionately and to the ground at my feet. “All we are is proof that love can survive anything. You and I, we’re heavy hitters, but even at our worst, we still couldn’t break this bond. If you’re honest with yourself, we didn’t even come close.”
I was weakening, my mind trying to find a way to reconcile what he was saying, to accept it and believe it, though I’d never admit it aloud.
But I didn’t have to. That was the worst thing about Dante. He knew me too well. Every in and out of me. Every lie and truth. He and I alone held the keys to my destruction.
As I’ve said, lovers should have secrets.
I asked the one question that would put an end to this madness. “Will you ever tell me why?” I didn’t have to elaborate. He knew what I wanted to know.
Why did you throw me away?
And . . .
Why did you let me give you every part of myself just so you could toss it all back into the trashcan that it came from?
But particularly . . .
How? How could you break my heart?
“I can’t give you an excuse,” he said in a careful voice that trembled. “But I’m asking for forgiveness. Please. I don’t make sense without you and you don’t make sense without me and you know it. We only ever worked together. How long did you think it was going to last? Scarlett without Dante, Dante without Scarlett? You and I going about our lives as though the other doesn’t exist? Who are you kidding? Who are we without each other? Apart we’re not ourselves. And it’s been long enough. I’ve been punished long enough.”
Had he?
And—had I?
And—couldn’t he at least try to make up an excuse? Even if it was bullshit, even if it was a complete lie, couldn’t he at least try?
I didn’t know how to respond to him. I didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t know what to think.
He had completely weakened me, utterly destroyed any resolve I thought I’d built against him, and when he started to move to me, I couldn’t find the strength to get away.
He crowded but barely touched, his hands going around me, under my hair, feeling at my nape.
Time froze as he unfastened one of the chains around my neck, took the ring off, and put it on my limp finger.
“I know this is sudden to you. I know it’s a shock. I’ll give you time. There’s no deadline on your answer, but it’s out there now, what I want, how I feel, though that was never much of a mystery if you were paying attention.”
“It doesn’t even make sense,” I pointed out tremulously. “We don’t live near each other, and you know damn well it can never work long distance between us.” We’d tried and failed it once. Some part of me blamed that distance for our downfall. It was my ego, I supposed, that was certain that he never would have turned to her if I hadn’t been so far away.
“I’ll move to L.A. If you say yes, that you can forgive me and give us another chance, I’ll move tomorrow.”
I was looking down at the diamond on my finger, Gram’s diamond, that she’d passed down to Dante, that he’d given to me once upon a time when I’d still believed in the conquer all power of love.
I couldn’t stop shaking.
“Don’t say no,” he pleaded. “Don’t say anything. Just think about it. I’ll wait for you. However much time you need, I’ll be here waiting.”
And then, he backed away.
We barely touched, barely said another word when he dropped me off at the airport.
I didn’t look back as I headed into the terminal, but that insidious thing inside of me was raging again, every step I took that led me away from him, it raged.
I was on the plane before I let myself cry. I pulled a blanket over my head, and God, did the tears fall.
I’d folded in on myself, my body failing under the weight of one simple realization: I needed to change. I couldn’t go on like this. Hatred alone was not enough to fuel a person through life. I needed to find some version of peace.
What could I forgive for the sake of love? What could I get past for the simple justification that I wanted to be happy again?
My answer stunned me. Rocked me down to my soul.
More than I’d ever thought I could.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
“Never make a decision when you are upset, sad, jealous or in love.”
~Mario Teguh
I didn’t make him wait long before I called, though some part of me thought I should make him suffer longer, I just didn’t have it in me.
I shut my eyes tight at the sound of his voice. I was in my bedroom at my apartment, sitting on my bed. I’d only gotten back from Seattle the day before, though I’d made my decision before my plane even touched down.
“Dante,” I breathed, my voice close to a sob. I felt so emotional and so desperate to get it out that I didn’t even wait for an opening. “Dante. My answer is yes. I want you to move to L.A.” I didn’t say anymore. I didn’t need to. If he came here for me, I’d be his. We both knew it, and I’d never been any good at expressing my feelings over the phone.
He was gasping on the other end, breaths so ragged that they punched into my ear like he was shouting.
“Scarlett,” he said once, his heart in his voice, hiding nothing from me.
But then, a few beats later, the strangest thing happened.
The tone of the call changed, the connection faltering as it lessened in quality, the background noise getting just a touch more static.
He’d switched it to speakerphone.
It was like déjà vu.
My hand pressed to my chest as the air seized in my lungs.
This has happened before, my mind recalled in horror, not even having to place the memory, because it was burned right there on my frontal lobe in a spot I could never misplace.
And his voice, when he spoke again had been stripped of all emotion. It was detached to the point of cold. “I’m sorry, Scarlett. I’ve thought about it, and it was all a mistake. What I proposed . . . is impossible.”
“What?” I breathed. “I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t you?” he asked, his indifferent tone ringing out hollow.
“And this was what? You messing with me? Revenge? Why would you do this?” My voice broke on the last word.
“You and I can never work,” he said simply.
My eyes were on my shaking hands. “This is really what you want?” I asked, and as I heard the words come out, heard how pathetic they were, I wanted to snatch them back.
“It was silly to think we could be together again. I’m sorry I put you through that, but it is impossible.”
And with that, he hung up.
A few days later, I pulled myself together enough to send him a small care package.
My return gift to Dante was not as fun as a pair of Louboutins, but it was far more valuable, and the note that went with it felt satisfying as hell when I wrote it.
Dante,
I know you love meaningless gestures. How’s this one for you?
Enjoy. Thanks for everything.
S, aka the hate of your life
P.S. There is not one more fucking thing we need to talk about. Ever.
P.P.S. Lose my number.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
PAST
A twist came my way senior year, one I couldn’t have foreseen but that I’d be feeling the reverberations of for a very long time.
Tiffany’s wealthy family purchased a great amount of acreage right next to Gram and Adelaide’s estates and they built a huge house and moved in over the summer. Next thing I knew, Tiffany was going to high school with us.
I hated it.
And what was worse, Dante had become friends with her. He said hi to her now when we ran into her, smiled at her, he even chatted and joked with her. When I’d called him out on it, he’d said, “She’s not that bad, tiger. We’ve snubbed her for years for no good reason aside from spiting my mother. Don’t you think it’s time we grew up? She can’t help that my mom’s a psycho any more than I can. Give her a chance. She’s actually pretty cool.”
I didn’t take that well. I gave him the silent treatment for two days, would barely look at him, but then it occurred to me that if I withdrew from him, he might turn to her.
I approached him at his locker. He was surrounded by people, as he always seemed to be lately, but I ignored them all.
Tiffany was lingering near him, talking to some girls. I knew she’d do that. She’d become a part of his circle of friends, I was certain of it.
The thought had been my last straw and why I had decided to approach him right then.
He smiled warmly when he saw me. He thought I was over my snit, and he was happy about it.
I didn’t smile back but moved right into him, smashing my soft chest against his hard one.
He put his arms around me, and I lifted my face up to him. He was not into public displays of affection, but he gave me a brief peck on the mouth.
I wasn’t having it, so I reached up and pulled his head back down to mine. I rubbed my body against his and started kissing him.
With a quiet groan, he started kissing me back, his hands going to my hips.
After a few beats he pulled back with a curse, “Jesus, what’s gotten into you? Not here.”
He wouldn’t let me move my hips, but I was brushing my breasts lightly into his chest, back and forth, over and over.
“Not fucking here,” he gritted out. “Guys!” he barked at the jocks he called his friends these days. “Give us a minute, will you?”
They left and the girls that were with them followed, Tiffany sending one long, steady stare my way before she joined them.
I met the stare, pressing my body harder against Dante. Mine, I told her silently. My man, my territory.
“What was that?” His voice was quiet and incredulous.
I glared up at him. “What? Are you embarrassed of me? I’m pretty sure everyone at this school knows we’re together.”
That pissed him off royally, I could tell. His hands tightened on my hips and his eyes shot daggers at me. “You know better. Don’t say shit like that. And yeah, of course everyone knows we’re together, but look at you right now. The fuck me look on your face, grinding on me in broad daylight in front of a crowd? I don’t want other guys seeing you like this. I don’t want them to have this picture of you in their head when they’re fantasizing about you because I know that every fucking one of them does. The assholes can use their imagination; they don’t need a picture like this.”
I was sure he was right about at least one of them. The way Nate looked at me, even just before the guys had cleared out, the gaze he’d cast my way, one of sheer longing, I was well aware I was the star of his fantasies.
“I think Nate is in love with me.” I had a habit of goading his jealousy, because I couldn’t get enough of it.
“I think so too. Try to go easy on him, will ya?”
“Aren’t you jealous?” I was pouting. That was hardly the reaction I’d been expecting.
“No. I trust you, and I don’t honestly think he can help it. I know I can’t.”
I pulled his head down to me and started kissing him again.
After a few drugging moments, he pulled back again.
“I need you,” I said into his ear.
“Jesus, Scarlett, we have class in like five minutes.”
“You can’t skip one class to give your girlfriend what she needs?” I breathed.
For that, he crowded me into the locker. “Oh, I’ll give my girlfriend what she needs all right, but I highly doubt we’ll only miss one class, and just for the record, I’m a little disappointed in her.”
“Why?”
“She hasn’t spoken to me for two days because she’s jealous when she, of all people, has no right to be jealous.”
I pulled back to look at him. “I don’t?”
“You don’t. No right at all. Other girls, other people, aren’t even on my radar. I don’t notice them. I don’t see them. I don’t care about anybody but you and you know it.”
With a coquettish smile, I took his hand and led him out of the building.
We walked through the parking lot and then into the woods. The elementary, middle school, and high school were all just minutes from each other, and all of them backed against the same large stretch of forest. It was a longer walk through the woods to get home than it used to be when we were younger, but still only about twenty leisurely minutes.
“Where should we go?” he asked me. “Dammit, I should’ve driven today.” His brain had gone into full-on rut mode.
“The forest,” I decided. Usually we went to my grandma’s house. I hated that place, but it was always abandoned until the evening so it was too convenient not to use.
He grunted, not sounding pleased with the idea, but when I started pulling him, he didn’t resist.
We didn’t make it far, maybe five minutes in before we were all over each other.
“We need to walk the rest of the way,” he told me between drugging kisses. “I don’t have any condoms on me.”
“You don’t? Why the hell not?”
“Because normally I don’t need them at school, and I especially didn’t think I’d need them today with the way you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder.”
“Whatever. It’s fine. You can just pull out.”
He groaned and started kissing me again, but quickly pulled away. “We’ve discussed it, and you know that doesn’t work. You need to get on the pill and until then, condoms.”
I started rubbing him with my hand through his jeans. “Just once won’t hurt. I want to feel you bare.”
“Fuck,” he cursed, yanking away from me.
I smiled and turned around, unsnapping my cutoff shorts and pushing them off.
“What are you doing?” he asked me when I went down on hands and knees.
I straightened, shrugged my shirt off, then my bra and lowered again. “I’ll let you guess,” I told him.
He cursed and cursed, but it wasn’t long before I heard him taking off his clothes, and then I felt him behind me, his chest against my back.
He kissed my neck. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. You could talk me into anything.”
“It’ll be fine,” I assured him. “Just pull out, okay?”
“Okay,” he panted and pushed his tip into me.
We both groaned.
He palmed my breasts and moved deeper.
“Oh God,” he breathed and rammed himself home.
He’d been getting better about lasting longer the more we had sex, but this time it was like our first time. He only made it a few rough thrusts before he was pulling out of me, coming in warm spurts against my ass, kissing my back and telling me he loved me.
Well, at least he’d pulled out.
“Sorry. Fuck. Sorry.” His fingers were playing with my clit, his other hand still fondling my breast. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
I squirmed. My knees were already sore and I knew they’d be marked up from the hard ground, but I didn’t want to move. I just wanted to stay like this until he was ready again.
“More,” I told him thickly, moving my hips.
“So greedy,” his approving voice rumbled onto my skin. He pinched my clit lightly as the fingers of his other hand pushed into me, two fingers thrusting steadily. I tilted my hips until they were hitting just the right nerve.
“Don’t stop,” I gasped when I was getting close.
He stopped abruptly.
“What did I say?” I snapped at him, unfinished and surly with it.
His answer came in the form of his recovered cock breaching me. He picked up the steady rhythm again, but this time it was so much better with the thickness of him.
I’d just started to come, my sheath clenching around him, when he pulled out again.
I straightened, turned, and pressed myself against him, grabbing his spasming cock and helping him finish with my hand, pulling his blunt tip to smash against my sensitive clit as we both got off, his warm cum coating my tender flesh in continuous pumps.
It was so good that I kept ahold of him, giving him open-mouthed kisses as I squeezed him, not ready for it to end.
He pressed me onto my back, spreading my legs open wide.
He had my breasts in his hands, pushed together while he licked my nipples when he reluctantly pulled back. “We should go somewhere. To your grandma’s probably. She’ll still be at work, so . . .”
I pulled his head back to my breasts, aiming one aching nipple at his mouth. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I was already worked up again, and it was still a solid fifteen-minute walk. I didn’t think I could wait that long and I told him so.
With a loud pop, he let my nipple out of his mouth. “It’ll take me more than fifteen minutes to recover,” he pointed out.
I bit my lip and pushed his head down just enough for him to get the hint.
He smiled and put his mouth on me again.
“God, if the girls at school only knew, mmm, that you could do this to them,” I told the sky as he kissed his way across my body. “They already want you something fierce, and they have no idea, mmm, that you’re like this, mmm.”
He came up for air long enough to say, “For the record, I’m not interested in doing this to anyone but you.”
His head was deep between my legs, and I was just on the edge of release when he pulled away.
“What!” I cried out. It was no time to be stopping.
He moved up my body, and grinning, shoved into me again.
My sated body was still vibrating, his heavy weight on top of me, when I blinked my eyes open and caught a movement at the corner of it.
I froze.
Dante was oblivious at first, still moaning as he finished on my thigh, his mouth busy on my neck.
I tapped his shoulder, then tapped it again.
“Mmm?” He made the noise between kisses.
“Someone saw us,” I told him, shivering.
His head snapped up, his entire body lifting off me. “What?”
“Someone was watching us,” I clarified. I pointed to the spot in the trees. “I don’t know for how long, but I saw somebody when I opened my eyes. They were watching us, but when I spotted them, they disappeared.
“Did you get a look at them?”
“It was a big man. I think it was that homeless guy, the one that’s always sleeping by the river, closer to the middle school. Remember?”
Dante was not happy about that. He cursed fluently as he got dressed, then impatiently stuffed me back into my clothes since I hadn’t been hurrying fast enough to suit him.
He dragged me around as he checked the immediate area, but there was no sign of the guy by then. “I don’t like it. I should find the pervert and put the fear of God into him.”
“I don’t honestly know how long he was watching. He might have just stumbled upon us, and I just happened to catch sight of him before he could leave.”
I moved into him, hand rubbing his chest. “Let’s forget about it. Let’s go to my grandma’s.” I cupped him. “We weren’t done, were we?”
His head fell back. “Jesus, you’re going to kill me.”
We didn’t make it back to school that day, and even knowing he’d catch hell from his coach for it, he skipped practice.
The next day we couldn’t even look at each other without the past day’s sensory memories ruling us. I lasted until just after third period.
“I’m so sore,” I breathed into his ear.
His answer was a very satisfying, half-stifled moan.
“I can’t sit down for another class, so I’m skipping,” I continued.
His hands squeezed my hips, and I may as well have been reading his mind.
“You know what’s not sore, though?” I asked him.
His only answer was a few helpless pants into my ear.
“My mouth.”
“At this rate,” he told me later. We were in my bed, his naked form spooning me from behind, “I’m going to get kicked off the team.”
I didn’t tell him that that wouldn’t have made me sad. He knew how I felt about football.
It was just a few weeks later that it happened.
It is so sad and so terrible how the most random and senseless things can set about your destruction.
Walking home alone that day was a complete fluke. Nothing but a temperamental whim on my part. Something so silly, some petty, jealous fit over Dante being too nice to Tiffany, and I’d gone into a rage and decided to go home early, ditching out while Dante was at practice, and sulk by myself.
When I think back on it there’s always some significant echo, some resounding weight to the steps I took alone into the woods that day.
But I couldn’t say if I noticed it then, only that it has attributed itself quite securely to my memories.
It is a powerful echo, one that aches with regret and a million what ifs.
What if I hadn’t gone that way? What if I hadn’t gone alone?
What if I’d waited for Dante to walk with me?
Any of those things could have prevented so much heartache, so much pain, and the domino effect of destruction that followed.
One thing was for certain, whether it was memory or retrospect, those footsteps would reverberate like gunfire through the rest of my life.
*****
BOOKS BY R.K. LILLEY
THE DANTE & SCARLETT SERIES
BREAKING HIM
BREAKING HER – COMING SOON
THE WILD SIDE SERIES
THE WILD SIDE
IRIS
DAIR
THE OTHER MAN
TYRANT – COMING SOON
THE UP IN THE AIR SERIES
IN FLIGHT
MILE HIGH
GROUNDED
MR. BEAUTIFUL
LANA (AN UP IN THE AIR COMPANION NOVELLA)
AUTHORITY – COMING SOON
THE TRISTAN & DANIKA SERIES
BAD THINGS
ROCK BOTTOM
LOVELY TRIGGER
THE HERETIC DAUGHTERS SERIES
BREATHING FIRE
CROSSING FIRE – COMING SOON
THE BISHOP BROTHERS SERIES
BOSS – COMING SOON
