Chapter Seventeen #3
I gulped. It sounded even worse when Adam said it. But he was right. “No, not these last few weeks.” A hot flush of shame pulsed through me. Damn it to hell though, I have nothing else to lose. “This has been going on for these last few months.”
“Months?”
“I never thought you’d find out. In fact, I was trying to make sure you didn’t.
” I shook my head, disgusted with myself for ever getting mixed up with Alexi, and sick over the fact my father had dealt with the man.
My father. A man I never knew at all. “Alexi knew I was in a complicated situation. He knew it and he…he’s—I screwed up. I know I did.”
Adam parked the car in his driveway and turned off the engine. “Let’s discuss this inside,” he said, his voice low and full of something I couldn’t quite place.
I agreed and followed him into his mansion through the side door. When we arrived in his kitchen, he stopped and turned to me. “You told me you were a virgin.” Adam didn’t hide his anger. “And this whole time, you’ve been working as a prostitute for Alexi Chekov?”
“No, Adam. I am a virgin. Still. I didn’t work as a prostitute exactly.”
“What the fuck do you call what just happened in that restaurant?” He braced his arm on the nearby kitchen counter, his bicep bulging, his gaze fixed on me. “Tell me the truth, Lila. All of it.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding at his demand. He was right and it was probably the least I owed to the man who had just agreed to guarantee my crushing debt to a South Floridian mobster.
“Dad took out all these loans, and as far as I can tell, most of them went back to Alexi. He wanted me to pay them after Dad died, and his people wouldn’t stop hounding me—threatening me. ”
“Not a surprise. He’s a criminal, and that’s what they do.”
“He said I could work off the debt if I wanted, and that I’d help him with his business interests.
” I shuddered at the memory of my first desperate meeting, when I’d begged him to give me extra time, when he’d looked so pleased to see me groveling at his feet, lowered and humbled because of the mess my father had left me.
“I tolerated it all, at first. Put it into a little box in the back of my mind and explained it all away. So what if what I did ruined lives and altered people’s realities? This was the easiest way out.”
“Nothing with Alexi Chekov is ever easy.”
I grimaced. “But I want to make it clear, up until…up until what was going to happen tonight, I never slept with anyone. I just…people played out their fantasies with me, and Alexi said it helped him with his negotiations.”
“Did something happen to make you change your mind about his offer?”
I nodded. “However bad things were, they got worse when the facility taking care of Mom called me. She has to be moved to a different facility focused on advanced care, and it’s going to break whatever meager budget I have left.
Even if the house sells, it might not be fast enough to keep the bills from piling up. ”
There. I’d finally said it. I’d finally revealed everything to him.
“Wow.” Adam let out a low curse and glanced at the floor. “You were there to get kompromat. To get leverage.” He paused. “How many times had you done this for him in the past?”
“Dozens. He had a lot of people he wanted me to entertain, people from all up and down this coast, from other states…and so on.”
“Jesus Christ.”
I nodded. “It worked okay for a while. I hated myself, but I could live with what I was doing. Except he kept trying to get to me to go further.” My shoulders slumped, and I braced my head in my hands, feeling the beginning of what would surely be a monster headache.
“And I owed him an astronomical amount of money. I thought I could hold him off, that I would be able to buy myself some time while I sold the house and get my affairs together. But Alexi was impatient. He wanted his money now. So, when he offered to let me pay it off in one night, I thought”—I swiped at the tear that slid down my left cheek—“I thought once I got through it, I could forget about it all, like a bad dream. And then I’d be able to move on. ”
“I still don’t understand. You agreed to auction off your virginity, for God’s sake. Your virginity.” He shook his head. “You’d rather do that than let me help you with all this?”
“I know you offered. And I know it doesn’t make sense.
” The reply tasted thick and bitter in my mouth.
Another tear fell, and I wiped it away. “I just thought…well, I was embarrassed to admit the truth. I kept thinking about how you remembered me when we were kids. I’m not that girl anymore.
I thought if you knew how far I’d fallen, you wouldn’t understand.
” I grimaced. “Because it’s totally horrifying. Embarrassing.”
“If you’d told me the truth maybe this could have been avoided.” His voice softened. “You can always tell me the truth.”
“I know.” I gulped down a strangled sob. “I see that now.”
He slapped the counter again. “Fuck it all. This evening can go to hell.”
We fell silent again, and I searched for some way to make things better. I came up short, and as the seconds stretched into minutes, I found myself shaking from the enormity of all that had transpired in one night. “You saved me. You did, and it was—”
“Stop, Lila.”
“No, you did. You—”
Adam took two large strides, then silenced me with one long, exquisite kiss, a moment that put a final note on it all. Whatever we’d been though, maybe this started something else. Something…more.
“I know you felt embarrassed,” he murmured against my lips. “You didn’t want to tell me the truth.” He pulled a little farther away and his gaze locked with his. “Horrified, even. But I want you to understand something—I spent all this time waiting for you. For you, Lila.”
“I know,” I breathed. “I don’t think I deserve it.”
“But you do. No matter how much I thought I’d gotten over what had happened, I kept coming back to it.
To you. And now that you’re back in my life, I want us to start over again.
I want us to…I want us to have the chance we never had.
” He moved some wayward strands of hair off my face and tucked them behind my left ear.
“As far as I am concerned, the future starts now. With you.”
“Oh, Adam—”
“Shh,” he replied, and then his lips found mine again, a kiss that came with no strings attached, no baggage, no confusion, no lies.
It was the moment I had waited for, and yet, at the same time, a moment I never knew I needed.
How did this happen? Out of all that ugliness, had I truly found joy?
I pushed aside those thoughts and gave myself over to the moment, to the energy between us.
I wanted this, and I had wanted this since the night at The Breakers, when all the old feelings I had for Adam came rushing back to me, memories that never truly faded away.
“Yes,” I murmured against his lips as our embrace intensified. “I need this. I need you.”
We fell against each other for a few more haggard breaths, and my desire overtook it all, a web of madness and need that stretched beyond the moment, into the years. We were together. At last.
But then Adam pulled away and looked into my eyes, his hands cupping either side of my face. “I want to make something clear to you,” he said between rough, heavy gasps of air. “This isn’t—this isn’t payment for anything, Lila. You’re not indebted to me. This is just us. That’s all.”
“I know.” I wondered if I’d be able to hang on much longer, as the pressure of the moment overwhelmed me. I wanted him. All of him. And I didn’t want to wait any longer.
He held my gaze for a long time. “Are you sure you’re ready for tonight? Ready for me?”
“Absolutely.” I didn’t need any further convincing; I knew what I wanted and who I wanted.
I knew this was the moment, the one I had waited for, and here I was, giving myself over to someone who not only cared about me, but who had waited for me, someone who had placed me above others.
And there was no better feeling than that. “I’m ready.”
He crushed his lips to mine again and walked me backward, pushing me from the kitchen to the long hallway that united the first-floor rooms of the house.
Then he led me by the hand, up the winding staircase, the moment a blur, the fire inside me building with every step.
When we arrived at his bedroom door, he turned to me, his eyes heavy with desire.
“You’re everything to me,” he said. “And I’m going to show you just what I mean. ”
We moved into the room and to the bed, kissing as we went.
When we arrived at the edge, Adam pushed me onto the mattress, and his touch enveloped me, blurring everything as I gave myself over to him.
Together, we removed our clothes, and I gasped as I beheld his naked body for the first time.
He was everything I had ever wanted, and I marveled at how fate had brought us together once again now. How lucky I truly was.
“I love you, Adam Greene,” I cried as he entered me. Nothing felt as good as having him inside me.
“Not as much as I love you, Lila,” he answered.
And then there were no words as our bodies came together with each thrust. With each moment that passed, I knew one indelible truth, one overarching fact.
I’d been right to wait. Adam Greene would be my first, my last, my everything. Much better than any story in any book.
That night, in Adam’s arms, I was finally home.