Chapter 22
“You know, I thought I had my eyes wide open. I thought I knew exactly what to expect with those vipers in there,” I said, pointing back to the dining room as I walked through the house, toward the kitchen.
All I really wanted to do was leave, but I’d wanted away from the table so badly that I’d left my stuff in the dining room and had turned toward the kitchen instead of the front door.
“I even knew Caro was capable of…befriending me for the greater good.” I was in the kitchen now, the scene of all those afternoons of sharing tea with Caro. Of laughing with her over memories of her kids and my father—memories I had no right to, but wanted desperately to hear.
Desperate. The word I most conjured up when thinking of my mother.
And that thought—that I was my mother’s daughter after all—sent me into a near rage. Which I directed at Stick.
I whirled on him, and he nearly ran into me. “And you,” I said, sticking my finger into his chest. “How dare you sell me out.”
I went to push at him again, but he grabbed my arm. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I don’t know what any of you are talking about.”
I wrenched my arm free, wanting to jab at him again, but also wanting to be away from this place. Away from that room of political scheming, where you never knew what was sincere and what was just positioning.
“God!” I turned and walked away from Stick—further from the dining room. I looked outside to the estate grounds. What snow had fallen had now melted, and though you couldn’t really call the landscape green, it was promising to be so very soon.
I went to the French doors and walked outside, the breeze cool, but not as bracing as it had been just weeks ago when I’d started coming here with Stick.
Which, apparently, was all part of some master plan.
“Unbelievable,” I said as I walked across the grounds, not really caring where I went. The ground was hard in places and soft in others, the thawing process beginning.
“What is your deal?” Stick said as he caught up to me. He took hold of my elbow and steered me to the guesthouse where he sometimes stayed.
I tried to shake him off, but his grip tightened. Not so that it hurt, but I knew I wasn’t going to be free of him.
That thought made a bark of laughter rise from me, and he looked over. “Jane? What the hell?”
We reached the guesthouse, and he opened the door and gently pushed me inside. I heard him close and lock the door behind him. “Okay,” he said from behind me. “Now. What the fuck?”
I turned on him. “Are you serious? What the fuck? They totally ratted you out in there. And you’re surprised that I’m pissed?”
“What? What your dad said? That I brought you here to bond with Caro so you’d be more…amenable?”
I scoffed at his nonchalant questioning of what I took as a very large betrayal. “Umm…yeah.” My voice sounded shrill to my ears, and I realized with a blinding flash of clarity that I sounded just like my mother did when she’d yell at my father that she wanted her own Dotty.
And that realization sent me over the edge. “How dare you manipulate me like that. Don’t you think there are enough strings being pulled around here—and for all of my fucking life, thank you very much. It would be nice to have something—someone—that wasn’t knee deep in their shit.”
He came toward me, and I backed away. I vaguely noticed the living area of the small guesthouse on one side, and a bed on the other.
For all the afternoons I’d spent at Caro’s house, I’d never been in here.
Only the main house and the garage. There was a door behind me that must lead to the bathroom.
And a small kitchen area off the living room.
Small and tasteful, except for the jeans lying on the floor next to the bed, and the sweat socks piled to one side of the bedside table.
The only clue that Stick had invaded this private sanctuary.
He was still following me, stalking me, and my back hit the far wall.
“You honestly believed that shit your father was spewing?”
“Yes,” I said. I put my hand out to stop Stick from coming closer. He snorted disdain at the movement, took my hand and raised it over my head, pinning it against the wall.
“No you don’t. You did notice that it was your father who said that, right? Not Caro or Grayson? And you get that your dad is, shall we say, not the mastermind of the group.”
“All the more reason that he’d be the one to slip up and let the cat out of the bag.
” I knew what would happen if I reached out my other hand.
He would pin that one too. And that was what I wanted.
I wanted to provoke Stick. I wanted to lose control.
I wanted to feel his hands on mine as they held me to the wall.
I raised my hand and pushed at his chest. We both knew it was halfhearted, but he didn’t scoff this time as he grabbed my wrist and brought it up to meet my other one, holding both in one strong hand.
“He didn’t slip up. There was nothing to slip. He made the wrong conclusion.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
He stepped into me, pinning me with his body as tightly as he did with my hands.
“Yes you do,” he whispered. He dropped his head and nuzzled my neck, his tongue making a quick graze across my jawbone.
“I don’t know if Caro played you, though I’d like to think she didn’t.
” He kissed his way up my neck. I arched back, giving access, wanting more.
“But I wasn’t a part of any master plan.
Not one that included you. I wouldn’t do that. ”
He kissed me, and I devoured his mouth, as if I could believe his words more if I tasted from where they’d come.
Peppermint, always peppermint. I got so aroused from the scent of stupid peppermint these days.
He broke the kiss, resting his forehead on mine. “You believe me, Jane.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m just trying to find one decent human being in my life, you know? One…good guy in this whole mess. Of either gender. A white hat out there in the sea of black ones,” I said softly.
“You have,” he said, leaning back so he could meet my eyes. “I never proclaimed to be a white hat. But in this”—he pressed his body into mine—“with us”—he tilted into me, letting his erection rock into me—“I’m a good guy. Your good guy. Or, at least, I want to be.”
“Stick,” I whispered, the futility of the situation—our situation—coming through in my voice.
He bristled, and I could tell I’d hurt him like I had that very first day he’d brought me Yvette. So long ago now, and yet had anything really changed?
How many times had I kissed that mouth? Tasted peppermint as our tongues swirled and danced? And every time I swore it would be the last.
But not today. Today I needed more. I needed all of Stick.
I pushed my body into his, blocking out the knowledge that there couldn’t be more between us. “Do it.”
He stared me down. “Do what?” He knew exactly what I meant. What I needed.
“Do it,” I said again. He gave a small shake of the head. I pushed my hips deeper into him, pressed my boobs out. “Take me.”
“Against a wall?”
“Seems as good a place as any,” I said. His eyes were on my chest, which was moving up and down as the whole scene got me more and more excited.
“You want our first time to be up against a wall? When there’s a perfectly good bed five feet away.
” His free hand skimmed up my body, from my waist to the side of my breast then back down and around.
He slid it around and grabbed my ass, pulling me even closer into him.
I mentally cursed the jeans and layers of tops that kept him from my bare skin.
“You don’t get it,” I said.
His eyes narrowed on mine. “What don’t I get?” He rocked into me again, and I couldn’t help but let out a tiny gasp. Much as we’d kissed in the past weeks, Yvette had always been chaperone against any kind of grinding action. And man, it felt good to be grinding against Stick.
“That this isn’t our first time. It’s our only time.”
“Oh, Jane, you are so wrong about that.” His hand dropped from mine and both of his palms bracketed my face, his fingers resting on my cheekbones, as he kissed me again. Harder and deeper than before. He tasted so fresh and clean. But it wasn’t enough, not today, when I felt so raw, so vulnerable.
Shit, I hated being vulnerable.
I sucked on his tongue as I started clawing at his hoodie, needing it off him. Needing to see the shoulders and chest that I’d only been able to feel through cotton and coats. Sensing my urgency, he followed suit, his hands leaving my face and going to the hem of my tunic, pulling it up my body.
We had to stop kissing to remove his hoodie and my gauzy tunic. Then his long-sleeved tee and my knit henley. Finally his chest was bare, and I ran my hands down the smooth, lean, taut muscles. Until he jerked my arms up to get my tank top off me.
“Enough tops, much?” he said. I was about to throw a zinger back at him, but I was entranced by his chest and shoulders, all lean muscle and lankiness.
I’d assumed he’d have tattoos, but his skin was ink-free.
And a hairless chest, too, so smooth to my touch.
Just a sprinkling of hair at his navel, running down past the waistband of his jeans.
My hand slid down, down, reaching for his zipper, when he put a hand at the base of my throat and gently held me against the wall. I looked up at him, but his gaze was about a foot lower than my eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered as he stared at my chest. My—yes, I hated to admit it—heaving-with-excitement chest. “I thought you might be hiding something spectacular under all those funky tops. But God, Jane, it should be illegal to hide that. You’re…”
“Huge?” I said.