Being Me

Twenty-two

All sinewy muscle and masculine perfection, Chris presses me back down onto the mattress, his hands covering my breasts, fingers flicking the rubies. Little darts of pleasure rush from my nipples to the V of my body, where the thick ridge of his erection settles.

My hand curves on his face. “I need what you needed earlier today.” My voice is raspy, urgent, etched with the weight that today has been, and all it has revealed. I barely recognize it as my own. “Take me there, Chris. Please.”

“Where I needed to go was where I ended up. I was shutting you out, like I shut everything out, and you pulled me back. You made me see what was important. What’s real. You made me see you.” His lips brush mine. “See me now, Sara.”

“I do see you.”

“No. You don’t. You see what happened tonight and what you’ve decided that means for us. See me now, Sara, like you made me see you.” He kisses the corner of my mouth and his lips travel down my jaw. “Really see me.”

“I’m trying.” My hands slide to his hair. “But, I—”

He kisses me, a soft caress of tongue against tongue. “No buts. Either you see me or you don’t. Either you let me in or you don’t.” His mouth touches mine again, a feather-light, barely there brush. “Let me in, Sara.”

Confusion ripples through my mind. Am I shutting him out? Isn’t it he who has shut me out? No. Yes. I don’t know. His fingers caress my nipple, and his mouth travels my jaw to the delicate curve of my neck, and I can barely think. His breath fans hot against my ear, and his voice is a low, deep, sensual promise. “I’m right here.” His words whisper in my ear and travel down my neck, over my skin, and settle in that deep hole inside me that only he can fill.

My hand slides to his face and I pull his mouth back to mine. “Part of you isn’t enough, Chris. You can’t hold back because of what you found out tonight. You can’t.”

He strokes his tongue against mine, and it is sweet velvet seducing me. “Taste that. That’s me. That’s us.” His tongue strokes mine. “Us, Sara. Forget everything else.” His mouth comes down on mine again, and I fight the passion consuming me. I fight because he didn’t tell me he wouldn’t hold back. He didn’t say what I needed to hear and I know why. Because he never says what he doesn’t mean. But it’s a worthless battle I cannot win. Not when his hands are on my breasts and his mouth is caressing a path down my neck.

The last of my will to question who we are together and where we are going is lost when his tongue flicks the ruby strand. He suckles my nipple, tugging on the attached ring, and oh God, his other hand slides between my legs, applying pressure to the jewels attached to my clit. I moan and my hands slide into his hair, and he lets me. Some part of my mind registers this as abnormal, as him allowing me control I don’t normally have, but I can’t seem to process. Not when his mouth is doing the most amazing things to my nipple and his fingers are pressing inside me. His thumb strokes my clit, and he seems to have found the exact right spot to send sensations spiraling through me. I gasp at how quickly I am on the edge and he swallows it, kissing me. I shatter at the touch of his tongue against mine, pleasure trembling through me in a long wave of sensations.

“Sometimes pleasure is just pleasure,” he promises against my mouth.

“And that’s enough for you?”

“We aren’t even close to the place I call enough.”

And with that promise he slides down my body, and spreads my legs to lick my swollen clit.

I gasp. “No. I can’t. I’m too sensitive. It’s too much.” Everything is too much tonight.

“I’ll tell you when it’s too much.” He licks me again and I feel him tug away the jewel, replacing it with his mouth. I shudder with a mix of pain and pleasure. No, it’s all pleasure. It’s pleasure and I am lost to the way he licks and strokes and teases me until I am impossibly on the edge again. So close, and yet I’m not there. I need to be there. I’m desperate to get there again. And this is pain. It’s pain and pleasure and it’s Chris, pushing me, taking me there. Always taking me someplace I don’t know I can go.

He is not so far out of reach, and neither is my release. My sex clenches and spasms, empty and needy, and I whimper. Chris answers my cry, covering my body with his, but he doesn’t enter me. He strokes his shaft over the sensitive V of my body and I whimper again, my lashes fluttering.

His hand slides to my face. “Look at me when I enter you.” His voice is rough, intense. “See me, Sara.”

“I do.”

He presses inside me and thrusts, burying himself deeply, completely. “Feel me.”

“Yes.”

He lowers his mouth a breath from mine. “But do you feel us?”

My hands slide around him, holding on to him. “Yes.”

“I’m not sure you do.” He brushes his mouth over mine. “But before tonight is over, you will.”

The sound of the phone ringing on the nightstand permeates the sweet, sated state of my slumber. I’m immediately aware of the sunlight glimmering through the hotel window and the wonderful weight of Chris’s leg draped over mine, his hard body curved around me.

Chris reaches over me and grabs the phone. “I need the car at nine fifteen. Right.”

I roll to my back while he listens to whatever he’s being told. I stroke my hand over the shadow on Chris’s jaw, letting it rasp along my fingers before tugging a strand of his sexy, rumpled blond hair, which is all the sexier because I know my fingers helped create the disarray. Memories of the night assail me in a mix of hot and cold, ice and fire. The lovemaking had been nothing shy of amazing, but there is so much more to Chris, and to me, that I need to know still exists.

Chris reaches over me again and hangs up the phone. “Morning,” he says, pulling my back to his front, his arm wrapped around me as he nuzzles my neck.

“Morning,” I whisper. “What time is it?”

“Eight. And since we need to swing by the hospital on the way to the airport, that leaves us only about thirty minutes for a good-morning fuck.” He nuzzles my neck and his stubble is deliciously rough on my skin, the way he can be when he wants to be. The way I want him to be now.

I feel a pinch in my chest, a hint of the ice returning. “I thought you might think I’m too delicate for such things.”

His hand slides over my breasts, caressing my nipple, and a sound of pleasure slides from my lips. How is it possible that I never get enough of Chris?

“Why don’t we find out?” he asks, and he nips my ear, settling the thickness of his erection against my backside before pressing between my thighs.

“Yes.” I reach between my legs and stroke him, challenging him. Pushing him the way I burn to have him push me. “If you dare.”

He covers my hand on his shaft and leads it to the silky wet heat of my sex. “If you dare. Because, baby, just because I protect you doesn’t mean I’m not going to fuck you. I’m still me and I’m still going to fuck you in all kinds of ways you haven’t imagined.” He squeezes my breast and pinches my nipple and I hold his hand there, not wanting him to stop. His voice is as rough as his touch, both like sweet cognac that burns going down and leaves me wanting more. “I’m going to tie you up the way I painted you, Sara. Does that scare you?”

“No. Nothing with you scares me.”

“No?” His hand curves my backside.

I remember his palm on my backside, the erotic sting. The moment his thick cock pumped into me, the pleasure. “No.”

“You should be.”

His finger slides down the cleft of my backside and I gasp at the intimate intrusion, and then pant. “Are we back to this again? You warning me away?”

He explores me from the front and the back. “Last night earned you one last warning. One chance to run while you still can.” His lips press to my shoulder, teeth scraping, nipping. “But know this, Sara.” His fingers slide deeper, between my cheeks, while his other hand teases my clit, flickering it with delicate fingers that contrast the near hard command of his voice. “I’m going to own you, body and soul. I will bind you. I will fuck your ass. Your mouth. I will do what I want. And none of this even comes close to where I’ve been and where I will never take you.”

My body reacts to the primal erotic promises, and I am hot and wet, and more aroused than I have ever been in my life. I fight the haze of arousal, the deep ache in my sex, threatening to become an orgasm. He’s testing me, trying to scare me, and it twists me in knots to know it’s because last night made him doubt me and us.

“This is who I am, Sara. I will protect you from everything and everyone else, but I can’t protect you from who I am or who we will be if you stay with me.”

“I know who you are,” I whisper, and I am more clear of mind than I have been in a very long time. I need him. I’ve needed him from the moment I first met him. Even then, that first night, I felt free to let go with him, to be me, when I didn’t even recognize me. “But you need to know this, Chris. I know who I am now, too. I know what I need to stay with you. If you own my body, I own yours.” I’ve walked away from too much to be willing to settle for less than everything now.

His body stiffens, tension rippling through his muscles. Anger and hurt spike in my chest and I try to turn. He holds me, his arm a vise around mine. “You own as much of me as I have to give,” he says, his voice hoarse.

“No, I don’t. Not until you take me to those places you say you never will. I need to know that one day you will.”

Suddenly he is gone, no longer touching me, and I roll over to find him sitting at the edge of the bed, the muscles in his impressive shoulders bunching.

I scramble to my knees and reach for his arm. “Chris—”

The instant I touch him, he pulls me around into his lap. “I love you, Sara.” He strokes the hair from my face. “But there are parts of me that I hate. We don’t go there. We won’t ever go there. Understand?”

No, I don’t. But I do understand the self-hate. I understand the emotion. “I love you, too.” I cup his cheek and he leans into it, his lashes lowering, his jaw softening. “And there is nothing you can do that will change how I feel.”

His jaw flexes and his eyes dilate. “Yes. There is, and I should walk away before it happens, for both our sakes.” He rests his forehead against mine. “But I can’t.”

My fingers tunnel into his hair. What is so horrific that it haunts him this completely?

He picks me up and carries me toward the bathroom. We shower together, but we don’t make love and we don’t even just plain fuck this out of his system. We just hold each other. Where I was once lost, he’s found me. But I know now that I have only begun to truly discover Chris. He’s still lost.

I stand at the bathroom sink next to Chris, and it’s an odd, wonderful, intimate moment to be finishing my hair while he brushes his teeth. I’m dressed in jeans and a green V-neck T-shirt to show off the emerald necklace I don’t want to take off, and I can’t stop peeking at Chris, who even with a toothbrush in hand looks anything but domestic. I can already tell I’m going to spend the day deliciously distracted by my intimate knowledge of the sinewy muscle and hard perfection beneath his brown Harley T-shirt, faded jeans, and boots.

I unplug my flatiron and wrap it up while he closes his travel bag, and I stare at our reflections in the mirror. I am a good foot shorter than him and my dark hair contrasts with his light chin-length hair, which is damp and wavy by his ears. There is a confidence about him, a power I find addictive. He is masculine and hard in all the right ways and he makes me feel feminine and soft, and strong.

His gaze lifts and our eyes connect in the mirror. Awareness tingles over my chest and shoulders and spreads like liquid fire through my body. “Keep looking at me like that,” he warns, “and you won’t make it back to work tomorrow because we’ll miss our flight.”

My lips curve. “Very tempting.”

A knock sounds on the door and he gives me a nod. “Room service or me at your service?”

I bite my lip in utter consternation and reluctantly sigh. “Considering Dylan’s waiting, I guess I have to settle for my second choice. Room service.”

He reaches for me and gives me a fast, hot kiss with a burning swipe of his tongue and heads for the door. “Hmmm,” I call behind him, biting my lip. “Minty fresh.”

The phone starts ringing. “Grab that, will you, Sara?”

I rush into the bedroom and snatch up the bedside phone to hear, “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you.”

“And we’re coming for you, Dylan,” I promise, laughing. “We’ll be there in about half an hour.”

“Can you bring me a chocolate bar?” he whispers conspiratorially.

“Yes,” I promise. “I’ll bring you a chocolate bar. I’ll see you soon.” I hang up as Chris tips the waiter and we sit down on the bed to eat.

“How’d he sound?” Chris asks.

“He answered singing me the Freddy song.”

He arches a brow and a glimmer of hope fills his eyes. “Really? I guess the treatment aftereffects have passed.”

“Yes,” I agree cautiously. I’m worried about how far Chris is going to fall over Dylan. “One big positive for sure.” I lift the lid on my food and inspect the eggs.

We’re just digging into our omelets when Chris’s cell phone rings. Chris glances down at it. “Blake,” he answers.

I listen hopefully and Chris’s gaze goes to mine as he replies to something Blake has said: “Mark is the Master in the journal. I know there are no names, but yes, I’m sure. They had a relationship. I have no idea who the second man in the journal is.”

“Ryan Kilmer,” I offer, and receive an arched brow from Chris, prodding me to add, “The real estate guy—”

He holds the phone from his mouth. “I know who he is. How do you know who he is?”

His scowl tells me he is not happy. “I’m doing a job for him. I think it’s him in the journal.”

“Why?”

“It’s a gut feeling. A strong gut feeling.”

“Based on what?”

“He seems to be a good friend of Mark’s, and”—I hesitate, certain Chris isn’t going to approve of my observations—“he isn’t as dominant. I don’t think Mark could share with someone too like himself.” Like you, I add silently.

Chris stares at me, unmoving, stone that can’t be chipped away, and I hear a murmur on the other end of the line that Chris responds to. “Yeah. I’m here. There’s a guy named Ryan Kilmer. He’s a member of the club Mark owns. They’re friends. Sara thinks it’s him.” He listens a minute and then ends the call. He sets his phone on the nightstand beside me and pulls me to my feet, his hand sliding around my back. “I do not like how well you know Mark Compton.”

The possessiveness of his touch, and in his expression, shouldn’t please me. It doesn’t, and yet it does. “What I know is from the journals.”

“Then stop reading the damn things.”

“I brought them for you to read.”

“I don’t want to read them, Sara. It just makes me think about what Mark wants to do to you, and I’m trying to be understanding about your job. The journals won’t help me do that. We lock them back up when we get back to San Francisco unless Blake needs us to read something specific.”

“Yes, Master,” I tease, trying to bring his tension down a notch.

His scowl is instant. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your master. You aren’t my submissive. And you damn sure won’t ever be Mark’s.”

Okay, so that joke went over much better the last time I told it. I push to my toes and press my lips to his. “No. I won’t, because I love you, Chris.”

His hand closes down on my neck and he kisses me, and it’s not gentle. It’s a hot, possessive, turbulent claiming that sends a swell of desire through me so intense I tremble. “What are you doing to me, woman?” he growls against my mouth. “Besides making me crazy. Do you know how badly I want to take you to Paris and away from that man? But I know right now you won’t go. You want this job and I’m trying to understand.” He sets me away from him and runs a hand through his hair, walking in a circle and facing me again. “I don’t like Ryan suddenly hiring the gallery. It’s just a little too reminiscent of the journals.”

Unbidden, a shiver runs down my spine and I hug myself. There is a lot in my life a little too reminiscent of the journals but I’m trying to fix that. “You said Mark wasn’t capable of hurting Rebecca.”

“I don’t think he could or would, but he brought her into his world where she didn’t belong, and he’s responsible for where that might have led her. I know nothing about Ryan or anyone else he might have put her in contact with. I don’t like this, Sara. I don’t like that he’s trying to pull you into his world. And he is. He absolutely fucking is.”

His torment over this is palpable, a ball of fire burning away at him. I go to him and hug him, settling my chin on his chest. “He can’t. As long as you’re in my life, sharing it with me, there’s nothing but us, Chris.”

The tension fades away as we finish breakfast and then head to the hospital, where we find Dylan and Brandy in contagious good spirits. By the time we’re on the plane back to San Francisco we are relaxed and laughing, and I am more comfortable with Chris than I have ever been.

We settle into our seats and Chris pulls out his iPad. “I have a cure for your nervous flying—a movie. We can start it here and finish it at home.”

“Home,” I repeat softly.

He cups my face. “Yes. Our home. You belong with me now.”

Mark’s words come back to me: Don’t let Chris convince you there’s an in between. If I want it all with Chris, I can’t stand on the line; there can’t be an in between. The details will work out. “Yes. I do.”

He rewards me with one of his breathtaking smiles and kisses me. “Yes. You do.”

It is nearly seven by the time we land in San Francisco and finish the drive home. The doorman greets us and offers to bring our bags up for us. “I’ll let you tonight,” Chris says, and glances at me. “Finishing our movie over pizza okay with you?”

“Perfect,” I agree eagerly.

Chris slips the doorman some cash. “How about ordering us a couple of pizzas while you’re at it?”

“You got it, Mr. Merit.”

Chris draws my hand into his and we are laughing over a scene in Bridesmaids, which had been my choice of movie, as payment for watching Halloween, when we find Jacob in our path.

“Good evening, Mr. Merit, Ms. McMillan.” Jacob greets us with a little bow of his head.

Chris wraps his arm over my shoulder. “Did Blake stop by?”

The reminder that Rebecca is missing and that it looks like foul play takes me for a hard, quick ride.

“He did,” Jacob confirms. “We beefed up security here at the building. Anything else you need, I’m available.”

My nerves are officially frazzled and when we step into the elevator, I say, “Blake was worried enough to stop by and help with security?”

Chris frames my face with his hands. “We’re just being cautious.”

“Because you think Rebecca’s dead?”

“Because I want you safe. Just be careful and tell us where you’re going for a few days, while we get more information.”

Fighting my unease, I nod. “Okay.”

The elevator opens and he motions me inside. “Let’s finish that movie. The rest will be waiting on us in the morning. Tonight, let’s just enjoy being home together.”

Home together. I like how this sounds. I give him a small smile and nod. “I’d like that.”

We step off the elevator and Chris catches my hand and embraces me. “I’m not giving you time to change your mind. I’m arranging movers for your apartment.”

I have a fleeting moment of uncertainty but shove aside the millions of things that could go wrong. I’ve spent a lifetime sinking into the quicksand of life, and Chris is the only person who has ever set me on solid ground. I wrap my arms around his neck and take a leap of faith. “All right.”

He kisses me and leads me to the living room. Our living room.

Half an hour later, Chris and I have kicked off our shoes, and we’re watching the rest of the movie on the big screen over the fireplace, trying to eat pizza through our laughter. When the movie is over and our stomachs are stuffed, Chris replays a particular scene and we laugh all over again. I wipe tears from my eyes and he pulls me down to the couch beneath him.

As I stare up at him, I feel the low burn in my belly he creates so easily. And I realize that though I’ve had a hellish weekend, I’m laughing. I’m happy. Happiness is unfamiliar to me, but I feel it now.

Because of Chris.