“It will be.”
“I have to ask. Is this Emma’s influence? Because if it is, I’d like to give that girl a hug right now.”
“Emma . . . doesn’t want anything to do with me. It’s over.”
“Hey, now. Don’t say that.”
“I’m only saying it because it’s the truth. Her words.”
“We all say a lot of shit we don’t mean when we’re pissed. I bet when you get back home, she’ll be ready to talk.”
“Not about this. You don’t understand what I did.”
“What did you do?”
Damien shook his head. “Nice try. Not going there.”
“Then I don’t know whether to be encouraging or call you a dumbass and tell you to grovel at her feet. Did you cheat?”
“No, man, nothing like that.”
“Savannah always says that’s about the only thing she couldn’t forgive.”
Yeah, but Mike hadn’t used Savannah as the fucking pot in a stupid-ass bet just because her brother pissed him off. Then again . . . Savannah had found it in herself to fall in love with the man who spelled her brother’s demise. How the hell had Mike pulled that off? For one, he hadn’t listened to a damn bit of advice anyone had given him.
And Damien himself had had his own part to play in Zane and Rowan’s eventual hookup. He’d lent his club to Zane for an impromptu August on Fire concert to win her over. He’d encouraged Zane not to listen to Rowan telling him to stay away.
Now he wasn’t taking his own advice. He wasn’t jumping on a plane to fly home and get the fucking girl.
Emma . . . she wanted forever. He could see it in her eyes. She adored him. He had absolutely no fucking clue why, after what he’d done to her.
“I broke her, Mike. I played with her fucking heart, and—”
His brother’s face fell as Damien’s voice choked off. Furious with himself, he struggled to shove the agony back down in the pit of his gut where it belonged, knowing that every bit of that battle showed across his face. Mike, of all fucking people, jerked him into his powerful arms.
“I haven’t seen you like this in . . . I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this,” he said. “Not even when Mom died. It’ll be all right. You can fix it.”
He’d been more upset over Rich leaving him than his mother overdosing.
“I can’t. There’s no coming back from this. I fucked around like I always do and I ruined us before we ever got started.” Feeling like an idiot, he shoved back from Mike’s embrace and rubbed his thumb and index finger hard across his eyes, composing himself. Enough. Enough of this. Mike still stared at him in concern. “And that’s it,” he concluded. “I fucked up, and there’s no coming back from it. She deserves better. She deserves . . . everything.”
“Then she deserves you,” Mike said solemnly. “Because you sound willing to give it to her. Whatever it was, make it up to her, Damien. You said you broke her? Then be the goddamn glue. Put her back together. Savannah and I . . . we had more pieces to pick up than we even knew about. But we did it. Together, we did it. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life with her, and I can’t wait. I want to see that for you, little brother. I need to know you’ve got your shit together and from what I’ve seen in just the past five minutes, you’re ready.”
Six weeks ago he would’ve thought his shit was thoroughly together. Then one feisty redhead slept on his couch and he hadn’t been the same since. A slow chipping away of his resolve, of his walls, of everything he thought he knew.
He still didn’t think there was any way possible to fix what he’d done. She got under his skin so much, she made him want things that weren’t for him. Things like Mike was talking about. Forever with someone. But when he considered a possible alternative—finding one of Zane’s hopeful groupies who didn’t stand a chance now that Rowan was in the picture, taking her back to the hotel and fucking out his frustrations on her—his stomach churned. The things that used to appeal to him had lost their taste. She wouldn’t be Emma, with her big, innocent, adoring eyes and her eager body. Her sweetness, her light shining on all his dark places.
Fuck.
For the first time in years, he didn’t know what to do.
Chapter Twenty-six
When the correctional officer walked Benjamin into the room wearing his orange jumpsuit, handcuffed and shackled, a slow twist of disgust wrenched her stomach. His face lit up with eagerness, but as he took a seat across from her, she didn’t return his ear-to-ear grin.
“How are they treating you?” she asked, not really giving a shit but hoping he might have taken a butt kicking or two.
Ben’s jaw tightened a bit, but he gave a nonchalant tilt of his sandy head. “All right. Just keeping my head down. I’m so glad to see you, though, Emma. Are you here to post my bail?”
Because of course that would be the only reason he was happy to see her. He thought she had Damien’s money at her disposal now. “No, I’m not.”
“Why not? I gotta get out of here, Em. I’m not built for a cage.”
“Who the hell is? You’re not special because you don’t like being locked up.”
“I figured I’d see your boyfriend in here by now,” he said with a bitter twist of his lips. “Was waiting to give him a nice welcome.”
“What boyfriend would that be?”
“Larson.” He spat the name like a curse. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Look, cut the bullshit. I know you have the money. Change of plans, okay? You’ve got to get me out of here. I’ll come up with some other way to pay off my loans, all right, but I have to be outside to do it.”
“How exactly are you going to do that? You said it yourself, Ben. No one will have shit to do with you now. No doors are open to you anymore.”
“Then I’ll go out of town.”
She tossed her head back and laughed. He was such a dumbass to be talking about this stuff with guards all around. “You’d be on conditions of release, Ben. Maybe even ankle monitoring. You aren’t going anywhere, or we’ll probably never see you again. That’s if you don’t get caught out on the street first by someone you’ve wronged.”
He only glared at her, but it was rare to see her brother not believing his own bullshit for a change. Right now she wished she could have her cell phone so she could take a picture of the quivering doubt in his eyes.
“By the way, I don’t have the money, Ben. There is no money.”
“What are you talking about?”
“All you need to know is the deal fell through. It isn’t happening. No change of plans for you. I’m afraid you’re stuck for a while. At least until you go to court, and they’ll decide if you’re going to prison or if you’ll do a stint on probation . . . during which you will still not be able to leave the county or do much else but hide out so you don’t get shot. I’ll have a lot to tell the prosecutor about you. I have to say, this might have been the best thing that could have happened to us, what do you think?”
He leaned forward, pure seething hate in his eyes. She knew the feeling. “Fuck you. I knew you would fuck this up somehow. You can’t do a fucking thing right, can you? You can’t even be a good whore. That’s bad, Emma. How hard is it to fuck someone for money?”
One of the guards stepped up to pull him back from her and then to his feet. “That’s enough. Let’s go.”
“Have a nice stay, Ben,” Emma said, icily sweet as he was pulled out of the room, still cursing at her. “He has a few friends in there waiting to make your acquaintance.” It wasn’t true, but she would like for him to think it. Then she sat back and drew a deep breath, collecting herself before she stood to leave.
It hadn’t been a necessary visit. She wouldn’t care if he sat in there to rot, and any shame she would have ordinarily felt for thinking that way about her brother was gone. Maybe she had learned a thing or two from Damien. A sad lesson, but a much needed one. She??
?d only wanted Ben to know without a doubt that no help was coming from her. She wanted him to lose sleep over it in that tiny bed in his tiny cell. She was done with him, and the freedom of that decision . . . God, she felt so light, so buoyant that she could take flight right now. The hot Houston asphalt under her feet felt like cushions as she walked across the parking lot.
Her parents would be harder. She loved them and could never wash her hands of them. They’d had a long talk, and while they were frantic to get Benjamin out, they were tapped. Couldn’t get blood from a turnip, and while Emma did have a little put back in savings that ordinarily she would have drawn out to help them, she was no longer willing to part with her hard-earned money at the sight of her mother’s tears. It was one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, telling her “no.” But it had felt good, too.
If only she could get Damien Larson out of her head, she would feel good all over.
She’d told him to leave her alone, but every time her cell phone dinged, her heart leaped. And often she found herself reading through their old text messages when she had nothing else to do . . . and sometimes when she did. Her days were spent reading the want ads, and she’d put in a couple of applications already. Her savings were there, but wouldn’t last her long if she couldn’t find another job in the next month or two. But she would have to be in danger of foreclosure before she would ask Damien for her old job back.
Thinking of it reminded her there were still a few things she needed to box up and take home, and today would probably be good for it. If she waited too much longer, he would be back from his tournament and she would risk running into him. She drove to Players, hoping that her improved mood after facing off with Benjamin would get her through the next hour or so.
When she opened her office door and stepped inside, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head, he was standing behind her desk, all in black, holding one of her pictures: one of her and Bentley.
Every muscle in her body froze up, and she looked helplessly into the hallway, considering making a run for it. But he was already around the end of her desk and striding toward her. “Emma. Emma, wait.”
But she couldn’t. She fled, and she should have known he wouldn’t listen, because he never did. She ran through the hallways, smacking the back door and out into the glaring sun, heat rising off the asphalt as she ate up the distance to her car, tears streaming freely down her face because she wanted so much to see him, to listen to him.
He’d turned her into an addict. If she looked back now, she was no better than Benjamin.
He was behind her; she could hear him as she scrabbled for her door handle. Before his rushing steps could reach her, she whirled around, her key fob in his face. “Cheesecake!”
Damien ground to a halt, breathing hard, looking at her with a desperation on his face like she had never seen. If she’d been broken before, seeing that look on his face only took the last piece of her and shattered it. He drank in her face like a desert traveler who’d gone for days without a drink.
But he took a step back at that one word being hurled at him, and it was more than she could take.
“Oh God. What are you doing here?”
“I . . . well, I got eliminated.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a sheepish gesture that was totally out of place on him.
He’d lost? Damien fucking Larson had busted out before even making the final table? “Are you serious?”
He nodded, and if he was drinking her in, she was drowning in him. Those eyes held her captive, so dark and hypnotic, seeing everything and, for once, revealing just as much. “I’m serious, but the truth is . . . I missed you so fucking much I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. Emma . . .”
Both hands going to her mouth, she took a step back toward her car. “I can’t—”
“Emma, I love you. I’m sorry I couldn’t say it before. I felt it, I always felt it. I should have said it. I’m sorry. I love everything about you. The way you challenge me. The way your eyes speak to me. The way your nose crinkles up when I’m being an asshole, like right now. I couldn’t keep my head in the game because everywhere I looked, I only saw you looking back at me.”
“You say that, but you hurt me so much, and you made me feel like you didn’t care. You kept doing it.”
His hands came up as if he wanted to touch her, but he held himself back. Still respecting the authority of her word, she thought. He’d communicated so much to her with his touch that being robbed of it left him powerless. “I know. Please. I don’t deserve another chance, I know I don’t, and I don’t know what I could do to make it up to you, but I’ll spend every day finding new ways. Every fucking day. I want you with me. I don’t ever want to be without you.” His words tumbled out in a rush of impossibility.
Emma sniffled, shaking her head, wanting so much to believe him. But in the beginning, she’d believed her brother, too. When he said he would straighten up, he’d get help, he’d never pester her for money again . . . and not half an hour earlier he’d called her a whore while she visited him in jail. “Damien, from the place we started, we don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said, sniffling. “I just don’t know.”
“Then we’ll start from where we are,” he said, a note of desperation entering his voice. “I can’t ask you to forget everything that’s happened, but here we are, you and I, right now. I’ll ask you on a date and we’ll go from here. Will you go to dinner with me tonight?”
“And then what? I end up tied to your bedposts?”
“No,” he said, delectable lips pulling down into a frown. She wanted to taste them so badly she could already feel their soft, insistent fullness on hers. “No. Unless you want to be.” And there was the smirk she adored. “We’ll go at your pace. Emma.”
If he touches me, I’m lost. He clenched and unclenched his fists. She watched his agony and wanted to relieve it so badly, to relieve her own, to feel him. “I don’t want to have you in my bed because you’re obligated to be there. I want you there because you want to be. And I want to make love to you.”
Knees weakening, resolve weakening, she scrambled to maintain a hold on herself before he took everything away. “And, um . . . then tie me to the bedposts?”
“There’s always time for that.” And then to her astonishment, he went down on his knees in front of her on the hot asphalt, right here in the parking lot, where any of his employees could be watching, where anyone passing on the street could see. “Don’t forgive me. Don’t forget. Make me suffer for all of it, I don’t care. Just tear up that fucking resignation letter; it felt like a punch in the gut when I found it on my desk. And tell me that I can stay in your life. That’s all the start I need.”
“You closed the room down,” she said, staring down at him. “Is that permanent?”
“It is. It was risky, and it was worrying my brothers and you and . . . it’s not worth it anymore.”
“We could always move to Vegas someday,” she said, letting one corner of her lip tug up in a crooked grin. “That is, if you haven’t lost your touch. Getting your ass eliminated. What’s gotten into you?”
“You,” he said, and Emma shuddered, her resolve buckling, collapsing, crashing, burning. She threw herself down at him and he caught her, that hot, feverish mouth swooping over hers at last, and everything was right in the world.
* * *
She was an angel in his arms. Soft, supple, blessing him with every kiss. Damien wanted to wait until he got her to his bed—he would never let her sleep anywhere else—but somehow on the journey, with her wrapped around him, his foot caught on a step and he pitched forward, managing to catch them before they fell while she shrieked and laughed. And they never quite managed to get up again.
He lay on his back with the edges of the stairs digging into his muscles so she wouldn’t have to, but he barely felt them as she straddled him, fitting her knees on either side of him after she released his cock from his jeans. He could only watch, panting, as she took his swollen
, aching length and slid it deep, her head falling back, her internal muscles gripping him fiercely.
“Oh God,” she gasped, and he grinned, watching her come alive, the color rising in her face. He grasped her T-shirt and pulled it up and over her head, unclasped her bra and flung it aside, then filled his hands with her breasts, brushing his thumbs over her coppery nipples.
“Feels like forever since I had this,” he whispered. “Baby, ride me. Take what you need.”
Emma planted both hands on his chest, lifting and dropping her hips in a brutal rhythm, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from where he disappeared into her body, where her lips parted to take him, her clit grinding against him as she lowered. The scent of her arousal went to his head, made him instantly drunk, and he couldn’t leave that succulent little bud neglected. Catching her beneath her thighs, he flung her up so that her pussy hovered over his mouth, her pleading cries music to his ears as he lowered her, hands gripping her ass, and feasted on the place where he’d just been buried moments ago.
“Damien!”
“Fuck, I missed this,” he growled, swirling his tongue over her clit, fluttering over it to draw more of those keening, throaty sounds from her. She melted over him, moving her hips in a circle, her taste tart and sweet and all Emma.
“I bet you didn’t miss it as much as I did,” she said, every few words punctuated with a gasp or sigh.
She was wrong there. Her pleasure was more important than his own. Being the one to give it to her was a privilege. He would never take it for granted again. “I could lick this sweet pussy all day,” he informed her.
“I would die,” she said. “But what a way to go.”
What a way indeed. As soon as she shuddered and sobbed with her first release—of many, if he had anything to do with it—he settled her back down, reentering her quivering flesh slowly, feeling her aftershocks grip him as she sank over him with a blissful sigh. Her scent, her body, her love, everything about her enveloped him as he put his arms around her.