I pull his lips to mine as I reach between us to stroke his length. Ransom moans into my mouth, only encouraging me further. I guide him to my slickness and rub the tip of him against my swollen mound. It feels indescribable, and soon I’m panting with the mounting need to come.
“I need you,” I nearly beg. “I need you right now.”
Ransom wastes no time hoisting my leg up to his waist and angling his body to meet mine. Tucker keeps a steady rhythm, restraining himself, and Ransom is able to slip in easily.
We all pause to take a breath and contemplate the severity of this crucial moment. Both men are inside me, making love to each other through me. While their hands and mouths and cocks may only be reserved for me, they can’t deny the intimacy of this act. We’ll forever be connected—the three of us. Even after tonight, after I send Ransom away, Tucker and I will be forever stained by the pleasure we all shared.
The guys move slowly at first, testing to see how much my body can take. Tucker pushes in, Ransom pulls out. They alternate like this with shallow, languid strokes. I’m so unbelievably full that I feel like I’m to the point of bursting. Still, when Tucker increases his tempo and presses in deeper, prompting Ransom to do the same, I can’t imagine euphoria feeling much better than this. I’m floating, so high that I may kiss the sky. I never knew that it could be like this, and now that I’ve felt bliss and tasted heaven, I don’t know how I could ever go back to how things were before.
I want both men. I need them. And if that makes me immoral or selfish or whorish, then so be it. But I won’t deny what I am. I won’t pretend any longer.
It doesn’t take long before we’re all shaking with the need for climax. Ransom is panting in front of me, eyes shut tight, lower lip sucked between his teeth. I nuzzle into the space under his chin and kiss his neck. With trembling fingers, he cups my cheek, turning my face up to meet his. The very second I see those heavy-lidded eyes, rimmed in anguish, I gasp aloud. I want to say something—do something—but it’s too late. My body wins out over my emotions, and sends me into a climax that shakes heaven and earth. I pulse wildly around them both, and I start to feel Tucker quivering behind me, his own orgasm coursing through him. But Ransom . . . Ransom continues to watch me as he thrusts into me, the fear and pain in his stare so jarring that I’m afraid to look away.
I’d have shot down the moon for you
So you could lay with the stars
But we’re out of time, little bunny
I’ve fallen too far . . . too far
When he comes, he grips my thigh so hard and thrusts so deep that I feel like he may break my body in two. It’d be fitting. Those desolate words, the pained look on his face as he rides out his orgasm, the small, single tear that rolls down his cheek . . . he’s already demolished my heart.
I came here tonight to say goodbye. To get Ransom Reed out of my system for good. And now that it’s done, and I feel more connected to him than ever, I know that I made a grave mistake. One that will cost me everything.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I wake up the next morning alone with an unfathomable sense of urgency that I can’t shake. Something isn’t right. I can feel it inside me, churning like hot lava in my gut. I text Tamara to see if everything’s ok. I shoot Caleb a message to inform him of my plans to send Ransom back to the city. Then I hit up a travel agent to arrange the next step.
As much as it pains me, I have to get Ransom out of my life. Permanently. I fell for him . . . fell for him hard and quick and so completely. And if I’m going to stick to my word and try to make things right with Tucker, I have to let him go. It’s not right of me to hold on to him just so I can play with him like a toy. I saw it on his face last night, even in the haze of orgasm. I’m hurting him. I’m hurting my husband. And when it’s all said and done, I’m hurting myself. And while the immediate sting of letting go has me texting through tears, I know that this is the only chance of recovery.
Tucker still isn’t back by the time I’ve dried my tears and finished my calls, so I decide to click on the TV to busy my mind. I flip through the channels until I land on another late 90s favorite of mine—Cruel Intentions. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character Kathryn was the epitome of devious debutante and Sebastian, played by Ryan Phillippe, was the wayward boy who never felt whole, no matter how many girls he slept with. Until he met her, of course. Wholesome, kind, virginal. Annette was the good one, sent to mend Sebastian’s brokenness and show him how to love. And even though he was a complete asshole in the beginning, you wanted him to be with the good girl, even though he may not have deserved her. You hoped that maybe she could make him good too.
But as the movie came to its climax, we saw that trying to conform—trying to steal that slice of happiness when it wasn’t meant for you—only got you hurt. So why was it even worth trying at all? When all people would ever see was the defect in you?
I look at my cell phone and instantly think of Ransom, wondering if he’s watching the same movie. If he can identify with Sebastian the playboy, or maybe he even feels like Selma Blair’s character, Cecile. He didn’t know what he was getting into. He didn’t realize what he had signed up for when he invited us back to his suite. It was just to be one night of fun. One naughty tryst between consenting adults. And now look at us.
I don’t know how we got here. But I know we can’t continue any further.
I snatch up my phone and text him, asking him if he received the flight info the travel agent should have forwarded to him more than hour ago. No response. I text him again, asking him if he’s ok. Again, nothing.
That same feeling of dread sets in and grows until I’m almost choking on it. I knew it when I saw him in the music room. I felt it last night in Justice’s playground. I had seen that same hopelessness reflected in those dark eyes before. Yet, once again, I didn’t ease his discord. I didn’t give him what he needed.
I get to the door of the Temptation room to find that it’s ajar. I can hear The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” blaring from the TV, the same song that I was just listening to as Kathryn was publically exposed and ostracized at her stepbrother’s funeral by none other than sweet, non-suspecting Annette, played by a cutesy Reese Witherspoon.
“Ransom?” I call out, pushing open the door. “Hey, it’s Heidi. Did you get my text?”
I don’t see him anywhere and the bathroom door is wide open and empty. The room is a mess, pillows and blankets strewn across the floor, cushions turned over, as if someone was frantically looking for something. At first glance, nothing looks out of place, aside from the disheveled linens. But when I walk over to the other side of the bed, my heart stops. Completely flatlines with shock and horror.
Several opened prescription pill bottles, most of them empty. A half-drunk bottle of Jack. Ransom had been popping pills—a lot of them. And considering how much he took, I’m positive it’s more than any person should be able to survive. I pick up a bottle to get a better look, recognizing some of them as antidepressants, antianxiety meds, even a mood stabilizer.
I’m Googling the uses for Androcur, when an even more shocking realization causes me to drop the bottle, scattering pills across the floor. Right there, next to the field reserved for the prescribing doctor, it states DuCane, Tucker J.
No. That can’t be right. But every bottle reiterates the same.
DuCane, Tucker J.
DuCane, Tucker J.
DuCane, Tucker J.
Tucker prescribed these pills to Ransom.
Tucker is Ransom’s doctor.
Ransom is Tucker’s patient.
I cover my mouth with a trembling hand, unable to grasp what I’m seeing—what I should have seen all along. It wasn’t a coincidence. None of this was. They knew each other. My husband and my lover, they knew what they were doing.
I walk backward out of the room and scurry to the safety of mine as quickly as I can, and plow right into a hard chest covered in white linen. I’d know the feel of him anywhere. Could
identify his masculine, fresh scent blindfolded in a room full of men. Yet, I couldn’t see Tucker for what he truly is. The puppet master. He wasn’t sweet, loving Annette as I initially thought. He was Kathryn. My husband is the scheming, conniving control freak.
He closes the door without saying a word, even though he can clearly see the disbelief etched in my wide, unblinking eyes. He’s perfectly calm like always. Perfect, impassive guise without even a hint of discontent. And that pisses me off.
“You.” It’s the only word that I trust myself with right now. “You. It was you all along. You did this. You wanted this. And in the back of my mind, I knew. I just didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to believe you were this . . . monster. The first night when we met him . . . I remember thinking that you never introduced yourself. You never told him your name. And the way you damn near pushed me into his bed. You wanted me to be with him. Why?”
Tucker sits on the edge of the bed and shakes his head. “No, baby. That was what you wanted. I just facilitated it. You needed something that I couldn’t give you. And I knew he could—he would. So while I may have given you the gun, I never made you pull the trigger. No, my love. You did that all on your own.”
“But he’s your patient, Tucker! He needs help! Not to be manipulated!”
“What makes you think I’m not helping him? You think I couldn’t be helping both of you right now?”
I shake my head in disbelief, refusing to accept what’s happening. Tucker was the mastermind. Tucker used Ransom, told him things about me, told him how to seduce me. And I fell for it. Maybe Tucker wasn’t manipulating Ransom. Maybe he’s Sebastian and they were in on this plan the whole time? To seek out the girl and break her down. Make her fall in love. Then crush her like brittle, paper-thin petals of a preserved rose.
“I knew it . . . I knew it when I heard it,” I stammer, thinking out loud as I try to put the pieces together. “When he sang . . . he called me little bunny. You told him all about me, didn’t you? The rape? My sexual deviances? You told him!”
Tucker looks at me with remorseful eyes, his first crack of emotion since I exposed his lying ass. “It wasn’t like that, Heidi. You both needed something from each other. You just couldn’t see it yet.”
I look down at the empty, orange bottle straining under my tight grip and throw it at him. “What’s this used to treat? What does it do?”
Tucker looks over the plastic bottle that once housed a prescription for Androcur and shrugs. “A number of uses, one being prostate cancer.”
“Stop bullshitting me, Tucker. Does Ransom have prostate cancer?”
He releases a breath, letting his shoulders sag in defeat. “No.”
“So why did you prescribe it? What is he taking it for?”
I watch him swallow down the last of his lies, before he closes his regret-tinged eyes. “Hypersexuality. Sex addiction.”
Sex addiction? Ransom’s a sex addict?
The first time I saw him drunk and high—it was as if it was a reaction to something. Like he was compensating for something much deeper with booze and pills. He told me he wasn’t a junkie, and I believed him. I wanted to. Now I see he was being honest, which is much more than I can say for my loving husband. I just don’t understand how he could put me in the hands of someone who needs sex like a drug. He was serving Ransom a hefty dose of X on a cocaine-dusted platter.
I look at the man I love, the man I’d built a life with. The man I had once considered having children with because that was what he wanted. We struggled together, fought together, cried together, laughed together. He was a piece of me, and up until this moment, I had believed he was the very best piece. But he was a liar. He was a fraud. And now, I can’t tell if I’m just looking at a stranger. I know absolutely nothing about him at all.
“I have to go,” I say, turning toward the door. “I have to go find Ransom. He could be lying at the bottom of the pool, no thanks to you. Were you trying to kill him? By prescribing all those pills?”
His face contorts in horror, and he inhales sharply as if he’s just taken a blow to the kidney. “No! Of course not. Ransom is a sex addict, but he also suffers from bouts of depression, anxiety, ADHD. Those pills were necessary to his treatment program.”
“And me? Was I necessary to his treatment program?”
Tucker diverts his eyes to the floor, unable to face the evidence of his transgression. He gave another man his wife—the woman he had vowed to love and protect—in some convoluted attempt to help her help his patient.
“Where is he? I’ll go talk to him,” he finally says.
I shake my head in frustration. “Don’t you get it? I don’t know! There’re empty pill bottles and alcohol. And he’s not answering my text messages.”
That certainly gets his attention, and Tucker jumps to his feet, pulling his cell out of his pocket. “We have to find him,” he says, headed for the door.
I put my anger aside and accept his assistance. Two people are better than one, and right now, Ransom needs me more than I need to crucify my husband. But there will be hell to pay later. You can bet on that.
“You check outside,” I instruct, going into boss bitch mode. “Check the pool areas, the bungalows . . . the lagoon. See if anyone has seen him. I’ll search inside and check with the staff. I know there are surveillance cameras. Justice can check for me.”
Tucker nods his head and looks at me solemnly before turning toward the doors. “I never meant to hurt either one of you—you know that. I thought that if you got what you needed, we could have a fresh start, and maybe . . . maybe I could learn to love you the way you needed to be loved. And I thought if Ransom got what he needed in a safe, controlled environment, he could see that he could tame the urges of his body and focus on the needs of his heart. That maybe he could open himself enough to see that he too could find love and happiness and acceptance. I just didn’t bet on him finding all those things with you.”
I stare at the stranger in front of me and feel . . . nothing. I know I love him deep inside, and I know he cares for me. But now I’ve gone to that place where none of that exists. That emotionally barren wasteland where love can no longer grow and thrive under the harsh conditions of his lies and deceit. Maybe one day I’ll be able to forgive him. Maybe we’ll even look back on this and be able to take a deep, cleansing breath, exhaling it all into the wind like ash. But for now, he doesn’t get to matter. He doesn’t get to make me feel sympathetic to him. Not when there’s a man out there who needs me to save him. A man who looked at me like I was his person, like I would be the answer to all the difficult questions of his heart. The same way I had once looked at Tucker.
My husband didn’t expect for Ransom and me to fall in love, but he let it happen. And for that, he’s just as guilty for our transgressions.
“Be careful what you wish for,” I say with an air of finality.
I don’t say goodbye as I turn and walk away. But I should.
Chapter Thirty
It doesn’t take long before I realize that Ransom has left the property. When I find Justice in his office and tell him what’s happened, he instantly springs into action, reviewing the surveillance tapes of the last hour or so.
“What’s going on?” Riku asks as he passes the open office door, his arms stacked with what looks to be giant leeks.
“Ransom. Have you seen him?” I try to keep the alarm out of my voice, but I know I’m failing. It hasn’t been long since I left his abandoned room and those empty pill bottles, but every minute that ticks by is another minute that his life could be in serious peril.
“No, not since early this morning. We got up before sunrise to hit up the fish market and grab produce. Actually, I was looking for him too. He offered to park the company truck in the garage for me after we unloaded. Still need to grab the keys from him.”
Justice and I lock eyes, both of us wearing identical looks of dread. It only lasts a second before he turns back to the surveillance footage, narr
owing his search down to the compound’s gates.
“There,” he says pointing to the screen. “The Oasis truck, leaving at . . .” he squints at the time stamp and then at his watch, “shit, just ten minutes ago.”
Ten minutes?
I could have stopped him. I could have found him before he had a chance to leave. Instead, I was confronting Tucker, something we could’ve done together.
Justice opens a drawer and produces a set of keys. “Here. Try to get to him. I’ll find Tucker and we’ll be right behind you.”
I take the key fob dangling from his fingers and hold them to my chest, nearly emotional with gratitude. There’s still a chance I can catch him. And considering the logo on the keychain says Porsche, my chances are pretty good.
I race to the garages and hit the Unlock button to see which beauty lights up. While Justice may have a huge estate, he isn’t really big on flash and pretention. However, his love for fast cars must be the exception. Ally once told me that Justice didn’t have a guilty pleasure. She had tried to corrupt him with ice cream and bad TV, and while he was a good sport about it, he was pretty clean in the vice department. But now that I see the full extent of his car collection—Ferrari and Bentley and Jag, oh my—it’s plain to see where he gets his naughty kicks.
I slide into the 911 GTS and rev the engine, relishing the sound of pure power and fury. While I’d love to savor this experience, I don’t even get time to enjoy the butter-soft leather and the luxury accouterments. Not if I want to catch Ransom.
Luckily, the journey between the compound and the next signs of civilization is merely a long, flat, dusty stretch of two-lane highway. If Ransom is on the road, I should find him, and catching up to him shouldn’t be an issue in the Porsche.
A few miles and several passed grandma drivers later, I catch a glimpse of a white Ford truck with a familiar emblem on the tailgate. I release a sigh of relief and begin to slow. He’s pulled over onto the shoulder. Not the safest place for him to be on these narrow roads, but it’s better than him driving under the influence.