Almost exactly what Chris said, and he understands me because he’s like me. Maybe she is, too. Truly, though, I have no clue. I’ve never been so clueless. I need to get away from this woman before I make another mistake we’ll both regret. I release her hand and step back from her. “I’ll walk you to the car I just had ordered for you.”
“You don’t have—”
“I’m walking you to the car.”
“Okay.” Her chin lifts with challenge. “You have my permission to walk me to the car.”
My lips tighten and so does my groin. “As long as I have your permission,” I say sardonically.
She simply gives me a nod and starts walking and, as I’m becoming accustomed to, she seems to expect me to follow. And holy hell, I do. But I want to grab her and pull her to the elevator and upstairs, where I can punish her with pleasure for making me this willing to chase her.
Once we’re outside, and a driver opens the door to the black sedan I’ve hired as her ride home, Crystal turns to me. Her mood has softened. “I’m going to the hospital in the morning, and I have to pick up my car here. You want to ride with me?” Her eyes light with mischief. “I’ll let you drive.”
That’s it. I grab her and pull her to me. “You’ll let me?”
She blinks up at me, and I watch the emotions flicker over her face, from stunned to aroused, and then to rousing challenge. “If you ask nicely,” she assures me, and no matter how coolly she tries to deliver the words, she can’t hide the breathless quality to her voice.
“I wonder if you’d ask nicely?” I’m not talking about driving the car, and I know she knows it.
Her lips curve into a teasing smile and she pushes out of my arms, stepping closer to the car. “I wonder.” She slides into the backseat and the driver shuts the door behind her.
I don’t move, staring at the tinted window, certain she is staring back at me, looking for a reaction I won’t give her. The car pulls away from the curb and, with adrenaline licking at my limbs all over again, I turn away and head into the hotel. Alone. I am alone. It has never mattered before. It’s always been my preference, but tonight . . . tonight I hate it.
Once I’m in my room, the first thing I do is call my father to check on my mother. She’s sleeping and my father sounds like utter shit. He’s exhausted and worried, and for the first time in a long time I don’t know how to make things right. I pace the room, the booze I’d tried to drown this with having absolutely no effect. Chris’s advice sucked. I go to my suitcase and open it. On top is a red leather journal and a small velvet box. I take them both to the bed and set them there.
I stare at the two items and finally manage to open the box to stare at the rose-shaped ring nestled in the black velvet. The one Rebecca had worn when she’d been my submissive. I want to flush it down the toilet, as much as I want to cherish it forever. It is a part of her, but it’s also the symbol of what led to her destruction . . . our bond.
I sit down on the bed, open the journal, and start to read. I know it’s not a good idea, but I can’t seem to help myself. And damn if I don’t hear Rebecca’s voice in my head. He is my Master, the one who commands me, but he is so much more to me. Am I foolish to believe I am more than a sub to him? Am I insane to believe that deep beneath his hard surface he might have real feelings for me? I’ve memorized this passage and heard it as if she were reading it to me a million times over. I’ve read it often since finding one of her journals under the mattress of my bed months ago, when she’d left town with another man. My bed. I cringe. I’d always made her feel everything had been mine, not hers, even when she’d lived with me. It is one of the many things I regret about the past that I can now never mend. She deserved better than me. She deserved the love I couldn’t give her, yet I selfishly called her back to San Francisco, knowing I could never be all she wanted me to be. She would never have been attacked had I not done such a thing. I’d been the end of her. Never again will I pull someone into the BDSM world who’s not already there and reveling in the experience.
My thoughts go to Crystal, and my new resolve forms. I won’t touch her.
It simply can’t happen. I won’t let it.
No matter how much I want her.
And I do.
Five
* * *
Between my guilt over Rebecca and my worry over my mother’s surgery, sleep is nearly impossible. Knowing I’m not likely to leave the hospital today, I dress in boots, jeans, and a brown Riptide T-shirt. Remembering the colder East Coast weather, I slip on a brown leather jacket.
Crystal is waiting for me in the lobby when I step off the elevator. Dressed in dark blue jeans, a pale blue silk blouse, boots, and a black leather jacket, with two coffee cups in her hands, it’s clear she doesn’t plan to head to Riptide today, which pleases me. Though I should want her there at Riptide, taking care of business.
She gives my similar attire an open inspection and smiles. “I like you like this,” she says. “Less ‘master,’ more man.” I stiffen at the “master” reference, and my eyes narrow, trying to read her. Does she know more about me than I think she does? And, holy hell, do my parents? She thrusts the cup at me. “White mocha.”
I reach for the coffee, unsure of what she knows. I am on such unsure footing with this woman, I barely know myself. “White mocha?” I inquire, never having had anyone assume this to be my drink. But then, people don’t get the chance to assume with me.
She nods and sips from her drink. “My favorite, and all macho alpha men like you have a secret softer side and a sweet tooth. It’s part of the breed.”
She’s dead-on. I have a major sweet tooth, but I don’t admit it. “Macho alpha men?”
She pushes her tousled blond hair out of her face. “Alpha man. Control freak. Type A personality, which I share. Whatever you want to call it, it’s you. Anyway, try the drink. The place I got it from is a block away and open twenty-hour hours. It’s really pretty good.”
Already my resolve to keep a distance from her is crumbling. Her outrageously bold personality seems to work for me. “Considering the time change and the early hour, I can certainly use the caffeine. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” she says, holding up her keys for me.
I take them from her, thinking her pleasure is exactly what I’d like to discover. Once we’re in the car, she keeps me talking and I let her. Anything to keep my own thoughts at bay.
Thirty minutes later, I stand by my mother’s bedside and lean down to her. “You’re going to be okay.”
She grabs the back of my head and pulls me close. “Yes,” she vows. “I will.” She hugs me so tightly, I feel like she’s clinging to me for dear life.
My eyes burn and my chest is on fire. She releases me and I lift my head to find Crystal standing in the doorway. There’s no hiding how emotional I feel, and I don’t even try. This woman is seeing parts of me I show no one. Parts I’m not sure I believed existed anymore, and I’m beyond stopping her. She’s too present. Too deeply embedded in my family’s life. This is why I need to be in San Francisco. It’s why I left.
The doctor enters and sends us on our way, so I give my mother another kiss, leaving my father alone with her. Out in the hallway I walk to the waiting room and sit down, letting my head drop into my hands, elbows on my knees.
I feel Crystal next to me. And then her hands are in my hair, she is touching me, and I don’t push her away. There is tenderness and comfort in her touch, comfort I swear I don’t need . . . and yet I do.
Slowly, I lift my head and look at her, staring into those pure, blue eyes, and feel like my heart’s being ripped from my chest. I feel something for this woman. I swore I’d never feel anything for anyone again, and for ten years I’ve managed to hold to that vow. Now, though . . . I am lost and she has found me.
“Three hours,” she whispers. “It seems like forever, but it’ll be fast. She’ll be out of surgery and feisty as ever, telling you how things are, and ruling the world.”
I laugh humorlessly. “Please let that woman make my life hell for another hundred years.”
Crystal smiles. “Don’t you worry. She’ll outlive us both.” She reaches into her purse and grabs a deck of cards. Then she moves a small table and sets it in front of me before pulling a chair up opposite. “Let’s play. What’s your game?”
This is another part of my past I don’t want revealed, and I’m suddenly aware of how exposed I am with this woman. Too exposed. “I don’t play cards.”
“Oh, come on. You’re human. You play cards.”
“No, Ms. Smith. I do not.”
“Crystal,” she corrects softly, “and if that’s true, then there’s no better day to learn. It’ll occupy your mind, which I happen to know is too sharp to remain inactive for the next three hours.”
“I’d rather discuss the auction coming up.”
“Poker? Why, yes, I’d love to play.”
I glance up to find my father, and it’s impossible to miss how bloodshot his eyes are. He grabs a chair and pulls it between mine and Crystal’s. He lifts his Styrofoam coffee cup. “Nothing better than coffee and poker, except beer and baseball.” He glances at Crystal. “Look out, darlin’. Mark was a damn good player back in his college days. He was the undefeated champion. If not for—”
“Dad,” I warn, stopping him and then looking at Crystal. “Deal.”
She studies me a moment. “Whatever you want, Mr. Compton.”
And damn if I don’t correct her. “Mark. My name is Mark.”
Three hours later I’ve won every hand of poker, and my father and Crystal are laughing as they team up against me and threaten to count cards.
“That’s only done in Blackjack,” I remind my father.
“Mr. Compton?” a man says.
We all rise and turn toward the doctor who’s standing in his scrubs, his mask on his chest, looking calm. Every muscle in my body eases. “She’s doing well,” he reports, and my shoulders slump, the tension sliding from my weary body, as he adds, “You can see her soon.”
I glance down at Crystal, who smiles at me. And for the first time in days, I truly breathe again.
I’m still talking to the doctor when Crystal gets a call. By the time the doctor departs, she’s grabbing her purse and walking toward me. “I need to run over to Riptide. Can you please tell your mother I was here and I’ll be back as soon as can?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“What’s wrong, Crystal?”
She surprises me by reaching out and pressing her hand to my chest. “Trust me, please. Go be with your mother. I won’t let you, or your parents, down.”
Heat radiates from the place she touches, and yet I’m frozen in place. “I don’t trust easily.”
Her fingers curl on my chest. “I suspect you don’t trust ever.”
“And yet you’re asking me to trust you.”
She wets her lips and I want to lick them, too. “You get nothing you want if you don’t ask for it.”
The air pulses around us and my hand closes over hers. “You have no idea how much I agree.”
“So you’ll go be with your family and let me take care of business?”
“Yes. I will.”
“Mark,” my father says, and I release her hand.
Six
* * *
A few hours later, the hospital phone in my mother’s room rings. She shifts against her pillow, still stubborn enough to try to answer it, and moans with the pain that creates.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” my father says, quickly moving from his chair to her bedside, while I swipe the phone from the table.
“Compton room,” I answer.
“Mark?”
At the sound of Crystal’s voice, I glance at the clock, and note that it’s four o’clock. “I thought you were coming back.”
“I am. I sat in a traffic jam for over an hour, and once I got here there were all kinds of things the staff needed for our small Monday event that I didn’t plan on. You know how it is around here.”
“Is that Crystal?” my mother whispers hoarsely. “I want to talk to her.”
“My mother wants to talk to you, but don’t hang up until I speak to you again.” I don’t wait for her agreement—I assume it, as she does for far too many things—handing the phone over to my father.
I watch as he holds it to my mother’s ear so she doesn’t have to lift her arm, and the tenderness of his expression rips through me. My parents’ relationship is not all roses. They’ve made each other’s lives hell. I know this, though no one else does, and it’s made me doubt what people so flippantly call “love.”
Until now. Until this moment, when my mother is broken, and my father is by her side, and I see this look on his face. I see that, despite all they have been through, a part of him would die if we lost her.
My father removes the phone from my mother’s ear and I reach for it a moment too late. He hangs it up.
I wait for it to ring again. And wait. Crystal doesn’t call back. I told her I wanted to talk to her. I run my hand through my hair and walk to the window. It’s all I can do not to call her back and demand an update on Riptide’s affairs. I can’t and won’t try to run two operations in separate states, worrying about what I don’t know when I should. If she wants my trust, she needs to communicate with me.
By the time visiting hours end, Crystal hasn’t called or shown up. I’m reclining in a green chair, much like the one my father has folded out into a bed, while my mother sleeps deeply, tucked beneath her sheets. Though I have Crystal’s cell number, I don’t use it. The more time goes by, the longer her silence draws out, the more I want to call her—but not here, not when it might upset my mother.
I uncurl myself from the chair and walk to my mother’s side, kissing her forehead. She doesn’t move, and neither does my father. Reluctantly, I head out of the room, caving to my father’s request that I give them some alone time in the evenings, which I know is a ploy to get me to rest.
Once I’m in the hallway, I dial the security desk at Riptide and confirm everyone is gone for the weekend, including Crystal. Irritated, I head to the front of the hospital and hail a cab to take me to my hotel, contemplating my next move. I decide I want to see her next move instead. Will she show up at the hospital tomorrow, or go silent on me? If she goes silent, she’s a problem I need to know about now, not later.
Fifteen minutes later, my cab stops at the hotel and I head up to my room. There I strip and go straight to the shower. I’ve tossed on pajama bottoms and I’m towel-drying my hair when a knock sounds on the door. Tossing the towel into the sink, I walk to the door, expecting the maid service. “I’m good. I don’t need anything,” I call out.
“It’s me. Crystal.”
I freeze. Crystal is at my hotel door? This is temptation and danger waiting to happen. This is . . .
I open the door. She’s holding a folder in her hand, her purse over her shoulder. Her gaze slides over my naked torso and lifts, and I don’t miss how hard she swallows. “You weren’t answering your phone. I guessed you were in the shower and your dad gave me your room number, so I—”
I pull her inside and shut the door, and touching her is fire in my veins. A dark, familiar need inside me begins to demand satisfaction. That part of me that uses sex for escape, for control of everything in my life.
But she is not for me, and I am not for her. She knows this. I know she knows this. She shouldn’t be here.
I quickly maneuver her against the wall and my hands settle by her head, my body lifting from hers. “Why are you here?”
“I have a situation I—”
“Why didn’t you call me and check in today?”
“You needed to focus on your family.”
“I told you I wanted to talk to you.”
“And I avoided you.”
“At least you’re honest. Why?”
“Because I had a problem I was
trying to solve, and I knew if I talked to you, you’d know about it.”
“You don’t think I needed to know there was a problem?”
“After it was solved, if I could solve it. And I did—one of them. There’s another I need your help with.”
“What are the problems?”
“One of the artists showing in Monday’s mini-auction tried to pull out. It’s handled.”
“And the other problem?”
“My Beatles guy wants this done this weekend. I made reservations to fly out in the morning. I need you to sign the check and paperwork. Your father says he’s not authorized, but you are.”
I’m not even going to comment on why my father doesn’t have access to the money. A piece of dirty laundry I didn’t ever want revealed but she’s managed to tread over. This woman keeps getting all up in my business. She keeps getting in my head. “You sure this has to happen now?”
“He’s adamant.”
My gaze finds its way to her mouth, and my blood runs hot. I want this woman. I want her, and I have her alone in my hotel room. “And you thought it was a good idea to come to my room to solve this?”
“Actually,” she says, her voice hoarse, “I thought it was a very bad idea.”
“And yet you still did it.” It’s not a question.
“I leave at six in the morning. I had no choice.”
If I stay this close to her, I’m going to strip her naked and fuck her. I push off the wall and stare at her. “Show me the paperwork.”
“I’ll get it ready for you.” She doesn’t wait for my approval—she never does—but walks past me toward the desk. Her scent stays with me, lingering in my nostrils and thickening my cock. Her hips sway with feminine grace and I picture her on top of me, riding me.
I have two choices here. They are simple. I fuck her, or I don’t. It doesn’t get any more black-and-white than that. Everything changes in the morning, though. That’s when everything gets complicated.