Mutual Release (35 page)

He launched himself at her, took her arm, making her look at him in a way that told him she knew damn good and well he’d been standing there.

“What?” she said, swaying, but not to the music. “Go ’way. You aren’t the fucking boss of me.” She pulled her arm out of his grip and turned to the boy, nearly falling right into him. The boy seemed startled and nervous. Evan reached over and righted her but was jolted by the rage with a very real undercurrent of panic rolling off her.

“Enough,” he said, turning her face to his. “You’re drunk. While that in and of itself does not bother me, I’m through watching you put on this show. You don’t have to prove anything, Julie.” He tightened his grip on her arm.

“Fuck. You.” She tried to struggle, but he found a chair and sat her down, kneeling at her feet. “I hate you. You’re… a… oh, just leave me alone.”

“You don’t know me well enough to hate me. But you are afraid, and that makes me sad.” He held her hands and kept his voice steady. After about two minutes she looked up as a tear slid down her face. He wiped it off, then helped her to her feet. “You aren’t a daredevil tonight, Julie. You’re just a woman trying to sort through what’s happening between us.”

“There is nothing happening… oh, shit.” Her ankle turned and she stumbled, but he wouldn’t let her fall. “Would you just stop being all… whatever the fuck it is you call it – ‘dominant’.” She hooked her fingers around the word and rolled her eyes. But he felt the tremor in her when she used it.

He smiled and leaned into her ear, kissed her jaw. “That is what I call it. And you like it, I can tell. Now, let’s get the fuck out of this meat market and get some water.”

“Whatever,” she slurred, slumping into him. He guided her out, flagged a taxi, and shoved her floppy body into the back seat. The second the cab pulled into traffic, she sighed and had shifted so she had one leg hooked over his thigh and her hand on his crotch. “I am a daredevil. I think that’s why you wanna tie me up and…”

“Shh,” he said, removing her hand and focusing on the back of the cab seat so he would not give in to the need to throw her down and plow into her, show her who was boss. He clenched his eyes shut. One of the things he truly hated about this personality quirk of his was the scary way it could take over; make him into a potential monster, a brutal uncaring man only looking to prove something. He put his hand over his eyes as visions of his sister loomed; her cracked lips and disappearing body evidence of how she had been used by a man who claimed to be no different than he.

A wave of nauseating claustrophobia swept through him. He gulped, grabbed the door handle, fully prepared to jump out and get the hell away from this mess he was about to create with a woman who already claimed to hate him. While he realized she was fronting, he also knew at that moment he wanted to kiss her, make love to her, cradle her in his arms and fall asleep with nothing but their skin between them. But she required more. The dichotomy in his own head was making him dizzy.

He glanced over at her. She was staring at him, her eyes watery and unfocused. She touched his lips, his cheek, his chest. “You’re… very… handsome.” Her voice was hoarse. “You scare me.” And that fact went straight to his heart.

“You don’t ever have to be scared of me, Julie. I swear to you.”

She blew out a puff of air and looked away. The cab screeched to a halt at the door of the Ritz. He held out a hand, but realized the combination of all the booze she’d had over the course of the day was about to hit her hard. He supported her weight as they walked through the double glass doors. She tugged him to a stop right outside the elevators. “Kiss me,” she said, her lips near his.

Using every ounce of self-control he possessed, and some he didn’t, he pulled her arms from around his neck. “Julie, you need to drink about a gallon of water and then pass out.” He hit the elevator call button, still hanging onto her to keep her from sliding to the floor.

The doors slid shut at the same moment Julie turned to him, her eyes clear. “I’m not as drunk as you think,” she insisted, curling her body into his in a way that came damn close to undoing him. “Evan,” she whispered, her lips making their inevitable way from his ear around to meet his. He had no control over himself anymore. Everything in him screamed at him to take her, finesse and bullshit domination be damned. She wanted it. He knew it. His jaw ached from the effort to not do that.

The doors opened onto the suite. He took a breath and guided her out. “Julie, let’s just call it a night. We both need some space, and you need some serious hydration.”

“No.” She walked ahead of him into the foyer, turned, and slipped the thin straps of her dress down and before he knew it she stood there dressed in nothing but…

He looked away, rallied his inner grown-up man, and picked the expensive scrap of silk off the floor. She touched his arm as he tried to walk past her and that one simple touch shredded his self-control. But he just looked at her hand, then at her face, somehow avoiding those incredible full breasts.

“Hands off,” he growled, shouldering away from her. “You do not get to handle the merchandise.”

But her hand slid up his arm, around to his face, then down. And the buttons of his shirt came undone, while he stood trying to catch his breath. She kept touching him but he stayed still, let her have her fun. “C’mon, Country Club,” she said, blowing alcohol fumes in his face, which did nothing to help the raw lust coursing down his spine. “I’m game. Go ahead…” She turned around, miming their dancing moves from earlier, grinding her thong-clad ass against his poor, miserable, needy cock. When he didn’t respond, she turned and pressed her entire body along his, and put her hands behind her back. “Tie me up, baby. Spank me. Whatever you want… Isn’t this how it goes?”

Rage replaced every rational particle of him. He gripped her upper arms. “Julie, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sure I do. I told you I was a daredevil.” She walked around behind him, put her arms around his neck, threading her fingers together in front of his face. “You stocked up my closet, so I’m guessing you have got a really great collection of naughty stuff in there – I mean, this
is
why I’m here, right?”

Evan closed his eyes. He reached very deep to own the anger and shove the lust down underneath it.

She kept moving, around to his other side, keeping her arms locked around him. “What’s the matter? Don’t think you can handle me?”

That tore it. But he was not about to make it worse by going with anger, although he channeled it and kept his face calm. Without a single word to her he reached behind him, unlatched her fingers, and put her arms at her sides.

Allowing himself one long sweeping look up and down her body, making sure she knew he was doing it, he smiled. “I can handle you, Julie. But I’m thinking maybe it’s not worth my time.”

She stumbled, the booze finally catching up with her as adrenaline faded from her system. “Evan,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I just… I want… you are…”

He caught her before she hit the floor. “You have no business acting like this with me,” he said as he carried her into the bedroom. His body sent him clear “fuck her” signals but he was used to that by now, and all his early training in controlling his own urges suddenly decided to prop him up, thank God, or he would have tossed her down and put his mark on her in a way she would never forget.

But something about the way she snuggled into his arms and how all the tension left her in a giant whoosh of mental energy forced him to stop dead in his tracks. He kissed her forehead. “You do still want me,” she mumbled into his bare chest.

“Maybe…,” he said, more to himself than to her as he tucked her under the covers. He smoothed her hair off her face and sat watching her a few more seconds. “But maybe I can’t want you, Julie. You aren’t the only one who’s afraid.”

She opened her eyes, surprising him. Their bright blue pierced his gut. Her hand touched his face. “Are we that fucked up, Country Club? Really?”

“Yeah, I think we may be. Sleep. I’ll catch up with you on the other side.” He kissed her cheek, her lips, then flipped off the light and walked out of the room.

Chapter Four

Julie sat straight up, gripping unfamiliar sheets and in the midst of the worst night terrors she’d ever experienced. The room had shrunk, stank of strong men’s cologne. She put her hand to her mouth before falling out of the bed and landing on the hard, cold floor. Her throat closed up as she stared, trying to focus on where she was and why in the hell she was about to…

She crawled to the bathroom and gripped the toilet seat. Random memories from the night before assaulted her while the evening’s various alcohols forced her to empty her stomach.

She sat on the wonderful cool tile floor and willed the room to stop spinning. Why had she been such a slutty bitch? Oh, right, Evan and his little reveal during dinner. The thought of the sushi made nausea overrule anything but the urgency to throw up for the next twenty-four hours. After another bout of dry heaves, she flopped onto the floor, tears streaming down her face. The tile felt so great against her cheek she decided to lie there a while, contemplate her no doubt impending death by brutal hangover.

But sleep was supplanted by a terrifying collage of memories – Bart’s disgusting cologne, his huge hands all over her, inside her. She’d repressed the memory of his repeated attacks for so long, choosing instead to look forward and never get in a position where any man could hurt her again. But something had loosened the floodgates of horror, and she curled into a ball, whimpering, aching and stinging in the places where he’d forced himself into her, all the while suffocating her with his nasty cologne.

She’d managed to go outside herself after about the fourth time, when he’d decided he wanted to fuck her doggie-style after trying to “teach her” how to blow him. She was a sleepwalker by that point, unable to really rest. He saved most of their sessions for the small office in the back of the restaurant, where her mother thought she was safe. Finally even her young, tight, and very sore body wouldn’t do it for him anymore and he would try and shove his flaccid dick into her mouth, or her ass. She’d been a useless ragdoll by then, using a kind of mind game with herself every time he showed up with his toothy grin and a condom. Thank Jesus he’d been scrupulous about that condom.

Julie was unsure how long she lay on the floor of the bathroom. But by the time she sat up and brushed her stringy hair off her face, she had relived every moment, every attack, the pain that never went away due to his hurry to use her and yank his pants back up before they got “caught doing the nasty,” as he liked to say. Anger gave her strength to stand and stare at herself in the mirror.

The morning of her last week of high school, after nearly five weeks of constant “sessions” with her stepfather, she’d completed her usual morning shower and cry session, got dressed, grabbed her backpack, and walked to Amy’s to beg the girl to let her stay with them. Amy’s parents had been sympathetic, but insisted she call her mother so she wouldn’t worry. Julie tried to tell them her mother didn’t give two shits for anyone but herself, but they wouldn’t listen. So she’d walked back home, sat her mother down, and told her exactly what Bart had done and continued to do to her.

Julie closed her eyes, shutting out that memory, unwilling to revisit the names her mother had called her, chasing her out of Bart’s house and back over to the one friend she had. She yanked on the shower to full hot and crawled under the stream of water, unaware of the tears rolling down her face until she tasted salt. She propped herself on the sides of the giant shower. What in the hell had happened to her? Why could she still smell him – that fucking rapist creep – his cologne, his sweat, feel his fat gross tongue in her mouth and the surprisingly spearing pain when he took her the first time, making a huge mess of blood he made her clean up, all manly and proud for raping the virgin.

She ground her teeth and spoke a familiar but long-neglected mantra to herself: “Stop! Stop now, Julie. Get a fucking grip. It’s over; you’re fine. It’s all… good.”

Her voice sounded strong to her ears, but the memories blinded and deafened her and she ended up sitting on the floor of the shower, shivering and frozen with fear and remembering pain – and anger at the only person she could think of to blame for all this flipping memory lane bullshit: Evan, and his weird effect on her. His… control of her, she admitted to herself finally.

He’d done this; he’d made her feel so good for a while, she’d let her guard down and now look at her, drowning in a sea of sights and sounds she’d sworn would never touch her again. She’d married one of the richest men in her universe, had a job she loved, all the clothes, shoes, cars, and amenities she needed to smooth her path. And this damn guy had dropped into her life, kept dropping in as a matter of fact, and now, thanks to him, she’d let Bart enter her brain again.

“Fucking men,” she muttered, finally getting to her feet and turning off the water. She was still shaking and had the beginnings of a stellar headache, could hear her own damn heartbeat in her ears thanks to her bad behavior last night. “Ugh, you are an idiot,” she berated herself once she was dried off and had wrapped up in a fluffy hotel robe.