No In Between (9 page)

I stretch over Chris’s lap, my elbows settling on the soft leather of the couch. My head tilts forward, allowing me the solace of my long, dark hair, though there is none for my bare backside. I am exposed in every possible way.

“Relax, baby,” Chris murmurs, his warm hand flattening on my lower back.

“I’m trying.”

“Take a deep breath and let it out.”

As I suck in air his hand begins stroking up and down my spine. Over and over, I feel the slow, gentle movements seducing me, softening my tense muscles. Time seems to stand still, and it could be seconds or minutes that pass, but the music begins to come back to me. Words meld with his touch, becoming soothingly erotic, almost hypnotic. Gradually his hand moves lower, over my backside, and still he continues the same back and forth motion. Sensations seduce me, draw me in, and I forget to think. Until his hand stills and his fingers flex against my cheek.

I jerk, trying to sit up, and Chris’s hand flattens on my back, holding me in place. “Stay, baby. I’ll warn you first.”

I pant, trying to slow my breathing. “Yes. No. I mean yes.”

“Easy, baby,” he murmurs again.

I force myself to relax, to sink against him and the couch, and close my eyes. I’m expecting the paddle any instant, but instead, he spreads my thighs and traces down the seam between my cheeks until his fingers slide into the slick, wet heat that defies my resistance and declares I am hot and aroused. And I am aroused, by how completely at his mercy I am. He reaches beneath me, his fingers stroking my clit in a deliciously, oh so right way, but one hand stays on my backside. One hand promises what is to come. But his fingers slide inside me, and the threat of that hand on my ass fades in the shameless lift of my hips, the pump of my hips against his hand.

Suddenly, though, his fingers are gone and I’m left gasping as his hand begins a gentle patting on my backside. I hold my breath, expecting this to be the warning before the sting, but his touch remains light, erotic. Over and over, he drums on me, the sensation an intoxicating vibration, and unbelievably, I’m on the edge again, my sex clenching, aching.

I feel Chris shift and reach for something, and then the music changes. “Listen to the song,” he orders. “Focus on the words.” The volume cranks to a roar and Muse’s “Hysteria” thunders around us.
’Cause
I want it now. I want it nowwww. Give me your heart and your soul. And I’m not breaking down. I’m breaking out.

Adrenaline surges through me and the loud beat consumes my mind, and I know it’s my warning. I try to brace myself for what’s coming, but I can’t think beyond how loud the words are, and I jerk when the fur of the paddle becomes the soft patting on my backside. It becomes faster but not harder. The music lances my mind and every nerve ending is in overload, tingling with every touch of the paddle. A burn begins inside me, an ache for more, for whatever comes next. It’s no longer fear, it’s need, but he doesn’t give it to me.

The music punches into my mind, like it’s echoing my thoughts.
I want it now. I want it now.
I do. I want it. “Chris, I—”

His fingers slice into my hair and he tugs my head back. “Now, baby,” he warns. One hard blow comes down on my bottom and my back arches with the shock, but I don’t have the opportunity to process it, let alone object. Another blow comes down. And another. Four, I think. No, five. I don’t count. I can’t count. Then he stops, but he doesn’t let go of my hair or speak. He doesn’t move at all. I lie there, feeling the gentle pull of my hair, the warmth of my cheeks, but then there’s an odd sensation in my chest that I cannot escape. Suddenly, that sensation turns to a bubble of laughter. I have no idea why I’m laughing. I don’t feel amused; I feel overwhelmed and aroused, and I don’t know what else.

Without warning the paddle comes down on me again, and my laughter stops. Three more times I feel the heat of its touch, and then it’s gone, and so is Chris’s hold on my hair. I gasp and fall forward, and more laughter bubbles from some deep place inside of me, but it’s not like any laughter I’ve ever experienced. It’s as if some unidentifiable emotion is being ripped from a deep part of me.

Chris turns me to face him and, embarrassed by whatever’s happening to me, I bury my face in his chest, curling into the hard warmth of his body. “Sara, look at me.”

“No.” I choke on more stupid laughter. “I can’t.”

He strokes my hair. “Laughter is like crying. It’s a normal reaction to the endorphins. Let it happen.”

“So I’m not crazy?”

He nuzzles my cheek. “If you’re crazy, then we’ll be crazy together.”

I’m not laughing anymore, and the emotion in my chest expands into something completely different. Something only Chris makes me feel. Flattening my hands on his chest, I lean back and stare into his eyes, and where I feared I’d feel vulnerable, I don’t. “Together,” I repeat and the word feels good on my lips, the way he does.

He lowers his mouth nearer to mine and his breath is a sweet seduction, a prelude to the kiss I crave, like I crave him. For long seconds, we linger like this and I swear I can hear my own heart beat. Chris moves first, his hand splaying on my back, molding me to him, and I tangle my fingers in his blond hair, but still we don’t kiss. We just breathe together, until the band of need between us snaps. Our mouths come together and we are crazy kissing, tongues tangling, hands all over each other’s bodies.

He cups my breasts, teasing my nipples in that rough, delicious way he does and I am on fire, burning up from within, where I need him now. I moan and shift my body to shamelessly, eagerly, straddle him. My arms wrap around his neck. “I really need to be inside you,” I confess, then blush to amend, “I mean—”

“You need to be inside me?” he teases, his laugh vibrating through my body, and tightening my sex.

“You know what I mean,” I chide. “And now you know why I never flirted with men. I suck at it. Why are your pants still on?”

“So I wouldn’t fuck you before you were ready.” He reaches for his jeans. “Lift up.”

We do some creative maneuvering and finally my hand is around his thick shaft, guiding him to me while he balances me. Then he is stretching me, filling me in ways far beyond the physical, in ways that reach deep into my soul. I take him fully, deeply, as completely as if I can’t get enough of him. We are in wild abandon together, the music pounding around us, our bodies swaying, grinding. Somehow we are both making love and fucking and it is perfection. It is right and real and absolute, like my love for this man.

Somehow, I am leaning toward his knees, and his hands are at my waist, shackling me, holding me up, his gaze stroking my nipples, while his cock strokes me to the edge. He drives into me, pulling me down, pushing up. Over and over. Harder and harder. The music filters into my mind again, and the fast beat seems to become a part of our erotic dance, until I feel the rush of release overwhelming me.

“Chris,” I plead as my muscles start to tense. “I’m going to fall.”

He scoops me up against him, enclosing me in his arms, pulling me down against his hips. He is thick and hard and my body reacts to the feel of him in me, against me. My sex tightens and then the spasms begin to rip through me. Chris buries his face in my neck, a deep, guttural groan escaping him as he shudders and spills warm, wet heat into me.

We collapse together, clinging to each other. Seconds tick by, or minutes . . . I don’t know or care. I’m with him. As he reaches behind him and turns down the music, I remember that first song and what he was telling me.

My hands cup his face and for once, it’s me forcing him to look at me. “It’s real.”

“What?” he asks.

“That’s what you were asking with that first song, wasn’t it? Is this real enough to survive anything, no matter how bad? The answer is yes—it’s real. And I’ll tell you what you told me in Paris. If you run, Chris, run fast, because I’ll come after you. That’s just the kind of bitch I am.”

I expect him to laugh, but he doesn’t. My name whispers from his lips, a tormented rough growl and his hand comes down on the back of my head, his mouth slanting over mine. His tongue sweeps past my lips, his kiss demanding, fierce, and I taste his need to believe me in it, his need to know we are right and real, and forever.

He doesn’t even stop kissing me when he picks me up and carries me to the bedroom. He cleans us both up, and then wraps me in his arms from behind. We lie there in our bed, legs twined together and it’s a perfect moment, so perfect that I dare to believe the past cannot rip this from us. Our demons are finally not as strong as we are.

Yet somehow, out of nowhere, I can almost hear Rebecca’s voice in my head as she reads her written words.

The rush of fear is far better than the defeat of boredom. The high of not knowing what comes next is so much better than always knowing one day will be like the last. Never anticipation, never feeling anything. No. I cannot go back. So why am I so terrified of going forward?

Nine

The nightmare happened again. I am on the trolley with a crowd of people, but I blink and they disappear. I am left alone with only one other person. My dead mother. I ask her, as I always do in these dreams, how she is here, but she merely smiles. There is something evil in her expression that hurts me and makes me question the love I’d thought she had for me. Is my subconscious mind telling me it was as fake as her stories about my father?

The trolley continues without a driver and we start rolling down a hill toward the Bay. I know how this nightmare goes; I’ve had different versions many times, but still I cannot control my reaction. I begin to scream and I want to jump, but the car is going too fast. I can’t stop the inevitable from happening. I can’t and I don’t. The trolley crashes into the ocean and icy water seeps through my clothes, piercing my skin like a sharp, painful blade.

I try to swim to the surface but the trolley is over me, shoving me down, down, down. . . . I cannot get to the surface. I cannot breathe. And my mother is nowhere. She is just gone. Like me.

I wake with a gasp, jolting to a sitting position, and it takes me several heaving breaths to realize I’m in bed.

“Easy, baby. It’s just the alarm clock.”

Chris’s voice breaks through the havoc in my mind; his hand on my back calms the tension tightening my spine.

“I had a nightmare,” I say, welcoming his arm around my neck, his forehead against mine. “It was . . . it was like I was Rebecca, and I was writing in one of her journals.”

He leans back, giving me a curious look, grabbing the remote off the nightstand and sending the shades into motion and a new day’s light spilling in as they lift. “I thought her entries were erotic, not scary.”

I pull my knees to my bare chest. “Not all of them. She wrote a lot about her nightmares and her death.”

“Wait. She wrote about her death? Why haven’t I heard about this before now?”

“They were just nightmares. It didn’t feel important.”

“They were a by-product of her life, so my question is what brought them on? Was she afraid of someone?”

“No. They weren’t about a person. She was always drowning in the Bay. They were more about control, I think. About her feeling like something in her life was spiraling out of control and she couldn’t stop it.”

“Was there anyone else in the nightmares?”

“Her dead mother.”

He tilts his head, giving me a keen inspection. “Let me get this straight. Rebecca had control issues, an absent father, a love for art, and was messed up over her mother.”

There is a tight knot in my chest, rapidly getting tighter. “And she loved a man she feared she could never truly have. Yes. We were alike. That’s why I connected to her writing.”

“Sara, where did that come from?”

“I’m sorry. It’s not about now. It’s about the past, when I was reading her journals, and you left me. I understood her and I didn’t even know her.”

“I see my instincts to lock those damn journals away were right.”

“At the time I locked them away, it was,” I grudgingly admit. “But her words were also what gave me the courage to seek out a dream that led us to each other. She changed my life, Chris, and she haunts me beyond those journals. I can’t explain it, but I feel like I was always supposed to find her justice.” I look upward a moment and shake my head. “I sound like a crazy person.”

“No.” He wraps his arm around my calves, just below mine. “You sound like someone who cares, and there are too few people who do.”

“Like you do,” I say. “You help people, Chris, and I love that about you. You’re helping Mark even though he doesn’t deserve it from you.”

“I’ve found that in life, the times we need help are often the times we deserve it the least.”

“Sometimes people like Rebecca deserve it and they never have it.”

His phone beeps on the nightstand and he releases me to reach for it. “That reminds me,” I say. “Did David ever call?”

“This is from him,” he says, indicating his phone, and reading:
“Client emergency last night and this morning. Tied up all morning. Update you later. Just don’t say anything I wouldn’t say today, and you’ll be fine.”

I laugh. “Seriously? Don’t say anything he wouldn’t say?
No one
says the things that man says.
Sugar
.”

Chris grins. “The next time we go to dinner with him, I’m ordering a pitcher of beer.”

Smiling, I shake my head. “I so would enjoy that.” It hits me that I forgot something else last night. “You never told me what happened when you met with Mark.”

“Not much. He’s a cracked brick wall, trying to pretend he’s steel. And his normal outlet for maintaining that façade is gone. Tiger made him sign the club over.”

“To who?”

“His head of security.”

“I’m shocked. That’s a major part of who he is.”

“It might be the best thing that ever happened to him. It’s going to force him to deal with life, not hide from it.”

“I’m not sure if I agree or disagree. Mark’s hard to understand.”

“And to help.”

“Did he decline my offer to help at the gallery?”

“No, he’s not a fool. He wants to be close to his mother right now, and that means Allure isn’t a priority.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

“You’re right—and his mother deserves her son next to her when she fights this monster. We’ll help that happen.” He glances at his cell phone. “It’s eight now. Mark agreed to hire security, and Jacob is meeting us at the gallery at nine.”

“Jacob? What about his job here?”

“Blake worked a deal with the building management to have Jacob at the gallery today. Walker Security’s working on a plan to carry the gallery through the trial.” He motions to the bathroom. “Care to save water with me?”

“Not if you want to be there on time.”

He leans in and kisses my neck. “Good point, because I could definitely make you my breakfast and forgo the shower.” He throws off the blanket and starts walking toward the bathroom, gloriously, wonderfully naked. My God, the man has a great ass. I drop back on the bed and sigh blissfully as his scent whispers all around me. Things might be bad but they are really darn good, too.

Rolling onto my stomach, I grab the remote from the nightstand and turn on the news, then reach into my drawer and pull out my new journal. Sitting up and resting against the headboard, I stare at the image of the Eiffel Tower on the cover, not overly eager to open it. After the meeting with the police, and seeing how Rebecca’s words have become such public fodder, I’m not so sure I want mine documented. Still, I open to a blank page and remove the pen clipped inside, and find myself re-creating the very first entry in Rebecca’s journal that I’d ever read.

Dangerous.

For months I’ve had dreams and nightmares about how perfectly he personifies the word. Sleep-laden, alternate realities where I can vividly smell his musky male scent, feel his hard body against mine. Taste the sweet and sensuous flavor of him–like milk chocolate with its silky demand that I indulge in one more bite. And another. So good, I’d forgotten there’s a price for overindulgence. And there
is
a price. There is
always
a price.

The word
dangerous
bothers me, just like it had Detective Grant. It has always bothered me. Its use was a big part of what drove me to look for Rebecca.

Chris asked me if she feared anyone. She did. She feared Mark and the power he had to hurt her, but that isn’t so odd. I had that same thought about Chris last night.

I glance up and my gaze lands on the television as a photo of Ava appears next to a pretty blond newscaster. Scrambling for the remote, I turn up the volume.

“Guilty or not guilty? That appears to be the question with a woman who first confessed to killing a missing young woman named Rebecca Mason, and attacking another. Now our sources say that in tomorrow’s bail adjustment hearing she’ll change her plea to not guilty, claiming she was coerced to confess by someone threatening her life
.
”

An image of Rebecca replaces that of Ava.
“The real question becomes ‘where is Rebecca Mason?’ So far there has been no body found, and without one, police will be hard-pressed to support a murder charge. Could the answer lie in the high-end art world she worked in? Or perhaps a link to underground sex clubs and billionaire clients? Our sources say it might just be possible. Tune in tomorrow night for a special report with Kali Wilson.”

The story leaves me shaken, and when the bed shifts I glance up to find Chris, fully dressed in a black long-sleeved T-shirt and black jeans, sitting next to me. “I guess it’s out now.”

His lips tighten. “It appears it is.”

“What do you think?”

He takes the remote from me and turns off the TV. “I think this is about to get very nasty.”

• • •

Forty minutes later Chris and I step outside of our building. He hands the attendant a large bill to retrieve our car, and the kid’s eyes light up at Chris’s generosity before he rushes away.

The instant he’s gone, Chris grabs the lapels of my coat and pulls it open, exposing my slim-fitting pale blue suit-dress to his sizzling inspection. My cheeks heat and I yank it shut. “Behave. We aren’t alone.”

“You look too damn fuckable to be around Mark Compton. Tomorrow you wear a bag. A big, ugly one.”

I laugh but I don’t miss the underlining edginess to his mood or make the mistake of dismissing it. He’s not even close to over being pissed at Mark’s attempts to seduce me. I push to my toes and kiss him. “I’ll have a bodyguard,” I remind him. “Two, actually. You and Jacob.”

He seems to have more to say on the matter, but his cell phone rings and he snags it from his pocket. “Amber’s rehab facility,” he announces grimly. “It’s already after nine,” he tells me before answering. “Can you call Jacob and tell him we’re five minutes away?”

I nod, digging my phone out of my purse while trying to listen in on his conversation. By the time I punch in Jacob’s number, I hear Chris say, “Whatever it takes. Money isn’t an issue,” and I have the impression he isn’t getting good news.

“I’m here,” Jacob answers, not bothering with a greeting. “Where are you two?”

“Five minutes away.”

“I’ll be inside the gallery. I got here early. Your ‘Bossman’ let me in.”

I laugh at the nickname the staff uses for Mark, but it chokes out of me, as laden with tension as Chris’s body language. “Sounds like Ralph is there and teaching you his gallery slang.”

“He is and he did,” Jacob confirms. “Apparently ‘Bossman’ is code for ‘Asshole.’”

“I take it he isn’t in a good mood?”

“He has moods? I heard he only did ‘Asshole’ and ‘Asshole.’”

“He’s normally arrogant and difficult, but fair and rather generous with his employees. But right now, his mother has cancer, and Rebecca . . . she mattered to him.”

“Don’t worry. I have a high tolerance for assholes. It’s a gift my father taught me.”

His remark hits a hot spot I’ve been silently nursing. I almost died last week, and my father doesn’t even know. “Your father must resemble mine,” I say, my tone cynical.

“I sure as hell hope not,” he says. “There’s a news truck out front. I’ll watch for you at the rear parking lot.”

Stuffing my phone back in my purse, I discover Chris is still on his, still listening intently to whatever is being said to him, his gaze cast off to the distance.

If he knows when the Porsche is pulled up beside us, and the attendant holds my door, he doesn’t acknowledge it. Concerned, I pause outside the car and wait, and it’s a good three more minutes before he ends the call, his jaw flexing as he slides his cell back into his pocket. I watch as he glances up and looks startled that the car is here; he’s rarely startled by anything. He heads toward the driver’s side and I climb in, allowing the attendant to shut me inside.

“Everything still a ‘go’ with Jacob, I assume?” Chris asks as he puts the car into gear.

“He’s already there and he met with Mark. There’s a news truck in front of the gallery, so he wants us to meet him at the back.” Softening my voice, I ask, “What about Amber?”

He reaches the end of the drive and brakes, staring straight ahead for several seconds before he looks at me, his eyes dark. “She’s turned violent. They feel she needs more attention and a longer stay than initially planned.”

“That’s not good.”

“No. It’s not.”

I want to comfort him, but Chris doesn’t like fluffy words any more than I do, and they won’t ease the self-blame eating him alive. I think of how he compared Amber to Rebecca, and himself to Mark, and a bad feeling slides through me. His helping Mark isn’t just about Mark. It’s about repenting for his own sins.

• • •

Chris cuts down the alleyway between the coffee shop and the gallery and says into his phone, “We’ll pull up to the back door to avoid the press. I’ll let Sara go in, and then park. Right.”

“You think the press is going to swarm us?” I ask when he hangs up.

“After that news piece this morning, everyone and their uncle will be after a story. So yes. If not now, soon.”