Ten Thousand Lies (26 page)

I noticed his accent got heavier when he spoke of his family. I wondered if he realized it himself.

“See? I told you I didn’t have it so bad,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood.

His beard twitched, so I supposed it’d worked.

“Jaime…who I am today is not the person I grew up to be.”

“I think we all can say that about ourselves.”

“No, you don’t understand. I grew up in a high-profile household. I was forced to leave Britain, leave my mother and brother. Chances are, I will never be able to go back.”

“What? Like a witness protection sort of deal?” I whispered, glancing around.

“Yes, and no,” he murmured. “The less people who know who I was, the better. I don’t want to lie to you. My whole fucking life feels like a lie sometimes, and there are times I’m not sure who I am. But, with you, I just want to be who I’ve always been deep inside, and I need to be honest with you about that. You’re a part of the life, you know? You’re in it with the rest of us. For now, I just want to come as clean as I can. Is that enough for you?”

I nodded. “I like who you are, Ricki.”

He smiled. “I like who you are, too, Jaime.”

Holy shit, I am halfway to wasted.

After dinner, Ricki and I had headed over to Wurther’s for a few drinks, and a few drinks had turned out to be a hell of a lot more. The alcohol had loosened us up, and we’d started taking shots, keeping the festive atmosphere going.

Like the restaurant, it wasn’t too busy. Sitting in our usual corner booth, Ricki was pressed into my side.

Draping his right arm around my shoulders, he pulled me into him, so he could whisper in my ear, “
Jaaiimeee
…”

“Yeah, Ricki?” I tried not to giggle.

“I wanna snog the feck outta you.”

When I turned my face to his, he swooped in, and we started sucking face. Drunken and unattractive PDA, and I couldn’t care less because it felt so fucking good. Ricki grabbed my face with his free hand. My right hand landed on his stomach and drifted lower to his lap. His hand went from my face to my hand, and he pressed it against the bulge of his crotch.

Shut the ever-loving fuck up.

Ricki was a well-built, average-size man. He wasn’t tall, but he certainly wasn’t short either. But the
thing
my hand was squeezing was so above and beyond average that I was stunned.

“What the fuck is that?” I gasped, pulling back from his face.

“Huh?”

I squeezed his junk again. “Seriously, is that your dick?” I whispered.

His cheeks were already pink from the hot and heavy making out, and they flashed nuclear. “Um…yes, it is. You don’t have to…if you don’t want to touch me—I’m sorry.”

I’d been staring at his crotch, squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing, just trying to make sure what my eyes were looking at was truly as huge as what I was feeling in my hand.

Jaw dropped open, I looked back into his weirdo eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me? I want to take this fucker for a test drive.”

His eyes bugged. “Yeah?”

“Hell yeah.”

Ricki looked around the nearly empty bar. Something was churning in his head. His dick jerked in his pants, and the next thing I knew, I was being dragged down the back corridor of the bar, past the restrooms. Digging into his pocket and swaying slightly on his feet, Ricki pulled out his enormous…key ring. Flicking through the endless amount of keys, he settled on one and inserted it into the doorknob of a utility closet. I knew it was a closet because it said so in Dutch on the sign nailed to the door.

“How the
fffuck
do you have a key to the mop closet of Wurther’s?” I slurred.

“I own it.”

“The closet?”

“The bar.”

“Oh. Makes sense. No, it doesn’t.”

“I own Wurther’s,” he said as he yanked me into the closet.

“Shut the fuck up,” I retorted, possibly indignant.

Ricki shoved me up against the wall and smashed his mouth on mine. Hands grabbing my ass, he lifted me—
holy shit, he’s strong
—and my legs wrapped around his waist.

“Fuck, been fantasizing about you for so long,” he mumbled, sneaking his hand between us.

His fingertips reached to my core, and he growled.

Holy hell,
that was so sexy.

My underwear felt slick against my skin. Roughly, Ricki tugged them down my ass. My arms snaked around his shoulders, and he pinned me to the wall, so he could fumble his pants open.

I felt the head of him slip between my ridiculously wet lips.

“Holy fuck,” he hissed.

“Fuck
yes
,” I hissed back, squirming.

“Don’t!” he barked.

“Stick it in already! I can’t sit the fuck still!” I snapped.

With one hard thrust, I was stretched wider and fuller than I had ever been in my entire fucking sexual life. Ricki’s cock was thick as all hell; it burned a little. And he must have some serious length on him, too, because I felt it as it probed deep,
deep
inside. A swift zing of pain made me throb from head to toe.

“Whoa…” I breathed, feeling absolutely complete even though I was drunk as shit.

I
felt
this. This was unlike anything I’d ever thought sex could be. It wasn’t even about sex, just…this was
Ricki
.

Ricki was in me, a part of me, making me a whole person for this infinite one second of time. It wasn’t about getting off, which sex had always been about for me. It was about this connection we’d had since the moment we’d spoken on the phone.

This.

This was the happiest I’d ever been. The most replete.

“FUCK!” he screamed into my neck, his dick jerking hard inside me.

It didn’t matter to me. The happiness coursing through me was greater than any orgasm I’d ever experienced. I was high off it. He pulled back from me, breathing hard, and I couldn’t help the joy bubbling out of me with my laughter.

It was just too much. I had to share it with him.

Opening my eyes, I expected to see the same elation reflected back at me. Instead, my laughter died as I took in the look of horror and then fury on his face.

Shoving himself off me, he all but tore himself out of me, making me wince.

I hit the floor hard on my ass. “What the—”

“Fuck you then,” he snarled, shoving himself back into his jeans. “Just my fucking luck.”

“What?” I gasped.

With a vein bulging on his forehead, his eyes bright and wet, he yelled, “
Fuck you
, you fucking bitch!”

Shocked and humiliated, I stared at him, just a fucking clueless mute. Ricki stormed out of the closet, slamming the door behind him.

I sat on my ass and stared at the shelf stocked with cleaning supplies. Slowly, my brain started to thaw as I realized what the hell had just happened.

He’d fucked me up against the wall in a utility closet. I was sitting on a filthy fucking floor in a bar, my underwear around my thighs, and—
holy shit
…semen dripping from my crotch. A lot of it.

A few seconds later, I was bawling my eyes out, ashamed to have ended up here, thinking I had been a fool to trust a man at all.

He hadn’t even put on a condom. I’d never done something so stupid in my life.

Who knows what sort of wack-ass STIs could be lurking in his genitals?

I didn’t know how long I sat there, crying, with my panties twisted around my knees, but at some point, Rex came in and lifted me off the filthy floor, tugged up my underwear, and carried my wrecked ass home.

Ricki

“Bloody fucking hell,” I croaked.

Beneath the layers of hangover, a deep sense of dread was waking up inside me. Miserable, I opened my eyes, hissing against the morning light filtering through the blinds of my bedroom window.

What the fuck happened last night?

I had no idea how I’d ended up here. Fully clothed, my fucking boots still on my feet, I was lying on top of my bed, facedown. Rolling onto my back, I fought the wave of nausea for a minute before my memory slammed into me.

Booking it to the bathroom, I puked until I ached.

“No, no, no…” I groaned in between heaves.

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t have happened. No fucking way. I’d never do that to her.

She laughed at me.

Racking my brain, I desperately tried to find something,
anything
that would tell me that I’d made it up in my head. A bad dream. I hadn’t fucked Jaime up against the wall in a cleaning closet at Wurther’s and then dropped her like a pile of shite on the floor afterward.

“Fuck you, you fucking bitch!”
my own voice screamed at me in my head.

Shaking, I tripped out of the bathroom and started searching for my phone in my bedroom. I found it on the floor. Panicked, I searched my messages.

Oh, fuck.

There were quite a few from Xanthe. She had called me every foul thing in the book. She’d threatened to tear off my cock and feed it to me. She’d also said, if I came near Jaime again, she’d beat me within an inch of my life.

Rex had sent one message.

Rex: You are a piece of shit.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

Bypassing all the voice mails, I dialed Jaime’s number. I was sent directly to voice mail.

“Jaime?” I whispered. I was so scared. This couldn’t be happening. “Jaime, please…” I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to bust out into tears. “I don’t know what happened last night, but I didn’t mean to—”

The message cut off, and I dropped the phone back onto the floor to cradle my head in my hands.

This was so fucked up. Beyond fucked up.

She fucking laughed at me.

When that had happened, something in me had snapped. The same sort of rage I would feel while I was out on a mission that would turn me into the cold-blooded bastard I was…it had surfaced, and I had turned on her. I’d been so embarrassed that I’d shoved myself in her and come instantly. I remembered wanting to apologize to her, tell her I was sorry for being a clumsy fucking douche, but then she had started laughing, and the humiliation had turned excruciating.

I’d fucking flipped.

Thinking back through as much shit as my head was spewing at me, the humiliation I was experiencing now was nothing compared to what I’d felt last night. It had to be that I’d been drunk as shit to explode like that at her.

I could see her plainly, as if she were sprawled on the floor before me, shocked, hurt, the laughter dead in her chest, as her China blues stared up at me. She’d had no clue.

Jaime hadn’t been laughing
at
me.

I broke.

I’d had her! All the dreaming and longing and lusting after her all these weeks—fuck that,
years
—I’d had her in my arms, had her with me, wanting me just as much as I wanted her! She’d been willing to let me fuck her inside a dingy closet.

“
No
…” I groaned, the dam bursting inside me as I leaked my self-loathing and pain into my hands.

Jaime had been my girl for a whole evening, and I’d destroyed it, just like everything else that was precious in my life. I had been so close! Joy and love had been within my reach, and in a moment of drunken idiocy, I’d dumped it on a grubby closet floor.