TRACE (The TRACE Series, #1) (7 page)

"Don't be an asshole," I say through a smile. "Don't be that guy that thinks he's the best lover any woman has ever had."

"I'm the best lover you've ever had, Vanessa." His hand is on my hip. "You've never come that hard with a man before."

I pull my hand over my face to hide the blush I know is there. He's right. I've been with men who were skilled in how to bring me to the edge, but it's never been this intense. I got lost in the pleasure with him. I couldn't stop coming when he was eating me.

"You're so arrogant." I rub my hand over his cheek. "I don't like it."

"You like it." He kisses my nose. "Open your eyes."

I nuzzle my nose into his neck as I slowly pull my eyes open, grateful that he's dimmed the lights in the room. "I need to go home."

"You don't need to go anywhere." He traces the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip. "You're going to sleep here."

It's too intimate. It's too much. I didn't come here to spend the night. "No. I can't do that."

Before I have time to react he's on top of me again, his knees on either side of my waist. "I'm not done with you yet."

I smile up at him. He's different in the soft light of this room, without the suit and with his hair out of place. He's boyish, and charming and irresistible in a way that isn't about how he owns any space he walks into. This man is about pleasing and desire. He wants me to stay. I want it too.

"I can stay," I offer as I reach up to cup his cheek. "I need to be able to walk tomorrow though."

A ghost of a grin flashes over his lips. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Y
ou slept with Garrett?" Zoe can't contain the shock, and maybe awe, in her voice. It wouldn't be so uncomfortable if we were standing anywhere other than in the middle of a baby store on the Upper East Side.

"No." I shake my head as I pick up a tiny blue pair of socks. "We didn't sleep. That man is a machine."

Her hand leaps to her chest. "He's not my type. I love Beck but you can tell when you look at him. I don't know how but it's just there. Do you know what I mean?"

I know exactly what she means. When I slid out of his bed yesterday morning shortly after four to get home to shower before my shift, he'd pulled me onto his face. I'd cried from the depth of the pleasure as I held tightly to his headboard as he coaxed two orgasms from me. When I finally got dressed to leave, he'd kissed me with a tenderness I've never felt from any man before. It left me feeling as though I was in a daze the entire day.

"Van?" She shakes my shoulder lightly. "Do you know what I mean?"

I nod even though I can't remember the question.

"Will you see him again tonight?" She rubs her hand over her ever growing belly. "Or do you have to work?"

"Neither," I answer honestly. I look past her to where a crib is set up complete with bedding and stuffed toys. "Did you and Beck pick out a crib?"

"We ordered one last week." She glances briefly in the direction I'm looking. "My mom wanted to ship my old crib here from Philadelphia."

"The crib you slept in when you were a baby?" I touch her shoulder. "Your mom kept that?"

"She kept everything. She still has all the clothes she bought for me back then."

I feel a pang of envy. She says the words as though the only meaning they hold is the fact that her mother has been hoarding things for a quarter of a century. That crib and those clothes in Philadelphia are rich with history and memories.

"Have I ever told you that your mom sounds amazing?" I ask with a sigh. "She sounds like she's going to be the most amazing grandmother ever."

"I already know that she will be." She picks up a package of newborn diapers. "She's going to come to New York a week before my due date to stay for a month."

"I can't wait to meet her." I shake a small rattle shaped in the head of a lion. "I'll get this for baby Beck."

"He'll love it." She pats my hand. "He's going to love his Auntie Van too."

***

"H
ave you thought more about finding out where that storage locker is?" Garrett nods across the table in the crowded diner. "I told you I can look into it for you."

He did tell me that. In fact, he told me that when I was talking to him on the phone this afternoon during my coffee break. "I'm going to do the detective work myself."

I had started. Yesterday, after Zoe and I had gone back to her place, I'd had dinner with her and her husband and then had boarded the subway to take me into Brooklyn.  I had sat by my mother's side for close to an hour while she stared at the wall just past my shoulder. I'd read to her from the notebook I found in the safety deposit box, crying as I felt the desperation in her words as she wrote about wanting a child and not being able to conceive. She'd drifted from lover to lover in her thirties hoping each would be the source of the miracle she wanted, before she realized that giving birth to her own baby would never be part of her story.

I wept as I read the passages about her wanting to adopt but being turned down by an agency because of her limited finances. I'd stopped at that page, unable, or maybe more unwilling, to learn more about how I came to be her daughter.

After I'd kissed her lightly on the cheek, I'd shoved the gold chain and rope bracelet back into my purse along with the notebook and I went to the storage locker facility seven blocks from the apartment where she'd lived. They had no record of my mother's name. The key didn't magically open anything there.

He looks up from his smartphone. "Have you contacted her bank? You have access to her funds, right?"

I do and so far I haven't found any trail of payments that lead to a locker that fits the key. "If the rent on it stopped being paid, they would have auctioned everything in it off, right?"

"Not without contacting her first." He slides his phone back into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. "Where is her mail being sent?"

"To my apartment." I look down at my hands. They're twisted together in my lap. "I had the post office forward everything to me when she started living at the facility."

"If you give me the key, it won't take me more than a day or two to find the locker." His palm rests against the table, turned upwards tempting me to trust in him again.

"I'm going to fly to Maine to see if I can find it on my own. I need to do that."

"I get it." His head tilts to the left as he runs his hand over his jaw. "You want to uncover her secrets on your own terms."

"It's something like that," I try to brush off the comment. "I'm tracing her past. I need to do it alone."

"I
don't think I've seen a body more beautiful than yours." He rests his chin on my shoulder. "There's not one thing about it I would change."

I pull his arms around my waist as I lean back into him. "I wouldn’t change anything about your body either."

The sigh that escapes him reverberates through me. I knew I'd end up back in his apartment. I couldn’t have known that after he'd fucked me slowly in his bed, that he'd draw a warm bath for me while I closed my eyes. I'd awoken to him scooping me up into his arms and carrying me into the bathroom. The candles that surround the large tub were the only light as he helped me step in before he slid his body behind me, water flowing over the edge and hitting the dark tiled floor.

"Tell me how old you are, Vanessa."

"You don't know how old I am?" I push my head back so I can catch a glimpse of his face. His hair is wet and pushed off his forehead. A fine mist of moisture has beaded on his upper lip.

"I think I know how old you are." His hands edge down my body until one is resting against my core. "I think you're twenty-seven."

"I'm not twenty-seven." I push my legs apart wanting him to circle my clit with his skilled fingers.

"You're twenty-six." It's a statement, not a question.

I graze my hands over his knees. "No. I'm not twenty-six."

"Tell me," he whispers into my neck. "Tell me how old."

"I'm twenty-four." I lean back against him. "You're thirty-two. I saw it on your chart."

"You're so young." He chuckles in a low tone. "How the hell did I end up wanting you?"

"I'm not that young." I slap his thigh playfully. "I'm very mature for my age."

"You're perfect for your age. You're perfect for me."

***

"T
ake it down your throat." He's leaning against the counter in his kitchen, his hands on the back of my head. "Fuck it, Vanessa. Fuck it all with your mouth."

I feel my eyes watering at the sheer girth of it. When I first dropped to my knees, and I took the spongy head of his cock in my mouth, his desire for release had taken over. He'd held my hair in his hands as he slid between my lips. He'd started fucking me slowly, curse words rolling off his tongue slowly and sensuously.

I moan as I feel it swell even more when I cup his heavy balls in my hand. I push back to pop it out of my mouth, wanting to flick my tongue over the tip.

"You know how to suck me." He looks down, his gaze meeting mine. "Christ, look at you. Look at your tits and your mouth."

I smile around his cock, knowing that the slight pressure of my tongue on the underside will bring out a low groan. It does. He throws his head back as his hands grip tightly to my hair.

"I have to fuck it, Vanessa." He suddenly reaches back to grab the edge of the counter. His fingers splayed out across the marble. "I want to come all over your tits."

I feel my core ache at the image of that. I move my body slightly, grab hold of the base of the thick root and slide my mouth slowly over it as he chants my name.

I don't pull back when I feel the first burst of his release hit the back of my throat. I want to taste him. I need to have this.

He pushes back hard, grabs hold of his cock and pumps everything he has onto my face and my breasts.

I stare up at him as he levels his breathing, his cock still resting in his palm.

"That was fucking amazing." He looks down at me. "You're fucking amazing."

I push myself forward, open my mouth and run my tongue over the semi-erect tip of his cock, collecting the last drop onto my tongue.

"That right there," he stops to pull in a deep breath. "That right there makes me want to keep you here forever."

H
e's fallen asleep. I didn't think it was possible but Garrett Ryan has finally run out of steam. He's next to me, his breathing deep and controlled. I've stared at him for at least the last thirty minutes, debating whether I should pull my jeans and sweater back on and go home. I know if I do, I'll wake up to a bounty of messages from him asking me why I bailed. He wants me to stay. He said it before he drifted off to sleep when he was telling me about his childhood in Boston.

I've avoided talking about myself. He hasn't asked any direct questions and I haven't offered anything. I can't yet. I won't share who I am until I have a clear picture of that myself.

I slide out from under his arm and pull on the white dress shirt he threw on the floor when we first walked into his bedroom. It's large, so large that I have to roll up the sleeves. It smells like him. It's the scent of his skin and his cologne.

I pad quietly out of the bedroom and into the living room. I reach for my purse, retrieving the notebook before I sit in an oversized brown chair. I pull my knees up to my chest and open the tattered pages to where I last read.

The words flow together, each more painful than the one before as my mother writes about entering her forties and the deep ache within her heart to be a parent. She wishes she had worked harder and saved more so she could travel to a place in the world where children are given to foreign families who have meager means but a lot of love to give.

She writes about her friends who are mothers and how they ignore their children even though they've been given the greatest gift a woman can have. The names that she's written are foreign to me. I don't remember any of them. I don't recall the descriptive details of the park by her home where she sat for hours at a time watching the children playing in the grass and swinging on the swings.

I watch my tears fall onto the paper as I turn the last page to read the pain she's in. Her loneliness is evident in the cursive handwriting, each letter so structured and woven into the next, even when her heart was breaking apart.

"Vanessa?" His voice is filled with sleep.

I twist in the chair to look at him. He's wearing pajama bottoms and a slight grin on his face. "I was worried that you left without waking me."

I want to run across the room and into his arms. I want him to hold me and I want him to know me.

"What are you reading?" He takes long strides towards me. "Is it that notebook you had at the pub?"

I close the cover carefully not wanting to disturb the bindings that are almost falling apart. "It belonged to my mother. I found it in the safety deposit box."

He pulls on the fabric of the pants before he lowers himself to the table in front of me. "Is it a diary?"

"It's something like that." I hold it close to my chest wanting to keep its secrets buried within the pages.

"Is reading it helping you?" He reaches for my left foot, massaging it in his hands. "Are you learning anything about her?"

"I am," I say hoarsely. "There's a lot about her I didn't know until now."

"It's a treasure then." He leans down to kiss my ankle. "You're lucky you have it."

I don't answer because I don't consider myself lucky at all. I won't until I understand who I am and how I came to belong to Rowena Meyer.

***

"W
hat time does your flight from Maine get in?" He straightens the lapels of his navy blue suit jacket.

"I'm on a morning flight." I glance down at my smartphone. "I'll be at La Guardia before noon and then I have to work the night shift."

He exhales quickly. "You're leaving to go to Maine today; you're coming back tomorrow morning and then working?"

"That's my entire itinerary," I tease.

"When do I get to see you?"