Two Week Seduction (15 page)

He frowned. “How do you know this? You were out with that douche Derek.”

“Yeah, well like I said. I was an idiot in high school. And I know because Marci told me all of it. Over and over. Ad nauseam. Everything you two did. Everything you said. Every opened door, every touch to her elbow or the small of her back. And yeah, I know the good night kiss was hot, but not too hot. As in, you’re-a-beautiful-girl hot, but not I’m-going-to-be-your-boyfriend hot.”

He broke military posture enough to lift one hand. “This was a decade ago. With another person.”

“I’m getting to that.” She leaned forward. “At a time when your family was struggling to make rent, you worked extra so that you could take my best friend out and make her feel better. You told her she was beautiful, you let her bitch about her dickhead ex, and you treated her as she ought to be treated. She still talks about how special that night was. How she could easily have spent the rest of her life hating men, but that you proved there were good guys in the world. We both fell in love with you that night. She was just the lucky one who got to live it with you.”

He shook his head, as if he could deny her words. “That was high school. Everyone falls in and out of love.”

“Don’t tell me it wasn’t love. I know it was high school, but the feelings were real. And you were a real-life good guy.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she spoke right over him. “I fell in love with you, and so I started my campaign to catch your eye.”

He nodded. This part he obviously remembered. “You were suddenly there whenever I was hanging out with Sam.”

“I joined you for pizza. I practiced those stupid video games so I could be good enough to play you guys.”

“You never were.”

“Whatever. You were still nice enough to let me think I was.”

John dropped his head back. “You were the sister of my best friend. What, I was going to be a dick to you?”

“You weren’t a dick to anyone ever. And the closer I looked at your life, at the things you were doing for your mom and your sisters, the deeper I fell.”

“Alea—”

“But you just wouldn’t bite. So finally, I waited for a party where I knew you’d be. I knew there’d be beer, so I was hoping you’d get buzzed.”

“I did get buzzed. In fact, I got shit-faced drunk.”

“Yes, I know. But that was after I dressed up in my sluttiest outfit and tried to seduce you.” And now she was blushing. Not something you can hide when you’re half naked. “Do you remember what you said to me that night?”

He pressed his lips tightly together and shook his head.

“You said, ‘This is beneath you, Alea. Me, this party, that outfit. It cheapens you and I hope you never do it again.’ Then you walked away and proceeded to drink yourself into a stupor. I didn’t notice, though, because you’d gotten Sam to take my ass home. I cried for a week. And by the time I got my head around straight, I’d heard you enlisted. You and Sam together, off to be pilots.”

“Well, one of us was.”

She waved that aside. “You never spoke to me again. I waited for you to come over so I could talk to you, but you never visited again. I was there at your going-away party, but your sisters kept me away.” She narrowed her eyes. “Did you ask them to run interference?”

He nodded once. A slow, anguished dip of his chin.

“Thought so. I just wanted to apologize, you know.”

“I was a kid, Alea. About to go into the Air Force. We needed the money, and I didn’t need you screwing with my head just before leaving.”

She understood now. But as a kid, she’d thought he couldn’t stand the sight of her. “Then you were gone. You and Sam, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what you’d said to me. How all of it was beneath me.”

“I was a stupid kid,” he repeated. “It was a mean thing to say.”

“It was honest, and you were right. The slut thing was beneath me. But that’s not what you said, is it? Well, not all that you said.”

“Alea—”

“You said that you were beneath me. That I was better than you.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus, Alea. I was eighteen.”

“And I was sixteen, old enough to swear that I was going to do whatever it took to be worthy of you. To be the woman who would wear your corsage and dance under the lights with you. While you were off in the military saving the world, I was going to work extra hard to be good enough for you.” She gestured to her left breast. “I even tattooed it on my chest so I’d remember.”

He stared at her tattoo. Then he stared at her face. He lifted a hand, but didn’t do more than that. It hovered in the air between them, so she took hold of his fingers and brought them to her tattoo. He took over then, outlining every petal and the winding ribbon. Her nipple puckered at that, and she tried not to shiver in lust.

Meanwhile, he kept touching her, but not in a way meant to arouse.

“I couldn’t be the man for you,” he finally said. “That’s what I meant.”

“Yeah, it took me a decade to realize that. I don’t think I really processed that until I got in the car fifteen minutes ago. God, John, why the hell don’t you think you’re good enough for me? I’ve been living all my life trying to measure up to you.”

He sighed. “You don’t understand.”

“So explain it to me. Before I lose another decade of my life waiting for you. Tell me you don’t want me. Tell me what we have isn’t real. Because John…” She hesitated, taking a deep breath before she took the leap. “I’m in love with you. Not the sixteen-year-old kind of love. But the adult, I want to marry you and bear your children kind of love. So tell me what don’t I understand.”

Chapter Fifteen

John stared at her breast. At the swirling lines of the flowers and the way it coiled lovingly around her nipple. Jesus, she’d tattooed herself with his corsage. A freaking tattoo. And all he could think was—damn. She’d tattooed herself. Damn, it had been his corsage. Damn, he hadn’t even given it to her. God damn. He stroked his fingers around the design. He felt the heat of her skin and the puckered point of her nipple, and slowly he began to talk. He didn’t think about his words, he just let them flow.

“You can’t be in love with me,” he said.

“Really? Why not?”

“Because that would mean I’ve fucked up royally.”

“No argument here. But just to make things clear—exactly how have you fucked up?”

He looked up to her face. “You want a list?”

“That would be nice.”

“How about this? I’ve failed at everything I’ve ever tried to do. This is just one more example of how messed up I am. Jesus, you can’t possibly love a screw-up.”

“I don’t love a screw-up. I love you.” She said it so simply. So bluntly as if she really believed that. Jesus, she was going to make him spell it out.

“First off, our backgrounds are night and day. My mom can’t afford to fix up her car. You could probably live comfortably off your trust fund.”

She leaned back and folded her arms, mercifully blocking out the sight of her gorgeous breasts and that amazing tattoo. “First off, that’s not a failing, that’s a situation. And second, don’t you dare suggest that makes a bit of difference to me.”

“It does to your parents.”

She snorted. “My parents don’t think the Dalai Lama is good enough for their kids.”

“I’m pretty sure the Dalai Lama isn’t allowed to date.”

“I’m very damn sure that we’re not talking about the Dalai Lama.”

He glared at her. It was his best fall-in-line-soldier glare. She didn’t even blink. Worse, she arched her brows at him.

“Next?”

“How about you based the last ten years and a tattoo on the wrong message?”

She shrugged. “That would be my failing, not yours.”

“No—”

“Yes. Next?”

She would have it all then. “Do you honestly think the military was my first choice? That I wanted to be an Air Force grunt?”

She frowned. “I doubt a tech sergeant’s a grunt.”

“I didn’t start there—”

“And if you hate it, why did you re-enlist?”

Didn’t she get it? “Because it’s the only thing I’m good at!” She had no snappy comeback to that. So he rubbed a hand over his face, flopped back on the couch, and started pouring out his life to her.

“I tried other things. You remember my dad? The original Get-Rich-Quick-Schemer? He wasn’t alone in all those business ventures. I was right there with him the whole time.”

“You were a kid.”

“Doesn’t matter. Aptitude shows. Look, Dad wasn’t dumb. He had good ideas. A lot of them. I was right there with him trying to make them work.”

She shook her head. “Again, I say, you were a kid.”

“He should have been a mechanical engineer. He could see how things worked like you and I see colors. Everywhere and everything, he saw the systems and he knew what was needed to make them really go.”

“But he had no follow-through. You know that.”

He nodded. “But he could see it. That was his gift. He could tear apart an engine and rebuild it in an afternoon. The best I could do was adjust a timing chain.”

“A what?”

“I tried everything to help. I didn’t understand the engineering, that much was obvious. The math was beyond me even when I did study it. But there were other things to do. There’s lots beyond the product. I sucked at marketing, at delivery, at any of the thousands of other things that he needed help with. I tried them all and I failed. The best I could—the only thing I could ever do—was organize him. I could write down the things he needed to accomplish and show him what he’d missed. Which was usually everything but the tinkering. He never could get his products right, so don’t even mention trying to sell them.”

She tilted her head. “You act like being organized is easy. Like keeping track of jobs and people is an easy thing. It’s not. It’s a highly valuable skill and it’s probably one of the reasons you’ve done so well in the military.”

“It’s easy to be organized in the military. The objectives are clear. The chain of command is clear.”

“And so you still count that as a failure? That’s nuts.”

He sighed. “I went in to be a pilot.”

“But you didn’t like it, so you switched into something you do like. God, John, do you hear yourself?”

He sighed. “I don’t expect you to understand. You’re amazing at so many things.”

She pushed to her feet to pace, but then a moment later huffed out a breath and collapsed beside him. Then she took his face in her hands. “Listen to what you just said, really listen. You said you’re a failure because you couldn’t run a business when you were ten. That you couldn’t run your father’s many businesses. So in desperation, and because you didn’t have the money for college, you go into the Air Force. You go in to be a pilot because every little boy wants to be a pilot, but eventually you shift over to something that worked for you. You make sure people are safe on the base. You protect them and their supplies.”

“That’s the job. Don’t make it out to be something special.”

“It’s not the job that’s special. It’s you, John. What is it in you that insists on saying you’re a failure? That you’re not worthy of having the good things in life?” She swallowed and touched her forehead to his. “Of having me. Because, let’s face it, I’m pretty spectacular.”

“You are, Alea. I just—”

She stopped his words with a kiss. And when she pulled back, she replaced her lips with her fingers. “Stop talking. Just think for a moment. When did you first start thinking you didn’t deserve the good things?”

He stared at her. There wasn’t a first moment. He’d always known.

“Because,” she continued, “as a teacher, I gotta tell you that this stuff starts young. Really young. And it sinks deep. Probably the first time your father blamed you for something you couldn’t possibly have managed. Could be as simple as learning to tie your shoes. You didn’t do it right, so he yelled at you.”

John didn’t answer, but he was thinking. How many times had his father screamed that he’d done it wrong? He couldn’t imagine a time when he didn’t hear the words: Why can’t you do the simplest thing? What the hell is wrong with you?

“I didn’t understand things,” he said as much to himself as to her.

“But you were a kid. And did your father like to blame other people for his failures?”

All the time. All the freaking time.

“So you started thinking you sucked at stuff. That you were stupid or that you didn’t deserve good things.”

Was it possible? It couldn’t be that easy.

“Don’t try to think about it, John. Just let the words sink in. And while you’re in listening mode, think about this. I’m a pretty smart woman, and I saw the goodness in you when I was sixteen. So much so I tattooed a reminder of you on my body. And when you finally came back to Jacksonville ten years later, I fell head over heels in love with you.”

“No,” he murmured, the denial automatic.

“Yes.” Then she grabbed his hand and brought it to her breast. “Look at my tattoo. It might as well say in bold letters—I love John O’Donnell.”

“You can’t.”

She chuckled and he felt the vibration against his hand. He felt her warmth and her softness and most of all…her love. It was shining in her eyes and was written on her skin. She loved him. And he…

He had to kiss her. So he did. Not on her mouth. Not even really on her skin. What he kissed was her tattoo. Her bold statement in black and purple ink that she was his and had been for a very long time. And while he was at it, he kissed her breast. And he tongued her nipple. And he pushed her backwards on the couch and he kissed every part of her that he could touch.

He stripped her naked as he sucked on her breasts. He spread her and tried to give her pleasure worthy of her love. And while she was writhing on the couch, he lifted her legs and started kissing her there. He licked her to orgasm, then he waited for her to quiet before doing it again.

He wasn’t going to make love to her. He didn’t feel like he had that right. But she shoved him onto the floor, unbuttoned his fly, and set his dick free.

Then without a second warning, she straddled him and sank home.

All the way home.

That was it for him.

He came. Right there without protection, without thought, he poured himself into her.