Wilde at Heart (23 page)

“There you go. Ride my fingers and I’ll get you off.” He pressed his thumb to her clit, drew circles around it until her rhythm grew choppy, her body shuddering each time she came down. And when she lifted herself again, he removed his fingers, stood up his cock and thrust his hips upward.

She screamed, climaxing as he filled her.

He loved watching her come, too, loved the way her body squeezed his as each wave of pleasure thundered over her.

Widening his legs to give himself more leverage, he pumped into her, again and again, deeper and deeper, until the spasms of her second orgasm finally milked another release from him. He came in hard, hot jets that left him dizzy.

Still shuddering, Shelby collapsed forward and rested her forehead against his. “Oomph.”

Reece snorted a laugh—he was too exhausted to restrain it—and tugged on her hair. “Oomph? That’s not exactly glowing praise.”

“If you want praise, I’ll write you a ballad as soon as I can feel my limbs again. My God, that first orgasm…” She lifted her head and imitated an explosion with her hands. “Wow. I mean. Wow.”

Buried to the balls inside her, he felt the delicate shivers still racing through her body. He smiled and pushed her damp hair back from her face. “For me too.”

“Yeah?” Color spiraled across her cheeks and she ducked her head. “We, uh, are good together. I-I mean, with sex. We’re good together in bed.”

Was that…a hint of shyness? From Shelby? No way.

Reece caught her chin between his fingers and lifted it until her gaze met his. “We’re good together in a lot of ways, Shelby. Come to bed with me.”

The uncertainty in her eyes shifted to sheer panic. He saw it happen and tried to catch her, but she moved too fast, leaping away from him. He missed the intimate connection immediately and pushed out of the chair, taking a second to dispose of the condom in the trash bin under his desk and tuck himself back into his pants. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have with his well-sated cock flapping in the wind.

Shelby smoothed a hand down the front of her nightshirt and backed several steps toward the door. “I should probably go. We have that opera thing tomorrow and—I need to go to bed. Alone.”

A muscle ticked in his cheek just below his eye and he realized he’d clenched his teeth hard enough that his molars hurt. He did his best to unlock his jaw. “Shel—”

“No.” She held up a finger, cutting him off. More than panic now, she radiated regret and her voice shook. “Tonight changes nothing.”

The hell it didn’t, but he let her go and didn’t chase her. Hands on his hips, he stared at the empty doorway.

What the fuck was that all about?

Chapter Twenty-One

R
eece left another note by the still-warm coffee. He’d gone to DMW’s office, would be back in time to get ready for the gala.

Shelby crumpled the note. It had been sweet of him to leave it, but it wasn’t enough. She’d wanted to talk to him, but she should have figured he’d sneak off to work first thing this morning. Retreating into work was what he did when things got too heavy. Just like her modus operandi was to run away.

She’d hurt him last night. The look on his face when she ran away from his suggestion of sharing a bed…yeah, she felt kind of like she’d kicked a puppy. She needed to apologize, try to explain things to him.

Except how could she do that without explaining everything? She’d need to tell him she never owed The Headhunters money and had used it as an excuse to get him to marry her. The marriage hadn’t been her original plan, but when she found out about the blackmail, she really thought she was helping him out while still furthering her own goals.

Dammit.

Maybe it was time to lay it all out, Jason and his warnings be damned. She’d risk prison time if it meant she never had to see that hurt look on Reece’s face again. But there lay the catch-22, because telling him the truth would most definitely hurt him.

She couldn’t see a pain-free way out of this situation.

Shelby wasn’t usually one to brood, but she couldn’t seem to shake the horrible mood as she puttered about the apartment. She tried calling Libby, but she and Jude already had plans. And Shelby couldn’t bring herself to talk to Eva yet, so she was left to her own devices for the day.

When the doorbell rang in the late afternoon, she jumped. She hadn’t even known the apartment had a doorbell, and now someone was ringing it? She padded over to the front door in her socks, careful not to make any noise in case she wanted to pretend she wasn’t here, and used the peep hole.

Oh, shit. Her stomach flipped. No way this was good.

She unlocked and opened the door, but only a few inches. “Mom. What are you doing here? Better question, how did you know where I was?”

Katrina Bremer wrung her hands. “I-I wanted to see you. Eva told me you moved here.”

Yeah, fat chance. Eva wouldn’t tell her the sky was blue if she asked.

Shelby studied her mother and a fist squeezed hard around her heart. Katrina was still going with the schoolmarm look, but underneath the prim and proper church-going facade was a thick layer of desperation. She was all pale and gaunt, and heavy bags under her bloodshot blue eyes spoke of many sleepless nights.

Katrina was back on the drugs.

Shelby didn’t know why the realization hurt so much. After all these years, why did she always believe Katrina would stay clean? “Mom, you need to go.”

Katrina’s lower lip trembled. “I have nowhere to go. Eva won’t take me in—”

“What about your new man?”

More with the lower lip. “He said he didn’t need me anymore and left me.”

Of course he did. Men always left Katrina. It was in her DNA, which made Shelby wonder if it was a genetic predisposition she shared with her mother. Reece was going to leave, and then she’d be in the same boat as her mother. No job, no home.

Shit. She wished she was more like Eva, but she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t turn her mother away. Maybe because she saw too much of herself in Katrina.

She backed up a step. “You can stay here until Reece gets home in a few hours. Then…we’ll see. I can’t guarantee he’ll let you stay longer.”

Katrina launched through the door and threw her skinny arms around Shelby in a fierce hug. “I’m so proud of you.”

Oh God. How many times growing up had she wanted to hear those words from her mother? Or from anyone? Shelby closed her eyes and savored the moment until Katrina tacked on, “Bagging a rich man like you have? You’ve done your mama proud.”

Disgust rolled through Shelby and she pulled out of her mother’s arms. “He’s not a trophy.”

“Of course he is. I was never able to find a sugar daddy, and Eva sure as hell didn’t, marrying a cop. Ugh, I swear, I don’t know what’s wrong with that girl. But I should have known you’d wrangle one. You have my looks and your daddy’s smarts.”

Right. Her father was so smart, he landed himself in prison for twenty-five to life.

Katrina bumped her hip into Shelby’s. “Now you just have to hang on to him. Oh!” Distracted, she wandered into the living room and did a little spin. “This place. My little princess found her palace!”

This was such a bad idea.

Shelby hugged herself to keep from shattering into a thousand heartbroken pieces. “Since when have I been your princess?”

“Since always.”

“You attacked me three months ago. Gave me a concussion and a black eye.”

Katrina put on her puppy dog eyes, blinking back tears she could turn on and off at a whim, and piled her hands over her heart. “Oh, Shel-bear, I wasn’t well then, and you know it. You’re my baby. My last baby. Of course you’ve always been my favorite.”

Shelby rolled her lips together and drew in a deep breath through her nose. It was all she could do to keep from screaming, “Real mothers don’t have favorites!” It would be a waste of breath anyway, because Katrina had a remarkable ability to ignore facts she didn’t want to hear. “You need to go.”

“Oh, honey. What’s wrong?” She walked forward, arms outstretched, but Shelby ducked out of her reach.

“Don’t.” Her voice broke, and she hated herself for not being stronger when it came to this woman. “I’m sorry. You need to leave.”

“What?”

“I made a mistake. You can’t stay.”

“You’re kicking me out onto the street?” Outrage flushed her cheeks with much-needed color. “I am your mother!”

“I know. I know. And I’ll give you money for a hotel, enough for a few nights, but you… you just can’t stay here.”

“Oh. I see. You married money, so suddenly you’re too good for me now?”

Shelby flinched. “That’s not it. I—”

“Fine.” Katrina crossed her arms over her chest. “I see how it is. Get me my money and I’ll leave you alone.”

And there it was. Katrina’s real motive. Her sudden appearance here had nothing to do with wanting to see her daughter and everything to do with money. She’d found out Shelby had married a well-off man and decided she deserved a piece of the pie by virtue of a shared biology.

Really, it had only been a matter of time until this happened.

Shelby held up her hands. “Don’t move. Don’t touch anything. I’ll be right back.” Afraid to leave her mother alone for too long, she ran into her bedroom for her purse. She had a couple hundred dollars in her wallet and it was pretty much all she had to her name at this point, but whatever. If it kept Katrina away, she’d pay it. She threw her wallet on her bed and started to turn, cash in hand—and broke into a run when she heard a thunk from the room next door.

Reece’s office.

Katrina was rifling through Reece’s desk like her life depended on it.

“What are you doing?” Shelby lurched forward, but stopped short when Katrina pulled a gun and pointed it at her. “Mom!”

“You are not leaving me out on the streets to rot, you ungrateful little bitch,” Katrina said through her teeth, spittle flying. She stuffed a box of blank checks in her purse, along with Reece’s laptop and a bunch of notebooks, then motioned to the right with her gun. “Move outta my way.”

Hands held up, Shelby did as she was told, stepping back into the hallway. “Mom, please don’t do this.”

Her pleas fell on deaf ears. But then, she’d known they would. Still, she had to try.

Katrina kept the gun raised as she edged out of the room. On the way, she snatched the few hundred dollars still clutched in Shelby’s hand. “Give me your ring too.”

Dropping her hands, she protectively cradled her wedding ring. “It’s not worth anything.”

“You’re lying!” The gun bobbled dangerously, and her finger was on the trigger. It could go off at any second.

Shelby swallowed to ease the ache in her throat and took off the ring, shoved it into her mother’s hand. “Okay, okay. Take it. Just, please, leave those notebooks here.” The loss of them so close on the heels of the loss of his parents’ house would break Reece’s heart. “They’re not worth anything.”

“If that’s true, you wouldn’t want them so much.”

“Just sentimental value. I swear, that’s all.”

“Lying again. Why are you girls always lying to me?” Katrina demanded, drug-fueled anger twisting her dainty features into something ugly and feral. She waved the gun again, and Shelby flinched expecting it to discharge.

“Mom.” Her voice came out as little more than a squeak. “Put the gun down. You have everything you want. Just put the gun down and leave.”

“Oh, I have everything I want? How about daughters who love me and take care of me like real daughters should? I don’t have that. Instead, all my good babies got taken away from me, and I got left with two ungrateful little bitches who’d rather have their mom live on the streets. I brought you into this world! You owe me this! You. Owe. Me. Everything.” She backed down the hallway until she reached the living room, then spun on her heel and ran.

Shelby didn’t dare move. Katrina had been known to fly into irrational rages while on cocaine, and she was sure that was the drug pumping through her mother’s veins right now. Katrina liked it all, dabbled in everything, but mostly flipped between coke and heroin depending on her mood. The former made her manic, paranoid, delusional. The latter put her to sleep, which had always been the more preferable of the two. The last time she was hyped up on coke, she’d hit Shelby hard enough to give her a concussion. This time…Shelby truly feared her mother might shoot her if she tried to intervene. So she waited, flinching at each crash from the living room, until finally she heard nothing but a resounding silence.

Oh. God.

She exhaled the breath she’d been holding and bent double, hugging herself, trying to breath and keep it together. A molten weight settled in her stomach, and her eyes burned, but she was too damned exhausted by it all to cry.

How many times had Eva warned her their mother would never change? And instead of accepting it as a fact, she kept letting Katrina back in to destroy her heart, over and over. Every time was like slicing open old wounds and pouring salt into them. Must be she secretly enjoyed the pain, was as addicted to it as Katrina was to drugs. Why else would any sane human being continually put themselves through this?

Gathering her strength, she straightened and trudged out to the living room. The short walk felt like a trip to the hangman’s noose. Sam the Cat had backed himself into the corner of the room behind the entertainment stand and peeked out at her with wide, alarmed eyes. The coffee table was overturned, the couch knocked askew, and the cushions strewn across the floor. A lamp was shattered, drawers pulled open, and the paintings she’d yet to hang were gone.

Damn. That almost hurt more than having her mother pull a gun on her. Those paintings were virtually worthless, would get Katrina all of fifty bucks when she tried to pawn them, but they’d already had sentimental value. Reece had liked them, had enjoyed her efforts to make this place more colorful. For that reason alone, those paintings had been worth their weight in gold to her.

Oh, and the notebooks. Why had Katrina taken Reece’s notebooks, of all things? And his laptop. His checks…

She needed to call him before Katrina emptied his bank account.