Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) (24 page)

A hand closed around her upper arm and she jerked, startled, flinging a glance over her shoulder before she could remind herself that it was Mike.

It
was
Mike, but his face was dark. The incoming light was at his back and the shadows his brows cast over his eyes kept her from reading them. The fingers he’d curled around her arm dug into her skin just a fraction too hard to be gentle.

“Oh,” she said before she could dispel her surprise. “It’s you.”

“Who’d you think it was?” his tone wasn’t gentle either and it sent a warning crawling across her skin, plucking at the fine hairs on her arms.

“We’re in a castle full of hundreds of people,” she said, all reason, and thought he frowned.

“You wanted us to meet in the closet, right?”

“That was the plan.”

He towed her there, faster than her tired feet wanted to walk, through the potted ferns and into the absolute darkness of the coat closet. It still smelled of mothballs and damp, but unlike the night before, he was the one steering things. Normally, that didn’t bother her, but tonight, her something-wrong sensors were howling at her.

Mike shut the door only halfway, leaving a soft stripe of yellow light across t
he floor. They stood in total shadow, but the stripe was an anchor, a reminder of where they were and how ridiculous their circumstances were.

Her hip bumped something and she reached out a hand to feel what she realized was
a table. Or, rather, a piece of furniture. A waist-high bureau of some kind. The top was cool and smooth – granite or marble – and the solid panels of the sides were sleek wood.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A chest of drawers,” she guessed.

The hand on her arm slid down, over her elbow and down to her wrist, then it closed tight and he stepped into her – his
chest pushed into hers and she had to take a step back – and steered her backward until the edge of the bureau’s counter bit into her spine.

“Mike…” her voice held a warning, but she wasn’t sure what she meant by it. “How was your day?” she asked instead as his other hand landed, first hesitantly as he searched, then more firmly, against her shoulder.

“Once I got rid of my family, I listened to your dad talk to me about investments and home management and keeping my wife ‘entertained.’”

Delta winced. For Mr. and Mrs. Brooks, “entertained” meant busy, out
of trouble and more importantly, faithful. “Sorry.”

“Whatever.” His hand swept down from her shoulder, moved across her breasts, felt restless through the fabric of her dress.

He was restless all over, it turned out. He didn’t want to kiss her, didn’t want her to kiss him – it felt like he didn’t even really want it to be her in the coat closet with him.

Delta stretched up on her
toes, reaching through the shadows, searching for his mouth with hers, but she couldn’t find it. His hand closed tight over one of her breasts and squeezed. His other hand left her wrist to close over her other breast and he pushed his hips into her, pressing her back into the cabinet. She could feel against her stomach that he was already hard and ready. Impatient. His fingers curled into the top of her dress and he gave it a tug; Delta heard the tiniest of tearing sounds as threads came loose.

“Hold on!” She protested. “It has straps! The zipper’s in back.”

He didn’t apologize, said nothing as he pulled the straps roughly down and then smoothed a palm behind her shoulders to get at the zipper. The sound of it going down sparked a sad awareness in her mind.

He’d had a rough day or two. He was too tired and riled up and looking for an outlet for his frustrations. And he was just angry enough with her to let her be that outlet. He’d never been rough with her, and while she didn’t know that rough was the right word for now, he certainly wasn’t sweet as he pushed down the top of her dress and her breasts spilled into his hands. He squeezed hard
, took her nipples between thumb and forefinger and rolled them and pressed them until it was painful. She bit down on the tip of her tongue, caught between lust and panic, and knew that if she let him continue like this, bonds would be broken. Trust would be damaged. But she wondered if maybe she deserved it, too. Maybe she’d denied him and angered him and this was something she shouldn’t fight.

It was a decision she was fast running out of time to make. He stroked her in a rushed, frenzied way, like he wanted to savor but didn’t want to take the time. He cupped her breasts, weighed them up in his palms, squeezed…then dropped them. His hands went to the hem of her dress and he brought it up over her hips with two sharp tugs.

“Mike.” She splayed her hands across his stomach and felt how rigid the muscles were, how taut and tense he was. In the dark, she felt for the buttons of his shirt, thumbed two open before his hands clamped down hard on her bare hips and he spun her around. Her hair tumbled across her face and her palms clapped down on the stone top of the bureau. As his hands ran down the backs of her thighs, and then up over her ass, smoothing and kneading, her mind went back to a year ago, to her kitchen and the center island, to the way he’d eased her into an encounter that was physically similar but completely different. He’d been all about her that night. Tonight, he was all about him.

His hands tightened on her hi
ps and he lifted her. “Climb up.” His voice was flat and she knew what he wanted her to do. She debated resisting – she knew she could – but she levered up with her palms and then lowered her upper body across the top of the bureau. It creaked, but felt steady beneath her. She, though, was shaking, still not able to decide if this shocked, horrified, or excited her.

It was still too dark to see anything save the line of light on the floor, but she could hear the unsteady hitch of her breathing
and his. The sound of his belt coming undone was her final warning. But even as she hated that she had stooped to this, she didn’t want to stop it.

He spread her thighs
, moved the lace scrap of her panties aside, and one hand settled on the small of her back as he entered her. The breath left his lungs in a rush the same moment her own caught in hers. Delta’s eyes went to the light on the floor, locked there, as he eased back and pushed in again. Withdrew and repeated, harder and more aggressive.

She was turned on in a dark way that left her wet and aching and wanting what he gave her all the while she hated his coldness. He was ruining her, and she was letting him.
Ears full of the bristling silence and the sounds they made, eyes trained on the faint stripe of light on the floor, they searched for a release that really had nothing to do with this moment in the dark.

31.

R
egina was awake and sitting up in bed, flipping through a
Cosmo
, the TV babbling away when Delta got back to the room. She wasn’t ever self-conscious in front of her best friend, but with darkening bruises on her skin and her torn underwear stuffed into her purse, her hair tangled beyond what her fingers had been able to repair, she felt a shameful blush creep across her skin as she walked in front of the TV on her way to her bed.

Regina’s sex radar must have gone off. Her head came up and a smile curled the corners of her mouth as she watched Delta round the bed and go to her suitcase on the floor. “Someone
get lost on her way back from dinner?”

“Oh, hush,” Delta said, and it was, she realized, the first word she’d spoken since Mike had put her up on the bureau. She was so tired her tongue felt heavy in her mouth, and she frowned to herself as she pulled her pajamas out of her bag.

“Are the nerves getting to him?” Regina asked with a sour face and a laugh in her eyes. “Not quite the
stand-up
guy he used to be?” She chuckled before she could catch herself.

As a matter of fact, he
wasn’t
stand-up tonight – in the figurative sense. Her head was still spinning, her chest tight with emotion. He’d never treated her before the way he’d treated her just now, and as ecstasy faded and her blood cooled, she felt no joy, felt none of the love he’d told her he had for her. She felt used and cheap and dirty. Not by the act – not by being almost naked in a dark closet, the body contact animalistic – but by his approach to the whole thing. It hadn’t been a game, but a venting of frustrations.

“There’s nothing wrong with him anatomically,” she said through her teeth, and rose, heading for the bathroom and the double-wash shower she was about to take.

Regina’s frown became sincere. “Everything alright?”

“Fine.”

But it wasn’t fine at all. As hot water coursed over her body, she smoothed suds with her hands, wincing at the tenderness along her hips and the insides of her thighs. Normally, she liked the little bruises, the reminders of him. Tonight, she closed her eyes and tried to rinse them away.

**

Spent and sated, Mike now knew, were two very different things. He’d gone into the closet mad at her – now he was mad at both of them. At himself for what he’d done, and at her for letting it happen.

He took a long walk through the halls, getting careful glances from the staff that he ignored, watched the play of light and shadow across the opulence of the castle, feeling like he’d stepped back into another century. He didn’
t calm so much as steady; he was still furious, deep down, but he reined it in, until he wasn’t frowning like hell at everything around him. He was a big guy – he knew that without any sense of pride: it was just a fact. It wasn’t something he ever abused to get the upper hand with a woman. Even if his parents frustrated the hell out of him lately, he’d always watched his dad treat the women in the family like they were made of glass. One six-foot-four man to the other, he’d been taught that. He lived by that. There was no excuse for how he’d treated Delta. And it made him all the angrier that she hadn’t pushed him away and insisted, hadn’t softened and pleaded until he’d realized they were tumbling down this rabbit hole of useless antagonism until it changed them.

A few doors down from his room, he passed Ryan, and his hackles rose again. The guy had his hands shoved in his pockets, a frown putting lines in his wide, square-jawed face. He watched the carpet as he walked and Mike started to let him just keep walking…

But what was one more transgression for the night?

“Hey,” he said, and Ryan’s head came up. He slowed, and then stopped as Mike came to a halt in the middle of the hall.

“Hey. What’s up?”

Last chance
, he thought. He could still walk away… “Have you seen my sister tonight?”

“I just left her at her room.”

No doubt, Jo had been the one to enforce the leaving. At least, he guessed. He hadn’t figured Jo would take Ryan up on his offer in the first place. He was starting to think he didn’t know her very well.

“Are you…” he felt like an ass, “interested in her?”

Something flickered across Ryan’s face: it could have been curiosity or surprise or guilt. “She’s a great girl.”

Which was about the most generic thing that could possibly be said about a girl.
It was the barest scrap of an almost-compliment that guys looking for a bang used to appease family members of their targets.

It didn’t appease Mike. “She isn’t anything like the girls you usually date, is she?”

Ryan grinned, but his hands did a nervous check for change in his pockets. “No, she’s not.”

Mike gave him a tight non-smile and started to move on. “Don’t think I believe you suddenly like tomboys,” he said, and Ryan’s smile dropped. “You be careful, Atkins.”

**

The little bay
mare under Delta rolled her shoulders as she started down the hill toward the creek they were supposed to cross, and the motion left her gritting her teeth. All the tender places between her legs had turned horseback riding into a torture test. The jeans she’d worn weren’t helping either.

The mare reached the bottom of the hill and the stony edge of the creek, and then she halted, ears swiveling, snorting softly to
herself. Delta would have gladly stayed still, but their trail leader and half the girls were scrambling up the hill on the other side. The swishing tail of Stacy’s mount was all she could see of any of them, and there were scrabbling hoofbeats walking down behind her: she couldn’t hold up the line.

“Alright, chick,” Delta said, and gave the bay a little thump with her heels. “Let’s move out.”  Aside from a small handful of lessons when she’d been a little girl, she knew nothing about horses, and wasn’t surprised when she didn’t get a reaction from the mare. “Come
on.” She gave her a kick. “Giddy up.”

Still no reaction.

Delta sighed. “Alright, horse…” Weren’t these trail ride nags supposed to blindly follow along one after the next?

Hooves crunched on the pebbles beside her and she glanced over to find a buckskin gelding and Jo. With her river boots and baseball cap, the way she sat relaxed and athletic in the saddle, Jo was the only one of the bunch really enjoying the outing. She held the reins in one hand and propped the other on her hip. “Did you kick her?”