Destination Connelly (11 page)

“You belong with me, Nora. Me,” he declares between openmouthed kisses and possessive nips. When he grinds his pelvis into my sex, I moan his name, shifting my hips upward with every downward thrust of his.

“I know it makes me a hypocrite, but I hate the thought of his hands on you,” he rasps gruffly. His hands travel down my sides, thumbs grazing my painfully erect nipples on their descent. “It makes me fucking crazy with jealousy, and I haven’t experienced jealousy since high school.”

I have. With every smile you gifted another woman or possessive arm wound about her waist.

All of a sudden, he stops all movement and I whimper.

Whim-per. Like a pet that was cheated out of its promised treat.

Palming my face with one hand, he slides the other between us, cupping my aching pussy over my panties. It feels so right, I have to fight my eyes to stay open. Running lithe fingers along the edge of the damp material, he teases and prods. “This, here? This. Is. Mine. We clear?”

My voice is suddenly gone, like an escaped convict. I mean to protest, but I find myself nodding my agreement instead.

“I’m going to kiss you now, Nora. Long, deep and very fucking thoroughly. And when I’m done you’re going to remember well who you belong to.”

I’ve never forgotten
, I think.
Never
.

Without waiting on a response, his lips smash to mine. His kiss is rough and desperate. Possessive. A declaration. It is long and deep and thorough just as he’d promised. My toes curl and my belly unfurls in desire. I may have bruises by the time he’s done, but at this moment, I couldn’t care less.

I want them.

I crave his dominant possession.

I
want
to be his, even if only for a few short minutes.

I don’t stop him as his greedy lips work their way down my clavicle and strong hands grasp my hips, squeezing hard before snaking underneath my thong-bared ass, pulling me tight against his pulsing cock. Running his palms slowly down my bare legs, goose bumps trail behind as he grabs my ankles and clasps them behind his back.

In this position, I’m exposed, vulnerable, and literally seconds away from one hell of an intense orgasm. One that’s been building since this afternoon. With the next flex of his hips, I gasp at the feel of the thickness that’s hitting my sweet spot perfectly. His finger slips between my cheeks and follows the thin string south to my embarrassing wetness. We both moan loudly the second he circles my soaked opening, pushing in slightly before dragging my juices all the way back up my crack.

“Fuck, Nora.” His voice is thick with passion. “I want you. I
need
you so badly I’m in agony.” His entire body moves relentlessly against mine now, fucking me like we have no barriers. I wish we didn’t. I want to feel him moving inside of me. I want to know if the memory I hold on to is real or something I’ve just trumped up in my lonely mind.

“Connelly…God,” I pant, clawing at his ass so he keeps hitting the small bundle of nerves I need to send me flying apart. His mouth takes mine again, almost violently. I love it. Every raw, unguarded second of it.

Gripping my hip, he holds me in place as he continues to drive furiously into me. “That’s it, princess. Come for me,” he grunts against my lax mouth.

My orgasm hits me with the force of a hurricane. I’m viciously swept up in the maelstrom of pleasure that Connelly’s every touch and every kiss have produced inside me. I bite his shoulder to stifle my cries, and he chants my name as shudder after shudder of pure bliss works its way through me.

It’s mind-melting pleasure I’ve never felt before, and he’s so damn talented he created it even with a barrier of linen and silk between us.

I’ve lost all sense of reality and am about half a second away from ripping off my clothes and begging him to take me on a rough, hot ride when laughter from down below penetrates the sexual fog that’s fuzzing my head. It reminds me where I am…and what I have to hide. And why I can’t do this.

“Connelly, stop,” I pant. “We have to stop.”

“Fuuuck.” His forehead goes to mine and he pinches his eyes closed. Working to catch his breath, his jaw ticks in impatience. “I’m getting tired of that word, Nora,” he tells me, his voice low and gravelly and breathless.

“Get off me. Please.” I push. With a frustrated exhale he finally lifts his heavy bulk. I tug my dress down and right myself on the couch, ignoring the hand he’s holding out, palm up. It is steady and calm while both of mine are shaking like an 8.2 Richter is raging through my body.

It is. It’s called passion.

Something I haven’t really felt since my one night with him.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I sit there, eyes cast down, confusion and horror driving aftershocks through me. Sensing my turmoil, Connelly remains quiet, letting me gather my thoughts, not pushing me for once.

“We can’t do this, Connelly.” My shaking voice is outright wishy-washy.

“And what exactly can’t we do, Nora?” His is soft and cajoling and patient. It twists my insides into knots.

“This. You. Me. Us!” I wave back and forth between us, still unable to raise my eyes to his. If I do, I’ll be lost. Again. And I want to be. I want to get so fucking lost in him I don’t need food or air or water. Just him. But I can’t afford to.

“Why, princess?”

“Why what?” I ask, exasperated, trying desperately to smooth the wrinkles in my dress. Anything to avoid looking at him, falling again.

His movements are slow and precise when he squats down in front of my seated form. Gently he places his index finger under my chin and lifts it so I’m forced to make eye contact.

And I was right. The genuine confusion on his handsome face about my manic outbreak is starting to chase away my determination again. I barely catch it fast enough. I’m hanging on to it so damn tight my muscles burn.

“Why can’t we do us?”

So many goddamn reasons. Too many. “It won’t work,” I say simply. Simple is always, always better. When you start talking too much, you say too much.

He nods his head, but I know he’s about to argue. He’s so damn calm, it’s as if the last twenty minutes never even happened while my heart could win a hundred-meter dash about now. “And why do you think this won’t work?”

Because you can’t commit and if I have you in my life, I need a whole heap of commitment you’re not capable of. Because I’m a horrible betrayer. Worse than Judas. I’m a Benedict Arnold.
But I don’t say any of that. I don’t give him the truth. I just hedge. “It didn’t before.”

“We were teenagers, Nora. I’d like to think both of us have changed and matured since then.”

“That’s the problem, Connelly,” I tell him softly, standing so he’s also forced to stand and take a few steps back. “I
have
changed.”

I walk around him only making it down two steps when his question floats heavy in the air in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. I consider lying. In the end, though, I don’t. I don’t think I can feed more hurtful words past my deceit-cracked lips, each one stinging worse than the one before it.

“Is it him? Harding? Are you in love with him?”

I’ve only ever been in love with you
. “No.”

“Is there someone else then?”

Not in the way you think
. “No.”

When he speaks again, his hot breath dances across my nape and I moan at the feel of his hands lightly settling on my hips. “Then you should know that I will move heaven and earth to make you mine again, Nora. It doesn’t matter how much time it takes. It doesn’t matter what I have to do. How many rocks I have to move or oceans I have to part. I’ll use every ounce of my infinite patience to wait out whatever struggle you have going on inside of you because we belong together and you know it as well as I do.”

When I feel his nose nuzzling the underside of my ear, my knees almost give out. “I love you. I have
always
loved you, Nora. You are lodged so far inside me I can’t possibly get you out and I’m fucking done trying. And you should also know that I’m very adept at hearing the unspoken and I heard the words you
didn’t
say loud and crystal clear, baby.”

Chills.

I have them everywhere.

Walking away after he confessed he still loves me is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life, but what other choice can I make? Before he can say another word, I flee down the stairs, his second fervent profession of the day clanging loudly behind like empty tin cans tied to my ankles.

N
ora

I
look
around the place I’ve called home for the last six years. Sealed boxes are stacked everywhere, waiting for the movers to arrive. I need to run a wet mop around the baseboards of the hardwood floors to get rid of the dust balls lining the corners. The windows still need to be cleaned. All final bills have been paid, all good-byes said, all memories packed away, ready to be shuffled to the next stop in life’s journey.

You’d think after moving around so much during my childhood I’d be used to it by now. Strangely I’m not, even though this hasn’t felt any more like a home than all of the other places I’ve lived. It is the place I’ve lived the longest, though: the house I moved to after I left my father’s home in Baltimore.

Baltimore. The place my life started falling apart.

As a genetic researcher, my father’s life was work, not us. His sequencing and genotyping research was widely published and regarded. His position at Johns Hopkins was the realization of a lifelong dream. Because I was the good little daughter, I never complained when we had to move or when he missed my plays or concerts or volleyball games. I understood how important his work was to him and to others.

But once we moved to Baltimore after I graduated high school, he was a ghost. Many nights he didn’t even bother coming home. I became more and more resentful, especially when my mom was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer thirteen months after we moved. Nine months later, we were burying her. She suffered greatly and because of my father’s new position, I was her primary caregiver at one of the hardest times in my own life.

Thank God for Uncle Carl. He flew in from Cincinnati as much as possible to help, even taking a leave of absence toward the end when she was put in hospice to live with us until she passed. Had it not been for him, I don’t think I would have made it through those dark days.

After my mom died, I turned angry and bitter. I unfairly blamed all the bad in my life on my father. Had he been home, where he should have been, maybe my life would be entirely different. Maybe I would have been a high school psychologist like I’d planned. Maybe he’d still be alive because he’d have no reason to be on that plane. Maybe my mom’s cancer would have been caught earlier because he would have realized something was wrong well before she did. And if not, maybe at least she could have died with the comfort of a loving husband, instead of a distraught daughter and distressed family friend by her side.

Maybe I’d be married to Connelly and I’d be living a very different life.

See? Irrational. I know, yet I can’t help the way I felt.
Still
feel. Except now, alongside the anger and bitterness that have their claws buried deep in me, I harbor immense guilt for feeling that way, because my father and I were still not on the best of terms when he died suddenly.

“Everything all packed?” a familiar male voice calls from behind me.

I smile sadly, not turning around to face Carl. I’m still pretty fucking mad at him, so I’ve been avoiding him as much as possible these past weeks. “Yes,” I reply tersely.

It’s been three weeks since I signed my life away. Okay, so maybe that’s a
tad
bit melodramatic, but that’s what it feels like nonetheless. I’ve done nothing—and I mean
nothing
—but lie awake in bed every night reliving every syllable of Connelly’s genuine confession and every second of his male display of dominance from our meeting and the party two weeks ago.

It left me wanting him even more than I have all these years.

It flayed every emotion open so now they’re raw and exposed.

“I’m so—”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. Not again.”

He takes a deep breath. I hear him blow it out slowly, the movement catching my hair. “You’re doing the right thing, Ladybug,” he says quietly.

“Well you didn’t give me much of a choice, now did you?” I retort.

Sighing, he speaks after a few silent, tense beats. “You’re right. I fucked up, but what’s done is done. I’d honestly like to say if I could go back and make different decisions, I would, but…” He leaves his sentence hanging. We both know the truth. He wouldn’t. “I don’t want you to leave mad at me, Nora. I just couldn’t bear that. Please.” The last few words are choked, thick with remorse and shame and sorrow.

My vision blurs as I try to hold my emotions in check. I will not let this break me. I am far stronger than my life’s circumstances. It took time, maturity, and soul-searching, but I know I can handle whatever life throws at me and then some.

“I’m mad at the situation. I don’t want to have to start over again.”

I can.

I will.

I’ve done it time and again.

I just don’t
want
to.

Here, it’s all too easy to bury my head in the sand and try to justify my lies and actions, but there’s also a part of me, bigger than I want to acknowledge, that’s also excited about being around Connelly more, even if it will lead to my demise.

“You know, sometimes life takes us to places we don’t think we want to go, but it’s exactly where we need to be because that’s where our next great thing will happen.”

I snort. “Is that some Robert Frost or Walt Whitman quote?” I never gave a crap about boring English lit when I was in school. Still don’t. I’d prefer a good, smutty romance novel to poems and sonnets any day.

He chuckles, stepping beside me before throwing an arm around my shoulder and tugging me close. “No. It’s a Carl Steele original.”

“You should have it burned onto a plaque or something,” I say, wiping away a stray tear before sinking into his hold. It’s a sign of forgiveness and acceptance for everything he is and everything he’s not. No one’s perfect and I should stop expecting them to be. God knows I’m so far from it, it’s just a blip on the horizon now, unattainable.

“There’s my girl.” His lips lovingly touch my temple. “Have you talked to Mira?”

“Yes. She hooked me up with a real estate agent who found a nice rental house in LaGrange. It’s in a good area, close to good schools and the train for easy commuting downtown. I think I’ll talk to Camille about telecommuting a couple of days a week. That would definitely help.”

“I’m sure they’ll be flexible.”

“I don’t know,” I mumble. “Connelly Colloway doesn’t seem like the flexible type to me.” In fact, he seems downright ruthless these days in order to get exactly what he wants. He’s made it perfectly clear it’s me, and that both thrills and scares the shit out of me for more reasons than I want to explore right now.

Carl huffs. “Let me know if you have any trouble, Nora, and I’ll take care of it.” A few beats later, “So, I heard you have a new assignment. One from Wynn.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nora, these people are like family to me. Just because I’ve sold the company doesn’t mean I don’t know everything that goes on.”

“Rick?”

He chuckles. “He’s got looser lips than a Saturday night special.”

“Oh my God. Where do you come up with this stuff?” I smile, snaking an arm around his waist. Even though I’m mad at him, I’m going to miss him like crazy. “I’m sure this new assignment is going over like a lead balloon about now at Wynn. I understand it’s a pretty big client of theirs.”

“Well, the only thing that’s constant is change. Get on the horse or be left staring at its ass. It’s pretty damn simple.”

I chuckle again. I love Carl’s crazy euphemisms.

“Kinnick Investments is a pretty big deal. They’re a multibillion-dollar conglomerate.”

Yes, they are, and I have to wonder why I was assigned this client instead of Jeanine. “Wow, you really do have the scoop.”

“CEO’s retiring, I hear.”

“Yeah, but that’s suspicious. She was just hired less than three years ago and I heard their latest acquisition caused their stock to plummet and has investors upset. She was a little too employee friendly versus Wall Street friendly.”

“Just up your alley.”

I’ve had several clients like this over the years. The board of directors seems to take no culpability for either their approvals on their CEO choices or their acquisitions. The CEO is always sent down the river, the designated fall guy for a poor business decision or drop in stock prices. Always. They make the big bucks for a reason, and it’s because their performance is under constant scrutiny, their ass always on the line.

His heavy hand squeezes my shoulder. “Your mom would have been proud of you, Ladybug. Of everything you’ve accomplished.”

Would she? I used to think so. I’m not so sure anymore. No one outside of her, not even my dad, knew my deepest secret. She never once judged me for my decisions, hard as they were, but I think now she might. I think now she’d tell me how wrong I’ve been all along.

A sudden melancholy washes over me. “I miss her,” I choke.

“So do I.” His voice is full of the kind of sorrow that only comes from losing someone you deeply love. Friends since elementary school, Carl had a special bond with my father, but I think he had a special spot deep inside for my mother. Her death was as hard on him as it was on me. Maybe even more so.

“Why have so many bad things happened to me?” I ask wistfully, feeling the full weight of all I’ve lost in life. It’s rhetorical and pathetic and full of self-pity. I try not to wallow in that muck too often. It gets sticky there.

“Not everything has been bad, Nora,” he reminds me.

We gaze out the three bay windows that overlook my decent-sized backyard, watching the one good thing in my life, outside of Carl, play on the swing set we spent an entire Saturday afternoon putting together six years ago now. Hawk, our five-year-old Basenji, runs back and forth, nipping at her heels and toes when she swings past him. Her squeal spurns him on.

“No. Not everything,” I concur quietly.

As I watch my daughter play and talk and sing to herself, like I used to do at her age, all I see is
him
. Now more than ever.

I see his beguiling eyes.

I see his innate intelligence.

I see his magnetic charisma.

I see him in her every single day.

I see the girl that, as she’s grown older and older, can be mistaken for none other than the spitting image of her father.

I see the daughter I’ve kept from him for all these years, because of my anger, hurt, shame, and fear.

I see my entire world falling apart if he ever finds out what the hell I’ve done. There isn’t even an “if” anymore. There’s just “when.” It’s only a matter of time now. The sands of the hourglass are falling faster and faster, gravity tugging hard at the tiny grains that will lead to my demise when the last one hits bottom.

He thinks he loves me; but he will be full of nothing but hatred when the truth comes out. I’ve been racking my brain for the past two weeks on how to come clean because I know I have to. It’s time. It’s
past
time.

I justified my actions early on by convincing myself I wasn’t even sure she was his. But when it couldn’t be denied any longer, I came up with new excuses. He didn’t want
me
to begin with, so why would he want
her
. Hell, he didn’t even want children.
That
I knew for a fact. I’ve told myself I couldn’t possibly stomach his rejection again and I’d never put my daughter through his rebuff either. I’ve used his commitment issues and womanizing as rationalization to keep him away from us.

But after spending two solid days with him, all I feel now is guilt.

Profound
, gut-twisting, soul-tearing, unforgivable guilt.

Guilt for my mistakes.

Guilt for sleeping with another man the night I was betrayed out of hurt, despair, and spite.

Guilt for letting pride and fear keep me from doing the right thing when it stares me in the face every single day.

Mostly, though, I feel guilt that maybe, just maybe, I’ve misjudged everything, depriving not only Connelly of his daughter but my daughter of her father.

I know it won’t matter to him once this comes out, but I actually decided to tell him. Twice before. But both times it was as if the world was working against us in the cruelest of ways again, so I left well enough alone, thinking our lives were meant to be without him.

But now. Now…

“I love you. I’ve always loved you, Nora.”

Could I have been wrong all this time? Would Connelly have wanted us? Would he have absolved my transgressions? Could I have forgiven his? Would we be the perfect happy family now had I just shown up with his daughter in tow, begging for his forgiveness?

I don’t know. I guess I never will.

A part of me has always held on to the fantasy of Connelly Colloway. That we would one day reunite. That one day he’d be mine and that maybe we’d be happy, living the life together I’d always daydreamed about.

The small part of me that still hopes for such things is the young and foolish one, the teenager who fell madly in love with an unattainable ideal of life and happiness and the man she thought was utter perfection in every way except the one that really counts.

Fidelity.

The woman in me is still irrefutably in love with Connelly, regardless of his commitment issues. I’ve never stopped, even through the hurt, pain, and cheating. My heart beats only for him. I have no hope of erasing any part of him from me without erasing a part of me, too.

But the pragmatist in me knows a life with him is not reality. All our future holds is anger, bitterness, and resentment.

As I stand here watching Zel, the one person I love more than life itself, genuine fear coils deep in my gut. Connelly will hate me once this comes to light, but I’ve never thought about the rest of the fallout. How will Zel take this news? That I’ve perhaps unfairly kept her father from her and it was all my doing. Not his. I’ve never once thought about the fact that she may not forgive me and I may lose my daughter, too.

It’s true what they say about hindsight. It slaps you square in the face with the sting of undeniable clarity. You wonder how you couldn’t have seen the answers plain as day before. And what I see right now makes me utterly sick with regret.