JACE (Lane Brothers Book 3) (29 page)

Nothing comes out of my mouth, not a single syllable or breath, as I stand frozen to the spot, my every hope and dream shattering and reforming in that one instant.

I feel everything recede but that handsome face and the slight quirk that lines his sensual mouth. For a split second I pray that the shit Nic’s mom hooked me up with has some sort of psychotropic drug…anything to explain—I’d rather be tripping on drugs than for this to be real.

And yet my heart is singing in my chest, breaking out in waves of elated song at the sight of the man taking up space at my counter. That’s when I do something I haven’t done in my entire life.

The plate tilts, spilling its golden, fried cargo, and drops, shattering in a sparkle of worn white porcelain as I feel my eyes roll backward, and I slump, approaching the floor.

I’m fainting, something so foreign to my ‘kiss my ass’ attitude that for that strange time while I’m heading for a nose slam, I feel a euphoric giggle bubble in my chest.

“Christ!”

That’s all I hear before everything goes dark, cutting off the exultant panic wending its way through me.

“Get…pulse…back away…”

Seconds, minutes later I’m swimming back to consciousness, my mind lighting up like a freaking Christmas tree despite all attempts to remain hidden in that murky place that is unconsciousness.

I don’t want to wake up and see those mint green eyes or that smug smile. I want this all to be the effects of Nic’s mother getting me tripped out on her night time rescue/liver killing tonic.

My eyes pop open against my will, and I gasp, once again held immobile when I see those bright eyes shining down at me even as his arms surround me, pulling me close as he rises, taking me with him.

“Lily, darlin', are you al lright?” I hear to my left, only half registering Nico’s voice and the murmurings of concern floating around me. “I told you to keep hydrated and to eat more, little one.”

I hardly track and can’t even tear my eyes away from the chiselled jaw—now clenched so tightly I see a muscle tic beneath his skin—as he starts barking orders at someone to his right, his voice filled with steely control and supressed anger.

“I’m taking her home. Get the door, Billings!”

That’s when my brain fires back to life and I struggle weakly, pushing at his chest and cursing softly when he, and everyone around me, ignores my annoyance, and I find myself deposited on the back seat of his chauffeur-driven car.

“Let me out!” I yell, going for the door release even as the driver starts pulling away. “I don’t want to go anywhere with you. I hate you!”

Vincent grabs my arm in a steely grip and pulls me back, his eyes flickering with some emotion I can’t decipher but definitely followed by the same arrogant sneer I know so well.

A tinted partition goes up between the seats, separating me from the driver and what I now know is my only respite before his arms shove me down and his big body comes crashing down over mine.

It’s no easy fit with him being so big and the seat being smaller than the position requires, and I’m left trapped beneath his weight as he pins my arms above my head and keeps me immobile.

“Shut up and fucking listen!” he yells, so fiercely I feel his breath enter my lungs.

The taste is just as I remember it, and I feel my traitorous body heat, wanting more of that mint-scented air, filling my lungs, my mouth, every inch of me.

I’ve lain awake nights remembering his flavor and the way I’d be infused with his breath as he thrust into me, sharing his very life force even as he took mine.

I’ve missed—

No! You will not do this to yourself, Cecilia. Get a grip.

“Fine,” I say, quitting my struggles to glare up at him. Handsome bastard. “What the hell do you want?”

I see him tense further, feel it in the way his fingers tighten infinitesimally around my bound wrists before he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

“Dove, I don’t know how to say this…”

That sends a foreboding chill down my spine. Vincent is never hesitant, never…afraid, as I see he is now, so whatever he has to tell me is either really bad or so fucked up I don’t even want to know.

Damned curiosity.

“Your father…” He swallows and levers himself up, pulling me along with him and into his chest.

I push back, needing some distance as the scent of his citrusy cologne starts firing up synapses I’d ruthlessly tried to kill these last three months.

But wait—

“Daddy? I mean, Beau? What…what’s wrong?”

He’s avoiding eye contact, his shoulders strung so tightly I feel the stirrings of panic hit me. I’m angry and hurt and not yet ready to call him my dad yet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love the big, controlling galloot.

“Vincent…what’s going on?” I ask, grabbing at the military perfect lapels of his jacket and turning him back to face me.

“Beau collapsed last week—”

“What! Oh God, is he okay? Please tell me he’s okay. I should never have bolted. This is all my fault. You’re such a brat, Sissy. If he’s de—”

“Christ, get a hold of yourself!” he yells, shaking me fiercely enough to rattle my brain around in my skull and dry up the stream of hysterical panic and self-recriminations. “He’s fine. He’s got high blood pressure, and the doctors aren’t too impressed with his cholesterol at the moment, but…”

“But?” I ask, watching his face like a hawk for any sign that he’s downplaying the situation to keep me from having a meltdown.

“His attack came when we got news that Brennan was headed this way and that he was precariously close to you,” he finishes, uncurling my fists from his jacket to flatten them against his chest, his hands trapping mine.

I feel his heart beat strongly and look away, closing my eyes against tears of relief and the constant heartache that’s starting to surface now that I know Da—Beau isn’t lying dead in the morgue.

“Dove, are you listening? Did you just hear what I said?” he asks, his tone laced with frustration and an effort at patience.

What’s his—I realize two things at once. One, Eric is still a—as I’ve always known—problem that needs taking care of, and some real caution on my end lest he succeed where he’d left off before. Two, Beau and Vincent—

“You’ve known where I was all this time, haven’t you?” I ask in a choked whisper.

And here I’ve been so ignorantly smug about making my escape and getting one over on them all. It had been a small victory in the greater scheme of things, but something I’d been proud of, considering my epic fail by actually marrying a man who doesn’t even want me.

“Not all along,” he growls, glaring darkly. “We found you two weeks ago by sheer bloody coincidence. Seems you didn’t manage to make it altogether out of that photo the historical society took of the diner,” he muses, making my teeth clench nearly to the point of shattering.

I remember that smarmy little photog and his ‘skills’. I’d spent the better part of an hour dodging his lens, and it seems I’d failed. How Vincent had run across me in some obscure little Georgian local newspaper, though, is a good question, and one that saves me from actual conversation, so I ask it, watching his smile curve higher.

“You’d be surprised what money can get you in the way of information and a decent photo,” he drawls. “I had a techie from my company keeping an eye out for any indication as to your whereabouts. Color me surprised when he came screaming into my office and slapped down a photo of my wife, working at a bloody greasy spoon diner for minimum wage.”

That drawl and the way he’s licking his lips while staring at the cleavage revealed by my uniform has me wrenching back and scuttling to the farthest edges of the seat, right up against the door, which coincidentally is locked.

“I’m not your wife.”

Keep saying it and maybe it will be true.

“Oh, but there you’re wrong, dove,” he snarls, pulling me back into his chest, his left hand settling my ass firmly over his lap and the impressive—clench-worthy—erection beneath.

“What are you doing?”

Now would be a great time to start struggling and get myself the hell away from temptation. I freeze, though, taking in the clenching deep within my neglected sex, and his subtle shifting as he pulls me down and into his cock.

Every emotion and lustful desire I’ve been supressing roars to full and consuming life, sending me into that eerie realm of fantastic remembrance. In my mind’s eye I see him throwing me down to the leather seat and coming over me in a wave of need and lust.

I feel his breath whooshing past my lips just before his lips crash down over mine, his tongue thrusting in, owning me in mimicry of what I want him to do between my legs.

Those large hands cup my breasts, expertly strumming my hardened nipples to points of screaming readiness, and his cock, I feel it probing, pushing past the thin barrier of my panties before gliding over the slick entrance to thrust up—

I come back to earth with a jolt when his hand lands on the inner skin of my thigh and begins stroking in little circles that have my breath exploding out in little pants that leave me lightheaded and resentful.

It’s always been so easy for him. Not once since we’ve met have I ever put up anything more than a token resistance to his experienced and practiced seductions.

Even now, feeling bitter and in a state of turmoil, I want nothing more than to throw my hurt pride and scruples to the wind and kiss him, devour him, beg him to touch me and take away the lonely emptiness his loss has caused.

But I can’t, no matter how good I know he’ll make me feel, because when the pleasure fades all I’ll be left with is the empty ache of regret for giving him back the power I’ve only just gained.

“Stop it,” I hiss, wiggling frantically to get away and retake my seat.

“No. Why should I? I’ve gone three bloody months without the feel of you in my arms, in my bed, surrounding my cock. Why should I give it up now that I have you again?” he asks, circling precariously close to the wet heat building in my core.

An inch closer and he’ll know how much I want him, and that I cannot have. Not yet, not till I have this damnable desire under control.

“You can’t give up something you don’t have, asshole. Now get your hands off me and leave me alone. I want to go back to work,” I hiss, planting my sneaker-clad feet against the door and shoving, managing to scoot back to the seat and my little corner of safety.

“You are not going back there. We’re going to the airport where my jet is waiting, and then we’re headed to your parents’ place so that you can see your father and bloody well reassure him that you are fine. Then we’re going home, and you are not to say one more bloody word!”

The biting warning in his voice freezes me to the spot, and I cringe, feeling every nerve tense when he spears a hand into my hair and jerks our faces together.

The violence is so startling I can do nothing but breathe and stare deeply into his eyes, now the color of dew-moistened moss.

“We are going to talk about what you walked in on three months ago, and then, when everything’s cleared up, I’m fucking taking my wedding night.”

“Oh, Sissy! I’m so glad he found you, sweetheart, Daddy’s been so worried.”

My eyes mist as Mama pulls me in for a bone crushing embrace. The scent of her perfume and the baby powder she uses is so comforting I have no choice but to hug her back, clutching at her like she’s a lifeline.

I’d missed her so much it’s unbelievable that I’d gone three months without hearing her voice or feeling the quiet strength of her love. Now that I’m back and enfolded in her loving embrace it’s all I can do not to break down and tell her why I’d run in the first place.

Thanks to Vincent’s non-stop commentary on the plane ride over, I know that my coward father hadn’t told Mama the truth about my runner. She thinks I’d gotten cold feet about my marriage and run away because I couldn’t get a grip.

I’d tell her the truth and relish the way I know she’ll go at him, at them, if not for the fear that Beau’s health would take a sudden turn for the worst. He loves Mama with an intensity that is scary, and I know that if she ever looked at him the way I now look at Vincent, he’d be broken.

“Hey, Mama.”

It’s all I can say as she pushes me away and takes in my waitressing uniform and mussed hair.

“Glory, child, you look like a hobo. Go on upstairs and freshen up. I’ll let Beau know you’re here.”

“Thanks, Mrs Bennet,” Vincent says, clamping a hand to my forearm in warning. “We’ll be down in an hour.”

He lets go only when the door closes firmly behind us, and I watch in shock as he locks the door and pockets the key, his eyes a steely green that leaves me shivering.

This man is the same man I’d seen on the roof the night he saved me from Eric, and I’m thrown back to that morning just before Thanksgiving when Mom had called him a bad boy.

I see it now, that hard, roughened interior instead of the suave, polished man I’ve known thus far. This Vincent is not about to manipulate me or trick me into doing what he wants. No, what I see is a man who knows what he wants and is more than willing to use force to get it.

I still feel safe though, ironically, and that takes the sting out of his next words.

“You can be the brat you are and throw tantrums and yell at me, I don’t give a shit, but if you so much as breathe a hint of our issues in front of your mother I will tan your hide. She’s had enough stress. She doesn’t need more.”

“She’s
my
mother. She deserves to know what an asshole she’s married to,” I spit, putting more distance between us while keeping him in my line of sight. “I’m not here for him; I’m here because I know she needs me.”

That’s such a monumental lie and I know it. So does he, if the skeptical expression is accurate. Who am I kidding here? I’d almost died at the thought of my daddy being…I can’t even say it.

What if he’d died or been seriously ill while I’d been sulking and licking my wounds in Georgia?

“Look, dove, I realize we have a lot to discuss and that right now you don’t understand everything. That’s my fault, and I take full responsibility. I’m just asking you to let that go and give Beau the comfort and love he needs from you. Just for today. Tomorrow you can go back to being pissed off and defensive, just—”

“I get it, okay? I’ll pretend that he didn’t rip my heart out by selling me like a piece of meat. Can I go shower now?”

The sigh he lets out is a show of weary frustration that does absolutely nothing to defuse the resentful ache brewing deep within, and he nods once, turning away to walk to the bed and his luggage.

Feeling slightly let down—not that I wanted him to make a move on me or anything—I close the bathroom door and strip down, letting out a groan when the shower jets roar to life, the strong pulsations loosening some of the tension I’ve been carrying around since I’d looked up and seen Vincent sitting in the diner.

It’s as I’m rinsing shampoo from my hair that he makes his move, confirming my estimation that Vincent the gentleman is nowhere in sight for the foreseeable future.

“Move up.”

That’s all the warning I get before a large hand lands on my ass, gently nudging me into the wall before his big body crowds in and takes up every inch of space.

“What are you doing?” I squeak, covering my boobs like a Victorian era ninny before I can stop myself.

Give me a break; I have to, lest he see the effect his nudity is having on my nipples. If I could find a way to cover my vagina without fear that my fingers would start moving just for a smidge of relief, I would.

Feeling off kilter and strung tight with hate-filled lust, I take a deep breath and concentrate on soaping myself, screamingly aware of Vincent and every inch of water-slicked skin.

When something nudges into the small of my back, leaving a warm stream in its wake, I spin around, slack jawed, to see him palming his thick erection with a smile of predatory delight.

“What are you doing?”

Jesus, be a little more inventive, Cecelia.

“Taking care of business. Unless you’d like to?” he drawls, his pupils dilating with pleasure when his fist tightens and starts a slow up and down stroke over satiny flesh I’m dying to touch.

I resist the urge and sniff delicately.

“Go fuck yourself.”

Like I just said, be a little inventive.

I groan when he grins wolfishly and thrusts his hips forward, his eyes glued to my face as I take in every pull of his fist.

“I am, dove, though I would really rather fuck you.”

I want out of the shower, out of this house, right now, this very minute, but I’m trapped and enthralled and so stupidly needy I can do nothing but stare and clench my legs together as he plants his left hand beside my head, giving me an unobstructed view of his cock.

“Yeah, keep your eyes on me, dove,” he grunts, speeding up his movements when I lick my lips and keep staring.

I can’t breathe or think past the need and hunger invading me when he reaches down and grabs one of my hands from my breast—God, I’ve been feeling myself up this whole time—and wraps it around his shaft, using his own to tighten my grip and start gliding it over his flesh.

I could pull away right now and walk out, leave him in this state of need and lustful desire, but, and it kills me to say it, even if only to myself, I’ve craved this as much as I have the feel of him filling my empty spaces.

I’d become addicted to his pleasure as much as my own, and feeling him thicken beneath my hand in that second before climax is as much a rush as anything he can ever make me feel.

So instead of walking, I do what I shouldn’t and grip him tighter, controlling the movements even as I wrench my eyes back up to his and watch his pleasure.

They dilate further, turning almost completely black before he thrusts against me and stiffens, pouring himself onto my hand and belly. Afterward, as we both breathe in pants and moans, I realize he hasn’t shouted my name, not once, as he usually does in the throes of passion.

The thought wrenches me back to earth as nothing else can, and I pull away, feeling utterly cheap and foolish, violated somehow. Not by him, because, even as I feel it, he starts peppering kisses across my face and neck, his hands stroking down my hips to rest at the juncture of my thighs.

“Open up.”