The Perfect Ingredient (Dare Valley) (17 page)

When they arrived, he didn’t even put the car in park. Only turned to her, running his gaze over her face.

“Goodnight, Elizabeth.”

“Goodnight.” Her chest hurt, and she could barely breathe out the word.

He didn’t wait until she was inside before tearing out of her driveway—the only indication he was angry.

When she closed the door and leaned back against it, her eyes started to burn. Her vision wavered.

She didn’t want to feel
this
with him again.

Sharing the full story of her past was something she’d never done directly with anyone outside of Rhett and Jane, and heck, she’d only filled Rhett in on certain details last month. Matt, Mac, and Abbie knew she’d been stalked—she’d shared that information with their tight circle before she and Jane were unmasked as Vixen and Raven—but they didn’t know the specifics.

Only Jane and now Rhett knew Elizabeth Saunders wasn’t her real name. Liz Parenti had died long ago, but she was like a ghost who haunted Elizabeth wherever she went: the poor girl from the trailer park whose mother sometimes stripped in two-bit dance clubs and whose father ran a broken-down dusty patch of mobile homes, drinking all day.

Terrance wouldn’t settle for less than the full truth. There was no way she could tell him, “I needed a change, so I became Vixen.”

But how was she supposed to tell him about Vince? Especially since he possessed his own violent temper.

She’d run from Terrance out of fear, but not just the fear he’d turn out to be like Vince. He was the only man who’d made her want to wash all the makeup off, remove the wig, and let him see Elizabeth.

Well, now he could see her for who she was, and he wanted to learn more.

He
cared
about her.

Other than Jane and Rhett and their growing circle, no one had ever cared about her.

She still wasn’t sure anyone other than her new family could, but Terrance was offering her that chance.

Could she take it?

She clenched her eyes shut and listened to the silence in her home. It was deafening. She didn’t want to be here. Not when she could be with Terrance again—laughing and joking, making love.

He wasn’t like Vince.
He wasn’t.

Pushing off from the door, she ran to the garage before she could lose her courage and turned on her car. Backing out, she realized she didn’t want to be lonely anymore.

She wanted to be Terrance’s, regardless of how it turned out.

If things went bad, she could always run again.

Chapter 18

Terrance’s fists were already swelling and bruised from hitting the bag, but he had been too pissed to put on boxing gloves or change into work-out clothes. He’d just stripped down to his briefs and started pounding. He switched to the jab, straight right, left hook boxing combination he’d been taught by a celebrity boxing friend and felt sweat gather across his bare chest.

She’d closed him out.

Again.

The hurt had been too monumental for him to do anything but sit there, barely tasting his meal, his gut twisting. He’d hoped to finally get to know the real Elizabeth.

But she hadn’t dropped her mask.

No, she was more mysterious now than ever. He punched the bag again, adding some footwork, needing to burn off his anger and the devastation under it.

She had her secrets—he knew that much—and he wondered again why she’d had the bat by her door. Did she have some crazy ex he didn’t know about? Is that why she’d become Vixen?

His mother had been a woman of secrets, and he’d come to hate her for it. All her lies about where she spent her days, how she spent the paltry sums of money that crossed their threshold, who his real father was.

By the time he was ten, she’d named five different men. He’d stopped asking.

His breath was wheezing out. He didn’t need Elizabeth and her complications. And he certainly didn’t need to feel like shit over her.

He’d been crazy to think they could rediscover the good times between them without lifting up the doormat and seeing all the grubs crawling beneath it.

He finally cursed like he wanted to, punching the bag once for each word that echoed in the empty room.

“Fuck. Shit. Damn…” He kept a mental count as his knuckles cracked and bled. He lost one thousand dollars to his Cuss Fund by the time he was done.

When he rested his head against the bag, defeat rained down on him like lead.

The doorbell rang, and he straightened. Were his ears playing tricks on him? A moment later, he heard it again.

What the hell? If some pizza delivery man was lost, he was about to become the convenient target of Terrance’s rage. His kitchen staff scattered when he got this pissed.

Wiping the blood from his knuckles on his briefs, he decided he didn’t give a crap if his unexpected visitor saw him like this. Hell, he’d been this exposed at Elizabeth’s f-ing dance class.

As he ripped the door open, he shouted, “What in the hell do you want?”

When he noticed it was Elizabeth standing there, he had to brace his hand against the frame.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her face white. “I…became Vixen because I was running from something, and other than Jane and Rhett, I’ve never told anyone the whole story. Rhett didn’t even know until recently…”

His hand slid down the frame, as an emotion slid through him, something violent and hot. “We can’t do this. I thought we could, but we can’t. I…goddammit, Vix, you hurt me again, and I just can’t take it.”

She stepped forward and raised a shaking hand to his jaw, caressing it. Her blue eyes were like the ocean at midnight. “Do you think you’re the only one? It hurts me too, and I don’t like it either. That’s why I…left you without anything but a note before. I was so scared.”

“Oh, babe,” he whispered and lifted his hand to cup her cheek.

“I missed you,”
she whispered, “and I can’t handle seeing you again. Remembering how things were between us. How they still are.”

Her skin was like velvet without the heavy makeup she used to wear, and the tears in her eyes made his belly quiver.

“I missed you too.”

“Then,” she said softly, brushing her body against him, and he wasn’t sure if it was a question or a request.

He only knew he couldn’t refuse it.

Yanking her mouth to his, he fused them together, devouring her. All of the time spent apart made his hands impatient as he pulled her inside the house and slammed the door behind them.

She grabbed his head and opened her lips to him, and God yes, it was just as he remembered it. The hottest kissing he’d ever experienced. Her tongue slid inside his mouth, and he groaned as his stroked hers. One hand slid down her hip and cupped her sweet round butt, pulling her to him. She moved her body against him in that slow sensual way of hers, the one that had tortured him at the dance class, the one that always drove him to the edge of madness.

Soon she was yanking down his briefs and grabbing a hold of him. His hips jerked in response.
Slow down,
part of him thought, but there was no way. He’d been without her for too long, and yesterday had aroused him to a fever pitch.

His hands tore off her silk shirt, sending buttons flying and pinging off the hardwood floor. She reached behind and took off her bra, then pushed her skirt and hose down her thighs.

Her boots were in the way, but he didn’t care right now. He kept their mouths fused together and cupped her breasts, so warm and soft and heavy in his hands. She moaned deep and long in her throat, then pushed him back, sinking to the floor, sitting on her backside as she dispensed with the boots and the rest of her clothes.

“Hang on. We need a condom.” His voice was raspy, like he’d gone all night without water.

She dove for her purse, which was thankfully on the floor, and pulled out a few packages, throwing them his way. “Put one on. I need you. Right. Now.”

He understood. He burned for her too.

“We’ll take it slow next time,” he said, sheathing himself and sinking to the floor as she leaned back, radiant in her feminine glory.

His hand sought the place between her thighs, and it was too much. She was more than ready, and so was he. Resting his hands beside her shoulders, he sank into her and arched his back.

God, it was so good.

It had never been this good with anyone else.

Her legs wrapped around his hips, and their dance turned primal, instinctive, out of control. He set his mouth to that place where her neck and shoulders met and bit her lightly, coming into her hard and deep.

She started keening, and he knew she was there.

When she exploded around him, he couldn’t hold back. He emptied himself, shaking from the force. Sinking onto her, he tried not to crush her, but he just couldn’t leave her yet. Not when everything in him said he had found his way back to something special. Something perfect.

She nuzzled his neck, humming, and he angled back to kiss her sweetly and softly on the mouth. He gathered his strength and rested his weight on one arm, wanting…no
needing
to caress her cheek. Gaze into her eyes.

They were open and wary, like she was as swept away as he was, and not completely happy about it.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Hey,” she whispered back.

He didn’t know what else to say. His brain still wasn’t working. His body felt like an empty husk. And his heart...well, it was throbbing, and not because it was beating crazy fast.

So he kissed her again. And again and again, until her legs relaxed around his waist and her hands gently crept around his back. This time, he took his time and rediscovered the luscious curve of her bottom lip. Ran his tongue along the bow in the center of her mouth. And sunk even further into the deep pleasure of kissing this woman.

Vixen.

Elizabeth.

Whoever she was, he knew her completely like this. She’d never been able to hide from him here.

She finally turned her face away and pressed her cheek to his. “I did miss you. So much.”

He clenched his eyes shut, his hand finally tangling in her real hair, which was as soft as corn silk. “Me too, babe. Me too.”

And as he took her mouth again, he pulled her up with him and awkwardly lifted her up until she straddled his waist.

“I want to make love to you in a bed this time,” he told her as he crossed the room.

She only fitted her mouth to his in response, and this time when they made love, it was sweet and slow, and it leveled all the walls he’d erected in his heart after she had left him.

Chapter 19

Part of Elizabeth felt like she was floating high above the ground in a hot air balloon. But the other part shook a little, as if walking along the ledge of a twenty-story building.

Everything she’d ever felt for him was back, and almost a thousand times larger because she knew what it was to live without him. She didn’t want to feel that again.

Her head rested on his chest, and her leg was curled over his body. He was stroking her hair softly as if he couldn’t get enough of this part of her real self she’d always denied him. Yet there existed a new awareness between them, and it had the teeth of their earlier silence.

He was waiting for her to explain.

“I don’t know where you want me to start,” she finally whispered.

He shifted until he was facing her and leaned in to kiss her again, that mere brush of lips so sweet, so undemanding, that it made tears burn her eyes again. If he didn’t stop this, she was going to make a mess of herself.

“How about you tell me where you were born?” he asked when he settled back, his arm still stroking her waist.

Where better to begin than the beginning? “I was born in a trailer park outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. We didn’t have health insurance, so a neighbor helped my mom.”

Those bottle-green eyes seemed as if they were staring into her soul, but she made herself hold his gaze.

“We didn’t have a lot of money. My mom sometimes stripped, and my dad took care of the trailer park when he wasn’t drinking.”

“So the dance stuff…” he mused.

“I’ve always loved it, but I used to be ashamed of feeling that way. I forced myself to get over it. Dancing’s…magical. There’s nothing dirty about the way I do it.”

“The way you do it is perfect,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it.

After that lovely touch, it took her a moment to decide what to share next. “I was good at school. I had a few teachers who knew…my situation, and they told me college was the way out for me. I’m…well, I’m really smart, which might surprise you because of Vixen.”

She held her breath, hoping he wasn’t going to be one of those guys who didn’t like learning he was with a smart woman. Vince hadn’t liked that she had ranked higher in their class at Harvard than he did.

“That doesn’t surprise me at all.”

The tightness in her chest eased. “I managed to win some scholarships and get into Harvard, and that’s where I met—”

“Wait a minute. You went to Harvard? Just how smart are we talking here?”

This time she shrugged her shoulder and looked down at his chest. “Smart.”

“
Elizabeth.
”

“Okay, I have an IQ of 160.”

His mouth closed with an audible pop. “But that’s genius level.”

“Yes. So, as I was saying, I met Jane at Harvard.”

He was shaking his head now and reached for a strand of her hair again, caressing it between his thumb and forefinger. “No wonder you have such a strong bond. You’ve been friends for a long time. You never would tell me how old you were.”

No, Vixen wasn’t the kind of woman who shared her age. “I’m thirty-one.”

“I didn’t know I was with a younger woman,” he said with a teasing smile.

She gave him a playful shove. “Are you implying I look older than you?”

“Never.” He gave her a soft kiss. “Back to your story. So, you ended up rooming with a prominent politician’s daughter. Nice twist of fate.”

No doubt someone was looking out for her that day. “It was a mistake, and her father tried to correct it, but we just knew we were sisters when we met. There was this click. Jane refused to change to a more ‘appropriate’ roommate.”