My next answer comes as a whisper. “She’s dead too.”

“How?” He watches me calmly.

His hand is still on my ankle, and I wish for his touch to leave me. I can’t deny his touch, and these memories are too painful.

“Please don’t.” I’m begging even though I know I’ll tell him everything he wants to know for this touch.

He pulls my ankle gently toward his hip as my body glides smoothly toward him. Once he’s pulled me up to straddle his hips, and my face is mere inches from his, he speaks again. “How?”

If I’d thought I’d been whispering before, my voice is barely audible when I speak next. “She was killed too.”

“Where were you?” His eyes are wide with interest and perhaps a bit of shock. His hand holds me gently at the small of my back.

“Watching.” I croak out the answer as my eyes flit away as quickly as I can move them.

His eyes widen considerably as the shock sets in, but he remains calm and quiet. He doesn’t push further. He appraises me with his ever-watchful gaze, swallowing over a lump in his throat, but he says nothing. I’m close to his body, so close, and I want nothing else but to enjoy this closeness, but I can’t. I’m frozen in my vulnerability. He’s so close to my secret, so dangerously close. With each passing second he allows me to keep my silence, I relax a bit further. His hands move to my hips, holding me firmly to his groin. I’m frozen and breathing more shallowly than I ought to, and as I continue to look at him, he runs his hands gently up my back. Another caress. Since when does he caress? Like everything, he’s exceptional at it.

His hands run up and down, always returning to my hips, and then they fall to my bottom. Clutching each cheek, he squeezes and pulls me hard to him. It’s intimate, but not overtly sexual, and I wonder again where this sudden softness has come from. I want to reach for him, but I can’t. Or maybe I won’t. Would he stop me? I want to wrap my arms around him, pull my chest to his, but can I do that?

As I continue to look at him, and he continues to gently rub my bottom, I ask. He’s asked so much of me, why can’t I ask something from him as well? “Can I touch you?” I can’t disguise the hopefulness in my voice, and I’m sure it shows clearly in my wide-open eyes as well.

He regards me intently. Again, his jaw clenches and releases in his consternation. Eventually, he nods, and as he continues to gaze at me, I run my thumb gently and slowly down his neck. When my hand reaches his chest, my other joins it, and I run them around his sides, enfolding him in my arms. As I pull myself to his chest, and my head slowly sinks to his shoulder, I continue to watch his eyes. They are watching me as well, intrigued. In the last moment I see them before my head drops to his shoulder, they flutter closed as he exhales the deep breath he’s kept captive since feeling my touch.

I’m tense and nervous against his chest, but when he doesn’t push me away and his breathing deepens and calms, I start to relax into his body. He slowly starts to caress me again, and my nervous tension releases entirely. I listen with my ear to his chest as his heart beats strongly and surely. I revel in the closeness, and in my contented state, I decide to test the waters. I usually know when I’m playing with fire, and I’m usually powerless to stop my mouth from pushing further. This time is no exception, but he’s asked me to give him so many of my own secrets. Doesn’t he owe me just one of his own?

I pull my body reluctantly from him and inhale a deep breath. “Why do you and Mr. Grayson hate one another so much?” I almost instantly regret asking the question as his face hardens. My regret at having spoken is also quite usual as well…

But, I hold his eyes steady nevertheless, and, eventually, he lets out a deep relenting breath. “A disagreement about one of the women that worked here.”

I’m suddenly hit with a pang of jealousy. “Were you attracted to her?” I’m almost afraid to hear the answer. My heart is gripped by an incredibly painful vise that threatens to break me in two. I know what this pain means, and I don’t welcome it. It means I care. Not a good idea, as Liz made clear.

His face is puzzled, amused even, as he shakes his head. “No, not in the least.”

“Well, you must have cared for her if she caused such a disagreement…” My tone is almost accusatory, and I chastise the weakness in my voice even as the words are spoken.

He smirks. “Very much, but not in the way you assume.” His smirk lasts as he slowly pulls my body back down to his. It’s the last of his secrets he’s going to give me, and he’s making this point very clear.

I’m once again planted firmly to his chest, and it isn’t until the water cools to uncomfortable and a chill takes over my body that he pulls the drain.

When we’re dried and our towels dropped to the side of the bathtub, he again takes my hand and leads me back out of the bathroom. He stops us at the bed, and my body warms with desire for him again. He runs a gentle hand down my arm as he leans down to my ear from behind me, his cock gently tickling my back.

“Do you want me again?” His voice is warm and seductive.

I nod without hesitation as I turn to him. A slight smirk, bordering on a smile, crosses his mouth, and he leaves me to crawl onto the bed. He lies in the middle of the bed looking up at me. My pathetic jealously is instantly forgotten as I kneel next to him. The look in his eyes is for me, and not for some woman that meant something to him long ago in a different time.

I’m waiting patiently for him to speak, but he doesn’t. Instead, he strokes his cock gently while I watch. After a couple of strokes, he holds himself erect by his shaft. I look to his eyes, but he still refuses to speak. So I lean my mouth down to him, but this isn’t what he wants. He stills me by a gentle hand on my shoulder and a slight shake of the head. He reaches between my legs and runs his index finger the length of my wet slit before he rubs my moisture over the engorged head of his cock, and now I understand. He wants me to fuck him.

My pulse quickens, and my pussy warms and clenches at the thought, but I don’t know how to do this. Derek is regarding me coolly. He sees my nervousness, but he doesn’t care. He expects me to comply, and he knows I will. I mount his hips as he holds his erection, waiting for me to impale myself on it. I rise up on shaky knees and align myself with him. His lips part as his body waits for my touch, and as I slowly lower my opening to his incredibly impressive cock, he holds his breath. When I make first contact, my stomach muscles twitch, and as I push down past the head of his penis, I can feel it pop past the taut skin of my hole.

I slide slowly and persistently down his length as his head falls back and a loud groan escapes his lips. His jaw tightens and his eyes smolder in heat. He moves his hands to my hips, pulling me the last couple of inches to his body. They are the most painful inches. He’s deep inside me, and when he reaches my core, it shoots pain through my body, but it is the most incredible sensation of fullness. He watches me and sees my nervousness at this new position, and the control that it puts me in. He gently rubs my hips around to my bottom, but he doesn’t ask me to move. He just watches. Waiting.

As I look down at him, he runs one hand from my hip around to my belly, studying the movement of his hand all the while. He strokes me gently with his palm flat against my stomach before it slowly works its way up to one of my breasts. His eyes are focused so intently on my body and every inch of skin that he touches. There’s an unexpected look in his eyes, intrigued, confused. He’s out of his element, and it shows, but I love this touch, and his vulnerability is intoxicating. His index finger slowly traces lightly around the areola while his eyes continue to explore my nipples. He then gently strokes the tight nub of my nipple. He continues to watch my eyes, his cock occasionally flexing within my tight sheath. When he leans up to my breast, I gasp. His mouth opens, and as I watch in stunned silence, he lightly teases the nub with his tongue. He then clamps down lightly with his front teeth, and my breath is stolen again. It is incredible. He’s touching me with his mouth. The man who doesn’t do intimacy is using his mouth to pleasure me. Me! And God what pleasure.

After he finishes with my nipple, he sits farther up to me, and with a gentle but insistent hand at the back of my neck, he pulls me down to him as his body sinks back to the mattress. Our faces are close, so intimately close it’s almost harder not to kiss him than it is to hold his gaze. For a moment, I think he might kiss me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he thrusts up into my body, demanding I push down to his. We find a new rhythm together, and it works so perfectly. He thrusts as I push down to meet him. He clutches the cheeks of my ass, pulling me harder and more vigorously as his thrusting quickens. My nipples are brushing his chest, sending radiating warmth through my chest, and every time they do, he glances down at our meeting bodies, his arousal mounting. With one final loud thrust, we find our release together, and he moves one hand from my bottom to my face, where he brushes my curls that have found their way free of my upswept hair. As our bodies slow, he pulls gently at a strand, twisting it in his fingers as he studies it. My breathing hasn’t yet slowed, and I’m still taking in every amount of air I can get.

When at long last he finishes looking at me and touching my loose curls, he rolls us to our sides, gently pulling his length from my body. A hiss escapes my mouth at his withdrawal, and his lips part marginally at my response to his loss. He continues to watch me with a look that borders on confusion. I know, though he holds so much back, that his confusion is at his response to me. Whatever little glimmer of humanity this might symbolize, I’ll take it. It’s enough. He feels. It doesn’t mean he’ll compromise; hell, it doesn’t mean he’s capable of ever fighting past his over-restrained soul tucked away and hidden from the world. What it does mean is there is a light buried somewhere deep inside, a light I desperately want to find. God, I want to know this man. But not tonight.

There is no pushing him, and I’ve suffered too much emotional anguish in the past two days not to take this small opportunity to regain my footing. So, difficult as it is, and fighting everything that my body wants to do, I pull away and sit up to the side of the bed. He watches calmly, not so much as the slightest degree of what he’s thinking flashing in his eyes now. And I speak. They aren’t the words I want to say; they are the words that I must say. “I should go.”

I want him to disagree, but I know he won’t. Instead he watches me. My every last move is captured by his eyes. As I stretch, as I stand, as I walk to the door where my dress lays in a heap, as I slowly turn it right-side out, and then pull it back over my head, he watches. And with one final look to him from the door, I bid him a quiet “good night.” He responds in kind.

Chapter 13

Life has never been easy since my parents were killed, and this place has pushed me nearly to my breaking point. But in all its cold, emotional emptiness, I don’t miss the life I came from. I have an unnerving fear that I risk losing myself, my heart, my ability to feel anything at all here, but I don’t fear starving, or going cold, or being tracked down like a dog and threatened. It’s a difficult dichotomy to grasp.

When Derek comes to speak with me in my room the next day, I’ve just gotten out of the shower. My hair is loose and crazy, and he walks into my bathroom while I’m standing naked in front of the mirror making ridiculous faces at myself in admonishment of my tangled mess of a head. He catches one such odd face, and with a raised eyebrow and a smirk, he watches me. I’ve learned his smirk is as close to a smile as I can hope to get, and my soul warms when I see it.

I feel a sudden need to cover myself, which is ridiculous considering how much of my body this man has seen. Wet, unclothed, and my hair trailing long and crazy down my back has me feeling utterly self-conscious, but as he speaks, he’s all business. “We need to talk about tomorrow night. Get dressed.”

There is little Derek tells me that Liz hasn’t already filled in, but there are a few points he’s adamant about. If I’m approached with any requests for my time, I’m to say nothing whatsoever and to send them directly to him. If any man wishes to speak with me in private, I’m not to leave the gaming room floor under any circumstances, and finally, I’m welcome to have a drink or two, but I’m not permitted in any way to over drink. Apparently he doesn’t trust me to make sensible decisions while I’m drunk, and he wants me lucid and cautious. Derek reiterates some of what Liz has already told me. Most of the men are regulars, and they’ll notice I’m a new face, but what Derek is most adamant about is that I not put myself in any compromising positions with the men. As though he need worry that I would. By the time he leaves, I’m more nervous than I’d like to be, and by the following afternoon, I’m an absolute wreck.