Читать книгу One Night Of Consequences Collection - Ким Лоренс, Annie West - Страница 22

THE charity ball was crowded already when they arrived, a sea of beautiful people dressed in black positioned around the ballroom, chatting and eating the very expensive canapes.

Heads turned when she and Zack walked down the marble staircase and down into the room. Everyone was looking at Zack, because it was impossible not to. She was fully appreciating just how he was viewed in the community now. A man of power and wealth, a man of unsurpassed beauty. If you could call what he possessed beauty. It was too masculine for that, and yet she wasn’t sure there was another word for it, either.

Pride flared in her stomach, low and warm. All the women in the room were looking at Zack with undisguised sexual hunger. And Zack was with her. Touching her, his hand low on her back, possessive.

She turned and pressed a kiss to his cheek. He looked at her. “What was that for?”

“Because,” she said.

He looked at her for a moment, a strange light in his eyes. “Let’s go find our table.”

“Okay,” she said, trying to ignore the tightening in her throat.

There was a table, for two, with place cards set on each empty plate. Zack held her chair out for her and she sat, her heart slamming against her ribs as she read the name that had been written in calligraphy on her place card.

Hannah Parsons.

With Zack’s name tacked on to hers, even. Clara felt dizzy. She looked down at the ring. Hannah’s ring. Hannah’s seat. Hannah’s man. She had to wonder if the necklace had been meant for Hannah, too.

She wrapped her fingers around the card and curled them into a fist, crumpling it and tossing it onto the marble floor.

“What the hell?” Zack asked.

“It had the wrong name on it,” she said stiffly.

“Does it matter?”

That hit even harder than seeing the name. “I suppose not.” She put her foot over the crumpled paper and squished it beneath the platform of her stiletto.

“You’re the one who’s here with me.” He stretched his hand toward hers, covering it, stroking her wrist. “No one else.”

She knew it. And in some ways she knew his words were sincere. But there was also something generic in them. There was something strangely generic to the whole evening and she couldn’t quite place what it was or why.

“Of course.” She looked into his eyes, tried to find something familiar now. Something of her friend. But she didn’t see it. She only saw the man as he presented himself to the world. Aloof, put together, charming. But there was no depth there. No feeling or warmth.

It was frightening.

Dinner was lovely, tiny bits of sculpted beauty made to be admired before being eaten. Of course it was marked up extravagantly, because the whole point of the evening was that the charity received donations.

A woman in a long, flowing dress walked up onto the stage, her air of authority making it obvious that she was the coordinator of the event, and a hushed silence fell over the crowd.

“Thank you all for coming tonight,” she said. “And for the very generous donation of your time and money to the Bay Area Children’s Hospital.”

She turned and looked toward their table, a smile on her face. “And tonight, we would also like to give special acknowledgment to Mr. Zack Parsons, who has donated enough money to revamp the entire Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit. Everything in the unit will be state of the art. It will be the best equipped facility in the state of California. There have been major advances in the field of Neo-Natal medicine over the past few years. We’re able to offer hope to babies, to families, who wouldn’t have had any as little as five years ago. And now, we’re able to offer even more. So, thank you, Mr. Parsons.”

The room erupted into applause and everyone stood. Except for Zack. Except for her. Her eyes stung, her entire body feeling numb.

Zack lifted his hand and nodded once, his acknowledgment. Her heart broke for him. What a wonderful gift he was giving to so many families. A gift he hadn’t been able to give to himself, to his own son.

She wanted to howl at the universe for the unfairness of it all. And yet there was no point. And Zack was there, broken, and probably in pain. She could be there for him. It was all she could do. And she would. Because she was his friend. His lover.

The speaker went on to talk about some more donations and then invited everyone to stay for dancing and an open bar.

After the applause died away, people started to wander around the room, talking and laughing, some people came to talk to Zack. She wanted to tell them to go away. Because she could feel the dark energy, the grief, radiating from him like a physical force. How was everyone else missing it?

She didn’t understand how they could miss what was so clear to her.

“Let’s go.” She put her hand on his, felt his pulse, pounding hard in his wrist. She ran her fingers along his forearm. She didn’t think he would accept loving words, but she could offer him comfort in another way. A way he could accept.

There was no question where things would end up tonight. No fighting it. They both knew it.

He nodded once and stood, she stood, too, and went to him, putting her hand on his back. He wrapped his arm around her waist as they headed out of the ballroom.

Zack’s chest felt too full. Everything felt like too much. The whole day. He shouldn’t have brought Clara with him tonight. It was one thing to sit in a room full of strangers and have them talk about his contribution to the NICU, but it was another to have someone sitting there, knowing why he’d done it. Someone else thinking of Jake. It was hard enough to be alone in it. Sharing it made it seem more real. It made him feel exposed.

It made him feel like everything, his failures, his pain, was written on him. Something he couldn’t hide, or scrub off no matter how many layers of control he tried to conceal it with.

Clara saw him.

When he’d picked her up tonight, he’d fully intended on keeping her at a distance, putting her in her place. A new place. Because he had mistresses, women who were with him for the sole purpose of warming his bed and accompanying him to events.

He wasn’t friends with those women. He didn’t eat their baked goods, he didn’t know that they wore yoga pants to bed when there wasn’t a man around. He didn’t know that they were insecure about their bodies, or that their favorite band was still that group of long-haired teenage boys that had been so popular in the nineties.

He didn’t know anything about them beyond what they looked like naked.

He knew the other stuff about Clara. And he knew the naked stuff. And tonight he’d been determined to focus only on the latter. If he couldn’t keep her as only a friend, and he’d proven he wasn’t doing a very good job of that, then he would have her as a mistress. Because what had happened at her apartment, the way they’d shared dinner, jokes, then made love, him holding her while she’d slept … he couldn’t do that. It was too reckless. To out of his control.

He had to move her into the compartment he could deal with. And she seemed determined to push her way back out.

The expression on her face when she saw the wrong card in her spot had been so sad, stricken, as though someone had slapped her.

And he’d felt it in him. As though her emotion was his. He’d always felt connected to Clara, but this was different. Sharper. Impossible to deny. Beyond his control.

He should have taken her home. Yet he’d still taken her back to his house. Because he had planned on having her tonight, had been obsessed with it all week. If only to prove that he could sleep with her without having his insides flayed. Sex was only sex. It didn’t have to be personal, it didn’t have to mean anything. It didn’t have to be related to the awful, tight feeling in his chest.

She was beautiful tonight, incredible in that form-fitting black dress and the gem, enticing in the valley of her cleavage, drawing his eye, tormenting him.

She was standing by the massive living-room windows, the bay in the background, city lights glittering on the inky surface of the waves. He wanted her. Here and now. A good thing he’d planned for it. It wasn’t spur-of-the-moment, it wasn’t beyond his control.

He had condoms and everything else he needed. He was in control. He desperately needed the control. He tightened his hand into a fist, steadied it, ignored the tremor that ran through his fingers and skated up his arm, jolting his heart.

Ignoring the strange tenderness he felt when he looked at her. This wasn’t about feeling, not in an emotional sense. This was physical. It was sex.

“Take off your dress,” he said.

She reached behind herself and unzipped the gown, letting it fall to the floor. She wasn’t wearing a bra, only a small triangle of lace keeping her from being completely bare. That and the necklace, the emerald heavy and glittering between her breasts.

She reached around to remove it, her breasts rising with the action, pink tipped and perfect.

“No,” he ground out. “Leave it on.” A reminder. A reminder that she was the same as every other woman he’d ever been with. The exchange of gifts, jewelry, that was how it worked. It was invariable, it was safe. It was unchallenging.

She dropped her hands to her sides and he walked closer to her, loving the way the moonlight spilled silver over her pale curves. The way the deep shadows accentuated the dip of her small waist, the round fullness of her hips and breasts.

She was a woman. There was no denying it. And he was starving for her.

But he would wait. He would draw it out. Because he was the master of this game. He was always in charge. He had forgotten that sometimes over the past few weeks, had allowed her inexperience, the nature of their friendship, to change the way he approached it.

Not now.

She’s a woman. Only a woman. The same as any other.

No. Not the same. His mind rebelled against that thought immediately. There had never been a more exquisite woman, that much he knew for certain. There had never been a figure, not since Eve, better designed to tempt a man.

She was the epitome of sensual beauty, more seductive simply standing there than any other woman could have been if she’d been trying.

Clara.

Her name flashed through his mind, loud, a reminder.

No. He didn’t need it. He wasn’t thinking of her. Only of his own need and how she might fulfill it. He would pleasure her, too, as he did all of his lovers. But it wasn’t different. It couldn’t be different. Not again. Not after that night in her apartment.

“Turn around for me,” he said. “Face the window.”

She obeyed again. She was like a perfect hourglass, the elegant line of her back enticing. He walked over to her, extending his hand and tracing the dip of her spine. She shivered beneath his touch.

“Do you like that?” he asked.

“I’ve liked everything you’ve ever done to me.” Her voice, so sweet, a bit vulnerable. Not a temptress.

Clara.

He put his hands on her hips and tugged her back against him, let her feel the hard ridge of his arousal, the blatant, purely sexual evidence of what he wanted from her. Her indrawn breath, the short, sweet sound of pleasure that escaped her lips, let him know that she was tracking with him. Important.

He would never do anything she didn’t want.

He put his hand on her stomach, soft, slightly rounded. He liked that about her, too, that she was so feminine, curved everywhere. Absolute perfection.

He cupped her butt with his other hand, her flesh silken beneath his palm. “You’re beautiful,” he said. She leaned back against him, her head against his chest. Her slid his hand up to palm her breast, teasing her nipples as he continued to stroke her backside.

He gripped the side of her panties and drew them down her legs.

He move his hand back behind her, moving it forward, teasing her slick folds before parting them and sliding his fingers deep inside of her. She gasped, spreading her thighs a bit wider to accommodate him.

The line of her neck was so elegant, irresistible. He bent his head and kissed her there, tasting the salt of her skin, so familiar now, as he slid his free hand up to her breast and squeezed her nipple tightly between his thumb and forefinger. She arched against him, her breathing growing harsher, more shallow.

He had her pleasure in his hands, how he touched her and where, dictating everything she did. Everything she felt. This was like everything else. Every other sexual encounter he’d had as an adult. He was in charge of their pleasure, both of them. He decided when things happened and how.

This thing with Clara hadn’t been right from the beginning, because he hadn’t managed to put her in her place for their affair. He hadn’t separated their friendship from it. That was why he’d shared with her, held her while she slept. That was why he’d started feeling things.

But he knew it now. He knew what he had to do. He could still have her. He could get a handle on everything, and then he could have her. He touched the necklace between her breasts, fingers sliding over the gem. A reminder of exactly what they had between them.

She tried to turn and he held her so she was facing the window, away from him. He reached over and picked up a condom sheathing himself and turning her to the side so that she was standing in front of the couch.

“Hold on to the back of it,” he said. She obeyed, bending at the waist, gripping the back of the couch. She looked back at him, her eyes round, questioning. Familiar.

He chose not to focus on her face. He gripped her hips, looked at the curve of her hips, how her body dipped in beautifully, perfectly, at her waist.

He positioned himself at the entrance to her body.

She made a short, low sound that vibrated through her. “Okay?” he asked, his teeth gritted tight, every ounce of control spent on moving slowly, on not thrusting in to her the rest of the way and satisfying the need that was roaring inside of him.

“Yes,” she said.

He pushed into her the rest of the way, her body so hot and tight it took every ounce of his willpower to keep from coming the moment he was inside.

“Oh, Zack,” she breathed. “Zack.”

His name on her lips, her voice, so utterly Clara. So familiar and still so exciting.

Clara. Her name was in his head on his lips, with each and every thrust, with each sweet pulse of her internal muscles around his shaft.

And suddenly there was no denying it. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see her face. Her smell, the feel of her skin beneath his fingertips, the way it felt to be in her body, all of it was pure, undeniable Clara Davis.

The woman who baked orange cupcakes and had a pink wreath on the door. The woman knew about his past, about the darkest moments of his life. The woman who smiled at him every morning. Who could always make him smile, no matter what. Who put powdered creamer in his coffee when he made her angry.

The woman who lit him on fire, body and soul.

He couldn’t pretend she was someone else, or that it didn’t matter who she was. There was no way. No one had ever been like her before, no one ever would be.

He had no control. He had nothing. He was at her mercy. If he’d had to get on his knees and beg her for a kiss tonight he would have done it, because he needed her.

Not just in a purely sexual sense. He needed her.

His climax built, hard and fast, the pitch too steep, too unexpected for him to control. He put his hand between her thighs and stroked her, trying to bring her with him. Her body tightened around him, her orgasm hitting hard and fast. When she cried out her pleasure, then he let go.

“Clara,” he whispered, resting his forehead on her back as he gave in. As he let the release crash through him, devastating everything in its path.

He released his hold on her hips, his body shaking, spent as though he’d just battled his way through a storm. Sweat made his skin slick all over. His hands were trembling, his breathing sharp and jagged.

He looked at her. At Clara. There were red marks on her hips where his fingers had pressed into her flesh. Where he had lost all control. He brushed his fingers along the part where he’d marked her, his chest tightening, regret forming, a knot he couldn’t breathe around.

She turned to look at him, a smile on her lips. She straightened, naked and completely unconcerned about it. Nothing like she’d been at first. Her confidence, the fact that she felt beautiful, shone from her face.

Her beautiful face. Unique. Essential. So damn important.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She blushed, looking away from him. “Didn’t I tell you not to apologize to me all the time?”

“What about when I need to?” he asked, moving toward where she was standing, brushing his fingertips over her hips. “I was holding on to you too tightly,” he whispered.

She met his eyes and they held. He saw deep, intense emotion there. A connection, affection. Something real. It wasn’t part of a facade, or a game. It was the way she always looked at him, whether they were in his office, in her living room or in bed. She was the same woman. She cared for him. She looked at him like he mattered to her.

The realization rocked him, filled him. Every piece and fiber of his being absorbing it. It made it easier to breathe, as though he hadn’t truly been drawing in breath for years and now he was again.

For the first time in fourteen years. Since he’d lost his reason for breath, his desire to give any sort of emotion, to give of himself. He felt like he’d found it again. In Clara’s eyes.

“I didn’t mind,” she said.

The moment, the tiny sliver of freedom he felt evaporated, chased away by a biting, clawing panic that was working from his stomach up through his chest. He had felt this way before and it had ended in utter destruction.

He knew what this was. And he knew he couldn’t have it. Wouldn’t allow himself to have it. Not ever. Not ever again.

He took a step away from her and bent down, picking her dress up from the floor, rubbing his fingers over the sequins. He felt choked, like his throat was closing in on itself, like his chest was too full for his lungs to expand.

He could do it. He could have her still, keep her where she belonged in his life. In his bed.

He had been careless again. He had lost control. He could find it again. He had to.

“Get dressed,” he said, handing her the gown.

“What?”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“What?” she said again.

He didn’t look at her face. He couldn’t.

“You and I are having an affair, Clara, I made that clear the other day. I don’t cuddle up with the women I’m having sex with at night, and I damn sure don’t have their toothbrush on my sink. That’s just how it works.”

“And I think I told you, I am not just one of your mistresses.”

“When you’re in my bed … or my couch, you are.”

“I am your friend,” she said, her voice ringing in the room.

“Not when we’re here, like this. Now, you’re just the woman I’m sleeping with. We aren’t going to curl up and watch a chick flick after what just happened.”

She jerked back, pulling her dress over her breasts. “I’m going to go get dressed. Send the car. I’m not riding back with you, and I’m not staying, not now so I think the decent thing to do, if you still remember decency, would be to arrange me a ride.”

“Clara …”

“We’ll talk tomorrow. I can’t now.”

She turned and walked away, her steps clumsy. She ducked into his downstairs bathroom and closed the door. He heard the click of the lock.

And he didn’t blame her. But he had to define the relationship, as much for her benefit as for his. Yes, he had lied. She was different. But she couldn’t be. It couldn’t happen.

He would fix it. He’d gotten it wrong tonight, by denying the one thing that had been there from the beginning. His feelings. The sex … he would pretend it hadn’t happened. Whatever he had to do to fix it, to have her never look at him like that again. As if he was a cold stranger, as if he’d physically hurt her.

It would have to go back to how it was. Because he could live without sex. He wasn’t sure he could live without Clara.

It was the longest car ride in the world. No one was on the streets, and it technically took half the time it normally did to get from Zack’s place to hers, but it seemed like the longest ever.

Because everything hurt. And she was wearing a really fabulous gown that had already been torn from her body once, during the most intense, emotion-filled sexual encounter they’d ever had. There had been something dark in Zack tonight. A battle. She wasn’t stupid. She knew something had changed, she knew, at least she hoped, that he wasn’t as horrible as he’d seemed when he’d sent her away.

She bunched up the flaring skirt of her gown when the car stopped and she slid out, letting the dress fan out around her. She gave the driver a halfhearted, awkward wave. He knew her. She’d used his services quite a few times with Zack. Having him be a part of this, the most awful, embarrassing, heart-wrenching moment of her life wasn’t so great.

Because it was two in the morning and it was completely obvious what had just happened. That Zack had had sex with her, sex, at its most base, and had her go home rather than have her spend the night in his bed.

She curled her hands into fists and let her nails cut into her palms, tears stinging her eyes. She almost hated him right now. It almost rivaled how much she loved him.

Almost.

If she didn’t love him, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

You’re my mistress.

Like hell she was. He might be the only man who’d seen her naked, but she was certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was the only woman who’d ever seen him cry.