Chapter Ten
Graham
By the time the last guest cleared out and the overnight people bedded down for the night, Lee was flirty drunk. The final hour of the party he’d rubbed up against me like a horny lion every chance he got. In the normal course of things none of that would have bothered me. It usually preceded nasty Lee the second we were alone.
Fuck, I was in trouble here. As much as I tried, I couldn’t completely shut off my body’s reaction to his antics. And that pissed me off. If any situation should have made me unreceptive it should have been having a new Leland lie come to light.
It was galling that it didn’t provide cover for his inescapable appeal, and I latched onto annoyance—hell, I was grabbing at anything I could—to keep me on target when we got to our bedroom. Lee could scatter my senses and shut down my thoughts like an electromagnetic pulse let loose across my body.
For all his declarations of love, I’d had to accept an ugly reality this night. Leland did not exist in the hemisphere of truth and it was very possible everything he’d ever said to me was a lie.
He lusted after me sexually. That was true. No man could fake that. But the rest of it, all those balls were up in the air in yet-to-be-determined status. What I’d do to Lee was yet to be determined as well.
Lee made a clumsy stop, his arms a sloppy drape around my shoulders, then turned back to Patricia. “Night, Patty. Don’t stay up with the cleanup team. They can handle it on their own. You’ve helped us enough. Thank you for everything.”
“It was a good party, wasn’t it?” She leaned in and kissed him on his cheek, that doting smile of hers brightening her face. “I was glad to do it. You’re my son now, too. See you in the morning.”
I watched my mom disappear to her wing of the house then smoothly stepped out of Lee’s clutches. Being alone kicked up what I’d struggled to contain, but we were ten steps from our bedroom and I prayed to God I could hold it together until we got there.
“I love Mom,” Leland announced overly enthusiastic, following behind me to our room.
I gritted my teeth and waited.
Swinging our door open, I plastered a fake smile on my face and motioned him in. Lee laughed—who knew at what—kissed my neck, and as he walked, dropped his pants enough to give a full view of his delectable ass.
I turned the latch behind me, leaned back against the door, and watched him collapse on the bed. Somehow he’d gotten his pants off in the handful of steps across the room, and he turned on his hip, golden head resting in his palm, looking absurd wearing only his lavender shirt and shoes.
Even mildly drunk, Lee had panache no matter what he did; he looked painfully sexy as well. And the coup de grace of his pose was that luscious cock of his was at full alert, beckoning me.
I stared at him, thoughts racing, and instead of arousal, what I felt was pain. Numbing—thank fuck—crushing pain from my follicles to my toenails.
Smirking, he pushed his mussed hair from his brow. “Why are you standing there staring at me that way? Not that I don’t like it. Well, everything but the not being undressed part. That I would change.”
“I haven’t decided what I want to do.”
His brows shot up and he bit his lower lip. “If you’re open for suggestions—”
I waved him off. “I’m not.”
He eased onto his back, head on pillow, legs spread and bent, and stroked his cock from root to head. “You get me so hot, baby. Get your sweet ass in this bed.”
Another stroke.
No missile between my legs.
My cock not answering was a first.
I unfastened my cuffs and rolled up my sleeves.
“Oh, you’re going to strip for me. Like you did the first night we were together. You are a romantic. Don’t say you’re not, never again.” Another pull on his own rod. “I don’t think I need the show, Graham, but oh, do I love it.”
I smiled and even felt a touch of admiration for myself knowing I could play Leland’s game—deception until attack—almost as well as he could.
I took a moment to steady myself. My body was a mass of tightly coiled nerves ready to spring. I could only get him boxed in if he didn’t see me coming. “Stop strumming it. Lie back. Enjoy. I don’t want this quick.”
“Not quick…” he murmured on a groan, melted into his pillow, and stared up at me.
Rallying a charming smile—fuck, I hoped it was charming—I moved toward the bed. It was vital he didn’t figure out what I was going to do next. He had the physical as well as mental agility of a tiger—yes, thanks to Langley training yet again—and my tactical plan required the element of surprise.
Knee on the bed, I leaned over him, my face going toward his as though I was going to claim his mouth, and as his lips parted my hand moved to its target.
My fingers clutched at the base of his neck with my weight bearing down. He was boxed in by my arm and body.
He shivered and his cock bobbed. “Oh, this is unexpected. An anniversary gift for Leland, and I thought you didn’t like this stuff, baby. But you’re feeling all alpha dominant and want to dominate me. We haven’t done any tie-me-up-and-whip-me forever. What’s my safe word?”
My fingers tightened.
My weight increased.
My face was a breath from his.
“Layla Hagen.”
The air turned electric around us.
My gaze bore into his.
His lids flared wide.
For his part, Lee expertly managed an expression of confusion and to hold his erection, though I was confident he’d discerned this wasn’t going where he hoped it would: him tied to the bed while I unleashed on him.
I waited, and it was as if her name rattled around the bedroom and couldn’t find a place to land. He’d heard me. I knew he did. What the fuck was he waiting for? Even Lee must have been aware no amount of bullshit would get him out of this.
I repeated it again. “Layla Hagen.”
Then his features melted into something untroubled, and all he said was, “Damn Jena. She let you see us together and no doubt told you shit I didn’t want to come from anyone but me. There’s no need to keep saying her name like it’s poison. I heard you the first time.”
There were moments in our private life when he revealed why he was such an exceptional field agent. This was one of those times.
I was furious. Pulsing with it. My hand could take his life in a single snap. I was just on the legal side of the bubble of doing it. We both knew it, and he hit back head on, equipped with instant sober and heart-shredding calm.
Leland in his most aggravating and dangerous incarnation. Leland the spook.
Fuck him.
I pulled back my arm and sank to sit on the edge of the bed. I took a cigarette from the side table, lit it, and blew out the smoke as something to do and focus on.
One of his hands rubbed the faint red mark on his throat and the other waved the smoke from his face. “There’s nothing to be angry about. I can explain.”
Oh, I didn’t doubt he could. I also didn’t doubt whatever drivel poured from his mouth this round would be untrue.
My face shot toward him. “How do you explain a wife you’ve never told me about? And better question, why is she here?”
He crinkled his nose. “Those two questions kind of go together.”
Christ, now it was the riddle game.
He sat up against the headboard and crossed his arms. “She wanted to see Ella. I told her not to come tonight. That you didn’t know anything about her and we needed to talk first. And for my part, I intended to. After the party. But Layla doesn’t listen.”
Yep, I called it. Our obnoxious anniversary gala was part of whatever cover story he’d spun and planned to feed me.
I tallied the untruths in my head. “That’s four lies, Lee. When you get to ten I’m outta here. For good this time. Would you like to roll the dice and see if I’m serious?”
“I know you’re serious,” he shot back, anxious and miserable.
He reached around my shoulder, grabbed my cigarette from me, and put it out in the potted tree on his side of the bed.
When Lee returned his focus to me, his eyes were flashing. “And I know why you’re angry. But this is partly your fault. If I’d told you I was bisexual would you have married me? I never thought I’d see Layla again so I never saw the reason to risk it by telling you the truth. Her being here is as much a shock to me as it is to you.”
My harsh gaze returned his pleading stare. “We’re up to four and half lies, Lee. That’s a half that round.”
“Fuck, I’ve told you the truth—”
“Five and a half lies.”
He sprang from the bed, snatched his pants from the floor, put them on, and dropped onto his chair across the room from me.
“You’re not going to be reasonable at all tonight, are you?”
“I’m here willing to listen to the truth if you can manage to speak it. That’s pretty fucking reasonable on my part, don’t you think?”
He sighed heavily and his jaw clenched. “Keep your voice down. The house is full of guests and we certainly don’t want Layla, Ella, or Patty to hear us fighting.”
That—the mention of my daughter—caused a small measure of control to return. “Stop spewing spin and my voice won’t rise again.”
His gaze softened. “Thank you. And I’m not spewing spin.”
“Six and a half lies.” I crossed my arms. My coursing thoughts came to a screeching halt, backtracked to a what the fuck I’d missed a second ago, and I jumped to my feet. “What the hell do you mean ‘Layla to hear’? Are you saying she’s still here? In my house?”
“Our house, baby,” he mumbled as though in agony.
“Why. Is. She. In. Our. House?”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“Seven and a half lies.”
Panicked, he sprang from his seat and closed in on me. “No, that’s the truth. I had her staying in a room in a nice hotel at the beach until I could ease into the discussion with you.”
“Why would you do that?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the ground. “You’re not going to believe me, even if I tell you the truth.”
My jaw hardened. “Try me. We have only one direction to go if you want to save us. Total, unvarnished truth. I know that’s a stretch for you, but don’t try to fuck with me again.”
His amber orbs searched my face and he exhaled a sigh of relief. “Thank you for saying that part about if I want to save us.”
“I’m here. Willing to listen. No guarantees what happens after that. Just so we’re clear.”
“Crystal. And before I tell you everything. I want you to know I love you. I may have lied about Layla, but never about you and me.”
I counted to ten inside my head. “Why is she in our house, Lee?”
“I owe it to her. She gave us Ella, and she needed help. She needed money. And somewhere to stay. Layla always needs money. I should have told you this long ago—I can see that—but I’ve been helping her since she ran through the divorce settlement I gave her.” He paused, raking back his hair several times, agitated. “Only this time she needed more than money. She needed somewhere safe to stay. How could I say no, Graham? She’s Ella’s blood.”
For that I chalked up two more lies in my head—nine and a half now—but I refrained from the pettiness of saying it because even after what he’d done I wasn’t fully resolved to crossing that line I’d drawn between us.
It was an in the heat of the moment utterance, my mouth farther on the road than my heart was willing to go yet.
Our life was on the edge.
Destruction or—
Fuck, I didn’t know what “or” was.
Not from how I felt.
And not with the queasy certainty there was another bomb about to drop on me. I didn’t know how I knew it, but there was more out there waiting that I didn’t want to know.
Experience with Lee?
The unfailing radar in my gut?
Or that the hairs on the back of my neck and arms hadn’t stood down since Lee’d started to speak?
Jesus Christ, it was going to get worse from what I already knew. How was that even possible? There was danger in whatever he was going to force me to hear.
My internal survival mechanism shouted to run. My heart slammed against my chest. My pulse gushed in my veins. I felt painful jolts in every cell.
This round of truth spinning I didn’t want to hear.
It would contain ugly truth woven through the lies.
No wife. An ex-husband.
Lee was nothing if not predictable in crisis. This was the biggest crisis of our marriage and would determine if we were done.
That thought devoured the last of my strength.
My legs buckled and I sat down on the bed. “You have only a half lie left, Lee. Get to what you haven’t told me yet. Quickly.”
His body folded like a house of cards as he lowered back onto his chair. “You’re not going to like it, Graham. I would change it if I could. But I can’t.”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat and shifted my gaze to meet his directly.
Those amber eyes were stripped of all emotion. “Layla’s in trouble. An abusive husband. That’s why I said she could come here. She’ll be staying with us until further notice. You’re going to have to figure out how to be OK with that.”
I lifted my chin. “Not possible. Not happening. I want her out first thing in the morning.”
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and shook his head. “Can’t do it and I won’t. She’s pregnant and afraid he’ll kill her, and I’m all she’s got.”
Pregnant?
What the fuck?
Shrapnel like fragments of our conversations blasted in my memory.
Lee’s let’s have more kids obsession.
No, no, no.
He didn’t.
He wouldn’t have.
Oh God, what I was thinking was crazy, but not impossible. Bisexuals had wants and needs in them a man couldn’t fill. It was why I stayed clear of them. They always needed and wanted more than they could get from me.
Had he gone to her for what I couldn’t give him?
Another fragment of memory broke free.
From this morning.
When I’d asked if he’d stepped out of the marriage to scratch an itch.
You’re the only man I’ve been with since you.
I didn’t fucking ask him if he’d been with a woman.
Bile flooded my throat and it was torture meeting his gaze. “Are you having an affair with her?”
“No,” he said flatly.
I realized my mistake a half second after. The devil was always in the details, or rather truth hid from the phrasing. “Whose baby is she carrying, Lee?”
He swallowed once. “I never meant to have to tell you this. I never intended to do this to you. You have to believe that. I love you with all my heart. And I don’t want us to end.”
“Answer the fucking question, Lee,” I shouted in a voice I was sure could be heard through the entire house. He flinched.
“The baby is…mine.”