Chapter 8

Olivia

“Get out,” I hissed, pressing my forehead to his. I didn’t mean a word of it. I couldn’t possibly with his body pressed against mine, so hot and hard, so overpowering. Oh god, everything was on fire. Every part of me.

The planes of his abs pressed through the suit, through my ridiculous pink cardigan. His hand strayed to my waist and held me there, so large his fingers passed my spine, his thumb tucked snug against the knit of my top. And his dick.

Oh. Good. God.

Save me. Someone had to save me from this, because I couldn’t save myself.

Even with all my strong words, with my tortured defiance, he was the man who’d always turned me inside out without even trying, and I still couldn’t stop wanting him.

“No,” he replied. “You don’t want me to get out, O. I see it in your eyes.”

“Stop calling me that.” It made everything harder to hear it from him. The name he’d given me before he’d simply disappeared and taken all the attention, all the interest he’d lavished on me with him. Without an explanation.

One soul-searing kiss and then he’d disappeared.

“Why?” Beckett asked and rubbed his nose against mine.

My chest expanded. My mind ran amok.

“Does it remind you of that night?” he asked. “It was seven years ago, Olivia. Aren’t you over me yet?”

I couldn’t answer without lying.

“It was just a kiss.” Beckett grinned.

“It wasn’t,” I snapped. “It wasn’t just a kiss, and you know it. It was more than that and then you were—” I stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Good,” he replied. “Then you’re not over it. How could you be?” Poisonous, delicious words. “You were always mine, Olivia. You always belonged to me.”

“I belong to no one.” My chin jutted upward. “No one!”

“Except to me,” he repeated and drew closer. His lips eclipsed everything, all my anger and frustration and the hot thrum of need curling between my legs.

He lowered them to mine. Closer, closer, closer.

I couldn’t move away from this. I didn’t want to, even though the rational portion of my brain screamed at me to get away before he destroyed me again, before he captured my heart and crushed it on a whim.

Get out! That was for me, not for him. Get out! Get out! Before it’s too late. He doesn’t care about you. He never did. You’re nothing more than a conquest. He doesn’t believe in love. He told you so. He told you.

But I was glued. Desperate. Wanting nothing more than to taste him again. Just this once. Just this one moment of weakness, and then I’d make him leave.

Beckett’s lips were a millisecond from touching mine. Warmth washed from them. I inhaled his scent, the cologne and that cosmic musk of him beneath of it.

A shriek split the moment down the middle.

It galvanized the common sense floating in the back of my mind.

“Penny,” I chirped and slipped out from underneath Beckett’s arm. I staggered across the carpet, crunching wax again, for god’s sake, and toward the hall. My heart knocked in my chest, demanding to be freed. Breaths caught in my throat, and I hiccupped.

“Leave her,” Beckett said, behind me, and my legs—betrayers that they were—quit moving. The muscles liquefied. “I’ll handle this.”

If I let him settle her, now, he’d never leave. I’d be stuck with him looking out for us. I’d have the help I needed but hated having. The one that wasn’t hired, that was totally allowed, and there would be nothing I could do about it.

Penny loved him. The connection between them was good for her. It made her happy. It made my life easier. But it made my life hell, too. Beckett’s special hell.

He strode past me and toward the hall, without even a glance in my direction. He’d almost kissed me again, and he didn’t care to look at me. To share a secret smile or a wink or anything.

Pathetic. You’re pathetic for wanting him. You’re better than this.

Moments later, the crying stopped, and the rumble of Beckett’s voice drifted from Penny’s room. The little girl hiccupped, and I crept toward the corner, held onto the wall, and listened hard.

A snort. A giggle. Another snort.

It was the same game he’d played with her in the restaurant. He’d been so soft with her. It was a side he’d never shown me, and I couldn’t believe it was real.

“It’s time for you to nap, Penny. When you wake up, it will be time for your dinner. Tonight, I’ll read you a story. Which one’s your favorite?” Beckett rumbled, gently.

“Cat-a-pillah!” Penny squeaked back.

The Hungry Caterpillar. I’d read it to her several times, and it always calmed her down for a little while. Every night was still a struggle though. She’d moan and weep for an hour, and if I was unlucky, she’d fly into a full-blown tantrum. Other nights, she’d finally drift off, but wake up and scream in the night. Scream for her daddy and mommy.

“Have a nice nap, Penny. I’ll be here when you wake up,” Beckett whispered.

“Beck poo. Stay.”

“In the next room,” he replied. A beat, and then footsteps trundled toward the corridor.

I backed away and toward my bedroom door, turned, and took hold of the knob. Penny would sleep, now, and I couldn’t spend another second in the same room with Beckett without totally selling out.

It already grated at me that I had to accept his help with Penny. It went against everything I’d tried to prove—that I could do this on my own. Without anyone. Just two girls against the world.

“You need a nap, too?” Beckett asked, behind me.

I needed a cold shower and a glass of wine after today. “No. I need to be alone,” I said. “I’ll make dinner in a bit.”

“You cook?” He snorted.

I’d only just started learning, but I looked back at him over my shoulder, eyes narrowed. “Yes. Is that so shocking?”

Beckett laughed. “Yes, it’s shocking.”

“If you’re staying, there’s a TV in the den down the hall. I don’t use it, so it might be dusty.”

He stared at me again with those devil eyes.

I entered my bedroom and shut the door behind me with a click, turned the key in the lock, not because Beckett would come in without an invitation—never, he wasn’t that type of devil—but because I didn’t trust myself not to go out there.

I removed the key and walked it to my dresser, put it there.

“What’s happening?” I whispered. “What’s actually happening?” This wasn’t how life was supposed to be. I’d sort of grown accustomed to Penny, now. Things weren’t easy, but I’d managed. I’d figured out a few systems to keep things running. Not smoothly, but running nevertheless.

I couldn’t handle Beckett Price in my house. This was too much.

I walked to my bed and lay down on it, stared up at the ceiling, offering a silent prayer to whatever powers there were to help me. To please help me before I lost my mind.

Going back down this road with Beckett was out of the question.

But pressed up against a wall, his dick against my belly, his gaze consuming me, it was so easy to forget the question, to forget everything but the heat that curled through me and demanded more.

It wasn’t just insane lust for this irresistible man.

It was that deeper connection we’d forged in high school and college. Letters from my next-door neighbor. Shared glances.

His bedroom had faced mine. He’d stripped naked in front of the open window several times, well aware I could see him. I’d never done the same, though I’d been so tempted. Once, I’d shut my curtains on him to get the point across that I wasn’t interested.

My brother’s best friend was off limits. So was my heart.

And then the letters had started, our secret notes, and I’d started losing my mind for this guy. On paper, he was a mixture of arrogance and softness. On paper, Beckett had asked about me, about what I wanted. He’d cared.

But paper Beckett wasn’t the real Beckett.

That guy was out there, probably laughing at how he’d teased me all over again.

I closed my eyes and tried washing him from my thoughts. Penny was important. Once we were on our feet, I’d start a business and work from home, and I’d teach her things. I’d find her a preschool. We’d be happy. No Beckett.

He appeared in my mind, and I was pressed up against the wall again.

Except this time, we were naked, and his dick—I’d only glimpsed it before—was hard and throbbing against my skin. His gaze caught mine, forehead pressed to me, noses touching, lips so close all over again.

“Oh god,” I whispered.

My pussy ached for him, and back in my bedroom, out of that fantasy, I slipped my fingers beneath the waistband of my jeans and into the silky underwear I’d put on that morning. I dragged them over my gash and gasped at the sensation, collecting the wetness there and spreading it upward and over my clit.

I was swollen for him again. This had happened too many times in the past, and it always ended like this.

The fantasy demanded my attention.

Beckett’s lips still didn’t touch mine. It was as if the real Beckett was in my head, teasing me still, refusing to give me what I wanted.

Instead, he slapped his palm to the meat of my thigh and lifted it. I looked down at the space between us and the massive cock there, circumcised, dripping pre-cum for me. For me!

“Hold still,” he said.

I did as I was told, watching as the head of that dick neared my entrance, as the fingers of his free hand parted my pussy lips wide, displaying the pinkness, the glistening readiness for him.

He teased me with his head, pressing it in and then sliding it out, never letting it deep enough. “You want this, don’t you, O?”

“Yes. Give it to me.”

“That’s no way to ask,” he replied, and continued teasing.

I was past waiting now. I needed him.

I timed it perfectly, waited until he dipped his fat head into my pussy again, then arched my back and forced more of him in, grabbed both his ass cheeks, and held on.

“Christ,” he growled. “Olivia.”

I whined. “Fuck me. Fuck me, Beckett, fuck me hard.”

He pounded into my pussy, parted my lips, claimed me as he’d promised he would years ago. How could he be this big? It was impossible. My orgasm screamed toward me, demanded I break for him for the hundredth time in years.

And I did exactly that.

I jammed over the boundary, raised my hips, and clenched, moaned, planting my feet on the bed sheets in my bedroom, finger working my clit, while Beckett played my mind. I was blinded by him all over again. Destroyed.

After, I flopped back and rolled onto my side, closed my eyes for the nap I’d said I wouldn’t take.

I drifted off, his smell trapped in my nostrils, soft laughter in my ears. For once, it wasn’t mocking. It was Beckett happy. But it couldn’t be real.

Never.