Chapter Thirty-Five

Sophie understood everything now. Why he visited his mom so much. The way the secrets had twisted over the years, like a string running through a labyrinth. Ryan had kept them all inside his head, locked up tight, clutching like a lifeline the wish of his one living parent.

Sophie’s place wasn’t to judge the guilt or innocence of Dora Prince. The state of Nevada had already done that. But her role, the self-appointed role that she embraced, was to be there for her man.

“I’m proud of you for speaking all those hard and terrible truths,” she said, as the town car driver took them to Ryan’s house after the event had ended.

“I barely know what to think anymore,” he muttered, staring out the window as the streetlights and cars streaked by through his neighborhood.

She dropped a hand to his shoulder. “You were brave to tell him.”

“Hardly,” he said, mocking himself as he turned to look at her. “If I were brave I would have said something years ago.”

She stared at him levelly and shook her head. “You didn’t know what you were dealing with. You still don’t entirely know. That’s why it’s brave. You took a chance.”

When they reached his home, Ryan took a moment to thank the driver and wish him a good night. Once they were inside his house, she grabbed his shoulders, then cupped his cheeks. “You said something now. That’s all that matters.”

He swayed closer to her, his eyes floating closed, his hold on gravity seeming precarious.

“Come with me,” she whispered.

She took his hand and led him to his couch, holding him close. Johnny Cash leapt on the cushion and curled up at their feet. Running her hands through Ryan’s hair, she let him rest his head in the crook of her neck, sensing what he needed right now was a safe landing. She wanted to be that for him. She wanted to be everything he needed.

“I just…Soph…if she…I don’t know.” His words beat out a staccato rhythm of what was said and unsaid.

“I know.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “I know.”

He sighed heavily then pressed his lips to her chest. It wasn’t sexual; it wasn’t the start of something dirty. It was a gesture of the familiar, of comfort, and she was glad he found it in her.

“For so long, she’s said one thing to me. She said she was set up. She said she was framed.” His voice was low and sad.

Her heart ached. It cried for him—heavy, mournful tears for what he had borne all those years. “So you go see her and you ask her. You tell her you need to know for your own heart.”

He shook his head. “She won’t tell me. Talking to her is like pulling teeth.”

She brushed a kiss on his forehead. “Then you find the answer in yourself,” she said, and wrapped her arms around him. He held her tight.

They stayed like that, curled together, him in his tux, her in her dress, nestled snug on the couch, a ball of fur by their feet. They talked more, whispered confessions and admissions, hopes and wishes.

“There were days when everything felt so out of hand. So beyond anything I could ever manage,” he said softly, and for a moment she understood that there was something more to his quest for control in the bedroom. With the way his life had spiraled, she suspected some part of his mind needed the solidity of that kind of dominance—sexual dominance. She kept that notion to herself though, not because it was a secret, but because it wasn’t her goal to psychoanalyze him. Whether that was his reason, or whether he simply liked it that way, she was happy to be on the receiving end.

“It was hard to manage because you carried so much. The weight of so many secrets. The pressure of so many things you should never have been asked to keep to yourself. Forget guilt or innocence or who was framed and not framed. You were fourteen. You deserved to be fourteen, not a secret keeper,” she said fiercely.

Then, when the conversation seemed to unwind, and it was time to move to something lighter, she sat up, straightened her hair, patted him on the leg, and said, “How about you teach me how to play pool finally? I believe that was one of the promises you made when I stayed here last weekend, and pretty much the only one you failed to deliver on.”

A sliver of a smile crept across his face. “I failed to deliver on something, did I?”

She nodded. “I’m wretched at pool. Show me how to play.”

He stood up and offered her his hand. “Why do I have the feeling that after one game you’re going to be a pool shark?”

“If that’s the case, then maybe for this first round, we should simply play strip pool?” she said, running a hand between her breasts as if to demonstrate the possibilities.

A groan escaped his throat, and he looped his arms around her waist. He brushed his lips against her neck. She closed her eyes and smiled. All was not perfect. All was not completely right in the universe. There were so many questions left unanswered. But they had moved through something difficult together. Here they were, ready to slide into another moment in their night.

This love between them had ignited one evening at Aria in a flirty, dirty, and naughty way. Over the days, and the nights, that followed, their connection sparked and sizzled, then deepened. Tonight, he had been forced to stretch and twist in unexpected ways. But after all of that, the two of them had somehow managed to return to their core.

Flirty, dirty, and naughty.

They grabbed beers and headed inside his den with the pool table. He took a cue down from the wall and handed it to her, then grasped one for himself.

“Have you played before?”

She nodded. “A few times. All badly. I barely understand how it works. There are stripes, solids and an eight ball, and we hit them in pockets, right?”

He laughed. “Something like that,” he said, taking a sip of his pale ale and setting it down on the table. He removed his tux jacket and his tie, and tossed them on a chair in the corner of the room.

“Wait. You’re already taking off your clothes?”

“Consider it my handicap,” he said, then racked the balls.

He explained the basics to her, and she quickly processed them, since rules and games made fast sense to her. Her challenge lay in the execution. Sophie Winston wasn’t known for her coordination.

Still, she was determined, so she pulled back the stick, stared at the ball, aimed squarely, and missed it by a mile. She laughed and brought her free hand to her mouth. “Oops.”

Then she removed an earring, tossing it on his pile on the chair.

“Want me to show you how it’s done?”

“I do,” she said, and he moved to her side of the table, behind her, then pressed his hand on top of hers, his chest along her back. As he positioned the cue just so, she felt him grow harder. She wriggled her rear as he shot the ball.

And missed, too.

“Hey. Take off your shirt,” she said playfully.

“That wasn’t my shot! I was helping you set up.”

“Fine. Help me again,” she said in a flirty tone, and he lined himself behind her once more. She couldn’t resist. Screw pool. She dropped the stick, shoved all the balls randomly around the table, then turned around in his arms, and laced her hands around his neck. She moved her lips to his ears. “You win. Strip me.”

He wasted no time, unzipping her dress in a flurry and leaving it a silky puddle on the floor. She backed up to the table and perched on it, handing him the stick. “Show me where you’d touch me to land the shot.”

He gripped the back of her head, and whispered roughly in her ear. “Everywhere. Every-fucking-where on your perfect body,” he said, then stepped back to survey her, roaming his eyes up and down.

She wore only stockings, purple sheer panties, and a demi-cup bra that did lip-smacking things to her breasts, judging from how he stared. Cocking his head, he flipped the stick in his hand then lowered the wider end of the cue to her shoulder, touching her bare skin ever so slightly. “I’ll start here,” he said, then ran it along her arm, tracing a gentle path to her wrist. “Then kiss your wrist.”

“Like you did the night you met me,” she said, her skin heating up as he bent his head to her hand and placed a soft, sweet kiss that both sent her back in time and rooted her right here, right now.

“Then, I’d pay a visit to those lovely legs of yours,” he said, and brushed the end of the cue from her knees to her ankles and back up the other leg. When he reached the top of her thigh, he gently nudged her legs apart, inch by inch.

Scooting back on the table, she rested on her elbows, giving him a view of her bra, panties, stockings and shoes.

“Your belly,” he murmured as the cue strayed along her stomach, then up to one of his favorite parts of her. “Those delicious breasts,” he said, licking his lips as he stroked a line through her cleavage then darted back down to her waist, tracing along the waistband of her panties. She murmured, and even though being touched by a pool cue was not the same as this man’s touch, she still grew hotter.

Then she burned when he brought the cue to the side of her ass, and whacked her lightly with it. She gasped and moaned, loving the way he knew precisely when to spank her and make her want him even more. “There, too,” he said, then bent his head to kiss her rear.

Loving, too, that he knew when to kiss the spot he’d marked.

When he raised his face, he brought his mouth to her ear. “Spread your legs wide for me.”

Heat raced through her. She let her knees fall open, savoring the reaction in his eyes when he stared at the scrap of La Perla fabric that barely covered her. “And what about here?” she asked curiously, running her hand between her legs.

“I’d play you there so good,” he said, his eyes shining with desire. He followed her with the pool cue, lightly touching her heat, her swollen clit. She arched up, angling for more contact, and he began stroking her with the pool cue. “You like that, beautiful?” he asked, his eyes blazing at her as she rocked into him.

“I’ve told you, Ryan. I love everything you do to me.”

“I’m not even the one doing it.”

“You are,” she said as she unclipped her hair. “You are doing it to me. Only you can touch me like this. Only you can do this to me.”

He stroked faster, rubbing her expertly through her purple panties with the pool cue. Her blond curls spilled behind her on the table, and she let her head fall back as he masturbated her with a pool stick. Like a wooden sex toy that he controlled, it set her on fire. Closing her eyes, she caught a perfect rhythm, like a surfer does a wave, and she rode it, rocking her hot center into the wide end of the pool cue, seeking friction with the wood, until her vision turned black and hazy, and she dug her nails into the green felt, coming in her lingerie on his pool table.

She moaned happily, and opened her eyes to find him stripping. He’d set the pool cue down on the table.

“I think I’m in love with the game of pool now,” she said softly, running a hand along the wood he’d used to get her off.

His eyes blazed darkly. “I’m not done with that,” he said, and her gaze followed him, as he grabbed her hands, lifted them over her head, then pressed the cue into her palms. “Hold it in place. Restrain yourself.”

Sparks sizzled across her skin at his command. She gripped the cue hard over her head, as he tugged off her panties in seconds, leaving her stockings, shoes and bra untouched. Pulling her hips to the edge of the table, he lined her up with his hard cock.

“I have never wanted to fuck you so much,” he said in a growl.

“Take me, wreck me. You can’t ruin me. You can control me all you want. You won’t break me. I’ll still be here,” she said, knowing it was what he needed, and what she wanted, too.

* * *

He slid into her without mercy.

She moaned the second his cock made contact with her heat.

Then he took over for her hands. He gripped the pool cue and clasped his fingers through hers, pinning her with the wood and his weight.

With her restrained like that, flat on her back on his pool table, he fucked her harder and rougher than he ever had before. He didn’t hold back as he held her captive. He slammed into her hot pussy over and over, his beautiful woman writhing and moaning, panting and screaming, and completely and utterly giving herself to him.

Arching up. Meeting him. Inviting him deeper.

His body jolted with each thrust, his heart pumping hard and wild, and this—this pleasure, this harsh fucking wasn’t just control for him. It was a relinquishment, too. He might be restraining her, but in doing so he’d revealed his hand. He’d shown her his cards. They were all for her, every single one turned up Sophie.

“It’s you,” he groaned, and she locked eyes with him, her gaze holding him tight, sending him to another plane of pleasure—one ruled by more than the physical. By the intensity of how he felt for her. By all the love that he saw in her eyes. “It’s all you. I fucking love you so much,” he said as he took her.

“It’s the same for me, Ryan.” Her breathing turned ragged, and her words drove him on. The tension in him rose higher in a fury of passion and love, in a storm of mind-blowing pleasure that spiked in him. Because of how he felt for her, heart, soul, mind and body. He didn’t look away. He simply couldn’t. His eyes were fixed on her the whole time as he took her deeper. Her moans and groans and cries were the sexiest song he’d ever heard, the scent of her skin and the smell of her lust were intoxicating, and the hot, tight grip of her body sent him into a red-hot, fevered frenzy.

He’d never been more turned on, he’d never been harder, and he’d never wanted to come so intensely.

But there was so much more at play than pure desire.

He’d never loved someone like this. He needed more closeness. More connection. No barriers. Nothing but skin and hands and limbs tangled together.

He let go of the stick, then uncurled her fingers from the cue and yanked it away, letting the wood clatter loudly to the floor. “Just you and me,” he said. “Just you and me.”

Instantly, she raised up and flung her arms around him, clutching his back, digging her nails in, and God, fuck, hell, it was unearthly; it was heaven on earth. His arms snaked around her, and he gripped her, pulling her, yanking her, bringing her as close as she could be. On the edge of the pool table their bodies coiled together like flames, consuming each other with wildfire.

He breathed her name, over and over, like a fucking mantra—the woman he adored.

She cried out, shuddering beneath him as she hit the edge, her glorious sounds the key in the ignition that set him off.

The tension inside of him snapped, and he came hard.

They collapsed in a landslide of pants and moans, of groans and grunts.

And also, something else.

Something that felt like peace in her arms, as he gave himself up to whatever this was with Sophie, because it felt as if it had the potential to be the rest of his life.

“Sophie,” he murmured in her ear, as she sighed happily and ran her fingers down his sweat-streaked back. “The way I feel for you is beyond control. And I don’t want that to change.”

Everything else was shifting. Everything else was cracking. She was his one constant.

* * *

She didn’t wake up as he went for a run with his dog. Nor as he showered. And not as he brewed a pot of coffee. She didn’t wake up, either, when Johnny Cash barked happily as Ryan let him take a quick post-run dip in the pool. And she barely rustled as he leaned over her, brushing a soft curl from her sweet, sleepy face to kiss her goodbye.

She murmured something then shifted and yawned.

“Hey, beautiful. I need to go,” he said, and kissed her cheek.

She stretched her arms over her head. “I better get out of here then, since you’re leaving.”

He shook his head. “It’s okay. Stay. Sleep. You like your morning sleep.”

She smiled and her eyes floated closed again. “I do like my sleep. I need to finish packing for Germany though.”

“Is that today?”

“Tomorrow morning,” she said, snuggling under the covers.

He patted the bed, and his dog jumped up. “Johnny Cash, you keep Sophie company ’til she wakes up and is ready to leave. Tell her to let you out in the yard once before she heads home.”

The dog panted his agreement, and Sophie laughed.

“Call me when you’re ready to go. I’ll send a car or driver or Uber or chariot or horse.”

“A horse please. A white one with a braided mane,” she said then fell back asleep.

He left a note by the door with his extra key, got behind the wheel of his truck, and prepared for a five-hour drive that he hoped to God would get him the answers that had eluded him for eighteen years.