Tyler
I HATED EVERYTHING about my father. From his name to his quick hand to the smell of his cologne.
The sad thing was I couldn’t remember a single day in my entire life that I’d actually liked the prick.
He was a gambler.
An alcoholic.
A womanizer.
An egomaniac.
I closed my eyes and inhaled, when I opened them I watched the orange tip glow in the dark. Numbness was always the only way I could deal with him. It helped me forget. Him. Me. The fact that we were fucking related. What I did.
“So, do you want to talk about why you think your father would have had anything to do with my sister’s death?” Paris asked.
Exhaling the smoke through my nostrils, I did my best to sound like I was laughing. “Talk about my feelings toward Corky? I think I’ll take a hard pass on that one.”
“Okay, then. Great conversation, Tyler.” Outstretching her arm, she tried to take the blunt from my hand.
Smoking and drinking was not her thing despite the party girl image she’d created for herself, so I moved it out of her reach.
“What? You don’t know how to share?” she said.
I gave her a slow shook my head. “You don’t need any of this shit. It’s too strong.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “You’re not the only one who gets to find a way to forget. That was my sister’s diary we just read. The girl I thought was perfect and turned out was anything but.”
“Touché.” After taking another inhale, I decided to pass it to her. “One hit. That’s it,” I said, smoke streaming from between my lips as I spoke. I already knew she probably wouldn’t even be able to take one but arguing about it with her was useless.
“You’re not my boss,” she said as she placed the blunt between her lips and attempted to inhale but ended up coughing until I thought she might vomit instead.
“Give me that,” I told her, grabbing it and stubbing it out.
She waved her hands to try to fan the smoke away and kept right on coughing.
I laughed so loud I swore I would have woken up the neighbors if she’d had any. “Still not much of a party girl, are you?”
While still hacking, she threw me the middle finger.
The action was so unlike her, it broke me out of my dire mood. Grabbing her upright finger, I said in jest, “Oh, fuck me? Is that right?”
She nodded and started to laugh. That’s when the coughing finally subsided.
“I like fuck you much better,” I growled.
“We need to discuss London and Corky, Tyler.”
Shaking my head, I leaned over and put my lips on hers, effectively shutting her up with a kiss that screamed distraction.
It was desperate.
Needy.
And frenzied.
Something I needed.
I wound a hand in her hair and kissed her wildly. Without breaking our connection, I dropped the bottle in my hand and didn’t even care that it was spilling all over. And then I scooped her up beneath her knees and cradled her to my chest as I carried her into the foyer. I kicked the door shut with my boot and set her on the entry table, too desperate for her to have to wait one more minute.
Whatever was on it crashed to the ground but neither of us seemed to care.
I peeled away her blanket and then her shirt until she was naked before me.
“I need you.”
“I know,” she breathed.
With our eyes locked, our bodies buzzed with an electric need. The heat around us was too hot to stand and I stripped my coat off, leaving me naked from the waist up.
Her gaze was so lustful that I didn’t wait another minute to kneel between her thighs. She splayed her legs wide open for me, the soft, pink flesh of her sex glistening in the crystal chandelier overhead.
She was too good for me.
And I was too much of a bastard to let her go.
She rested a foot on my shoulder, inviting me to take what we both knew was already mine. I trailed a finger down the slit of her pussy and then slid it inside her before licking her clit in one rough swipe that had her calling out my name.
Demanding pleasure.
Pleasure that I gave her freely.
I licked and stroked her until she trembled with climax and then I lifted her in my arms so she could wrap her legs around my waist and just held her to me.
“Sometimes I really hate you,” she whispered into my ear.
I knew that, of course.
I was a selfish, egotistical, bastard, a lot like Corky, and she was everything I wasn’t. Good. Kind, Gentle-natured. Except when she was with me.
She really was too good for me.
We were fire and ice.
Hot and cold.
Good and bad.
“Sometimes, I really hate me, too,” I whispered back, taking the stairs that would lead us to her room two at a time.
When I reached the top landing, she pulled back and stared at me with those eyes that told me she could see into my soul, and I had to look away. Too afraid she was looking for the light inside me but all she could see was the darkness.
She slid down my body and placed both feet on the ground, but this time she didn’t leave. Instead, she took my face in her hands. “I don’t disagree with you Tyler about any of this, but you have to let me in. Promise we will talk to Wilhelmina together. Find out whatever it is that was buried and if there was something, we will face it together.”
I nodded at her, knowing she was right.
“Promise me, Tyler, promise me you won’t shut me out,” she demanded.
I bent to kiss her softly this time. “I can’t make that kind of promise, Love, you know that. But I do promise I’ll try not to.”
I honestly thought it was possible.
She slid her hands around my shoulders and hugged me close to her body.
I held her back just as tightly. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
When I pulled back I said, “Now, how about make-up sex? I heard it’s fantastic.”
Much to my surprise, she didn’t protest, so I slung her over my shoulder and carried her to the bedroom.