CHAPTER 19
If Randi wasn’t so lost, she might have pondered that if she looked back on this night later, she’d admit that it was Evan’s vulnerability that had finally gotten to her.
His anger, the fear and pain she could see in his expression, and his willingness to expose himself tore at her heart. She could see his need in those beautiful eyes of his, and the war he was waging with his emotions was her undoing.
I love him.
There was no uncertainty, no hesitation anymore. She wanted Evan Sinclair and all of his unguarded fierceness more than she needed the oxygen she breathed.
He ravaged her mouth like she was the only woman he ever wanted to kiss, but she needed so much more. She wanted to climb inside him until she couldn’t get any closer to him.
Need slithered inside her belly, moving straight to her core, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life.
“Evan, please,” she begged as his mouth left hers, trailing a rough path with his tongue down the sensitive skin of her neck. “Fuck me.”
All her defenses were stripped away. She wanted and needed him.
“You. Are. Mine,” he told her in a demanding voice as he pulled the silky material of her gown up to her waist.
Randi moaned aloud as Evan’s fingers pressed insistently between their bodies and beneath the scant covering of the thong she was wearing beneath the dress. She had worn the most daring set of lingerie she’d ever owned underneath her gown, needing to feel like the sexiest woman alive for just one more night.
“Christ, what are you wearing?” Evan’s voice was needy and hungry.
She didn’t answer; she panted as she leaned back on the counter, letting Evan look until he growled.
Randi trembled as he yanked the dress over her head, helping him as she shrugged it off and let it drop to the floor. She hadn’t worn a bra since the dress had a low back, and she could just imagine what she looked like in the red thong panties, her heels, and silky stockings held up by a garter belt. “They’re new. I bought them for our last night together.”
It was a bold move for her, a woman who liked lacy, pretty underwear rather than what she was wearing now.
Evan traced the outline of her folds through her saturated panties. Grasping her roughly by the waist, he sat her up on the counter. “I’ll buy you more,” he said in a harsh voice.
Before Randi could react, he gave a hard tug on the flimsy material and the panties came apart.
His mouth was between her thighs almost instantly, as he placed her legs on his shoulders.
The feel of his hot, hungry mouth on her bare pussy was a shock to her senses, especially since he didn’t start slow. He devoured. He tasted. He licked until Randi was chanting his name. “Evan. Oh God, Evan.”
His fierce possession of her was exhilarating. He held open her folds and buried his face in her pussy, feasting on her ravenously, greedily. He didn’t tease. He was a man driven to make her come, and his laser focus on the task was mind-blowing.
“Yes,” she moaned, fisting his hair and pulling his face flush against her needy core. “More.”
Evan could be as rough as possible, and it still might not be enough. She needed to come, and she needed it right now.
His tongue rolled exquisitely over her clit, forcefully and commandingly. There was no real finesse. There was only passion, desire, and raw, carnal need.
“Yes. Please. Now.” She whimpered her plea, grinding her pussy against his face, demanding that he make her climax.
And suddenly, devastatingly, she did, with a blinding-hot intensity that made her scream. “Evan!”
Pulsating waves washed over her in assaulting forcefulness, making it impossible for her to do anything but ride along with them. Evan rose and tore at his tuxedo pants, freeing his massive, hard cock in record time.
Randi barely had time to draw breath before Evan was inside her. He claimed her savagely, need riding him.
She coveted his possessive, caveman-like claiming, needing it to make her feel alive. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she clung to him. Her channel was still squeezing him from her first orgasm.
“Christ. You feel like a dream, but I know you’re real,” Evan said gravely, his voice vibrating with passion.
“Harder.” Randi needed more.
He yanked her off the slick countertop, and she nearly wailed aloud as he pulled himself out of her. Flipping her around, he took her hands and placed them on the counter as he moved behind her. “This will be hard, but I can’t control myself right now.”
“I need you out of control,” she agreed.
He drove his cock home, burying himself so deeply that Randi moaned.
“You’re mine,” Evan insisted in a feral groan as he pulled his cock almost totally out of her channel and drove it back in again.
Randi gasped at Evan’s carnal claiming, needing something to hold, something to keep her from flying away on a violent wave of elemental desire. Gripping the marble countertop tightly, she pushed back as Evan surged forward, and a feeling of satisfaction enveloped her at the sound of their bodies slamming together.
It was too much.
It wasn’t enough.
Randi wanted to hold Evan inside her as deeply as he could possibly get. That was the moment she realized that he owned her: heart, body, and soul. She wanted more; she wanted everything from him.
“Don’t hold back,” she begged him with a moan, her body writhing.
“I can’t,” he admitted, sounding tortured as his grip on her hips tightened hard enough that she’d probably have bruises come morning. “Admit that you’re mine, Randi. Say it or I’m going to lose my damn mind.”
“I love you,” she blurted out helplessly, unable to keep her emotions under control. Every movement, every ragged breath she took was focused only on Evan at the moment, and she had to tell him how she felt.
“Fuck,” Evan rasped, pummeling into her with a strength that left her mindless. “What did you just say?”
“I love you,” she bellowed out loud, the words echoing in the tiny space.
She exploded the moment Evan moved one of his hands to the front of her body and stroked a thumb over her engorged clit. Her head dropped to the counter as her body was assaulted by pulsations that had her heart racing and her entire body trembling in climax.
“Don’t look down.” Evan grasped her hair and pulled her head up. “I need to see you.”
She probably wouldn’t have lifted her head if Evan hadn’t been supporting it by his hold on her hair. He threaded his fingers through the tresses, and their eyes met in the mirror as she saw herself in the throes of an orgasm.
Desperate.
Needy.
So entirely pleasured that at the moment, she didn’t even know her own name.
“You make me feel so good, it’s almost painful,” she moaned as she stared into a pair of blue eyes filled with torment and confusion.
Their gazes locked and held until Evan gave one final thrust and leaned his head back in ecstasy as she milked him of his own release.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against his body as they both panted for breath, finally pulling her into the too-small chair and letting her collapse onto his lap as his cock slid from its position inside her.
“Tell me why, Randi,” Evan demanded as he recovered his composure.
She clung to him, her arms around his neck to retain her position on his lap. “What?” She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Tell me why you said you could never love a man like me. Those words nearly killed me. Why did you say that?” He stroked her hair like she was the most precious female on earth.
Randi tried to make her brain functional again, his questions sinking in as she slowly regained coherent thought. She hadn’t said that, had she? “I never said that.”
I can never love a man like him.
Her brain started working, and she shook her head at the conclusion it was making.
It wasn’t possible, but yet . . . She’d never said those words to Evan; she’d made that comment in writing to S.
Somehow it all made sense. Actually, hadn’t S. started encouraging her relationship with Evan, even asking her to give him a chance after he’d warned her away?
S. had changed since she’d started a relationship with Evan—now that she really thought about it. He asked a lot about her relationship, and was almost prompting her to give Evan a chance, a man he’d never met. His behavior was exactly the opposite of his normal and constant cautiousness.
She stood, feeling naked figuratively as well as physically. Snatching her dress from the floor, she donned it mechanically, pulling down the silky material of her gown to cover her scanty remaining lingerie hastily.
Her stomach lurched as she thought about some of the conversations they’d had, and the fact that S. now had a woman in his life. The Sinclair Fund was Evan’s business, so it wasn’t a stretch that it could be him, that it had always been him.
Her heart started to bleed as she thought about the fact that if he was S., he hadn’t told her, had actually lied to her. He’d used the relationship to his advantage, and to hell with how she felt. They were incongruent actions from the Evan she’d come to know and love.
Maybe I only thought I knew him.
“I didn’t say those words to you. I wrote them to a man I thought was a friend, a man I trusted.” She took a deep breath and asked quietly, “Are you that man?”
Randi wasn’t looking at him directly but she saw him give an affirmative jerk of his head from the corner of her eye as he stood up. “Yes,” he admitted huskily.
“The calla lily on Dennis and Joan’s graves. It was you?” She already knew the answer. Gut instinct told her that it was true. Maybe she was able to blow it off before, but that made sense to her now, too. Evan Sinclair was probably one of the only men who could get anything he wanted, even a perfect calla lily every day in the dead of winter in Maine.
“Yes.” Evan zipped his pants and reached for his shirt and tie. “I did it every day to thank them.”
“What were you thanking them for?” Her mind was spinning, and she was still trying to wrap her head around the idea that S. and Evan were one and the same man.
As he jammed his arms into his shirt, he replied, “I was thanking them for saving you when I couldn’t. I’m grateful you’re here, that you’re healthy and strong. I’m grateful that they gave you a home. Most of all, I’m grateful they saved you for me.” He shouldered into his jacket and put his tie in the pocket.
Randi felt completely destroyed and betrayed by the two men who meant the most to her. “You lied to me. When did you know who I was?”
“The day I brought you supplies and you lost power. Hope told me that you had recently lost your foster mother, and everything fell into place. I should have told you that day, but I couldn’t.”
Okay . . . so maybe he hadn’t known for very long, but he’d known before they’d ever been intimate. He should have told her before anything ever happened between them. “There was nothing stopping you from telling me,” she told him furiously, angry now that the initial shock of his confession had worn off. “You played me.” He’d used his status as a trusted friend to get information from her.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he grumbled as he strode forward and gripped her by the shoulders. “Why did you say you couldn’t love me if you do?”
She shook off his hands, not wanting him to touch her. He’d betrayed her, and his dishonesty and the way he’d toyed with her emotions infuriated her.
“I didn’t say I didn’t love you. I said I can’t love you because of my past and the problems it might cause. You’re a billionaire who travels and I’m a teacher who stays in the same place. Don’t worry. I’ll get over it. The fact that you’re a liar and that you deceived me will help me get over you that much faster,” she answered hotly.
Evan grabbed her shoulders again. “You’ll never get over me. I’ll never get over you,” he growled, sounding enraged. “I’ve never gotten over you. I feel the same damn way every time I see you. I wasn’t as shocked as I should have been to learn that you were the woman I was corresponding with, either. I should have known that two different women could never hold my interest in the same way. I have to wonder if deep down inside, you knew who I was, too.”
“I didn’t know,” Randi denied emphatically. “I thought you were my friend.” The loss of both men was practically ripping her heart from her chest.
“I am your friend. I’m also your lover,” Evan replied flatly.
“You’re nothing,” Randi answered, thinking about all of the times he’d played with her feelings. “Was any of it real?”
“All of it,” Evan said in a graveled voice. “And don’t say I’m nothing to you. You just told me you loved me.”
She pulled away from him to look at his face, unable to decipher exactly what was real and what wasn’t. He’d lied to her from the very beginning, agreeing that he was just an employee. Then he’d bullshitted her again, not telling her the truth even after he knew who she was. “I don’t really know you, do I?” she asked angrily. “How can I love a man who doesn’t exist?” The question made her nauseous. How could she have been so stupid?
“You do love me, dammit!” Evan answered sharply. “You said you did.”
“That was before I knew that you were a manipulative liar.” Randi unlocked the door as tears rolled down her face, the pain of his duplicitous actions gripping her heart and tearing it to shreds.
Gasping for breath, she knew she needed to get out of the tiny room, create some distance between her and Evan. She had to think, needed to understand. Opening the door, she quickly fled, wondering if she’d ever be able to get over the excruciating pain of Evan’s betrayal.
Male voices sounded behind her as she ran toward the entrance to the Center, but she couldn’t make out who they were or what was said. Honestly, she didn’t care.
I have to get out of here.
Escape was the only thing she could think of right now.
The harshly cold temperatures hit her the moment she ran out the front door, her gown offering little protection from the elements.
“Madam, are you all right?” The male voice came from beside her.
She saw Stokes as she turned her head to the side. “No. I’m not okay,” she told the elderly man as she angrily swiped the tears from her face. “I need to get home.”
“I’ll take you.” The driver took her arm gently and led her to the Rolls.
“Evan will want you,” she protested.
“For once in his life, Mr. Sinclair can wait,” Stokes answered firmly, helping her to the vehicle sitting right out front.
Distraught, Randi didn’t argue. She needed to leave this place, she needed to think, and she needed to put space between herself and the man who had just rocked her world in a good way . . . and a devastating one. She jumped into the rear seat of the luxury vehicle as soon as the driver opened the back door for her.
Stokes set the car in motion almost immediately, leaving her huddled in the seat behind him—bewildered, crying, and feeling as though her heart would never be whole again.