‘God, I hope so,’ he muttered. ‘Stay here. I’ll get a condom from next door.’
‘No.’ She opened the nightstand drawer, finding it as full of condoms as the one next to the bed they’d used that morning.
He laughed breathlessly. ‘I’m not going to ask. I don’t want to know.’ He grabbed one, ripped it open, and slid it on. ‘Are you still wet?’
Eyes on his, she palmed herself, slipping her longest finger up inside. His eyes blazed, his breaths quickening as he licked his lips. ‘God. I want to watch you do that again and again until you make yourself come, but not right now. I need you now.’
She stretched both hands above her head. ‘Then do something, for God’s sake.’
She didn’t need to ask him twice. He crawled between her thighs, sliding his hands under her butt to lift her hips and—
‘God.’ The gasp was shoved out of her lungs as he entered her in one hard thrust.
Holding himself above her, he dropped his head with a moan she was sure could be heard down in the parking garage. ‘I can’t go slow this time. Maybe round two.’
Round two? Yes, please. ‘Then go fast,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll keep up.’
His grin was downright filthy. ‘You do that, Dr Fallon.’ He began to move in short, hard thrusts, his eyes on hers. ‘Show me how you’ll keep up.’
She slid one hand between them, mesmerized by him, completely unable to look away. But she didn’t need to look. She found her clit and rubbed in time to his thrusts, feeling the tension growing tighter and tighter. But it wasn’t until he dropped his gaze to her busy fingers that she couldn’t hold back any longer. Head back, she let herself go, let herself fall, conscious that he was right behind her.
He dropped to his elbows, still careful not to put any weight on her ribs and hips. For which – now that they’d burned off some of the need – she was grateful. She hadn’t cared about her bruises while they were at it, but once the adrenaline began to fade?
Yeah, she’d feel it then.
He tensed then, surging up into her once more as an aftershock shuddered through him, his gasp followed by another low groan. ‘God.’ Finally spent, he kissed her shoulder, the side of her neck, the cheek that wasn’t scraped up.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘I needed that. I’ll go slower next time.’
‘I kind of liked it just like that,’ she confessed. ‘But I’d be willing to check out the benefits of slow in a little while.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
Twenty-four
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Monday 21 December, 1.35 A.M.
Adam broke the silence, his voice low in the darkness. ‘Meredith?’
He’d turned out the bedroom light and they lay together, legs intertwined. She nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder, her fingers petting the hair on his chest. ‘Yeah?’ she asked lazily. She sounded relaxed. Replete. Completely sated.
So of course I’m going to dash all that to hell. But he needed answers.
‘What happened to you around the holidays?’
Her fingers stilled and he immediately missed the petting. But it was a small price to pay for the truth. As long as she started petting him again. Eventually.
‘How much did you overhear yesterday, when Papa and I were talking?’
‘I came in when you were telling him that you were okay with how I’ve dealt with things, so he needed to be too. I heard you ask him to watch videos with you. Of your parents, “On the day.” And he said that he’d need me not to be there since he’d need to drink to watch. Which I appreciated, by the way.’
‘He’s thoughtful that way.’
‘Will you tell me what happened?’ he asked, and she sighed heavily.
‘My parents died in a plane crash three days after Christmas, seven years ago.’
His chest tightened. ‘I’m sorry, honey.’
‘So am I,’ she murmured. ‘My parents were . . . simply the best. I see you and Diesel and Kate and Decker and all the other folks in our group that didn’t have good childhoods and my heart breaks for you. I miss my mom and dad every day. And that’s part of the problem. I miss them and there’s still a piece of me that feels like I don’t have the right.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m the reason they were on that plane,’ she said, with perfect calm. ‘I’m the reason they died.’
Stunned, he pressed back into the pillow, angling to better see her face. She appeared serene, her eyes closed, lashes lying thick and dark against her skin. He wanted to shake that serenity off and see her real face, but he didn’t. He figured that she needed the zen mask right now and he wasn’t going to take that away from her.
He wanted to tell her no, that she wasn’t responsible for a plane crash, but she’d uttered the words with such quiet finality that he knew she believed it.
‘Why?’ he finally asked.
‘I was the perfect child,’ she said. ‘I never rebelled, I got good grades, I was on the track team, I volunteered at the hospital. My parents believed I had my act together.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No. I’m good at letting people see what they want to see.’ Her petting of his chest resumed and he let out a relieved breath. She was there with him, even if she still hid behind her unyielding composure. ‘I was driven. Partly because it’s who I was – am. And partly because I hated who I was. Never good enough. Most of my clients have been the victims of some trauma, but not all. Some just don’t like who they are. My job with them is to help them see themselves clearly and then to decide – if they still don’t like what they see – what will they change and how will they change it.’
‘Did anyone do that with you?’
‘Yes, but not until it got so bad that I couldn’t hide it anymore. My cousin Alex came to live with us when she was fifteen. I was seventeen. I’d been a cutter for years by then. Alex’s mom and my mom were twins. We’d always been close, but then Alex’s mother was murdered and when we got to Georgia, where they lived, Alex was in the psych ward. They thought she’d tried to kill herself because she’d discovered her mother’s body.’
‘But she hadn’t?’
‘Not then. But later? Yeah, she tried. We got her from Georgia to our house here, got her settled in her room, then I set myself up as sentry. Because I’d seen her palm a sleeping pill. I took it away from her and watched her until I was sure she wasn’t going to hurt herself.’
‘For how long?’
‘A few months. Alex went into therapy and got . . . better. I kept the pill.’
Adam sucked in a breath. ‘Did you now?’ he said with a calm that was pure BS.
The little huff of breath against his chest told him that she knew his BS for what it was. ‘I did. And I’d look at it sometimes and think, I could get more and swallow them all and then I’d be done. But I never did. Told myself it was because I was in control.’
‘Like an alcoholic who goes to a bar to prove they can say no to booze.’
‘Exactly. And down deep, I didn’t want to hurt myself. Not then.’
He thought of the scars on her arms. Those from the cutting had nearly faded. The longer, deeper scars just above her wrists signified an act far more drastic. ‘When?’
‘When I was twenty. There was no single event. No primary trigger. I just woke up one day and knew that I didn’t have the energy to do it anymore.’
‘Clinical depression,’ he murmured.
‘Yes. But like I said, I was good at letting people only see what they wanted to see.’
‘Who found you?’ he asked, because the scars were remnants of an injury so serious that he doubted she could have dealt with it on her own.
‘My gran. My parents were traveling. Alex was making friends at university and she . . . didn’t really need me anymore. Which makes it sound like I blame her, but I never did. I knew she was doing the healthy thing, experiencing life, while I, Miss Perfect Child, was not. I don’t know why I did it that day or why I did it at Gran’s, other than I knew she’d check on me. I think she always knew what was wrong. Turns out she’d dealt with depression too, but she didn’t tell me until afterward, because people didn’t talk about things like that.’