The foreboding gripped tighter. “Who? Who is it?”
Hunter held her gaze. “Liz,” he said softly. “It was Liz.”
Chapter Eleven
Fucking Liz. Of course she’d screw everything up. She always did. And now he had no option but to tell Ellie the truth. Ellie stood in front of him, naked apart from her sheet, her beautiful red hair everywhere, and he hated the look of anguish in her eyes. Hated knowing he’d put it there. She’d held him in her arms, taken him inside her body, given him an experience he’d never, ever forget, and he couldn’t bear to repay those gifts with a lie.
And what was the big deal about the truth anyway? There was nothing wrong with being a virgin. Completely screwed up for a thirty-three-year-old man, yeah, he could admit to that. But not wrong. Besides, the thing with Liz wasn’t a secret. A youthful indiscretion he’d prefer no one know about, a mistake he’d once made, sure. So telling her shouldn’t be difficult. Shouldn’t be hard.
And yet it was. The hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life.
The colour had drained from Ellie’s face. “Liz? Your stepmother?”
“It happened a long time ago, when I was sixteen, seventeen.”
“But how old was she?”
“Thirty-eight.”
Ellie went white. “Hunter….”
Really, there wasn’t any drama telling her—it happened so long ago he barely remembered—so he might as well tell her everything. It wasn’t as if he gave a shit nowadays anyway.
“Dad was away from home at a conference. Liz came down to the pool one afternoon when I was swimming and we got talking.”
Little white bikini with gold rings holding it all together. Long tanned limbs. She was beautiful and she knew it.
“Come here, Hunter. I need some sunscreen help for my back.”
Her hands undoing the catch on the back of her bikini top, the white fabric falling onto the sun-lounger… ”You like doing that, don’t you? How about I turn over so you can do my front too?”
“She wanted me to put suntan lotion on her. So I did. Everywhere. She made it clear she liked it, and that she wanted more. I was almost seventeen and horny, and I didn’t say no.”
Ellie had a strange look in her eyes. Like pity and horror all mixed into one. “What?” he demanded, defensive anger rising. “Yeah, I was stupid and I shouldn’t have done it. But Christ, you should have seen her. She was beautiful.”
“You were sixteen, Hunter,” Ellie whispered, still looking horrified. “And she was thirty-eight.”
“So?” He ignored the twist of disgust, of shame that crawled down his back. “I was old enough to know what I wanted.”
“Were you?” She came toward him, very slowly, and he found himself tensing again, all the old feelings flooding back. The need to distance himself. Keep himself separate. “At sixteen?”
Anger knotted in his gut. He focused on it because that was easier than the other emotions that crowded inside him. “Nearly seventeen. And of course I knew what I wanted. Show me the teenage boy who would have said no to a pair of tits like that.”
The deliberate crudeness stopped her, the catch in her breath audible. After a moment she said carefully, “You didn’t sleep with her though.”
“No, but not because I didn’t want to. She wouldn’t because she didn’t want to cheat on my father.”
A silver spark of answering anger lit in Ellie’s eyes. “She didn’t want to cheat on her husband with his son, yet she had no problems with seducing said son?”
His grip on his anger loosened. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I was innocent, Ellie. I wanted her. I wanted to fuck her, don’t ever doubt that.”
Ellie started walking again, coming right up to him, her gaze holding his with a directness that made him want to push her away. His hands curled into fists at his sides, restraining the impulse.
“Of course you did,” she said softly. “Like you said, you were nearly seventeen. So did it happen the once?”
“What does it matter? It’s ancient history.”
“If it’s ancient history, then why were you still a virgin?”
His anger burned hotter. “Shit, because I wanted to be, okay?”
“Your rules, Hunter. You didn’t want me to touch you. You didn’t want me to move. Or speak.” The words became relentless, inexorable, and he wanted to run from them, escape them. “That’s not normal, Hunter.”
“Of course it’s not fucking normal, Ellie! I told you I was screwed up, didn’t I?”
“You don’t get the connection, do you?”
His mind blanked. “There is no connection.”
She was so close to him now, and it felt like she was slowly peeling back his skin, exposing soft tissue, sensitive nerve endings. “It’s her you see when you look at me, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Yes, it is.” Ellie’s eyes glittered like she had tears in them. “She still wants you too. I wondered why she seemed so territorial and I couldn’t work it out. But it makes sense now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said forcefully, trying to unclench his hands. “She’s always trying it on with me, but I have absolutely zero interest in her.”
“It does matter, Hunter! She abused you!”
He was moving before he’d even realised he’d done so, taking hold of her arms, gripping her. “There was no abuse,” he said fiercely. “None. I wanted it. I begged for it. I was fucking in love with her for Christ’s sake.”
Ellie made a little sound of pain, and he realised abruptly how tightly he was holding her, how his fingers were digging into her skin. Self-loathing, disgust, shame, guilt, welled up inside him like a thick, black tide, choking him. He was so screwed up. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her and yet look what he was doing. What a prick.
Hunter released her, horrified by the marks his fingers had left on her pale skin. “Jesus… I’m sorry, Ellie. I’m so sorry.”
She said nothing. For a long moment she stared at him then rose up on her tiptoes and put her arms around him, her warm body pressed to his with nothing but the cotton sheet between her bare skin and his.
“Don’t,” he said roughly, his hands dropping to her hips, wanting to wrench her away because he didn’t want the warmth or the soft pressure of her arms. Ellie’s presence felt like too much, burning like acid on an exposed wound. But she was twisted so tightly around him, he couldn’t pull her away without hurting her. And he couldn’t hurt her, not again.
The heat of her began to seep through the sheet and he realised he was shaking again. Like an old man. A hot, volatile emotion caught in his throat, making it hard to speak. “Let me go,” he forced out. “Ellie…please…”
But she didn’t. With one hand she pulled away the sheet between them instead, her bare skin burning against his, and turned her head into his neck, pressing kisses to his throat and collarbone.
Hunger began to build inside him, a desperate, intense need that he couldn’t seem to stop. The need to escape these feelings, this shame and guilt. Be free of them for one goddamned moment. And there was only one place he could do that. In bed with Ellie.
His hand caught the back of her head, tangling in her hair, pulling her head back, covering her mouth with his. A raw, desperate kiss that went on and on until there was nothing in the all the world but her.
She gave a soft moan as he pushed her up against the wall, hauling her leg up around his waist. Then she arched back, lifting her hips, and there was no thought. No reflection. No memories. Only need. He couldn’t wait, pushing into her hard and deep.
She gasped then lifted her hands, took his face between them. Looked into his eyes.
And he stopped, deep inside her, caught by her silver gaze.
“I won’t let you shut me out again,” she said hoarsely. “I won’t let you, do you understand?”
Perhaps he should have felt threatened by that. Certainly a week ago he would have. But he didn’t now. Instead he felt something he didn’t even have a name for that threaded through his desire and passion for her like gold thread, holding everything together.
He began to lean into her, wanting to kiss her throat, drive them both mindless, but she wouldn’t let him. “Look at me,” she murmured. “Look at me, Hunter.”
And he did. Looked into her eyes as he moved, as the pleasure built and the heat of her body set him on fire.
And as he burned, he kept on looking until there was nothing left of him but embers.
“Didn’t you have some kind of family staying?” Ellie eyed Kara’s suspiciously un-slept-on looking couch. The brightly coloured Indian throw was immaculate.
Kara gave her a blank look. “Family? Oh, yeah. My, uh, aunt. She left yesterday.”
“Why does that sound so bloody suspicious?”
“I have no idea. And more to the point, what’s that on your neck?”
Ellie had put a hand to the bruise Hunter had left on her neck the previous night before she could stop herself. “Nothing,” she said, collapsing on the couch. “I just bumped myself.”
Kara, standing at the breakfast bar in the apartment’s open-plan kitchen-lounge area, gave Ellie a look. “You bumped your neck? How the hell could you bump your neck?”