Dropping his body on hers, Erik pinning her to the mattress and began to move with earnest strokes inside her. He curled his fingers through her hair and held her soft mouth prisoner with his own as he pumped fiercely into her. Their grunts of lust filled the air. Their tears melded into a river of hopelessness.
Fire coursed through his veins at the velvety moistness of her clutching at him like a bloodthirsty parasite, sucking the very life out of him, pulling him toward the end of the universe. She wasn’t supposed to feel this good. She wasn’t supposed to be this delicious, this irresistible. His body had betrayed him, just as she had.
“How could you do this to me, to us?” His voice rang with pleasure and torture as he licked at her salty tears.
“Do what?” Michelle wrapped her arms around his neck, and sank her teeth into his shoulders as she was consumed with the conflicting agony of intense pain and primal desire.
“Your father killed Cassie.” He began to ride her harder.
Doom descended on Michelle. Her body tightened around him. He must be mistaken. Her father was a drunk, not a murderer. “Erik, it can’t be true. He left Manchester before—”
“He came back. And he ran her down with his car that night.” Rising upward, Erik pumped deeper into her.
The pleasure was so intensely passionate, they both became lost in the rhythm that melded their bodies together, even as their world fell apart around them.
With his groin locked securely to Michelle’s, Erik’s back arched upward, and when she saw his eyes close and his mouth convulse, Michelle knew he was near the edge. He wrapped his arms around her, and holding her tightly against his heart, he groaned then dropped his head into the softness of her throat. She felt the terrible trembling in his body as he growled then poured his ache, and his seed inside her. She cried out his name and exploded with him, their juices fusing in a cauldron of love and hurt.
The sound of Erik’s sobs tore Michelle’s heart to shreds. As her mind reeled with questions about the accusation he’d made about her father, she broke down and wept, for her pain for Erik was greater than any she’d ever felt from her father’s hands.
After a long while, Erik got up and pulled his clothes back on. He stood at the side of the bed and gazed down at his wife, the woman he loved.
Yes, he loved her.
But the image of Cassie dying in his arms yanked him back to the fierce reality. Michelle had lied to him. She had deceived him.
Michelle sat up in the bed and pulled the sheet around her shattered body. What they had just shared was nothing short of a desperate need for survival. They were both drowning and they knew it.#p#分页标题#e#
“I know you would have come forward if you’d know it was your father who’d killed Cassie,” Erik began in an unstable voice. “What I want to know, Michelle, is whether or not you suspected it could have been him.”
Michelle hung her head. She couldn’t bear the iciness in Erik’s eyes. Gone was the lust, the desires that had just obsessed them. “Yes, it crossed my mind the first time you told me about the accident. But after I did some checking, I realized it couldn’t be because he’d already left town when it happened. I didn’t know he’d come back. I’d already moved to South Carolina by then, Erik. I was gone for a year and a half. I didn’t even know about Cass… what had happened until you told me about it.”
Erik wiped his hands down his face. The smell of her lingered on his fingers. “Why couldn’t you have been totally honest with me? Why couldn’t you have just trusted me?”
Michelle pulled the sheet tighter around her body. “I was afraid of losing you. Afraid you could never love the daughter of a drunk seeing it was one who killed Cass… your wife.” She saw no need to tell him that the man who’d raised her, the man who’d killed his wife, may not even be her father after all. It didn’t matter. She’d lied. “Who told you it was… my father? How do you know it’s even true?”
He walked over to the window and turned his back to her. His voice was heavy with sadness as he told her what Detective Garret had told him.
Fresh tears sprang to Michelle’s eyes. Dwight Carter had taken the life of another human being—Erik’s wife, Precious’ mother. He had hurt the two people who meant most to her in this world. Then he ran because he was a coward. He’d always been a coward. That was his yoke to bear. Hers was that she should have been truthful with Erik from the beginning.
She pulled her nightshirt back on and walked over to where Erik stood staring out into the night that was as black and brooding as the shadows hanging across their hearts.