Black Lies (12 page)

She doesn’t give me a reason. Doesn’t do anything but cry as I stare, examining every line of her as she covers her face. Eventually, there is a stiff shake of her head and I close the lid, putting the ring box back into my pocket, a place that has already grown cold in the last few minutes, the scrape of my knuckles against the cashmere of my coat a sickening texture. Something is wrong. Something has happened and broken the perfection of us.

I need to find out what has happened. We are fixable. Nothing will change that.

I will wait until the day I die for her. For me, there isn’t, and will never be, anyone else.

Our relationship had been perfect. A gorgeous, brilliant man. One who loved me with every spare inch of his heart. Spoiled me. Listened to me. Valued me. One who I loved passionately in return. I had gone ahead and made plans for us. Big plans sucking up large parts of my heart. Plans involving a house full of children, growing old as one, a joining of our lives that would never end.

Then, I found out his secret. And on that night, my world imploded. Every fantasy I had of happily ever after, of children and marriage: gone. I was faced with a hole of deceit and had to decide if I wanted to jump in or walk away. I could have ended everything. Broke it off and continued on—tried to find another love, a different happy ending. Instead, I stood at the rabbit hole of hell and looked down. Toed the line of indecision, even while turning down his proposal. I waffled, I moped, and I drowned my sorrows in chardonnay. And then… finally? I squared my shoulders and stayed. Didn’t let on that I knew his secret. But that day, when my fairy tale died? I lost my trust in him, in our relationship. And a few months later, I met Lee.

Lies. A mountain of them between us.

A few months after Belize, I was in a convenience store, examining colorful lines of candy, trying to decide which one was worth my change, when he walked in. Out of my normal neighborhood, I had driven down to Palo Alto to visit Brant at work. Stopped in an area I shouldn’t be in because my Mercedes needed gas and my bladder wouldn’t shut up.

I felt him before I saw him, a presence behind me, uncomfortably close, and I turned my head and caught his eyes. Staring right at me. Not evasive, not ashamed. Looking at me in the same way a baby does, innocent and direct, so direct you wanted to break contact but I didn’t. His stare was so unlike Brant’s that I mentally stuttered, caught in this moment in time where we both stared and then he smiled.

Wow
. Cocky. Confident. Sexual. So different from Brant’s. Brant’s fixed expression was intensity, his face still and stoic. Brant was a man who listened, then reacted, impulse not a trait in his wheelhouse. Neither was carefree, playful, or flirtatious. This man’s smile was all three, and I was drawn to it, my own smile curving in response.

“Hard decision,” he said, nodding his chin to the shelves.

“Yeah.” I nodded, my smile still on. Like I was a marionette doll, the goofy expression painted in place.
I should turn back. Move away
. Instead I kept the eye contact, my damaged relationship at the type of fragile place where decision-making abilities should be revoked.

“I know you…” he said slowly, squinting slightly, his smile a little more guarded, recognition dawning in his eyes. Actual recognition, no ‘Don’t I know you?’ flirtation to follow.

I stopped breathing, my smile still in place, dreading yet curious about whatever words would come next.

An ‘aha’ moment when he made the connection. “Aren’t you Brant Sharp’s girlfriend?” He whirled away from me, his head tilting as he scanned the magazine rack behind us, his hand skimming over and grabbing a magazine. A groan slipped through my clenched jaw.

Wired Magazine
: the go-to for geeks worldwide—had just proclaimed me Tech Hottie of the Year, an honor that should have been bestowed on someone actually in the electronics industry, not just a girlfriend of this century’s brainchild. Yet there I was, on the glossy cover, covered in nothing but wires, the confident grin on my face making this their bestselling issue so far. Geeks apparently liked nudity, no matter who wore it. And there, in giant letters across my midsection, my appearance’s validation: “Lucky Layana: where Brant Sharp gets his creative inspiration.”

I stopped smiling, reached out and snatched the magazine from his hands, took four steps to the side and stuffed it behind a few issues of
Martha Stewart Living
.

“Well now, that just answered my question,” he said with a smile, putting a hand on the rack and leaning in, just enough that I could smell the scent of fresh grass coming off him.

God, that’s a good smell
. I stole a discreet sniff and then stepped back. So…the gorgeous man
didn’t
know me. Had just recognized me from the magazine, either the
Wired
cover or another one. Over the last few months, Brant’s media machine had gone into overdrive, put me on seven of them, the PR campaign headlined by Jillian, a woman who had jumped fully into Team Layana. She and I had talked, the night I found out the Secret. Mended fences in our new common goal to Keep The Secret. The stiffness was still there, but with an objective now shared between us, she had moved bleachers, her energy moving onto things other than ending our union. Her most recent efforts centered on pushing me into the spotlight. I knew what she was doing. She wanted the focus off him, his privacy left intact while the vultures feasted on my flesh instead. It’d been working. I’d done five interviews that month.

The media machine coined me Lucky Layana, due to my supposed inspiration for Brant’s last creation: the Laya. The Laya was single-handedly responsible for increasing BSX’s bottom line by an extra eight figures that quarter. A shining star. All thanks, in the media’s mind, to me. Ridiculous.

“So are you?”

My return to the candy quandary was looking like a lost cause. “Am I what?”

“Lucky.” His voice low, it grated of intentions, desire, and Iwannafuckyourighhere sex.

I looked up, meeting his gaze and was taken aback by the sizzle of chemistry between us. This was nothing like how it was with Brant. This was electricity and danger and raw want, a combination that pushed my feminine buttons and made me reckless. “Why don’t you try me and find out?”

He chuckled, stepped back, the yellow suede of his work boots creaking on the linoleum floor. “You’re not that kind of girl.”

I kept the eye contact, swallowed the apprehension sitting in my throat. This was wrong. This was bad. I should run home, wait for Brant, and forget this ever happened. My voice disobeyed, coming out cool, confident. Exactly as I’d always wished a flirtation to sound, yet
this
time was when I finally nailed it. “Not that kind of girl? Then you really
don’t
know me.”

“Anybody can talk big in public.” His eyes dared me, his cocky smile returning, and he glanced at the hidden magazine, then back at me.

“Then take me somewhere private.” The challenge was in my tone, even as my conscience screamed a long, silent death somewhere in my bones.

Private turned out to be the back of the store, a gravel lot enclosed on both sides with privacy fence and junk cars, an abandoned bucket and empty packs of cigarettes littering the ground that our feet kicked through. He shoved me against the wall, his hands pulling at my Vince sleeveless tank, sliding it down over my shoulders, the neckline popping as it stretched beyond its means, his strong hands ripping further until the pale top of my breasts were exposed, peeking out of the lace of my bra. “Nice,” he murmured, dropping his head, pulling down with greedy hands until the cups of my bra were pulled aside and my breasts hung free, out of the cloth, his hands cupping and squeezing them as his body pressed against me. Inside me, my conscience battled with need, every brush, grip and grope of his hand like fire across my skin, lighting my arousal till it was at the point of madness. I struggled with my emotions, unable to keep a clear head as I gasped for breath, his head lifting until we were staring at each other and everything paused.

A long freeze in time, both of us caught until he broke the moment with the long scrape of a chuckle. “What are you doing Lucky? Aren’t you late for afternoon tea?”

I growled at him, leaning forward and biting into his neck, the taste of his skin one of sweat and salt, heat and man. Dirt and want. A far cry from the cologne and dignity of which I was accustomed. “I thought you were a man of action. You nervous? Worried you can’t compete?”

He pulled my mouth from his neck. Twisted my face with his hand until I was staring full force into him. Dominant eyes, the playfulness gone. Nothing but gorgeous alpha male, competitive forces at play in their depths. I’d seen the look in Brant’s eyes before. When he was attacking a problem. Going after a competitor. But never when he’d stared at me.

“I’m worried I’ll fuck you so well I’ll ruin you for life.”

God, I know it was wrong. But in the face of recent events, I closed my eyes to reason.

I liked it. I wanted it. I wanted it to fuck me.

And it did. Right there in that overgrown parking lot. An employee’s car watching us pulse and moan against dirty brick. Heaven above cursing my soul while I spread my legs and let his cock take me hard. A cheap gas station condom on his cock. Hard and clean and hotter than I’ve ever gotten it before. Including from Brant. He fucked me to use me, his focus on his pleasure, his attraction to me not masked in any way. It should have felt wrong, it shouldn’t have been hot, but it was, dirty and desperate, and I came hard, my hands gripping the rough brick, my legs shaking, the pleasure ripping a forbidden path through my body.

He finished a minute later with a roar, not attempting to censor his speech, his cry whipped by the wind, my own moan loud against his neck, his hands tight on my ass, pulling me into him, the gasps and pants letting me know how long and how good his finish was.

“Fuck,” he swore, pushing off the building, his cock dropping out of me, one of his hands hard against my shoulder, keeping me pinned to the wall as he stripped off the condom and tucked his cock back into his pants. Zipped up ripped jeans with one hand while his heavy breaths and wild eyes traveled up my body. “So that’s what the other half gets.”

“Fuck you,” I shot back, with as much challenge as I could, given that my linen shorts were stretched tight around my ankles, my shirt up, tits out. A strong breeze gusted, and my nipples responded, the skin tightening, my cunt heavy and wet with my arousal.

He squatted before me. Gripped the top of my shorts and worked them up, my legs sliding together to aid him, the scuff of jeweled sandals against gravel as the heat of his fingers drug up my legs, his eyes never moving from mine, their directness more of an invasion than his cock.

At my navel, I felt the turn of his hands as he fastened the button, then he slid his knuckles higher. The rough skin of them brushed over my stomach, then the curve of my breasts, my breath hitching as he rolled his hands over and squeezed possessively. Hard enough to almost hurt, he used the grip to pull himself up, and I had to look up as he rose to his full height.

Another squeeze. I felt every single finger as they spread across my chest. He alternated the pressure and I would have laughed except that I was on the thin verge of asking him for round two.

His hand released. He pulled up my bra and down my shirt so quickly that I got distracted from whatever I was about to say. And… with clothes in between us, we suddenly had less in common.

“Get back to his mansion, Lucky. I’m sure he’s waiting.”

“He’s not.”

He grinned again, this one less playful, harder, cynical. “You always fuck strangers within five minutes of meeting them?”

“Did they leave that fact out of the article?”

“I guess high class bitches like cock just like any other.”

“I guess low lives don’t know how to take a girl on a date.”

A catch in those eyes. A slow nod, the corners of his mouth turned up a tad, a dimple breaking through. Brant had a dimple, though I hadn’t seen it in months.

“Then let me take you to lunch.”

I glanced at my watch, the Tag sparkling brilliantly against the afternoon sun, framed by California-kissed skin. “A little late for lunch.”

“Then beers. Unless that’s too lowbrow for you.”

I shrugged. “I can fuck in a parking lot; I think I can down some dollar wells.”

His face darkened, and I had already seen more emotion from him in thirty minutes than in the last month with Brant. Ever since my rejection of his proposal, there’d been a gap of sorts. Maybe it was me, maybe he had withdrawn, maybe it was a little of both. Whatever the reason, this man’s passion, his attitude… it was a refreshing change.

We got in his vehicle, a jeep, one that pulled a trailer full of mowers and tools, my eyes skipping over the contents, inventorying everything, his eyes catching the movement. “Sorry. Left my Ferrari at home.”

I sat on a broken vinyl seat, my fingers itching to pull open the glove box and check the registration, put a name and some bit of understanding to the man who sat beside me. The jeep hitched, then jerked, throwing me against the steering wheel as he tore out of the parking lot, my white Mercedes still parked in front, the candy bar craving still present as I let him drive away.