The Millionaire's Wish (15 page)

He gave her a quick, hard kiss. “I can do that. But I want you so much right now I'm shaking. I'm afraid I'll lose control.”

She met his gaze steadily. “I want you to lose control.”

He swallowed. “One second,” he said, reaching down to the floor for his pants and the condom in his wallet. He tore open the foil package and covered himself, and then he was back at her side.

The few moments they hadn't been touching seemed like too long.

She gripped him by the shoulders and tugged him down. For a moment she felt his body hard on hers, her breasts crushed against his chest. Then he pulled back, supporting his weight on his arms.

“Are you sure you're—”

She opened her legs for him and felt his hips slide into the cradle of hers, his hard length pressing against her center.

He closed his eyes briefly. “I guess you are.”

A moment later he was at her entrance, his arms corded and tight as he held himself rigid above her. Then slowly, carefully, he pushed inside.

Her eyes closed as her body stretched to accept him, inch by inch. They both went still as he pushed deeper, her body hot and tight around his. Then he was home, all the way home, and her eyes flew open to meet his.

“Rick,” she said, her voice ragged and trembling and full of wonder.

His eyes never left hers as he began to move, sliding out and pushing in, and she felt the shock every time he
found her center. When the pressure started to build she moved beneath him, restless and agitated, and Rick's jaw tightened as his thrusts turned harder, faster. When the storm broke this time she knew he'd be right there with her.

Her head arched back as she cried out. Her body spasmed and then fluttered around him. He called out her name and thrust hard once more, bringing his mouth down on hers as he pulsed inside her.

It was a long time before they moved again.

Her body was still humming when he eased out of her, taking care of the condom before he lay down beside her again. He pulled her close, and she rested her head on his chest with a feeling of joy inside her that was too big for words. His arms tightened around her, and she wondered if he was feeling the same thing.

She fell asleep listening to the sound of his heartbeat.

 

When she woke up, it was a few hours before dawn.

She lay in Rick's arms for a few blissful minutes, and then sat up carefully so she could watch him sleep. His strong features looked relaxed, peaceful even, with those intense green eyes hidden from view. In the low light of the desk lamp they'd left on, his hair was coal black.

Allison hugged her knees to her chest and settled in for a nice long look.

His mouth… He could work magic with that mouth. Hard one minute, soft the next, demanding and tender at the same time.

And his body… Allison let her gaze drift down over
his arms and shoulders and chest to his well-toned abs and the hipbones angling down toward his…

He might be asleep, but she still blushed.

And his hands…oh, yes, his hands. Strong, knowing, gentle… He could chase away fears with a single caress, take her to heaven with one firm stroke.

Allison rested her chin on her knees. She felt more at home with Rick, more at ease, than she'd ever felt with anyone. She'd told him things she'd never told a living soul—and she knew, now, she was going to tell him the rest. She'd tell him what happened the night she broke up with Paul.

A wall inside her crashed down and everything flowed together, whole.

Ever since that night ten years ago she'd kept her strength and weakness apart, the one hiding the other. A part of her strength had always come from the fear of weakness, the fear of needing something outside herself. But the strength coursing through her now was different. It came from everything that she was. Rick accepted every part of her, and because of that, she could too. She didn't have to be afraid of herself anymore.

A sudden rush of joy made her feel like dancing. She couldn't contain it. She had to tell Rick, had to tell him she—

“Rick!”

He awoke with a gasp, reaching out for her blindly. She grabbed both his hands in hers.

“Allison, what is it? What's wrong?” He pulled one hand away to scrub the sleep from his eyes, and she felt a wave of nervousness. Her epiphany had seemed
so momentous, but maybe it could have waited until morning.

Except that it couldn't.
She
couldn't.

She straddled him. His body came alive, and suddenly his eyes didn't look sleepy at all.

“Feel free to wake me up like this anytime.” He thrust up against her, and Allison had to stifle a moan even as she grabbed his hands and pinned them to his sides.

“Cut that out,” she said sternly. “I have something to say to you.”

He stared up at her, surprised. Waiting.

Such a simple thing. Three little words. Three…little…

She wanted to shout it. She wanted to sing it, with a full orchestra behind her and fireworks in the sky. But with her breath all gone and her heart hammering against her ribs, her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

“Rick—”

She leaned closer, afraid he wouldn't hear her.

“Rick, I love you.”

He went utterly, completely still. The planet might have stopped on its axis.

His eyes were bright, and she realized with a shock that there were tears in his eyes.

“I love you, too,” he whispered. Then he gripped her wrists. “I love you, Allison,” he said, his voice clear and strong this time.

Then he was tugging her down to him and his arms were tight around her, and they were kissing.

They kissed forever, like teenagers. They kissed like they were never going to stop.

They fell asleep in each other's arms, their legs tangled together and Allison's head on Rick's shoulder.

When she woke up again, it was a new day.

R
ick opened his eyes and saw Allison coming toward him with a breakfast tray.

He sat up and propped his pillow behind him. “The woman I love brings me breakfast in bed after a night of incredible sex. Either I'm still asleep, or this is an elaborate plot to make me believe that dreams really do come true.”

“It's the second thing,” she said with a smile, putting the tray down next to him and sitting cross-legged on the bed. She'd put on her pajama top but not the bottoms, and the glimpse he caught of her black lace panties made him instantly aroused.

“You know—”

“Don't even finish that thought,” she said, pouring him a cup of black coffee.

“How do you know what I was thinking?”

“Call it woman's intuition. Try to control yourself
long enough to have breakfast, okay? And then there's something I want to tell you.”

He grinned at her. “You already told me you love me. You're not going to take it back, are you?”

“Never,” she said.

She handed him his coffee and poured a cup for herself, but she set it down on the tray without drinking it. “It's something about Paul,” she said abruptly. “I told you a lot last night, but—” She trailed off.

“You don't have to talk about anything you're not ready to.”

“I know,” she said. “I appreciate that. But I'm ready to tell you now, because…” She broke off and smiled at him suddenly. “I realized this morning that it doesn't matter anymore. I've been carrying this around for so many years, like a wound that won't heal. And then I woke up beside you and realized that the memory doesn't have any power over me anymore. Because of you.”

She pushed the tray aside and crossed the space between them, and he had just enough presence of mind to put his coffee on the nightstand before she was kissing him. He wrapped his arms around her and slid down so she fell across his chest, and he let his hands rove under her top and across the smooth skin of her back, and then down to her hips so he could fit her securely against the erection that the blankets weren't doing much to hide.

Another second of that and their conversation would have had to wait, but Allison broke the kiss and scooted a few feet away.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

“Yeah, that was terrible of you. Come here and do it again.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Just let me get this all out, okay? Then I'll kiss you senseless, I promise.”

He sat up against the headboard again. “It's a deal,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said. “So…” She took a deep breath. “It took me a long time, but I finally realized Paul wasn't making me happy. Whatever feelings I'd had for him in the beginning were gone. To make things worse, he—he drank a lot, and when he drank he got angry. He was drinking the night I broke up with him.”

She was hugging her knees, her eyes looking down as she told the story. “He'd yelled at me a few times, but he'd never hit me. Not until that night.”

Rick froze.

Allison's eyes were still down. “When I told him it was over, he slapped me across the face. I tried to run away, but I wasn't fast enough to get away from him. He dragged me into an equipment shed, and…”

She closed her eyes. “He hit me so many times. I think he kicked me, too, after I was on the ground. I had two broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, a broken wrist.”

A white flash burst behind his eyelids, leaving him shaking.

“He left me there in the dark. I think I might have passed out for a little while. When I came to I dragged myself out, and found a pay phone, and called for a cab so I could get to the hospital.”

“A cab?” he asked abruptly. “Why not your parents? Why not 911?”

She sighed. “I told my parents I took a bad fall off a horse. They were already losing a daughter to cancer… How could I give them one more horror to deal with? Especially since I felt like it was all my fault for going out with him in the first place, when I should have been focused on my family.”

She held up a hand before he could say the obvious. “I know it wasn't my fault. I get that now, I really do. If I could go back in time and talk to myself I'd know exactly what to say. But I was eighteen, and I felt guilty and ashamed and sick of myself, and all I wanted to do was forget it ever happened. To put it behind me and never be vulnerable like that again.”

He remembered telling her the reasons he never talked about his father, and felt sick inside. “But by not telling anyone, you were agreeing with him. You were agreeing that you were nothing, someone whose pain didn't matter.”

“I know,” she said softly. “Believe me, if something like that happened to me today, I wouldn't react the same way.”

His throat felt raw, his muscles tense. If anyone dared to hurt Allison today he'd tear them to pieces with his bare hands.

“You never pressed charges?”

She shook her head. “A few days after it happened he got into a bar fight with some businessman. Hurt him pretty badly, I think. The case went to court and for the first time in his life Senator Winthrop couldn't make something go away. Paul spent some time in juvenile detention.

“I think it scared him straight,” she added with a grim
smile. “I'm pretty sure he must have gone through the twelve steps at some point, because I got a letter from him when I was in college, wanting to ‘make amends' for what he'd done to me. I never answered it. Sometimes I wonder if I should have…not for his sake, but for mine.”

He could never make amends for hurting Allison. For hurting a girl who'd never done harm to a living soul. A girl who tried so hard to take care of others, who'd grown into the most beautiful, compassionate, incredible woman he'd ever met.

He wanted to reach out for her, to pull her into his arms and take her away, take her…where? To a place where there was no violence, no evil, no demons masquerading as human beings?

There was no such place. He of all people should know that.

“I wish you'd told me this last night,” he said.

She stared at him. “Why?”

“If you'd told me last night, I could have…talked to him.”

Her eyes got wider. “What do you mean by that? Rick, what are you thinking about right now?”

“Nothing.”

“I don't believe you. You look…dangerous.”

“I'm fine.” He threw off the blankets and reached for his clothes, on the floor beside the bed. He got dressed quickly, as if there was somewhere he could go—something he could do.

There had to be something he could do.

Then he looked at Allison. She seemed so small and
fragile sitting there on that enormous bed, her eyes wide as she stared at him.

“Should I—not have told you?”

He sat down again, taking her hands in his.

“I'm glad you told me. I love you, and you can tell me anything. It's just…thinking about that bastard hurting you, and you dealing with it all alone…”

His hands tightened.

“That's why you stayed single for ten years. Because of what he did to you.”

“I never wanted to feel like that again. Not that I expected every guy to hit me, but…I saw my friends get hit by love in other ways, ways they brought on themselves. Wasting their time and their emotions like I had. Life hands you enough pain without standing in line begging for more.”

She shook her head. “I didn't want to waste my heart on someone who wasn't worth it, someone who would hurt me. I didn't want to waste time on an illusion.”

Paul had done that to her, made her feel that way. Made her turn her back on the very idea of love for ten years. He hadn't just hurt her physically; he hadn't just hurt her once. He'd hurt her over and over again.

The rage sweeping through him was so consuming that when she spoke again, it was hard to focus on her words.

“I was comfortable being single. I never felt like I was missing anything, not once. And then you came along…”

Those words, and the tone of her voice, cut through his emotions and made him see her again.

She was smiling. “You came along, and made me
throw everything I'd ever believed out the window. Because of you, there's nothing lurking in the darkness anymore…. only magic. The magic you make me feel.”

He didn't know what to say. His heart ached in his chest, and he leaned forward to kiss her.

Allison had let her experience with Paul go. It was over for her. What she'd just shared with him had been the departing shadow of that bad memory, and he should let it go, too.

But instead of the peace he'd felt this morning, there was turmoil. And in his mind's eye all he could see was Paul Winthrop's face.

Then he remembered that the patent law office was in Chicago. Paul probably lived in Chicago. Chances were, he'd stayed over after the party. He could be in this hotel right now.

He stood up, his muscles trembling. “I'll be right back,” he said. “I need to go…check on something.”

“Rick—”

“I'll only be gone a minute,” he told her. “I'll be back before you finish your breakfast.”

When she looked in his eyes, Allison knew exactly what he was planning to do. She shot to her feet and blocked his way.

The expression on his face raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

“Let me go, Allison.”

“Rick, you have to listen to me. You can't go after Paul. He's not worth it.”

This was her fault. She should have realized that Paul might be staying over in the hotel, and that Rick might
react this way. He'd watched his mother be abused, and she knew he had a protector personality.

Not being an alpha male herself, she hadn't thought about what a man like Rick might do when confronted with this information—especially when the person who'd hurt her could be right here in the hotel.

He tried to step around her, but she got in his way again.

His jaw was like granite. “Let me go.”

“I can't. I'm afraid of what you'll do if you find him.”

“Paul's the one who should be afraid. He deserves to feel every bit of fear you did that night.”

“Maybe so. But he could file assault charges against you, Rick. You know I can't let you do this.”

A muscle in his jaw jumped. “You can't stop me.”

“How are you going to get past me? Push me aside? Walk right through me?”

“Damn it, Allison, get out of my way!”

“No.”

“What makes you think I won't push you?” A spasm of pain crossed his face. “What makes you think I won't hurt you?”

“Because I know you.”

“You don't. You don't know what's inside me.”

His hands clenched into fists. There was so much rage and torment in his eyes that she couldn't stop herself from reaching toward him.

He took a quick step back. He was breathing hard, every muscle in his body tense.

“Stay away from me,” he said.

“Rick—”

She could feel the tension in him, rising to the breaking point. He took another backward step and bumped against the dresser, jerking his head around and catching sight of his own face in the mirror.

He froze.

Allison could see his reflection over his shoulder. It looked like he was staring into an abyss, into the eyes of a demon that haunted his darkest nightmares.

He stood there for a minute. As she watched, she could see the rage leaving his body. When he turned around again, the look in his eyes brought her heart into her throat.

She'd seen that expression on the faces of people who'd just been given a terminal diagnosis.

She took a step toward him.

“Rick—”

“It's okay,” he said, moving past her. “I'm not going after Paul.”

Watching him leave was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. She wanted to follow him so much it hurt.

But not yet. She needed to give him a little time first, a little space.

And she thought she knew where he'd go to find it.

 

Rick drove straight to Hunter Hall. He didn't decide to consciously; he just got in his car and started the engine. It wasn't until he was halfway there that he realized where he was going.

There were two images in his mind. Allison waking him up in the middle of the night, leaning over him and saying those words with such determination, such knowledge of what they meant.

“I love you.”

If he lived to be a hundred he'd never forget how it felt to hear her say that—and how it felt to say it back to her.

He tried to cling to that memory, to burn the other image out of his head.

The sight of his father's eyes looking out of his face.

He hated that Allison had seen him like that. But even though his rage hadn't been directed at her, it was something that was inside him. A part of him.

The poison his father had left behind. The violence he'd never be able to escape.

Allison deserved better than that. Better than a man with this ugliness inside him. He loved Allison with everything he was, every cell in his body—but hadn't his father loved his mother once? In the beginning?

With that legacy of hate in his heart, how could he ever trust himself completely?

Rick pulled up in front of Hunter Hall and turned off his engine. He sat in silence for a moment before he dropped his head into his hands.

 

“Richard? What are you doing here?”

He raised his head to see his grandmother standing in the driveway, peering at him through the window.

He got out of the car and slammed the door shut, leaning back against it and dragging a hand through his hair.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.” His voice was rough, and he cleared his throat. “Gran…there's something I have to tell you.”

She tilted her head back to look at him. “Goodness, Richard. You look absolutely dreadful. What is it?”