Darker the Release Read online

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, taking a sip and looking oddly young and vulnerable. Almost like a little girl—which made Caleb wonder how he’d just been fucking her so roughly a few minutes ago.

  He stared at her for another minute, trying to push all the unsettling experiences of this evening to the back of his mind.

  The worst thing he’d ever done—years ago now—coming back to haunt him.

  Kelly, ghost white and trembling, because she’d let him fuck her.

  When she obviously hadn’t wanted him.

  He shrugged off the jacket of his tux because he couldn’t stand how violently she was shivering, and he wrapped it around her shoulders, pulled her against him, and waited to see if she’d pull away in disgust or in fear.

  She didn’t. She just huddled against him, shivering.

  Caleb could feel his own stomach churning and tried to process something—anything—that was happening here.

  After an extended stretch of dead silence, he finally forced out, “Why did you let me do that?”

  Kelly gasped and turned to look up at him. “I wanted it,” she insisted, her eyes wide and innocent. “It was good. I just got…carsick or something.”

  Another pitiful excuse. Not even worth countering.

  “Why did you let me do that?” he demanded again.

  She wasn’t looking at him now. She was staring straight in front of her, seeing…nothing, as far as he knew. “I wanted it,” she repeated blankly. “I asked for it.”

  “Why?”

  A long pause. Then, “I’d never had sex in the back of a car before.”

  “Kelly,” Caleb rasped, wishing he could just shake the truth out of her lips. “Why?”

  She let out a long sigh. “I don’t know,” she admitted in a defeated tone. “I just did.”

  Caleb closed his eyes, slammed with a wave of dizziness, which was an absurd reaction to something like this. His response to this entire encounter had been far more extreme than it should have been.

  Yes, he’d fucked her roughly, but she had asked him to. If she hadn’t wanted it, then it was her responsibility to tell him rather than egg him on. True—their fucking had obviously been upsetting to her, but it wasn’t really his fault and shouldn’t make him feel so off-kilter. But it did.

  Despite his attempt to deny it, the truth was threatening to level him anyway. Kelly had begged him to fuck her—but not because she’d wanted it. She hadn’t wanted it, and yet she’d taken it, encouraged it, demanded more.

  Let him use her.

  She’d been punishing herself. Through him. The truth Caleb hadn’t wanted to admit.

  He knew she’d had a bad relationship with some Albanian gangster in the past and that she was still working through it. Maybe it had something to do with that, but it felt more personal than that.

  “It’s not your fault,” Kelly added, evidently reading guilt on his expression. “It was my choice. I asked for it. How could you have known differently?”

  He had known. Subconsciously. Instinctively. He had known, but he’d ignored it because his other urges had been so strong.

  At this silent admission, Caleb sucked in an urgent breath and then reached down to grab another Coke, this one for himself. He took a long swallow, hoping it would settle his stomach.

  Kelly kept huddling next to him, so small and fragile that he incongruously felt like a big, hulking, clumsy Neanderthal. “It’s not that big a deal, anyway,” she mumbled. “You didn’t hurt me or anything. I just wasn’t as into it as I’d expected.”

  And suddenly Caleb was angry with her. For making him feel like this. For causing him to question himself. For shaking the sure foundations of his universe over the course of the last weeks. “You might have considered how it would make me feel to fuck you when you didn’t want it. I’m not in the habit of being with women who are unwilling.”

  Kelly opened her mouth, as if she were going to immediately respond. Then she snapped it shut and sipped her Coke in silence for a few minutes.

  When she finally did respond, it wasn’t at all what Caleb had expected. “Are you so sure about that?”

  It took him a few moments to piece together her question with the last thing he’d said. But when he had, he bristled defensively. “Are you suggesting—”

  “No,” Kelly interrupted, sounding more tired than anything else now. “I know you would never take someone without consent or anything. That’s not what I was implying. I just meant, are you so sure that you’re always with women who want to be with you?”

  Caleb was nearly as offended by this remark as he’d been by her earlier one. “Every woman I’ve been with has come to me willingly.”

  “I know,” Kelly acknowledged softly. “But have they really wanted you?”

  Caleb had been about to argue some more, but something about her question struck him. It didn’t convince him, but it made an impact on him. He sat for a moment and thought about it.

  Then Kelly continued, before he could work out a response, “Have you ever hired a prostitute?”

  “Call girls,” Caleb said. “Yes. But that’s a business transaction, and those women received as much as they provided.”

  Kelly’s voice was faint as she prompted, “And they…wanted to be with you?”

  Caleb jerked away, a jolt of resentment shooting through his chest at what he took to be her implication. “Yes. I’m careful about the services I used. Every woman who was sent to me was there willingly and was justly compensated.”

  “I believe you. Although I’m not sure you can be one hundred percent sure about the kinds of choices most women living in those situations have. But anyway, that’s not really my point. They fuck you for the money. Not because they want to be with you.”

  This was undeniably true.

  “And all those other women you fucked over the years,” Kelly continued, her voice almost gentle but somehow functioning as a weapon Caleb couldn’t avoid.

  “What about them?” he asked thickly. “They were all willing. Most of them came on to me. You aren’t really going to suggest that women don’t have the ability to make a conscious, informed choice about whom they have sex with.”

  “I’m not talking about choice,” she said, her trembling finally starting to ease. “Every woman chose to be with you. I’m talking about something else. And are you going to suggest that every single one of those women you fucked for the night and then paid off with some offensive, expensive trinket wanted that experience? And did they actually want you for you? And not for your wealth, your power, or something else you could give them?”

  Caleb was shaking now too, with some sort of rising intensity—only he was shaking on the inside. His fingers were motionless and relaxed on the seat beside him. “If they were with me for other reasons, then they were trying to use me as much as I used them. I’m simply the one who succeeded. Besides, they all had a good time.”

  “Did they?” Kelly asked blandly, the mildness in her voice almost merciless. “How do you know?”

  He didn’t.

  He didn’t know at all.

  Most of the time he hadn’t even cared enough to wonder whether they’d really come or not.

  “Anyway,” Kelly concluded, suddenly sounding sad and almost ancient, “I’m not saying you’re to blame for it. All of those women chose to do what they chose to do. Just like all the men I was with before. I used to think…”

  There was a pause. And Caleb found himself holding his breath until she finished her sentence.

  “What?” he asked at last, when she never completed the thought.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I used to think sex could be simple—just something to do. I never really thought what might be going on with the other person.”

  Caleb had always been exactly the same, rarely thinking about the human being on the other end of the encounter. The revelation hit him with more power than it should have.

  Kelly went on, as if she were speaking to herself no
w. “I went a really long time without ever knowing what it was like.”

  “What?”

  “Having sex with someone who saw me as a person and not a body. And who I saw in the same way.”

  Caleb let out his breath and took another swig of Coke as his belly clenched sickeningly.

  She’d been talking about herself, but the words so clearly applied to him too.

  Surely there had been someone—in all his years of fucking—who’d wanted to be with him for no underlying reasons. Who’d just wanted him…for him.

  It was tragically implausible, but if there had been someone like that in his past, Caleb couldn’t recall her.

  Until Kelly. Maybe Kelly. But she might not even really want him either. Not completely. There was so much more going on inside her that she wasn’t revealing to him.

  Why had she fucked him just now when she hadn’t really wanted to?

  “Anyway,” Kelly concluded, “I’m sorry I messed up our hot sex. I’m still trying to work through a lot of issues, I guess, so it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped.”

  It hadn’t been good at all, except for the empty physical release.

  As they rode back home in exhausted silence, Caleb realized something else that hit him just as jarringly.

  Their fucking hadn’t been much different from most of what had passed for good sex in Caleb’s life, until Kelly had entered his world.

  It just had never bothered him before.

  —

  They only said a few words during the remainder of the drive. And when they got to his house, Kelly went right to bed while Caleb went to his office to return a couple of calls.

  When he got up to the bedroom a half hour later, he saw that Kelly was under the covers.

  She hadn’t brushed her hair, and her dress was tossed on the floor beside her shoes.

  He’d half expected her to take a shower before going to bed, and the fact that she hadn’t wanted to immediately wash off all evidence of Caleb’s body on hers relaxed something in his chest.

  Maybe it had just been one of those things. Maybe it wasn’t something he needed to feel guilty about.

  He did, though. And it was somehow all tied up in his mind with the guilt provoked by his conversation with Sean Moore.

  He took off his clothes, dropping them on the floor next to her dress, and then crawled under the covers beside her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, scooting over toward her.

  She turned to face him, and even in the dark room he could see that her eyes were slightly red.

  She’d been crying.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him, smiling faintly. “I’m glad you didn’t work all night.”

  Caleb didn’t even register her comment. The small comfort he’d taken in the fact that she hadn’t showered had dissolved completely at the sight of her face.

  He was overwhelmed with another sick, heavy feeling rising in his gut.

  It wasn’t guilt so much now as knowledge.

  There was so much going on inside Kelly that he didn’t know about. Her life was just as complex and conflicted as his was, and that meant everything she did might be more than what it initially appeared.

  She could come on to him—fuck him like an animal—and not really want it. She could say yes with her mouth and body and say no with her heart. She was deep and haunted and torn and human. And human.

  Like him.

  He didn’t want her saying no to him—not any part of her. He wanted what was between them to be real.

  “Kelly,” he murmured, unable to resist the instinct to pull her into his arms.

  She didn’t pull away. Her shoulders shook a few times, and she burrowed against his side.

  So Caleb held her, had to acknowledge that she was desperately wounded from more than one experience in her past, that he hadn’t really been thinking about what was best for her.

  He could see himself—as if from a distance—as he’d been brutally pounding into her body from behind, even as he’d somehow known that she wasn’t in the mood, that there was more going on with her than he wanted to acknowledge.

  He stroked the tangled, golden glory of her hair.

  And he thought about what she might have been trying to hide this evening with sex.

  —

  Caleb held Kelly for an hour or so, trying to figure everything out.

  He just didn’t seem to be capable of thinking clearly this evening. In any way.

  He kept going back to the idea that Kelly had started coming on to him after the strange interaction with Wes, and the suspicious part of his nature wondered if she had been using it as a distraction, trying to hide something from him.

  But he couldn’t figure out anything that had to do with Wes that she could possibly want to hide.

  Finally, when he could feel she’d completely relaxed in his arms, he murmured, “So what happened earlier? Why did you get so upset?”

  She tensed briefly but then relaxed again. “I don’t know.”

  “You know something.”

  After a long moment she finally said, “Do you ever think something is a good idea at first but then, once you start down that road, you realize it’s not what you want at all? But then it feels like it’s too late to take it back?”

  Caleb knew she was talking about the sex they’d had earlier, but he suddenly saw himself all those years ago, thinking there was an easy way to deal with a business problem that threatened to ruin him and then realizing how utterly wrong it was but being in too deep to take it back. He said softly, “Yeah. I’ve been there.”

  “That’s all it was. Once I realized it wasn’t really what I wanted, it was too late to take it back.”

  “It wasn’t too late. I would have stopped—”

  “I know. Of course I know that. But it just felt…I don’t know.” She pulled out of his arms and straightened up so she was kneeling beside him on the bed. She looked down on him, her hair tumbling down her back and the straps of her little gown slipping off her shoulders. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have had sex with you like that when I wasn’t in the mood. I’m sorry.”

  A tension in his chest relaxed. In spite of everything, his body couldn’t help but respond to the sight of her kneeling above him, the lush outline of her breasts beneath the fabric of her gown, the full curve of her lips. “I’m sorry too.”

  Kelly must have noticed the signs of his growing arousal, even though he had no intention of acting on it. The mood was deep and intense between them—almost uncertain in a way that wasn’t like either one of them.

  Caleb wanted her as much as he always had, but he felt like she was somehow more than she’d ever been before.

  Or maybe he was finally just recognizing all of who she was.

  She still looked lost and confused and beautiful. Her breasts swayed slightly as she moved, and her hair cascaded down around her body as she leaned over him.

  She pushed the covers down, slid her hand under his waistband, wrapped her fingers around his cock, and started pumping it steadily, her breasts jiggling slightly with her motion.

  Caleb stared at her, feeling just as lost and confused as she looked. But he could sense some of the pulsing ache inside him transform to a building climax.

  She was giving him something, but he wanted to give her something too. So he nudged at her thighs with his hand until she parted them further, and he slipped his fingers in between until he’d found her pussy.

  She gasped when he maneuvered one finger and then two inside her. He started to move them.

  So in breathless, fumbling silence, they brought each other to orgasm with their hands. It should have been embarrassing—like two groping teenagers instead of experienced adults. It was awkward, almost childish.

  But Caleb couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He felt Kelly’s hand on his cock as she built up the coiled tension in his body. He pumped and curled his fingers inside her. He stared at her twisted face, almost hidden by he
r hair, and at her tensing body.

  Soon Caleb’s body was tensing too, and his pelvis was bucking a little.

  He heard Kelly suck in a breath and freeze abruptly. Then whimper as she moved clumsily over his hand.

  Her fingers clenched around his cock spasmodically until Caleb came too, with a grunt and an upward thrust.

  Afterward Kelly fell asleep, his arm around her, her head resting against his chest.

  Caleb didn’t sleep at all.

  He stayed awake and brooded all night.

  He wasn’t thinking about his business. He wasn’t thinking about Sean Moore and the secrets that could never come out. He wasn’t thinking about sins he could never atone for. He wasn’t thinking about Kelly’s ex-lover and the trauma from her past that she would never tell him.

  He wasn’t even thinking explicitly about Kelly, although she was underlying every one of his thoughts.

  As he lay in the dark until dawn, Caleb tried to remember all the women he’d fucked. All of the call girls, one-night stands, other men’s wives and girlfriends. Tried to remember their names, their faces, the color of their eyes.

  And couldn’t.

  He tried to remember the name of the last woman he’d fucked before Kelly. Only a couple of months ago, before Kelly had entered his life. She had been brunette—that one-night stand. Her name had been one of those silly diminutives, but he couldn’t even remember what it was.

  Caleb wondered what she’d been like—for real, beyond the sex they’d had—what she might have really wanted. He wondered if she’d cried like Kelly had after he’d fucked her.

  And the woman before her had been a call girl, a woman with a full history that had brought her to that place. And the one before that…he didn’t know.

  An endless stretch of empty experiences.

  Every one of the women Caleb had ever fucked had chosen it, had consciously agreed to it. They’d seduced him, asked him, begged him, accepted the money he’d offered them.

  But Caleb wondered, as he lay beside Kelly that night and didn’t sleep at all, about every one of them—all of the women over all of the years who had somehow ended up in his bed.

  They’d said yes. Every one.