smiled at that, there against his side where he couldn’t see. “Your childhood doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.”
Another man might have shifted in the discomfort of that. Charlie went still.
“Was yours?”
“No,” Maya said, surprising herself, because she’d never said that out loud. She would never have dared say that out loud. And she kept going. “Now that you mention it, it really wasn’t any fun at all.”
Charlie made a low, rumbling sort of sound that she decided to interpret as encouragement.
“My parents are the coldest people I’ve ever met,” Maya told him, the words spilling out of her, as if there was a fissure inside her she could no more contain than she could stop the flow of lava from a volcano. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them touch each other. I know I’ve never seen a hint of affection from either one of them toward anything or anyone. As far as I can tell they have a business arrangement. And they raised my sister and me to be perfect little vice presidents of the family firm. Cold. Focused. All achievements, no excuses. That’s the Martin way. My wedding was the only time I’ve ever seen them show anything even resembling emotion.”
Charlie didn’t say anything, but she knew he wasn’t asleep. More than that, she knew he was listening to her.
And it occurred to her that for all the endless conversations she’d had with Ethan, he had never truly sat there and listened to her. He had always been far too busy strengthening his own arguments.
How had she never seen that when it mattered?
“I worked so hard to meet their expectations for me. I spent my entire life trying to succeed enough to get their approval. But the truth is, I don’t think they know how to be happy with anything. Certainly not with me.”
“That’s what kids do,” Charlie said at last, and his hand moved to the back of her head, his fingers gripping her curls and making her feel safe, somehow. “You try to live up to what’s in front of you. It’s the only thing you know.”
“Here’s something I know you don’t want to hear,” she said into the dark, because he made her feel safe and the fact that he could told her things about her whole life she would have given anything not to know. “I think the first real thing I’ve ever felt in my life is you.”
“You’re right,” he growled down at her, shifting then so he could look at her face. “I don’t want to hear it.”
But he didn’t let go of her. He rolled with her instead, coming over on top of her and pinning her to the bed.
“I wanted to fuck a beautiful woman in a shed, because I could,” he told her, his gaze fierce and challenging, and she should have been disgusted, surely. But instead, she was thrilled. “Instead, I got you. I don’t like real, Maya. It’s not who I am. I told you, I was raised to run cons. Not to get real.”
She knew she should say something. She should do something about the way her heart was pounding, as if it was telling her to run.
But he was shaking his head at her, and there was something in that blue gaze of his that made her pussy ache, even while it made her feel all those things she shouldn’t feel. Cherished. Safe.
He reached down to pull her hands up and over her head.
“I didn’t want real, but here we are.” His mouth went dangerous. Maya shivered. “Now we’ll see how real you want to get.”
“Is that...a challenge?” she asked, need stampeding through her, mixed up with something a lot like terror, but not because she was afraid of him.
She was far more worried that, really, she was afraid of herself.
“You’re going to hold on to the headboard again,” Charlie told her in that voice of his that was nothing but command. “And this time you’re not going to come until I tell you to. That’s the challenge.”
He dropped his head down next to hers, and the look on his face made her heart skip a beat. Then kick in so hard she was surprised he couldn’t see it.
“You wanted real, Maya. You wanted the truth.” Charlie’s blue gaze set her on fire, but she wasn’t sure she’d even started to burn. Or if she’d survive it. “Let’s see how much you like it.”
MAYA WOKE UP in a panic, as if she’d had a bad dream.
But if she’d been dreaming, she couldn’t remember about what.
Her heart careened around in her chest, her skin felt clammy and she could hardly manage a full breath. She squinted at the clock on the bedside table, certain that it would be the dead of night. But it was one of the long, dark mornings this time of year, and somehow the fact that it was a new day and yet still so dark made her...shiver.
Then again, maybe that had more to do with the way Charlie was sprawled next to her in the big bed, taking up more than his share of room on the mattress.
She wanted to curl into him. She wanted to bury her face in his chest, feel his heavy arms around her and let him make her feel safe again—
But she couldn’t let herself do that. Because she knew she would wake him up if she touched him, and he would see that she was losing it, and the very idea of that made her heart beat faster and her throat feel tighter.
A sob, trapped in her chest like some kind of time bomb, threatened to break free.
And Maya couldn’t have that, either.
She eased herself over to the edge of the bed, then rolled out of it, expecting her body to react to that much movement after the night she’d had. Expecting to feel twinges, little pulls or scrapes, instead of...the strangest feeling that suffused her from head to foot. As if she was lit up with something too bright to contain.
It didn’t make sense.
Charlie had turned her inside out, with an intensity and a deliberateness that made her knees feel weak. He had taught her things about herself that made her shiver all over again, just remembering.
He had taken control of her in so many delicious ways that she was surprised she’d survived it. But maybe the real truth was that she hadn’t. She felt like ash. She was charred straight through, waiting for the faintest breeze to blow her away.
Her heart was still kicking at her like it wanted out of her chest. She couldn’t breathe. And looking at the impossible, sculpted beauty of the big hard man sprawled across her bed made her...weak.
She made her way across the bedroom in the dark, carefully stepping over the shoes she’d thrown on the floor last night. Once she made it to the washroom suite, she eased her way inside and gently, carefully closed the door behind her. Then she stood there, her back against the door and her heart hammering at her, as if something was chasing her.
Maya stood there for a long time. Until her feet grew so cold against the tiled floor beneath her that she could feel the chill of it climb up her calves. When she pushed away from the door, she felt older, arthritic, as if the force of whatever panic this was had aged her immeasurably.
The funny thing was, she believed it.
She’d thrown her clutch on the washroom counter when she’d stormed into the room last night, and she moved over to it now, unclipping it so she could pull her mobile out and scroll through her notifications.
There were several voice mails from her parents’ house phone and individual mobiles, but she didn’t need to listen to them. She could feel their cool disapproval of her choices from across the world and knew exactly what they’d say. That they were disappointed that she hadn’t risen to the occasion and shown her mettle as a Martin should.
They would have