Exposed to You (23 page)

“When I got my full scholarship to art school, that was pretty special. For a while there, I was concerned I wasn’t going to be able to go to VCU’s program. It was my first choice for art school, and it’s not easy to get in. My mother was so happy I’d been accepted, but she died not realizing we really wouldn’t have been able to cover the finances. When I found out about the scholarship, it was like someone lifted the door on my cage,” she said.

“And the dove flew free.”

She gave him a shaky smile. “What’s your favorite movie of all time?”

He grimaced and clutched at her hips, tilting her forward slightly on his cock.

“Everett?” she gasped, feeling him press erotically against the front wall of her vagina.

“Hard to say,” he said tightly. “Probably
On the Waterfront
.”

“I can see that,” she murmured. “You have all the ragged passion of Brando, somehow stabilized.”

He grimaced, and she knew it had nothing to do with what she’d said. “What’s yours?”

“
Casablanca
.”

“I can see that.”

“Why?” she asked, finding it difficult to focus. The pressure in her genitals was becoming unbearable.

“You and Ilsa both have that elusive thing going on that drives a guy crazy,” he mumbled, referring to Ingrid Bergman’s character.

“I do not!”

“Have you ever been in love?” he asked her, abruptly changing the topic.

She couldn’t resist any longer. She pressed down in his lap, getting friction on her clit. A ripple of pleasure shuddered through her. “I . . . don’t know,” she gasped.

“How can you not know?”

“I can’t be sure.” She nervously licked at the perspiration gathering on her upper lip. “Have you?”

His fingers dug into her hips. He seemed to realize what he was doing and smoothed the silk over her skin as if to apologize for his forcefulness.

“Yeah.” Was that uncertainty she heard in his tone or some other emotion?

“But you don’t know for sure?” she whispered, scanning his features.

“No. I know,” he said grimly after a moment.

Her heart throbbed against her breastbone. Her vaginal muscles tightened around him without conscious instruction on her part.
Change the subject,
she thought desperately.

“When I was talking to Errol down in the diner earlier today, he said something about Katie being related to Howard Hughes. Is that true?”

“What?”
Everett said, his gaze narrowed on her.

“Are you related to Howard Hughes?” she asked.

“Oh. Um . . . yeah,” he said as if he were trying to dredge for inconsequential information in a murky area of his brain. “He’s some kind of sixteenth cousin removed on my father’s side or something.”

His hands shifted. He lowered her nightgown back down beneath her breasts. She felt his cock lurch inside her as he stared at her chest.

“How much longer do we have to do this?” he asked, his gaze glittering . . . ravenous.

“Much longer.”

He exhaled exasperatedly. “Why did I know you were going to say that?” He stroked the tender skin at the sides of her body, making her shiver and her nipples tighten. Again, her vagina tightened around him. She shot him a repressive glance. He knew how sensitive she was there. “Okay, how about the worst day of your life?” he asked.

“The day my mother died,” she said without thinking. He caressed her bare back with warm hands. This time, she found his touch comforting as well as arousing. “I had thought for sure when the end came, when her suffering finally ceased, I would be relieved . . . glad that her pain was finally over. I was wrong. It was exponentially worse, knowing I’d never hear her speak again, never feel her touch,” she whispered. He regarded her silently for a moment. “What about you?” she asked.

He grimaced. “I’d rather not say.”

“Why?”

“Because compared to your worst day, I’d sound like a spoiled, shallow jerk.”

“Don’t say that, Everett,” she said, caressing his shoulders. She had to move. She must. She lifted herself a few inches off his cock and settled again. They both gave restrained groans.

“One person’s suffering doesn’t compare to another’s,” she said once she’d caught her breath. “We’re not in a contest. It’s a completely private, personal experience. What you would say is your worst day is about you, no one else.”

He hesitated, his gaze lowering to her breasts. She held her breath when he ran the tip of his forefinger along the sensitive skin on the lower swell of flesh.

“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. It might have been when I took my parents to the director’s screening for
Stardust
. Maybe you saw it—it was my first major motion picture and a colossal flop. When I looked at the expression on my father’s face when he saw me on that screen wearing tight silver pants and spouting the most moronic lines ever spoken by a human being, including during the Neolithic era, I thought I’d die of humiliation. I knew the screenplay was bad, and had a pretty good idea it was going to tank, but until I saw myself up there through my parents’ eyes, I didn’t get just how horrible it was. I was too young to tell my agent to go screw herself when she insisted the project was revolutionary and cutting-edge. I was too stupid to understand that the magic fairy dust of filmmaking is completely ineffective on a crap screenplay.” Her heart squeezed in compassion when she saw the vivid discomfort on his face. It still bothered him, even now. “After that experience, I didn’t act for nine months. I was twenty-three years old and totally pissed at myself for agreeing to be a part of such a shit project. I was convinced I was a total sellout.”

“I never saw
Stardust
.”

His eyes sprung wide. “Will you marry me?”

She suppressed a smile at his earnestness. “It changed your life, that day. After that, you always were extremely careful of the parts you chose. You only wanted the best, and that often wasn’t roles in the highest-budget films. You challenged yourself on independent films and foreign projects. You became the opposite of a Hollywood sellout.”

“Only because I’d prostituted myself to begin with,” he mumbled. He put his hands on her hips and flexed his arms, lifting her up on his cock. His facial muscles convulsed as he lowered her again and she sunk onto his erection. “
God
that feels good.”

“I think your worst day became your best. That says a lot about you.”

His eyes turned lambent as he stared at her. Sweat glazed both of their faces now. A slight sheen of it gleamed on his chiseled torso. “Thanks. That was a nice way of reframing it. I’m not so sure I deserve it, but it sure sounds better that way.”

She smiled. “You deserve it.” She circled her hips, watching his reaction. His head banged against the headboard.

“Have we talked enough?” he asked in a choked voice.

“I don’t think so.”

His hands shifted to the tops of her thighs. His long thumbs inched toward her outer sex.

“Can I make you come, then?”

“No, Everett,” she said shakily. Her body would like nothing better, but her brain wanted to stretch this moment with him . . . make it last.

He frowned. “Then tell me something really sexy. Something you’ve never told anyone before.”

She licked her upper lip nervously and tasted salt. “After you left my apartment on that day of the rainstorm,” she began quietly, “I . . . I masturbated while thinking about you fucking me.”

He stilled. A sharp glint entered his eyes, reminding Joy of a predator sighting prey. “How did you think about me fucking you?”

“Hard,” she said on a puff of exhaled air. His cock lurched inside her. She stared at his parted lips, entranced. Her clit burned. She stroked him with her pussy—quick and firm, landing back in his lap with a sharp smacking sound. “Like you were making me take it,” she grated out, “all of your cock . . . all of you.”

“Joy,” he rasped, firming his hold on her hips.

“No, Everett. No. Don’t make it end yet,” she pleaded.

He stared at her, panting. He was like a coiled spring beneath her, a receptacle of incipient energy, a keg of dynamite about to explode at the smallest provocation.

“What’s a moment you’ll remember for the rest of your life?” she asked in a rush.

“This one.”

She clamped her eyelids shut and ground down in his lap.

“Another one,” she whispered. Was his cock growing larger inside of her? It seemed to be stroking her inner walls, firing her nerves, but he wasn’t moving.

“At the studio when you asked me if
I minded
. The way you looked when you turned around in that doorway and saw me running to you in the rain—”

“
Don’t
, Everett,” she moaned. “Don’t say those things.”

“Why not? It’s true. You said you weren’t afraid of my honesty. That’s all I’m doing—telling the truth. The moment when I saw that sketch you made of me on that napkin,” he continued relentlessly, “and you somehow managed to capture something I was just beginning to realize.”

She lifted herself off him and ground her pussy back in his lap, her eyelids clenched tightly as if it could make her stop hearing him—or make her hear him more clearly. His hold on her tightened and he lifted.

“That I was falling in love with you,” he said as he drove her back on his cock.

The stroke—or perhaps his volatile words—ignited something in her. Hot, spiking pleasure cascaded like a beating waterfall in her flesh. She gripped his shoulders. They began to move as one, both of them submersed in the same pure pool of electric delight. She heard their skin slapping together and the headboard thudding against the wall as if through a dense, heavy fog. Sharp pain shot through her buttock and she cried out. Her eyelids popped open and Everett spanked her again, squeezing both her ass cheeks and jerking her back down on his cock. The burn of pain was the subtle spice to her boiling pleasure.

He spanked her again and again as they mated frantically, as if he truly was bent on creating a fire in her flesh. It worked. Her fingernails sunk into his shoulders and she began to climax. His cock lurched inside her. He roared.

Joy continued to bob desperately in his lap, increasingly wild to stretch those fleeting, exquisite moments.

Seventeen

In the dead of night Everett awoke to the sensation of cool, air-conditioned air on his skin and a warm, wet mouth on his thigh. He shivered at the sensation of sweet, skimming kisses.

“Joy?” he whispered, slightly disoriented in the darkness.

“Everett,” she whispered against a damp spot on his thigh. Her voice sounded thick with drowsiness. Goose bumps broke over his body. He felt the edge of her front teeth scrape gently over his skin.

“Come here,” he mumbled, clumsily reaching for her.

She came—warm, decadent silk sliding next to his chilled skin. His arms went around her. She brought the comforter with her and settled it around them. She laid her cheek and palm on his chest. One moment, he had been cold and naked; the next he was cocooned in Joy’s fragrant warmth.

“Joy?” he whispered after a moment, confused by her utter stillness. Had she wanted to make love again? He wasn’t quite sure he was up for the deed after such an active day and night, but he’d be more than happy to bring her pleasure. He palmed the back of her head, the sensation causing a surge of tenderness, wonder and passion to go through him, a heretofore unknown, powerful combination of emotion. He ran his fingers through her silky hair.

“Joy,” he repeated, this time with no expectation of a reply. She must have been enacting her dreams. Her even, soft breath on his chest told him she was fast asleep.

*   *   *

Golden sunlight leaked into his awareness when he pried open his eyelids the next morning. Not yet prepared for the intrusive brilliance, he clamped his eyes shut again. He flopped his hand onto his abdomen, frowning as he absentmindedly scratched himself. Something was missing in the crook of his arm.

He opened his eyes and glanced around the bed without moving his head off the pillow. He was alone. It didn’t surprise him; Joy had awakened earlier than he had yesterday. He’d always thought he was a morning person, but Joy seemed to rise with the dawn. He rubbed his eyes and thought about the previous night.

“Joy?” he called, his vivid memories making it suddenly imperative he see her right that moment . . . touch her. How was she feeling? Better or worse?

No answer came. The guesthouse seemed silent. Maybe she’d already gone for her morning jog? Surely it wasn’t a good idea for her to be exercising when she was ill.

Of course that didn’t prevent you from letting her make love to you last night, did it, Mr. Nice
Guy?

He tossed the sheet off him and sat up, swinging his feet to the floor. He noticed the folded piece of paper while he was scraping back his hair with his fingers. It had been set against the bedside table lamp and had his name written across the front.

He picked it up and opened it slowly. Surely the sharp sense of dread he was experiencing was uncalled for. It was probably just a note telling him that she’d run down to the Legion Diner for some coffee or something.

He read the note rapidly.

It wasn’t just a note telling him she’d run into town for coffee.

He stood abruptly and for the first time noticed Joy’s suitcase was gone.

Five minutes later, he entered the big house’s kitchen, Joy’s note clutched in his hand. Katie sat at the oak table near a window, sunlight spilling around her as she bottle-fed a hungry-looking Daisy.

“Did you see Joy leave?”

Katie did a double take when she noticed his tense expression. “No. The car was gone when I got up. I thought maybe you two had gone to the diner for Sunday breakfast or something.”

“She’s gone,” he said starkly, staring around the sunlit kitchen as if he thought it’d provide him some vital clue that would explain Joy’s inexplicable absence. “Where’s Seth?”

“He’s sleeping, of course.” Her green eyes looked bewildered. “Everett, what’s that you’re holding?”

He paused and glanced at his hand in rising irritation. “It’s a note. From Joy.”

“What’s it say?”

“It’s a Dear John, that’s what it is. It says this whole thing between us would never work, and she thinks she’d better end it before one or both of us gets hurt. Some kind of crap like that,” he said bitterly. He started to walk determinedly toward the staircase that led to the dormer bedroom where Seth was staying.

“Everett, what are you doing?” Katie called, standing. Daisy made a muffled sound of protest and then started to cry.

“I’m going to ask Seth what he knows about this!”

“Why would Seth know something that you don’t?”

“He’s got to understand
something
better than I do, because this”—he snapped Joy’s note in the air—“completely blindsided me.”

“Everett, stop it.”

Katie’s sharp tone brought him to a halt as he reached for the door that led to the stairs.

“Come back over here. Please,” she added more softly. “Let’s try to sort this out.”

He rolled his eyes in exasperation, but gave in to her request, although he refused to sit. He was too worked up. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins. He experienced an almost imperative mandate to get in his car and chase after Joy. It was torture to just stand there.

Katie sat and murmured to an agitated Daisy, reinserting the nipple into her mouth. The baby almost immediately began to suck again with gusto. Katie turned her attention to him.

“When you called last night on the way home from the hospital, you said Joy was going to be fine. Seth didn’t indicate anything different when he came in. Did something happen between you and Joy that could explain this?” She nodded at the letter he still gripped in his hand like a bloody knife discovered next to a dead body.

For a second, he just stared at his sister, dumbfounded. Had something happened?
Hell yes
, something had happened. They’d had a mind-blowing, life-altering, intimate sexual and emotional exchange, and for the first time in his life, he’d told a woman he loved her and meant it in the way he’d always worried he never would.

“Did you fight or disagree on something?” Katie prompted when he just continued to stand there.

“No. We—” A puff of air popped out of his throat. “Talked.”

“You talked?”

Everett stared at Katie, his mouth hanging open. He felt like he was still disoriented from a sucker punch. “I told her I was falling in love with her.”

For a few seconds, only the wet, sucking sound of Daisy breakfasting could be heard in the tense silence.

“You’ve fallen in love with Joy?” Katie asked slowly.

“You don’t have to look at me like I just said I’d cured cancer while I slept. I do have the capability to love someone, you know,” he said, annoyance creeping into his shock at seeing Katie’s amazement.

“Of course you do. And I’d been hoping it was true, watching you with Joy this weekend. It’s just that . . . it’s awfully big news, isn’t it?”

“What’s big news?”

Everett turned to see Seth walking into the kitchen. He looked like he’d already showered and dressed for the day in jeans, a white shirt and a leather belt with a tooled silver buckle. A flicker of suspicion went through Everett. Hadn’t Seth woken up midmorning yesterday, and hadn’t Joy once referred to the fact that he was a night owl who often slept until ten or eleven? Joy’s uncle had certainly risen early, almost as if he’d been preparing for something.

He held up the letter. “Joy has left.”

Seth’s features looked even more classically Native American than usual as he gave Everett an impassive, cold stare.

“Yes. I know.”

“You
knew
? Did she come in here and talk to you before she left this morning?”

“No. She told me she planned to leave last night.”

Everett realized he was gawking. His heartbeat started to pound in his ears. How could this be possible? How could Joy have told Seth that she planned to break things off with Everett this morning, then return here and share such a soulful, intimate night with him?

“What the hell is going on here?” Everett demanded.

Seth blinked. Everett realized the question had cracked out of his throat like a blistering whip.

“What did Joy say in the letter?” Seth asked, nodding toward it.

“That she doesn’t think things would work out between us.” He lifted the piece of paper and read a portion word for word. “‘In the end, our lives are just too different. I would disappear in the largeness of your world, and you’d be suffocated by the smallness of mine. I think after I go away, you’ll see the truth of that quickly enough.’” Everett dropped the letter abruptly, where it crumpled next to his thigh. “Well?” he prodded Seth.

Seth shrugged, his expression unmoving. “Isn’t your answer right there?” A frown flickered across his stoic features when he saw Everett’s disbelief. “I’m sorry, Everett. If it helps any to know it, I told Joy that I thought you really cared about her. But it’s her choice, in the end. I can’t stop her from doing what she wants. I never could,” he added quietly under his breath.

Everett glanced, aghast, from Seth to a somber-looking Katie. They didn’t understand. They didn’t know what had passed between Joy and him last night. They had no idea how singular their initial attraction was, how unique their growing feelings toward each other were.

Sadness crossed Katie’s face. Or was it pity? He felt a twisting sensation, like someone had just reached into his gut and rung his intestines. He’d been kidding himself. Deluding himself. This intense attraction he had for Joy . . . this incredible, swelling feeling . . . this growing love . . .

It was all on
his
part. Or mostly, anyway.

Christ. He really was cursed when it came to this business.

“Everett,” Katie said in a strained voice, but he could tell by her hopeless tone she didn’t really expect him to halt in his exit out the front door.

*   *   *

“Shit,” Katie cursed succinctly when the door shut after Everett with a thud.

For a few seconds, Seth and she stared at each other. Did he feel as helpless as she did?

“He’s never really fallen for a woman before like he has Joy,” she said. She examined her daughter, whose energetic sucking had slowed as her delicate eyelids started to close. She sighed and removed the bottle, setting it on the table.

“Do you really believe that?”

Katie looked up at the stark question. Seth stood on the other side of the table.

“I don’t believe it. I know it. Everett and I are very close. He hasn’t been all that . . . lucky in the romance department.”

Seth gave a small derisive grunt.

“Shame on you,” Katie said.

“What?” Seth asked, incredulous.

She frowned and studied her daughter’s peaceful face. “You seem like a smart man. You work in the land of make-believe, just like Rill and Everett. Surely you aren’t silly enough to fall for all the smoke and shadows. You’re one of the people responsible for
making
the fantasy. Surely
you
know there are real people behind the screen of illusion.”

“But Everett—
Everett Hughes
”—Seth specified, waving toward the door—“has never fallen for a woman like he has my niece?”

“I don’t understand why that’s so shocking,” said Katie, firing up. “Lots of people don’t fall in love until they’re in their thirties or forties. Have you found the woman you’d sacrifice just about anything for?” She studied his stunned, blank expression. “I didn’t think so. Why should Everett be any different from you? And by the way, you sound awfully cynical in regard to your niece. If you haven’t noticed, Joy’s gorgeous and kind and amazingly modest, considering all her talent and gifts. To be honest, I’m not surprised at all Everett has fallen for her. He hates artifice, even though he thrives in the midst of it. Joy is fresh and understated and . . . and . . .”

“What?” Seth prompted, no longer looking taken aback by her outburst, but interested.

“Well, sort of haunted, to be honest,” Katie said regretfully. “It’s the kind of combination a man like my brother would find irresistible.”

“He would think her being haunted was
irresistible
?” Seth asked, sounding mildly offended.

“No,” Katie said. “He’d find the idea of bringing her peace and happiness irresistible.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke as Katie watched her sleeping child. “She has reason to—look haunted, I mean. Doesn’t she?”

She looked up when he didn’t immediately answer, stilling when she saw his face. It no longer was shrouded.

“Yes,” Seth said. “Joy lives with many ghosts. Many fears. She fights them fiercely, guards herself against them.”

“Does that have anything to do with why she left this morning?”

Seth exhaled slowly. “Yes. Unlike your brother, she doesn’t believe the haunting will ever end.”

*   *   *

Joy’s oncologist was concerned enough about her reported symptoms that he examined her immediately upon her return to Chicago. As he finished giving her the results of some diagnostics, he told her he planned to admit her to the hospital first thing the following morning. He had scheduled a mediastinoscopy with biopsy.

Fear settled in Joy’s gut like cold lead when she’d heard a mediastinoscopy was warranted instead of a mere needle biopsy of a lymph node. They could do a lymph node biopsy outpatient with a local anesthetic, while the mediastinoscopy required general anesthesia. An instrument called a mediastinoscope would be inserted into a cut in her neck so that tissue samples could be taken from lymph nodes in her chest region. It wasn’t so much the procedure that bothered her. Ever since her first round of treatments, she had gained an illogical paranoia about general anesthesia, a nameless fear that she’d never wake up.

Dr. Chen noticed her discomfort.

“I’m just playing things safe, Joy,” he said comfortingly as he put away her X-rays. “The procedure will take a half hour, tops. Your family member can pick you up on Tuesday morning, if all goes well.”

A childish loneliness surged through her at the thought of taking a taxicab to her empty apartment.

“Can’t we do the procedure outpatient?”

“No. The incision we’ll make is small, but I’d still prefer a night of observation afterward, just to make sure.”