MC BIKER ROMANCE: Bad Boy Romance: BETRAYED: (New Adult Motorcycle Club Navy SEAL Romance) (Contemporary Military Romance Thriller) (50 page)

I saw the apology for what it was, though. It was a little victory shot at me. It was all very well to apologize once the deed was done. He could see from the look my face, and surely from the look on Emma’s as well, what he’d done to me.

I didn’t look at Emma. I still couldn’t, not since I’d looked at her when I walked in, and everything had gone wrong in my head, and my chest felt like it had caved in and left the entire contents thereof in disarray. But was it my imagination? I could
feel
her. I could
feel
her disapproval. After all this time she returned to someone laughable …  someone she could laugh at, and make her certain she had made the correct choice to leave.

I could not speak. I could not think of anything to say. I decided at that point to play more aggressively, so that I would have valid reason to leave, and lick my wounds at home for however long it took me to drink myself to sleep.

Chapter 8

Emma

What was the point? What was the point of the city being so big, and containing so many people, if the one person I didn’t want to see showed up regardless, in the one moment of joy I’d had since arriving?

I’d truly enjoyed myself for a few rounds. I was able to spread a little bit of knowledge around, and bring this game I’d so loved in America back to London. And the questions they’d asked about it were a welcome change from the dull, repetitive conversations I’d had with so many people since being back. They wanted to hear card stories, and if there was one thing that I’d learned over the years and over my travels, it was that there was no character that couldn’t be revealed in perfect clarity by a loss at cards.

I found, quite surprisingly, that I didn’t dislike these people. Well, none but one of them, who was most disagreeable. And it was not that I was generally one primed to dislike people. But whatever had truly happened downstairs, whether it was fair of me to think of myself as ill-treated or not, it had put me in a terrible mood. And so finding some company that could make me forget all of that absurdity was so welcome.

But him! Why did he have to come? And when he had come in the room he had stared at me as though he knew what I was thinking, as though I’d done this intentionally. Why did he always have to look as though he thought I’d planned to bring him pain? His eyes were accusing. They were assaulting.

And then, it felt, they were too fleetingly on me. He wouldn’t look at me. I kept looking at him. I was drawn to. I even bet wrong, once or twice, because I wasn’t watching where I should have been watching, and was instead staring at him. He who was staring at others, staring at the ceiling, staring at anything he could that wasn’t me.

And then feelings began welling up in me. All the guilt I’d had on leaving came bubbling up. And all the righteous indignation. He had no right to expect! He had no right to judge me! It wasn’t his choice! He was never put to such a test!

The game, the table, and the night became a misery. It was no longer a refuge to be stuck in there with these people. Now it was only a test of my resolve. I felt somehow that I must stay. I must last. I must show him that he could not guilt me into leaving.

But then that hideous man spoke those words. He said those things, and…

I’d prepared myself that he might be married. I’d accepted it. His wife would be lovely, no doubt. Then, when I’d seen him downstairs, it was clear he was not. And yet, still, I thought that perhaps the girl he had spoken to was his long-term sweetheart. Maybe there’d been one or two others, and that was why he hadn’t married. He’d always wanted children. He’d wanted a quiet life. He’d wanted a family life.

The reputation that this man implied for him … it was wrong. Everything about it seemed impossible. The Henry I knew would never be like that! He would never do that sort of a thing. He would never be that kind of man.

But no one contradicted the words. No one defended Henry’s honor. I tried to tell myself that meant nothing but I found I could not make myself believe it.

I won the hand and, though I could have gotten more, I decided it was time to quit. The air in the room itself had become toxic to me. It was hard to breathe. It was like acid had been dissolved into the very air and somehow everyone else was ignoring its effects, but my body was melting inside itself. I took my money and left, ignoring the protestations of my new friends that I should stay and give them a chance to win back all that they’d lost. Henry didn’t protest. He didn’t say a word. Perhaps if he’d spoken, I would have stayed.

The air outside of the room felt better, but I still felt trapped. I’d forgotten my mask in the room, but I paid it no mind. The idea that I should care whatsoever what anyone had to say about me, or to me, now seemed absurd. What did their words matter? What did any of them matter?

I went down the stairs and finally found the door I’d been looking for before my ill-fated detour. I didn’t look around. I simply slipped out and headed for the back gate of the property.

It wasn’t until I was well and truly out that I began to feel more myself. The river had a calming influence, and even though it was a nice night, luckily no one was out walking on the promenade along this portion of the river. I leaned against the stone wall and looked at the reflections, and the distortions made in them by the ripples left by passing boats.

So that was what had become of him, in the end. Perhaps I had been wrong about him all along. I’d been so young. Perhaps in all these years I’d simply built him into more of a man than he was. I’d let my own guilt transform a bit of a boorish man into someone pristine and innocent. I’d turned him into the life I could have had instead of the one I did, so every disappointment I experienced only elevated him in my mind.

Then perhaps this meeting was inevitable. What real man could possibly live up to the god I’d made Henry into in my mind over the years?

This explanation was comforting, in its own way. I struggled to accept it, even though accepting it felt like an ending, and I couldn’t bear endings.

Sure, I’d struggled with the decision. And I’d loved him. Oh, I didn’t doubt that I’d loved him. But hadn’t I learned and seen, time and time again, that a young girl in love is only a young girl driven beyond her senses? I wasn’t in my right mind. I wasn’t thinking properly. How had I credited myself for so long with being so right in who he was and what life with him would have been like, and ignored the whole time that I simply had not missed out on much after all?

With this frame around it, tonight didn’t seem quite so bad. I didn’t mind blaming myself for having been foolish. Perhaps it was easier than what I had done all these years, blaming myself for having been a coward.

My shoulders relaxed. I breathed in. I breathed out. All things considered, tonight had been a very good night indeed. I’d earned some very useful money that would go a long way towards making us more comfortable until the money came through from the solicitor. Perhaps it would even do to get us through until we were out of that hotel, if the meeting I had arranged tomorrow went well enough.

But above all I’d dispelled a myth that had been haunting me for such a very long time. I’d slain a ghost of a man I once knew, who turned out never to have even been real. It was a good night, and I resolved myself to drink it all in for a while, and cherish the newfound feeling I had that London was an ally to me, and that it had nothing lurking in it that I needed to fear.

Then I felt it – a hand on my shoulder. And I remembered suddenly that for a woman carrying a good deal of cash, all alone in a secluded spot in London at night, there were perhaps a good fair few things lurking that I needed to fear. My heart began to pound and I allowed myself a moment of fear.

And then the fear was done, and I determined that things had best be dealt with rationally.

“I have money,” I said, “and I’m not going to turn around. You can take it and be gone.”

Chapter 9

Henry

“Have I ever wanted your money?”

I realized Emma didn’t know it was me, but even so, the accusation still stung. I drew my hand back as though she were a hot iron that had burned my fingers.

She turned and faced me, and I felt my courage begin to wither. But I couldn’t let it. I had let it go this long. It would go no longer. She owed me better than that.

“Are you afraid of me?” I asked her, though I could see now that she was not. Her fear had gone, and all the things that had artificially held us apart the whole night long were gone. Now it was simply the two of us, standing in front of each other, alone.

I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I followed her out to speak to her, but I hadn’t expected this. Things between us felt so familiar, as though no time at all had passed. The whirlwind of emotions, the anger, the indignation, with the longing when I saw her face and the shame when she had heard what I’d come to … it was all gone. Now that it was only the two of us, it felt as though all those things had never happened, and we were simply strolling along the river, having a talk to one another.

But we weren’t, were we?

“Tell me it isn’t true,” she began, and I wished I could.

“If I did it would be a lie. And if it were a lie, what good would that do either of us?”

“It isn’t you.”

She spat the words out, bitterly, and I felt a trace of my earlier anger coming back up to the surface.

“What is it you think you know about me? After all this time? Do you think you have the right to say what I am and what I am not, and what I should be and what I should not? I owe you nothing. I owe you no apologies. Did you expect me to wait for you all this time?”

She was hurt. My words had stung her. Good.

But it still felt like a lie. I
had
waited. For several years, I
had
waited. For two years I’d spoken to no one about it. I’d been convinced that she was going to return to me and that, when she did, it would be best if I had not disparaged her and there was no obstacle to our reunion. Those were the days of the parties. All those grand parties when I had sat, chaste, among so many women who would have loved for me to make love to them. Some had even propositioned me, and fawned over me, and made their intentions clear in so many ways. What a waste it had been!

“You’re angry,” she observed, calmly. And in that moment, I hated her.

“Of course I’m angry! Why should I not be angry?” I yelled, and felt as though I’d lost it all. I had lost my composure, and she had kept hers. What ground did I have left to stand on?

“You ought to be,” she said, and stared at the ground.

I had been wrong; she hadn’t kept her composure. She’d lost it, but not to anger. She’d lost it to sadness. And with the revelation of her sadness, I felt my anger calm.

Standing here by the river, in this light, she looked as she had looked one evening not long after we began to court in secret. No one had known we were here. It was the first time she had spoken to me about anything of worth. I had been drawn by her beauty, and by the conviction I had drawn from those few words I had heard her speak that there was more to her. But that night by the river, which was so much like this night by the river, she had proved it.

But that night she had smiled. This night she did not.

I wanted to reach out to her, and lift her chin with my hand, and look into her eyes. I wanted to see if there was a tear there, or if it was a trick of the light and my imagination.

But I didn’t feel I had the right to touch her, and after a few seconds, she raised her head herself, and wiped the tear that must have been there away with her fingertips.

The distance that had been strangely lacking a moment ago was there again. The years and all that had passed in them hung between us like a glass curtain. Smalltalk seemed impossible. Even if I could think of something polite and trivial to say, it would have seemed wrong to say it.

“Do you regret it?” I asked her. I blurted it out, as though I hadn’t written it down in letter after letter that I lost the will to send as soon as I imagined her opening them and never answering.

She didn’t answer me now either.

“It’s was more complicated than all that you know,” was all she said.

“That isn’t really an answer.”

Her body was relaxing now, and I realized that mine was too. I’d been so afraid of this conversation for so long that the fear of it was worse than the words themselves. Now that it was finally happening, it felt like a relief.

“There’s no easy answer for that question,” she said, and for the first time, I believed her.

I reached out, and put my hand on her cheek, and the glass curtain between us was shattered.

She was so warm! And her cheek was so soft. I could feel the weight of her head leaning into my hand. It was like an invitation for me to grow closer to her, and I did.

Her body felt the same. The curve of it under her dress and the texture of her hair. I breathed in deeply. She smelled the same. She smelled like her. How strange it is, I thought, that the smell of a person you miss should be so hard to recall exactly, but that once you’ve got it back it calls back all the memories of her so completely.

But then I felt her tense and saw her look around us. There was no one here, but that didn’t put her at ease. She took my hand and then pulled me into the shadows.

“Why does it matter?” I asked her. I meant for my voice to sound annoyed, but that was hard to do. I was too overawed by the intoxicating feeling of being near her again, and besides that was trying to be as quiet as I could for her sake.

She’d be wanting to protect her reputation. That made sense enough. She was a proper lady, and while I was still a titled man in theory, there was no doubt in my mind or hers what people would think of any lady they saw in my company.

This began to lead my mind down a dangerous path. It was the path of wondering what this would mean if it went any further. If she didn’t want anyone to see us, what then? Wouldn’t that mean the same thing it had always meant? Wouldn’t it mean that we were never to be together? That she was ashamed of me? That she didn’t want me?

I was looking out at the walk by the river, and not at her. But she was looking at me, apparently. She raised her fingertips – those same precious fingertips she’d used moments before to wipe away a tear and that I’d so desperately wished to touch – to my lips. She used to do this. It all came flooding back to me.

“There’s something on your lips you won’t speak,” she’d say. “I’m trying to find it.”

Her face now was a strange mix of emotions. Was it the dim light or was it only my fantasy that made her look now exactly like she looked all those years ago, as though no time had passed?  Or was it simply that this was the expression she’d often had on her face back then: wondering and hoping? Lord, she looked young! And I felt young, too. I felt so much younger than I’d felt in a while.

And I was still young, I knew. I’d been feeling older lately, as though nothing good could become of me. But it wasn’t really too late, after all, was it? These years misspent … they didn’t really amount to anything, did they?

I kissed her fingertips, the way I used to, again and again. I reached up my hand to hold on to them, afraid that she would withdraw them. She couldn’t. I couldn’t be without them.

But then she did, and used them to lead my mouth to hers.

And then I couldn’t see anything, because my eyes were closed, and I couldn’t feel anything, because all the feeling in my hands, and my feet, and the rest of my body was irrelevant next to the sensation of her soft lips. We kissed gently, as we had the first time we’d kissed, when we’d neither of us ever kissed another or been kissed, and were so afraid that we would do it badly and wouldn’t get to kiss again.

But with one kiss, with this kiss, I was not afraid anymore. And then the sensation began to restore itself to the rest of my body. And I was more and more aware of the entire front of her body pressed up so hard against the entire front of mine. It was as though she was trying to get to me, but the bulk of her dress was holding her back.

I wound both of my arms entirely around her and helped her draw as close to me as our bodies would allow.

Then she smiled. And I knew that smile. It was the smile she had had on her face after I told her the first time that I thought if we saw much more of one another, I may begin to fancy her. It was in an alley around the corner from the old dressmaker’s shop, where I’d followed her. And she had smiled this smile of cautiously optimistic triumph – she knew she had me, but was terrified she would ruin it by being too sure.

But I could not be carried back into my memories this time. There was too much here, in front of me, to allow myself to spare a single thought for what might have been, a long time ago.

My body wanted her. It wanted her with an intensity that hit me all at once. Back then I’d been so chaste in my thoughts, so far into my head, not imagining that I would actually be here, touching her. But the body I had longed for for so long, and had substituted other women for for so long, was here now. And she could be mine. She
must
me mine.

I pulled one of my hands around from where it had been behind her back, and let just enough space between us to allow my fingers to touch the bodice of her dress. The corset was too rough! I couldn’t feel at all the soft skin beneath. But I brought my fingers up, inch by inch, until the feeling beneath them changed from stiff, stretched silk to the yielding, heaving flesh of her breast. I could hear her breathing rise in intensity, and she gasped as I reached my hand down between the stiff fabric of her corset and her breast. Her nipple was firm beneath it, and I felt her begin to lose her footing. There was no hint of hesitation. She was mine. I could do with her entirely as I wanted, I knew.

But then she stiffened suddenly, pulling away. I did not hear what she had heard, but followed her gaze out toward the river where I saw what she had seen. Two women were there, innocently and loudly chatting their way down the path.

As one, we slunk back further into the shadows of the trees and bushes. It seemed a lifetime before they finally passed, but when they did, I looked to Emma, afraid that the spell would be broken entirely.

The look on her face assured me it was not. She was desperate. Her eyes slightly glazed from the intensity of her desire, and her cheeks flushed.

“We are near your family home, are we not?” she asked me.