The Master Undone: An Inside Out Novella (3 page)

Five

_

B
etween my guilt over Rebecca and my worry over my mother’s surgery, sleep is nearly impossible. Knowing I’m not likely to leave the hospital today, I dress in boots, jeans, and a brown Riptide T-shirt. Remembering the colder East Coast weather, I slip on a brown leather jacket.

Crystal is waiting for me in the lobby when I step off the elevator. Dressed in dark blue jeans, a pale blue silk blouse, boots, and a black leather jacket, with two coffee cups in her hands, it’s clear she doesn’t plan to head to Riptide today, which pleases me. Though I should want her there at Riptide, taking care of business.

She gives my similar attire an open inspection and smiles. “I like you like this,” she says. “Less ‘master,’ more man.” I stiffen at the “master” reference, and my eyes narrow, trying to read her. Does she know more about me than I think she does? And, holy hell, do my parents? She thrusts the cup at me. “White mocha.”

I reach for the coffee, unsure of what she knows. I am on such unsure footing with this woman, I barely know myself. “White mocha?” I inquire, never having had anyone assume this to be my drink. But then, people don’t get the chance to assume with me.

She nods and sips from her drink. “My favorite, and all macho alpha men like you have a secret softer side and a sweet tooth. It’s part of the breed.”

She’s dead-on. I have a major sweet tooth, but I don’t admit it. “Macho alpha men?”

She pushes her tousled blond hair out of her face. “Alpha man. Control freak. Type A personality, which I share. Whatever you want to call it, it’s you. Anyway, try the drink. The place I got it from is a block away and open twenty-hour hours. It’s really pretty good.”

Already my resolve to keep a distance from her is crumbling. Her outrageously bold personality seems to work for me. “Considering the time change and the early hour, I can certainly use the caffeine. Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” she says, holding up her keys for me.

I take them from her, thinking her pleasure is exactly what I’d like to discover. Once we’re in the car, she keeps me talking and I let her. Anything to keep my own thoughts at bay.

—

T
hirty minutes later, I stand by my mother’s bedside and lean down to her. “You’re going to be okay.”

She grabs the back of my head and pulls me close. “Yes,” she vows. “I will.” She hugs me so tightly, I feel like she’s clinging to me for dear life.

My eyes burn and my chest is on fire. She releases me and I lift my head to find Crystal standing in the doorway. There’s no hiding how emotional I feel, and I don’t even try. This woman is seeing parts of me I show no one. Parts I’m not sure I believed existed anymore, and I’m beyond stopping her. She’s too present. Too deeply embedded in my family’s life. This is why I need to be in San Francisco. It’s why I left.

The doctor enters and sends us on our way, so I give my mother another kiss, leaving my father alone with her. Out in the hallway I walk to the waiting room and sit down, letting my head drop into my hands, elbows on my knees.

I feel Crystal next to me. And then her hands are in my hair, she is touching me, and I don’t push her away. There is tenderness and comfort in her touch, comfort I swear I don’t need . . . and yet I do.

Slowly, I lift my head and look at her, staring into those pure, blue eyes, and feel like my heart’s being ripped from my chest. I feel something for this woman. I swore I’d never feel anything for anyone again, and for ten years I’ve managed to hold to that vow. Now, though . . . I am lost and she has found me.

“Three hours,” she whispers. “It seems like forever, but it’ll be fast. She’ll be out of surgery and feisty as ever, telling you how things are, and ruling the world.”

I laugh humorlessly. “Please let that woman make my life hell for another hundred years.”

Crystal smiles. “Don’t you worry. She’ll outlive us both.” She reaches into her purse and grabs a deck of cards. Then she moves a small table and sets it in front of me before pulling a chair up opposite. “Let’s play. What’s your game?”

This is another part of my past I don’t want revealed, and I’m suddenly aware of how exposed I am with this woman. Too exposed. “I don’t play cards.”

“Oh, come on. You’re human. You play cards.”

“No, Ms. Smith. I do not.”

“Crystal,” she corrects softly, “and if that’s true, then there’s no better day to learn. It’ll occupy your mind, which I happen to know is too sharp to remain inactive for the next three hours.”

“I’d rather discuss the auction coming up.”

“Poker? Why, yes, I’d love to play.”

I glance up to find my father, and it’s impossible to miss how bloodshot his eyes are. He grabs a chair and pulls it between mine and Crystal’s. He lifts his Styrofoam coffee cup. “Nothing better than coffee and poker, except beer and baseball.” He glances at Crystal. “Look out, darlin’. Mark was a damn good player back in his college days. He was the undefeated champion. If not for—”

“Dad,” I warn, stopping him and then looking at Crystal. “Deal.”

She studies me a moment. “Whatever you want, Mr. Compton.”

And damn if I don’t correct her. “Mark. My name is Mark.”

—

T
hree hours later I’ve won every hand of poker, and my father and Crystal are laughing as they team up against me and threaten to count cards.

“That’s only done in Blackjack,” I remind my father.

“Mr. Compton?” a man says.

We all rise and turn toward the doctor who’s standing in his scrubs, his mask on his chest, looking calm. Every muscle in my body eases. “She’s doing well,” he reports, and my shoulders slump, the tension sliding from my weary body, as he adds, “You can see her soon.”

I glance down at Crystal, who smiles at me. And for the first time in days, I truly breathe again.

I’m still talking to the doctor when Crystal gets a call. By the time the doctor departs, she’s grabbing her purse and walking toward me. “I need to run over to Riptide. Can you please tell your mother I was here and I’ll be back as soon as can?”

“Is there a problem?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“What’s wrong, Crystal?”

She surprises me by reaching out and pressing her hand to my chest. “Trust me, please. Go be with your mother. I won’t let you, or your parents, down.”

Heat radiates from the place she touches, and yet I’m frozen in place. “I don’t trust easily.”

Her fingers curl on my chest. “I suspect you don’t trust ever.”

“And yet you’re asking me to trust you.”

She wets her lips and I want to lick them, too. “You get nothing you want if you don’t ask for it.”

The air pulses around us and my hand closes over hers. “You have no idea how much I agree.”

“So you’ll go be with your family and let me take care of business?”

“Yes. I will.”

“Mark,” my father says, and I release her hand.

Six

_

A
few hours later, the hospital phone in my mother’s room rings. She shifts against her pillow, still stubborn enough to try to answer it, and moans with the pain that creates.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” my father says, quickly moving from his chair to her bedside, while I swipe the phone from the table.

“Compton room,” I answer.

“Mark?”

At the sound of Crystal’s voice, I glance at the clock, and note that it’s four o’clock. “I thought you were coming back.”

“I am. I sat in a traffic jam for over an hour, and once I got here there were all kinds of things the staff needed for our small Monday event that I didn’t plan on. You know how it is around here.”

“Is that Crystal?” my mother whispers hoarsely. “I want to talk to her.”

“My mother wants to talk to you, but don’t hang up until I speak to you again.” I don’t wait for her agreement—I assume it, as she does for far too many things—handing the phone over to my father.

I watch as he holds it to my mother’s ear so she doesn’t have to lift her arm, and the tenderness of his expression rips through me. My parents’ relationship is not all roses. They’ve made each other’s lives hell. I know this, though no one else does, and it’s made me doubt what people so flippantly call “love.”

Until now. Until this moment, when my mother is broken, and my father is by her side, and I see this look on his face. I see that, despite all they have been through, a part of him would die if we lost her.

My father removes the phone from my mother’s ear and I reach for it a moment too late. He hangs it up.

I wait for it to ring again. And wait. Crystal doesn’t call back. I
told
her I wanted to talk to her. I run my hand through my hair and walk to the window. It’s all I can do not to call her back and demand an update on Riptide’s affairs. I can’t and won’t try to run two operations in separate states, worrying about what I don’t know when I should. If she wants my trust, she needs to communicate with me.

—

B
y the time visiting hours end, Crystal hasn’t called or shown up. I’m reclining in a green chair, much like the one my father has folded out into a bed, while my mother sleeps deeply, tucked beneath her sheets. Though I have Crystal’s cell number, I don’t use it. The more time goes by, the longer her silence draws out, the more I want to call her—but not here, not when it might upset my mother.

I uncurl myself from the chair and walk to my mother’s side, kissing her forehead. She doesn’t move, and neither does my father. Reluctantly, I head out of the room, caving to my father’s request that I give them some alone time in the evenings, which I know is a ploy to get me to rest.

Once I’m in the hallway, I dial the security desk at Riptide and confirm everyone is gone for the weekend, including Crystal. Irritated, I head to the front of the hospital and hail a cab to take me to my hotel, contemplating my next move. I decide I want to see
her
next move instead. Will she show up at the hospital tomorrow, or go silent on me? If she goes silent, she’s a problem I need to know about now, not later.

Fifteen minutes later, my cab stops at the hotel and I head up to my room. There I strip and go straight to the shower. I’ve tossed on pajama bottoms and I’m towel-drying my hair when a knock sounds on the door. Tossing the towel into the sink, I walk to the door, expecting the maid service. “I’m good. I don’t need anything,” I call out.

“It’s me. Crystal.”

I freeze. Crystal is at my hotel door? This is temptation and danger waiting to happen. This is . . .

I open the door. She’s holding a folder in her hand, her purse over her shoulder. Her gaze slides over my naked torso and lifts, and I don’t miss how hard she swallows. “You weren’t answering your phone. I guessed you were in the shower and your dad gave me your room number, so I—”

I pull her inside and shut the door, and touching her is fire in my veins. A dark, familiar need inside me begins to demand satisfaction. That part of me that uses sex for escape, for control of everything in my life.

But she is not for me, and I am not for her. She knows this. I know she knows this. She shouldn’t be here.

I quickly maneuver her against the wall and my hands settle by her head, my body lifting from hers. “Why are you here?”

“I have a situation I—”

“Why didn’t you call me and check in today?”

“You needed to focus on your family.”

“I told you I wanted to talk to you.”

“And I avoided you.”

“At least you’re honest. Why?”

“Because I had a problem I was trying to solve, and I knew if I talked to you, you’d know about it.”

“You don’t think I needed to know there was a problem?”

“After it was solved, if I could solve it. And I did—one of them. There’s another I need your help with.”

“What are the problems?”

“One of the artists showing in Monday’s mini-auction tried to pull out. It’s handled.”

“And the other problem?”

“My Beatles guy wants this done this weekend. I made reservations to fly out in the morning. I need you to sign the check and paperwork. Your father says he’s not authorized, but you are.”

I’m not even going to comment on why my father doesn’t have access to the money. A piece of dirty laundry I didn’t ever want revealed but she’s managed to tread over. This woman keeps getting all up in my business. She keeps getting in my head. “You sure this has to happen now?”

“He’s adamant.”

My gaze finds its way to her mouth, and my blood runs hot. I want this woman. I want her, and I have her alone in my hotel room. “And you thought it was a good idea to come to my room to solve this?”

“Actually,” she says, her voice hoarse, “I thought it was a very bad idea.”

“And yet you still did it.” It’s not a question.

“I leave at six in the morning. I had no choice.”

If I stay this close to her, I’m going to strip her naked and fuck her. I push off the wall and stare at her. “Show me the paperwork.”

“I’ll get it ready for you.” She doesn’t wait for my approval—she never does—but walks past me toward the desk. Her scent stays with me, lingering in my nostrils and thickening my cock. Her hips sway with feminine grace and I picture her on top of me, riding me.

I have two choices here. They are simple. I fuck her, or I don’t. It doesn’t get any more black-and-white than that. Everything changes in the morning, though. That’s when everything gets complicated.

She pulls a folder from her purse and opens it. I walk over to her and stop beside her, just shy of our shoulders touching. She hands me a pen, and I take it without looking at her—and I damn sure don’t touch her. Touching her would be bad. I sign the purchase order and then look at the hundred-thousand-dollar check.

Now I look at her, and her mouth is mere inches away—an easy lean in to meet her lips with mine. The burn to kiss her is intense. I don’t kiss women. I fuck them. I please them. I like to please them. To drive them to the edge and make them want and want, until release is sweet bliss. But I don’t kiss them.

I tap the pen on the check. “This is what I call trust.” I sign the check and drop the pen, turning to face her. “Make sure you deserve it.”

She lifts her chin. “You’re insured if I don’t, but you wouldn’t have signed it if you didn’t believe I was worth the risk.”

There’s a subtle challenge in her voice. There’s a less subtle challenge in her eyes, a message. I grab her and turn her backside to the desk, my hips framing hers, my fingers wrapping her slender waist. “What did you think would happen between us if you came here tonight?”

Her hands settle on my arms. “I thought we’d end up naked.”

I wonder if her directness will ever fail to surprise me, as much as I wonder what it is about her that gets to me. “And you don’t see the problem in that?”

“I see a million problems with that. Do I care? At his very moment, with you half naked already, I can’t seem to, no.”

And neither can I. Therein lies the problem, but I can’t stop myself from touching her, caressing a path up her sides and skimming the lush curves of her breasts. That I can’t stop myself is a red flag, a sign I am not myself, and that I have no business doing this. But I watch Crystal’s lashes flutter and her lips, those damn lips I want to taste, part. To possess this woman is like a drug I have to have. And I do have to have her.

Desire overcomes me, and it’s a welcome replacement for what I’ve felt these past few days. Without conscious thought, I lace my fingers into the silky strands of her hair, and my mouth closes down on hers. The taste of her explodes on my tongue—addictive, sweet, with a hint of coffee. Her hands are all over me, her touch feeding the hunger in me, and I don’t know why I don’t stop her. Or maybe I do. Control means thinking, and thinking is more dangerous than this woman. Thinking is making me crazy, it’s making me doubt, it’s making me question all that I am or ever have been.

My hands hug her backside and I pull her hard against my thick erection. She moans, a seductive, wanton sound, and I am instantly harder, hotter. I am lost in her, in kissing her, in touching her, and I can feel how lost she is, too. I want her like I’ve never wanted anyone. She answers an invisible something inside me, and I don’t know why or how.

She shrugs out of her jacket and I keep kissing her, hungering for more of her and ready to have her naked, to feel her soft skin next to mine. To bury myself in her and have her wet heat wrapped about my cock, taking me away to some oblivion that will never last long enough. My hands work her shirt up from her sides, my fingers finding her bra and shoving down the lace to tug at her nipples. She makes a tormented sound, tears her mouth from mine, and our eyes collide.

And holy hell—I don’t know why, but the impact punches me in the chest again. For a moment we’re frozen, looking at each other, and I’m not sure what I feel. It’s unfamiliar, like everything this woman does to me. And the very fact that I crave more of it tells me I’m in trouble. I don’t have control. She has it.

Crystal moves first, tugging her shirt over her head, and the broken connection of our stare is just enough to shake some clarity back into my mind. I step back and sit on the bed to watch her undress. I study every inch of her with a penetrating boldness that would make most women nervous. Not Crystal. She watches me watch her—desire, even challenge, in the depths of her stare as she unhooks her bra, as if she’s telling me she knows what I’m trying to do. She knows I’m trying to rattle her, and it won’t work.

Just when I’m about to order her to caress her breasts, her hands close around them, shoving them together, her thumbs moving over her nipples. My cock pulses at the sight of her, all wanton and eager to please. Or maybe she doesn’t want to please me. Maybe she wants to control me with her body. It is not a pleasing thought. She’s everything I don’t like in a woman, and yet I can’t take my eyes off her.

My gaze strokes over her body, watching her take off the remainder of her clothes. I’m not even attracted to blondes, usually. Yet every inch of her—from her pale hair to her pale skin, to the pale neatly trimmed V of her body—arouses me and spawns a million fantasies of what I could to do her if I had more than one night.

In some far part of my mind, I grapple to be myself, to take charge. I need to control this woman before she does what no other woman has, and truly controls me.

As if she wants to prove she can do that and more, she drops to her knees in front of me, her hands sliding up my thighs. “I’ve thought about”—she runs her teeth over her bottom lip—“what it would be like to make you—”

I don’t let her finish the sentence. Warning bells go off in my head. She’s just a few licks from taking me where I don’t want to go. To have me at her mercy, not the other way around. I have her on her feet, backed against the desk again, before she knows what’s happened. I press her hands to the desk. “Don’t move them until I say you can move them.”

Her lips curve into a smile. “You can fuck me, Mark, but you don’t get to control me.”

“We’ll see about that,” I say, and this time I drop to my knees, sliding my fingers over the slick center of her body.

She gazes down at me. “What does that prove?” she challenges, sounding breathless.

I slip a finger inside her. “You tell me.”

Her lashes lower, then lift. “That you can make me feel good.”

I press another finger inside her and stroke her. “And does that feel good?”

“Oh, yes,” she whispers. “That feels good.”

“And if I lick you? Will that feel good?”

Her thighs tense as if in anticipation. “Why don’t you try it and see?”

I can’t get this woman to back down. I’m going to
make
her back down. I run my tongue over her clit several times and then suckle her. Her hands go to my head and I shove them back on the desk. “Touch me and I’ll stop.”

“I’m going to touch you, Mark. If you don’t like it, you picked the wrong girl to bury your troubles in.”

I pull my fingers from inside her.

She groans. “That was rude.”

“
That
was necessary,” I assure her. My hands go to her hips and I stand up, lifting her to the desk at the same time. I move to step away from her, and she wraps her arms around my neck, pressing her breasts against my bare chest.

“Why can’t you just fuck me?” Her hand slides to the top of my pajama bottoms. “Why can’t you forget all the games just for one night?”

“There’s no such thing as just fucking,” I say, but it doesn’t stop my mouth from closing over hers, and damn if she doesn’t take that as an invitation. She all but climbs on me, wrapping her legs around me and lifting herself off the desk.

Her body molds to mine, her fingers delicately framing my face as she pants into my mouth, “You
can
just fuck me. Tomorrow you’re still my boss.”

I stand there holding her, telling myself she’s wrong—but suddenly, I just don’t care anymore. I don’t care about anything but being inside her. Not who has control, not how this will end badly. There’s only the need to be inside her. To “just” fuck her.