Page 89 of Hot Nights in Morocco
“I could lie here forever touching you.” His fingers delve deeper under the top sheet. He’s circling the base of my spine, and I can feel that insistent, telltale buzz between my legs again. “Tell me more about the gun,” he asks suddenly.
I tense, all thoughts of pleasure forgotten. “Not now,” I beg him. “I can’t—”
“No more secrets, Charlie.”
I turn away and hug the pillow to my face. The pain that he’d managed to banish is slowly creeping back into my consciousness. I shut my eyes to block out the images, but they’re too powerful to ignore.
“He kept it in his hands the whole time. An old-fashioned wheel gun. He’d make me play these sick games…” My voice turns into a sob and Jake pulls me back into his arms.
“Easy,” he croons, gently stroking my hair. “I’ve got you. Take all the time you need.”
“He’d load a single bullet and then spin the chamber ten times. Always ten. He’d make me count.” My voice is devoid of emotion now. “We’d take turns. He’d point the gun at me and fire, and then hold the barrel to his own head.”
Jake’s grip on me tightens but he doesn’t interrupt.
“He’d do this three times every evening. It was like a sick ritual. On the fifth night, his luck ran out before mine.”
I stop there. There are few ways to describe the horror of watching your father blow his brains out, or to describe an aftermath, equally as bloody, of shattered innocence and a lasting legacy of guilt and mistrust.
“My mother was crushed, of course,” I say bitterly. “She blamed herself, and so did I. I was unmanageable, disrespectful. I couldn’t stick to anything. Books were my only comfort, the more angst-ridden the better. If I could lose myself in someone else’s pain, I didn’t have to feel my own.”
“God, Charlie.”
“I was smart, so my grades were good, but I wielded my grief and trauma like a talisman. It was my fallback excuse for all my shitty behavior. I didn’t care. In my mind, I’d lost both parents that day.”
Jake turns me back around and snags my falling tears with the pad of his thumb. “So strong,” he murmurs.
“I don’t disgust you?”
“How could you even think that?”
“Because…” I say, fresh tears welling up. “If my own father could treat me like that, I can’t be worth loving.”
“Bullshit.” Jake silences my painful admission with an all-consuming kiss. “You deserve all of my love and respect, now and forever.”
“I’m sorry I kept pushing you away in Morocco. I didn’t want the press finding out about my history.”
“You should have trusted me.”
“You should have trustedme,” I counter gently. “I know all about Brad sleeping with Cassie.”
“I couldn’t give a shit about Cassie. As far as I’m concerned, he did me a favor. Before you came along, I didn’t care about any of the women. There were many—too many,” he admits reluctantly.
“And Sienna?” I hold my breath as I say her name.
“An infatuation that fell afoul of my stepfather’s malevolence. We were nineteen. I loved her. He seduced her. She was just another game to him, an opportunity to slap me back into my place. A chance to ruin me as he’d ruined my father. I did some stupid stuff afterward.” Jake flashes the small silver scar on his wrist at me. “Then I boarded a plane to England, and that was that.”
“Did you ever tell your father about any of this?”
He chuckles without mirth. “And confess to history repeating itself? I couldn’t even admit it to myself. Me turning my back on Global was like a festering wound, right up until he died. But now it’s time to settle old scores.” Jake pulls me tighter to him, grinding his hips into my ass, his body reenergized by whatever he’s about to share with me. “My eight-hour meeting today was to officially vote Wilson off the board.”
“Won’t that make him even more dangerous?”
“Not when he’s just been arrested for embezzling Global funds.”
“Wow. Are you serious?” I’m stunned.
“I don’t expect to be hearing from him for at least thirty years, in fact. That’s if he ever makes parole. Global is mine now.” Jake grins suddenly and it’s like sunlight blasting through the clouds. “Andyou’reall mine. On top of everything else, Max has decided to stop nailing everything that moves. This might be the best day of my life.”
