The Best Next Thing Read online

He still had his arms loosely looped around her waist and she tightened hers around his neck, getting comfortable as she told him about her afternoon. “Lia’s sister Daff Carlisle, and her, Daff’s, five-month-old baby, Connor, joined us for lunch. We were talking about makeovers for some reason and I mentioned needing a haircut. Lia convinced me to get one today, before I chickened out. I never could resist a dare.”

  “No? Well then…I dare you to give me another kiss and see what happens.”

  “Oh, I already know what’ll happen,” she countered with a laugh, before giving him a light, teasing kiss. “And that’s not much of a dare, really.”

  “Well then, I dare you to…” he paused and seemed to consider his options, his eyes taking a lazy meander over her face and lingering on her lips. His breathing sped up, and she could feel his heart racing against her chest. “Take off your panties.”

  Her lips parted in a slow grin, and she unwound her arms from around his neck and hiked up the skirt of her knee length dress. Maintaining eye contact, she hooked her fingers in the sides of her bikini panties and slid them down, deliberately brushing her abdomen against his lengthening hardness as she shimmied out of the scrap of fabric. She slipped off her pumps and stepped out of the silky, white panties.

  “Yet another easy dare,” she taunted him, her own voice husky and breathless.

  “Well then,” he muttered, clearly trying very hard to keep it together. “Why don’t you show me how it’s done?”

  She gave him a long, searching look. The inflexible ridge of his penis was an insistent presence between them, his hair was mussed, his eyes glazed, and he was starting to pant. She wasn’t much better off. Her nipples were so hard, she wondered they didn’t make dents in his chest. She was soaking wet and more than ready for him. She was still shocked by how fast this man could turn her on. Every single time. All it took was a look, or a word, and she was ready to climb all over him.

  Their chemistry was mind-boggling.

  “I dare you…” She hesitated and licked her lips as she considered her options. Her gaze dropped to where Stormy was staring up at them, her head tilted in confusion and she chuckled.

  “Go to bed, Stormy,” she commanded the pup, and the dog whined unhappily. “Go on. Good girl.”

  Stormy whined again. She turned away despondently and trudged out of the kitchen.

  “Charity, focus,” Miles sounded equal parts amused and exasperated, and Charity buried her fingers in his hair and dragged his head down until his lips were a hairsbreadth from hers.

  “I dare you to get on your knees and make me come with your tongue. In under two minutes.”

  “Two minutes? I’ll get it done in a minute.”

  “You turned my dare into a bet,” she protested.

  “Whatever. I’m going win it.”

  He sank to his knees in front of her, lifted her skirt, palmed one of her thighs, and unceremoniously hitched it over his shoulder. The move allowed him easier access to the aching heat between her legs. In an attempt to maintain her balance, she planted her hands on the kitchen sink behind her.

  He was hidden beneath her skirt, and she couldn’t see what he was doing, but oh God could she feel it. He used his thumbs to part her folds, and she shuddered at the first touch of his tongue on her rigid, throbbing clit.

  Charity’s head fell back, and her pelvis tilted forward.

  She heard him swearing shakily before he went to work.

  “Oh, oh! Oh, yes. Miles. Right there. Right…” She had never been very vocal during sex but for some reason she always found herself encouraging him, talking to him, telling him what she liked. How she liked it.

  He lapped at her, like a cat drinking up the richest cream. And it was heavenly.

  He won the bet, because after a few strokes of his tongue, she was on the verge…and when he clamped his lips over her aching bud and sucked, she was wrecked.

  She was still spasming violently when he got up and hastily undid his trousers to release himself.

  Soon her butt was braced on the edge of the sink, and her legs were wrapped around his waist while he pounded into her. She came again, and then again…and was on the verge of a fourth climax when he swore.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, I forgot the condom.” He withdrew and gripped himself tightly as he tried to stave off his orgasm.

  Charity didn’t think about it. She was on her knees and had him in her mouth before either of them could take another breath.

  “Fuck!” He cupped her head, and she lifted her eyes to stare into his straining face. “Jesus. I can’t…Charity. I can’t…”

  She smiled at him around his length before closing her eyes and sucking him deeply into her mouth and down her throat. She relished the salty sweet taste of him, the size of him…one of her hands crept up to the rigid muscles of his abdomen and the other cupped the smooth, heavy sac at the base of his penis.

  He groaned. The sound was long and low and helpless. And, knowing she had him right on the verge, she withdrew until she had only the tip of him in her mouth and scraped at the sensitive underside of his glans with her teeth.

  He muffled a cry and came. Copiously, almost violently. His entire body remained in spasm while he emptied himself into her mouth.

  And Charity, who had pretty much despised this act during her marriage, moved a hand to the sensitive, throbbing spot between her legs and strummed herself to completion.

  She wasn’t sure how it happened, but they wound up sitting side by side on the floor, backs braced against the dishwasher. His arm was curled around her shoulders, and her head was slumped on his still heaving chest.

  “That was fucking phenomenal,” he said.

  “It truly was. And well done on winning the bet.”

  He chuckled, sounding drained.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Cole. I do strive to please.” He paused for a beat before adding, “Well…I guess that takes care of dinner for both of us.”

  Charity choked. She lifted her head to stare at him incredulously and burst into laughter.

  He grinned and then began to chuckle and before long he, too, was laughing helplessly. His rich, deep guffaws a masculine counterpart to her girlish, carefree giggles.

  And in that moment of sheer unbridled joy…Charity fell hopelessly, helplessly, head over heels in love with him.

  And that terrified her because she didn’t want to love anyone. Not now. Possibly not ever.

  Not while she was still the wrecked woman of Blaine’s creation.

  “Can you tell me about the day he died?”

  The words were quiet and fell like unwelcome stones into the cold, silent darkness of night. Charity and Miles were cuddled up on the love seat on the patio, warm and toasty beneath the patio heater. Stormy was curled up on Miles’s lap, and they were all bundled beneath a blanket and staring out at the dark, still lake.

  They were sipping hot chocolate and after a lively debate about the potential direction of the Terra Arbor Chronicles, talk had drifted to Miles’s telephone conversations with Vicki and his mother that afternoon. After which they had lapsed into a comfortable silence.

  Until now.

  Her brow furrowed as she watched the lights from the dock ripple on the surface of the black water. She didn’t want to think about that night. Not while she was warm and safe and happy.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  She felt his throat move beneath her head as he swallowed heavily.

  “I looked him up. I’m sorry. I know it was an unforgivable intrusion but I wanted to find out more and I know it was wrong but…” His voice tapered off, and Charity silently mulled over his disjointed confession. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him prying into her private business, but he already knew more about her than anybody else, and she found that she didn’t mind as much as she thought she would.

  Instead, she was curious about what he had found. She had never read any of the news articles, or the sympathy posts on social me
dia, not even the cards that a few—very few—of his parishioners had sent to her. “Looked him up how?”

  “The Internet. It wasn’t easy. I thought his last name was Cole.”

  “I didn’t want his name. I reverted to my maiden name when I took this job.”

  “He killed himself? I was surprised by that. Everything you told me about him indicated toward some type of narcissist. A man who valued his own life above all else.”

  “He was…he did.”

  Tonight’s the night you die, Charity.

  She shuddered violently, and Miles’s arm tightened around her shoulders.

  “You don’t have to tell me about it. Okay? I’m so sorry for snooping. I just wanted to understand you better.”

  “I think…” Her voice was hoarse, and she paused to clear her throat before continuing. “He thought I was dead. He thought he’d killed me. He nearly did. He meant to, he told me I was going to die. And then he held me down and covered my face with a pillow. But I passed out, and he stopped before the job was fully done. I can only speculate as to what happened after that. I think he panicked. He wrote a bullshit note about not wanting to live without me, lay down beside me and blew his brains out.”

  She woke up covered in blood. So much blood! Was she bleeding? He didn’t usually make her bleed…

  “There was so much blood,” she recalled distantly. The memory still had the power to make her shudder. “At first I thought it was mine. I believed he had cut me while I was unconscious. And I was terrified, I thought I was bleeding to death.”

  Miles was shaking, she could feel the violent trembling of his body beside hers and patted his knee reassuringly. This wasn’t easy to talk about, and for a decent, kind man like Miles, it couldn’t be very easy to hear either.

  But he had wanted to know. And this was the bitter unvarnished truth. The ugliness that simmered beneath her surface.

  She could hear his breath stuttering in and out of his chest. It sounded painful and uneven. Like sobs, and she lifted her gaze to his face. The heater provided dim illumination, and she could see the gleam of his eyes as he met her stare.

  He hugged her closer. “I wish I’d met you sooner. Before you’d met him. I would have swept you off your feet. I would have loved and cherished you and kept you away from that fucking monster.”

  She lifted her free hand to his cheek, warmed that he cared enough to be so deeply affected by something that had happened to her so very long ago.

  “That would have been difficult. I grew up with him, you see? Went to school with him. And in my twenties, I fell in love with the kind and generous man he had pretended to be. But, thank you. For saying that. It means a lot.”

  “Not enough though,” he whispered. “Nowhere near enough. You have no idea how helpless and frustrated I feel. How much I want to make this right for you.”

  “I don’t need you to make things right for me, Miles. Or to feel helpless and frustrated on my behalf. It’s not your place and it’s not what I want from you. What I do need from you…” She paused and smiled, even though she knew he could not see it. “I’m getting it already. And it’s enough for right now.”

  But it wasn’t enough for Miles. He wanted this thing between them to be more and mean more. He wanted to take on the world for her. Wanted to show her how precious she was to him. Wanted her to see how much she amazed him, awed him, and impressed him.

  He wanted a future with her. More than a future.

  He wanted forever with her.

  Yet every day brought them a step closer to the inevitable end of their affair.

  And it was going to break his fucking heart to say goodbye to her.

  “He wanted a baby.”

  Her words surprised him. He hadn’t expected her to continue, and the dullness in her voice filled him with dread. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this. But he had invited the confidences and that meant listening to whatever she had to tell him. “Almost from the very beginning. But as you can imagine, I was hesitant. I didn’t want to bring a baby into that environment. I wasn’t even sure if pregnancy would have served as a deterrent to the abuse. I had a brief moment of weakness where I selfishly considered it. I fantasized that maybe a baby would miraculously fix what was wrong, and Blaine would go from this abusive monster to a loving husband and father.

  “I came to my senses pretty quickly. I knew a baby would make it worse. Either he’d hurt the baby, or use it as leverage against me. And I didn’t want any child of mine to grow up in a toxic environment like that.”

  Another long pause.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I stayed with him?”

  “I’m not,” he replied truthfully. The thought hadn’t occurred to him. He was aware of how manipulative abusers could be. The absolute control they held over their victims.

  “I was afraid of what he’d do to me if I tried to leave.”

  “You don’t have to explain, Charity. I get it.”

  “How are you so understanding?”

  “I understand how abusive emotional manipulation works, Charity. I may not have experienced it firsthand, or even witnessed it, but the mechanics are pretty straightforward.” He played the words back in his own mind and grimaced at the dry logic of his statement. Nothing in his voice or in his words betrayed the extreme, gut-wrenching emotional wringer her descriptions of life with Blaine Davenport put him through.

  Her heard her swallow. He blindly reached for her hand in the darkness, and she latched on tightly when he found it.

  “He was a by the book abuser, so to speak. First made me doubt myself, made me believe that somehow if I just tweaked little things about myself, I’d be what he wanted me to be, and he wouldn’t have to punish me any longer. By the time I realized that wasn’t going to happen I was a year into the marriage and that was when he convinced me that no one would believe me if I told.”

  She laughed. A bitter, joyless sound that tore at his heart. “By the third year it was clear that he just plain enjoyed hurting me. And controlling me. There was no more pretense between us, he had resorted to threats. He’d kill me if I tried to leave. He’d hurt Gracie. Faith. Anybody that I loved. And he was so evil and twisted I absolutely believed that he would.

  “And through it all he kept trying for a baby. Every month when my period arrived like clockwork, he’d punish me. It was my fault. I was worthless, pathetic, dried up…I honestly hoped his desire for a child, and my apparent inability to give him one would drive him to divorce me. But he was obsessed with me. Or as he put it, he loved me too much to let me go. He’d kill me before releasing me. Die rather than lose me.”

  “Did you get pregnant?”

  “No. Because he was right, it was my fault I never got pregnant. For the first two months of our marriage I was sneakily taking the pill. But when he started to suspect something was up, I was forced to flush them. I got an implant instead. Under an old scar so that he wouldn’t feel it. It was the one thing he wanted above all else, and the only thing left to me that I had any control over. I knew that if he discovered what I’d done he’d kill me.”

  The risk she had taken by using something as fundamental to her rights as birth control was staggering. And the sheer courage of her actions stole his breath away.

  “And then, one day, my luck ran out…he saw the renewal notice on my phone…”

  Tonight’s the night you die, Charity.

  The words played themselves out over and over again in her nightmares. The fury in his face. The absolute fear and dread in the pit of her stomach. The certainty that her last breath was mere minutes away.

  The cold, flat fury in Blaine’s eyes was more than enough to send her scampering for the dubious safety of the bedroom. But he beat her to the door, grabbed her elbow, and flung her onto the bed.

  Before she could scramble away he was on top of her, straddling her.

  “Please. Please Blaine! I can explain. I’m sorry. I can explain. Please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry.”<
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  The words were a breathless, panicked jumble. But he didn’t seem to hear them. He wrapped his hands around her neck and lowered his face until she could feel his breath on her skin. His mouth opened, and his teeth gently closed over her cheek. She heard the involuntary mewling in her throat. Her body was stiff as a board as she waited for him to bite down. To rip, tear…maim. Destroy.

  He would. He wanted to. She knew it. She had seen it in his eyes, sensed it in the leashed fury of his movements. He was going to kill her. But first he would hurt her. He would make her regret defying him.

  She thought of her parents, of Faith. Of the beautiful niece she would never see grow up. She regretted the life that she could have lived, the love she should have found…She didn’t want it to end. Not now. Not like this.

  She managed to get both hands between their bodies, braced her palms against his chest, and shoved him as hard as she could. The move surprised him, and he reared up. She used his momentary confusion to try and wriggle out from beneath him.

  But he recovered too quickly. Compressing his thighs over hers to prevent her from getting away, his hands clamped around her neck.

  “Let go of me!” she demanded of him. Tears seeped down her face and soaked into the pillow beneath her head. He had an erection. He always had an erection when he hurt her. And she hated it! Hated him.

  “You stole from me, Charity,” he said, from between gritted teeth. “You stole my child from me.”

  “F-fuck you, Blaine!” She hurled at him, finding her voice, her defiance, her bravery now. When it was too late. “I stole nothing from you. I would die before I give you a child.”

  He reached for a pillow, and the last thing she saw, before he covered her face with it, was his lips parting on a thin, menacing smile.

  The shroud of darkness was accompanied by the terrifying sensation of being smothered. Each excruciating exhalation left her with even less air in her lungs. And while she fought to breathe, he was right there, intimately close…applying ever more pressure.

  “Oh, don’t worry, my love. I can promise you this…Tonight’s the night you die, Charity.”