Page 73 of To Save Him

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-four

 

DINNER THAT NIGHT felt so weird.  JR seemed oblivious to the strange vibes, instead talking about his time with Cash and all the “cool stuff” Cash’s family had, aside from a swimming pool (which was the reason why JR had a nasty sunburn on his nose and back)—three gaming consoles, a pool table, and more, all nestled inside a three-story house.  Apparently, they also had a cleaning lady and three new cars.

If I recalled correctly, his dad was some kind of investment guy.  Figured.  Easy bucks made from gambling with other people’s money.  But, hey, maybe he was a good guy.  How would I know?  I just hated that friends like those often made JR feel like he was missing out.  I guessed he probably was, but there wasn’t more I could do about it.  It didn’t help that we had a split family.  And I knew that I at least was engaged nowadays, unlike a few years ago.  Money could not replace love.

Annabel was quiet, texting with Liam off and on.  I normally would have asked her to put the phone away, but she seemed upset.  She and Liam had probably had some sort of argument, and she needed to work it through.  She was rarely home anymore, so I wanted to take what I could get.  I could barely get a word out of her, though, because she was pretty into her texting conversation—and JR was dominating the airwaves.

Brandon too was quiet.  He looked at me once in a while, and his gazes gave me chills.  Well, chills up my spine but burning heat in other places.  In spite of the fact that I felt slivers of doubt, I also continued to feel a heated lust for him—even more so now that we had begun a relationship.

Lots more since he’d made his seeming transformation to a somewhat bossy, very domineering—dominant.  I knew that was the terminology, but I didn’t know that it quite fit.

Yes, as much as I had growing suspicions, I even more had escalating desires.  And that made me feel, to a degree, like a bad mother.  Here I should have been listening to every word coming out of JR’s mouth (even though some of them made me feel bad, because there was no way I’d be able to provide for my son like Cash’s dad did his) and asking him questions; instead, I looked over at Brandon every time I felt his eyes on me—when I wasn’t distracted by Annabel’s solemnity and phone activity, that is.

And in spite of the emails I’d cried through in the afternoon, discovering no shred of Brandon linked to my deceased son, I wanted him.  Wanted him badly.  Wanted to discover where his dark mind would take us next.

I shifted in the kitchen seat, a sense of shame washing over me.  Instead of feeling a need for him, I should have been wanting to know more about him—asking for proof that he really had been friends with Gabriel.  Well, no.  Asking for proof outright would destroy what little we had; I would need to be subtler than that.

After our strangely tense dinner, Brandon offered to help me with dishes, but then JR demanded time with him for some videogame action.  It wasn’t until later that night that Brandon joined me downstairs.

I was sorting through an old shoebox of pictures—most had been taken years earlier, but some were more recent, printed when I’d taken my phone to a photo center in a store.  I knew Gabriel had sent me a few, though not many, and it wasn’t until I was almost to the bottom of the shoebox that I realized I probably had some pictures saved on my computer and, having been buried inside several email “conversations,” I’d missed them earlier in the day.  I also knew there was a picture of him with his squad he’d sent via email, but that was from earlier in his military career.

I’d have to check my computer the next day.

Brandon sat next to me at the table but didn’t say anything at first.  “Is that JR?” he asked, pointing to a baby picture.

I smiled.  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?  But that’s actually Gabriel.  I always forget how much they looked alike as little guys.”

After several moments of silence, he said, “We probably need to talk, yeah?”

I let my eyes rest on the photo a little longer before turning my head to look at him.  “Maybe.”  I didn’t know that I was ready to tell him about all my doubts, my unease, my suspicions.  And what if I was right?  It would be a damned bad idea to give myself away without knowing what his true motivations were.  So I wanted to see what he thought we needed to talk about before I fully committed.

“Last night…you okay with all that?”

Twenty years earlier, simplythinkingabout how nasty last night’s activities had made me feel—and how feeling like a dirty girl had made that wicked pleasure even more enjoyable—would have had me blushing, followed by a sense of deep shame, and the whole thing would have been something I’d have avoided talking about at all costs.  Now, though…not so much.  I was more worried about what I didn’t see or know about my lover—not a subtext but the possibility that this was all a game for something else that I had no idea about.

I could play the game…especially because—in a deep, dark corner inside—part of me was enjoying it.  “I think so.”

He cocked his head a little.  “You struggled with it all at the restaurant.  Are you really not okay by a little exhibitionism or were you just testing boundaries to see how much you could get away with?”

“I’m reallynotokay with doing things in public.”

“Nothing in public?”

I scrunched my nose.  “Ilivehere, Brandon, and most of the people in this town don’t seem to care for me anyway.  I don’t need to make it worse.  I still have kids in school—”

He nodded.  “We just haven’t found the right way yet.”  I didn’t say anything, but I was dubious. “What about when we got home—after?  Was all that okay?”

All right. NowI could feel my cheeks grow warm, in spite of the fact that I was a grown woman—an independent woman.  I thought back to last night—how Brandon had commanded me to do certain things…and how obeying his commands had made me warm.

How I’d experienced an insane level of pleasure.

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