Purr (Revenge Book 3) Read online

  And she didn’t want to be anywhere but there, looking down the stairs of that cliffside deck and into the eyes of the man climbing those steps toward her, wearing a blue button-down shirt tucked into white shorts, his feet bare.

  Gage held her gaze until he’d joined her at the top of the stairs.

  Veda’s eyes rose to him as he came in close, nearly fluttered closed as his scent surrounded her and made everything okay. She ached to reach out and touch him. To let him touch her. To expel the quiet monster between them that still went unresolved. The monster that was blocking her from his everlasting light.

  “I’m sorry,” they both said.

  Each of them gasped when the words spilled from their lips at the same time.

  Veda laughed softly, smoothing her bun. When he reached up and cupped her jaw, she didn’t know if the blast of light shooting through her was from him or the beam from the lighthouse that sat on its own mountain in the distance.

  “Why are you sorry?” he asked. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

  She searched his eyes. “You’ve told me, time and time again, how uncomfortable you are with my friendship with Linc. Instead of listening to you, I fought. I argued. But arguing doesn’t make your feelings any less real. Arguing won’t make those feelings go away. I need to be willing to listen and hear what you’re feeling. Otherwise, how can we fix it in a real way? We can’t.”

  He brought his other hand up, cupping her jaw completely. “No, I was wrong, Veda. You were right. When I see you and him together, I don’t know why but… I do get jealous. Possessive. Controlling. Something inside me just snaps, and I go a little crazy.” He shook his head. “I go a lot crazy. I don’t know why I feel like that, even though you’ve told me, time and time again that nothing is going on. And I believe you. It’s just….”

  He didn’t finish, but she didn’t need him to. She knew he wasn’t imagining things. Not completely. But she also knew she could never help him understand. Not without revealing herself. She could never tell him that she wouldn’t even be alive to love Gage as much as she did right then if it hadn’t been for Linc.

  She couldn’t tell him why she’d never turn her back on Linc—even if it came at the expense of losing him. She knew Gage wasn’t wrong for seeing a connection, because there was one. It was a connection that had been made ten years ago, when Linc had fished her out of the very waters that rolled hundreds of feet below. It was a connection that would never die.

  She understood that, but she knew Gage never would.

  “I’m justifying it.” He slammed his eyes closed, clearly taking her silence as frustration. “I promised myself, when I was lighting all these candles that I wouldn’t try to justify my behavior to you because there is no justification. There’s no excuse. All I wanted was to say I’m sorry, and to assure you that I understand exactly why I’m sorry.” He held out his arms, laughing softly. “Veda… you’re the first woman I’ve ever chosen for myself. The first girlfriend—the first real girlfriend—I’ve ever had that has nothing to do with them. You’re the first woman I’ve ever cared about this deeply. You’re the first woman I’ve ever loved.”

  Veda’s heart swelled, filling her chest and wetting her eyes. “You’re the first man I’ve ever loved.”

  He covered his heart with both hands. “Since this love is a first—for both of us—I hope we can give each other enough wiggle room to make the kind of mistakes that rookies tend to make sometimes. The kind of rookie mistakes that most people learn from before they’ve even finished high school.”

  They laughed softly together.

  He motioned between them. “An MD and an MBA, sure. But a little remedial when it comes to relationships.”

  “A lot remedial.”

  His smile slowly fell, a lump moving down his throat. “I’m still learning, Veda. Not just how to be a good boyfriend to you, but how to be the best one. I don’t want to control you. I don’t want to be jealous. I don’t want to be possessive. I don’t want you to look at me and not recognize the man looking back. I don’t want you to look at me and feel badly. There was no excuse for my behavior today. I behaved unforgivably. But I promise you, from this day forward? I trust you. Completely. I’ll never tell you who you can’t talk to or who you can’t be friends with. I’ll never make you feel like your body isn’t your own. I never want you to feel like that.”

  She came to her toes and he lowered his head, meeting her halfway into a gentle kiss. The softness of his lips lived on hers, lingering until neither of them could hold their breath for another moment. He pulled back just long enough for them to steal a gasped breath before he dove in again, seizing her bottom lip between his. Their lips smacked softly as he moved from one lip to the other, tasting her patiently before something snapped and he was devouring her, encircling her in his arms and licking her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue, spreading his mouth wide over hers.

  “I love you,” she whispered in the midst of their passionate kiss.

  “I love how sweet you always taste.” His voice grew lower, more gravelly, with each deep kiss, betraying his arousal. “I love how it’s a different sweetness every time.”

  Veda moaned and gave him her tongue. He returned the favor and they tilted their heads, deepening the kiss.

  “Can you guess what flavor?” she asked, her lips brushing his.

  He moaned into another kiss, anchoring the back of her head in his palm as he dove in, pushing his tongue deep inside. He trapped her bottom lip between his teeth, releasing it as he pulled back slowly, keeping his smiling mouth on hers. “Cherry.”

  She bit her lip and shook her head.

  He dove in again, staying longer that time, groaning as his mouth left hers with a smack. “Mm….” He licked his lips, tasting her. “Watermelon.”

  She breathed out a laugh through her nostrils and nodded.

  When he took her mouth again, she wrapped her arms around his neck, squealing when he took that as an invitation to cup her ass and take her off her feet. She locked her ankles around his waist, never breaking their kiss, crying out when he started down the stairs.

  “Gage, we’re a hundred feet up! Put me down.”

  “Uh-uh,” he mumbled his refusal into her neck, sucking the skin there between his teeth, sending tingles prickling over every inch of her skin as he hit her most sensitive spot, clearing each step of the staircase slowly.

  “If you drop me, Blackwater….” Her warning came out halfhearted. She buried her fingers in his thick hair, slightly damp from the mist of the ocean, and let her words fade away as she melted into the pleasure of his hot mouth on her neck. Her pussy was already clenching for more.

  Only when he’d carried her down to the second level, where a candlelit table was set under the gazebo, did she release the grip she had on his hair.

  “Baby,” she purred, clapping her arms around his neck and laying her head on top of his as he approached the table. “You did all this for me?”

  “I made it myself,” he said, slowly setting her to her feet and chuckling when she placed a flurry of kisses on his cheek. “So brace yourself.”

  She smiled and they clasped hands as they closed the rest of the space to the table. He pulled her chair out for her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll be delicious.”

  He pushed her in and removed the stainless steel food coverings over their plates, revealing the seafood dishes hiding underneath. He set the coverings aside before taking his seat on the other side of the table, which was small enough for them to clasp hands on top. He reached in far enough to take hold of her forearms, squeezing.

  She giggled at the intensity in his eyes, telling her that his dick was tingling with as many unbearable pleasure sensors as her pussy, even as they made an unspoken agreement with their eyes to finish dinner first.

  Licking his lips and sitting tall, he lifted a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket on the edge of the table, popped it open, and f
illed both their glasses.

  “What are we having?” she asked, lifting her fork.

  “Miso-glazed sea bass with asparagus and wok vegetables.”

  Veda raised her eyebrows, stabbed her fork into the fish, and took a quick bite.

  He watched her intently, putting the champagne bottle back on the ice. When Veda’s eyes exploded to twice their size, he laughed, eyes lowering bashfully.

  “Oh my God,” she moaned. “I’m engaged to an iron chef.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, picking up his own fork as his cheeks heated.

  “Baby, this is phenomenal. I’m serious. You could put this on a restaurant menu with a six-hundred-percent markup. People would pay. Hell, I would pay.” She stabbed her fork down for another bite, a much bigger one that time. “Holy crap.”

  Gage took his own bite, watching her with a smile.

  She frowned at him with a mouth full of food, motioning to her plate with the tines of her fork rapidly. “Okay.” She dropped her fork. “Where did you learn how to make this? Seriously. I’m not even halfway done, and I want seconds and thirds.”

  He lifted his champagne glass to his lips, taking a slow sip. “My mother’s recipe.”

  Veda froze in mid-chew.

  He set his glass down. “Like you, she doesn’t cook. Not boiling a pot of water. Not toasting a slice of bread. Nothing. This was the one and only dish she could ever make, and she hit a home run every time.”

  She took her own sip of champagne, always needing a drink at the thought of Celeste Blackwater. “How are you doing, Gage? Have you spoken to her?”

  He shook his head. “Not since the dinner.”

  “Something else I owe you an apology about.”

  “I’ve already told you that you have nothing to apologize for. My family will never treat you fairly, and they made it crystal clear that night at dinner. They also made the colossal mistake of assuming that I would choose them over you. Clearly they have no idea how madly in love with you I actually am. But they’re certainly going to learn.”

  “I don’t want you to be angry at your family on account of me.”

  “I’m angry at my family on account of them.”

  She ran her hand over her bun, feeling it growing slick from the mist. She gazed out into the ocean. “It was tough today. Not having you at the hospital. I had to sit through a three-hour surgery listening to Dr. Britler’s mouth and couldn’t even run to your office to let your cock make me feel better afterward.”

  He chortled.

  “It was awful, baby. I’m not sure I’m going to make it there without you. Even Latika is super sad. She tried to make a joke of it, but I can tell she’s terrified at the thought of who your family might hire to replace you.”

  He smiled softly. “Latika said she missed me?”

  “Well, of course she didn’t say the actual words.”

  He grinned, nodding with his eyebrows raised.

  “But I could tell she was sad. Everyone was. They were all looking at me like it was my fault. Like I’m the reason you were gone. I guess I kind of am.” She shrugged. “Honestly? I’m a little terrified that you’re going to look back on this one day and believe it too.”

  “I already believe you’re the reason I’m not at the hospital anymore. But it’s not something I’ll look back on and blame you for. It’s something I’ll look back on and be thankful for. Before I came home and made this dinner today, I did some research. Paid a visit to a career counselor downtown.” He snickered. “That’s how badly they’ve screwed me up, baby. I couldn’t even begin to think of what I wanted for myself. For my life. I had to have a stranger behind a desk write out a list of things for me. You can’t begin to imagine the confusion in her eyes when I walked into her office.”

  Veda’s eyes shone at him. “Well, was she able to help you?”

  “She asked me a lot of questions. Some of them were hard to answer. Particularly the ones about what I want to do with my life. What my strengths are. What my hopes are. What my dreams are. Not his. Not hers. Just mine. She had to steer me back on track whenever my ‘hopes and dreams’ inevitably veered back toward my family. Toward the cruise line. She had to keep reminding me to think about me. She certainly had her work cut out for her this afternoon, that’s for sure. Took a while, but we finally landed on something. It gave me the kind of butterflies… the kind of butterflies I only get when I’m inside you.”

  Veda’s mouth fell and she covered his hand over the table, hungry to hear more.

  He shook his head. “Anything that can make me feel that good? As good as I feel whenever we’re making love? That’s a winner.”

  “What did you find that made you so excited?”

  “A couple things, but the big one was this foundation. A non-profit for missing kids on Shadow Rock. It’s called the—”

  “Terrance Gloss Foundation,” she finished. “Yeah, Jake talks about it all the time. Ever since his brother went missing, he’s been really passionate about it.”

  “I don’t know why, but when she brought up the possibility of pursuing a seat on the board at that foundation, really making a difference, your face popped into my head.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe that was the real reason it got me so excited. It made me think of you, and everything you do excites me, so….”

  She lifted her leg under the table with a smile, running her foot over the crotch of his pants. Her smile grew when she felt his hardness bopping between her toes.

  Even as his eyes grew suggestive, he stayed on subject. “It made me think, ‘This would make Veda really proud. She’d be really proud of me.’”

  “I’m always proud of you, Gage,” she whispered. “You’re my man. My hero. My best friend. I’m always proud of you.”

  He searched her eyes, his voice breaking. “Thank you, baby.”

  “I’m curious.” She went back to enjoying her food, talking between bites. “How exactly does the sexiest Italian on all of Shadow Rock Island go about joining the board of a charity?”

  He smiled around the champagne glass on his lips. “Well, first that sexy, gorgeous, not to mention dapper Italian man has to attend every fundraising party and event that charity throws.”

  She laughed softly.

  “With his outrageously sexy, gorgeous, not to mention stunning chocolate girlfriend on his arm, of course.”

  “You just love dragging me to boring parties.”

  “I do.”

  “Surely you could just throw that billion-dollar name of yours around to get your foot in the door. I doubt anyone on the board would turn their nose up at a Blackwater.”

  “I could do that, but I kind of want to do it right. I don’t want them to think I just walked in the door and threw my name around. I want them to know I cared enough to learn the ins and outs of the organization and only went for a seat because I really believed in their cause. I wouldn’t even be above volunteer work to prove my motives are sincere.”

  She tilted her head at him. “I love you to absolute death, you know that? I love you all the way down to your guts.”

  “I love your guts too.”

  “I know you do.” She giggled softly, drinking in his moan of warning when her toes continued stroking the tip of his hard dick under the table. “I can’t wait for our cruise. Four whole days. Me and you. Anywhere but here?” She rolled her eyes skyward. “Heaven.”

  “Anywhere you are is heaven for me.”

  Veda didn’t know why but her eyes suddenly shot up, zooming across the expansive beach to the cliff on the other side. When she caught sight of Celeste, standing at the white stone balcony where Veda’s life had been forever changed, staring down at them with her long black hair blowing in the breeze, Veda understood why her eyes had suddenly shot in that direction. Some unknown force had pulled them there to alert her.

  “Your mother is watching us from her balcony,” Veda said. “Again.”

  “Ignore her.”

  “Should we thank her fo
r the delicious dinner?”

  “We should ignore her.”

  “Gage, I don’t want you to hate her forever.”

  “She will never accept you.”

  Veda’s gaze left Celeste in a flash, shooting to him. Her eyes widened softly.

  He softened the venom in his voice, shaking his head gently, food and wine forgotten. “Never.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “She will die first.” Gage nodded. “So… ignore her.”

  Veda lowered her eyes, and even as the clatter of Gage’s silverware hitting his plate rang into the air, she couldn’t ease the storm in her heart.

  7

  Hours later, Veda’s baby blue scrubs and Gage’s white shorts went abandoned, scattered on the wood floors of the deck, leading a haphazard path toward the bubbling Jacuzzi. His blue shirt, which he’d yanked off at the last minute, hung over the Jacuzzi’s silver rail and swung in the night air.

  His hands snuck under her white lace bra and squeezed her breasts, pulling a moan from her parted lips. She swirled her ass against his hardness and clutched his thighs under the warm water, breathing in the subtle hint of chlorine through her flared nostrils. Her grip on his legs tightened, along with her pussy, which pounded with the need her body always allotted him when his fingers were pinching her nipples the way they were right then. Her grip also tightened because she could still feel Celeste Blackwater’s cold green eyes watching them from the balcony across the rocks.

  “Baby,” Veda warned, digging her nails into his broad thighs, whimpering when the hardness pressing into her panties twitched, hitting her clit from behind. “She’s watching.”

  “She can’t see past the bubbles,” Gage spoke into her neck, his breath warming her more than the frothy waters of the Jacuzzi ever could. His tongue darted out to lick her skin as he pulled her closer, sealing his chest to her back.