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"Whether the case goes good or bad, I come home to you and Chris," he said in a measured, tight tone. "You're what makes the rest of it work. I'm not willing to risk that as much as you are. Maybe it isn't as important to you."
Hurt speared her, taking her breath so that she couldn't respond right away. His gaze flickered with regret, but she spoke again before he could say anything more, since she was pretty sure if his next words were along the same vein, she wouldn't be able to bear it.
"I'd forgotten you can be mean when you get scared," she said softly. "Maybe because I've never been the one who's scared you. I'm always what you need me to be. I'm going out. If you truly don't think I value this relationship as much as you do, if you don't get that's why I've been pushing this, then I don't know what else to do."
She was close to tears that would ruin her carefully applied makeup, so she fled, sliding out the door. She got into her car, fumbled with her keys and stuck them in the ignition. She'd worn a pretty dress, but she knew she'd worn it for Geoff. Geoff really liked it when she wore girly things, evidence of that romantic streak he tried to hide. If he had the choice of seeing her in a crotchless teddy or a clingy satin peignoir like the starlets wore in the black-and-white movies, he'd choose the latter. He'd push the thin straps off her shoulders, let the gown pool around her feet . . .
Oh God. She knew him and Chris so well. Too well. She wanted to take it all off, put on flannel pajamas and hide in her bed. So she wasn't going to do that. She was going to . . .
She sighed. She was going to be fair to Mark. It was a group thing, after all. Florence and several other people from work, including Mark, were meeting at the bar. There'd been some implication that they might go from dinner there to a dance club. Any other time, it would have been fun, whether or not she and Mark hit it off. It proved how sensitive her potential date was, suggesting a good, low-pressure environment to make a decision about each other. He was obviously a nice guy, and she wasn't going to dick him around, using him as a pawn in a situation that didn't involve him.
She sent Mark and Flo a text, indicating she'd had something come up and couldn't be there, but she hoped they had a good time.
After she hit send, she closed her eyes. The car was humming. Maybe she'd go to a movie, pick up some dinner, whatever would keep her away from the house for the next several hours. She wished Chris was here. Then again, maybe she wasn't ready to talk to him about this, either.
She put the car in drive, but her door opened before she could press the accelerator. Geoff reached over her, put the car back in park. Switching off the ignition, he pulled out the key and pocketed it. Then he eyed her with a set jaw and resolute expression. "You're not going on a damn date," he said.
She crossed her arms over her breasts and shot him a mutinous look. "Sorry, it's what we insensitive sluts do."
His firm lips pressed together. Squatting next to the car, he put his hand on her knee, fingers incidentally sliding beneath the gauzy pleats. The warm strength was too welcome. She told herself to jerk away, tell him to let go and give her the damn keys.
"Come in the house, Samantha Beth," he said quietly.
"You'll say you're sorry first. That was a really, really horrible thing to say."
"Yes, it was." He sighed, surprising her by kissing her shoulder before he pressed his forehead against it and the side of her breast. "Forgive me. Sometimes I need to have my tongue cut out."
"It'd be really hard for you to be a trial lawyer that way," she said. She wanted to touch his head, run her fingers through his hair in comfort, but she steeled herself to stay motionless. She refused to go backward again, and a simple apology with no indication that anything would be different wasn't something she was going to accept this time.
He lifted his head, his eyes thoughtful. "Someone told me earlier in the week that submissives are braver than Doms," he said. "Maybe because a sub's mentality is all about reaching a point of vulnerability where you can surrender and let go. Doms don't have that, Sam." He grimaced. "We're all about control, beginning to end. He told me to think of you as a partner in this, and I'm trying, but there's this pounding drum in my head that says I'm in charge of all of it, that if it crashes and burns, it's me who will make that happen. I think I could forgive anything you or Chris did to me. But I couldn't forgive myself if I pushed us away from one another. And look, Christ, isn't that what I just did, in there? I said things that made you bolt."
Something else entered his gaze, something vulnerable that she wasn't sure he meant her to see. "You're my family," he said. He stopped, cleared the break from his voice, but kept his eyes fastened on hers. "Do you understand that, Sam? I need you to understand it, to help me . . . get us where we both want to go."
She could feel the tension strumming through his body, as if he was willing her to un
derstand things that were too hard for him to say. She realized then why what he'd said had hurt so much. Hadn't she harbored that exact worry, that she was so trapped in her own desires she might mess something up, which was what someone who didn't value their relationship as much might do? She did value it, just as she'd said.
Because Geoff was so good at being in control, it was easy to forget really important details about him. He wasn't being sentimental. She and Chris were Geoff's only family. His dad had screwed around on his mother and Geoff had ended his relationship with his father. That could have turned out okay, except his mother had returned to his father, even though it was widely known he was still philandering. Geoff's mother had told Geoff she could overlook his father's infidelities as long as he took care of her, and his other siblings had supported her wish. Geoff couldn't, so he'd walked away from them and the family money, which had been considerable.
That was what so many people didn't get about Geoff, but she and Chris did. A lot of people became attorneys for the money or the prestige that came with saying, I'm an attorney. Or just to have a career path. Even if the legal system dealt with a lot of shades of gray, Geoff believed in clear lines of right and wrong. Though he worked for a corporate firm to pay for his student loans, she knew what he really wanted was to be on the front lines, trying to see those lines honored. He'd told Sam once that even if that happened only once out of every hundred cases, there was value in being one of the guys who helped make that one time happen, and who at least tried get the other ninety-nine as close to that state as possible.
She put her hand down on his. "I do get it," she said gently. "But you really hurt my feelings. Why would you strike out at me like that?"
"Exactly why you said." A muscle in his cheek flexed. "Because I'm an asshole when I'm cornered. If Chris had been here, he'd be sitting on me in the living room right now, turning my face into mashed potatoes and breaking my ribs like matchsticks."
She couldn't help a small smile at that. "I was just thinking I wish Chris were here. I wasn't wishing for him to do that. Though, now that you mention it, that would have been nice."
"Thanks." His look was wry, but after a moment's reflection, he removed the keys from his pocket and put them back in her hand. "It's your choice, but I'm asking you. Don't go on the date, Sam. I know what I said, and maybe it's true, you should give some other guy a chance, but I don't want you to do it. Since I've already been an asshole tonight, I might as well be a selfish bastard while I'm at it."
"You know what I was thinking when I was putting on my lipstick?"
"That you were going to torture my dick as much as possible before you left?"
She colored a little bit at the crude language. Geoff was regaining his composure. With it came that direct look that could swirl things in a lovely way down through her chest, to her lower abdomen and even farther. His gaze swept her. "Like this dress. You know it's the kind I particularly like to see you wear. Don't you?"
She nodded and his lips tightened. "What are you wearing under it? Tell me." His palm slid up a few more inches, his thumb on the seam between her thighs, and her legs loosened under that touch.
"Geoff . . . the neighbors--"
