AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He hadn’t gone far. He was on the verandah, his back to her, looking out towards the creek. “Go back inside. Get on the table. Take that same position you were in before you decided threatening me was a good idea.”
She gulped. Will, the master and commander, was back and he was ready to play. She skipped back inside and he followed. She got back on the table, hitched the shirt up and opened her legs.
He went back to the bench and leant against it. “Ask your question.”
He was so hot like this. Will in a snit with his temper boiling, but under control. Not like at Double Happiness, when he was hurting so badly and lashing out. But like the night of the grey dress, when he knew exactly what he was doing and how it would play out. There wasn’t a single question in her head. All the blood had run to other parts of her body, making it impossible to think.
“Cat got your tongue?”
He said ‘tongue’ like it was a lewd act and she felt it between her legs. She said the first thing that came to mind. “Why Parker? Why Spiderman?”
The question surprised him, his frown deepened. “We needed to be different people, not Will Brown, and Peter Vessy anymore.”
He’d been born William Brown. That’s why she couldn’t find him in Tara. “Why?”
Will pushed off the bench as if to walk away again, and she realised her mistake. She popped the top stud of the shirt. He heard it, settled back, folded his arms into a barrier. But he was ready for the question and there was no point in letting him get too comfortable.
“Why do you prefer paid mistresses to girlfriends?”
“You want to ask me that?”
She nodded. Was his contempt for the question or what the answer would reveal about him?
“Because they’re uncomplicated, and they understand their role, unlike certain other women, who clearly don’t.”
His mouth was drawn, but he was amused and working not to show it. He deserved another stud for that. She popped it. There weren’t that many left on the shirt, only one more.
“Why were you living here with Pete?”
“No choice. I had nowhere else to go.”
She opened her legs wider and his eyes drifted down. They had heat ray powers.
“Couldn’t you leave? Get help to leave?”
“I couldn’t leave Pete behind. I was scared his father, Norman, might hit him hard enough to kill him.”
A shocking answer, a new window to Will’s psyche opened. She parted her knees further and pulled the shirt higher up her thighs.
“Did Norman hit you?”
“Yes.”
Darcy thought that was going to be all she’d get, and it was enough; she moved her hand to the last stud, but he went on.
“He’d start on me. I could wear him out so he didn’t have so much left in him for Pete.”
She closed her eyes against the matter of factness in his voice, against the idea that choosing to be beaten to make it easier for someone else was business as usual. She popped the last stud, pulled the shirt open so her sternum and belly were undressed, like all of her emotions. Will was watching her intently, but there was a faraway quality to his expression.
“How did you get the scar on your chin?” They’d remade half his face but he’d chosen to keep this scar. It meant something to him.
His hand came up, he ran a finger under his chin. “Norman’s belt buckle. Pete has a scar on his shoulder from the same night. It was the first time he’d used anything other than his fists. It was the night I decided it had to stop.”
No more studs and she was running out of leg length to hoist the shirt up.
“He broke your nose too.”
“Twice.”
