“Look at me.”  His demand was rough and carnal but I was too lost to listen.  He slammed harder.  “Look at me, Lake,” Callum growled, his hips pumping like a well-oiled machine into me, faster and deeper than I ever knew possible.  “Look at me when I make you come.”

I opened my eyes just in time.

Delirium poured from my lips as I came, rattling between his hot chest and the cold wall.  It pulled a surprising growl from Callum, deep and needy from the pit of his throat.  He crushed a kiss over my euphoric mouth as I pulsed around him, groaning my name as I brought him to his own shuddering climax.  My fingers tangled in his hair as I felt every ribbon of his pleasure surge like a wildfire inside me.  Every one rushed through my body, searching the depths of me and finding the walls I still fought so hard to hold up.

Slowly, gradually, I felt them burning down.

Chapter Twenty

Callum

Ana’s eyebrows rose sharply as we walked across the tarmac.  She was leaning against the railing of the steps leading into the jet and smoothly pulled her shades down to mask her dissatisfaction.  It flashed in her dark eyes the second she spotted Lake, my shoulder draped in her luggage and her fingers entwined in mine.  It was noticeable enough that Oz exhaled with a hint of stress, which might’ve been the first time I’d ever heard that emotion from him.

“What?”

He shrugged.  “Here’s to hoping she’s not the type for petty revenge,” he muttered when Lake broke away from me to help with her luggage.

“What do you mean?”

“You brought your girl on a business trip and I’m sure the reasons aren’t business-related but Ana looks a wee bit unhappy about it.”

“She’ll get over it,” I said as we climbed the steps and into the Gulfstream.

“You must be Callum’s lovely lady,” Ana held her hand out to Lake when we got in.  I shook my head at her when she shook Lake’s hand but looked straight at me.

“I guess so, though I’ve never heard Callum describe me as lovely,” Lake laughed, peering at me.  “Or a lady for that matter.”

I smirked.  She was too fucking sexy to be described as lovely but of course she was.  I kept the thought in and nodded for us all to take a seat.  “Nice touch,” I remarked at the table lined with various bottles of Pike Scotch.  “Some hair of the dog?” I asked Oz and Lake, who both groaned.

We’d all had too good of a time last night, Lake and myself in particular.  By the time we returned downstairs to our friends, Oz had gotten them sufficiently drunk because that was what he did best with people – bring out their worst.  We’d mixed Scotch with champagne over five courses of dinner and at the end of it all, joined whatever party was going on in the event hall.  While Oz, Logan and Isabel danced their asses off, I sat at the bar with Lake on my lap, both of us just laughing and watching.  Some drunk asshole grabbed Isabel’s ass and before Lake and I could move a muscle, Isabel beat him with her clutch like a woman gone mad.

“Shame that she’s married.  That was the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” Oz shook his head.  “Top five at least.  You know that kind of feisty translates well in bed.”

I ignored him.  “Know what that reminded me of?” I asked Lake, whose eyes were already wide on me because she was thinking the same.

“My grandma.”

Elena had been the feistiest old woman I’d ever met in my life.  Twice she had her purse snatched on the subway and twice she smacked the living shit out of the thief with it when she got it back.  The second time, she enlisted the help of a stranger to drag him to a cop on the platform.  The memory had us laughing fondly till Oz asked if Lake’s grandma was single.

“She’s dead, Oz.”

He winced.  “So that’s a ‘no?’”

“For this lifetime, unfortunately.”

We were all pretty drunk.  Lake was apparently enough so to get started on her confession with me.  It was after we’d snuck our drinks back upstairs and sat on the top of the steps, watching all the drunken antics unfold below us.  It had been quiet for a minute when she tossed back the rest of her champagne and spoke.

“I started talking to my mom again after my grandma died.”

I looked at her without showing my surprise.  “Yeah?”

“You know my mom’s name right? My biological mom?”

“Trisha.”

“Trish, yeah.  She tried asking my grandma for my contact info once, I think when I was like, thirteen, and my grandma shut that shit down so fast,” Lake laughed, staring bleary eyed into nothing.  “She knew she was bad news.  Never wanted my dad to be with her.  My dad was apparently a good guy.  I mean, obviously, since my grandma made him.”

She never really knew him.  He didn’t have much contact with her mom and died young in a car accident.  I wanted to say something comforting but instead, I just nodded and listened, afraid to disturb whatever had shifted in the air to inspire Lake to talk.

“My grandma warned your mom, too.  She said Trish found out about the nice, cushy life I suddenly had and she was suddenly very interested in me.  Your mom was worried.  She told me to tell her if I ever received contact from Trish.”  The amusement faded from Lake’s voice and shame trickled its way in.  “I really should have done that.”

“When did she try again?”

“Literally the day we got back from my grandma’s funeral.  On Facebook.  She was really nice at first, actually.  She went through my pictures and said I looked so pretty and I had such a cute boyfriend and she was happy my life was so good.  I knew from the way your mom and my grandma acted that it was wrong if she tried to talk to me but it didn’t… feel so bad.  She was my mom.  She was the only blood I had left.  And I was kind of curious about how she might’ve changed.  If maybe she’d gotten better.”

“Better? From what?”

Lake shrugged.  “I was six when I left her.  I don’t really remember knowing names or any official diagnoses of what was wrong with her.  Looking back on it, and just from what I saw on her Facebook, she was… obviously on drugs.  She made some crazy poor choices when it came to men.”

My muscles tightened.  “Did any of them hurt you?”

“No.  They hurt her but they never touched me.  Then again, I think they forgot I was even there.”  She looked at me, bracing me for laughter.  “I hung out in the closet a lot, with the door closed.  Even when I was home alone.  I just liked the dark.  I’d just sit there braiding my hair like a little dumbass,” she giggled at herself.  I cleared my throat, offered a smile as my heart crushed at the thought of little Lake before I knew her, sitting alone in a pile of laundry and oblivious to how she was saving herself.  “I mean I’m sure it wouldn’t have stayed like that if my grandma didn’t eventually take me away, but honestly, all the bad that came from that time was from Trish.  From living with her.  She just wasn’t mother material – she was fifteen when she got pregnant with me.”

I kept my face decidedly frozen.  I didn’t want any look of surprise to discourage Lake from going on.  But I hadn’t known that detail.  I hadn’t known much at all about her family aside from her grandmother, Elena.  I didn’t consider Trish her family at all. I had no idea she was ever curious to.  “What was it like living with her?” I asked.  From what my mother told me, Lake came from a “broken family” but it hardly seemed like she even had a family to break.

“It’s foggy.  I remember being home alone a lot.  I honestly can’t even remember if that house was an actual house or a trailer home.  I don’t even remember what the neighbors’ houses looked like.”  She let out a breath of disbelief as she realized it.  “I didn’t even go to school.  I kind of existed as this little thing that floated around bothering her and reminding her that she probably should’ve gotten an abortion instead of thinking that a baby would make her a better person.”