“You shouldn’t have let her leave,” Devril snapped, his green eyes coldly furious.
“Dammit, Lucian, she was in no shape to be walking out of here.”
“She was in no condition to fight.” Lucian sighed. “Follow her home. We’ll decide what to do later.”
Devril stalked from the offices and Lucian turned back to face Jesse and Terrie’s concern.
“You and I need to talk,” he told Terrie. “There are obviously a few details about your friend Tally that you neglected to mention in the past few months. I think it would be a good idea if you mentioned them now.”
She had made such a fool of herself. Tally accelerated out of the company parking lot, barely missing an incoming employee as she rounded the curve and headed for the freeway.
She breathed in deeply, fighting the excess emotion straining to be free. She needed to scream or rage or something. It had never been like that. Never before had an orgasm completely eluded her in such a way. They were often not satisfying, barely taking the edge off the hunger that strained inside her, but rarely had she failed to achieve any relief at all, and with such horrifying results. They had known. Her fingers clenched on the steering wheel as fear and humiliation swept over her. They were aware that she had faked the release; that she had been unable to achieve her orgasm despite the fierce, exacting pleasure sweeping through her body.
God, it had felt so good. Their hands, their mouths, Lucian’s lips at her clit, his tongue raking the little gold ring that pierced it. The pleasure had been unlike anything she had known in her life, sweeping through her, sensitizing every nerve and cell in her body until the need for release had consumed her. Yet the harder she had reached for it, the farther away it seemed.
She was burning now. Her skirt was hopelessly stained with her own juices, she knew, and horribly wrinkled. Wrinkles were a sign of sloppiness, both of mind and of appearance; the sisters of the Catholic school she had once attended had lectured that point to her constantly. Her blouse wasn’t even buttoned straight. She clenched her teeth against the overwhelming urge to scream out her mortification.
Years — years of careful control, of watching every move she made, controlling every hidden impulse and presenting an appearance of unshakable calm had been destroyed at the hands of the two men who now knew her most shameful secret.
She needed the pain.
A low growl of fury passed her lips before she throttled it back and once again forcibly controlled her inborn fury. They were dominants, for pity’s sake. Trojans. Part of the much whispered about Club. They liked their sex wild and rough, their women submissive and screaming, not whimpering from the gentleness of their touch. Of all the men she had thought could bring her to mind-blowing orgasm, she had thought Lucian and Devril surely could.
The drive to the upscale apartment complex where she lived was made in record time. She refused to admit she was speeding. She never broke the law. It was a point of pride for her. Just as an unwrinkled skirt, smooth hair and unblemished skin were points of pride. One’s inner person was reflected in the way she carried herself, how she handled hardships. She grimaced at the thought. Why were those old, harshly worded lectures tormenting her now? The good sisters of the St. Augustine’s Academy were a part of her past, or so she had tried to convince herself.
Tally, only whores wear skirts above their knees. You must rise above such hedonistic impulses. Your parents deserve so much more than such a disrespectful child…
What shame you bring to your parents, Tally. Such disgrace…
If your mind must become the Devil’s playground, the least you could do is give an outward appearance of decency. Even the prostitutes that stroll the streets show more decorum…
She shook her head, parking the car and heading quickly for the cool silence of her apartment. She needed a shower. A cold shower. She needed to forget that she was different, that her needs were so depraved that even a Trojan couldn’t fulfill them.
Cool silence greeted her as she entered her apartment. It was dim, perfectly neat and spotless, and so cold. Tally stared at the desert tones of the living room. Despite the warm colors, the room was cold, sterile and unwelcoming, just like her life.
Her fists clenched as she fought back the need to move something, anything. To scatter the potpourri filling the jade vase across the floor. To shatter the crystal against the wall. She wanted to destroy the very essence of what her life had become. Sterile.
Unlived and unloved.
“Stop it.” She breathed in roughly, pushing herself away from the door and striding quickly through the room. The dining room was no different. The heavy oak table had never known a spot of food spilled on it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had used the stove in the kitchen.
The dark hardwood floor didn’t have so much as a stain on it and her carpets, even after five years, appeared in flawless condition. Her bedroom… She stepped into the room and stared around it silently. There was no life here. No memories. Not even sullied ones. She had never brought a lover to her home, had never fouled her bedroom with the unnatural desires that twisted through her mind.
She had never realized how perfectly the good sisters had conditioned her. She had never known how empty her life had become until now. Until she had been forced to walk — no she hadn’t walked, she had run — from something she hadn’t realized she needed. Lucian and Devril.
She walked over to the bed, her hand smoothing stiffly over the white bedspread, fighting to ignore the compulsion to clench her fingers into the fabric and rip it to the floor.
Enough. She straightened her shoulders and turned, forcing herself to walk sedately into the bathroom. She undressed, stuffed the skirt and blouse into the wastebasket before dropping the demi-bra in after it.
She twisted on the cold water to the shower, watching the pounding spray run into the glass cubicle before stepping beneath it. Her breath caught as ice seemed to envelop her skin, pouring through her hair, over her face, stealing her breath. Washing away the proof of the hot tears that finally fell.
Chapter Eleven
Self-control, that much sought after, often sadly lamented virtue, should not have the destructive, unforgiving undertones that Dev had glimpsed in Tally’s wounded brown eyes. It shouldn’t cause a passionate, vibrant woman to deny the very heart of her sexuality, nor leave her sobbing beneath the force of a shower whose chill could be felt outside the glass cubicle she stood within. But that was exactly what it had done.
Dev and Lucian had known for quite some time that Tally Raines was unique, a challenge unlike any woman they had known in their lives. The fact that they had slowly, over the past year, fallen in love with her, wasn’t the point. They had seen in her a strength of will that often mirrored their own, and a loneliness that echoed in their chests.
He and Lucian had, despite all appearances, lived a quiet, often lonely life. The bond they shared was more intense than most other twins, stemming, he thought, from the fact that they were fraternal rather than identical twins. The first years of their lives they had been largely separated by their divorced parents, seeing each other only occasionally and even then the visits had been brief. Only with the death of their mother after their tenth birthday had they finally been given the chance to know one another. From that moment on they had been inseparable.
Dev was the quiet one. The one everyone rarely paid much heed to. He preferred to watch the foibles of men and quietly learn from other’s mistakes. Lucian was the more social brother. He thrived amid the high paced, often stressful career he had chosen and gloried in the challenges they presented. Dev was more content to work behind the scenes, to coordinate and see the projects through rather than forging into the fray and doing battle with competitors who would have taken the more lucrative contracts.