What I Did for Love (Wynette, Texas #5)(18)

He slid his hands down the back of her thighs to her hips and angled them upward. More of her weight shifted onto her elbows. Her neck ached from the awkward position. She smelled latex from the rubber, she smelled him—the beer, the tobacco, a hint of another woman’s perfume. His fingers dug into her bottom as he worked himself inside her. It hurt, and she winced. The boat lurched, pushing him deeper. Her head bumped against the wall as he began to thrust. She tilted her neck, but it didn’t help. He ground into her. Again and again. She looked up at the perfectly symmetrical bones in his pale face, the diamond shadows cutting across his cheeks. Finally, he began to shudder.

Her elbows gave way, and she fell back. Moments later, he pulled out and dropped her legs to the carpet. They were so stiff she had a hard time drawing them together. He went into the tiny attached bathroom. She pushed her dress down and told herself this could still turn out all right. Now he’d have to see her in a new light. They’d talk. Spend time together.

She bit her lip and managed to stand up on her shaky legs. He came back out and lit a cigarette. “Later,” he said. And the door closed behind him.

As the lock clicked, all her fantasies about him shattered, and she finally saw him for exactly who he was, a crude, self-centered, egotistical ass. She saw herself, too—needy and stupid. Shame took her to her knees, and self-hatred smoldered in her chest. She didn’t know anything about people, about life. All she knew was how to make stupid faces into the camera.

She wanted vengeance. She wanted to stab him. To torture him and kill him and hurt him as he’d hurt her. How could she ever have imagined herself in love?

The following season was agonizing. Unless they were filming, she pretended he was invisible. Ironically, her awful tension led to a powerful on-screen chemistry, and their ratings grew. She surrounded herself with her friends in the cast and crew or studied in her trailer—anything to avoid him and whichever of his foulmouthed cronies was hanging around the set on a particular day. Her hatred froze into a mass large and solid enough to protect her.

One season followed another, and by their sixth year on the air, Bram’s antics had begun to chip away at the ratings. Drunken parties, reckless driving, rumors of drug abuse. The fans of good-guy Skip Scofield weren’t happy, but he ignored the warnings from the show’s producers. When the sex tape surfaced at the end of season eight, it all came crashing down.

As sex tapes went, it was fairly tame, but not tame enough to obscure what was happening. The press went wild, and no amount of spin control could repair the damage. The network brass decided they’d had enough of Bram Shepard’s antics. Skip and Scooter was canceled.

“Damn it!”

She jumped as Bram appeared. It took her a moment to reconcile the oversexed youthful jerk she remembered with the healthy, full-grown jerk walking toward her. He wore a matching hotel robe, and his hair was wet from his shower. More than anything, she wanted to avenge her eighteen-year-old self.

He looked uncharacteristically grim as he gave the robe’s sash an extra tug. The clock registered two, which meant this miserable day was already half over. “Did you happen to spot any condoms in the trash?”

Hot coffee splashed her hand, and her heart stopped. She rushed into the bedroom and began searching the trash basket, but she only found her panties. She dashed back out into the living room. He pointed his coffee cup at her head. “You better tell me you’ve been tested since the last time you slept with your scumbag ex-husband.”

“Me?” She wanted to throw another shoe, but she couldn’t find one. “You’ll nail anything that walks. Hookers. Strippers. Pool boys!” Eighteen-year-old virgins with misplaced fantasies.

“I’ve never nailed a pool boy in my life.”

Bram was notoriously heterosexual, but considering his hedonistic nature, she figured that was merely an oversight.

He went on the counteroffensive. “I keep my engine in top working order, and I happen to be clean as a whistle. But then, I never slept with Lance the Loser and whatever candy-ass boys you replaced him with.”

She couldn’t believe this. “I’m the tramp? You haven’t seen single digits since you were fourteen.”

“And I’ll bet anything, you’re still in them. Thirty-one years old. Have you been to a shrink?”

Thanks to her father’s overprotection, she’d only slept with four men, but since Bram had been her first so-called lover, and, apparently her last, the overall total hadn’t changed. “Ten lovers, so you can keep the tramp trophy. And I’m also ‘clean as a whistle.’ Now get out of here. This whole thing never happened.”

But he’d been distracted by the food cart. “They forgot the Bloody Marys. Shit.” He began taking the covers off the serving dishes. “You were an animal last night. Your claws in my back, your moans in my ear…” As he sat, his robe fell open over a muscular thigh. “The things you begged me to do to you.” He speared a chunk of mango. “Even I was embarrassed.”

“You don’t remember any of it.”

“Not much.”

She wanted to beg him to tell her exactly what he did remember. For all she knew, he could have attacked her, but somehow that didn’t seem as horrible as the notion that she’d willingly given herself to him. She felt woozy and sank down at the table.

“You called me your wild stallion,” he said. “I’m sure I remember that.”