Seal All Exits (Tangled Web #3) Read online

  Before he could give it any more thought, she pulled him the rest of the way inside the room and slammed him up against the wall, her hand splayed on his chest, as her mouth collided with his in spectacular reunion.

  There was no thought in his head as his body shifted to pure instinct. His hands grabbed her around the waist and pulled her close and his tongue danced with hers. His heartbeat stopped pounding in his ears and began thudding in his chest…and it was no time for his jeans to grow tight. That discomfort in his nether regions forced him to process what was happening, and so he brought his hands to Heather’s face and gently pulled back. “Hey. Maybe we should slow down.”

  “What?” Her face reflected a look of disbelief.

  He sucked in a deep breath and scanned her eyes. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t have to jump in with both barrels blazing, do we?” He saw a twinkle in her eyes and so he added, “So to speak.” Most times, he forgot Heather had not one but two college degrees and was probably the smartest person he knew. When he remembered, it intimidated the hell out of him.

  “Did you not hear a word I said? I distinctly remember telling you that I wanted us to get this shit out of our systems.”

  He shook his head, hoping his disappointment didn’t show. “Yeah, I know, and I’m cool with that, but…does that mean we can’t talk a little first?”

  Heather blinked, not once, not twice, but several times in rapid succession, as though the very act helped her to understand Kiefer’s words. She looked disappointed. He didn’t want to say it, but Heather was beginning to feel like someone with multiple personality disorder. Online, she was one person—sweet, caring, inquisitive—the same person he’d met at the Shock Treatment concert in Denver three years ago. Now, though, the woman was aggressive and demanding. Granted, she was also hotter than hell, something he knew she hadn’t been at the concert. Cute, yes, but…

  It really was like she was two different people…and maybe he needed to address that issue. He didn’t think he could go on without talking about it, whether she liked it or not. In spite of the disappointed look in her eye, she let Kiefer take her hands and lead her to the bed where they sat down. He felt a little relief that she wasn’t attacking him. Yeah, that shit was a turn on, but he wanted to talk first. He wasn’t sure where to start, so he just began talking and hoped what he needed to say would find its way out. “You might not know it, Heather, but you really have become my best friend.”

  She was quiet for a moment before nodding. “Aside from Katie, you’re my best friend.”

  He looked down at his hands that still had Heather’s tinier ones inside. He inhaled sharply, trying to find the words he needed to say. “Sex? It’s awesome, but I have groupies throwing themselves at me all the time. I’ve had more sex over the last four years than I’ve had in my entire life. And not just any sex. We’re talkin’ anything you can imagine. The kind of women who throw themselves at me are hell bent on one thing—they want to be the one I remember out of the vast ocean of pussy.” He closed his eyes for a second, shaking his head. “Sorry.”

  He met her eyes. A tiny smile formed on her lips. “It’s okay.”

  “And I know you only know about me the things I’ve told you, so it might not seem realistic to you when I tell you how much you mean to me, but it doesn’t matter. You do. And, much as I want to take you up on your offer—and I will, by the way—I’m not ready yet. I just want a little time to enjoy you as my friend first.”

  His appeal worked. He saw her eyes soften before she nodded her assent. Her eyes dropped to his hands and then she said, “So…what do we do?”

  He hadn’t premeditated any of it but it seemed like the perfect answer. “How about we lie down here on the bed and I hold you and I just talk for a while? Maybe tell you some of the shit I’ve never said in an email?” Not only had emails been woefully inadequate, he wasn’t much of a typist, and he’d grow tired after a while. Their emails had mostly consisted of plans for the future (both of them) and funny stories about their days…or shitty stories of things they needed to vent about. Heather might not have realized it, but she’d not only been his sounding board but his pressure valve as well. He’d likely have ripped Sage a new one a long time ago had Heather not been there to listen to him and give him sound advice.

  He was relieved when she nodded and he lay back on the bed, his back supported by the headboard. He held out his arms and felt his heart swell when Heather lay her head on his chest, resting her right hand next to her head. He could handle the heart swell right now and was grateful that his cock had since chilled out. Her voice was quiet when she said, “So what’s all this stuff you couldn’t say in an email?”

  His smile was small. “I never said I couldn’t. I just said I didn’t.” He took several deep, slow breaths, contemplating how to explain his thoughts. “Would you really have wanted to read long, depressing emails from me all the time?”

  He could hear the smile in her voice even though her face was turned away from his. “Don’t friends do that?”

  “Yeah, but I was afraid of scaring you off.”

  She was quiet for a few seconds, and he could feel her finger swirling a pattern on top of his t-shirt. “I don’t think you could scare me off.”

  Kiefer chuckled. Man, if she knew how messed up he was inside. He’d go ahead and tell her some, but no way was he going to hit her with both barrels. “Let’s just say I had a shitty childhood and this might sound cheesy and stupid, but Johnny took me away from all of it.”

  “Tell me that story—how that happened.”

  “Well…I was kind of a bum. I worked little jobs here and there, just enough so I could afford more weed, but I had no real direction, and I didn’t care to. I didn’t have any real friends. I had some friends I called the ganja guys. They were around when I had shit and gone when I didn’t.”

  “Fair weather friends?”

  “Yeah. Something like that. They didn’t care about me; they cared about if I had any pot or not. And that was okay at first, because it was just nice having people around, people to talk to and hang with, and I was stoned most of the time, so I was pretty mellow about it. As long as I stayed high…it didn’t bother me. But when I’d sober up, I’d realize what a bunch of losers I was hanging with. So I decided to stay high all the time. I made that my goal. Until one day it just didn’t feel right anymore. I felt like my brain was somewhere else, like I was empty inside, you know? If you don’t think that was stupid enough, I started drinking to escape that feeling, and it was night three in my new alcohol strategy when I met a guy who went by the name of J. C. Gibson, and he started chatting with me.”

  Heather sounded like she was growing sleepy, but she said, “Yeah?”

  “Mmm-hmm. This little bar just off the beach. It had been a hot fuckin’ day, but the breeze off the ocean was nice and smelled fresh, and I was downing some stupid fruity drink. I wasn’t completely blitzed yet, but I was feeling pretty light, and this guy sits next to me. Looks really sad. Looks like he feels worse than I do, so I say something to that effect. He kinda laughed, but it was one of those polite laughs, you know, where you can tell he didn’t really think it was funny. So I said, ‘What happened to you was so bad you’re drinking that shit?’ I had no idea what he was drinking. I could only tell he was drinking it straight, and the bartender kept pouring new shots. So he laughs again and tells me he’s had the most incredible week in his life but also the shittiest. I couldn’t afford it, but I offered to buy him a drink anyway. Then he really laughed and said he’d buy me as many drinks as I could handle if I really wanted to listen. So I did. You probably know the story. He was putting together Shock Treatment, but he and Katie had kind of hooked up but that whole thing went down the shitter fast…so he was drowning out his sorrows. And he might have been putting together a band, but he had a drummer and bassist but no singer. Well, don’t tell the drunk guy that, ‘cause he’ll make an ass out of himself. So I sang shit all night long and
we laughed our asses off. They kicked us out of the bar at closing time and we took a cab to Johnny’s place and kept drinking till we passed out in his living room. I woke up with a hell of a hangover. Johnny hardly seemed fazed. But after we had some coffee, he asked me to sing again. I said, ‘No way in hell.’ He asked me again then, because—he said—he’d heard something the night before that he thought he could work with. He said there was a kind of earnestness in my voice that couldn’t be taught or begged out of vocalists, and he’d be honored to hear me one more time. So I had another sip of my coffee and sang ‘Man in the Box’ and Johnny offered me the job on the spot.

  “The guy who was our original drummer flaked out. Not sure what happened there, so when we had our first rehearsal, Mickey brought his friend Sage, and we’ve been a band ever since. So these guys…they’ve been like brothers to me. Friends, sure. Best friends? Nah. I don’t tell them stuff that really matters to me deep inside.” Kiefer got quiet for a few seconds. He hoped Heather understood what he was saying and wouldn’t minimize it, but at the same time he didn’t want to seem like a whiny bitch. He’d do fine without close friends—after all, he had for most of his life—but he wanted more, and that was the difference. He didn’t want to come across as weak, because he knew he wasn’t. He’d survived a lot. He just wanted more now. “So, when we connected, I found myself for probably the first time opening up.” Heather shifted so she could turn her head and look him in the eyes. He didn’t know that he was ready for that but damned if he could stop it. He hoped the full spectrum of his emotions for this woman wasn’t showing in his eyes, because somehow he knew she didn’t feel the same way. Somewhere along the journey he’d fallen for her and fallen hard. Being a close friend was perfect, because she had a beautiful soul. He knew it was a scarred soul, just because of things she’d said even though she’d never elaborate, but he loved her nonetheless. And then their recent physical connection sealed the deal. There was no getting out.

  Her blue eyes were warm but guarded and Kiefer wished he could translate what they were trying to communicate, but in the short time they’d spent at Johnny’s, Kiefer had learned something about Heather—she was closed off, as though she’d sealed all the exits from her heart, and she was never going to let a single emotion out. It felt as though they were conducting a business transaction, but he knew better about her. Online, she was a different person, and somehow he had to find a way to make both of those parts connect.

  He resisted the urge to slide down against her body and kiss her, because he didn’t think that was what she wanted. Yeah, sure, she wanted to fuck. But she didn’t want to connect, and he needed to accept that before moving forward. That and he kept hoping he’d break through somehow. He swallowed and said, “I’m sure that doesn’t make any sense to you, but I’ve probably told you more about myself, inside and out, than I’ve ever told anyone else.” He could see the understanding wash over her eyes and he wasn’t sure what that meant. He knew, though, that he was in a precarious position, because if she didn’t really feel the same way, he was all kinds of vulnerable. So he forced a grin on his face and said, “Even more than I ever told my dealer.”

  Heather’s smile in return seemed equally forced, so he didn’t feel his muscles relax until her smile faded and she rested her head back on his chest. Maybe he simply needed to enjoy the moment, take it for what it was, whatever that turned out to be, and just move on when the time came.

  It was a skill he was quite adept at and maybe it was time to practice it once more.

  Chapter Nine

  HEATHER FELT A little too warm and she had a kink in her neck. As she stirred, she realized she had fallen asleep on Kiefer’s chest, and easing into wakefulness, she realized she could hear his voice. “You awake?”

  She stifled a yawn and said, “I am now.”

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  “Now?” She needed to move, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to sit up yet. “What time is it?”

  “It’s barely eleven. Not even bedtime.”

  “Ha.” She rolled off Kiefer and forced her body into an upright position. She wasn’t going to admit it, but that had been very nice. She’d asked for one thing—hot sex—and received something quite different. She’d always known Kiefer was a sweetheart and a softie down to the core, and his actions shouldn’t have surprised her.

  They did, though. Heather wasn’t used to people—okay, men—acting nice or acting like they cared. She expected most men to act like her fucking father, and—until tonight—they had all lived up to those expectations.

  What was it about Kiefer? What made him different…and why did he care?

  She didn’t know, but she was beginning to think she’d have to find a way past all of it—past who she had been up to this point, past all the walls she’d had up since adolescence, past her doubt and fear…and just go with it.

  But part of her was worried that maybe it wasn’t real, that maybe she was just a plaything for him while they were there.

  That couldn’t be, though. She knew Kiefer, right? The real Kiefer?

  For now, half asleep, she was going to trust him. She was going to follow him wherever he wanted to take her. “A walk? Where do you want to go?”

  She felt her breathing grow shallow as she met his smoldering green eyes. They twinkled at her as he answered. “Wherever our feet will take us.”

  She couldn’t help the grin that she could feel pulling at her lips, and she stood, stretching her arms and breathing in deeply through her nostrils. “Okay.”

  He got up off the bed and stood beside her, and then he followed her to the door. She cracked it open and looked in the hall before opening it all the way. Her voice was low when she said, “Coast is clear.”

  He nodded and walked out the door. She reached back in the room to flip off the light switch, and then she followed Kiefer’s lead as he began walking down the hall away from the main areas of the house. Heather wasn’t going to say it aloud, but she was relieved that they weren’t heading toward the kitchen or great room. Those rooms were more likely to have people in them, and she didn’t want to have to explain why they were hanging out together so late at night.

  The house was drowning in shadows now that there was no sun shining in all the windows, and it would have been creepy if Kiefer hadn’t been with her. Instead, it was eerie in its stillness. Had the house not been so damn big, Heather wouldn’t have felt that way, because she knew she would have been able to hear all the people in the rest of the building, but they might as well have been in a barn down the road.

  “Did you ever play the first Resident Evil game?”

  “The super-old one? The one for the first PlayStation?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Once or twice. One of my cousins had it when I was a kid.”

  Heather tried not to seem bitter when she spoke. “I had a PlayStation and a ton of games. My dad bought me stuff he thought I wanted so I’d leave him alone.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. That’s not why I brought it up, though. Sorry. Anyway, Resident Evil…the first game. You know how damn creepy that game felt? Kind of scary. It made me jump all through the whole thing.”

  Kiefer shrugged, and Heather noticed his hands were shoved in his pockets. “Yeah, I can see how it could do that.”

  “This house, right now, is giving me the same creepy feeling.”

  Kiefer tilted his head toward her but didn’t stop walking. “Shit. Sorry.” They kept making their way down the hall for a few feet until he said, “Do you want to go back?”

  Heather giggled, hoping she didn’t sound as stupid as she thought she did. “Nah.”

  He removed his left hand from his jeans and draped his arm around her shoulders. “Does that help?”

  Actually, it did, and because she didn’t think anyone would be near the back wing of the house this late at night, she wasn’t worried about anyone catching them getting cozy with each other.

  So
she nodded and let her head rest in the crook of his arm as they continued down the hall. They were in no hurry, going nowhere, so she decided to simply enjoy his presence. Her mind wandered back over the day’s events and she said, “You know, Johnny and Katie’s announcement didn’t come as any surprise, but it still freaked me out. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think it was because, even though I knew they loved each other, I never once heard them talk marriage.”

  Kiefer shook his head. “They never did around me either if that makes you feel any better.”

  “It’s cool, though. Katie deserves happiness. Johnny too.”

  She felt Kiefer nod his head while they continued walking. What Heather was finding most comforting was that she felt no need to talk. They were relaxed either way. She hadn’t felt like that around someone in a long time, and that just confirmed how close she was to him. It was hard, but she was beginning to be able to reconcile that Kiefer, this hot guy here, was also her best friend, the sweet guy she chatted with online.

  They arrived at the big door that belonged to the swimming pool, and Kiefer opened it. Heather was beginning to think maybe Kiefer hadn’t had the big tour and was exploring. Well, he’d figure out what was inside as soon as the humidity and smell of chlorine hit him. But, even though the lights were off, Heather noticed that there were low lights in the pool, following the entire perimeter, and they were bright enough that she could make out the lines on the bottom under the water. She looked up as well, because she hadn’t noticed the skylights before when Katie had given her the tour. The pool somehow seemed bigger tonight than it had earlier in the day. It still seemed a little creepy too, but Heather imagined switching on the lights would help with it.

  Kiefer said, “Let’s get in.”

  Heather grinned. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”

  “So?”

  She shook her head, still smiling, and started looking around for a light switch. It had to be around there somewhere. When she turned back around to look elsewhere, she saw that Kiefer already had his shirt off and was pulling off his shoes. “You’re serious.”