Happily Ever After: A Romance Collection

by Amelia Wilde

  I don’t let go of her. I keep her firmly in my grip, pressing her hips forward, and devouring her for everything I’m worth, lapping up her juices, going back for more.

  I lick until her knees are shaking, until her grasp isn’t steady on the countertop, and then I slide one hand around to her front and find her clit with the pad of my thumb.

  A hint of pressure. Just enough so that she knows I’m there. Ellie writhes under my touch, hips dancing. Jesus, if this is how hot she is in the kitchen, I can’t wait to get her into bed.

  I don’t move my thumb.

  I know she wants me to.

  I don’t do it.

  That’s the game we’re playing.

  She makes a plaintive sound.

  “What was that?”

  “Please,” she whispers.

  “Ellie, I can’t hear you,” I say, flicking my tongue along her folds.

  “Please,” she shouts, and I let her have it.

  I circle her clit with my thumb and press my tongue in deep, my free hand sinking into her ass. She can’t get away. The gush of juices into my mouth tells me she doesn’t want to.

  Ellie comes with a cry, her hand flying up to her lips. She bites down on her own knuckle. Three waves and she’s gasping for breath, twisting away from me, oversensitive and spent.

  Not me.

  I get to my feet and she faces the counter, leaning heavily on it, breathing hard.

  I put my arms around her and she leans back into me. Her head falls back against my chest. I swear, I can feel her smiling.

  There’s one more thing to say to her, whispered into her ear as she recovers. “I win.”

  25

  Ellery

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  He was right. He was so right. I don’t know where Dash got those skills—frankly, I don’t want to know—but I’m hooked. How am I ever going to survive without that in my life?

  I lean against him in the kitchen, trying to put the scattered pieces of my brain back together. One thought pulses through, drowning everything else out: More. I want more of that. I want more of that right now.

  “You won,” I whisper back. I’m not going to admit defeat when it comes to Medium Roast. How could I? After that magic with Dash’s tongue, I feel like I can do anything. “This time.”

  “What does that mean?” he says, his voice a low rumble in his chest.

  I turn in his arms and run my fingertips down over the outlines of his muscles. “I really don’t think we’re finished here.” We’re definitely not finished here. When my hand meets the waistband of his shorts, he growls, bending to press his lips against my neck again. “I mean, look at this.” I pull the shorts away from his body, tugging away the elastic of his boxers, and reach down to take his cock in my hand.

  Whoa.

  He’s as hard as iron and thick. I don’t need to see it with my eyes to know that nothing about Dash is going to be a disappointment. Nothing at all.

  I sink down to my knees in front of him, a slow throb of pleasure building between my legs. He gave me that, and now I’m going to give him even more. He’s never going to feel like he’s working harder than I am. No way.

  His belt comes away easily in my hands, and the shorts fall to the floor the moment I’ve unzipped them. Without that cloth to keep him contained, he springs out through the opening in his boxers.

  I stifle a gasp.

  Dash Huxley has the world’s most perfect cock.

  “You should have told me,” I murmur.

  “You wouldn’t have believed it,” he says with a low laugh.

  I wrap my hands around the shaft and size it up. It should fit in my mouth, but it’s going to be a near thing. I don’t care. All of me is humming with anticipation. I want to make his muscles tense with pleasure. I want to suck him dry. It’s unbelievably filthy how much I want his cock in my mouth, down my throat, but it’s only making me wetter. If this keeps up, we’re going to have to clean the floor.

  I lean forward and swirl my tongue around the head. Dash lets out a low groan, leaning forward over me to brace his hands against the counter. He’s huge. Jesus. What am I going to—

  The pounding on the front door shakes the entire cottage. It’s loud as fuck and aggressive, and I jerk backward, hitting the counter full force. Dash reaches for me and stumbles over his shorts, which throw him off balance. My next move is to scoop my clothes into my arms like a shield. His next move is to overcompensate and he tips backward, arms swinging to catch himself, and catches the frying pan heavy with sauce instead.

  “No!” I yelp.

  It’s too late.

  He pulls the handle toward him and then tries to shove it back onto the stove. Half the sauce goes toward the back of the stove, but he has such a tight grip on the handle that the shorts finally complete their mission of ruining all of this and trip him a second time.

  I fling myself out of the way of the falling pan as the second knock comes, along with a muffled shout. The voice sounds familiar.

  The pan hits the floor with a clang and sauce flies everywhere, coating my clothes along with Dash’s shorts and most of my torso and the top of my head. A wail rises from one of the side rooms—oh, shit, his daughter.

  “What the fuck,” Dash hisses, grabbing for the shorts. He steps over me, his footsteps heavy on the way to the bedroom. A moment later he reappears, his daughter nestled into his arms. She’s wearing a pair of cotton pajamas. Footie pajamas. His arms are flexed to carry her and his jaw is set. “I’ll take care of this,” he says to me while I wipe helplessly at my clothes with my bare hands.

  This is not going to look good if someone comes into the house. But that’s not going to happen. I can tell by the look on Dash’s face.

  I scoot sideways, out of sight of the doorway, just in time.

  “Hello?” he says, and the sheer power, sheer manliness in his voice makes me wet all over again. This is a man. He can handle things. He’s the opposite of Sol in every way. That’s what makes him a formidable business enemy. It’s also what makes me so hot for him, damn it. “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s not right, what you’re doing, young man,” says the other voice. I cover my face with my hands. What the hell is Morris doing here? “We came to tell you that.”

  “At this hour?” says Dash, his rage not disguised even a little. “You woke my daughter. You ruined my dinner.”

  “We don’t want another coffee shop in town. The city council never should have approved your business license,” pipes up another voice. “We wanted to tell you in person that we’ll be protesting your shop at this Thursday’s meeting.”

  “That’s foolish,” spits Dash. “The license is already granted. I’m opening on Friday. Come to my shop. Don’t come to my shop. I don’t care.” His voice is measured, but I can tell he’s on the verge of losing control. “Was there anything else you wanted to say to me?”

  There’s an awkward pause, and then Morris speaks up. “You might not know Ellie very well, but you shouldn’t do this to her, Mr. Huxley.” Wow. They’ve been working. They must have found the public record for the business and found the renters, and— “Her aunt and uncle are some of the best people in town. Don’t do this.”

  Awwwww.

  A fierce defensiveness flares up in my chest for all these idiot people who have just interrupted the sexiest thing I’ve done in years. I won’t close the shop, no matter what. I can’t disappoint them...or Aunt Lisa and Fred.

  I’ll work harder. I’ll figure it out.

  “Take it up with the city,” Dash says, and closes the door.

  A silence reigns.

  There are no more knocks, and a minute later he breezes through the kitchen, going back to the bedroom. I sit in the puddle of sauce. What’s going to happen now? Is our dinner date done with? Is it actually going to become a true sex date now, or has the mood been shattered?

  His footsteps are quiet when he returns. One hand come
s into view. He helps me up, a disbelieving grin on his face.

  “How about a shower?”

  26

  Dash

  The shower turns into a twenty-minute-long affair complete with getting pieces of beef out of Ellie’s hair. She had it pulled back and still it worked its way in there.

  “What a waste of sauce,” she says as she steps out and wraps a towel around her, but she has a little half-smile on her face.

  “What else is on your mind?”

  She flicks her glance down toward the front of me. “You. For starters.” Her smile gets sultrier. “But I bet you’re more concerned with finishing.”

  I laugh out loud. “I don’t know. Shouldn’t we give it a few minutes? Make sure the angry mob doesn’t come back?”

  It was a shocker, opening the door to find a few old men on my doorstep spoiling for a fight. I probably should have done something else—offered to sit down with them, something—but they’d woken Rosie from a sound sleep. That’s what I’m most angry about. Of course it is. The blowjob I’d only begun to get is a distant second.

  “I don’t think they’ll be back,” says Ellie. “They’ve got to be up bright and early tomorrow.”

  “To plan how they’re going to bring down my business?”

  “To be at mine,” she says, needling me. She lets the towel slip down an inch and my breath catches in my throat. “You know...” She looks down at her feet, then back up at me. “We could get in some real trouble.”

  I laugh out loud. “How?”

  “By consorting with each other.”

  “Consorting—” I can’t stop. “Ellie, that is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Why would they care if we’re sleeping together?”

  “We’re not,” she says. “Not yet.”

  She insists on cleaning up the kitchen first, wearing a pair of my boxers and one of my t-shirts. “We can’t leave it,” she says, going past the kitchen to the laundry nook off the entryway. “That’s going from great to terrible.”

  “What?”

  “You and me together?” She puts in detergent, tips the clothes in after it, and lets the top down gently. “That would be great. And then to come out and clean up spilled sauce? Terrible. Terrible. We can’t.”

  I open my mouth to argue, but she has a point. So instead I get the mop.

  Her stomach growls loudly mid-scrub. “You didn’t eat before you came, did you?”

  “No.” She wipes down the front of the cabinets.

  “You have to be starving.”

  “Look, I don’t like to complain,” Ellie laughs. “But yeah, I am.”

  “I have enough to start over.”

  She dismisses me out of hand. “You don’t have to do that. That would be insane. You already spent enough time cooking this, and look what happened.”

  I lean the mop against the countertop and cross the distance between us.

  It’s one step.

  Then I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her in close. “Listen carefully,” I say, and her body relaxes in my arms. “I have enough to start over. It’s not a long process. In half an hour I can have a delicious sauce. The noodles only take half that long.” I let my fingers play over the curve of her hip. “I won’t spill the sauce this time. I promise.”

  “Challenge accepted,” Ellie whispers.

  We both dissolve into laughter.

  I start with the half green pepper and half onion from before, dicing them as fast as I can and getting them to sizzle in the pan. Ellie scrubs the counters, straightening up the already straight stacks of mail I have left to deal with. When she’s exhausted herself, she leans against the counter and watches me.

  “You have good cooking hands,” she says, after a minute.

  I flex and lift the spatula I’m using to break up the rest of the meat in the pan. “What about my arms?”

  “Those are multi-talented.”

  “Oh, and my hands aren’t?”

  “I would never say that.”

  It’s so easy standing here with her. It reminds me of working behind the counter at Medium Roast. We danced around each other then. I never had a moment’s worry that she’d spill hot coffee on me, even though we were in tight quarters.

  It never felt this easy with Serena.

  Then again, I never really knew Serena.

  You don’t really know Ellie, either.

  There is no way I’m going to entertain that thought right now. Not when I’m cooking her my second batch of spaghetti today and she’s standing there in my clothes.

  Say something. I’ve got to say something.

  “Did you grow up in Lakewood?”

  “In a way.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “We lived in the city when I was a kid, but we moved here after I finished middle school.” Ellie scoffs a little. “My mom wanted me to live in a safer environment.”

  There’s something different in her tone. “It isn’t safer here?”

  “Oh, it is,” Ellie says, and she sounds almost wistful. “It’s a hell of a lot safer here than most places. You don’t have to worry about...” she trails off for a moment. “People care about each other here. Not so much in the city.”

  “I didn’t mind it.” I put the spatula down and switch it out for a heavy-duty plastic spoon.

  “I didn’t mind it either. At least not when I was in college.”

  I steal a glance over at Ellie. She’s looking out the window to the dark of the backyard. The moon shines over the lake, its reflection scattered in the ripples on the surface. “What happened?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  Ellie shakes her head slowly. She doesn’t speak until I’m looking into her eyes. “Are you sure you want to go this far?”

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I don’t hesitate for a single moment. “Yes.” I put the spoon down on the spoon rest, freshly cleaned, and turn to face her.

  “You have to promise me something.” She crosses her arms over her chest.

  “I promise.”

  That makes her crack a smile. “You haven’t heard what it is yet.”

  “I still do.”

  Ellie takes a deep breath, gathering her damp hair in both hands. “Promise you won’t think I’m fucking pathetic afterward.”

  27

  Ellery

  I want to tell him.

  I don’t know why.

  I do know why. It’s because whenever I’m in his arms, I feel like nothing could ever happen to me again. I feel like I could pick up a camera and go about my life and it wouldn’t be attracting a disaster.

  Never mind that he is a disaster—for Medium Roast, anyway. But his face is open and kind, and for God’s sake, he’s gone back to stirring the pan of spaghetti sauce right now. All because I said I was hungry.

  I’m fucking starving. For the spaghetti...and for him.

  “I went to school for photography.” I start there because I don’t know where else to start. It’s all so hazy. If I go too far back, it’ll take all night, so I can’t start with the time I picked up my dad’s old film camera from his office and loved the weight of it in my hands. Or the four years I spent in photography club. The award I won for the portrait of Honey. Honey, the wild adventuress who’s off in Europe somewhere at this very moment.

  Dash nods. “You said something about that at the sandwich place.”

  “I didn’t say much.”

  “No.” He frowns at the spaghetti sauce.

  “This is why.” I take another deep breath in. “My last semester at college I got an internship for one of the smaller papers. The pay was for shit, but I thought, I’ll get a few credits, I’ll get some experience. Work my way up.”

  “That’s a good plan,” says Dash.

  “It was a great plan.” I loved working for that little paper. I got a summer at that paper before things fell apart. I don’t want to go back to that day, but i
t’s already happening in my mind. “Then I got this one assignment.”

  My editor had called me into his office, which was a larger version of a regular corporate cube, and told me that he wanted an event covered. It was a local event, but anything with more than one person was a step up from what I’d been doing. I was so fucking excited. I didn’t care that he had coffee breath.

  “What kind of assignment?”

  “A festival they were holding in one of the neighborhoods. It had the dumbest name: Summer Slam Jam Fest. They had all kinds of local bands. They sucked.” Dash laughs. I can still feel the sun on my shoulders. I can still see the frozen daiquiri Sol had in a plastic cup, the ice melting away in the heat while I stood at the corner of the stage and tried to get the perfect shot of every band. I had frame after frame of the people in the crowd. “I was in the zone that day. I had so many good photos. One of them was going to end up on the front page. I knew it.”

  Dash puts the spoon down again and turns the heat down to a simmer. “This doesn’t sound like—”

  “It wasn’t until afterward,” I tell him. I can’t linger in this memory for much longer. It makes my heart beat fast. It makes my palms sweat. I hate it. I hate it. “We were walking back from the festival. The neighborhood was a little rough, but I was taking some last shots. The light…” The light had been incredible, that strange time between afternoon and evening, and everything looked like magic on the screen of my digital camera. “My boyfriend was walking next to me on the sidewalk. I had the camera up to my face to take a photo.” I mimic the motion with my hands. “That’s when the woman came out onto the street.” My breath comes out shallow like there’s not enough air in the room. It is not pleasant. “She was screaming for help.”

  “Jesus,” Dash says under his breath.

  “It all happened fast. Too fast. My body went on autopilot. I took another photo. That’s what we were supposed to do, you know? I wanted to do this as a career. I saw what happened on the viewfinder. Her boyfriend—it must have been her boyfriend, or her husband—ran out behind her.” I swallow the panic rising in my throat. “He shot her in the back.”