by Nadia Lee
Dazed, I went back to bed and plopped down. My face fell on the pillow I’d hugged last night. It smelled like Killian. I couldn’t believe how hot I’d been for him, how madly I’d craved his body. But I didn’t regret any of it.
For the first time in my life, I’d experienced the kind of sex I’d only read and written about in romance novels. The kind that lasted literally all night long with a guy whose stamina put me in awe. And the orgasms…
No way I could remember them all. All I knew was that I’d come a lot, and all of them had been good—so, so good.
No wonder Killian had been annoyed when I said ten minutes.
I sighed, shivering with a languid soreness and remembered pleasure, but my head said I needed to snap out of that and think about what was next. After all, I couldn’t stay in bed forever, and Killian and I did have a life outside of the bedroom.
We hadn’t talked much the night before. Maybe we should, over breakfast or lunch if Mir wasn’t around, since it wasn’t the kind of conversation I wanted to have with his sister listening. This didn’t feel like a nice but meaningless one-night stand. If all he wanted was a fuck buddy while he was in town, he could’ve slept with anyone. And he certainly wouldn’t have had to wait until last night.
He had to leave Kingstree in June, but I could offer to go to Dallas with him, see where things went from there. As nice and quiet my home here was, I could write anywhere, so long as I had my laptop. I could even join him when he toured, assuming he was okay with me coming with him while he traveled.
Feeling much better, I looked around for a clock and spotted a box of condoms on the bedside table. I squinted at it. Chocolate-flavored?
I picked it up, then shoved my nose inside the box and sniffed, wondering if the condoms smelled like chocolate too. I’d never thought Killian would be the type to use flavored condoms. He seemed like a plain, standard condom kind of guy. But then, what did I know about rock stars? But if he really wanted a sex partner to enjoy chocolate flavor, wouldn’t it be more effective to buy chocolate syrup instead? Latex didn’t have the right tex—
“Why are you sniffing the condoms?”
I almost dropped the box. “Geez, you scared me.”
Killian walked closer with an expression that was halfway between amusement and confusion. A teasing gleam shone in his bright blue eyes. “Yeah, because you were too busy sniffing rubbers to notice someone coming in.”
My face heated. He didn’t have to make me sound like a perv. “I was trying to see if they smelled like chocolate.”
His nose wrinkled. “Do they?”
“I don’t know.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“I’m not sniffing them again.” I put the box back on the table. “Do they taste like chocolate?”
He laughed. “I have no idea. Not that flexible.”
“What do you mean—” Then it hit me. “Oh for…”
He laughed again. “Dev stuck that box in my bag after our last tour.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a weirdo? But they came in handy last night.” He smiled, then started to move onto the bed, on his knees and hands, his eyes gleaming.
My gaze flicked between his legs. I could tell even with boxers that he was hard as hell. I was growing wet in response.
He stripped and sheathed himself in one of the so-called chocolate-flavored condoms. I watched the whole quick process, anticipation pooling.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to make you eat the rubber,” he joked. “I have a much better idea.”
He kissed me. It was slow and leisurely, a kiss of a man savoring the final bite of a delicious dessert. And I matched it, a liquid heat spreading through me.
He moved his mouth slowly down my body, layering sweet, gentle kisses on my neck, my chest. He licked my nipple, then watched the glistening tip with a wicked satisfaction. “I knew you had great tits the day you came over to tell me to be quiet.”
I looked at him curiously.
“You didn’t have a bra on, and your nipples were pointed right at me. I’ll never forget how hot that was.”
Oops. I had no idea. I’d thought I had everything that needed to be on. My cheeks grew warm as I thought back on the scene and the sight I must’ve made. It was a miracle that Killian remembered I was angry about his drums that day.
But the embarrassment dissipated when he pulled the nipple into his mouth then used his tongue and teeth to make me cry out in bliss. Patient torture seemed to be the theme of the morning as he moved to the other nipple and subjected it to the same exquisite torment. My breathing went ragged as pleasure pulled me deeper into the magic he was creating. He was careful to take me with him into its warm center, and I’d never felt this close to another person before.
He moved his hands under me, cupping my ass then squeezing. He buried himself deep inside, pushing easily into my wet flesh. I let out a soft sigh. He was moving so slowly that I could feel everything—every inch, every little change of the angle, every little twitch of his cock.
A plateau of pleasure shimmered, just out of reach, as he continued to drive into me lazily, like he had all the time and patience in the world, while my heart cantered endlessly, driving toward him, and desire pulsed and grew steadily within me. With supreme focus, he tilted my pelvis, and each thrust sent a jolt through me. But it wasn’t enough to push me over. I needed more speed. And him touching my clit. I’d never been able to come with just vaginal stimulation.
“Killian,” I said, my voice low and needy. “I wouldn’t mind too bad if you want to go faster.”
“Do you want to come?” He somehow sounded taut, amused and affectionate all at once.
“Don’t you?”
“I can wait.”
I debated for a moment. He’d drive me crazy like this all morning if I didn’t tell him exactly what I wanted, but I wasn’t used to giving orders in bed. Mainly because my previous partners had pouted—are you saying I’m not doing it right?—or had some creative interpretation and failed to give me what I wanted. Or it could be that they’d been physically incapable.
But Killian’s dark blue eyes invited me to tell him what I needed, and he moved his body in a tantalizing way, as though trying to tell me he could give me whatever I wanted.
“I want to come,” I said finally, a breath shuddering out of me.
The smile he bestowed on me was blinding. “Your wish…”
He pushed my legs up and over his shoulders, opening me wide for him. He drove inside me, harder and faster. Sharp pleasure shot through me with each thrust, and I moaned. I wanted to tell him to touch my clit, but couldn’t, not when all my throat could produce was moans and sighs and ragged cries. My senses were out of control, and the tension in my belly grew tighter—almost painful.
Then it broke—a scalding-hot climax. I screamed, my fingers digging into his sweat-slick muscles. Fireworks seemed to go off inside me, and I shuddered and clung to him helplessly while he continued to have his way with me, driving me crazy and weak with pleasure.
He grasped my hair and kissed me hard before he gave one final thrust and came inside me. Then he held me tightly in his arms as though I was the most priceless treasure in the world.
Chapter Thirty-One
Emily
By the time we showered and came downstairs, it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch.
“Looks like a day for brunch,” said Killian.
“Where’s Mir?” I asked, resting my hip against the kitchen counter. I was in one of his T-shirts and a pair of his boxer shorts. They were both too large, but with a safety pin, the shorts stayed put around my waist.
“She went to Sunny’s, but it’ll be a while. What are you in the mood for?”
“Coffee. And anything you want to eat is fine…” I trailed off as I spotted a juicer on the counter. I hadn’t seen that while making the scampi. An unpleasant possibility went through my mind. My mom had bought a juicer l
ast year and told me I should too so I could just “drink” my vegetables, since I didn’t like eating them like a good, responsible adult.
“Kale’s so good for you,” she’d claimed, but it seemed to me that kale was a slow-acting poison, one of those silent killers. There was no other explanation for its vile taste, and you’d never know until it was too late.
I cleared my throat. “Well… ‘Anything’ as long as it’s not kale or Brussels sprout juice or something gross like that.”
“Why would I feed you something so terrible?” Killian said.
I indicated the juicer. “Because you have one of these torture machines.”
He laughed. “Ah. I made some carrot and apple juice and forgot to put it away. Want some?”
I pulled back, my body stiff. “No thanks. Like I said, I don’t do veggies before noon.” Actually, I preferred not to do veggies at all.
“Aye, milady.”
He stowed the juicer and pulled out a couple of presliced bagels. As he put them into the toaster, knocks came from the door.
Probably Mir coming back from the market. “I got it,” I said, since he was busy in the kitchen.
When I opened the door, a tall, dark-haired guy with a pretty, sun-kissed face was standing there. He looked really familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him. He wasn’t from Kingstree—I would’ve remembered somebody this good-looking if I’d run into him in town.
There were several women hovering behind him. They had a rainbow of different hair colors: golden, brown, apple red, black, pink and purple. Gorgeously tanned, the six were dressed in skintight dresses with perfect hair and makeup, their feet in hooker heels that made my feet ache just from looking. The six had such huge breasts and tiny waists that they looked like a collection of living, breathing Barbies.
And they all had their phones out and were snapping selfies in different poses.
I stared, unable to process the scene. Kingstree was a nice, normal small town. It didn’t have people like the women in front of me. Otherwise I would’ve heard about them from some gossip-loving resident. Or one of the cashiers at Sunny’s Mart.
Actually, now that I thought about it, the women reminded me of the groupies I’d seen in some of Killian’s photos on the Internet…
The man was looking at me with puzzlement. “Isn’t this Killian’s house?” He turned to the Barbie Sextet. “Babe, can you check the address?”
All of them moved to do his bidding. “Two-five-zero,” the blonde said, snapping a picture of the numbers. She had a slight accent.
“Huh. Should be it,” he said. “And hey, delete that pic. I told you, no personal info on the net.” The blonde pouted but did as he asked.
Okay, time to get to the bottom of this. “Who are you?”
He didn’t look like a weirdo stalker fan—or a reporter—but it wasn’t as if weirdos always looked like weirdos. But given how many pictures his sextet had taken, the whole tableau was creepy. Maybe he looked familiar because I’d seen his mug shot on the news. Now I wished I was carrying the gun Mom had given me for self-protection. I didn’t know if Killian had anything for home defense.
The stranger stared at me like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What did you say?”
“I said, who are you?” I spoke more slowly in case he was dim-witted on top of being hard of hearing.
He put a hand over his chest. A silver skull ring flashed on his middle finger. “You gotta be kidding! You don’t know who I am?”
Definitely dim-witted. “Obviously. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.”
Now he seemed even more confused. “I’m Devlin Marsh.”
Devlin Marsh? The drummer guy from Killian’s band. He looked very different without black eyeliner and wax in his hair.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Emily,” I said.
He frowned. “Emily? There’s an Emily now?”
Weird. Why was he acting like he expected somebody other than me to be here? If Devlin hadn’t been behaving oddly, I might’ve thought Killian was cheating, but right now, I was giving Killian all the benefit of the doubt.
“Has to be the wrong address. Or maybe I’m still drunk. Or…he’s having trouble scoring properly.” Devlin smirked.
Scoring properly?
Before I could respond, he bellowed, “Killian! Come out, you bastard. If I can travel halfway around the world to visit you, you can drag your ass out of your house.”
“Dev?” Killian appeared from the kitchen. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Spain.”
Devlin took Killian’s hand and did the man hug, bumping shoulders and slapping Killian’s back. “I was,” he said, “but since you weren’t going to come out to Spain to hang with the babes, I figured I’d bring the babes to you.”
Wow. I let the information trickle through my mind, trying to come up with multiple acceptable scenarios. But no matter how much processing I did, I couldn’t think of a single case where I was okay with the “babes” Devlin had brought from Spain, especially after what had happened last night and this morning between me and Killian.
Besides, seeing the kind of women Killian had been around in pictures and seeing them in person was very different. The pictures hadn’t felt real. And I could rationalize that they were in his past. After all, it’d be unreasonable for me to expect Killian to have lived like a monk. Fame and fortune gave men access to lots of hot, willing women. And if the man happened to be as young and sexy as Killian, the world was full of consenting vaginas.
“And you know what’s more inspiring and restorative than a threesome? A foursome,” Devlin said with a grin. “You can have all of them except for two, because I hate sleeping alone.”
How generous of him. And why did he need two women? One would be enough to keep him from sleeping alone. Besides, he hadn’t brought the right number of women for one foursome and one threesome. And I needed to stop thinking about his inability to count, because otherwise I was going to hurl.
On the other hand, seeing him covered in puke would be oh-so satisfying. Was it possible to projectile vomit forcefully enough to hit him in the head on an empty stomach?
I so wanted to find out.
From the way Devlin was talking to Killian, I wasn’t even a bed partner worth considering. I wasn’t the right size or shape. And I was much older than the six he’d brought. None of them seemed a day past twenty, if that. And I was in my late twenties. Ancient to this type of man. I knew from years of watching my dad.
My earlier thoughts about going to Dallas withered away. It wasn’t an option if I was going to have perfect late-teen bodies rubbed in my face twenty-four seven.
Killian just stared at Devlin, his eyes slightly narrowed as he processed the scene.
Devlin leaned closer. “Looks like I made the right move, since you aren’t having any luck with that Emma chick.”
He was trying to whisper, but I could hear him anyway. Then I wondered who “that Emma chick” was. Emma was my pen name, of course, but how would Devlin know that? And if he’d heard about me through Killian, wouldn’t he have recognized me when I introduced myself as Emily?
The women squealed and moved toward Killian, sighing and fawning. They paid as much attention to me as one might a piece of grass. It made me feel small, like when Dad’s girlfriends had patted my head and cooed at me because I was too young to realize what he was doing with them was wrong. Then it reminded me of the times when I’d cook a special meal like lobster pasta or fancy beef stir-fries to get Dad to come home and have dinner with me and Mom, and I’d even tell him it was okay to bring “those nice ladies” because I was just that naïve and stupid. I clenched my fists at the sudden pang that pierced my heart. I was letting Killian’s groupies jog the humiliating childhood memories and making me feel the same hurt and shame.
Because I’d looked too far ahead. Shit. I should’ve never considered going to Dallas with him in June when he hadn’t even asked. Thank God Dev
lin and the women’s arrival stopped me from bringing it up and embarrassing myself.
“Killian…” the girls sighed in unison. Must’ve spent hours practicing that.
Raising his hands, Killian pulled away from them. “Whoa, don’t come any closer. I’m not interested.”
The embarrassment stopped welling. Actually…it started to deflate.
“What?” Red tossed her perfectly curled scarlet hair over a shoulder. “But I have plans for us. My followers expect me to post something amazing. I promised and received over a thousand likes in two hours.”
Did she track how many likes she got on that post by the hour? That was sad. Dedicated…but sad.
“Take it up with Dev.” Killian’s tone was hard enough to scratch glass.
His unexpected reaction made me blink. He wasn’t interested in these women. Not even a little. He hadn’t taken a single peek at their breasts or other butts. In fact, from the set of his mouth, I’d say their presence actually irritated him.
Pleasure and relief started to unfurl. Maybe, just maybe, Killian was okay. He wasn’t like my dad—he seemed to have all the qualities I’d give my own romance heroes.
“Hey, don’t drag me into this,” Dev said. “I was trying to help you out of your funk, since you were reading junk like The Very Bossy Engagement and shit.”
I inhaled sharply. Based on how immersed he got in my stories, Killian would never call my books junk, but Devlin’s attitude was typical of people who knew nothing about romance. It grated badly, especially given the fact that he’d brought those women for Killian.
“Shut up, Dev,” Killian said, clearly annoyed.
“What? It’s not like I’m saying something that isn’t true.” Devlin rolled his eyes.
I should’ve puked on him. “Yeah, well, even if you believe that, you probably shouldn’t say it.”
He spared me a glance, a hint of stubbornness fleeting across his face. It was the same look that my dad got when he knew he was wrong but would rather die than admit it. “It isn’t like you wrote it.”