Seared (Cooking up a Celebrity Book 2)

by Hadley Harlin

  I couldn’t think of anything else in this moment. The country we were in: Germany? Switzerland? Fucking Timbuktu? Not when Liam was here, ripping off my shirt and roughly kissing my neck.

  “This is crazy,” I whispered.

  Liam grabbed me around the waist and placed me on his lap. He ran his hands up and down my back. There was nothing better than the feeling of his hard cock between my thighs.

  I wanted to take all of him, but I’d have to settle for taking him in my mouth.

  “Show me,” I whispered. “Show me how to give an amazing blow job.”

  Liam knelt me down. “We’ll go slowly,” he promised.

  He took my hand in his and brought it to his base. He moved it steadily up and down. I was fucking masturbating Liam Long with his own fucking hand. Was this real life? After I got the rhythm he liked, he pushed my head down to his tip.

  I eagerly put him in my mouth, but after only a few inches, my gag reflex kicked in. It took a mountain of strength to ignore it. He was so masculine, so real, and it was more the fear of him than any gag reflex, I realized.

  “Use your tongue,” he grunted, fisting my hair.

  I tentatively licked around the cock, feeling his head against my inner cheek and down my throat.

  “Clara. Mmm, Clara.”

  His cock jerked in my mouth and I sucked harder, letting Liam help pump at his base when I forgot, all of my attention on making my tongue move in new swirls.

  “Clara.” He tried to pull out of my mouth, and I knew he was close. I pushed him off, pumping and swirling, licking and sucking to make him lose it.

  Then, he shuddered, his salty cum coating every corner of my mouth. I swallowed it down, digesting these new sensations until I sucked him dry.

  Suddenly, his fingers moved down my chest, finding that deep place inside of me. Liam knew it well already. This was so hot. So unbearably hot.

  His fingers worked magic, moving in and out, making even speech an impossibility. He teased me, seeming to sense when I couldn’t stand the infinite pain of pleasure and then releasing me from my exquisite prison. How, I had no idea.

  OhmysweetbabyjesusmotherchristLIAM!

  At least Liam knew what to do. Sweeping me up, he softly put me on the bed and laid next to me. He seemed to take great pride in this most intimate, tender act, and as I lay there wrapped in Liam’s arms, coming down from our heights, I knew I’d never felt so at peace or so happy.

  But the dark part of my personality, the overthinking, overanalyzing, terrified part that lived in all of us, wouldn’t let me enjoy the moment. It kept telling me I needed to focus. Italy was next, and I planned on winning. That part kept telling me I couldn’t have both. No one could.

  But I was sure as hell going to try.

  Liam kissed my collarbone, sighing deeply as we drifted off to sleep, curled into one another like two interlocking puzzle pieces, completed but not whole.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Liam

  The Swiss Alps

  I woke up in Clara’s warm bed. She slept silently with one arm over her head, which caused her covers to slip down to her belly button.

  I didn’t want to disturb her, but she looked so damn adorable. Her perky breasts were begging to be touched, but I resisted. My routine kept me sane.

  Three hundred and forty-eight days.

  Push-ups, squats, crunches. Push-ups, squats, crunches. Nothing overly sophisticated, but it didn’t need to be. Not when done well. Much like food, simplicity was key. I kept my eyes averted from her half-bared body. Push-ups, squats, crunches. Push-ups, squats, crunches.

  Finally, I couldn’t resist any longer. I shadowed little kisses along her skin, letting her warmth seep into my lips. She smelled like citrus and spice, and I took as much time inhaling her sweetness as I did kissing her.

  Clara woke slowly, then all at once. She arched her back at my touch and gasped, her eyes blinking open.

  “Mmm, good morning,” she breathed.

  “Good morning, sweetheart,” I replied, only coming up for that. My tongue moved down from her pert nipples to her mound of dark, curly hair. I parted her lips with my fingers, licking and smelling her scent.

  After I licked her to orgasm, we collapsed back into bed for another nap. I could have worshipped her like this over and over, but as I drifted off again, I knew a reckoning was coming. Pretty soon, we’d both have to decide what mattered more, winning this competition or indulging, night after night. They could not co-exist. I had no idea if she realized how delusional we insisted on being.

  I’d like to say it got better over the next twenty-four hours, that I finally buckled down and studied up on Italian cooking while we waited for the storm to pass. I had never made pasta from scratch before or lovingly nursed a Sunday sauce for hours. But my little virgin was insatiable, so instead, I focused all that time on studying my Italian girl and lavishing all my attention on her needs.

  Over the course of those two days, stranded in the Swiss Alps, I couldn’t even count the orgasms that had shredded her tiny body. But she always surfaced, begging for more. Not once did we emerge from her room, not even to eat.

  And still, we didn’t fuck. Clara made it very clear she was ready, but I knew better.

  I fucking knew better.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Liam

  San Gimignano, Italy

  I staggered to the bus and blearily made my way to the back before trying passing out. Yet, despite my fatigue, I couldn’t manage to sleep on the bumpy ride down the mountains into Italy.

  Clara, on the other hand, slept like a rock, meaning the moment we arrived at our spectacular Italian villa overlooking the vineyards and olive groves of Tuscany, she came to my room, stripped down, and jumped into bed with all the enthusiasm of youth.

  “You’re killing me, woman,” I complained, although I could already imagine burying my cock into her sweet tightness. “I’m not that young anymore.”

  She grinned, bouncing up and down on my bed. “So I’ve graduated from sweetheart to woman. I like it.” She spread her legs and beckoned me closer with a crook of her finger. “Aren’t you only like thirty?”

  “That’s still ten years older than you. And I’ve put my body through a bit more than you have.” I immediately cursed at my slip-up, not wanting to reveal more about my past. It was hard, though, since I also had the urge to tell her everything, always.

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Never mind,” I told her. “Do I use one egg yolk or two per cup of flour for fresh pasta?”

  She yanked the covers out of my hands and put her hands on her hips. “Oh no. You’re not getting out of talking to me that easily. Tell me a story about your life. I want to know everything.”

  “Nothing to know.”

  “Everyone has stories. Even if they’re about coloring on the wall and blaming monsters.”

  I shook my head. I was not going there with Clara. I was not letting my shitty childhood color her view of me. Truth be told, in less than two weeks, she’d completely flipped my life upside down. Over and over, I caught myself picturing her biting her lip in concentration as she executed perfect macarons. Or admiring her stubborn spirit as she forced everyone to hang out together.

  She didn’t need to know that my mother’s shitty genes were most likely going to cause me to walk away sooner rather than later. Or that her addictive genes, blooming into a full-blown case of alcoholism, had already taken root, and that I was one bad day away from slipping into a bar and waking up in a stranger’s bed surrounded by the wreckage of my terrible decisions.

  Part of me wondered if the total and complete infatuation was due to our artificial and intense situation. Thanks to the competition, we were in each other’s space twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Even on our days off from filming, we didn’t live a normal life. We explored quaint German towns or the Italian countryside. What would happen if we tried to take this home to New York City? The flash of hote
l keys and the romance of Europe would fade when it came time to take out the trash or walk six blocks to a coin-operated laundry mat, lugging trash bags of clothes along the icy streets.

  What if the magic of this unique situation, traveling the world for free, couldn’t be recaptured in our daily lives? Neither of us even had jobs. The financial strain would tear us apart. Worse, what if one of us got a better, more ambitious job than the other? No matter what, our chosen careers were always going to put stress on our relationship.

  I don’t think Clara even considered that. She lived in the moment, fiercely enjoying every second. God, she was so innocent and pure.

  Well, not so innocent. She wanted dirty things. She wanted to fuck. And just seeing her cheeks flush or the slight dilation of her eyes turned my cock into steel.

  Clara crawled across the bed to where I was standing. Despite being turned on, she was still shy. It was one more thing I was learning about her. The fake coyness wasn’t an act.

  She resolutely kept her eyes on my zipper as she slowly undid the button and wiggled them down. I was already hard, because, well, look at her. She was so petite and alluring, a fresh scent somehow always swirling around her.

  I let her pull my shirt over my head and gently rolled down my jeans. When I tried to return the favor, she shook her head, winking at me, and pulled off her shirt. She inched out of her panties. The moment I caught sight of her lips wet and swollen, wanting me, I wrapped her in my arms and kissed her as I pushed her to the bed. My cock twitched at the feeling of her soft belly, but she needed that softness. It made her more confident.

  “I want you to fuck me. Now,” she said.

  “Not today, sweetheart,” I promised, but it was getting harder to keep those promises. Honestly, I didn’t even want to anymore.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Clara

  San Gimigano, Italy

  Italy! I was finally here. Dad probably would have sunk to his knees, tears in his eyes, and kissed the motherland. I did an interview about what it was like to be in Italy for the first time as a first generation American and finished with a few shots for post-production.

  Nothing could encapsulate it, and I mostly mouthed words like, “thankful” and “blessed” and the real winner: “my dad would be so proud.”

  Of course, he would, but the true reasons for his pride weren’t for international reality television consumption.

  After hearing about the place where my father had grown up every day for my entire life, I knew it by heart. Santa Lucia. His family had lived in this little village in Tuscany for centuries, and I needed to see it.

  We had a day before filming started, so the plan was to sneak away from production and soak it in. Emma would have gone with me in a heartbeat, but I asked Liam. I knew why I was doing it, and I knew the dangers in doing it, but I asked Liam anyway.

  He knew why I was doing it, and he knew the dangers, too. But he came anyway. I wasn’t sure what that said about us. Suckers, the both of us.

  Liam met me downstairs, looking good in his scruff and blue jeans. He handed me a bottle of sparkling water, and we sped off toward the village. Once there, I insisted we rent mopeds. I ran my fingers along the chrome and plastic, wishing it were the real deal.

  “I want a motorcycle,” I said, revving up the moped. “With illegally high handlebars, a twin looping exhaust candace, and super classic lines. Except I want it in this deep orange color called scorched orange. It will go well with my skin tone.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Just kidding about my skin tone, but yes to the other stuff. I’ve got this dream to do high-end small bites, but in a food truck. I’d travel to whatever city my heart was feeling that week. My partner—Emma, if I can talk her into it—would drive the truck, and I’d lead on my bike. Wind in my hair.”

  “Bugs in your teeth. Yeah, I see the appeal.”

  I frowned, my eyebrows creasing. “I figured you’d be into that. Motorcycles, I mean.”

  “Because of the prison tatts?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Liam laughed. “I’m really a kitten beneath all of these muscles and knives.”

  “I’m beginning to understand that. And, oddly enough, I don’t hate it.”

  I spun around as church bells clanged in the warm, Italian breeze. “Wow. I can’t believe I’m in Santa Lucia! The Motherland!” I knelt and kissed the ground for my father. Production wished they had that shot, but I was too stingy to give it to them and cheapen the real moment.

  I pointed. “That could be my great-great-great-great-grandpa’s other brother!”

  “Who?” Liam squinted.

  “That one, with the wrinkly little nose and dark hat.”

  “I hope not. Those are some intense nose hairs mingling with that mustache. So now I know what you’re going to look like when you’re old.”

  I shoved him. “Rude.”

  “Accurate.”

  I drank in the sun-kissed terracotta buildings and pink and purple flowers pouring from every windowsill. The hills rolled and I wanted to roll with them. There wasn’t a McDonald’s or Walgreens in sight. It was glorious.

  “What do you want to do?” Liam asked me. “Did you have some grand dream in mind for this moment?”

  Now that I was here, I realized I didn’t. I looked around this town that my dad grew up in and his dad, and his dad, and so on. It was exhilarating, but it also made me feel a little lost. Despite being so tied to my history, it was totally foreign. Nothing felt familiar. As beautiful as the cobblestone streets and flowering buildings were, I had no immediate connection to any of it. I was Americanized, through and through.

  Why, Dad, didn’t we come back when you were still alive? Why didn’t you take me?

  Panic and inadequacy began to rise in my chest and that made me more panicky. The last thing I wanted to do was ruin this moment. To only have negative memories of my time here.

  But before my anxiety descended into a full-blown panic attack, I noticed Liam was gone.

  “Liam?”

  I spun around and spotted him talking to the old man I’d pointed out seconds ago. I walked up behind him, shocked to hear the questions coming out of quiet, brooding Liam.

  “Ro-mer-O,” Liam enunciated my last name way too loud and, for good measure, with his hands waving. Then he did it again. He turned to me. “He doesn’t speak English, but I figured he’d probably know your last name and the farmstead. It’s not that big of a village. “ROMERO,” he said again, even louder.

  At that the little old man in his slacks and sweater vest, cradling a bottle of wine and a rolled-up newspaper, lit up in smiles.

  “Sì, Sì! Romero!” He began rapid-fire Italian, which I couldn’t keep up with, and a lot of gesticulating. When that didn’t work, he pulled out his newspaper and drew a little map of the town. Right on the edge, he marked an X.

  “Romero,” he said, pointing. Then he handed us the paper, smiled, and sauntered away.

  I held it like it was a treasure map, and in a way, it was. “Oh my God. I might find where my dad grew up.”

  “Do you want to go see?” Liam asked.

  My heart threatened to crawl out of my rib cage, but I nodded. “Yes. Let’s do it.”

  We parked our mopeds a few miles outside of the village. In one of those funny twists of fate, we’d driven by it on our way into Santa Lucia.

  The little stone farmhouse sat in a clearing overlooking rows of grape vines. There was a well in the front yard and the biggest vegetable garden I’d ever seen. It was a chef’s paradise. Most of the vegetables had been picked over and pruned for the coming winter, but I could tell it would’ve been my favorite place in the summer to read, drink a glass of wine, and watch the tangles of wisteria.

  “What should I say?” I asked, using my foot to lock in the kickstand.

  “Hello is a pretty good start. You could even get fancy and say ciao.”

  I ignored him and steeled my shoulders, marching right u
p to the front door. Where I promptly stood without doing a thing. A lazy black and white dog lifted its head to look at me and dropped it again.

  I heard chickens squawking in the back of the one-story farmhouse and maybe a pig. Then I heard knocking. Wait, why was Liam knocking?

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  “Helping.” He smirked.

  A middle-aged woman opened the door. Was that… I don’t know. My dad’s sister? Did I have another aunt?

  “Sì?” she asked. She had lightly graying hair, pulled into a bun. Her hands were dusted with flour, and she wiped them on a white apron outlined in large, waved ruffles.

  “Uh.” I looked around, not quite sure how to proceed.

  “Pull up a picture of your father,” Liam whispered.

  I fumbled for my phone. There was a picture of us as my background from my high school graduation. He had picked me up, swinging me around, my graduation cap blowing off my head. Mom snapped the image right as he brought me back to earth. We were all laughing.

  “Are you a Romero?” Liam asked. He gestured for me to show the picture.

  The woman squinted at us, unsure what to make of two Americans on her small doorstep, one of them tall and tattooed and broody.

  “My name is Clara Romero,” I supplied. “I think my dad grew up here. Mio papa, Luca Romero.”

  “Ah,” the woman said, beckoning us inside as if I had pronounced the magic word.

  Liam and I exchanged a glance. He shrugged and followed her into the sunshine dappled kitchen while my stomach churned.

  I walked into the house with all the grace of a zombie and drank it in. Copper pots lined the window, hanging elegantly from hooks. Long braids of garlic swung next to bright red bunches of cherry tomatoes. The two-room farmhouse smelled of something meaty and rich.