by Jo Raven
We all start to clap, and Christ, tears are running down my cheeks. A sniffle escapes me.
“Embers.” Jesse turns me around in his arms, hugs me close. “Come here.”
Zane is saying something about having the toast at the reception later, but all I know is Jesse’s heart booming against my own, his hands sliding up my back, over my shoulders, smoothing my hair back from my face. The way he’s looking at me is doing funny things to my insides.
“We’re here now, too,” he whispers, and I shake my head without thinking, because what I think he’s saying… “Embers?”
“We are,” I say and kiss him. He sighs, tugging me closer, then draws back just enough to undo the knot on his leather bracelet. “What are you doing?”
“Give me your hand.” I lift it, and he ties the band around my wrist. “There. Rub it when you feel scared. It’ll keep you safe.”
“JJ…” I gape at him. I remember his reaction when I returned it to him. “Why? This means a lot to you.”
“You mean even more,” he says and smiles.
***
“So where’s the wedding reception being held?” I ask as the newlyweds return to the limo and speed away. “I didn’t catch the name of the restaurant.”
I read the invitation twice, but the name of the place didn’t stick. Too many new names to retain in these past few weeks.
Besides, I’m distracted by the warm leather band on my wrist. His leather band. His talisman. There’s a burning behind my eyes I’m trying to ignore. This boy… He’s hacking down every defense I own.
“Hm… The reception won’t be at a restaurant.” Jesse glances distractedly around as the crowd departs in a wave of perfume and clickety high heels. “It’s at a house. Belongs to a friend of Dakota’s.”
Dakota. Zane’s spunky girlfriend. I catch a glimpse of her in a short black lace dress that leaves her back bare and reveals a huge tattoo of wings covering it. She’s holding the bouquet Audrey threw. She was the one who caught it.
Zane had picked her up, then, and spun her around, everyone laughing and yelling at him to propose.
So he went down on one knee and proposed on the spot. Dakota went into hysterics and couldn’t speak for ten minutes, until Zane picked her up upside down and she shouted yes so loudly I bet the people in cars passing nearby must have heard her.
It was hilarious, and again touching. I never thought I could have such fun at a wedding.
Or that I’d be left thinking. There’s so much love going around in this little group. These boys are so nice behind their tough exteriors.
The exact opposite of the guys who bullied me at my school, boys with trendy clothes and clean hairdos, hiding so much senseless violence and craziness.
Then of course my mind returns to Nick, and I shudder.
“Okay.” I need a distraction. Weren’t we leaving? “Are we catching a cab? Do you know how to get to this house?”
He nods and hums under his breath, his arm around my shoulders. I don’t think there’s been a single second he hasn’t touched me since he appeared at my door this evening.
“Can’t see Ev or Kayla.” I squint in the dimness. Apart from the rumble of cars passing by less than thirty feet away, it’s quiet. “I was thinking we could catch a cab with them.”
“Come,” he says and tugs me toward the old synagogue, away from the departing guests.
The technicians are turning off the last spotlight, and a woman in a smart navy blue dress is gathering the flower pots and ribbons. We walk toward them, and at first I think Jesse wants to ask them something, or help them pack up—which would be weird, but why not?
He doesn’t stop. He takes me round the back, where the trees are thick and the shadows deeper.
“Where are we going?” I whisper, half expecting someone to jump from behind the trees and attack us. I’m tensing, even with his arm around me. I dig in my heels, my skin breaking into goosebumps. “Wait.”
He slides his hand down to the small of my back and turns me toward him. “Trust me. Can you trust me?”
It seems light, as questions go, but it feels much heavier with meaning, as if he’s asking me not just to trust him in this moment but in everything.
“I do.” Weird how I don’t have to think about it twice.
“Good. Because I need you, Embers. Need you now, can’t wait.” Stunned into silence, I let him walk me backward a few steps, his hands smoothing over my dress to settle on my waist. His big body bumps into mine, and even from that brief contact I can feel how hard and ready he is. It turns my blood to burning lava.
I suck in a sharp breath. The tips of my breasts ache, pressed to the wall of his hard chest. “JJ…”
“And before you ask, no, I’ve never done this before. Never wanted anyone this damn much. Like I can’t control myself one second longer when I’m around you. Like I have to be inside you, right fucking now.”
He presses me to him, to his swollen cock, and I bite back a moan. The feel of that hard rod of flesh, the knowledge of how aroused he is, is a bolt of fire straight to my core. His mouth seeks mine and I surrender, looping my arms around his neck and rising on tiptoe to taste him.
Salted caramel and sugared nuts, I think, pressing my breasts, my legs, every part of me to him, and he groans in my mouth, his tongue parting my lips and thrusting inside, his hips rocking against me.
He pushes me backward until my back meets something hard and knobby—a tree trunk, I realize before his hands roam all over me. He breaks the kiss to trail kisses down my neck, and he’s whispering something.
“Only you,” he’s murmuring. “Nobody but you. Just you.”
Over and over again.
He lifts my skirt and runs his hands on my thighs, tugging down my panties. They drop down my legs, and his hand wanders up.
“Oh God.” I squeak as cool air rushes up my girly parts, and his thumb brushes over my clit, sending shocks of pleasure through me. I clap a hand over mouth when I realized what had escaped me for a blissful moment: I’m standing in a park, with people less than twenty feet away, with my panties around my ankles and a man’s hand between my legs. “We can’t.”
“Keep your hand over your mouth,” he instructs me, his voice rough with desire, and he goes down to his knees in the soil and stones. I reach for him, trying to stop him, but he slips from my grasp and then his mouth is on me.
A low keening sound leaves my mouth, and I can’t even bring myself to care, guests or not. Sweet pleasure is pooling between my legs, heaviness is gathering in my belly as the sensations wash through me. His tongue is doing wicked things to me, licking along my seam, parting me, reaching my center and then—
Stars go supernova behind my eyelids. His tongue is stabbing into me, thrusting into me, and I’m tittering on the edge, one hand still pressed to my mouth, the other gripping his shoulder so hard it’s a miracle I haven’t torn his shirt with my nails.
Then the pressure increases, pleasure spiking, and I’m vaguely, distantly aware he’s using his hand down there now, too, stroking me deep inside while he kisses and licks, his firm lips soft, a counter point to his rough tongue. His mouth moves up, sucking on my clit, and the need sharpens, cutting me like a knife.
I wail behind my hand as my whole body tightens and contracts in a spasm that’s near pain, riding the first wave of release. My back scrapes on the rough bark of the tree, and I’m sure an insect is crawling up my leg, but then the second wave hits, pleasure through and through, and my knees bend, unable to hold me.
Before I fall, Jesse is up on his feet, his arms around me. “Whoa, kitten.” He’s holding me up, my legs like jelly. “God, you taste good. Like cream and sugar. I thought I was going to come from your taste. Shit.”
I blink at him, out of it completely.
He suddenly grins. “I was that good, huh?”
I laugh and swat at him. Hard to do when he’s the one holding me up. “You’re insufferable.”
“But y
ou like me anyway.”
I’m pretty sure he’s teasing me, but I nod anyway, because it’s the truth. “Yes, I do.”
“A lot.”
“Yeah.”
“Cross your heart?”
“Yes.” I frown, my face pressed to his muscular shoulder, some of the haze clearing from my mind. “And you? Do you like me?”
My heart thuds heavily while waiting for his reply.
“I do,” he says, quietly, easily, and I smile against the scratchy material of his shirt. “Very much.”
Jesse Lee has admitted he likes me. Which is just a technicality—speaking the words out loud when he’s been showing me as much—but it makes it more real somehow.
Not that it means anything. I mean, liking someone isn’t unusual. Friends like each other.
Friends don’t go down on each other, a smug voice whispers in my mind. They don’t kiss so much either, and they don’t roll in the sheets naked together.
Speaking of naked… My panties are lying somewhere on the ground, and it feels weird to be bare down there. Bare and wet from coming, and as he presses into me, his erection rubs against my slightly bruised mound, sending electric jolts to my insides, making me clench painfully.
For shame, Amber. You just came so hard you almost passed out.
But this man is like a drug. The more time I spend with him, the more I want him, and the way he’s moving his hands over my curves, the way his cock twitches…
“Embers.” My name is spoken in a growl, sending shivers over my skin. “Need to fuck you.”
No idea why these few crude words make me moan and burn for him so badly. “So do it,” I breathe, hitching one leg up, around his thigh and fumble at his fly. His hard-on is tenting the front of his pants.
His hand is already there, unzipping and pushing the heavy cloth down. His breathing is unsteady, shallow and fast, as he reaches into his briefs and pulls out his heavy cock, and like every time, the air leaves my lungs at the sight of it. Big, flushed dark, the head wet and glistening, a thick vein throbbing on the side.
I want to touch, and when I trail my fingers over its length, over the hot, silky skin and the weeping slit on the soft crown, he hisses between his teeth.
Next thing I know, I’m pushed back against the tree, my dress bunched up around my waist, and he’s kissing me hard.
This boy sure likes kissing me.
“Never kissed anyone before.” That’s what he said the first time we kissed, and that’s so sweet and sad and powerful, and—
He pushes into me, his cock breaching me slowly and surely, sliding into me. I let out a breath, taking him in, all of him, until he’s seated inside me, his pelvis pressed to mine. It’s overwhelming, and I squirm, needing something I can’t name to ease the incredible feeling of fullness, and I can hardly believe he fits inside me, so thick and long and hard like steel. I whimper, gripping his shoulders and rocking my hips.
“Fuck, kitten...” He finally starts to move, his eyes trained on my face. “God, you feel fucking amazing. Is this…?”
“Do it, JJ.” I rock my hips again and gasp at the pleasure.
“Goddamn.” His hips snap forward as he drives into me once, twice. “Christ.”
My mouth falls open, a cry rising in my chest, and he clamps his lips over mine, swallowing down the sound. He cups the back of my head, keeping our mouths fused as we move together, rocking and rubbing. Mouths crushed together, tongues clashing, we race toward the end, the drag and pull of his hard cock against my inner walls maddening. Pleasure sparkles at the base of my spine, and I moan in his mouth.
He breaks the kiss, gasping, his hips jerking wildly, his cock impossibly big as it pushes deep into me, filling me to the brim. Pushing me over the edge.
The fall is exquisite. Delicious. Ecstatic. I think I leave my shuddering body for a moment and float above, in a cloud of white light.
Then I come down, and I’m still moving, still moaning with pleasure, milking every last drop of it.
Of him.
Because he’s coming hard, his jaw clenched against a shout as he spills inside me, his cum hot like fire, his forehead pressed to mine as his hips buck. I brush my lips over his, and he chases after my mouth, even as he’s still coming, still spilling, grunting with pleasure.
Gradually, his movements slow down. He slumps against me, slowly softening, still buried in me. He slams a hand into the trunk above my head.
“Holy fuck. That was…” He shakes his head. “Damn.”
He feels so good inside me, even not fully hard, and I love holding on to his trembling body as he struggles to catch his breath. Love the musk of his clean sweat and the nutty scent of his seed, the fainter notes of cinnamon and spice drawing me until I bury my nose where his shoulder meets his neck and inhale deep.
God. So delicious. I’m acting like a mad woman, and I don’t care. Besides, nobody is here to see me.
I hope.
“All right, kitten?” He lowers my leg and smooths down my dress, then he lifts one hand and strokes my cheek. It’s too dark to see the color of his eyes, but I feel his lips when they touch the tip of my nose.
“Yeah.”
I should hate the nickname. Kitten. Ridiculous.
And yet it’s cute. As for calling me Embers, I can’t complain anymore. Not when I know that Embers means something important to him.
“Not so romantic here,” he says. “I know that. I’d buy you flowers. Would you like that?”
Okay, I’m speechless again. “You’d buy me flowers?”
But he hates shopping, is the only coherent thought I manage.
“Hell yeah, I’d buy you flowers. And chocolates, and whatever you want.” He cups my face. “Red roses?”
“No.” I look away, face heating. What girl doesn’t like red roses? “White roses. They stand for new beginnings.” I shrug at his arched brow. “My mom’s a florist.”
He nods, his expression going blank. How weird, I think, that he loves babies but goes stiff when I speak of my parents. That he talks about sending me roses after having sex against a tree trunk. So many contradictions.
“Ready to go?” He takes my hand, and I let him pull me out of the cover of trees, heading toward the street, my mind buzzing.
It’s not until we’re sitting in a cab and rolling that I realize I’m still not wearing my panties, and that they’re lying somewhere in the park.
Then Jesse kisses me, and they’re again forgotten. Who needs panties, anyway, with this man? They’d only get in the way.
***
The house is frigging huge. The gate is open, music and noise spilling into the street. Inside there are pools with stone alligators at the edges. The small crowd of the wedding has expanded. There have to be at least a hundred people milling about the grounds, shadows until they move close to the torches stuck in the ground and the illuminated pools. A long table with food stands on one side. The scent of water tells me we’re on the lake shore.
Crazy place. Never expected anything so grand. I hope Asher and Audrey are enjoying their reception. After what I heard during the ceremony, they more than deserve it.
If only I enjoyed this, too…
Jesse’s arm is a welcome weight around my shoulders, and I’m grateful beyond words for his presence, but as we stroll along one pool, watching candles and bunches of flowers floating in the milky, lit-up water, I know I have to let him do his thing—talk to his friends, catch up with them, talk to new people, without me attached like a leech to his side. Both for his sake, and mine.
I mean, it doesn’t have to be for the whole time, right? I can go find Kayla and Ev, at the very least, and return to him later.
If he’s still available and willing to hold my hand.
“Trust me,” he said earlier.
Maybe I should. Maybe I should trust myself, too, to survive for an hour without need of a babysitter.
A very sexy, handsome babysitter. Still…
“Hey, I was
thinking…” I start to pull away from him, and his arm instinctively tightens around my shoulders, then drops to his side.
“What’s wrong?” He has to shout to be heard over the music and general hubbub.
“Nothing’s wrong.” I smile at him, study his beautiful face in the flickering light of the torches. “I thought I’d just go say hi to the girls and find you later. Give you a breather.”
“I don’t need a breather from you, Embers.”
A knot forms in my throat. He keeps saying such sweet things, keeps catching me off guard.
“Just for a while. Need to do this.”
He seems about to say something, then thinks better of it and nods instead. A faint smile touches his lips, my favorite one that lights up his eyes.
Before I go, though, he leans in and drops a soft, sweet kiss on my mouth. “Come back whenever you like,” he whispers, and my heart does a wild little flip of joy.
“I will.”
Wandering away from him is harder than I thought, but I force myself not to look back. Just an hour, Amber, come on.
I push my way through a group of giggling girls, searching for my friends, and for one fleeting, horrible second I think I see Nick from the corner of my eye.
My breath freezes in my lungs. I stop in my tracks, trying to locate him again, but he’s gone. Or I imagined him. Oh God, I probably did. Wouldn’t be the first time. I used to see him everywhere for a while, back then.
What would he be doing here anyway?
And where are my friends? So many people. It’s as if they sprouted from the tiled floor. I swear the wedding was a much smaller affair. Which makes sense, I guess, but it’s only sinking in now, as I wander, lost, bumping into people, fast working myself into a panic.
I rub at the leather band on my wrist and suck in a deep breath.
The crowd parts a little toward the end of the pool, and I see familiar faces at last. Zane’s blue Mohawk is like a flashing road sign, and not far from him, I spot Micah and Ev. I open my mouth to call her name, but they seem to be having a serious conversation, judging from their frowning faces.