“There’s only you.” He wrapped his arms around me, his mouth taking mine again as I lifted my knee higher on his hip, giving him access.
He moved into me slowly, timing his movements with our breathing, with my pulse, with the press of his lips on mine. I opened myself to him until finally I was above him again, filled to the hilt. For a moment, I stayed still, sitting up and arching my back to feel every centimeter of him inside me. And though neither of us moved, I could feel him pulsing there, the heat of him warming me from the inside out.
“Oh God,” I heard myself whisper, a prayer of my own sent out to float above us on the rays of streaming sunlight.
And then I began to move, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. I was greedy for him, hungry for what we’d missed so far. I slid along him, clenching him with muscles I didn’t even know I had as he guided me with his hands on my hips, meeting me with thrusts that threatened to shake the bed apart or split me in two. We were both panting, crying out as each thrust hit its crest, and something inside me building—a delicious coiling sensation I wanted to chase, to capture.
“God, Amy.” Trent’s eyes never left mine. “Oh fuck,” he whispered.
I didn’t have words, I was so intent on the release I could feel just around the corner.
This. This. This.
I moved with him until I finally caught the tail of what I’d been following, pulling it near and letting it wrap itself around me as I exploded and shuddered around Trent, his firm hands on my waist promising to keep me near even as my body threatened to fall apart, to drift away. As I released, I felt Trent’s body tense and then explode alongside me, beneath me, inside me, both of us crying out our release until we melted together in a pile of sweaty limbs surrounded by a ridiculous heap of pillows strewn in sunlight.
Yes, this. Simple. Easy. But it doesn’t feel casual.
Chapter Twenty-One
Trent
Having Amy in my arms, both of us sweating and panting in a lazy pile, was everything I wanted. In that moment, the rest of the world slipped away, hovered just beyond my consciousness.
“Have I told you that I love this house?” Amy smiled up at me from the circle of my arms. “We should rent it every time we come to Palm Desert.”
I glanced guiltily at the photo of my parents standing on the mantel over the fireplace across the room. Amy obviously hadn’t noticed it earlier, and now we were dwelling in the midst of a potential misunderstanding. “I didn’t rent it, actually,” I told her hesitantly, worried it could shatter the perfect bubble we inhabited. She’d never explicitly stated it, but it was pretty clear that my fake fiancée wasn’t comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth. I hadn’t even thought about it when I’d planned our night away, but now it occurred to me that maybe just running out to my parents’ vacation home wasn’t the most romantic of ideas. If this was some anonymous rental house, it might have been, but I was beginning to see how letting Amy know it was my family’s house would only add to her vision of me as a reliant mama’s boy, something I would have to dispel if I had any shot of keeping her past this casual entanglement.
Why did I keep screwing everything up?
Amy cast a questioning gaze up at me, her lips quirking into a half smile and the unfettered light still shining in her beautiful brown eyes. “You didn’t?”
Lying was not part of my usual repertoire, but I tried. “It belongs to one of the guys at the station,” I said. “Just borrowing.” You suck at this. The smile I shot her felt false, and everything in me was suddenly rigid with the lie. “Be right back.” I slipped out from beneath her, glad she was curled on her side facing away from the photo. I slid by the mantel, silently removing the photo as I headed for the bathroom where I chucked it into the back of a cabinet.
“Water?” I asked, moving through the room to head downstairs and do a quick sweep for more family photos.
“Sure,” she called back, her voice still lazy and unguarded.
I sanitized the house, guilt creeping over me like a prickly coat, and then returned to Amy, handing her a glass of water.
“What do we do now?” she asked, a serene smile making her features clearer than I’d ever seen them. She sipped water and sat there on the huge bed, beautiful and open. I want to keep her here like this. Forever.
“Whatever we want.” I slid back onto the bed beside her and pulled her back on top of me. Her long hair draped around my face, tickling my cheeks, before her lips found mine. Her kiss was gentle and tentative, but it was like stoking a fire. Every cell in my body jumped to alert, and I tightened my arms around her.
“Really?” she asked, her voice teasing and sultry. She slipped down my body, dropping kisses over my chest and around the sides of my rib cage as she took me in her hands and smoothed her palms over my skin.
I couldn’t have been happier in that moment, with Amy above me, crying out as she moved over me. I swept an arm around her waist and slid out from under her, keeping my arm around her as I pressed into her from behind. She gripped the headboard for purchase, and I slid my hand around her waist up to caress one perfect breast. I was in the right position to lavish kisses down her spine.
She ground against me, struggling to create friction, but I held her firmly with my other hand at her waist. Her whimpers and moans increased as I dropped my hand to finger her swollen nub and finally began to slide in and out of her tight entrance.
We rocked there, each cry from Amy threatening to send me spiraling over the edge. Tight tingles were beginning in the base of my spine, and I knew I wouldn’t last long, but I needed to hear Amy go first. I increased the friction of my fingers against her, and was immediately rewarded with the hottest breathy moan I’d ever heard.
“Oh God, Trent…” Hearing Amy say my name like that—like I was all she needed, all she wanted—it was too much.
Keep it cool, keep it cool. I fought for control, but the tempo of my thrusts became erratic and harsh as I felt my own release sinking its claws into me, climbing over me and threatening to rip me from reality. Just as I thought I would lose it, Amy’s orgasm took hold, and she cried out my name again, sending me into the void, tumbling and shaking with an orgasm like nothing I’d ever felt. The difference, I realized, was that this wasn’t just the girl I was dating, or the girl I was fucking. This is the girl I want. The girl I want to marry. For real.
We collapsed again into a pile of sweaty limbs and lay there until the rays of sunlight across us had dissipated into a filmy gauze of orange light.
“Should we get dinner?” I asked finally, reluctant to leave Amy’s embrace.
“I guess we should.” She sounded just as reluctant.
And finally, after one more sweaty, sweet round on the bed, we did.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Amy
Sex with Trent was everything I thought it would be physically. I mean, the man has a body, and that was no surprise. I’d seen it before, I just hadn’t felt it hard against me in all the right places quite like that until now.
But there was more to it. Granted, I hadn’t had a lot of sex, but I’d had enough to know there were different flavors. There was plain old boring do-it-because-it’s-expected sex. And this was not that. There was kinky let’s-do-something-different-because-we’re-adventurous sex, and this wasn’t that, either. This was sweet and tender, hot and raw, and completely unlike anything I’d done before. There was an element of honesty between us—something exposed and true, and the vulnerability I felt made it that much more intense. It was hot and erotic, no doubt—made more so by the fierce emotions tied up in the physical sensations of having Trent around me, inside me, dominating my senses completely.
The more time I spent with him, the more I realized that I wanted him—in every sense of the word. And I wasn’t sure that when a month was up, I’d be able to let him go. You will. You have to. That’s the deal. I was starting school. I needed to focus. It made good, sound sense to keep this just as it ha
d been designed—a fling, nothing more. It made perfect sense. Didn’t it?
When we finally got home from a romantic dinner, we ended up in bed again. It was like waiting as long as we had had created a stockpile of all the feelings and desires we’d kept in check for so long.
I awoke sleepy and spent and a little bit sore, but completely calm and centered for the first time in months. There was something that just felt right about this thing between us, and from the honesty I’d seen in Trent’s eyes, the things he whispered in the dark, I thought he felt it, too.
“Ready to head back?” Trent brought his bag down the stairs and set it next to the door.
I’d found a leather-bound guest book on a far table by the patio door and was just about to flip through it when he appeared.
“Yep. My bag’s right here.” I grinned at him as he stood there watching me, tall and tan and gorgeous in a navy T-shirt and faded jeans with flip-flops on his feet and a two-day growth of stubble on his square jaw. “Do you think we should sign the guest book?” I held up the book and then flipped it open, knowing I was being nosy, but unable to stop myself. “We could write, ‘Your house is the perfect sex escape,’ or, ‘The things we did in your bed made your curtains blush.’”
“Maybe we should just…” Trent trailed off as he watched me open the book and read.
What is this? It makes no sense. “Dear Trudy and Hank,” I read out loud, incredulity making my voice thin. “Thanks for a lovely weekend in your vacation home. We had a great stay with you and hope you’ll join us soon in our…” I looked up at Trent, who had gone pale. I skipped a few pages ahead. “Trudy and Hank, great time with you this week…” Trent crossed the distance between us and took the book from my hands.
“It’s my parents’ house.” He said this as if he was admitting to a great crime. His apparent guilt sent my suspicion spiraling upward.
What? Why didn’t he just tell me? “Why didn’t you say that before?”
He rubbed a hand across his jaw, squeezing his eyes shut for a long moment. “I just…I just didn’t want you to think I can’t do anything without my parents’ money.”
I shook my head, though I couldn’t pretend the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.
“I wanted to do something special for you, something just for us.”
“So why didn’t you?” I asked. He certainly could have just rented a house if he’d wanted to. “Did your mom suggest we come here? Is it a way to keep us under her thumb?”
“No.” He shrugged. “I didn’t even think about it, really. I mean, the house was vacant, and…”
“You’re just used to using your family’s things,” I finished for him.
He nodded, looking ashamed.
“It’s fine. I mean, it would have been fine.” Would it, though? If I’d known it was Trudy and Hank’s house, their bed, would I have had such a good time? “I just don’t know why you didn’t tell me in the first place.”
He let his chin drop to his chest for a beat and then stepped forward and pulled me into his arms, his warm chest against me reminding me of the time we’d shared here. It did bother me this was Trudy’s house—it felt like it changed the time we’d spent somehow, made it less authentic, less true. But it bothered me more that Trent felt like he had to cover that up.
“I just hate feeling like I’m rubbing it all in your face, the family stuff…” he trailed off.
“The money?”
He dropped his head to mine, resting his chin just behind my ear so I couldn’t see his face. “Yeah.”
I stepped out of his embrace. “I wouldn’t have thought you were rubbing it in my face,” I said, sorting through my feelings even as I was speaking. “But we really are from different worlds, Trent. We both have to figure out how to deal with that. I can’t pretend that the fancy gifts and flowers don’t feel strange to me, that it isn’t odd to visit your parents’ mansion or spend time in their vacation home. Those just aren’t things I’m used to.” I made a point to hold his gaze. I wanted him to really understand what I was saying, because I was partially trying to convince myself. “But I’m also getting to know the real you. And I don’t think you’re about all those things. I don’t think they make you who you are.”
His eyes shone as I spoke, and he finally said, “I feel like I have to apologize for where I come from, for the way I was raised.”
“You’re a good person. That should be all that matters.” I took his hand and squeezed, hoping my touch conveyed more confidence than I felt. “Do you ever feel like I should apologize for how I was raised? For where I came from?”
His head snapped up, and his eyes widened. “God, no. I mean… I wish I could change some of it for you, but that’s also what made you who you are.”
I watched him put the words together, realizing that while our upbringings were different, neither of us could change them. Who we were now should be all that mattered. “As long as we’re on the topic,” I said, pulling the wad of cash from my bag where it lay on the floor. “I need to return this to you. I took the bag you sent me back to the store. It was too much. I just can’t accept it.”
His eyes were wary as he took the wad of money from me.
Trent stuffed the money in his pocket and looked back up at me, something sad in the twist of his lips. “Do you think there could ever be a chance for us? For us to be real?” His question confirmed that we’d both felt a closeness growing between us, that I wasn’t making it up. But it also confirmed the doubt he felt at our ability to overcome the differences in our backgrounds, our families.
I held his eyes with my own. “I want there to be,” I said, terrified at the honesty of my words.
A cold worry had crept between us and was skulking in the dark corners of the room now. Awareness of that creeping disturbance tinged Trent’s eyes a darker brown and sent a chill through me, despite the desert heat.
“I do, too,” he said. But where the words could have been hopeful, they were sad.
“We should probably get back home.” I wished I could go back to the girl I’d been upstairs in that big bed, that the differences between us didn’t define us. But despite the words I’d said to Trent, I wondered if maybe they did.
…
Amber dropped by midweek to go over my supply list with me and tell me what I really needed to get and what could wait, and she stopped dead still in the entryway after entering the house. “Who died?” She looked around at the wilting flowers I hadn’t cleaned up and Dani’s half-packed boxes in the hall.
“What? No one died.” Her question annoyed me, and I slouched back to the living room in my pajama bottoms and tank top.
“Something did.” She followed me into the room, stale from having been closed up for days. “Maybe in your hair?” Her hands reached out and tried to smooth the mess of my ponytail. I’d put it up that morning, but there had been several naps and a long day of shoving my head against the pillows of the couch. I could feel it sticking up, but I was finding it hard to care.
Amber sat down with me on the couch and watched as I picked my chiming phone up off the coffee table and typed a reply to Trent’s text. He’d been busy since the weekend, and his texts felt tentative, like everything between us was cracked and might just fall to pieces if we weren’t both careful. I hated it, and I had no idea how to fix it.
“Trent?” she asked, nodding toward the phone.
“Yeah.”
“So you’re still together.” It wasn’t a question. She seemed surprised, and I realized she had thought my disheveled state was due to a breakup. I held up the hand that wore the engagement ring to prove all was still intact. “Holy shit, that’s gorgeous,” she said in a whisper, taking my hand. She stared at the ring for a minute and then looked up at me, her dark hair falling across her forehead as she stared, narrowing her eyes. “So what the hell is going on, Amy?”
I blew out a long breath and flopped back into the sofa. “I don’t know.” As I said the words, planning to
hold her off, I realized I needed to talk. I needed to tell someone about the confusion I felt, the strange combination of emotions that had been stirred up out in the desert. I explained about our trip, told her about everything that had gone on, and concluded with our stifled ride home and Trent’s careful texts since then.
“So you had crazy, swinging-from-the-chandeliers sex, and now you don’t even want to talk to him?” She shook her head and looked genuinely confused. “And where the hell is Dani, by the way?”
“She moved out.”
“What?” Amber’s eyes widened, and she stiffened.
“No, I mean…not because we fought or anything. She moved in with Rob. But partly because we decided to sell the house.”
Amber nodded, as if that explained things. And it probably did to some degree. I hated the empty house. I missed my sister and her buoyant presence in my life. Dani had been a constant—Dani and this house—and a painful cavity lay in the place where everything I’d been certain about had once been.
“So Dani is gone, and things with Trent feel messed up because you think he’s some kind of spoiled rich kid who can’t possibly understand you.” This last part was said with a bit of sarcasm.
I lifted a shoulder. “Something like that.” She didn’t say anything else, so I kept talking, hoping maybe I could find some clarity if I kept throwing words at her. “It just kind of feels like his parents are always in the middle of everything, like they’re always lurking between us. Ever since I met his mom, I’ve felt her influence—and her complete disapproval of me. Did I tell you she saw me returning the bag he gave me?”
Amber shook her head, muttering, “I can’t believe you returned it…”
“I bet she thinks I kept the cash, that I’m just using Trent for what I can get. She told him—in front of me—that marrying a doctor was a terrible idea.”
“Good thing you’re not really getting married then, right?” she said, but her question hit a nerve.
Without Promises (Under the Pier) Page 14