38
LILY
He led me up the back staircase of the Willows, guiding me by the small of my back. The house was dark but for the moonlight. As he followed me, I felt all that masculine energy radiating off him, all that pent-up fury, ready to be unleashed. When we got to the top of the steps, he pulled me into him and kissed me as we walked backward into the bedroom. He pulled away from the kiss just long enough to yank my shirt off over my head. My hands went for his belt, his fly, his top button, but before I could get his pants off him, he pushed me back onto the bed. “Put your hands on the headboard, and don’t you dare move them.”
I felt a new fury from him, a new kind of urgency. I might’ve been full of moxie and spunk, but he turned me to warm goo inside instantly. I could not resist him like this. I couldn’t even tease and play. I was his, completely, and he hadn’t even touched me yet. I slid my hands up the sheets and took hold of the headboard behind me, with my elbows slightly bent on either side of my head. He stood over me, and I watched him grind his teeth, bite his lip, and growl out, “Fuck.”
Tossing his shirt aside, he let his pants and boxers drop. Next came my shorts and my panties, which he tugged off me and threw into the darkness. He bent down over me, his strong arms depressing the mattress, and took one of my nipples in his mouth; he closed his eyes in pure and calm bliss, and I felt both my nipples tighten even though he was only teasing one. Instinctively, I let go of the headboard and tried to touch him, but he pulled away from me, shaking his head. “No touching. I’m running this fucking show.”
I swallowed hard and felt my toes curl. “OK,” I said, my voice honey thick and my whole body trembling.
Some men played at being an alpha. But not him. For him, it was effortless. Innate. Part of him. The essence of him. He crouched down beside the bed, and I heard him going through my bag. “Dirty girl,” he said as he rummaged through all my favorites. In his big, rugged hands he held my sparkly bullets and a pastel-pink dildo. These he spread out on my stomach, and I felt myself get wetter still.
He tested them out on me. A bullet to my nipple made me gasp; the dildo to my clit made me writhe and tremble. One after another he tossed them aside until he landed on my favorite. The universal favorite. The Magic Wand, God bless it. “That’s what I’m talking about.” He shoved the bedside table away, and its legs squeaked along the floor. He wasn’t gentle about anything now, and I heard him rip the lamp cord from the outlet, followed by the noise of him plugging my vibrator in.
“God,” I said, up at the ceiling, gripping the hard wood in my palms. The familiar whir filled the air and I gasped, feeling my heartbeat quicken in my chest. He straddled me, pinning my body beneath his as his erection pressed into my leg. I felt the heat of his balls on my skin. As if my hand wasn’t attached to my body, I reached out to touch him once again.
“You touch me and I stop,” he snarled, leaning down into me and pinching my cheeks so I could see just how serious he was about what he wanted to do to me. “Got it?”
I felt the trickle of my own warmth spilling out of my body onto the sheets. I nodded, looking up at him and digging my fingers back into the carved edges of the headboard. “Yes.”
He didn’t answer but lowered his eyes back down onto my body. With two fingers, he parted my lips and teased me with the vibrator, using the lightest touch. I was so turned on that it was like an electric current. The pleasure made me drive my hips back, and I arched my neck. The pillow came up on either side of my head, muffling that familiar whir. He pulled it away from me just as quickly as he’d touched me. Using two fingers, he slipped inside me, groaning as he dipped into my wetness. “Christ almighty, Lily,” he said, his voice low and greedy.
It was time for me to take some power back from the beast, but power didn’t have to snarl. Power could also beg. Topping from the bottom was a very real thing. “Take me, please.” I tipped my hips toward him, trying to get him to go for my G-spot. Again he touched the vibrator to my clit. It made me groan, and the room spun as my body responded. But again he took it away, and I let out a low whine.
With his free hand, he stroked himself. He wet his cock with me and rubbed it all over him. The vibrator hovered near me but still didn’t touch me. “Please.” I squirmed a little bit, writhing under his weight and rustling the sheets.
This time, he pressed the vibrator against me hard—hard enough to make it so that my pelvic bone was absorbing the vibrations, hard enough to flatten my clit and dull the sensations for a second. My hand flew out, and I dug my fingers into his thigh as my eyes rolled back in my head.
Instantaneously, the vibrations stopped, and I gasped for air.
He stared at me, hard and serious. “Lily.” He pulled my hand off his leg, and I slid it back up to the headboard. And he started the vibrator again. Again and again he teased me. Taking me to the brink, pushing me back. Letting me think he was going to let me come but stopping me every time. He wound me up so tightly that I felt myself starting to get angry that he was denying me the thing I wanted and needed so much. On the next intense press of the vibrator to my clit, I grabbed hold of it, pressing his hand and the vibrator into me. His eyes flashed, that mix of anger and excitement. He tried to pull it off me, but I fought him and felt myself starting to come.
“Fuck that.” He yanked it away hard, tossing it aside. The whirring went silent as the cord was pulled from the wall and the vibrator clattered to the floor. He dropped into a push-up over me, pinning my hands over my head, elbows against my cheeks, and we faced off in the moonlight, my chest heaving, my body writhing. I was so mad at being denied, so angry at getting so close over and over again, that I almost wanted to push him off me. But before I could show him how annoyed I was, he pressed into me and everything went . . .
. . . black. A noise came from my mouth that I had never heard myself make, a roaring scream, frenzied and very impolite. As he entered me, I was thrust into the most intense, insane, and inside-out orgasm I had ever had. With every drive that he gave me, I got more and more lost in mind-bending waves of pleasure that made me forget where I was. All I knew and all I needed to know was his body, the way he made me feel, and the way he made me think of forever even when I knew nothing else. “I love you and I never want to let you go,” I roared as I came.
He pushed me back down again and scooped me into his body, one hand on each of my ass cheeks. Wave after wave of pleasure was still coursing through me, and my legs locked around his hips. “I love you too. That is where this starts. That is not where this ends.”
39
GABE
The proof that she was a goddess was that being inside her was fucking heaven. I gave her three ball-busting thrusts and felt her toes curl against the backs of my thighs. She made long, ruthless scratches down my back that stung like a son of a bitch. Pain of the very best kind.
With every drive, I wanted her more. More. Fucking more. I didn’t just want to fuck her because I loved her. I wanted to fuck her for keeps. I wanted her to be mine now and tomorrow and forever. I want to give her something that would bind us, now and always.
And the thing that would do that wasn’t a goddamned locket.
The idea had never even crossed my mind—not with Lily and not with any other woman either. Not once. Now, though, it was like an obsession. With every drive and every smack of the headboard against the plaster, the idea possessed me more and more. Us, doing that. Me owning her, and her owning me.
Me knocking her up.
She arched her back and planted her palm against my chest on the next drive, pushing me away from her and creating space. Space that I didn’t want to be there. “I’m not letting you go,” I told her as I rammed into her yet again, this time changing my angle like I knew she liked, bringing my shaft along that inside curve of her pussy.
“Prove it,” she said soft, sultry, naughty. Not a fucking Southern belle within miles and miles.
I took her old-school missionary. Good traditions di
e hard. “Guess what I really want, beautiful. Tell me. Say the words.”
Her eyes met mine as she rolled her hips back. “You want my pussy.”
Close. “Dirtier.”
“You want your cum inside me.”
Closer. “Filthier.”
She searched my face, like she was trying to figure it out. And goddamn, the idea of her thinking so hard to give me what I wanted almost got me there by itself. Still, though, I needed her to say it. I needed to hear it from her lips. “Be filthy,” I growled as I locked eyes with her, telling her, Go there. Say it. Fucking say it.
She set her teeth, lowered her chin, and dug her fingernails into me. I felt her squeeze my cock, and she ran her fingers up my flanks like a bitch in heat. And she said, “Put your baby into me right fucking now.”
I was coming hard before she’d even finished the sentence. With brutal drives and ball-draining pumps, I was hers forever. I didn’t need her key to find my way home. Because I was already there.
We lay tangled up together on the comedown, and I savored every minute with her. Every shift of her body, every breath, every sigh. There were a lot of mysteries in the world, but the way I felt about her wasn’t one of them. She was the one I wanted. She was the one I had been looking for. The one. “Tell me what you want, beautiful. If you could have anything.”
She rolled over in my arms onto her stomach. She traced a line up my chest, with her eyes following her fingertip, before finally looking at me. “Big dreams, you mean? Not picnic baskets.”
I pulled her closer, making sure we were skin to skin—not even the sheets keeping us apart. “The biggest. What do you wish for, right now?”
She scooped her hair over one shoulder and paused with her fingertip just above my heart. “You really want to know?”
“I asked, didn’t I?” I swept a stray curl off her back and my hand down her arm and back up again.
Lily nibbled gently on her lower lip. She searched my face for a second, like she was trying to find the right words, before finally pressing her palm to her chest and saying, “I wish, with my whole heart, that you lived here.”
Here. With her. The only thing I’d ever known was constant forward motion—one army post to another, then California, the hustle, the grind, the next big thing. Now, though, it hit me—it was high time to start working to live. I wanted to make her happy, and I needed to know exactly what she had in mind. “Tell me more.” I studied her body, each soft curve and valley. Like a map of paradise. “Don’t be shy about it.”
She opened her mouth slightly before closing it again. Her eyes darted back and forth between mine.
“You’re not gonna scare me,” I told her, touching my thumb to her cheek. Even as I said the words, though, I knew it really was a lie. It scared me shitless; it was like thinking of my world getting flipped upside down. But it was also the good kind of fear, like that moment before you jump off a high dive. “Promise.”
She took a deep breath and turned away, placing her cheek to my chest, her ear right above my heart. “I wish we could stay here. In this house. Together. Christmas lights and Sunday roasts. Traditions. Kids and chaos. I would love that. I’d give anything for it to be that simple.”
It wasn’t simple. It was fucking beautiful. And lying there, with her in my arms, I had that feeling like when a compass finds true north.
40
LILY
The next morning, I was washing two pears in the kitchen sink when Gabe’s phone began to buzz. Mr. Markowitz’s name appeared on the screen, along with a photo of him in a novelty nose and glasses that made him look slightly like Mr. Potato Head. I glanced at the clock next to the pantry and did the time calculation as best I could. I was pretty sure Los Angeles was two or maybe even three hours behind Savannah time, which meant it was awfully early in California.
“Gabe!” I called over my shoulder. “It’s Mr. Markowitz!”
“Christ,” Gabe grumbled, and I heard his heavy footsteps thundering down the steps. “Grab it, will you?”
My hands were dripping wet, so I leaned over and tapped on the speaker button with my elbow. Before I had the chance to say hello or It’s Lily or anything else, Mr. Markowitz launched right into the conversation. “Powers! It’s me!” he panted. Gabe came around the corner in his boxers just in time to hear Mr. Markowitz say, “There’s been a Nessie sighting. And the old guy who saw her wants you to come get the exclusive. Says he loves your show and wants to talk it over with you. ASAP! As in, fly over tonight!”
On Gabe’s face I saw the purest and most instantaneous delight—like he’d just walked into a room full of people yelling, Surprise! Utter happiness from the bottom of his heart. He was, obviously, thrilled at the news. But as soon as his face lit up, it went dark again. He looked at me, and I saw a flicker of what I knew had to be disappointment. Disappointed in me or because of me or with me. Disappointed that he’d somehow found himself with a girl who made his life more difficult. Disappointed that he couldn’t have everything he’d had before.
My stomach rolled at the thought that I could be the source of anything like that. I wanted to be the cherry on his sundae, not the pebble in his shoe. The whole sequence of emotions couldn’t possibly have taken more than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. His delight and his disappointment. The high and the low. The possibilities of his great big world colliding with the limitations of the little one I had to stay inside.
My heart sank right down into my feet. I never, ever wanted him to feel that way when he looked at me, or because of me, or because of my stupid fears or any of it. Him being gallant made me feel like a queen; him giving up his aspirations for my sake made me feel cold all over. I might’ve been in a sexy lacy nightie, but I felt just like the old ball and chain. “You have to go,” I said to Gabe. “Go! It’s OK!”
But his expression didn’t change back into sparkling delight. It stayed firm and focused, and he shook his head at the phone. “I told you yesterday, man. It’s North America or nothing.”
“For Chrissake, Powers! It’s Nessie! It’s the myths and legends mother lode!”
But Gabe was totally unmoved, and he ended the call without even telling Mr. Markowitz goodbye.
I stood there stunned, with a dripping pear in each hand and the faucet running. The idea of him rearranging things to make room for me in his life had been wonderfully romantic in theory. But the actual experience of seeing him turn down something that he so clearly would have loved to do made me feel just terrible. In the world there were penguins and there were eagles, both literally and figuratively. Some people were meant to soar. I wasn’t one of them, but he most certainly was. “Call him back. You’re going.”
Gabe shook his head, and I watched the muscles in his jaw flutter. He slid his phone down the counter and said, “I told you, Lily. I want to take this time to build something with you. And I never go back on my word.”
I knew that this was all much bigger than what was happening right now. Of course I would be absolutely fine if he went away for a while—I’d been fine all my life without him. If he went away for a week or two or even longer, I was hardly going to wither away like an unwatered plant in the summer sun. No, this was more than that. This was about the big picture. This was about him and me and how we could make all of this work.
The truth was, I was so very tired of the crushing weight of fear keeping me where I was. I was tired of seeing an earth full of no when I wanted so much to finally have the courage to say yes.
I could let fear stop my love. Or I could let love stop my fear. I had to try. I just had to. For him and me and us together. For the sake of big dreams and possibilities. “You’re not going anywhere without me,” I said as I set down the pears on the counter and turned to face him. “Because I’m going to come to Scotland with you.”
41
GABE
Holy, holy shit. We were doing it. She was doing it. Markowitz—who might have even been more excited at her sayi
ng yes than I was—booked a direct flight for Lily and me from Atlanta to London that evening. The next morning, we’d take the train north to Scotland. We’d decided to drive to Atlanta and fly straight from there rather than making another connection; even though the drive was a hell of a hike, I was more than glad to do it, because it meant one less flight for her to worry about. As fast as I could, I packed my stuff and locked up the Willows, and we headed over to her apartment to get her packed up too.
She was a bit of a mess. An adorable mess. A lovely mess. But still, a mess. Totally understandable. I just wanted to do whatever I could to help her. I was so damned honored that she was even willing to try to go with me that I’d have done anything to make it easier. But helping her pack, as it turned out, really meant me just getting the hell out of the way; she whizzed around the apartment like a tiny tornado, leaving a mess of charging cords and ziplocks and rain jackets in her wake. Then she lugged an enormous suitcase out from the closet and asked, “What about this?”
It would’ve been just right if she were trying to get rid of a body in the ocean, but for a quick trip to Scotland it was, you know, kind of big. Still, though, I didn’t want to burst her bubble. For as hard as she was trying, I’d have lugged the thing anywhere for her, even if I put my back out doing it. “Perfect.”
“’K,” she said, and gave it a two-handed shove back toward her bedroom, like she was moving a minifridge.
On her desk in the corner of the living area she’d placed the envelope that contained her passport. I slipped it into the outside pocket of my bag, where I kept mine, and looked outside at her sister playing with Ivan next to an old and faded plastic play set. From the bedroom I heard nervous huffs and puffs, followed by annoyed and frustrated grunts. I could solve a lot of problems, but helping her face down her fear wasn’t like a fixing a stuck tent zipper. She was up against herself on this, and I was worried that whatever I did to help might end up hurting more than anything. I needed information, and I needed it quick.
Do You Feel It Too? Page 24