by Amelia Wilde
I turn over carefully and prop my head on my elbow.
We never closed the curtains last night. I thought about it, but then Everly pulled me back into the bed. “Leave them open. No one can see.” She sounded like she didn’t quite believe it. Like maybe it turned her on to think that someone might see.
Breaking the rules is so deliciously wrong. Not that anyone looking in would know we were breaking any rules at all. But that doesn’t matter—not to my core, which pulls toward her with a vicious possessiveness that’s completely forbidden.
Sex was one thing.
This is different.
I rub at my eyes to see if it’s only the vestiges of sleep that’s making me feel this way, but the need still pulses at the center of my chest, right along with my heartbeat.
The need to be near her.
The need to be with her.
Oh, shit.
The sunlight from the open curtains plays gently across her skin, across the curves of her body underneath the sheet. Her hair is a shining spill across the pillow. She could be in a movie—that’s how perfectly it’s arranged itself, as if her post-sex hairdo was the product of several professionals.
I risk it—putting a hand on her hip to feel the rise and fall of her breath.
God, it’s torture.
I remember the way she looked with her head bent over that highball glass in the bar. Something in her called to me then. I thought it was something simple—lust, or attraction, whatever you want to call it.
This feeling isn’t simple, and that’s what’s torturous about it. I want to know everything there is to know about her. I need it, like I need food and water. But I can’t bring myself to ask for it. There have been so many signs that she has secrets, and if she wanted me to know them, she would have told me already.
My mind plays the what-if game. What if the secrets were true dealbreakers? What if the secrets destroy this thing we have going on? What if, what if, what if?
What if I want to defend her from my brothers’ accusations? What if being in love with her means I have to move to Montana, of all places? What if it tears my family apart?
What about hers?
I try to wish the heady feelings away so I can think with a clear head.
The effort fails completely.
The feelings aren’t something I can dislodge through deep breathing and concentration. They’re real. As real as the grief I feel for my father, who shouldn’t be dead right now. I shouldn’t be done with working for him yet. They’re as real as the loyalty I feel toward my brothers, who can’t seem to piss me off enough to break it. They’re as real as the tug on my heart when I see the sun rise over Ruby Bay.
I’ve been fooling myself.
“Hi,” she says softly, and the sound of her voice in the quiet of the room makes me jump out of my skin. I barely manage to stifle the startle that rocks through my body. “Did I scare you?” Everly turns over and heat sprints through my veins.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I was.” She stretches her arms above her head. “You’re still here.”
“Where else would I go?”
“Back to the house?”
“Without my wife?” It should feel like acting to say that, but it doesn’t. It feels frighteningly natural and good. “That would be a dead giveaway, don’t you think?”
“After last night, I don’t think anyone could deny that we’re married.”
“Not any of the guests, anyway. I don’t think my brothers followed us to the hotel.”
“Yeah.” She wrinkles her nose. “That would be weird.”
“More than weird. It would be gross.”
Everly rolls closer to me, and relief spills into my lungs. Part of me was tense, I realize now, waiting for her to say that we’re done breaking the rules. Waiting for her to climb out of bed and go back to business as usual. I should want it to be business as usual, but I don’t.
Because I’m falling for her, head over heels, even though it’s a mistake.
I know it is, and by majority vote, I don’t care.
“What are you thinking about?” Her voice, warm and full with sleep, is the best sound I’ve ever heard.
“You.”
A smile brighter than high noon spreads lazily across her face, and she closes her eyes. “Say that again.”
“I’m thinking about you.”
“Sounds a little dangerous, Asher Bliss.”
“I know.” I run my fingers through her hair. If there ever were any knots, then uncurl for my fingertips. Even her hair wants me back. “It is dangerous.”
Her eyes flutter open. “Dangerous enough to stop?”
I can’t breathe, and then I can. “You tell me.”
She bites her lip and some expression flashes across her eyes and disappears. “No. Not dangerous enough to stop.”
You hesitated, I want to say. But then what? Would she admit to the secrets she’s been hiding, or will I be the asshole who was wrong about her?
I swallow the words.
“All right.”
“I think…” She purses her lips, thinking. “I think there are some rules that we have to break in order to survive.”
That would be ominous as hell if it weren’t for the fact that she delivers the line in a tone that’s just as sleepy and warm as before. My heart picks up the pace, knocking against my ribs, but I don’t want that.
I want Everly in the sunshine, Everly in my bed, Everly against my skin.
I roll over and bend my head to her collarbone, then run my tongue along that ridge.
“Asher,” Everly gasps. “Asher, we shouldn’t…”
“We just agreed to break the rules.” I plant a line of kisses down between her breasts.
“Isn’t there somewhere we should be?”
“We’re supposed to be on our honeymoon, aren’t we? Isn’t a hotel room at a luxury resort the ultimate in method acting?” I curl my tongue around one of her nipples and she arches back against the bed. “Be here with me,” I murmur against her skin.
“I am here with you.”
“Mmm…not quite as present.”
Everly giggles. “What does that mean?”
“You’re still so…coherent.” I kiss the line of her jaw, then work my way back up to her earlobe. “I’d prefer more moaning out of you, Ms. Carson.”
“Oh, that’s…that’s very official.”
Back down her neck. Back down over each nipple. Back down to her navel, with a detour around her belly button.
I reposition myself on the bed, down between her legs.
I spread her open.
Everly shivers.
She tastes sweet—so fucking sweet. It’s the world’s biggest cliche, but the sweetness that explodes on my tongue reminds me of peaches and cotton candy and doing something illicit behind the bleachers at the high school. Only Everly is all grown woman.
I suck her clit into my mouth and she moans, breathy and low, and my cock throbs.
“That’s what I like to hear.”
She mumbles something I can’t understand.
“What was that, sweet thing?”
Everly presses her hands above her head, palms flat against the headboard. “Less talk, more action.”
I give the lady what she wants.
12
Everly
“No meeting with your brothers this morning?”
Asher lifts his head, his face lighting up when he sees me. Oh, god, it feels so good to see that. So good, and so guilty.
“Not today. Roman thought Charlie might snap if we all sat around talking about the trust.”
“Nothing new has come in yet, then?”
“Not yet.”
We agreed to break the rules in the hotel room, that’s true, but it’s been a dance back at the rental house. Sometimes I can feel Asher hesitating, pulling away like the rules still stand, and then I do the same, and then it’s twenty minutes before he’ll stand close to me a
gain.
Out on the porch I don’t have to hesitate at all.
Maybe that’s why he’s out here. A butterfly makes a graceful swoop in my gut at the thought that he’s making it easier for us to be together.
I take a deep breath of the mid-morning air. “What are you working on?”
Asher frowns at the screen of his laptop. It’s perched on one of the ottomans for the wicker chairs. “I was trying to get early access to the trust documents. You know, greasing the wheels. I out which company stores the offsite backup and I offered them an incentive. Turns out not even money can speed things up.”
Closer—I want to get closer. So I do. I put an arm around his shoulder and slide into his lap.
It’s only when he settles his arm around my waist that it strikes me—this doesn’t feel like method acting. This doesn’t feel like acting at all. Asher rearranges me on his lap and pulls me in closer. No—there’s nothing fake about this.
I feel a thump, the way I imagine it would feel to time travel.
What if last night at the hotel wasn’t sexual tension boiled over? What if it was more than that?
I look automatically at the screen for way too long while my body memorizes his solid muscles beneath mine and the clean, showered smell of him.
“Everly.”
“Yeah?”
“You know you’re looking at an empty screen, right?”
“It’s…bizarrely empty.” This is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. There’s one single icon on Asher’s whole desktop, and it’s the one for the hard drive. “Are you this anal in other aspects of your life? Because I have to tell you, I’m not opposed to a little clutter.”
“Uh oh. That sounds like a dealbreaker to me. We’ll have to get a divorce.” Asher laughs, and I can’t help but laugh with him through the painful twist in my heart.
“Ha, ha. You’re too funny. If I’d known, I’d have put my clothes in the hamper before I came down.”
“Oh, Ev.” He clicks his tongue. “You’ll never catch a man if you can’t make good decisions.”
“I’m morally opposed to hampers.”
“I’m morally opposed to you wearing clothes right now.”
“Out on the porch?” I put a hand to my chest, pretending to be scandalized. “Asher Bliss, if I thought you wanted me barefoot and naked in front of the whole neighborhood, I’d never have proposed to you.” It hurts, a strange sharp slice, to joke like this, but it also feels…good and real, like it might be if we really were married. If we’d met during any other timeline.
“No way. I would never want you naked on the front porch. That’s a sight for husbands only.” A rumble of a laugh fills his chest. “I hope you know I’m kidding. You can be naked anywhere you like.”
“I love that about you.”
Asher freezes, going still underneath me, and then he sucks in a big breath. “It’s one of my best qualities.”
My face goes warm, then hot. I feel like I could tip forward into empty space at any second. Is this what people mean when they say falling in love? A literal falling sensation? I’ve never felt anything like it before. It must be real.
God, that’s frightening. If this is falling in love for real, then I’ve really screwed myself over. I’ve screwed both of us over.
My body isn’t willing to entertain that idea. My next breath of Asher’s skin sends calm through me like a big swig of chamomile tea, if chamomile tea was laced with desire.
“I think you have a lot of good qualities,” I say, grasping for anything to talk about.
Asher reaches forward and snaps the laptop closed. “Patience isn’t one of them. Not today, anyway.”
“Hmm. Is there anything I can do to help with that?” I let the question settle between us.
“When you say anything…” Asher’s voice is cautious.
“I mean anything.”
A car goes by in front of the house, and on instinct I lean forward and kiss him. He tastes like mint and exhilaration, and I drink it in.
“It’s different, you know. This is the house.
“Yes. A rental house. It’s not so different from a hotel. Unless…” I pull back and tap a finger against my lips. “It would kill more time to check into a room, if you want to keep things separated like that.”
“I don’t want to keep anything separated.”
I lean down close, so my lips brush his ear. “Then take me inside.”
Asher looks up at me from between my legs, blue eyes playful. “What do you think? Should I stop?”
I squirm in his hands. “God, no.”
“Are you sure?” He gives a tentative lick between my legs like he hasn’t been devouring me for five straight minutes. He brought me right to the edge, and now he’s toying with me.
“This isn’t funny.” I shove my hands against the headboard, but Asher’s hands on my hips don’t give an inch. “You’re not funny.”
“I’m very funny.” His tongue against the hot core of me lingers for a little longer this time. Just long enough for me to close my eyes and let out a moan. Then he’s gone.
“I love that sound,” he comments, and the word love is an arrow through my heart.
“I love it when you do what you came here to do.” I spread my legs another inch to feel the resistance from his hands. “You’re falling down on the job, Mr. Bliss.”
“I’m laying down. There’s a difference.”
“Oh, god,” I groan. “You’re not seriously going to—” He cuts me off with a masterful stroke between my legs.
This time, he doesn’t stop until I come into his mouth.
Asher is meticulous. He licks up every drop, then sits up on his knees and wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes dancing. “Go ahead.”
I struggle to catch my breath. “Go ahead and what?”
“Register any complaints you have regarding the service you received today.”
It feels so good to laugh, like I’ve swallowed a glass of pure sunshine. “I have several complaints.” I want to do this with him forever. That’s my first complaint. I want to stay in this bed and have conversations like this until the end of time. “Number one, you’re too far away.”
Asher clambers up the bed until he’s balanced above me, hips bumping against my hips and thickness between my legs. He kisses the corner of my mouth. “How’s this?”
“Better. But that wasn’t the only thing.”
“What else?”
“You’re still too far away.”
He puts on an expression of deadly concentration and reaches between us. He lines himself up and enters me with one powerful stroke, knocking the wind out of me. His muscles work while he props himself back up on his elbows, his length throbbing against my most sensitive skin. “How’s this?”
“Better,” I gasp. “But there’s still…one…”
“One more thing? Tell me what it is. Tell me, Everly. I’ll do anything to leave you satisfied.”
“You’re so still,” I cried. “You’re not moving at all, and honestly this should be classified as torture, because I want—”
Asher pulls back until all that’s left is the thick head of his cock and thrusts back in. I’m so wet and ready and every nerve ending between my legs is on fire with sweet electricity. One, two, three, four strokes and I’m spiraling up toward another release. It should be impossible. I’ve come so hard already today that it should be dangerous to do it again.
Yet there’s no way in hell I’m going to ask him to stop.
“Better?”
I can’t answer. I have no words. I open my mouth to say something, anything, but what comes out is a pleading moan unlike any other sound I’ve made before.
“Oh, yes,” Asher says. “It’s better.” He puts his head down against the side of my neck, bracing himself as he fucks me, and I’m lost under the power of him. “How long do you think I should keep this up?” he says into my ear.
“F—forever.” He picks up his
pace. “Never…stop.”
He doesn’t stop.
Not for a long time.
13
Asher
“No,” Everly says into the pillow. “Not now.”
I take my hand off the small of her back. “Me?”
“No, not you.” She turns her face toward me. “Put your hand back. Right now.”
“All right,” I say with a laugh. Every muscle in my body is relaxed. Two hours of sex with Everly is better than any alcoholic drink I’ve ever tasted, and far more effective. I stroke my fingertips over the soft skin at the small of her back, tracing the line where the sheet exposes a hint of her ass.
“Ugh,” Everly groans, frowning.
“Is it me?”
“No, for god’s sake, no.” She opens her eyes, and they’re hazy with satisfaction. “All the touching, the sex…we need this. You especially.”
“Why me especially?”
“You’re so on edge when it comes to the trust stuff.” There it is—that flicker in her dark eyes that stays long enough to plant a cold seed of doubt in the pit of my gut and leaves no trace behind. “It’s clear that it’s getting to you from a lack of sex.”
“I don’t think I’ve suffered from a lack of sex lately.”
“You need more than you think you do.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.” She tilts her face up for a kiss, and I give it to her without thinking. It’s not an act. It’s real.
And I think she knows it.
“What about you? Do you need more sex than you think?”
“No, I need exactly as much as I think I do.” A rueful smile plays around the edges of her lips. “I haven’t…been with anyone like this. Not in a long time.”
I find that hard to believe, because Everly is the most beautiful and intriguing woman on earth. I’ve traveled more places than the average man, so I can say that with confidence. I smooth her hair back from her face and tuck an errant strand behind her ear. My skin hums. We haven’t talked much about Everly’s past. She’s told me about her sister, Brooke, and I know about her father’s will, but she’s never brought up any past partners or boyfriends. Ever.