I get up on shaky legs and fetch the small scrap of paper off of the nightstand. Handing it to Drew I hold my breath as he looks at it.
“Shit,” he mutters under his breath.
“I… I found it while you were gone. I didn’t want to mess up the press tour by letting you think I needed you,” I say in between sobs as tears streak down my cheeks. “We should be getting ready to have our baby.”
Drew looks at me and I can see his heart breaking. “Sydney, you mean more to me than all of that press tour bullshit. I can’t believe you were dealing with this alone. Or with Adam Reynolds.” His gaze turns hostile. “Why have you been seeing him Sydney? You know I don’t want you alone with him!”
I bristle at his directive. “Adam owns the penthouse I’m remodeling. My dream job. I didn’t know it was his until I already accepted the project.” Wiping my face, I stare at my hands miserably.
“What!” Drew roars, startling me. “That motherfucking piece of shit.” He jumps up and paces the room angrily. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
He whirls suddenly and drops to his knees on the floor in front of me, his vivid green eyes even with mine. “Did he try anything with you, Sydney?”
I drop my gaze and that’s all the confirmation Drew needs. He gets up and starts pacing the room again, his eyes flicking angrily towards the walls of the bedroom.
Uh oh, he’s going to punch another wall.
“Stop!” I jump up to get in front of Drew and cling to his chest, not wanting him to start breaking more bones.
His face is purple, the veins in his neck are pulsing, and his eyes are wild with rage.
“Did he… shit Sydney. Did he try to fuck you?” His chest is heaving with anger, his heart pounding furiously under my hands.
“God no! Drew, no way. He kissed me and I left immediately. That’s it.” Holy shit he’s going to kill Adam. “I was never alone with him any other time. One of the guys was always with me.”
He calms down a fraction and wraps his arms around me, burying his head in my neck. We stand like that for a long time, just holding each other tight.
When he finally breaks his hold and steps back, I can see that his eyes are shining with unshed tears.
“Syd, let’s sit.”
“What? I can’t take anymore Drew. Are you breaking up with me?” I choke out.
“Fuck no!” he growls. “I might want to break that fucker’s neck, but I’ll never leave you Sydney. I just know how he is. Please, sit, baby.” He directs me to the bed, sitting down and pulling me onto his lap.
He’s silent for a while, rubbing a hand up and down my leg, the panic welling up inside me with every passing second.
“Drew, you’re killing me here. Please just tell me.”
He sighs sadly and tugs on his hair with his free hand. “You know the phone call I got in L.A?”
“Of course.” This is bad, really bad. That call pissed him off more than I’ve ever seen him, including just now when he found out Adam tried to kiss me. That says a lot.
“I’ve been trying to stop them, Sam’s been trying to stop them. Hell, I’ve had an entire legal team trying to stop them, Sydney.” Drew is unable to meet my eyes, instead watching his hand slowly move up and down my leg.
“Stop what?” I whisper in a broken voice.
“Someone saw us, Syd.” He chokes on the words. “There are pictures of us at Chad’s house in Brentwood. They’re publishing them tomorrow.”
I let his words sink in. Brentwood. Chad’s. Pool. Skinny dipping. Hot outdoor sex. Holy fuck!
I think I must stop breathing because Drew is yelling at me to look at him, but all I hear is the whooshing of blood behind my ears. I feel his hand force my head down between my legs.
“Breathe Sydney!” he tells me as my head spins and becomes desperate for air.
When that doesn’t work Drew lays me back on the bed and he curls up behind me, wrapping his arms around my trembling body and holding me tight against him. Over time, my breathing steadies and my heart slows down. After a while, I’m able to somewhat function and I roll over to face Drew.
“People… people are going to see us … having sex?” I choke on the words, tears running noiselessly down my face. How much can one person cry?
“No baby, they didn’t get pictures of that. We were under the cabana, thank fuck. But everything else? I’m so sorry Sydney. It was my idea, I shouldn’t have…” his voice breaks. “The thought of anyone seeing you like that, fuck!” He lets go of me and runs his hands through his hair, yanking on it in frustration.
I can’t move. I would think I was catatonic except I’m pretty sure you can’t actually be aware that you are catatonic. So I guess I’m just frozen in place. I thought Drew finding out about Adam was going to be bad, but this? This is so much worse.
“My parents, my co-workers… I swallow loudly, “they’re all going to see me?” I whisper. Then I suck in a breath, “Your parents? Holy shit, Drew.”
Drew jumps up from the bed and yanks a suitcase out of the closet, throwing it onto a nearby chair.
“Get up and get packed,” he says to me.
“What? You just got home, why would we leave?” I’m astonished that he can even think of doing anything except hiding in a hole for the next year or so until the public forgets about us.
“We’re going away, on a vacation.” He starts putting clothes into the suitcase, haphazardly chucking in whatever he can get his hands on.
“But…” Drew interrupts my sentence.
“Sydney, it’s either stay here and watch this horror unfold or get the fuck out of here and try not to think about it. Which do you prefer?” He stops packing and stares at me until I can manage a response.
“Leave,” I say, joining him in the closet to start pulling my clothes out.
“I’ll be right back, pack for warm weather,” Drew says as he takes out his phone and starts dialing.
He goes into the hallway so I won’t be stressed out by his conversation, but Angry Drew has an abnormally loud voice so I can hear everything he says.
“Jane, get the plane ready to leave in three hours…”
“Yeah… Call her first and make sure it’s okay…”
“No, Rhys is doing that…”
“He can deal with that bullshit!...”
“Sorry!... No, he can call me to run it by me…”
“Yeah…yeah… what do you think?...Okay, bye.”
He disconnects and must make another call immediately.
“Rhys! I need you to figure out a statement….”
“I don’t give a fuck!”
“They bettah not even try that shit!... I swear… “
“No!... No!... What the fuck Rhys, I said no!...”
“Yeah, wicked pissed. I wanna fuckin’ punch the shit outta somethin’, whadda you think?…”
“Get me his numbah… just do it!”
He’s still making calls when I walk into the bathroom to gather my toiletries, thankfully out of earshot. I’m done packing by the time he returns to the bedroom and zips up the suitcase.
“Everything okay?” I ask meekly.
Drew gives me a dark look as if to say ‘not a chance in hell’ and hauls our luggage down the stairs. I trail behind, feeling betrayed when I catch Evan’s eye, knowing that he told Drew about Adam. I’m not the one who writes their paychecks, so I can’t blame them if Drew demanded to know what was going on with me. It’s not as though I’ve been acting normal lately, so Drew was certain to drill them as soon as he got home. He probably threatened their jobs.
Less than an hour after Drew pulled the suitcase from the closet, we’re climbing into the SUV and leaving the underground garage.
“We just have one stop before the airport,” Drew says to me. I glance at him and surprisingly, I see a sparkle of mischief in his eyes. How can he be in a good mood with a metric fuck-ton of shit raining down on us?
I look outside as the Mercedes slows to a stop. �
�Hey, this is Leah and Ryker’s building.” Drew sits there, smirking.
The door opens and Leah comes piling in, squealing at the top of her lungs.
“Vacation! I’m so excited!” She hugs me so tight I think I’m going to explode, then takes the seat in front of us.
“Hey guys,” Ryker says calmly as he follows Leah into the car.
“You guys are coming with us?” I ask, feeling much happier than I was a few minutes ago.
“Yep! Your man called us up and neither of us have anything that can’t be postponed, so we’re coming with you!” Leah says.
“I just have one phone interview that I can’t miss, and a photo shoot that they agreed to do next week,” Ryker tells us.
“Where are we going?” I ask Drew.
“Your mom said we could use her house in Belize,” Drew says modestly.
My mouth drops open. “You arranged all of this within the last hour and a half?”
“Ummm, not exactly. When I got the call from Sam that we lost the final appeal, I left Tokyo knowing that we were probably going to want to skip town. I called your mom before I got on my flight. The plane and the company,” he nods at Leah and Ryker, “Those I arranged in the last hour.”
Leah turns around in her seat to face us. “So, why do you need to leave town?” Interested to hear the answer, Ryker turns around as well, wanting to know what we have to say.
My face burns with what must be a deep scarlet blush and I can’t look my friends in the eye. “Uh, well…” I stammer, unable to finish my sentence.
Drew stiffens up, equally embarrassed, but manages to speak. “When we were in California, Chad let us borrow his Brentwood home for an afternoon.”
“I remember you telling me that,” Leah says.
“Yeah, but I didn’t tell you everything,” I whisper.
Drew shifts uncomfortably in his seat, a slight pink tinge on his cheeks, and continues. “So, we ate lunch and swam some and apparently there was a photographer with a long lens somewhere in the trees.”
“Okay,” Ryker says, “So what? We all know that those parasites are ruthless.”
Uncomfortable to say it out loud, Drew clears his throat. “Ummm, we didn’t feel the need for swimsuits, since, ummm, Chad’s yard is very private.”
Silence... Dead. Awkward. Silence.
Their shocked faces show that they finally understand what the problem is in this scenario.
Leah loudly breaks the tension, screaming, “Oh no!” Then her mouth twists up as she realizes something. “Wait, that was two weeks ago. Why is this a big deal now?”
“Because I had a team of lawyers trying to stop them from publishing the photos!” Drew snaps. “And we finally lost our last appeal. They’re printing them tomorrow.” His shoulders sag with defeat.
Leah’s mouth forms into an ‘o’ and Ryker sits there with wide eyes.
“Yeah, I know,” I say sadly. “There’s really nothing to say about it.”
“Have you seen them?” Leah asks us.
“No,” Drew says through clenched teeth. “They won’t let anyone have copies, they want the ‘exclusive’ and convinced the judge they could be leaked if they had to release them.” He spits out the word exclusive as if it were poison in his mouth.
“Well, maybe they’re not that bad,” she counters. “Sometimes when they’re really far away, everything is fuzzy.”
Even though there’s nothing even remotely funny about this situation, I burst out laughing at Leah’s observation.
“What?” She asks, giving me an odd look.
“I don’t know what’s worse, having everyone see me naked or having everyone see really bad pictures of me naked,” I tell her.
Drew laughs with me and puts his arm around my shoulders, kissing the top of my head. “I vote for both being equally awful. I mean, how in the hell am I supposed to punch every single guy who looks at those pictures? It’ll take me a lifetime.”
We all laugh with Drew, but I know that if he could, he really would punch every single one of them.
Every. Single. One.
CHAPTER 27
“This is so much better than being held hostage in your brownstone,” I tell Drew as I look out over the gleaming Caribbean Sea.
“It certainly is.” He grins at me from the other end of the hammock that we’re sharing.
“God that feels so good,” I say as he gently but firmly rubs my feet. We’re sitting head to toe on my Mom’s giant hammock that hangs in a quiet, secluded area near the water. The warm ocean breeze is gently rocking us.
“Do you regret meeting me, Sydney?” Drew asks unexpectedly, turning our relaxing moment into a serious one with just six little words.
“No. Not for a single minute.” I reply immediately, watching the waves lap gently at the rock wall that surrounds my mother’s island. “You don’t know how miserable I was Drew.” I return my gaze to his brilliant green eyes. “I wasn’t really alive before you. I was just a scared, lonely, anti-social girl with no future and no identity.”
“I feel as if I ruined your life.”
“You gave me a life, Drew.”
He gets up from the hammock carefully, turns, and lies back down, his long hard body resting on top of mine. I inhale deeply, the scent of coconut oil, grapefruit body wash and that unmistakable scent of a sun-kissed Drew mixing together in an intoxicating cocktail that sets my pulse racing.
“I can’t imagine my life without you Sydney,” he whispers as he drags his lips and teeth down my neck. “I need you more than I need air.”
Drew stops kissing me to stare at my face, reading my feelings in the way that only he can.
I run my hands up his broad back, over his shoulders and into his soft, messy hair. Knotting my fingers into the silky strands I pull his mouth down to mine, greedy for the taste of him. His response is instant and heated, unleashing a raw passion that has him branding me with his deep kisses.
A soft moan escapes from the back of my throat when Drew presses his hardening length between my thighs. His hands are everywhere at once, skimming down my hips, tugging on the hard peaks under my bra, cupping my face gently. I’m writhing underneath him from his blazing touch.
“Syd,” he groans into my mouth. “Let’s go inside. Even though this is a very private spot on an even more private island, I have no desire to repeat our Brentwood performance.”
Breathless, all I can do is nod. Drew untangles himself from the swaying fabric and helps me stand up next to him. Grinning, he grabs my hand and leads me through the lush garden and into our room, which has its own entrance facing this side of the yard.
Once inside, he reaches for the sarong tied around my waist and unknots it, letting the bright fabric flutter to the floor. We crash together again, red hot desire unfurling in my core as he claims my mouth with his tongue. Impatient to feel his skin on mine, I grab the hem of his shirt and yank it over his head, breaking our contact. Drew’s eyes burn with an intense fire as I untie his board shorts and shove them down to his ankles.
Before he can protest, I drop to my knees in front of this fine man and wrap my hand around his thick shaft.
“Fuck baby,” he groans. “It’s been too long.”
I lean in and swirl my tongue over the end of him, stroking with my hand at the same time. He mutters a string of curses and twists his fingers in my hair, pulling just hard enough to pull a gasp from my lips. The burning in my scalp is pain and pleasure combined, letting me know how much my touch is affecting him, driving me to satisfy him.
When I open wide and take all of him in my mouth, tasting him as his hips buck uncontrollably. I move up and down his length, pressing my tongue along the bottom as I pull back, then pushing forward until he reaches the back of my throat. Over and over I push and pull until he’s panting and gasping for breath, on the verge of collapsing to the floor.
“Stop, please,” he moans. “I want to be inside you.”
I release him from my mouth and stand
in front of him, letting him watch as I untie the strings to my bikini top and toss it aside. Not breaking eye contact, I hook my thumbs in the sides of my bottoms and shimmy out of them until I’m naked.
Drew licks his lips hungrily as I allow him a moment to appreciate my body, his eyes roving up and down, alight with desire. Without warning he scoops me up and throws me down on the bed, his tan muscles flexing as he climbs on top of me. His mouth finds mine and he flicks his tongue over my parted lips, causing a blistering heat to build between my thighs.
“I need to make sure you’re ready for me, because I’m not going to be gentle,” he rasps in my ear.
I need this, badly. To feel the deep connection with him that I’d been without as I struggled with my demons alone. To let him take charge and free my mind for a while.
His head drops to my breasts and he alternates between gentle licks and rough suckling as my eyelids become heavy with lust.
“I want you to watch me Sydney,” he demands as he licks his way down my abdomen.
Drew winds his hands beneath my hips and lifts me from the bed, arching my back and thrusting my breasts up toward the ceiling.
“So fucking gorgeous,” he moans as he lowers his head to my drenched sex.
When his mouth makes contact with my slick folds, I scream in ecstasy and my hands twist in the sheets. He swirls his tongue furiously, not allowing me a moment’s reprieve from his skillful touch. His eyes meet with mine as he latches on to the small bundle of nerves and sucks gently, quickly sending me spiraling into a free fall of bliss.
Before I can come down from my high, he’s flipped me over onto my knees and placed my hands together on the top of the tall headboard. “Don’t let go,” he commands.
I’m all too willing to comply and couldn’t form a coherent thought to protest if I weren’t. One strong hand covers mine on the headboard, holding me in place. The other guides his hard cock to my opening, thrusting in violently until he’s buried to the hilt.
“Jesus Syd, you feel so fucking good.” I can hear his voice waver. He’s already on the edge of losing the control he craves so much.
“Let yourself go babe,” I say between moans as he slides slowly in and out of my slick passage.
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