No. I would have sooner forgotten how to walk.
“Have you forgotten what my mouth felt like?” His lips moved hard and demanding along my cheek; I knew their destination. I awaited their arrival. “Have you forgotten this?”
His mouth attacked mine and I, I whimpered because I wanted nothing more.
His kiss was everything I remembered, topped with anger and depraved need; he tore into my mouth for the audacity that I had to want to forget him—the man who’d turned my heart to dust. I should be trying to hit him over the head with my snowboard. But here I was, the addict, snorting up the powdered remains of my heart because I’d do anything for one last taste of his high.
“Have you forgotten what it was like to hold me in that sweet pussy of yours?” The hand on my stomach dove south with no concern for the clothing that was in his way. I gasped as his fingers slid into my folds, his chest rumbling against my back. “No, I’d say that some parts of you haven’t forgotten.”
“E-Emmett… someone could see.” We were only pulled off to the side of one of the green marked trails. It was only a matter of time before someone came. I moaned as his fingers expertly toyed with me. I hated how he knew just what to do to me.
“My back is to anyone coming,” he said as he took my mouth again, his tongue punishing me for trying to dissuade him. “Have you forgotten how I make you come? Say yes and I’ll make you come so many times that you won’t even be able to walk down this goddamn mountain your legs will be so numb.”
Even if I had, I was going to remember again very soon the way he tugged on my clit.
“Emmett…” I moaned, hips arching against his hand. I should hate him for this. I should hate him for a lot of things. I didn’t.
“Have you forgotten, sunshine?” He whispered in my ear. “Have you forgotten anything about me?”
“N-no.” His mouth swallowed my scream as his fingers took me over the edge.
“You don’t get to forget me, sunshine. You don’t ever get to forget me.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
My brain came back together like snowflakes falling on the ground. Two skiers flew past us, but their eyes were focused on the trail ahead. Still, my breath caught. The release was too much. It broke the dam inside of me.
“Have you forgotten, Emmett?” My voice gained strength—and volume—with every word. Emotions. All of them. Poured out of me like snow from the heavens. “Have you forgotten anything about me? Have you forgotten that I love you?” His solid body tensed behind me.
Yes, I did realize how ridiculous this looked. I was yelling at the man who’d broken my heart less than a week ago, yet whose hand still cupped my sex, whose fingers had just been knuckle-deep inside of me, and whom I still loved.
“Have you forgotten that you were the one to leave me? That you were the one who’d said you’d gotten everything that you wanted.” I tried not to whimper when his hand left me, slipping up to my stomach to hold my waist.
“Ally…” Tortured. Pleading.
I gave him no mercy, pulling out of his grasp and spinning around, my board moving awkwardly with me. “Or was it not enough? Am I some sort of game to you, Emmett? Maybe I should just start calling you ‘King’ since all I am is just your stupid pawn.”
Stay. Go. Every option promised more pain. So, I continued with a pitifully watery voice, “I don’t have anything else left to give you, Emmett. Or have you forgotten that I already gave you everything?”
He closed the space between us. And I let him because I was weak. I didn’t want to go. I’d rather be fighting with him than be without him any day of the week.
“No, sunshine.” His hand cupped my face. “I haven’t forgotten a single fucking thing about you—or what I said or did.”
“So then just tell me why you are doing this to me.”
Hoarse words caressed my cheek. “Because I want you and I shouldn’t. Because I need you and I shouldn’t.”
Something wasn’t right.
“What’s wrong, Emmett?” I whispered. The man had destroyed me. I’d still do anything to save him.
He swayed. “Come home with me.”
Yes. “Why?”
He groaned like there was a knife buried somewhere in him. There wasn’t—I checked.
His eyes swam in front of mine. “I need you. I just—Fuck.” He pulled away so fast I was surprised he didn’t fall over. “Forget it. I have no right—“
“I’ll come,” I insisted, reaching for him.
If it was the wrong decision, then it shouldn’t have felt so right. Maybe I was just following any chance I had for one last hit of the ecstasy that was Emmett Jameson. Or maybe I went because the pile of shards that used to be my heart quaked and trembled with an unreasonable and unjustifiable hope that this was their chance to be pieced back together again.
Every woman has her guilty pleasure. The one thing that is oh so good, yet so, so bad. Well, he was mine.
Whatever happened next, I only had myself to blame. But, it’s not like my heart could be much more damaged, right?
I don’t get nervous when I fly. But there is one moment, the brief second where the front of the plane has lifted off the tarmac but the rear is still planted where I get this pit of uncertainty in my stomach. It’s not fear; I wasn’t afraid. Just purely objective uncertainty.
What if we don’t have enough speed? What if the back is too heavy? Will we take off? Will we crash back down and burn?
I’m not an engineer by any stretch so these are all probably silly questions, but the same ball of uncertainty spun like a top the entire ride down the mountain and in the car to his house. He might have been perfectly fine snowboarding down the trail, but I still drove and he still fought himself the whole way.
The cabin in the woods appeared just as magically as the first time. I wondered if Emmett had just shown the contractor a Thomas Kinkade painting and told him to build it.
“Ally…” my hand was on the doorknob when he spun my back against it.
I couldn’t bear to hear him tell me again how he didn’t deserve me. Sorry, King, that’s my decision.
“Don’t ask me again, Emmett,” I said quietly as I opened the door and stumbled back into his house, the sweet scent of weed mixed with the dark, earthy spice of pine immediately assaulting me.
I kept moving farther inside to where I stood between the couch and the fireplace that crackled behind me. Like the more distance I put between myself and the door, meant the harder it would be for him to throw me out.
He kicked the door shut, following me—predator to prey—as though I might not be real. “Just tell me what you need.”
“You,” he growled, with eyes that flickered like a dying fire just begging to come back to life. “You’re all I want, sunshine, so bring me the dawn,” I heard before his mouth took mine.
The first touch finally had me forgetting something about him: I forgot about his words from the other day because those words were lies. I forgot that he’d said them to hurt me in some twisted attempt to protect me and save my relationship with Chance. I forgot any thought that suggested my heart would ever be whole without him in my life.
He destroyed my mouth and I, in turn, destroyed any doubt in my mind that he was anything other than my everything.
Snow clothes, cold gear, underwear… they all fell to the floor like the layers we’d tried to build between us.
“Perfect,” he growled into my neck.
Emmett’s hands were the best thing to happen to my breasts since light padding and comfortable sports bras.
And that was before his mouth got to them.
He lifted and laid me onto the pile of clothes even though there was a couch a few feet away and a bed upstairs. But this, this was raw. It was broken. It was not where it was supposed to be, but it was everything it was meant to be. Just like us.
My gasps competed with the burning fire for available soundwaves as his mouth claimed its turn at my chest. I swor
e the way he sucked my nipples you’d think that they got him high.
High. Hard. Same difference.
“Always ready,” he nipped my sternum as his fingers slid through my folds, “always ready for me to take…”
My hips arched against him. “A-always ready…” I moaned as two fingers entered me, “to give…”
Even if I could have said something else, I was silenced with his tongue. Moaning into his mouth, molten desire spread like lava through my body, so deep, so penetrating, my bone marrow turned to magma.
He lifted off of me, goosebumps following in the wake of his retreat. Cursing until he found them, he pulled out a condom from his discarded pants and handed it to me.
“Cover me.”
My teeth dug into my lip as I tried to focus on getting the slippery rubber out of the package. It didn’t help that it seemed like he was purposely trying to make it as difficult for me as possible, rubbing my G-spot over and over again.
My body sang only for him—loyally, reverently, and with everything it had because the only song that it knew was his national anthem.
Once I had the condom out, I pushed myself up to sit as he remained upright on his knees between my legs, his thick arousal pointing squarely in my face. I could see the blood pumping through the engorged vein; the tip leaked slightly underneath my stare.
His hiss as I gripped his hard, hot length was motivation. His curse when I wrapped my lips around his head, was my success. Now, it was his turn to sing while I sucked him hard, feeling him push all the way back against my throat, as groans and curses formed a melody out of his mouth.
His fingers in my hair, alternately gripped and massaged my head as he let me pleasure him, before he used my hair to hold me steady and pull himself from my mouth.
“Cover me, Ally.” This time, there was no room to disobey.
I rolled the condom down over him, it barely reaching to the end of his shaft. Back on the floor, his mouth covering mine, I felt him rub against my entrance. Without the distraction of pleasuring him, his fingers that had never left my sex threatened to take me over the edge.
“Emmett…” I pleaded just as his mouth covered mine. His tongue filled my gasp as he slid inside of me.
“Christ, Ally…” Our bodies moved unconsciously. In and out. Like breathing.
Except not like slow, programmed breaths. We moved as though we were suffocating without it. Every thrust I pulled and he pushed, gasping for life.
He moved up and pulled my legs up to his shoulders, letting him slide deeper into my core.
“That’s it, sunshine,” he bit out, frantically slamming into me, his eyes holding mine. “Take me. Take everything.”
Just like my knuckles as they gripped into the clothes around me, I felt like my whole body had turned white with how taut every muscle was. His fingers skated down my stomach and I knew I was done for.
Every push he hit my sweet spot. Every push he teased my clit.
It was like the night of Halloween—except this time, it was his erection filling me and tearing me apart from the inside instead of just his fingers.
Like DNA, my orgasms spiraled together—a double helix of pleasure and pain, love and hate—tighter and tighter until the coil broke. And so did I.
Annihilating. Tantric. Consuming. Grounding.
“Yours.” His promise to me as his restraint broke. He drove into me, roaring as he found his release.
My legs slid off of his shoulders as he collapsed on top of me, the cracking of our breaths echoing the fire. Sweating, panting, he slid out of me and off to the side, peeling the filled condom off of his still-impressively hard cock.
It wasn’t the right order. The sex was supposed to come after the make-up. But this was us—we ran before we walked, hated before we loved, forgave before we fought. Maybe it wasn’t right, but it definitely wasn’t wrong.
Coarse fingers turned my face to his.
“I’m such as ass,” he said gratingly.
I loved his voice after sex. So rough and raw and my body so sensitive that it alone kindled the pressure between my legs again. “I bring you here,” his finger trailed lightly along my cheek, “I don’t tell you why. I can’t even make it to the bed to fuck you because I’ve been so starved for your touch.”
There was no way in hell I was going to complain when he put it like that. Not like I was complaining anyway.
“Starved?” I whispered. “It’s only been a few days.”
“I’m fucking emaciated, Sunshine.” His thumb brushed over my lip. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” Not in the slightest. “Tell me now. Why am I here? A week ago…” Well, there was no point in repeating all of that. “And now, you’re starving…”
“Because…” his finger gently trailed along the edge of my jaw. God, every endearing touch on my face was making my insides throb even more. “Because I want your smile, your sunshine, your tears, your hurt.” His lips touched mine; the softest kiss he’d ever given me and I breathed in his desperate devotion. “I want your body, your heart, your love. I want them all and I can’t have them.” His lips planted butterfly kisses on my cheek—so soft, I could have been imagining them.
“Because of Chance?” There was no point leaving him out of the conversation anymore.
“No. I stopped caring what your brother thought the second I realized I couldn’t live without you. I can’t have them because I’ve made you hate me.” His twisted laugh scored my skin. “That was all I ever wanted to do—all I ever needed to do to keep you away from me. And now that I’ve done it, I wish like fuck that I could take it back.”
Delusional. Hallucinating. Did Channing spike my tea? Nick stopped in the coffee shop earlier, did he spike my coffee with something? That was the only explanation.
Was it possible to hallucinate what you needed to hear so that your body didn’t finally just give up and call it quits on this thing called life?
Yes, I think so.
There was no other explanation for what was happening because it certainly couldn’t be real.
I started laughing—because that’s what awkward people do in serious situations. And this situation was very serious.
“You think I hate you?” Incredulous was a poor descriptor for how I sounded. “After all of this?”
“Ally, what I said—“
“No, hold on.” I propped myself up on my elbow, looking down into the sparkling black abyss of his eyes. “You’re right. I do hate you. In fact, I made a list specifically for you in my diary of all the things that I hate about you—“ I paused, almost feeling guilty for the way he was taking me completely seriously right now. “You, with your stupid, sexy smile and your attractive asshole attitude. Let me tell you… I hate the way you look at me like you want to devour me. I hate the way you respond not to what I say, but to what I think because you always seem to know. I hate the way you insist on looking out for me and protecting me when sometimes, all I want to do is lose myself. I hate the way you know my body better than I do and I hate the way it responds perfectly to your touch.”
His eyes glistened as he realized just where I was going with this.
Tears were already streaming down my face as I pushed forward, “I hate the way you punish yourself for the past when you don’t deserve it. I hate the way I always look for you and the way I can’t stop thinking about you. I hate the way that it feels like I need you more than I need air.”
“I hate the way you keep me on the edge of having everything that I need. But mostly, I hate the way you’ve tried to make me hate you, because I can’t. Not even a little bit. Because I love you.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. Hard words from a man who felt like they would never be enough.
“I know and I forgave you days ago,” I promised.
His lips crushed mine again as though he were trying to seal my words like a promise so that I couldn’t take them back.
“Alice Daisy Ryder,” I thought I held my br
eath, but the truth was he’d stolen it. “I’ve been in the dark and I’ve realized that you’re all I need; I need the sun to break through. I’m so fucking in love with you.”
I smiled so big that I had to laugh even as tears escaped down my cheeks. “I hate the way you make me cry and laugh at the same time. I love you, Emmett, for the bazillionth time.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sassing me right now? Because you’ve said it more times?” I laughed harder and shook my head. “I think you are.”
And then he began to tickle me.
“Don’t you worry, little Miss Sunshine, I’ve got every fucking day for the rest of my life to make sure that I surpass your tally.”
I gasped for air. “What did you just say?”
“I need you, Ally. I need you in my life. Every fucking day for forever because otherwise there is no light; there is no life.”
“No, wait. Are you… did you just say the f-word?”
We froze, a slow grin spreading over his face. I was sassing him again for the time he told me that ‘forever’ wasn’t a part of his vocabulary.
“Forever, Sunshine. I need you forever. I’ll love you forever.”
My heart hurt for a whole new reason—one that I thought I’d never experience: so much love that I thought it would burst at the seams of where he’d soldered all of the shards of it back together again.
“So, yes, I did say the f-word. It felt… pretty good, I have to say,” he said with a sexy grin as his hands slid down to my waist. “But now I’m wondering if I’ll enjoy that word more than my current favorite f-word.”
“That’s a tough choice, Mr. Jameson.” I slid my hips closer to his.
“It is. Maybe exploring both options again will make it easier…” I shivered with anticipation as his lips touched mine. “I want you forever, Ally.”
I moaned as his teeth grabbed my lower lip.
“That felt pretty damn good. Now, I’m going to take you upstairs—to bed—and fuck you nice and slow and see how that compares.”
The Winter Games Box Set Page 70