by Melody Anne
It was such an intimate gesture.
His fingers wrapped around my wrist and he pulled me on top of him. I straddled his hips and leaned down to kiss him again. Tension filled his body, his muscles strained and moved under my fingers, but he lay there and let me control the pace.
His hands were firm but gentle as they settled around my waist.
I lifted enough so that I could hold him in place, then met his gaze and sank down onto him. I don’t know who groaned louder. Our voices mixed together in harmony.
“Shit.” Seth gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. “Don’t move, baby. Just . . . give me a second.” His nostrils flared and he inhaled ragged breaths.
I clenched around him.
“Fuck, don’t do that!” His hands held me down, impaled on his entire length. Now his entire body shook.
Something wanton unleashed inside me.
I was making him beg. Power surged through me and I threw back my head.
I wanted to move. The sensation of being completely filled made me feel too good. I wanted to come again, with him inside me. I squeezed again. His breath whooshed from his lungs and he slowly rocked my hips.
It wasn’t going to take much.
I was already so close.
A whimper escaped from between my lips.
Seth opened his eyes and looked up at me. The emotion in them took my breath away. His hands rose to cup my breasts, squeezing the nipples between his thumb and finger. Molten heat shot straight to my clit.
I moved, letting him slide almost all the way out before I plunged back down.
Seth growled low in his throat. He dropped one hand and slid it between our bodies. His thumb pressed against my clit, and every time I rocked forward, the tension inside me grew tighter.
“I’m too fucking close, baby. Ride me. I want to feel you explode on my cock.”
I whimpered, put my hands on his chest, and thrust my hips back and forth. The dual sensations of his cock and thumb drove me higher and higher. Sounds came out of my mouth that I’d never heard before.
Light danced behind my eyes.
Oh, God.
Did I say that out loud?
Did it matter?
I was so close.
“Come for me, baby,” Seth growled. “For me.”
He swiped his thumb one more time and I shattered. My cry of release tangled with emotions that clogged in my throat. Tears burned my eyes. Wave after wave of the most delicious pleasure I’ve ever felt washed through me.
I felt Seth go rigid under me, and then he growled, low and deep.
His arms wrapped around me and he pulled me down so that I was lying on top of him. I could hear his heart thundering under my ear. It matched what was going on in my own chest. Every few seconds, fissures of pleasure made me clench around him.
Each time he groaned and lifted his hips a little.
He kissed my neck, my jaw, and finally claimed my lips. His tongue stroked languidly over mine. When he stopped, he laid his forehead against mine. There was just enough light from the hallway that I could see how bright his eyes were.
Something that I thought I saw in them took my breath away.
He probably saw the same thing reflecting from mine.
This was too fast and too intense, but I didn’t want it to stop. Every single day that I spent with him made me fall just a little bit more. The days, the nights, were running together, and the outside world was just a vague notion.
I didn’t want to think about what would happen after. When CS was done. When I went back to school. All I knew was that every time I thought about tomorrow, Seth was a part of it.
I couldn’t imagine my life without him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Seth
“You cook now?” Avery asked the next morning. She stood in the doorway to the kitchen wearing nothing but my T-shirt. Eggs be damned. I wanted to spread her out over the table and have her for breakfast instead.
“Food. I need sustenance after last night.” She met my stare, and her cheeks turned pink.
God, she looked hot with her bed head and a smile. I think we finally fell asleep around five, but I woke up an hour later. Some habits were hard to break, I guess. Prison makes you a rule follower whether you like it or not.
Avery sidled up next to me and peeked into the pan. “You smell delicious.”
I ducked my head. It wasn’t some fancy eggplant dish for sure like she had whipped up the other night, but I could make scrambled eggs and bacon. Could even pour a mean glass of OJ too.
I leaned down and buried my face in her neck, inhaling a lungful of Avery. “You smell delicious,” I murmured against her skin. I could stay there all day, just breathing her in. That smell, a combination of vanilla and flowers and just her, had me aching to be near her.
“Cooking bacon shirtless is not a smart idea, but I can’t find it in myself to complain.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to my shoulder. I almost flipped the fucking food right out onto the floor. Her chuckle told me she knew it too.
I’d only thrown on my jeans before I made it out to the kitchen. Avery had on my shirt and no way in hell was I going to take it back. Well, not yet anyway. I did have plans to take it off her again. Very soon.
“Sit.” I waved the spatula at her.
She walked over to the coffeepot instead and reached up high for a mug in the cupboard. The shirt rode up enough so that I could clearly see she had not put on panties before coming into the kitchen.
Damn her. I was trying to do something nice and she was shooting my concentration to shit.
“You are evil,” I muttered.
She grinned at me over her shoulder. “I was thinking, since I showed you my special spot yesterday, maybe we could do something you want to today?”
The laugh burst out before I could stop it. “If I remember correctly, I saw your special spot about half a dozen times. And licked it and kissed it and . . . ”
“Okay!” Her cheeks turned bright pink, but she laughed too. “Let me rephrase, then. Since I took you to the lake, is there anyplace you want to show me?”
She looked so damned hopeful that I sobered instantly. My life before prison wasn’t anything to write home about. I partied. Drank. Hung out with Ryan and did some stupid shit. Most of it revolved around Ryan’s place, three trailers down from ours.
A knot tightened in my stomach. Christ, was I really contemplating taking Avery to a trailer park? As long as I stayed five hundred feet from my old home, I’d be within the conditions of my parole.
Shit. I scrubbed my hand over my face.
“It’s okay,” she backtracked quickly, sensing my hesitation. “We can hang out here or go down to the pool.”
But Avery had shared something that meant a lot to her, and I’d be a selfish prick if I didn’t return the gesture. Pretty fucked-up when the best part of my past was a house with axles.
“Let me make a call after breakfast.” I slid the eggs and bacon onto two Betty Boop plates and carried them to the table. I hadn’t noticed that Avery had gotten me a cup of coffee too. The normalcy of the whole situation hit me hard between the eyes.
It would be so easy to fall into this safe place.
Somehow with Avery, I forgot about the shit right outside my door. I watched her dive into her food, and her eyes closed as she moaned around a mouthful of eggs. Damn if it didn’t make me feel ten feet tall and bulletproof to see her so happy. The knot in my stomach tightened.
It was going to kill me when she realized she deserved better. And she would. Once community service was over and she stepped back into her real life, her friends, her classes, she’d see it.
Her fork paused halfway to her mouth.
“Aren’t you eating?” She cocked her head to the side. “Is everything okay?”
It wasn’t, but there was no way I would break this magical spell and tell her that.
“I have somewhere to show you, but it’s not anything like that spot
at the lake. If you want,” I added.
Avery set her fork down and pushed the chair back. She was on my lap with her arms around my neck before I could blink.
“I just want to know more about you. If it’s a part of you, if you have good memories there, then I’d be honored if you shared it with me.” Her lips moved down the side of my neck, and the hairs on my arms stood up.
“Breakfast,” I mumbled.
“No.” She moved her legs so that she straddled my lap, and I could feel the heat from between her legs through my jeans. When she shifted her hips, I was gone.
“Don’t blame me when you pass out from hunger later.” I gripped under her thighs and stood up, keeping her wrapped around me. She tightened her arms and bit down on my shoulder. I missed a step.
“Damn it.”
I made my way to her bedroom with the grace of a stampeding water buffalo.
Avery said nothing as I made the turn into Garden Grove Estates.
We’d taken my truck instead of her Beemer on purpose. That car in this neighborhood would draw notice. Something I didn’t want or need. I hoped that if Davis did see my truck, he’d realize I wasn’t there trying to see Sara. That he wouldn’t call the cops even though I wasn’t technically doing anything wrong. There were about five hundred feet between Ryan’s place and my old home, give or take a few hundred.
The dull thump in my chest sped up as familiar sites greeted me. The night I got out, I had driven back to the entrance to the park, but it was dark and I allowed myself only a few glances before I took off.
Now I saw everything clearly.
In a year, not much had changed. Old Mrs. Hopsin’s flowers still looked like they belonged on a home and garden show, not next to a thirty-year-old run-down blue trailer. My mom used to laugh and call them eloquently barbaric looking.
Well, she did before she met Davis and stopped thinking anything at all except when her next fix would come. I tightened my fingers around the steering wheel. This might have been a bad idea, because if I saw that fucker, I’d be tempted to run him over.
It was taking a chance, going there to see Ryan, but I wanted to give Avery something that was a part of me. This, the rows of trailers and barking dogs and kids running around, was me.
As if she could sense my mixed feelings about being back, Avery reached over and put her hand over one of mine, softly stroking her thumb back and forth. I felt the tension ease a little.
“So this is where you grew up?” she asked. Her gaze had been shifting back and forth since I pulled into the park. She probably wanted to run home and take a shower to wash the grunge off.
“Yeah, this was home sweet home.” I tried to see it through Avery’s eyes—the poverty, the lack of caring about anything, which was obvious by the condition of the cars and yards. It was even worse than I remembered. What the fuck had I been thinking, bringing her here?
“It must have been nice growing up around so many other kids.” The wistful note in her voice floored me.
“Huh?”
“There are kids everywhere. You probably ran around outside all day with your friends, right? That’s so great.”
She just summarized my entire childhood. I glanced over and saw a sad smile on her lips.
“Yeah, I guess.” Christ, no one ever called the way I grew up great. At least not in a serious way. “Didn’t you play outside with your friends?”
She shrugged. “Tennis lessons and horseback riding, I guess. If I were with other kids, it was always for some kind of lesson. I can’t remember just . . . playing with anyone. Not like this.” She waved her hand toward a group of boys in the middle of a game of war. Half were on one side of a driveway, hiding behind a car up on cinder blocks, their stick guns pointed at the kids on the other side.
“Or that?” I asked.
A group of about six teens were hanging out in a front yard. The girls were sitting on the lowered tailgate of a rusted truck, and the guys were tossing a ball around a few feet away. Music from inside the trailer thumped away over the laughter.
How many days had Ryan and I spent doing the exact same thing?
“I always wanted to be part of that,” Avery said. “Just hanging out, talking about anything but school or extracurricular activities or SAT scores. Having fun with boys.”
I really wasn’t sure what to say to her. From this side of the street, the lives of the rich kids looked golden. Never worry about heat or food or getting sick, hell, yeah.
Except she looked lost right now, and I hated it.
“What about your friend, the one from the bar?”
“Shari? Yeah, we’ve been friends pretty much forever. Our parents set us up in preschool. Thankfully we clicked, but it wasn’t until college that she tried to get me to loosen up a little.” She looked at me from the corner of her eye. “I started dating Grant freshman year of college, even though we’d known each other our entire lives. So I never really did the whole party scene as a teenager. The fishbowls were Shari’s idea, after she had a messy breakup with a guy freshman year. I went along with it because she needed a friend. Then it became this tradition of sorts, when my parents pissed me off, or when Shari broke up with some other guy.”
“Fishbowls? I don’t get it.”
“We had these bowls, and one had occupations and the other had every bar and club within five miles. We’d pick a personality and a location, and that’s who we were for the night.”
“The night we met?”
“Yeah. I don’t normally dress like that, if you haven’t noticed.” Avery smiled at me, and I reached out and wound my fingers between hers.
“I owe Shari a huge favor.” I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like if Avery wasn’t sitting next to me. Christ, I didn’t want to.
I pulled into the driveway of a light gray trailer with green trim. Of all of them in the park, it was probably the nicest from the outside. Ryan put a lot of energy into keeping it up. In case his mom ever decided to come back, I was sure, but I’d never say that to his face.
The door flew open, and Ryan bounded down the steps. I killed the engine and waited. If Avery wanted to leave, we would leave. The last thing I wanted to do was make her uncomfortable.
“Man, I thought you were shittin’ me, bringing her here.” Ryan leaned in the driver’s-side window. “Hello again, Fancy.”
I didn’t miss the way his gaze lowered to her bare legs, and I gave him a good smack upside the head.
“Dude, eyes above the neck.”
Ry winked at Avery. “Just appreciating what nature gave her.”
I started to smack him again when Avery laughed. “I can see why you two are such good friends. Neither of you knows how to rein it in.”
“Get that fine ass out here and grab a beer,” Ryan said. “You too, Avery.”
Avery’s laughter followed me out of the truck. It was good to hear it, especially here. Ryan’s house was the one place that had any good memories for me, and I really wanted her to see it like I did.
“The full effect.” Ryan swept his arm over the setup. Three lawn chairs, a red cooler filled with beer, and a fire in the old fire pit. Crazy how it looked exactly the same. But it felt different with Avery here now. Had we really sat around this fire for nights on end?
Way back when, I tried to get Melissa to come here with me. She’d laughed in my face and asked why she’d want to sit around a trailer park and drink cheap beer.
But Avery looked delighted as she strode over to the cooler like she’d been doing it her whole life.
“So, Ryan,” Avery said, snatching up a beer and plopping down on a rickety lawn chair, “you have to tell me stories about Seth.”
Ryan grinned.
“Shit,” I muttered, grabbing a beer and sliding into the chair next to Avery. I hadn’t expected she’d want to stay and hang out. Hadn’t really thought through what would happen if she did. Everyone in the park knew me and my truck. There were more than a few who would try to cause pro
blems.
“When the hell did you get out and why didn’t you call me?” a low, feminine voice said right behind me, as if on cue.
Ryan looked over my shoulder and sputtered. Beer dribbled down his chin. I thought I heard him mutter fuck, or maybe that was me. Long tan legs appeared, encased in barely there jean shorts. Tracy lifted one and straddled my chair before sinking down onto my lap. Her arms wove around my neck.
“If I knew you were out, I would have personally welcomed you home, baby.” She leaned in to kiss me, but I jerked back. My hands were on her hips, but it was only to stop her from dry-humping me in front of Avery.
“Err, hi, Tracy.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Avery stand up. Shit. I tried to move Tracy, but she was like a fucking burr stuck to my jeans.
“Tracy, is it?” I heard Avery ask. She stood on my left, and when I looked up, I couldn’t get a read on what she was thinking. “I’m Avery, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop dry-humping my boyfriend now.”
My mouth fell open, and Ryan sputtered around another mouthful of beer before bursting out with laughter.
Tracy stopped moving and glared at Ryan over her shoulder, then slowly lifted off my lap. She eyeballed Avery from head to toe. “This? Really? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I stood up before Tracy decided to do something stupid, and moved beside Avery. I wrapped my arm around her waist, and she leaned into me immediately.
“You’re just the flavor of the week, sweetie,” Tracy drawled. “We have history, me and him, and when he gets tired of your bony ass, he’ll be back in my bed.”
I wanted to roll my eyes. Good God. I hadn’t slept with Tracy in over three years. Not after one drunk night that I regretted as soon as I sobered up. We were never together after that, despite how hard she tried to change that.
“I think it’s time you went home, Trace,” Ryan said, taking the words out of my mouth. I shook my head, partly in disbelief that Tracy had actually just tried to pull what she did, and partly in disbelief at Avery’s too-cool-to-be-true reaction.
Tracy stormed off in a huff.
“You want some fries with that shake, girl?” Ryan hollered.