by M. Leighton
“Still slumming it, I see.” Her bright head tips toward me, even though I’m so insignificant she doesn’t deign to actually look at me.
“I don’t want to embarrass Evie at her show, so I’m going to very politely ask you to leave. Before I have to see to your exit by…other means.” Levi’s voice is naturally deep and low, but I’ve never heard him sound like this. There’s an edge to his words, a razor sharp band of steel that threatens to cut its target to shreds.
“How chivalrous!” Julianne laughs, a sound that reminds me of every Disney villainess ever created. “But I should caution you not to forget who I am, who my father is. I can overlook a lot, but some things even I won’t forgive.”
“Then tell me what they are,” Levi growls. “Give me a list and I’ll be sure to commit every infraction on it. If that’s the only way I can get you out of my life, I’ll waste a few more minutes of my time making sure you never come back. I’ll consider it a worthwhile investment.”
“Careful, Levi, you’re about to make me mad.”
Like the strike of a snake, Levi’s hand flicks out and snatches Julianne’s thin arm, his fingers biting into her pale flesh. “Do you think this is a joke? Do you think I’m kidding when I say that you disgust me? Do you think I’m teasing when I tell you that I never want to see you again?”
“Levi,” she warns, her voice more hushed now as though she doesn’t want anyone to hear her plead with him. Surreptitiously, her eyes dart right and left, checking to make sure the scene she created isn’t being overheard. “I’m telling you, you don’t want to do this. My father can still destroy you.”
“Save your breath. You have nothing left to threaten me with, or didn’t you hear the news? I outed my father, confessed to what we did, and let the world know that Evie’s the real deal. Hurting her was the only hold you ever had on me, but now you can’t play that card anymore. So,” he says, leaning forward to tower over her, intimidation in every taut line of his body, “let me make this as clear as I can make it. I am in love with Evie. Nothing you could say or do will change that. Ever.”
“You say that now, but—”
“I love her, Julianne! Not you. Never you. I don’t want you. At all. I don’t want to see you, hear from you, or even think about you for the rest of my life. What I do want is for you to stay the hell away from me and stay the hell away from Evie or so help me God—”
“Ahhh,” she shrieks theatrically, pulling her arm from Levi’s grip, outrage written on the landscape of her pretty yet ugly face. “How dare you touch me!”
“Julianne,” Levi begins, a quietly dangerous warning in the single word.
“Don’t you threaten me! You can keep your trash. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.” She gives her head a haughty shake before pinning me with her narrowed, glassy eyes. “And, you, you’re nothing but a poor, pathetic, blind bi—”
“Security!” I yell, cutting her off, my eyes never leaving hers. “Security!”
Within seconds, two hulking men dressed in solid black appear at my side.
“Is there a problem?” one asks, his voice a deep barrel of sound.
“Please escort this person out. She’s no longer welcome here. At any of my shows. Ever.”
“You little whore,” she begins, raising her hand as if to strike me.
Before she can even get it raised completely, the second security guy grabs her wrist and pulls her arm behind her back, causing her to yowl in pain.
“Get your hands off me! I’ll sue you. I’ll sue this whole place and everyone in it,” she rails as the two security men walk her toward the exit. I can still hear her shrill voice long after she’s out of sight.
With Julianne gone, my anger and shock quickly abate. Self-consciously, I glance around. I can make out several faces turned subtly in our direction. Embarrassment stings my cheeks. Instinctively, I take a step backward. Before I can make my own exit, before I can get away from the whole situation, Levi is turning to face me, gripping my arms, speaking adamantly, uncaring of who else is listening.
“Did you hear that, Evie? In case you didn’t, let me repeat it, loud enough for you and every damn body else to hear.” He raises his voice. “I love you, Evian de Champlain. You’re the only thing I want out of life. I want to wake up beside you every morning and kiss you before I go to sleep every night. If you won’t have me now, I’ll wait. I’ll wait forever if I have to. And all these people,” he says, sweeping his arm in a broad arc, indicating the growing number of patrons focusing on us, “are my witnesses. I won’t give up on you, Evie. On us. Not ever. Do you hear me?”
A laugh—lighthearted, flattered, shocked again—leaves my throat on a puff of air. Not quite a gasp, not quite a sigh.
“I hear you,” I confirm, reveling in the warmth his words generate, like sunshine to my insides, to my soul. “You’re not going to break into song are you? Or produce a boombox to bring to my window tonight?”
“If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it. I’ll be there tonight and every night after it, rain or shine, cold or hot. I’ll do anything. I’ll say anything.”
My smile broadens at his rebuttal. I should’ve known he would get the movie reference. Because he gets me. He gets me.
My heart is overflowing, and another breathy laugh gurgles up and out, like I’m so full of happiness, my body can’t contain it. My cup is running over. “You’re crazy, you know that? But I love that about you. You’re as crazy as I am and you love me anyway. I don’t think I could ask for more than that.”
“Yeah, I’m crazy. And I’m crazy about you.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Give me the grand gesture. Do your worst!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Levi bends and sweeps me up into his arms, planting a hard, smacking kiss on my lips. Then he swings me toward the crowd and announces, “I’m in love with this woman. I hope you don’t care if I borrow her for the rest of the night.”
With that, he looks back to me, his Levi’s blue eyes meeting mine, and he whispers, “Now I’m gonna get you naked. Come with me or suffer the consequences.”
I throw my head back to laugh and, much to my surprise, the sea of finely-dressed guests breaks out into an applause that follows us all the way out the door.
“Embarrassed yet?” Levi asks when he sets my feet onto the ground beside his car.
“Not by a longshot.”
He takes my face in his hands and smiles the most gorgeous smile I’ve ever seen. “Give me time, beautiful. Just give me time.”
CHAPTER 34
EVIE
I WAKE to the scent of coffee brewing. I open my eyes, unaccustomed to seeing anything other than smudges of light through them. But today, for the first morning in thirteen long years, I can see something else.
I’m in a hotel room. A very nice one by the looks of it. Levi doesn’t scrimp when it comes to accommodations. He wanted to bring me here, to have me in his bed, or as close to his as what any hotel bed can feel like. Personally, I just think he wanted to get me away from Cherelyn so he could make me scream his name about a thousand times without worrying I’d hold back because of her.
And if that’s the case, he was right.
It totally worked.
I smile as I think back to the dark, sultry night hours, to touching and tasting and seeing the incredible man I fell in love with. He spent hours letting me look my fill, lying still while I traced every muscle, outlined every plane, licked every swirl and curl of his various tattoos.
If I’m being honest, he’s even more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. My mind’s eye had no way of conjuring such physical perfection. Just like my heart had no way of conjuring what it feels like to love and to be loved this way.
I lift my head off the pillow when movement tickles my blurry peripheral vision. It’s Levi. His back is to me, and he’s setting a tray onto the table in the bedroom. I have no idea what’s on the tray, nor do I care. All I can see is the broad expanse o
f his shoulders that narrows to a trim waist and the delicious curve of his lower back as it flares into his world-class ass. And between the two, an ocean of smooth, tanned skin.
I push myself up onto my elbows to get a better look, and my eyes lock onto his butt before he turns around. The jeans sit low, exposing those two delectable dimples at the base of his spine, and the denim is exactly the color I pictured when he said his eyes were Levi’s blue. What I wasn’t able to picture is how those jeans would look on his body. Absolute perfection. He’s the type of man that makes jeans look good. Actually, I think he’s the type of man that makes everything look good.
“You have about ten seconds to stop that or you won’t get fed and coffeed for at least an hour.”
I force my eyes up to his face. He’s grinning at me over his shoulder. A lopsided grin that pulls at half of his sculpted mouth and shines from his heavy-lidded eyes. It has to be the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
“An hour? Is that supposed to impress me? Now, if you’d said three hours….”
As he turns his whole body to face me, I let my eyes skim down his mouthwatering physique. The muscular pecs, the ripped stomach, the tantalizing V that disappears into his jeans. My gaze drops to the top button, which isn’t fastened, and then stops on the thick bulge behind his zipper.
“Speaking of impressive things,” I murmur, heat flooding my core. I squirm beneath the sheet.
Levi says nothing, just reaches past the button to flick down his zipper. He’s not wearing any underwear, and his erection springs free of the denim.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a naked man, but I remember it well enough to know how flawlessly formed Levi is. Long and straight and wide as my wrist, his shaft lies flat against his stomach and strains nearly all the way to his navel. It’s swollen and tight, with one juicy vein traveling up the back side. Just looking at it causes heat to pool between my legs. I remember all too well exactly what it feels like when he slides into me, stretching me tight, filling me up, and then when he starts to thrust harder, faster, deeper, driving my body to places its never been before.
Oh God!
I press my thighs together, wallowing in the delicious squeeze of my inner muscles as I look at what was bringing me to orgasm not so long ago.
“Stop,” he croaks hoarsely.
I don’t pull my eyes away. I can’t. “Stop what?”
“Looking at me like I’m breakfast.”
I lick my lips. “Maybe I’m hungry.”
Levi lunges for me, one knee on the bed as his hand flashes out to grab my ankle. It happens so fast, I couldn’t react even if I wanted to, which I don’t. I want to be touched and dragged and taken by him.
It still surprises me, though, so I yelp as he pulls me toward him, the sheets falling away from my naked body as I go. He doesn’t stop until I’m directly in front of him, legs curved around his hips where he kneels on the bed, leaving me open and vulnerable to him.
Before I can speak out in mock protest, he reaches down, one fingertip unerringly finding the little bundle of nerves at the top of my folds. Whatever I was going to say gets swallowed up in my gasp of pleasure.
“One thing I never asked you,” he begins in a voice that was made for a bedroom. He moves his finger in a leisurely circle then slips down to tease my entrance before climbing back up to start all over again.
“Wh-what?” I ask breathily. The sensation of his touch is more than enough to thrill me, but the look on his face as he watches his own hand—easing one long finger into me and then pulling it out, easing it back in and pulling it out—compounds the eroticism factor and the sensation.
“God, that makes me so hard,” he explains, plunging another finger in alongside the first, pushing them deep then dragging them back out.
“Wh-what?” I gasp.
“How wet you are.” He slips another finger in, pumping all three and groaning at the sound it makes. “Jesus, that’s hot!”
“Levi,” I plead between pants. “Please.”
His breathing has picked up now, too, his dilated pupils turning his Levi’s blue eyes to midnight sky. “Are you on the pill?”
I nod in response, writhing beneath his touch, needing more, needing faster. Needing him.
“So, it’s okay if I do this?” Levi removes his fingers and pushes his jeans down enough to rub the swollen head of his erection along my slit. He dips in just enough to leave my body sucking greedily at his, then he pulls back and swirls his thumb over the glistening tip.
A shiver of pure delight races down my spine. It leaves a sprinkling of gooseflesh in its wake and brings my nipples to tingling points of awareness.
He winds his long fingers around his shaft and strokes it slowly, his eyes on me as I watch him. I can almost feel the pulse of him when he says, “I’m gonna make you come all over this. And then I’m going to fill you up.”
“You might be evil,” I moan, my body already on fire and he’s just getting started.
Levi laughs.
And if sex—hot, dirty, naughty sex—had a laugh, I know this is what it would sound like. “Oh, you have no idea. But first…”
When he backs away from me and drops down to bury his face between my legs, licking at me with long, deep swipes of his tongue, I think to myself that I’m glad he didn’t let me give up on us. I found myself, found another meaning in life I had given up on ever finding, and I found love when I found Levi.
And I wouldn’t have missed him for the world.
********
Over an hour later, when I lie, spent, along his side, my leg thrown over Levi’s and his arm curled around my shoulders, I can’t make myself stop smiling.
“You look pleased,” he notes, brushing his lips across my forehead.
“I am pleased.”
“Good. I am, too.” We drift off into silence for a few more minutes until he speaks again. His voice now is deep and low, sincere. “I’m so glad you could forgive me. I don’t deserve it, but I want you to know that I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you are never sorry that you did.”
My smile falters. I hate even thinking about the past now. It seems so…unnecessary and painful. “I won’t ever be sorry. I have everything I’ve ever wanted in life. No regrets.”
“Not even for the years you spent without your sight?”
I don’t hesitate in my answer. “No. How could I regret it? I found painting when I lost my sight. And then I found you through that painting. My life is finally complete when I never thought it would be.” I take a deep breath and let out a happy sigh. “No, I have zero regrets. Zero.”
“So, nothing but blue skies?”
I chuckle. “Nothing but blue skies.”
“Hey, speaking of blue skies, I have an idea,” he says, rolling onto his side to face me. He grazes the backs of his fingers over my cheek as he talks, like he has to be touching me all the time. I can relate. That’s precisely how I feel, like if I’m not touching him, he might disappear. Evaporate like smoke. “Why don’t we retrace our footsteps? Go back and do and see all the things we did together before you got some of your vision back.”
“I think that sounds like a wonderful idea, but how much time do you have? That could take a while. I mean, we did go to New Orleans.”
He pauses. “Well, that’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. I…I can work from a lot of different places because I only use a few ports on the East Coast and I travel to them as needed. That means that if I were to move my base to, say, Shreveport, it wouldn’t be inconvenient or anything. As long as…”
“As long as…” I prompt.
He shrugs one big wide shoulder, his expression taking on a boyish look that I’ve never seen, but love just the same. “As long as you’d want me here. I mean, to live here. Permanently.”
My belly feels like an aviary, like it houses a million birds and all their flapping wings, and I have to focus on keeping my breathing even. “Is this where you want to be
?”
“There is no place I’d rather be. Not in the whole world.”
Giddiness bubbles up in my chest, shaking in my voice when I respond, “Then there’s no place that I’d rather you be either.”
Levi looks down at his hand where it’s now tracing my jawline. “Evie, I love you. You know that, right? You finally believe me, right?”
“I do.”
“Really?”
I grin. “Yes, really. I love you for double-checking, though.”
“You love me for ‘double-checking’?” he asks, stressing the word in an unusual way.
“Yes, I do.”
“Is there…anything else you love me for?”
I shift my head on the pillow to get a better look at him. “There are a million things I love you for. I mean, I love you. I thought that was pretty all-encompassing.”
Levi flops back on the bed, spreading his arms out wide in relief. “Thank God!” he hoots. “Finally!”
I raise up onto my elbow. “Finally what?”
“You finally told me you loved me. Jesus, woman, way to keep a guy in suspense.” When he looks up at me and winks, his smile is brilliant.
“I thought I already did.”
“No, you didn’t. Damn you! You had me kinda worried.”
“How could you doubt it? I mean, I thought it was fairly obvious.”
“I still wanted to hear it, though. That’s not exclusive to women you know—wanting to hear those words.”
I grin mischievously. “So you’re developing ovaries. Is that it?” I tease.
He bolts upright in the bed and shoots me the stink eye. “You did not just reference me and ovaries in the same sentence. While we’re naked. Thereby questioning my manhood.”
“Of course not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The giggling begins the moment he starts easing toward me, a predatory look on his face.
“You did!”
“Did not!”
“Oh, it is on! There’s no denying it now. You can’t take it back. You can only suffer the consequences.”