by B. Cranford
“Ash,” he whispered, as he used his free hand to move the popcorn out of the way. “Ashton.”
“Llama,” she replied, just as quietly, a soft smile on her lips at their little joke.
“I love it when you call me that.” He was moving closer as he spoke, rearranging himself so his legs bracketed her body. Then, finally releasing her elbow, he placed both hands on her legs, guiding them from their cross-legged position, so they were bent up and over his.
He’d made it so her center was pressed intimately against his straining cock. Ashton closed what little distance remained between their bodies by wrapping her legs around him and bringing her arms around his neck.
“Kitten, can I kiss you?” he asked, his voice low, his mouth so near hers that she could feel his request as it floated across her lips.
“Yes. Please.”
She expected that her permission would be met with an immediate joining of their lips, but instead, Duncan surprised her, bringing his lips first to her forehead.
She sighed, loving the feel of his kiss. It was sweet and soft and still somehow sexy, and as he moved his lips to the tip of her nose, to her cheeks, to the lobes of her ears, then back to her forehead, she didn’t care what his name was.
He could be Llama or Asshole or Jeremiah.
He could be Sebastian or Walter or Paul.
He could be whoever the hell he wanted to be, as long as his lips stayed on her for as long as possible.
“Duncan,” she murmured, not wanting to break the moment, but wanting to say something, something, so he might know how he was affecting her.
He trailed more kisses over the plains of her face, until he stopped at the corner of her mouth.
The pause felt like it might last forever. Her eyes, which had fallen closed the moment he’d first kissed her forehead, flew open at the touch of his lips to hers. It was gentle but it burned—the heat so much, so good, that Ashton thought she might feel it for days.
Long after she left to go back to her school.
Maybe even forever.
Propelled by the thought of forever, and the fact that it was more than likely not in the cards for them, she pressed in harder, rolling her hips against his cock, letting her tongue slip past her lips to trace his.
His mouth opened, slowly, slowly, giving her the chance to deepen the kiss even more. She grabbed the opportunity, relishing the way their bodies seemed to sync up—his hips pushing, hers pressing, his tongue caressing hers, his hands moving from her legs to her hips, then higher, to her waist.
Oh God. Oh God. There were so many perfect sensations rocketing through her that Ashton didn’t know which one to concentrate on first.
Maybe on the way his erection rubbed along her sex, the sensation somehow not dulled by the layers of material between them, but heightened, like the extra friction was the spark needed to set her aflame.
Or perhaps she should give all her focus to this kiss. This kiss that felt like it was erasing all the others that came before it and tainting all the ones that would come after it.
But then again, she thought, her mind working overtime to enjoy, to appreciate everything Duncan was doing to her in that moment, maybe she should be concentrating on the way his hands spanned her waist, rubbing up and down, up and down in a motion that, at any other time, might have been soothing. But not right then. Not in that moment.
It didn’t soothe. It created a longing that Ashton wanted to have satisfied. Needed to have satisfied.
Drawing back, she broke the fevered kiss, stilled her rocking hips and moved her hands from around Duncan’s neck to lay them over his. “Please,” she begged, “please pet me.”
His smile, oh God, his smile. It was glazed over with lust, yet so bright and real that it was another layer of sensation that she needed to put in order. “I thought you’d never ask, Kitten.”
Present Day
The room was dark, except for the dim light that was coming from the couch where Aaron’s little sister was sitting.
Ashton.
She’d only been in his apartment for a day, and already it felt strangely like she’d been there for longer. He knew from the moment he’d watched her carefully, quietly slip into his car that she was going to be trouble—he just didn’t know what kind of trouble.
“Hey, you’re just getting in?” Her voice was quiet, probably in deference to the room, and he just stood there for a beat, trying to think of what to say.
“Yeah,” he managed, trying to find his cool. He never had troubling talking to girls—except this one. But he’d figure it out; he was determined to find a way to talk to her and flirt with her and more with her.
It probably wasn’t appropriate, given why she was here and what her brother—his best friend—was dealing with, but he found he didn’t care.
“Whatcha reading, Kitten?” The nickname came easily to him, because he didn’t think he’d ever forget the way that ratty old T-shirt clung to all the best parts of her, the request for petting practically a shout to all of his senses.
And his dick.
She didn’t respond, so he tried again, determined to get something out of her before he slunk off to his own bed. Alone. Fuck. “Kitten? What’s the book?”
Her eyes widened at the question—and it only took him a short moment to realize that it was the nickname. That was what gave him the upper hand. That was what told him he wasn’t the only one feeling this pull between them.
He’d never felt it with anyone else, and he’d met a lot of girls. Not that he’d slept with them all, or petted all that many. But still—he knew that whatever this thing was, it was different.
“It’s, ah, don’t laugh, okay?”
“Why would I laugh?” he asked, moving closer, enjoying the way her eyes followed his every step. They were so blue—he didn’t think he’d seen eyes that blue before.
“I’m reading Sweet Valley High,” she said, turning the book so he could look at the cover.
He shook his head, never having heard of it before, and looked up from the blonde on the book to the blonde holding the book with a question in his eyes. Which she answered, without taking a breath.
“It’s series I used to read when I was younger, like when I was just a teenager or whatever, and I found it in this used bookstore I went to today and it reminded me of home and being a kid and before all this stuff happened with A and with our parents and I don’t know, I just thought it might be fun to read it again, it’s the first one, the series has like, seventy books at least that I remember reading.”
The moment held for longer than he realized. He wanted to lean down and kiss that bottom lip, to pull the book from her fingers and drop it on the floor so her hands were free to touch him. Instead, he swallowed, letting just the slightest smile form on his mouth before saying, “Goodnight, Kitten. Enjoy your trip down memory lane.”
The vibration of his cell phone against his leg jolted Duncan from the daydream he’d been having—one that was more memory than daydream, and one where he absolutely wasn’t stuck discussing inane reality television with a bored, flirtatious trophy wife. He slid the phone from the pocket of his suit pants, careful to angle the screen away from Cassidy, or Carlie, or something starting with “C.”
Raising his hand, he smiled apologetically. “Sorry, I have to take this. Have a great afternoon.”
The trophy wife—not his—ran a far-too-affectionate hand down his arm and fluttered her eyelashes at him. “You too, sugar.”
He nodded, then turned away, swiping to answer the call and raising the phone to his ear as he headed back to his office. “Aaron, how was the honeymoon?”
A chuckle in his ear told Duncan that the answer he was about to get wasn’t an answer he necessarily wanted to hear. “I only want to know if you can tell me without too much detail,” he added, earning a laugh from the man he’d called friend since their freshman year of college.
“It was as good as you’re imagining—better, even. We
did this one thing where—”
“And I don’t want to know, but I’m glad it was good for you.”
“Oh, it was very good for me . . .”
Walked right into that one, you fool.
“I’m sorry again I couldn’t make it to the wedding. I hate that I missed it.” Duncan smiled a sad smile, knowing that missing the wedding was unavoidable.
His sadness was reflected back in Aaron’s voice as he responded, “I understand. How are . . . you?” The hesitation wasn’t uncommon, these days, when people asked after him.
Saying goodbye to your only sibling will have that effect.
“Good. I have her estate mostly finalized now. One of the only good things about knowing you’re losing someone is that you can be a little more prepared when the time comes.” He swallowed down the lump forming in his throat as he thought of his sister, rail thin and fighting against her own body until the very end. “She didn’t want it to be a burden.”
Silence. He could hear Aaron breathing, slow and steady, on the end of the line so he knew the call hadn’t dropped. Clearly, his friend simply didn’t know what to say. Or had exhausted all the time-worn sentiments. After all, Duncan had called him two weeks before the big day to let Aaron know he wasn’t going to be there; traveling out of state when Kennedy was in her final days was out of the question.
They’d talked about her illness, about the likelihood of a kidney transplant happening in time to save her. And Aaron had said everything right.
Now, she was gone and sorry didn’t begin to cover the heartache.
Clearing his throat, Duncan plucked a subject out of thin air. “The World Yo-Yo Championship is being held this week in the city”—the city being New York City, where Duncan currently lived—“and there’s a group of contestants, participants? People who are entered to win? There’s a bunch of them staying at an Airbnb in my building. This morning, I nearly took a yo-yo to the nuts.”
The story earned him a laugh, even though, at the time, Duncan had been as far from laughter as one might expect when their balls are under fire, and instantly, the tone of the phone call lightened.
“Man, you need to get out of that place,” Aaron replied, the sentiment one that he’d expressed many times before.
Duncan had lived in Manhattan for the past six years, in Los Angeles for a handful of years before that. It was a long way from the small dorm where he and Aaron had first met, and he’d talked before about getting away from big cities and big business.
He never planned to take over the world.
He just wanted to have enough money to help Kennedy in her fight.
And maybe a nice car.
But not a 24/7 job that exhausted more than excited him and an empty apartment to come home to—later and later every night.
“I’m thinking about it, man. Now that Ken is . . .” He trailed off. Gone. “Anyway, what’s happening there?”
“Not much. Thought maybe you’d want to come out here for a visit. My brother and sister bought a bar, The Avenue, and it’s pretty fucking cool. You’d like it.”
Kitten, he thought, a little thrill creeping through him as it always did when Aaron mentioned his pretty little sister.
They’d had a few days and a lot of flirtation but not much more.
Except that one scorching kiss.
He still thought about it, more often than he probably should, given the number of years that had passed.
Hell, he had just been thinking about it. About her. And wondering—“She still seeing that idiot? Norbert.”
“Nathan.”
“Yeah, I know his name. So?”
“Nah, man, they ended it a while back. He cheated, she finally wised up.” Aaron’s voice was muffled briefly, like he’d covered the microphone to talk to someone in the background, and when he came back, he continued, “And I’m fucking relieved. I kept thinking he’d end up related to me, and that wouldn’t do.”
Duncan laughed at that—he knew Aaron well enough to know that he was covering his real concerns, the real reason he didn’t want his sister to marry her ex, with humor.
The guy was, from all he’d heard, a dickhead. As evidenced by the fact he’d cheated on Ashton.
“Why, his taste in clothing not up to your standards?” he teasingly asked, knowing that Aaron was pretty particular about his wardrobe.
“His taste in other women was the problem.” It was a deadpan response, and one that Duncan knew was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to what Aaron truly thought about the man. Hell, it was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to what he thought of the man.
“She seeing anyone?” He tried to word the question innocently, though he knew that Aaron sensed his motivation. There had always been something about Ashton that intrigued Duncan, made him want to know more. And though the timing wasn’t right fifteen years ago—hadn’t ever been right, come to think of it—that didn’t mean he didn’t still wonder . . .
Fifteen Years Ago
The shrill ringing of the old phone hanging on the wall of his apartment stopped Duncan in his tracks. His hands were halfway up Ashton’s shirt and on their way to the Promised Land—those tits—and he had to bite back a groan at the interruption.
“I should get that.” It was said with all the reluctance in the world, because the last thing he wanted to do when he was finally, finally, touching this woman, was stop.
“Ignore it?” Ashton’s suggestion was said with an innocent tone but coupled with a far-from-innocent look on her face. “It can’t be that important, right?”
That’s some logic I can get behind, he thought, moving his hands up just a little more so they brushed the underside of her breasts. God, all he wanted was to—
Riiiiiiiiing.
—answer the goddamn phone and tell the idiot on the other end to fuck off, it was too late to be calling.
If 9:30pm could be called late, which in his humble opinion it could be. It was definitely too late if the caller didn’t want to be talking to someone with a raging erection and an eight-day-old case of blue balls.
“Answer it.” Words he didn’t want to hear, but knew were the only way to stop the interruption. He’d deal with whoever was intent on cock-blocking him and then get back to the matter at hand.
The matter being Ashton and the hand being his, roaming over the expanse of silky smooth skin that she’d been hiding under her ridiculous, baggy, sexy-as-hell T-shirt for more than a week.
He moved to stand, realizing after a beat that the ringing had stopped. The caller must have given up after Duncan took too long to answer. Good, now don’t call back.
“Knew it wasn’t important,” Ashton said smugly, beckoning him back to his position beside her, her hair adorably rumpled, her lips reddened by his kisses.
“You’re important, though, Kitten,” he replied, just about to pick up where he left off when—
Riiiiiiiiing.
“Fuck.” He hastened to the wall where the old phone was mounted and practically ripped it from the base. “What?” he asked, his anger at being interrupted perhaps unjustified but also unable to be hidden.
He just wanted to pet Ashton. That’s all.
“Ah, is—um, Aaron there?” The male voice on the other end of the phone held a note of distress that Duncan recognized despite his irritation. “Or maybe Ashton?”
Duncan’s eyes sought out Ashton’s, her head tilted as she waited to see what was happening, and he knew in that moment that it was something big. Something that he couldn’t have stopped by not answering the phone, by ignoring the call. “Yes, Ashton is here. Who’s calling?”
“Austin.”
“Austin?” Duncan asked, recognizing the name as that of Aaron’s younger brother. As soon as it slipped past his lips, Ashton was moving to stand, then crossing over to him, her hand held out to take the phone.
He gave it to her without a word, but didn’t move. He wanted to be there for whatever was coming—wanted to help her h
owever he could.
“Aussie?” Her voice was low, as if she too knew that something big was afoot. “What’s going on?”
Duncan couldn’t hear the words that sent Ashton trembling to her knees on the floor of his apartment. It wasn’t until later that he’d learn that her father had had a heart attack, and that their mother had specifically requested that Aaron not be told.
All he knew in that moment was that their time was coming to a premature close—and that he really didn’t want it to.
Present Day
Thoughts of Aaron and Ashton remained for the rest of his workday and well into the night, even when he arrived back to his sparse apartment—an apartment that had once housed a hospital bed and medical equipment designed to prolong Kennedy’s life. But all of that, like his sister, was gone now and the warm glow of the city lights did nothing to make his place feel like a home.
Home. Such an odd concept when thinking about four walls and some pieces of furniture arranged haphazardly around a room, or several rooms. His place had only ever felt like home when Ken had lived there with him—even with her health problems, the dismal prognosis, those few years of having her there were so much more than what he had now.
In fact, the only other time he’d ever felt as comfortable in a space was when he lived with Aaron. Not that that was an option anymore, nor would he want it to be. He was a man in his thirties—he wasn’t looking for a roommate.
But he was looking for something.
And, as the city wound down—never sleeping, only slowing—he began to think that maybe that something could be found in Madison.
Shaking his head at the heavy thoughts settling there, Duncan made short work of getting ready for bed. He was exhausted, as he always was at the end of a work day. Phone calls, meetings, glad-handing people he wouldn’t associate with if not for business, was more tiring than ever—either a sign of his age or the malaise that had blown in when Ken had taken her last breath.