by Fox, Ella
All the while, I felt the heat of his hand as it traveled—so, so slowly—up my thigh. Along the way, he worked his way from the back of my thigh to the front. My core tightened as he grew ever closer, each movement elevating my need. Our chests heaved together as he tore his mouth from mine and stared into my eyes. The heat in his could’ve powered a large city.
“I want to touch you,” he rasped.
Realizing he was asking for permission, I nodded. “I want that too.”
“You make me so fucking crazy,” he whispered.
I whimpered when his hand made it all the way up and he began tracing circles across the fabric of my bikini bottoms. I threw back my head and let out a soft cry as he applied a bit of pressure against my clit with his middle finger. The expression on his face was so erotic I wished I had a camera. Seeing him turned on like that and knowing I was responsible for it made me even hotter.
My breath caught when he moved his fingers up and started sliding them back and forth just beneath the fabric of my suit. His breathing accelerated when he looked down to watch his movements. He slid his fingers beneath my bikini so slowly I felt faint with the need for him to arrive at his destination. By the time his fingers arrived at my sex, I was desperate for him to touch me. I bit my lip when he parted my lips and rolled his middle finger against my clit.
“Ah, baby, I love how hot and wet you are for me,” he rasped.
I swore I could hear the blood rushing through my veins as he dipped a finger inside of me. I held tight to his shoulders as he leaned in, his lips skating softly across my own. It wasn’t a kiss so much as an exchange of breath. “My tight little virgin.”
“Oh, God,” I whimpered as he pushed in and out, not deep, but enough that I felt full. When he began swirling his thumb across my clit, I clenched around his finger and let out another cry.
“Do you know how fucking crazy you make me?”
Our lips brushed together as I shook my head.
“I’ve held back every single day since we first met,” he confided. “That first night when you came for dinner and I said I needed to make a phone call? I lied. I had to go inside and jack off. Since then I’ve come dozens of times thinking of you.”
My breathing quickened as I remembered that night—and the yell I’d heard from inside. “I heard you,” I whispered. “I didn’t know what it was but I heard you yell.”
“I came so fucking hard for you,” he whispered.
My sex clenched hard around his finger as his thumb twirled faster. “Fuck, Shae, you’re so goddamn tight.”
“God, Garrett,” I gasped.
“I can’t wait to get inside of you.”
I was so turned on it hurt.
My hips started rocking back and forth in desperation. “I’m going to come,” I cried.
“Good girl,” he praised.
I clutched his shoulders tighter and held on as I climaxed. He moaned against my lips as I let out a breathy cry. I trembled as waves of pleasure washed over me.
When it was over, Garrett kissed me. Our tongues danced softly as he removed his hand from my bikini bottoms. We stayed on the lounger kissing for countless minutes. He was still hot and hard, but when I reached for him, he stopped me.
“Not yet,” he said.
He chuckled when I huffed in annoyance. In quick order, he pulled me up from the lounger and guided me into the pool. We spent the rest of the afternoon swimming, touching, and kissing.
Later, after dinner and a few hours of playing Sonic the Hedgehog, we watched Seven in the living room. When it was time for bed, I didn’t want to go to my room. It had been one thing when Goldie was there but on the heels of what had happened earlier that day, I felt closer to him than ever. I was trying to figure out how to tell him that when he spoke.
“I know we agreed you’d have your own room, but I want to sleep with you in my arms. I’m not talking about sex, we’re still taking it slow, but if you agree, I’d like us to start sharing a room now.”
“That’s what I want, too,” I assured him.
From that day on, his room was ours.
Chapter Twenty
September 1998
“So it’s official?” Garrett asked as I walked into the house three weeks later on a Friday afternoon. I hadn’t heard anything from Jewel since the night she was arrested, and without her around, I was feeling more confident and upbeat about myself and my life. Of course, a lot of that had to do with the way I felt about Garrett.
As usual he looked delicious. He was in jeans, a Pearl Jam shirt from the concert we’d gone to, and his feet were bare. I’d always found feet gross but with him, every bit of exposed skin was enticing. When he smiled, my heartbeat sped up.
“It is! I’m done with high school. All credits have been completed.”
I beamed as I walked into his open arms. I’d spent hours trying to solve the mystery of how it could be that whenever he touched me, I felt a sense of security and rightness that I’d never felt before. Was it the fact that he smelled so good? Or the way his muscular arms held me just so? Maybe it was how his eyes lit up whenever we were close. I didn’t have a definitive answer. All I knew was that the feeling only grew stronger the more time I spent with him.
He winked at me before I stood, lifted my lips and kissed him softly. “I missed you today.”
“I missed you too,” he answered.
“Thank you so much for hiring Annabeth to continue on with me until I was finished.”
He smiled as he ran his hands up and down my back. “You never have to thank me, baby. Anything for you.”
My rapid heartbeat jacked up even more as he traced a finger along my jaw. “We should celebrate.”
“How?”
“We have dinner with my family tonight but how about we get up in the morning and drive up the coast to Monterey?”
I nodded as I tilted my head back and pursed my lips so he knew I wanted a kiss.
“I’ll make the arrangements,” he said before he took the hint and kissed me the way only he could.
* * *
“And that’s when I realized he had the acting bug,” Garrett’s mom explained.
Her story about Garrett performing little plays with his cat for his family and their friends had me cracking up. I loved hearing tales about his childhood and his parents sure loved telling them.
I’d been nervous about meeting Garrett’s parents, and about seeing Alan again, but both things turned out fine. Gabriel and Aubrey Riordan (she only used Vonn professionally) were as warm and friendly as their son and Alan was as at ease with me as he’d ever been. I’d worried that he’d be different with me because of Jewel, but that didn’t happen at all.
In fact, the only mention of Jewel had come when Alan pulled me aside before dinner to apologize for falling for her lies.
“The evidence that you were far from a troubled teen was right in front of me and I wrote it off. I genuinely thought being in Moab and having a job with my nephew was changing your life.”
I looked back over my shoulder to where Garrett was standing at the kitchen counter talking to his parents. When I looked back at Alan, I smiled. “It did change my life—just not in the way Jewel claimed. Believe me when I tell you there was nothing you could have done differently. Jewel is a force unto herself—a category five storm swirling off shore at all times. I’m just glad you got away. If anything, it’s me who owes you an apology. I felt that my hands were tied about warning you—but I did plan to say something once I was eighteen. One way or the other, I think things would’ve blown up.”
He grimaced as he shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. Your mother is an emotional abuser—I’m just glad you’re out. It’s a damn miracle you turned out the way you have. Having met your grandmother, I can tell she’s a big part of it. It’s a goddamn joke that the system is set up to favor the parents, even when they don’t deserve their kids.”
After dinner, the five of us had gone outside to digest
. I quickly realized that was code for the men to have the chance to light the cigars they’d picked from Gabriel’s dark cherry humidor cabinet. It had double doors and was big enough for me to believe that it was bigger than any fridge I’d ever had.
Aubrey let out a chuckle as she gestured to where they sat at the outdoor bar. “Those boys and their damn stogies,” she snickered. “When they’re in town together at the same time for more than a few days they spend at least one afternoon together in one of the cigar lounges in town.”
“I’ve never seen Garrett smoke before. I had no idea.”
“Just the occasional cigar. Other than when they come back from a cigar lounge it’s not too bad. It’s a hell of a lot stronger when they’ve been in a room with a bunch of other smokers. Still,” she mused, “there’s something sexy about a man who appreciates cigars and good scotch.”
She stared at Gabriel as she spoke, and her expression said a lot. They’d been married for twenty-seven years, but the adoration in her eyes made it clear that she adored her husband. He turned and smiled at her as if he’d felt her eyes on him. In that moment, I was envious of Garrett for growing up with that kind of love between his parents.
“I’m glad it’s just us girls right now,” she said when she turned back to me, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something but every time we were on the phone there wasn’t enough time to get to it.”
Although her expression didn’t look angry, I feared she was going to tell me she had a problem with her son dating me.
“Uh, sure,” I said, hoping my voice sounded somewhat confident.
I did my best to school my expression but I suspected I looked like I’d just gotten caught in the cookie jar.
“You have a very expressive face,” she laughed.
Well shit, I thought, so much for looking nonchalant. Her son has said the same thing before, so I must really be transparent.
“It’s nothing bad,” she assured me. “And just so you know, Garrett’s father and I are ecstatic that he found you. Our son is…” She paused as she chose her words. “Well, I guess the easiest way to say it is that he’s a lot like his father.”
I gave her a curious look.
“A one-woman man,” she elaborated. “The only girl he was ever remotely serious about before you was Drea DeLeon, but that was doomed from the minute his father and I found out about it. Looking back, I see that it was never anything more than him liking that he’d lost his virginity to someone with experience. Either way, they both knew it was never going to be permanent. Once it was over, it was over.”
My eyes were saucer-wide as I stared at her. That Garrett had lost his virginity to Drea DeLeon was a shock to me for several reasons. First, she was one of the biggest stars in the world. Second, she was a hell of a lot older than him.
“I, uh, didn’t know that,” I admitted.
She shrugged. “Men don’t hold onto the virginity memory the way women do. The only reason his father and I know is because one of her assistants told us. To this day, it’s one of the only things we’ve ever really fought with our son about. He was barely sixteen, she was thirty-four, and to say that his father and I were beside ourselves is an understatement. I was so livid I told the bitch I was going to press charges. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Had Garrett been truly invested in her it would have. I’m older than my husband by quite a bit but he wasn’t a child when we got together.”
My mind was officially blown. I was also intimidated as hell. On my best day I could never, ever be as beautiful as Drea DeLeon. I was a B cup, she was at least a D, if not a double D. I had plain-Jane chestnut-colored hair; she was a platinum blonde. My lips were normal; hers were gigantic. My hips were small; hers were perfectly curved. I was female and even I knew that she was sex on legs. She held a record for selling the most posters of all time—a photo of her naked with a black silk sheet wound strategically around her unmentionables. Calling her beautiful was akin to saying the Mona Lisa was kind-of well known. She’d been linked to Harrison Ford, Robert DeNiro, Tom Cruise, and Jack Nicholson, for fuck’s sake. That Garrett had been with her blew my mind.
“Anyway,” Aubrey continued, “what I wanted to talk to you about are the Post-it notes you left in the Terminal Eighteen script Garrett was sent a few weeks ago.”
The new subject seemed to come from out of the blue. “Sure,” I said slowly. “What’s up?”
“You picked up on the one-liners and dramatic moments that would sell the movie, which interested me because that’s what the rest of us liked about it, too. However, three of the four biggest studios have turned that script down. We’re the fourth it’s been shopped to and we were about to pass on it, but the Post-it you left at the end referring to the script as a diamond in the rough caught my eye. I agree that it has something to it, but there’s something missing and I can’t put my finger on exactly what that is.”
Realizing that she really wanted my opinion, I leaned forward with excitement. “It took me until page forty-nine to figure it out. There’s no love interest—it’s all action and adventure. It’s great that the main character is motivated by love for the brother and niece trapped in the terminal, but other than that, they give us nothing to go with. Even though it would be a secondary storyline, with this type of movie people are looking for that. Franchises like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard walk that line very effectively by focusing on the action while giving the audience enough to root for the hero personally. I think with some rewrites Terminal Eighteen could be huge.”
“That’s it,” she said excitedly. “I kept thinking the problem was that he spends so much of the movie alone but now that you’ve compared it to Die Hard I see exactly what you’re saying. It was fine that McClane was on his own because the Holly storyline was there in the background.”
“Exactly! It doesn’t need to be the main focus, but it definitely needs to be there somewhere. There’s a reason every Bond movie features a love interest—the audience wants to see their heroes involved in some way.”
Aubrey and I spent the next few minutes talking about great action movies before we were joined by Garrett, Gabriel, and Alan who had finished their cigars. As Garrett sat in a chair next to me at the table, he slid his arm across the back of my chair. Leaning in, he dropped a kiss on my shoulder. I was wearing a floral halter-style dress, which meant he kissed my skin. Goose bumps sprung up on my arms at the feel of his lips against my skin.
It meant the world to me that he’d taken me home to meet the family and that he was comfortable being affectionate in front of them. Still, I was plagued with worry about how I measured up—literally—against Drea DeLeon.
I should’ve known Garrett would pick up on the fact that something was on my mind. We hadn’t even cleared his parents’ driveway before he addressed it.
“Alright, hit me. What’s going on in that mind of yours, Shae?”
I feigned ignorance. “Not a thing.”
He asked twice more and both times, I told him everything was fine. When he let it go, I thought he believed me. I should’ve known better.
As soon as we arrived home and got into the house, he steered me into the living room and set me in one of the brown leather chairs. “Look me in the eye and tell me nothing is on your mind,” he challenged.
I couldn’t lie to his face, so I tried to deflect. “It’s stupid—don’t worry about it.”
He gave me a look. “Baby.”
I blew out a breath and lowered my gaze to the beautiful area rug on the floor beneath me. “Your mom told me you lost your virginity to Drea DeLeon,” I blurted.
He made a choked sound. “What the fuck did she tell you that for?”
Certain that he was angry, I was surprised that when I looked up he appeared genuinely confused that Drea had been discussed.
I shrugged. “It just came up. Did you not want me to know?”
He set a hand on my knee, just beneath the hem of my summer dress. “If who I lost my virginity
to ever came up I’d have told you myself,” he assured me. “At the moment I’m more concerned about why something I did a decade ago is upsetting you now.”
My cheeks felt like they were on fire as I gestured to my body. “Because I look like the girl next door and she’s pretty much the goddess of sex.”
He huffed out a sound of disbelief. “You really don’t see yourself, do you? I’ll tell you two things. First, when I tell you that I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you, I’m not exaggerating even a little bit. The need I have for you is all-consuming. I wake up thinking about you, I go to bed thinking about you, and when I’m asleep, I dream about you. When I think about my future, you’re in it.”
My breath hitched as butterflies flapped away in my stomach.
“Second, to put the situation with Drea in perspective, I was a sixteen-year-old guy who wanted to get his dick wet,” he said bluntly. “I had a small role in that shitty beach movie she did and we hit it off. She was easy on the eyes, she was friendly, and she loved the idea of taking my virginity. We had sex a few dozen times before my parents caught wind of it, at which point things got messy. After the crackdown we managed to sneak a few more times in before filming wrapped and then it was over. I wasn’t in love with her and she wasn’t in love with me. There were no feelings there—just an easy rapport between people who spent a few weeks fucking. I honestly haven’t thought of her in years—at least nine, if not the full ten. Also, for the record, I was neither her first nor her last young lover.”
“Your mom said she was the last woman you were serious with.”