by Hughes, Maya
Palming her ass, I didn’t think, didn’t stop when her hips shifted and the tip of my head met her opening. I wrapped my hands up and over her shoulders then slammed into her in one solid, fierce thrust. Stars exploded in my head.
“More, I need more.” Her teeth grazed my cheek.
Her head slammed back against the wall. Her screams were sealed with my lips, which demanded repayment for years of deprivation. I wanted her unadulterated pleasure. Shifting my hand, I tugged on her hair and tilted her head up to meet my mouth. We worked together and against each other in a savage battle waged with our bodies. Desperation pulsed between us in a heady wave filled with the sizzling spark of everything that had happened since that night.
Rolling and grinding, the flickers of intense pleasure had my cock thickening inside her. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” I rasped into her mouth.
Our lips and teeth were colliding and unable to keep up with the pace of our bodies. Her hips and legs egged me on, falling into the rhythm I knew so well, capped off with a clinging, clutching edge that drove us both toward that inevitable cliff.
I pushed her harder and higher. The rattle and bang of the framed beach scene pictures falling off the wall didn’t deter me. I didn’t care who knew, who heard. I wanted everyone to know she was still mine—had never stopped being mine.
My eyes burned with unshed tears. She’d stolen this from us. Her thighs tightened around me and her walls clamped down on my dick. I hissed out a sharp breath. It was so good. Her arms wrapped tighter around the back of my neck and she screamed my name. Her body rigid, I kept pumping into her.
I wanted to follow after her, wanted to join her in that place where a blissful climax awaited, but I couldn’t. My cock thickened, filled with a helpless lust I couldn’t control.
She clawed at my back as her climax stretched out. Her trembling increased. Her body jerked.
“You left me.” My voice was hoarse with desire and a rawness that had always been under the surface. Accusation hung heavy in my voice.
Her eyes glazed in the unending pleasure sizzling across her skin, shooting into mine. A flicker of remorse battled with the desire in her eyes.
“You let me leave.” I lifted her away from the wall and carried her to the bed. Bracketing her between my arms under me, I was moving again, tumbling toward a yawning precipice. My body remembered every curve, dip, and hollow. Her tawny-tipped breasts I’d spent hours laving with my tongue were even fuller in my hands.
“Emmett, I’m going to—”
I reached between us. Pinching and tapping her clit, I clenched my teeth together and slammed my lips onto hers.
Her back shot off the bed. Gasping for air, she writhed under me. Her thighs tightened around me, squeezing desperately. My strokes were uncontrollable, and my cock buried inside her couldn’t stop. The orgasm I’d been chasing was still outside my grasp. I gritted my teeth.
“I can’t. I’m going to—” Her words were cut off as she gripped the nape of my neck and screamed out my name again.
“You made me let you go.” The tears clouded my vision, but I couldn’t stop.
She stared into my eyes, their softness nearly making me collapse. She lifted herself from the bed, using my neck as leverage, her breath fanning across the beaded sweat on my skin.
“I’m sorry, Em. I’m so sorry.” Her words were soft and gentle against my lips. With her eyes open, she pressed her lips to mine. The tenderness contrasted with the visceral, crude slamming of my hips. Like a damn bursting, spasms gripped me at the base of my cock.
I held her close. Pulling her into my arms, I crushed her to me as I rode out an orgasm so strong my vision blacked out. Pinning her beneath me, I gulped down air that had been squeezed from my lungs.
Slowly, I came back from the brink. Resting my forehead against hers, I panted and rolled to my side, taking her with me. I couldn’t break the connection yet. I didn’t want to let her go. What happened now? What did this mean? I couldn’t figure out the answers to those questions, but this was a moment I wanted to live inside.
The panting breaths slowed. A chill from the AC breezed across her skin and she broke out in goosebumps. I needed to get her warm. We groaned as I slipped free from her body, and my head snapped up as I realized what had been missing between us. Our combined essences were plastered to our skin.
“I’m on the pill.”
My gaze shot to hers. “And I get an annual checkup. No issues.” She looked away.
“I’ve never not used protection, and my last physical was clean.”
She nodded and pushed up off the bed.
I reached out, encircling her wrist. “Where are you going? We’re nowhere near finished.”
15
Avery
The deep promise in his words sent a shiver down my spine.
I stopped trying to get away when his fingers locked around my wrist. The warmth of his hands lit my body up, even on a hot summer morning. Every cell called out for him. I’d known I’d hurt him, had seen it that night, but when I had touched my lips to his and apologized, the raw pain in his eyes had been enough to take my breath away. Somehow I’d let myself believe his anger was more out of embarrassment and resentment, not rooted in those same emotions I’d seen in his eyes when he’d told me he’d forgive me if I told him my nonexistent cheating had been a mistake.
But it was still there, so close to the surface I didn’t know how I hadn’t seen it before. Maybe I’d ignored it on purpose, not wanting to believe I could inflict that much pain on someone I loved so much.
I glanced back over my shoulder. He sat up straighter, not letting me go. Even after everything we’d done, there was still desire in his eyes.
The soreness between my legs didn’t stop the aching from coursing through my skin.
“You can’t run away from this.” He settled against my back. Heavy and muscled, his arms wrapped around me, tugging me to his chest.
I dropped my head. The answers he wanted were ones I couldn’t give him.
“I’m not running.”
“Yes, you are. Look at me, Avery.”
I kept my eyes fixed on the beige carpet under the foot I’d managed to get off the bed. I hadn’t had a choice back then. His parents’ blistering words hung in the back of my mind. “You don’t understand what our son needs, and one day he’ll realize it too.” And the deal they’d offered me was one I couldn’t turn down. Guilt gnawed at my stomach.
Capturing my chin between his fingers, Emmett turned my head so I was forced to meet his gaze.
“I’m not letting you run away.”
I tipped my chin up. His breath fanned across my face, across my lips. I wanted to taste him, feel him on me like I’d taken for granted before. Once wasn’t enough. His smell was so ingrained in me it felt like coming home, the urge so powerful it brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to believe him, but I knew the stakes for us both. There were so many things I couldn’t tell him. The universe had given us a cruel path forward that could only lead to heartbreak, and I’d only sped things up before he realized just how little we had in common, how much of what he thought about me was a facade I’d put up to hide behind.
“We shouldn’t have done this.”
His head jerked back. “We never should have stopped. I’m not going to stop now.” His hoarse whisper broke the thin line between us, snapped it in half, and then his lips were on mine. The fiery passion that had been hidden away, brewing for so long, now crested over in the waves of our desire.
My hands pressed against his solid chest and his went around the back of my neck, holding on to me like he was afraid I might evaporate into thin air. I held on to him because I feared the same thing. Maybe I’d hit my head and wasn’t actually back in his arms, feeling and tasting him.
If it was a dream, I was going all in for the time being, something we’d both been denied, something he needed.
One of my hands dipped down low, palming his solid erection. He gro
aned against my lips, dropping a hand from my neck. His fingers trailed along my back and up my spine as he pressed his body closer, pulling me tighter against him with my arm trapped between us.
“If I have to do this all day and night, I’ll make sure you don’t ever think this is a mistake.”
Our bodies slammed together, writhing and trembling in a sweaty, gasping heap. I drifted to sleep with my head against his chest like I’d done many times before, too many times to count. His heartbeat was a lullaby etched on my heart.
He’d been so overwhelmed by my confession he hadn’t asked the questions I’d run from for so long. The questions would come eventually, though, and I didn’t know if I could answer them because the answers might hurt him even more than I had already.
Percy sputtered up to the front steps of Emmett’s house. I climbed out of the car and unlocked the heavy frosted glass door with the key he’d given me a long time ago. This was why I hated staying over—I always forgot something. Emmett was at an away game and I needed my physics homework. I’d already been late with so many assignments, another would mean I’d fail the grading period, which would mean no graduation, and I couldn’t let that happen.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I rushed up to Emmett’s bedroom. My notebook and textbook peeked out from under the bed. Indecision warred in me once I grabbed the books—go home to finish my work or just stay there. I didn’t like being in the house without him; it was so big and empty, though not of possessions. There were plenty of those—paintings, custom furniture, sculptures, and who knows what else tucked away—but that didn’t mean the house looked like anything other than a museum. The only room with any signs of life was his bedroom.
Still, my dad was home and Alyson wasn’t, and that answered the question for me. Dropping my backpack on the floor, I sat at his desk and worked through the problem sets I hadn’t finished. It was so quiet, it made it easy to quickly finish the last of them. Tucking my things into my backpack, I zipped it shut and glanced around Emmett’s room. It had held so many special memories, so much time. I ran my hands over the bedspread. What would happen when he went away to college? Maybe the next time he jokingly asked me to marry him, I would just say yes.
He wasn’t serious. Even though he said he was, how could he be? We were still so young, and there were so many things about myself I never let him see.
My stomach grumbled. If Emmett hadn’t already demolished the entire tray, I knew there should be a container of chocolate chip cookies downstairs. Slinging my backpack onto my shoulder, I went in search of some baked goodness.
“Yes!” I spotted the container and ripped off the lid. Stacking three in my palm, I stuck another one in my mouth, taking a big bite. Even though they were my own concoction, I had to say they were damn good cookies.
Holding the treat between my teeth, I reached for the front doorknob but it turned before I could touch it. A large shadowed figure loomed on the other side of the glass door. Had Emmett’s game been canceled?
I stepped back and the door opened. My throat tightened.
The shrewd and icy cold gazes of two people I’d avoided at all costs zeroed in on me. I took the cookie out of my mouth, choking down what was already in my mouth.
“Mr. and Mrs. Cunning, what are you doing here?” My stomach coiled into a tight knot that was so much worse than the hunger.
His mom arched her eyebrow even higher. “I think that should be our question to you.”
His dad closed the door behind them. My avenue of escape was blocked.
“I left one of my textbooks here. I came back to get it.”
“Where is Emmett?”
My eyebrows furrowed. “He’s in Pittsburg.”
They looked at me, even more confused than I was.
“For his game? The semi-finals for the state championship…” I wished I could have gone, but I had to work. Why the hell weren’t they there, though? Unfortunately, it was a refrain I defaulted to often when I saw how much their absence got to Emmett, how much it hurt him. He tried to hide it, but I saw the truth.
“Right.” His mom dropped her bag on the table beside the door.
“It was nice seeing you both, but I should get going.”
I took a deep breath and climbed the two steps just inside the front door.
“You do know you’re not going to get your hands on this family’s money, right?”
My shoulders straightened and I spun on my heel.
“Excuse me?” My heart pounded. I should have bolted the second I had the chance.
“I know you think you’ve sunk your claws into a real meal ticket with Emmett, but this is nothing more than a high school dalliance for him, his other-side-of-the-tracks fantasy.”
“What?”
“I said, you’re not getting your grubby little hands on any Cunning money.”
“What makes you think I have any intentions of taking anything from Emmett? Why do you even care? It’s not like you’re ever here. You didn’t even know he had a game.” I fisted my hands at my sides. My dad was fucked up, but at least he had the excuse of being a junkie, not just a terrible human being. When he wasn’t drunk or using, he could actually pull off the slightest hint of the caring father routine—sometimes.
“We keep track of the important things in his life well enough,” his dad retorted dismissively.
“All I want is for Emmett to be happy. Shouldn’t that be what you want for him?”
“He has always resisted reality, and the reality is who he is and what he has will always attract those who wish to take advantage of him,” Mrs. Cunning sneered.
I stormed back down the steps, ready to go toe to toe with her. Her eyes got as wide as they could given the plastic surgery she’d had.
“I have never taken advantage of him, have never asked for a thing, and maybe if you knew your son a little better you’d know he’d never let anyone do that to him.”
“What do you call that around your neck?”
My hand shot to the key pendant hanging from the thin chain. I’d been washing dishes at the sink a few weeks ago when he’d come up behind me and slipped it around my neck. Clasping it, he’d run his fingers along the chain and peppered my back with kisses. I’d tried to give it back, but he can be persuasive when he wants to be.
“Do you know how much that little piece cost?”
I snapped my jaw shut tight and wrapped my hand tighter around the key dotted with what I’d hoped were cubic zirconia but knew weren’t.
“Let’s just say it’s probably half a year’s salary for a janitor.” Her cold stare sent a shiver down my spine. So different from Emmett. If I’d found out he was adopted, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.
“I didn’t ask for this. I’ve never asked for anything from him.”
“No? I bet you’re just waiting for the right moment, lying in wait to try to steal from this family.” Mr. Cunning came to stand beside her.
“I’ve never stolen anything in my life.” I hated how their hard gazes made me feel—like I wasn’t good enough, like I’d never measure up.
Her eyes darted down to my hand.
“I made these. I made them here with Emmett.” The chocolate chips melted against my palm, dirtying my hands.
“I’d hate for your father’s position to be threatened because his daughter insisted on grasping at those above her station.”
My blood boiled. Who actually said things like that? We weren’t in some Victorian-era TV show. Even so, the threat landed solidly, sending the air whooshing out of my lungs.
“We take it you’ll be able to see yourself out.” His dad’s voice snapped me out of my stunned silence.
They were threatening my dad’s job, the one we needed to keep Alyson in school. My cookies crumbled in my hand and fell to the gravel outside the house as I walked away on numb legs, not even closing the front door behind me.
I sat behind the wheel and wiped my hands on my jeans. Tears I hadn’t
let gather inside built up. I drove down their tree-lined driveway, the shade that covered it feeling like impending doom gathering overhead. Pulling off to the side of the road, I punched my steering wheel, and Percy let out a small yelp. With my head resting against the wheel, the tears fell.
What was I supposed to do?
I ran my fingers along his chest, his breathing steady under me. His parents’ threat against my dad and Alyson didn’t hold any water anymore, but what happened if Emmett’s parents found out I was back with him? He was finally getting close to them, and telling him that part of why I’d walked away would make him choose, would force him to make a decision that would taint anything we tried to start. It could also lead him to leave me behind in the dust, and really there was no doubt in my mind it would. Taking the happiness at spending time with his parents away from him seemed cruel after him wanting that relationship for so long. And how did I explain the money to him? The deal with his parents struck for my cooperation? That was a betrayal he’d never forgive. Where did that leave us? Was there an ‘us’? What happened when the summer was over?
16
Emmett
When I woke up, birds might as well have been chirping outside the window, bringing me a cup of coffee and some donuts. The only way it could have been more perfect was if Avery had been in my arms. Instead, she was perched on the chair by the window, staring outside. It’s morning already? Our morning together had morphed into afternoon and taken us all through the night.
“Hey.” I sat up. She was absolute perfection, and dashing out to get some food and drinks from the kitchen had been the only reason to leave in the last 18 hours or so.