by Lindsey Hart
Which, when he finally woke the hell up, he realized the little breakdown in the field had been about that. It was Bella trying to put some distance between them. He got it. He felt the need for it too. He just didn’t have the ability to let his good judgment win out over his caveman brain, which demanded that he do anything possible to see her again.
Okay. Maybe a little more than that.
Bella shifted. She pulled away and Rhett was sure that was it. She was going to ghost, call it done, and he’d never see her again. The ache in his chest told him that it would be far worse than getting dumped at the altar. Or right before it.
His heart gave a weird skitter jumping action in his chest when Bella shoved her hair over her shoulder, adjusted her dress, and straddled his lap. Maybe his cock gave a little jump too if he was being honest.
Her hands deftly found the hem of his t-shirt and she shoved it up over his chest. “I’m going to regret this,” she said huskily. “Because we both know this isn’t about closure at all.”
Rhett let her tug his t-shirt off and throw it to the floor. “We don’t have to do this. We can stop. Call it a day and go our separate ways.” His heart gave a hard kick and he knew that it was bullshit. He couldn’t walk away.
When Bella’s lips slanted over his again, he knew that she couldn’t either.
CHAPTER 15
Bella
Okay. They were really going to do this. Finally. It seemed like the entire time since she’d first set eyes on Rhett had been devoted to ending up here. Fumbling hands. Hot kisses. Clothes littering the floor. Scalding touches. Tongues doing battle with each other. Raspy breaths.
She blinked and she was on her back, Rhett’s hard body covering hers, pressing her down into the soft white covers. He’d flicked off the lamp. The room was dark, but she’d missed him do it.
She’d been so lost in his kisses, his touch, the way he stripped off her clothes like he had a magic wand and when he said the word, they just fell right off, that she’d missed the little flick of the lamp as well.
Bella didn’t miss the wall of muscle hovering over her though. The washboard abs, the carved-out chest, the arms and shoulders caging her in, rippling with muscle at either side of her face as they supported Rhett above her.
Her hips bucked up all on their own and Bella found Rhett’s knee between her thighs, parting her legs. She shifted down a little and ground herself shamelessly against him, and holy shit, it turned out that the rain showers going on in her nether region weren’t at all limited to once per day because she was soaking. Even she could feel the wetness she left on Rhett’s leg.
He let out a growl right beside her face and latched onto her neck. His hot kisses drove her mad. He licked and suckled the tender skin right beneath her earlobe before he sucked it into his mouth, and holy Hannah, that shouldn’t have felt so good.
The pressure building between her legs shouldn’t have been so intense either, but then again, they’d just spent the better part of an entire evening working each other up and coming back down. The five minutes of foreplay, aggressive kissing and groping were enough to get her nearly all the way there. Rhett’s knee could have done the rest. If she’d ground down hard enough, she could have found her peak and sent herself flying.
Yeah. She was a little keyed up.
His cockhead, thick and warm, butted up against her entrance. She was soaked and he was soaked. They’d done this before, although maybe the alcohol lubricated her up a little more than she was willing to admit because even though she’d just had him in her mouth and hand an hour before, holy shit he felt huge.
“Bella,” Rhett ground out close to her ear. Hearing him say her name like that, all raspy and shivery like he couldn’t hold on, like he couldn’t wait to get inside, like he wanted to destroy her and fuck her into three weeks from now… yeah. That was pretty hot too. As in, it almost made her come just hearing his tone.
She couldn’t remember a single other time she’d ever been so turned on. So ready. So… so able to get there just from the brush of Rhett’s cockhead against her and a single word. Her hips pumped upwards again, doing that thing where they did it all on their own and she couldn’t control it at all. Fuck, even her nipples hurt. They were hard enough to cut glass. Or, more apt, Rhett’s chest, which hovered right above her. The friction of his skin on those sensitive nubs was delicious.
“Don’t hold back,” Bella panted. She didn’t even realize she was going to say anything at all until the words were out. Rhett went rigid above her, but before he could do anything, she gripped his ass, digging her fingers into his skin and all that tight, glorious muscle. She shouldn’t have thought about how it was possible to have such a tight ass, but she did.
And then his hips moved under the force of her fingers and he pushed inside of her, stretching her, filling her with a single hard thrust, and all coherent thought, including thoughts about his ass, was virtually impossible.
Bella’s eyes slammed shut and her breath refused to do even the most basic in and out thing with her lungs. All she could think about was how damn good it felt to have Rhett inside of her.
“You’re so ridiculously tight,” Rhett groaned. “Do you do those crotch exercises all day or something?”
Bella felt herself clench around him as if her va-jay liked proving the point. Her hips started to pump harder, in time with Rhett’s, as he thrust in and out, filling her harder, faster, over and over again. And god, did he fill her. She’d never felt anything like what he was doing and as far as she knew, he wasn’t doing anything overly different. It was just that with him and his massive dong, even the missionary position felt like something wild and taboo. Not just vanilla, it was rocky road with bananas, chocolate chips, sprinkles, and butterscotch topping.
There weren’t any words or comparisons or bad ice cream metaphors to properly describe what Rhett was doing. He was thrusting. Hard. Losing himself. She was losing herself. It felt like one of those beams of sunlight slanting down, angels singing kind of moments.
The pressure built, harder and faster, with Rhett’s thrusts. The noises in the room were hot. Sex noises, their bodies slamming together, Rhett’s hot heavy breaths and groans of pleasure, her little pants and whimpers and more feminine style groans.
Right before everything went dark and tilted out of control, Bella realized it was the first time in her entire life that she’d ever felt truly connected to another person. Truly… safe. Altogether… right.
Rhett slammed into her one last time and it must have hit something like her G-spot or something associated with it, because her world imploded. Everything shattered and the lights turned off. Game fucking over.
The climax that ripped through Bella was white-hot. Raging like a wildfire, it ate up her limbs and turned her inside out. She shuddered and panted and tried to breathe through the most intense pleasure she’d ever felt in her lifetime. She’d never felt a climax like that before, where every tremor was stronger than the last, where it literally felt like her bones were melting. Her lady bits did a crazy clamping, unclamping, vice-like motion and Rhett thrust harder and harder, going a little wild himself, setting off another series of mini and not so mini explosions, before he did his own version of the shuddery dance and hit more places Bella didn’t know she had and half collapsed on top of her, all the while breathing like he was going into cardiac arrest.
God, it was wonderful.
Every. Single. Second.
She’d always thought guys coming was kind of… well… not so pretty. She’d learned a long time ago not to look at anyone’s face while they were in the throes of passion, because that shit was uncontrolled and scary, but not Rhett. She hadn’t watched his O-face, but it was probably beautiful. Like the rest of him. There was nothing gross or weird or unattractive about what he’d just done. To her. With her. For her. For him. Together. Not one thing.
That was also a first.
When he rolled away and tugged her into his arms, Bella we
nt. Which she never did. She didn’t like to be held after sex. Sex was just sex for her. It wasn’t cuddling. Most of the time it was just scratching an itch and the whole aftermath thing only involved rolling away, grabbing up clothes and muttering excuses to get the hell out of there.
Rhett’s arms were solid and warm, just like the rest of him. Even caged in them, Bella didn’t feel panicked or trapped. She didn’t feel claustrophobic.
She sure as hell didn’t feel closure.
When Rhett began to stroke her hair gently, massaging her scalp with his fingertips in a motion that could have been absentminded, but she knew wasn’t, she was done. Just… done.
“I- did that feel like closure for you?” Rhett asked breathlessly.
Bella knew she could have lied. The words were right there on the tip of her tongue. She could have told him that it didn’t feel at all like her ovaries had just exploded or that she’d been ruined for any other guy because no guy on earth had a dick like that and could use it like Rhett just had, but it was more than that. It was… it was scarily more than that.
She should have rolled away, should have told him that it was the best closure she’d ever had, thanked him for it, thrown on her clothes, and beat a hasty retreat, but she just couldn’t do it.
Because there was something seriously wrong with her.
Along with giving her the best orgasm of her life, Rhett must have scrambled her brains.
When she opened her mouth all the wrong words came out. She needed to tell him that it was over. That they couldn’t see each other again. That it had been short and sweet and that was the best way, that anything good was always ruined by time and bullshit, but instead, she found herself muttering the exact opposite as she fought eyes that were suddenly really, really heavy.
“No,” she whispered as she snuggled into Rhett’s side. His strong, warm, muscular side. A side that felt far, far too good. Far too much like home and she’d never had a home she actually cared for. Buildings or metaphorical people's homes. “No, it’d didn’t feel like closure at all.”
CHAPTER 16
Bella
“You sure about this?”
Bella dropped a folded-up set of jeans onto her already overflowing suitcase. She eyed John, who had been buzzing around in the periphery for the past half an hour. He was hovering in the doorway, his shadow darkening the whole room, he really was that big.
She cast him a fond smile. They were friends, after all. When she’d put out the roommate wanted ad, she never could have foreseen John answering. He looked like a professional wrestler. It was nice that he worked nights so he often slept during the day and was gone when she was home. Their schedules worked out so that they didn’t often bother each other, but they were friends. John was just an easy kind of guy to know. Bella viewed him as the over-protective big brother she never had. He’d rescued her from more than a few shit dates by pretending to be just that. They’d even done the whole boyfriend routine thing, shamefully enough, that he’d tried to pull on Rhett.
Was that really a month ago?
Time flew by when you were having fun. Or so people said.
“John,” Bella said patiently. She ignored the rest of the stack she still had to fold into her suitcase. “The only reason I’m not sure about this is because the airline is probably going to charge me fifty dollars for this overweight bag. It probably weighs double what it should.”
John lifted those massive shoulders of his in a bear-like version of a burly shrug. “I have a bag you can borrow. If you check two, it’s probably cheaper.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“Is it pink? I don’t do pink.”
John smiled despite the concern that lingered on his granite features. He looked like he was hewn out of rock, in a completely different way from Rhett. Rhett was like softer rock. John was like… like the kind of rock that had been around since the dawn of time. He was probably spawned from an ancient line of giants.
“Why would it be pink?” John scoffed. “Of course, it’s not pink.”
“Then maybe I’ll consider borrowing it. Unless it’s black. I can’t do black. I can never find it on the conveyer with everyone else’s luggage.”
“It’s blue.” He gave an exasperated sigh. “You’ve only known this guy for what? A month? You’re already going to go to his place for a weekend? An extended weekend? You never take those. You are getting serious already?”
Bella stuffed her hands into her hoodie so that John couldn’t see how they’d started to shake at the mention of the word serious. She didn’t do serious. So, what am I doing?
When Rhett came down to visit her, it was easy to pretend that they weren’t actually a couple. He just came for some fun on the weekends. He never stayed at her place. She went to his hotel room. It was like an illicit affair. Except without the whole evil cheating part. It was… it was just them having some fun now and then. Okay, every weekend. Without fail. It was just them not being able to get enough of each other. Bella kept waiting for it to wear thin because she didn’t do permanent and she didn’t do commitment.
She glanced down at her bag one more time, at all the stuff scattered all over her bed. Her hands began to sweat in her hoodie. She kept them firmly clutched together.
“No.” The word had to be pushed out and it came out anything but casual sounding. She winced at herself. Okay, so she had trust issues. She might have been burned in the past. By three different guys. Cheaters. All of them. The rest just didn’t stick. She wasn’t always the one who found a reason for it not to work. She wasn’t always the one who was difficult or didn’t want something lasting. Sometimes she did, and that was the worst part.
“So, you’re not getting serious?” One of John’s brows quirked up. “This is just another booty call for like the sixth weekend in a row? You’re just taking time off and flying across the country to scratch the itch?”
“My itches aren’t your concern.”
It was true though. She was always in a state of ready to be turned on-ness that was new, and she didn’t know what to do with it. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, that her clit always seemed to be throbbing, her panties in a permanently moist state, her nipples always hard. Because she was always thinking about Rhett. Even when she shouldn’t be. Which was pretty much all the time.
She literally felt her right eye start to twitch.
“Okay, well, I just hope you know what you’re getting yourself into. Guys that have a lot of money can be… well- you know what they can be. They think they’re entitled to the world just because they can buy it. Don’t let him buy you. You’re worth more than anything he could offer.”
“I’m not being bribed,” Bella spluttered. Her jaw dropped open before her brain could catch up. When it did, she pressed her lips shut for a second, thinking about what John had just said. “Wait… what?” She unfolded her hands and dropped them to her sides, quickly wiping away the moisture on her jeans. “How do you know that he has money?”
“I looked him up.” John didn’t bat an eye, as though looking up his roommate’s boy-er lover- er… whatever Rhett happened to be, was an everyday occurrence.
“I didn’t hire you to do security for me. I didn’t need you to run a background check.”
“No, I know. I just did it anyway. It just happens to be what I do for a living.”
“You don’t do that kind of security.”
John’s eyes danced with humor and he actually cracked a bit of a smile. “Okay, so I do security a grocery store but hell. You should see some of the shit that goes down there at night.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Bella responded dryly. Actually, she didn’t. She couldn’t imagine. John was really tight-lipped about his job, but she’d heard a few things over the past months that were totally bizarre. One of them involved a pizza and a guy getting arrested for indecent exposure.
“Well, I was just farting around on my laptop a few weeks ago and I thought I
should look him up. Make sure he wasn’t into anything sketchy or a pervert or something. You’re my friend. I wanted to keep you safe.”
“So, you actually know how much money he has? How the heck would you find something like that out anyway?”
“Uh- online. The most basic search produces a person’s net worth when they’re that rich.”
Something cold and shivery slithered up Bella’s spine and simultaneously lodged in her chest. “What do you mean, that rich?”
“Dude, the guy’s a billionaire. So yeah, you can figure out pretty fast what he’s worth.”
The world ground to a halt in record breaking time. Bella’s legs threatened to give out and she actually took a step and lowered herself onto her overflowing bed. “A- a billionaire?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” John looked at her strangely. “I mean, you knew that, right?”
There wasn’t any use pretending. John knew her too well. “No,” she admitted, voice thin and reedy. “I mean- I knew that he was rich. My sister was actually engaged to him and uh- it’s a long story, but remember when I went down for her wedding?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“She didn’t actually get married. Rhett was her fiancé.”
“Damn!” John shook his head, surprise written all over his face. “You’re dating your sister’s ex-fiancé. That’s messed up.”
“Not as messed up as you think. I was the one who found him at the church. He found out my sister was actually cheating on him and had been for a while. He was a mess. I gave him a ride out of there. I- uh- we went back to my hotel room and got shitfaced, kind of by accident and uh- things happened.”
“Things happened? Shift faced by accident? How does that even go down?”
“I don’t know.” Bella shook her head. She dropped her eyes. She couldn’t even look at John for a second longer. He wasn’t judging her, she was doing it to herself.
“So, you knew that the guy’s super rich, right?”