by Alexis Anne
Andres stood with his hands clasped at his front, watching me as I wandered back and forth in front of the windows. “I think that’s wise. They’ll be there waiting for you to leave in the morning. They’ll follow you to work. And most likely they’ll still be waiting to follow you home.”
Fucking stupid paparazzi. I wanted to blame myself for all of this, but I didn’t have the energy to hate myself that much. Not yet. “There’s a hotel just across from campus. It will be obvious, but easy to manage.”
Andres nodded and pulled out his phone. “Name?”
Adam cleared his throat. “I have another idea. Come stay with me at Green Hills.”
He was looking right at me with that beautiful intensity I loved so much. “Adam, I…” the words evaporated on my tongue. As much as I wanted to say no, I didn’t seem to be able to actually do it.
He stepped toward me. “Seriously, this makes good sense. Green Hills is a large piece of property, it’s gated and we have our own security and protocols for dealing with…” this time it was Adam searching for words. “With situations and important guests,” he finally finished. “The photogs won’t be able to get near either of us.”
“But,” I tried again and failed. I didn’t want to continue dragging Adam into my circus.
“Don’t say no.” Adam took my hand in his, turning it over so he could look at my palm. He traced the lines with his thumb, never looking up. “I want you there with me,” he said quietly. “My family would want you there, too.” I wasn’t breathing. I couldn’t. Right after Adam stole my words he stole my air. He was so sweet and sincere. He took my hand and placed it on his heart, holding it in place. I could feel the heavy thump of his heart in my palm and wondered if this gesture was as intimate to Adam as it felt to me.
He finally looked me in the eye. “I think it is the smart thing to do.” He was appealing to both my emotions and my intelligence.
Green Hills was out of town and further away from work, but I’d be able to think and actually get some sleep out there. A hotel wouldn’t be much better than my apartment. It would be close to work, but would I actually be able to work if I was exhausted? I wanted to be with Adam. That was what put me in this mess in the first place. Refusing him now wouldn’t help. “Alright.”
Adam’s eyes lit up. “Really?” Clearly he’d been expecting me to retreat back behind my lines, but I was done hiding and compromising. Adam was offering a good solution and I’d be stupid to reject it simply because it put me on the same property with his family.
“Really. As long as Andres agrees.”
“I think it sounds perfect,” Andres answered immediately and I got the impression he’d been hoping that I would say yes. “Let’s get you packed.”
Chapter 4
An hour and half later I was wearing my t-shirt, leggings, socks, and a comfy sweater, sitting in the middle of Adam’s bed while eating an enormous tray of food sent over by his mother. I was happily hiding away in the little apartment and purposely not thinking about the fact that Adam’s family, and whole life, were a few hundred yards away.
I was alone while Adam introduced Andres to the property manager and the security team for Green Hills and I was using my time to field phone calls from campus police and a very angry best friend.
“Why did I learn about your weekend online?” Allison hissed.
I shoved a puff pastry stuffed with some sort of cheese and jam into my mouth and shrugged at my laptop. Allison and I were in a Google Hangout catching up while I ate.
“I was testing the waters on living without you.”
She shrieked at me. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Well, you were going to tell me that you’re moving to London permanently, weren’t you?”
She stuttered, her mouth hanging open so long I thought the chat had frozen. “Maybe. I’ve been considering it. How did you know?”
“Allison, we’ve been best friends for ten years. I know you like the back of my hand. First you had the gushing stage, then you had the eating stage,” I ticked through Allison’s known process of falling in love. “And last week, you stopped talking about how much you loved it there and only wanted to talk about me finding more people in my life. You said, and I quote, ‘You wouldn’t always be around’.”
“Damn it,” she pounded her desk and took a swig of her beer. “You know me too well.”
I gave her my very best self-satisfied smirk and popped a fried piece of something delicious in my mouth. “Why are you only considering it? Please say it isn’t because of me.”
I sipped some red wine while Allison looked everywhere but at me. “You’re my sister from another mister. I’m not going to abandon you. If it works out for both of us, I’ll do it. But the firm is happy to have me in Calhoun Beach or in London. I have a good job either way.”
I loved this woman and all she’d done for me. It hurt to hear this. She was considering holding back on her dreams because of me. “I think you should do it. If you want this job, if London is home, then do it.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “What happened this weekend?”
“I got a wakeup call I’ve been needing for a very long time.” Being without my support system was eye-opening. My time with Adam was enlightening. But seeing my past come back to haunt me just as I was starting to picture possibilities for my life… well, my options couldn’t have been placed in front of me any more starkly.
“How bad is the press? Have you talked to your parents?”
I winced. Bringing Allison fully up to speed hurt. There was some lecturing and a little bit of yelling. “And Friday is the end?”
“Edita is drawing up the paperwork now.” I didn’t mention any of the other messy details factoring into my decision.
“Good.”
Allison loved Lily, but she always hated the agreement. We were grown women now. We didn’t need our parents to have a relationship. “So…can we discuss the elephant in the room?”
“And what is that?” We’d covered my parents, my sister, and what happened at the club…what else was there?
“Adam fucking Callaway is Hottie Pants?”
“You say that like I hadn’t told you who I was seeing.” I was being purposefully difficult to rile Allison up.
“You said Adam. You said Callaway. I figured he was some guy you met in a bar, not him.”
I shook my head. “I have apparently missed out on the obsession.”
That got a good laugh out of Allison. “Do you not remember the screen saver you gave me shit about our sophomore year? Do you seriously not recall the poster behind my door? Hold on, you’re getting an email in a minute.”
Fuzzy, decade old images were all I could recall. I did, however, remember giving Allison a really hard time about the hot guy on her computer. She was obsessed and to me, it was disturbing. He was always just floating back and forth, and back and forth…
My email dinged on my phone and I started downloading a string of five images.
“I still had these saved in my college folder I always import when I change computers.”
Image after image of a much younger, but still gorgeous, Adam appeared on my screen. They were sexy pictures of him gripping the steering wheel of an Aston Martin, leaned lazily up against the car with a blazer over his shoulder, of him holding a gorgeous model against his hip with shiny sunglasses over his eyes. I did remember these. They were a Vanity Fair spread from our sophomore year. The picture of Adam driving was her old screen saver. The poster behind her door was him leaned up against the car.
Allison had been obsessed. Said he was the most gorgeous man who ever lived. “I had no idea.”
“You know,” she chuckled, “that is actually part of your charm.”
“You can’t have him. He’s mine,” I said more forcefully than I meant. It was supposed to be a joke but instead it sounded more like a threat.
Allison shook her head with a shit-eating grin on her face. “To hear you say
that, I’ll give him up. That sound right there, is worth it.”
The door opened and a very tired looking Adam strode inside, locking the door behind him. I took that to mean things were handled and we were in for the night. “You want to meet him?”
Allison clapped her hands and bounced in her seat. “Is that even a question?”
Adam grinned as he crossed the room, leaning across the bed to kiss me on the cheek. “And who is in bed with you while I’m gone?”
I turned the laptop a little so that the camera faced both of us. “Adam, meet Allison.”
“It is very nice to meet you.” He settled onto the bed beside me.
Allison giggled like a sophomore with a crush, not the twenty-nine year old architect with an exterior of steel. “I should confess, I had a wild crush on you in college.”
Adam tensed and avoided my eyes, looking intently at the computer. “I haven’t heard that in a long time.”
“I just thought I should toss that out there now. I want it to be on both your radars that I’m going to celebra-stalk you. Not because I’m in love with you, but because I can’t help myself.” She clapped her hand over her mouth and shook her head. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry. That was a really stupid comment considering you two are actually being stalked.”
Adam took it in stride, smiling politely. “Well, I’ll let you two finish up your chat. I need a drink.” Tension rolled off his heavy shoulders. The day had taken a toll on both of us. For once, Adam truly looked like he needed a drink to take the edge off. I didn’t like knowing I was the cause of his smile disappearing.
“Well, it’s late for you over there on the other side of the pond, and Adam and I have a lot to figure out so…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…you’ve got sex to have. Rub it in.”
“No pieces of meat for you to seduce in London?”
A look, slightly pixelated by our trans-Atlantic chat, crossed her face, making it difficult for me to interpret. “Plenty of pieces of meat, none that I’ve tasted. Yet.”
Well, that was an interesting comment. “I expect a better explanation later.”
She nodded. “Have a good night. Try and get some sleep. Update me on the Reign of Terror.” Allison referred to Roger and Cybil as the Evil King and Queen of Hollywood, and the crap that followed them as the Reign of Terror. It was fitting and useful in situations where we couldn’t use names or explain ourselves fully.
“I will. Good night.” I closed the chat and snapped my computer shut.
Adam poured himself a glass of wine and slid onto the bed beside me, picking up a puff pastry from the tray. It was going to be hard to get through the night considering how much we both needed to explain.
“I should meet your parents tomorrow. Properly thank them for the help.”
Adam finished chewing and studied his glass of wine. “Only if that’s what you want. I’ve explained the situation and, believe me, they understand. It won’t hurt their feelings at all if you want to avoid meeting them.”
“Are you politely trying to tell me they don’t want to meet me?” I didn’t like that feeling one little bit. I was the walking, talking embodiment of hypocrisy. It was ok for me to avoid meeting them, but not the other way around.
Adam chuckled low in the back of his throat. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?” I turned a little more so that I was facing him.
“The thing you were doing before dinner. Overanalyzing and reading too much into things. You’ve been very different today and I can’t tell if it’s just because of the press, or because of something else.”
My skin prickled as my blood pressure skyrocketed. Nothing about this conversation was going to be easy. “For someone who’s known me a week, you sure can read my moods.”
Adam set the tray of food on the floor beside the bed and then moved closer so that his bent knee slid along mine. He ran a finger up my neck and his palm along my cheek, before his fingers tangled in my hair.
I could barely hold myself together. Adam’s touch did things to me. Sometimes the lighter touch did more—forcing my senses to reach out, only to be met with the overwhelming intensity of Adam’s lust for me. The blood rushed out of my head.
Adam swallowed as he leaned in, his breath dancing across the skin of my cheek, and his eyes burning into mine. “I like to think that the moment I sat down at the bar in Seychelles you and I were in sync. Everything about me tuned itself to you. Your body. Your voice. Your desires.”
His thumb swept over my cheek and he tilted my head to kiss me, but stopped just short of my lips. It was torture to have him so close, but holding back. Every cell in my body screamed for Adam to just fucking kiss me.
“When we’re together,” he whispered, “I can hear every breath, every shudder. I know when you stop breathing and the moment I hit the spot that makes you come. Your whole body tenses when you want more, and you relax the moment you let go of everything that worries you. I know,” he kissed me, just barely, “that the only way to get you to forget about the world and trust me, is to let you have the control, but that the moment you do let it go, the last thing you want to do is think.”
I was quivering now. So wet it was uncomfortable. Adam’s body and scent were aphrodisiacs, but his words took me apart piece by piece. He was making love to my heart with a speech. I loved everything he said. Normally it would make me run. Someone seeing that much of me, knowing me so well, would be a threat. They could expose me, use me, and hurt me in ways I had yet to imagine.
But not Adam.
I knew he was different. Being exposed to Adam wasn’t a threat to my safety. He would never hurt me. His intentions weren’t to use me—he just wanted to be with me. It was as simple and as perfect as that.
And that was when I realized how well I knew him, too. I had no doubts about Adam. It wasn’t just a gut instinct that he was genuine. I knew his grunts and what the different sounds of his voice meant, but I also saw how he treated his friends. His family was important to him, even when they disagreed. He was kind and generous to the people around him. Added to his easy confidence and intelligence, I knew who Adam was as a person because of what I was able to observe.
He kissed me slowly. His lips gliding across mine until we were firmly pressed together. It was just a simple kiss. Lips locked together, connecting us, almost as if it were a first kiss.
Maybe this was. I’d forced us to keep so much about ourselves hidden. Now that the truth was coming out, everything felt different. I put my hands around his face and tried to pull him into a deeper kiss, but he shook his head. “No. This deal we’ve had…I can’t do it anymore.”
My fingers tightened onto him reflexively, like I was grabbing on so he couldn’t go. I may be emotionally confused and a little stunted, but I could recognize fundamental feelings. I needed Adam. “No.”
He kissed the tip of my nose and then pried my fingers away from his face. “It’s not what you think,” he whispered as he pressed my hands together inside his. “I want to throw away whatever is left of our no-strings-attached deal. I’ve got strings and I am fucking attached to you.”
I was attached to him, too. It was the scariest and most exhilarating experience of my life. It was a lot to accept and I was glad my hands were inside his. In a way, it felt like he was holding me together when I wanted to fly apart. “What do you have in mind?”
“Well for one, we need to be honest. Lay all our cards on the table—no more holding back.”
I nodded. There was no denying the pressing need for details where both of us were concerned.
“And,” he continued with a smile, “I need whatever this is between us to happen naturally. No rules, no time limits, no assumptions.”
I wrinkled my nose. “You’re asking me to trust you.”
“I am.”
“And what do I do if you turn out to be a lying dirt-bag who breaks my heart?” Even though I knew Adam wouldn’t, I was still terrified. I didn’t know if I
had the strength to keep putting myself back together. My feelings for Adam were so strong that I might not survive getting my heart trampled by him.
His eyes narrowed and his breathing evened out. “I propose an undressing.”
What?
He chuckled and his eyes softened. “Let me explain. We both have a lot to share. It’s gonna suck—for both of us. You don’t own the patent on painful history. I have something I’ve never shared with anyone. I’ll give it to you to keep safe. If I hurt you, it’s yours to do with as you wish.”
I wasn’t sure if I understood Adam completely, but I was willing to figure it out. “Alright. And how is this going to work exactly?”
Adam tilted his head sideways, letting go of my hand as he assessed me. “Well, it looks like you’re wearing enough clothes.”
“Clothes?”
“Mmmm…” he nodded. “Like I said, we’re going to have an undressing. One piece of history for each piece of clothing.”
Chapter 5
The sexiest, funkiest music played softly in the background. A fresh bottle of wine sat on the coffee table which had been pulled over by the bed. We dragged the couch over as well. Adam raided a cabinet and found a couple of candles and lowered the lighting so that the room seemed to glow. He sat on the couch and I perched on the edge of the bed. For a moment I panicked and wondered if I should put on more clothing or take some off. I had a lot to share, I might not have enough clothes. But then again, I might not make it through the clothes I did have on in one piece.
I took another gulp of wine and blew out a cleansing breath. I’d made up my mind: I was going first. I probably had more secrets to unload—and more clothing. Adam hadn’t said anything one way or the other, but I felt like taking the lead would give me that little bit of control I needed to get through this.