He kissed her hard and deep, his hand slipping from her hair to gently clasp her neck. “You can have whatever you want from me. Always.”
“I just thought…because when I came to you I wanted it to be all about my fantasies…”
He gave her a soft smile as his hand cupped her spine. “I know there’s more to you than just your fantasies, Autumn.”
She thought about what he’d just done, pushing her gently toward one of the best experiences she’d ever had in New York. “You do, don’t you? You always know everything I want.”
“So what do you want now?” he asked, his voice low. “You want to fuck me on this park bench? Take control of me. Make me suffer?”
She nodded shyly. “I don’t want to risk our jobs and reputations, though.”
He smirked. “Stand up and take your panties off.”
Autumn did what she was told, shimmying her underwear down her legs and putting it in her handbag. She watched as Blake unzipped his fly and produced his cock. It was thick and dark-red, straining inside his fist. Her mouth immediately started watering but when she lowered her mouth toward him, Blake gently nudged her away. “I don’t mind breaking the rules, Fun-Size, but we can’t risk being here all night. I’ve never had a blow job from you I didn’t want to last an hour. Come sit on it before I change my mind.”
Autumn put her hands on her hips. “I thought I was going to be in charge?”
“You know what they say about old habits. What do you want me to do?”
“Sit back with your hands behind your head.”
He obliged, still looking like a lazing god. “Now what?”
Rather than respond, Autumn climbed onto his lap, arranging her skirt so that what they were doing would be concealed, even to the hedge. She reached between them and fisted Blake’s cock, sliding it between her soaking lips.
“Fucking hell,” he grunted. “Not shy with it anymore, are you?”
“Not even a little bit.” She sank down, impaling herself on him inch by inch. “We see or hear anyone, we start kissing and pretend we’re just making out, okay?”
“Yes, boss.”
The idea that they’d get away with this became slimmer and slimmer as she sank down and they both let out deep moans.
“God, don’t move,” Autumn said, gripping his shoulders and using them to raise herself up again. “I want to use you. You don’t move unless I tell you to.”
He nodded, his lips pulled into his mouth in concentration. She could tell it went against his instincts to let her do all the work, but still he sat there, allowing her to ride his cock. Within seconds he was slippery from her wetness. She experimented with her speed, taking him fast before slowing down and grinding herself against him. As she played, he watched her, a king allowing a subject to play with his toys without ever losing an ounce of power. Their gaze met and she shivered. “You look so good.”
“Goddamn, so do you. Now, take my fucking dick, Fun-Size. Take it all the way down like I make you take it.”
The use of her usual nickname while they were having sex made her smile. Blondie was the woman he screwed in a closet. Fun-Size was the girl who did stand-up in the park. She sank down on him as deep as she could go, moaning into the night air. “You’re so big.”
He chuckled, making both their bodies shake. “Like hearing that. You know I used to picture this. Before we knew each other.”
“What? Me humping you in a park?”
“Something like that.”
Autumn leaned forward and kissed a line along his neck. “How did you picture it? Tell me exactly and maybe I’ll let you live.”
Another chuckle. “We were on the beach, you came crawling up to me in this tiny string bikini begging for my cock, so eager, you sat on it the second I got it out.”
She closed her eyes, her arousal accelerating. “I can be eager.”
She rode him fast, her hips slapping down on his. He was so deep this way it was hard for her to keep it going. She was a vet and amateur comedian, not a spin instructor.
“Blake,” she whispered. “Can you help me?”
Instantly, his hands were on her hips and she was being raised up like she weighed nothing, brought down with more speed than she could have ever managed on her own. She moaned into Blake’s shoulder, slightly embarrassed.
“I wish I could do that,” she mumbled. “Fuck you the way you—oh—fuck me.”
“Don’t think about it,” Blake said, his hand weaving into her hair. “No one can make me laugh the way you do.”
God, this man. This man and his body and his words, it was more than a girl could take. Autumn closed her eyes and just let herself feel, the flutter of her skirt, the prickle of her sweat, the roughness of Blake’s hands as he ground her against him, rubbing her clit against the thatch of pubic hair that covered his groin. “Feel good?”
“Yes,” she said, unable to add anything else. “Yes, yes, yes!”
There was something different about this sex, but she couldn’t put her finger on it until her orgasm was closing in around her like the darkness. They might have been on a park bench, fucking where everyone could see them, and Blake might have been doing most of the work—she probably needed to do some squats or something—but they were connected in a way that went deeper than their bodies. Fully clothed, she could feel herself revealing something to Blake. Something that went beyond their shared fantasies. The like, maybe. The like she felt for him. The knowledge that from now on, the hardest thing about leaving New York would be leaving him.
The knowledge hurt. It made the sex sweeter and more painful. Her orgasm, as it swelled, made her feel the way she did when she received a beautiful bouquet. It would bloom and then burst and then it would be gone, leaving her a little emptier for knowing such beautiful things faded away.
“Can you grab my hair?” Autumn asked, needing to feel pain, to escape the crushing void of all this intimacy. Blake complied and with his fist tight in her hair, she imagined him as he had been before, a brooding outsider who watched her with an intensity she now knew was lust. She pretended her landlord had found her wandering the park and decided to use her for his own selfish purposes.
As soon as the fantasy wrapped itself around her brain, she felt better, more in control. She ground against him, imagined him cursing and taunting her for being such an eager little whore, even as the man inside her kissed her cheeks and moaned his encouragement. She came that way, her mind grasping at the filthy and impersonal despite the glow in her chest that said it was so much more. Her orgasm detonated like a bomb. It was a mercy the way it dulled out all her thoughts in a hot glow of sensation. He followed her a few seconds later, pressing her down and coming deep, deep inside.
They sat together, still joined, waiting for their breathing to slow.
Blake tipped his face toward the night sky. “How was that for you, boss lady?”
“Really good,” she said, which was the truth, but not all of it.
“Autumn…?”
She looked up at him. “What’s up?”
He stared at her for a long moment, then shook his head. “It’s late, we should get you back home.”
They untangled themselves with some difficulty, mopping up with the tissues Autumn kept in her handbag. It was pitch black now, and though she could still hear distant traffic it felt like she and Blake were the last two people in the world. She amused herself for a second, imagining the two of them trekking through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Funnily enough, Blake was the first person she’d ever met that she could see surviving in that scenario. Big, tough, resourceful. He knew all the streets and would probably know how to get food, too. If she was lucky, he’d agree to let her tag along with him. He didn’t seem to mind her more irritating personality traits and she had some medical knowledge. Surely that counted for something?
Her mind still on the apocalypse, Autumn absently checked her phone. When her brain processed what she was actually seeing, her heart felt like
it stopped dead in her chest. “Oh fuck!”
“What?” Blake said sharply, but she was too distracted to answer.
“Fucking shit!”
She had over two hundred Facebook alerts. Doubting that meant anything good, she opened the app to see she’d been tagged in a photo Owen had taken at the bar. The background was a blur of people and little fairy lights but she and Blake were crystal clear. They were standing so close together she was sure they’d just kissed hello. Blake’s hands were on her waist and he was frowning down at her in that familiar way that said he was amused and concerned at once. She was smiling up at him, her eyes huge as an anime character’s. She looked smitten. As though she thought he’d hung the moon and every star in the universe.
A lump rose in her throat and she swallowed, trying to force it down. This wasn’t the time. This wasn’t the fucking time for that. She kept scrolling and discovered Owen had captioned the picture ‘A tale as old as time’ and included a bunch of hashtags including #summer and #NewYorkRomance. It had over three hundred likes but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that her account was public and a ton of her friends from home had commented.
“OMG where’s Ian? Did you guys break up?”
“Fucking hell Autie are you and Fletcher opening things up?”
“God we’re out of the loop! Upload more pictures you spaz!”
“New York Romance? So you’re not coming home? Your mum keeps saying you’re coming home!”
She had twenty direct messages, all of them asking similar things, but that wasn’t all. She had nine missed calls from her parents, two from her uncle and multiple texts. She sank down on the stone bench and found they all said the same thing; what the hell is going on?
Then it got worse. Her mum had apparently called Ian, forced the truth about the break up out of him and was now in the process of booking her a fucking flight home.
“Oh god…” Autumn moaned. “Oh god, they all know, everyone knows. I was waiting for the right moment and now everyone knows.”
Her stomach heaved upward, threatening to eject her ice cream/vending cart dinner. She’d not only been outed as single, but clearly dating another man. Everyone knew and anyone who didn’t already would soon be told. This entire situation was out of control.
“Autumn,” Blake said. “What’s wrong? What do you mean everyone knows?”
She turned to look at him. In her horror, she’d almost forgotten he was there. “There are some things I need to tell you. About my parents and my uncle and Ian and a deadline date I’ve let get very, very close.”
CHAPTER 15
Blake leaned back in his chair and regarded the finished book sitting on his desk. Not the Bible project that had grown overdue. No, this restoration hadn’t been on the schedule, but it was by far the most important one he’d ever worked on. The rich pinks, reds and greens of the cover glowed in the lamplight, the embossed golden letters polished to a shine. There was no sign of the frayed spine or uneven pages that had been there when he purchased it. It was as perfect as he could make it and yet, he was less confident than he’d ever been upon completing a restoration. Usually when he finished a project, there was a sense of relief. He looked forward to dropping off the item and having it out of his life, the association with his client done. Clean cuts. His life had always been about clean cuts.
When his job had quite literally blown up in his face, he’d changed lanes.
When his friends proved to be untrustworthy, he’d walked away.
When his fiancée slept with someone else, he’d canceled the wedding.
Walking away without a backward glance was so much easier than forcing a square peg into a round hole. Maybe it was one of the pitfalls of a brain that operated on pure pragmatism. If a man’s leg is busted, he finds a job that doesn’t require him to use that leg. If people take away more than they add to a man’s life, cut them off. Simple. He’d always wondered why others didn’t find concise, necessary changes easy.
Blake had read enough of the classics stacked in his apartment to know there was an answer to why others chose to stick out an uncomfortable situation, instead of using their brains and God-given sense of self-preservation. Romance. Love. But love would suffice.
Looking down at the book he would give to Autumn, now he understood.
Love made people do uncomfortable things.
He’d never loved anyone before—obviously not even his fiancée—because he’d exited his comfort zone for Autumn. It got easier every time, mainly because of her. The way she held his hand and allowed him to be his grumpy self, even celebrating it. And on the opposite end, when he made jokes or couldn’t quite hide his happiness, she celebrated that, too. She had restored something in him, as sure as he’d restored the book on his desk. Then again, she’d made him better than he’d been before. She’d made him believe he had the capacity for love and now…now he couldn’t lose her.
Blake loved Autumn.
Admitting his feelings, especially in the midst of this rare cluttering of his usually cut and dried mindset, wasn’t easy. In fact, it was difficult acknowledging that he’d opened himself up this much to someone else. At first, he didn’t know why, until he realized she could be the one making the clean cut this time.
Isn’t that what it boiled down to?
For the first time in his life, he was on the other side of the knife. He’d never taken the time to consider what it must be like, having a loved one’s presence hanging in the balance. Knowing you were unworthy of them and that the decision to stay paired or separate was in their hands.
An uncomfortable knot tied itself in Blake’s stomach and he pushed himself out of his chair, beginning an agitated pace behind his desk. For so long, he’d maintained a brick wall between himself and the past, but the mortar began cracking now, letting daylight through. On the other side were faces he’d left behind, without so much as a second thought.
Although now Blake wasn’t so sure if he was devoid of second thoughts, or if he’d just blocked them, never acknowledging the hurt it caused to carve out vital parts of the past and toss them away. For the first time, he tried to imagine things from his friends’ point of view. His fiancée. If they’d tried to communicate with him, to make him listen to things he didn’t want to hear, would he have cut them off anyway? Before they even did anything wrong?
He didn’t have time to think about this now.
Blake snatched up the book and slipped it into the waiting plastic. Christ, why the mental torture when too many things already weighed in the balance tonight? As soon as he gave Autumn this book, she was going to know he loved her. Even without the inscription he’d written on the title page, she knew him well enough that the gift would say it all.
She knew him well enough.
How long had it been since anyone knew him well?
Never. He’d…never let anyone know him like Autumn did. Tonight he would show her the reverse was true, too. When they’d met, she had been in a state that reminded him of his past, yet he could see the girl beneath still burning so fucking bright. If all went according to plan, everyone would see her burn that way tonight.
Blake slipped the book into his inner coat pocket, switched off the lamp and tucked his apartment keys into his pants. He intended to pick Autumn up at her door, but when he opened his, there she was, her hand poised to knock.
“Hello,” he said, surprised. “I was just coming to get you.”
She dipped her chin. “Thought I would pick you up for a change, landlord. Men deserve to be courted, too.”
It was hard to speak for a moment, she looked so beautiful in her sparkly tights and black lace dress. Part of him wanted to drag her into the apartment and forget tonight’s plans. It would be so easy to continue as they had been for the last couple weeks; eating dinner together while she scratched jokes into a notebook with her purple pen, occasionally asking his opinion about one. And since the night in the park, she’d grown more and more confident wit
h the delivery each time. Sometimes she sat on his knee while he prepared rent statements for the building or worked on a restoration.
Then there was the fucking. God, the fucking. He couldn’t help going at her like an animal at the smallest encouragement. Or lack of encouragement, as was often the game between them. Every time he thought the edge had been taken off, it came back sharper and more demanding. It always would for this girl, he knew it in his gut. His heart. Where his bedside drawer had once been empty, it was now filled with rope, handcuffs, a gag, a notepad for ransom letters, new pictures he’d taken of Autumn on the sly and panties he’d confiscated. But when she left her joke notebook there, such a private part of herself, that had been the most satisfying item of all.
“Blake?”
He realized he’d been staring at her in the hallway without commenting for too long. “You look beautiful,” he said, clearing his throat. “What is that? New lipstick?”
“Yes. Electric coral.”
Blake waited for her to make a joke or lay a lipstick mark on his cheek. Either of those things would be typical Autumn behavior. Instead, she just stood there. There seemed to be an air of distraction about her. He didn’t like that, especially when there was so much on the line tonight. That went double after what happened in the park. She’d explained her reaction to whatever popped up on her phone away by summing it up as family drama she didn’t want to discuss, before he’d walked her home in a thick silence. He’d only pressed enough to make sure it wasn’t another dick snap from her ex-boyfriend, then let it drop, hoping Autumn would explain when she was ready. Maybe that had been a mistake.
He stepped into the hallway and caught her chin between two fingers. “Something on your mind, Fun-Size?”
“Who, me?”
“No, the miniature candy bar behind you.”
A light warmed the hazel green of her eyes. “Hey, I thought I was the aspiring comedian.”
Captivated Page 23