by Gemma James
I’m gaping at him again. “Ashton…”
“I can’t give you expensive houses or cars, or huge diamonds, but I can give you everything that I am.” His blue eyes darken with sly satisfaction. “And intense orgasms. I can give you those.”
I burst out laughing. Only Ashton would include orgasms in a marriage proposal. “It’s a big step.”
“No bigger than the steps we’ve already taken. You can move in with me when you’re ready. We’ll get married when you’re ready. But let’s make it official. Say you’ll be mine.”
“I’m yours.” I don’t even have to think about it. The vow slips off my lips as if they were designed to say such an oath to him.
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s a yes…someday.”
“I’ll take it.” I’ve never seen his smile so bright as he slips a solitaire diamond ring onto my finger. It’s not overwhelming in size, but it sparkles with more brilliance than any piece of jewelry I’ve laid eyes on.
It’s perfect.
“But this doesn’t mean I’m moving in with you yet.”
“Of course not,” he says with a smirk. “After all, you’re the girl that brought me to my knees long before you’d let me kiss you.”
“I believe I was the one on my knees.”
He presses his mouth to mine, and I feel his lips curving into a smile. “You’re damn good at it too.”
“I had an excellent teacher.”
“Did you, now?”
“Oh, yeah. Sexy, on the cocky side, loves to get good head. You might know him.”
“I might. This teacher you speak of. Does he enjoy pushing past boundaries?”
Shit, I know that tone. “He likes to think he’s in charge.”
Ashton lifts a brow. “He thinks he’s in charge?”
“I wouldn’t want to deflate his ego, so it’s our secret.” Before he can issue payback, I scoot out of reach and slip into the pool of water behind the falls.
He’s quick to follow, and I sense him at my back, heat wafting off his skin as he stalks me through the water. I reach the other side, the falls spilling over my right shoulder, and that’s when he makes his move. He bends me over the smooth rocky ledge, adjusts his swim trunks, and plunges inside me.
One hand tangles in my wet locks, and he pulls until my scalp tingles, and I can’t move my head. I’m completely at his mercy, clawing at the stone beneath me as I stand on tiptoes for leverage.
“Baby,” he groans, yanking even harder on my hair. “Say it. I want to hear you say it.”
“Say what?” I squeal the question.
He thrusts upward, plundering so deep that it ignites the best kind of ache low in my belly. I can’t breathe. I can’t do anything but let him fuck me from behind as I cry out with each forceful thrust of his cock.
It’s primal and animalistic and enough to hurtle me into orgasmic heaven.
“Yes! Oh fuck yes! Yes!”
“That’s the answer I want.” He jerks to a stop with a shudder, and then he’s biting into my shoulder to smother his moans as he empties himself into me. The roar of the falls lulls us into serenity, giving our breathing time to even out. Several minutes later, he whirls me to face him.
“So I guess this means we are moving in together.”
My eyes go wide. “Getting ahead of yourself there, aren’t you?”
“No take-backs. You just screamed ‘yes’ to high heaven. More than once.”
“Clever, Ash. Real clever.”
“I have a degree in clever. When should I move your things?”
“How about when you catch me?” I sink beneath the surface and kick off the rocks, shooting across the small swimming hole, but he’s got his fist around my ankle before I reach the other side. I don’t know why I’m surprised.
When it comes to getting what he wants, Ashton has had me in his clutches from the moment I met him on the playground when we were kids, and he turned those beautiful blue eyes on me.
There are far worse destinies than loving Ashton Levine.
This bonus book of Trashy Foreplay is the first in the Trashy Affair series. Please note it DOES have a cliffhanger ending! Book 2 is coming this summer.
He’s flying home to confront his cheating wife. She’s running from her life in shame. Neither expected to fall in love 35,000 feet in the air.
With my heart and reputation in ruins, I can’t afford to make another mistake. Boarding a flight to Seattle is supposed to give me a clean slate, but from the moment Cash Montgomery slides into the seat next to mine, I’m captivated by his steel eyes that see too much. I ache for this stranger in a way I’ve never ached for anyone.
But I didn’t know he was married, and I sure as hell didn’t see the curveball fate had in store. My clean slate in Seattle isn’t so clean after all because my new boss is the man forbidden to me.
And the only man I want.
The only man I’ll do anything for, even if it means breaking the promise I made to myself when I fled my old life in shame.
I wasn’t supposed to fall for a married man, but I did.
1. It's the End of the World
Jules
It all comes down to a fucking toothbrush. The absence of it rips a hole in my heart. No, that missing toothbrush obliterates me, scattering any chance of hope I have that he’ll come back. Clutching my chest, I stumble from the bathroom back to my pitiful spot on the bed, but nothing lessens the sobs holding me hostage to this devastation. It sears and consumes. Makes breathing hard as hell. I can’t see past it, and the idea of going on with this gaping hole in my soul seems impossible.
I hear the front door of my apartment creak open, and the sound busts through my pain-induced neurosis. Sweat drips down my cleavage. It’s ten in the morning, but the temperature has risen to a humid ninety degrees, thanks to Oklahoma summer heat. It doesn’t help that the air conditioner decided to take a crap yesterday.
Fisting my hands over my chest, I watch the bedroom door—the one he left ajar when he stormed from my life an hour ago. Footsteps pad down the hall, and I curse that sliver of hope that makes my breath catch in my lungs.
I know it isn’t him—I fucking know it—but my naive heart speeds up anyway. The footfalls halt, and someone pushes the door all the way open. My sister stands in the hall, somehow impervious to the heat that’s making me sweat buckets. She’s put-together as always despite her ebony hair twisting into a messy bun. She’s not wearing any makeup, so I figure she must be on her way to a photo shoot. I wipe my eyes, hoping she’s in a rush on this Sunday morning and won’t notice that I’m falling apart at the seams.
“Oh, Jules.” She crosses to where I’m sitting on the bed, and the mattress dips under her weight as she settles next to me. “Chris told me you guys broke up.” Her perfect brows furrow in sympathy, but the tone of her voice belies her words. I love my sister. I do. But everyone knows she can be on the self-important side. Even so, just the fact that she’s here when she has somewhere else to be warms my aching heart a little.
“You saw him?”
She seems taken aback for a second. “Um, yeah. At the gas station. He looked like hell.”
The pain of the morning leaks from my eyes, no matter how hard I try to hold it back. “He just…”
Left.
Shaking my head with a sniffle, I dash the salty despair from my face. Will the tears ever stop? I’ve been heaving sobs since Chris made it clear no amount of bargaining or begging would stop him from leaving. The last words we said to each other were the biggest blow, and they torpedo through my mind now.
If you love me, you’ll stay.
Then I guess I don’t love you enough for this shit, Jules.
“He’s gone, Brit.”
“Maybe he just needs some time to cool off.”
I shake my head. That’s what I’d told myself until I spotted the toothbrush holder with only one left in it.
Mine.
Sitting there alone like me.
And I’d known. Chris never took his toothbrush when he “needed space.” He’d disappear for a day or two, but not his toothbrush. That fucker would remain in its rightful place on the bathroom counter next to mine, where it belonged.
Until today.
He’d packed every fucking thing he owned, down to that damn toothbrush.
“What happened?” she asks, brushing a few strays of blond hair from my damp cheeks.
I don’t know what to tell her. The guilt’s been eating me alive for the past two weeks. All the gory details are going to come out soon anyway, and I’ll have no choice but to deal with the blowback. But finding the words to explain what I’d done…
It’s hard as fuck, because I have no conceivable explanation.
“It’s my fault.” I really do need to get this off my chest, and Brit is the closest thing I have to a confidant since my best friend moved to Seattle a few months ago.
“You can talk to me.” Her hand settles on my shoulder, and I wonder if she can somehow hear the struggle going on in my head.
“Remember when Chris and I took a break a couple of weeks ago?”
“Yeah,” she says with a nod. “He took off for a few days. But you worked things out, right?”
“I…” My breath hitches. “I made a huge mistake, Brit.”
Long lashes flutter over her wide sea-blue eyes, but she doesn’t say anything. Brit can be patient when she tries.
“God.” I shudder out a breath before burying my face in my hands. “I’d do anything to take it back.”
She rubs a comforting circle between my shoulder blades, and when I raise my head, I don’t find a smidgeon of judgment in her expression. Only wary curiosity.
“What’d you do, Jules?”
“I got wasted.” That’s significant enough on its own, since I rarely drink. A beat passes in which the words try to lodge in my throat, thick as molasses. “I…I slept with Perry.”
Perry Reynolds. My boss. My gorgeous and persistent married boss.
I wish like hell he hadn’t been there at the bar that night. He’d been surrounded by his usual crowd, including his partner at the firm. Darlene, who hates my ever-loving guts and happens to be his wife’s best friend.
He’d kept his distance at first, but I remember him moving closer with each drink I poured down my throat.
Maybe he’d felt sorry for me because of the way I’d sat alone, drowning my sorrows in the bottom of a glass. Okay, more than one glass. More like eight or nine. Shit, to be honest, I can’t remember how much I drank that night. In fact, I recall zilch after he hopped onto the barstool next to mine.
But the following morning…well, the memory of waking next to his naked hotness in a hotel room is ingrained in my mind.
The people at work would accuse us of heading there all along, of stumbling headfirst into a secret and shameful romp in the sheets. From the day he hired me, the office grapevine took us through the wringer, whispering about the heated vibes between the boss man and his latest assistant. But I never had any intention of acting on the harmless flirting between Perry and me. Besides, screwing unattainable men is far from my style, and I had Chris.
Had.
I choke at the thought.
“It’s really over,” I say, my voice little more than a strangled whisper. A single moment of weakness on my part ended up being the final breaking point in my relationship with Chris. He isn’t coming back.
Brit stands and pulls me to my feet. “So you made a mistake. Get over it, baby sister. Life happens.”
I raise my brows, stunned by her harsh tone, though it isn’t the first time she’s spoken to me like that. “Tell me how you really feel, Brit.”
Dropping my arm, she gestures toward my pathetic state of undoneness, from the blotchiness I’m certain is coloring my cheeks to the faded yoga pants hugging my hips. “You’re a mess, Jules. I’m only telling it like it is.”
“If this is your idea of cheering me up, you missed the mark by a fucking mile.”
She despises when I drop the F-bomb. So does Mom, for that matter. They believe speaking such words is unrefined. Just as I expect, Brit purses her lips.
“I didn’t come here to cheer you up. I came here to get your ass moving.”
Whoa. When Brit cusses she isn’t messing around.
“I’ve gotta go into the city for a shoot,” she says, checking the time on her cell, “but as soon as I’m finished I’ll come pick you up. We’ll get our hair and nails done.”
I sink into the mattress, overwhelmed by the thought of doing anything other than crying into his pillow for the next decade. It’s the only thing of his I have left. “I can’t.”
She crosses her arms, and the hard planes of her face cause my stomach to plummet. I recognize that look—it’s a look few people escape.
“Snap out of it,” she says, placing a hand on her hip. “You and Chris have been at each other’s throats since you moved in together. I’m not surprised you slept with someone else. Don’t you think it’s time you moved on? Everyone saw this coming.”
She has good intentions. At least, that’s what I tell myself as she twists the knife in a little deeper.
“Everyone but me,” I mutter.
“Love makes us blind. Trust me. This is for the best.” Brit hikes the strap of a leather Gucci bag high onto her shoulder, and I cringe to think of how much she spent on it. “I’ll be back, Julie Bean.” Her tone says what her words don’t—be ready, or else.
After she prances out the way she came, I drape my bed with a groan and bury my nose in the pillow that smells like Chris.
I hate that childish nickname, probably because Mom and Brit have a way of making me feel like I’m ten-years-old again. The only time it doesn’t irritate me is when Dad uses it. Then again, he’s the only one in my family who doesn’t go out of his way to push my buttons. Mom and Brit like to railroad me. They are too much alike. Blunt and abrasive. Same dark hair and startling blue eyes. Identical lithe figures with curves that scream fuck me.
The doorbell rings, and I groan again. No doubt it’s Mom. They usually come at me in stages. If Brit is the lightning, then Mom is the thunder. I push off the bed and drag my feet all the way to the front door. The least she can do is barge in like Brit—then I wouldn’t have to leave my bed of desolation. I pull the front door open, and my brain screeches to a halt.
Perry leans forward, bracing both hands on the doorframe. His brown eyes, normally warm with a seductive glint, narrow on me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, retreating a couple of steps. The way he sizes me up is raising the hair on the back of my neck.
“We need to talk.” Letting go of the doorframe, he crosses the threshold into my apartment, and I take a few more steps back. The door slams shut behind him. “I thought we had an understanding, Jules.”
We haven’t spoken of that night, not even once, almost as if we’d come to a silent agreement.
“We…did.”
He brushes his fingers against my cheek, and his knuckles are soft, free of the callouses Chris has from working in construction. Perry has the hands of a man who crunches numbers for a living. “You’re a mess,” he says, and I wonder if he and my sister are reading from the same script.
“Thanks for pointing that out.” I turn away with a scowl and head for the kitchen. Whenever I get nervous, I always fight the need to keep my hands busy, but it’s a battle I’m losing now. I feel him lingering behind me as I open a cupboard. A second later, I close it and move on to the fridge, unsure of what the hell I’m doing.
Avoiding. That’s what I’m doing.
“I’ve been dealing with this shit storm all morning. How the hell did this get out?”
Jumping from the sharp sting of his words, I grip the refrigerator handle and stare at a jar of pickle relish, mustard, and an open package of hot dogs that are going bad. The milk is probably sour as fuck. Forget hair and nails. I need to go grocery shopping.
<
br /> “I don’t know, Perry.” And I don’t. How am I supposed to know how my boyfriend caught wind of my drunken one-night stand? Between the tears and yelling, I asked Chris, but that only lit his anger on fire. “I was alone, remember?”
Shoving the door shut on the fridge, I whirl and face Perry, and it’s weird how he doesn’t seem so appealing to me anymore. His eyes are dull and boring, and his blond hair has no life to it. He’s good-looking, sure, with defined muscles hiding underneath his suits. But now I question the reasons behind my initial attraction to him. The truth, especially when it crashes into you in the form of self-awareness, is ugly.
I’d thrived off the attention. The desire in his eyes. The way his voice strummed my insides. My relationship with Chris deteriorated long before I fucked up and slept with another man. Even though we’d been on a “break,” it still felt like cheating to me.
Never mind the fact that Perry is married. I can’t even wrap my head around my actions, and I’ve never been so ashamed of myself. New tears sting my eyes, and I lower my gaze to the shitty linoleum floor, toeing a crack that’s been bugging me since Chris and I moved in.
“Jules,” Perry says, his tone softening the slightest bit, as if he senses the eruption of tears on the horizon and is tempted to head for the hills. “I’m just trying to figure out how this happened. Did you run into anyone that night?”
“Just you and your usual crowd.”
Darlene was there, and if I have to take a guess, she springs to mind first.
“I trust them. I’ve known them for years. No way did any of them leak this.” He folds his arms, and the way he stares me down hits hard. He thinks I told someone.
Seriously?
“Tell me you don’t think it was me.”
“If not you, then who else? Tell me who could have opened their big mouth?”
“Darlene, for one!”
He shakes his head, dark eyes resolute. “She’d never hurt Vicky like that.”