Her skin was now flushed with arousal, her eyes dilated with excitement.
The sight of her becoming aroused, it fuckin’ excited me.
My eyes never left her face and as our gazes locked again, her tongue darted out to moisten her lips.
I fucking exploded.
“Adelaide,” I groaned, my voice thick and hoarse as the climax roared up from the base of my spine.
Cum shot down the back of Mira’s throat and she swallowed audibly, sucking me off and licking me clean.
Then she stood up and smiled at me, her lips puffy and swollen from her labors. “What did you say just now, babe?”
Fuck. Coughing lightly, I said, “‘Man, it’s late.’”
“Humph.” Mira stared at me suspiciously. “I thought it sounded more like you said, ‘I ate late.’”
“Yeah,” I grunted. “That was it. I did eat kind of late tonight.”
“Funny you should say that.” Mira slipped out of her skirt, pushed herself up onto the granite countertop and spread her legs wide open for me. “Because I don’t give a fuck if you ate late.” Her eyes caught mine, a flash of wry humor in their dark, entrancing depths. “It’s your turn to feast on me now.”
Her crotchless panties gave me an excellent view of her extruded clit and the creamy release seeping out of the moist folds of her sex.
I drew a ragged breath that verged on a groan. “I’m gonna eat you out until you scream.”
Without breaking her stare, I brought my mouth to her sex.
Mira ground her clit against my mouth as I slid my tongue from side to side... side to side... side to side... side to side... not stopping, not relenting until she was screaming from the pleasure I was giving her.
A wild, primal, sexual cry curled up from the back of her throat as she came, her nails scoring my muscled back as her body shook and convulsed around me.
Moments later, I lifted my mouth from Mira’s pussy and my gaze zeroed in on the couch.
Adelaide was no longer there.
THE NEXT MORNING, I made the swift introductions as Adelaide breezed into the living room. “Mira.” I cleared my throat twice. “This is Addy.”
All things considered, I didn’t want Mira knowing that I’d called out ‘Adelaide’ when I exploded in her mouth last night.
That I knew for certain.
But what I wasn’t so sure about was why I’d called out Adelaide’s name in the first place. That... I was still trying to figure out.
The look Mira leveled at Adelaide was calm and considering. “Addy,” she said coolly. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Adelaide said rigidly, tripping over her laces.
Mira leaned back against the sofa, crossing one leg over the other. “Addy.” A pause. Then she tilted her head, curiosity shining in her eyes. “Is that short for Addison?”
“No.” Adelaide knelt down to tie her shoe. “It’s short for Adelaide.”
“I see.” Turning to me, Mira arched a delicate brow. “Interesting. How very, very interesting.” I didn’t miss the alteration in her tone.
Naturally, Adelaide did.
She missed it entirely.
“What is?” she asked, double-knotting her laces.
“Oh, nothing.” Mira waved her words aside. Then she leaned forward and kissed me fully on the lips. “Ciao, babes.”
“You’re leaving already?” Adelaide stood, smoothing down her tennis skirt. “But you just got here,” she said hurriedly. “You can’t leave yet. I’ve got so many questions for you.”
Before Mira had a chance to even speak, Adelaide was already firing off a round of questions:
“Why do airline seats have to be in an upright position during takeoff and landing? What difference does it make?”
“Is your airline, or any other you might be aware of, trying to improve the quality of airline food? Or is that pretty much a lost cause?”
“Obviously you aren’t expected to have pilot skills, but does your training include even the most rudimentary ‘how-to’ on landing a plane in the event the pilots are incapacitated?”
“What does it take to get an upgrade once I’m already on the plane?”
“How often are the blankets washed?”
“What do you do after the plane lands? Do you get to have a short vacation at the destination?”
“When I order soft drinks on a flight, sometimes the flight attendants pour me a small cup, and other times they give me the whole can. What makes them decide this?”
“Does it annoy you when people use the flight attendant button?”
“What would make a flight attendant’s day? Snacks, candy, Starbucks gift cards... any ideas for small gifts of appreciation?”
“Oh, hunni. You’re adorkable.” Mira gave a tinkling laugh.
Adorkable? I can’t decide if that’s something charming or incredibly twee.
“So many questions and so little time,” Mira said regretfully. “I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got a nine o’clock flight to catch, darling.” She rose from the sofa, grabbed her purse, and sashayed across the room, her high heels clicking and clacking with every step. “Must dash, my lovelies! Maybe next time we can have a nice little chitchat, Adelaide.”
As Mira passed the foyer, she paused to check her reflection in the mirror before calmly letting herself out the front door.
The door clicked shut behind her and the room went silent.
A moment passed before Adelaide spoke. “Is Mira possibly a powerful and mystical Greek goddess manifesting a human form?”
“You think she’s pretty?”
“Pretty?” she cried indignantly. “More like effervescently beautiful.” Unzipping her gym bag, she tossed her racket inside and zipped it back up.
“You heading down to the court?” I asked.
“Correct,” she said, slinging her gym bag across her shoulder. “I could use a ride. Unless you’ll let me drive your car.”
“I’ll take you,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m headed that way myself. Gotta train today.”
“Train?” she said quizzically. “Mind if I join you?”
“Nope.” Grabbing the hem of my shirt, I dragged it across my chest and yanked it over my head. “Just let me get changed first, then we can get going.”
As I was turning to head for my room, a bubble of laughter escaped her.
“What?” I frowned. “What the hell’s so funny?”
“Your back.” She clapped a hand to her mouth, barely concealing her laughter. “It looks like you’re dating Wolverine.”
My frown deepened as I looked over my shoulder, checking out the scratch marks on my back. “I told you,” I said shortly. “I’m not dating Mira.”
“I know, I know,” she said lightly. “You’re just fuck buddies.”
“About last night...” I hesitated, and before I had a chance to continue, Adelaide interrupted me.
“Yes,” she said too quickly, too forcefully. “About last night! I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
I waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, I said with a certain amount of irritation, “What? Ask me!”
A blush stained her cheeks. “Last night... when you, erm... performed oral sex on Mira, I noticed that you didn’t remove her panties. Errr... why is that?”
“Oh, that!” I said with a sudden flash of comprehension. “Mira was wearing one of those crotchless panties.”
“Crotchless panties.” Adelaide smiled with relief. “Thank goodness for that! It looked like her vagina had eaten her panties and I feared it would have eaten up your condom, too!”
Chapter Thirteen
ENDER
THE SUN WAS BAKING down on us as we ran up the hill. Adelaide jogged beside me, keeping up with my rapid pace with little effort.
“How far are we running?” she asked.
“Twelve miles.”
“How often do you run twelve miles?”
“Every single day,” I said,
trying to keep my breath even and pace myself. “Up this hill.”
“Why?”
“Why else?” I huffed. “I’m training. Coach’s orders.”
“Humph,” she grunted.
Adelaide continued jogging beside me, keeping pace, barely breaking out in a sweat. But by the time we neared the final stretch, she was wheezing and gripping her sides in agony. “Have you ever run twelve miles in a match?”
“No.”
As soon as we hit a steep incline, she came to a stop, hands on her knees. “I’m done,” she said, panting and gasping for air.
After taking a moment to catch her breath, she said, “If you ask me, tennis is not about running. It’s about sprinting. Short bursts of energy. You need to be quick on your feet, change directions in a blink of an eye, and explode after a ball. And in order to do that, you should be practicing your short and long sprints. Running up this hill—twelve miles, every day—is not going to help your tennis game. In fact, it tunes your body up incorrectly for tennis, and you actually start to fade in long matches.”
Now she had my attention. That was probably the most logical thing I’d ever heard anyone say about tennis.
Why didn’t my coach ever tell me this?
“So what do you suggest?” I said, wiping the sweat from my brow with my forearm.
“I find that running in sprint interval bursts is much better for tennis,” she said weakly, panting to catch her breath. “Run for one minute, walk one minute, repeat for twenty minutes. Then sprint hard for thirty seconds, and walk for one minute, repeat for ten minutes. Shuttle sprints are good, too.”
“Shuttle sprints?”
“How about we head back to the court?” she said, holding her sides. “I’ll show you how to shuttle sprint. I’ve got some other drills you can try out, too.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m up for that. But first...” My lips tugged upward at her dog-tired expression. “We gotta make it down this hill.”
BACK ON THE TENNIS court, Adelaide had me sprinting from the baseline to the serving box and back, then up to the net and back.
“Now,” she said squarely. “You can repeat this with either no rest or a short rest. This will improve your pivoting and short distance bursts. We’ll try sets of five at first and improve each session by two sets.”
I nodded and went at it, determined to work myself to exhaustion.
When I thought we were done, she had me working on another drill. She placed a number of tennis balls across the court and I had to sprint to each one, pick it up, return it to the baseline and continue in this vein until all the balls had been recovered.
After thirty minutes of sprinting after balls, she had me doing square versions of a ‘figure eight’ across the court. Starting at one corner of the baseline, I sprinted to the net, shuffling along the sideline, going back to the other corner and repeating until I hit all four corners, and then starting over again. And again. And again.
All the while, she timed me and tracked my progress.
By the end of Sergeant Adelaide’s drills, all my muscles were burning and my quads felt like they were on fire. Soaked in sweat, I limped stiffly off court.
“Nice work.” She delivered a solid punch to my arm. “We’re going to work on these drills four times a week and rotate it with weight training.”
“Right.” I grunted with an air of machismo and tossed my tennis racket into my gym bag.
“Great!” she said cheerfully. “Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we’ll head to the gym and I can give you some pointers.”
I grabbed my towel and wiped the sweat off my face. “Why are you doing this?”
“You’re my social coach,” she said simply. “And I’m happily returning the favor.”
Wiping the sweat from my neck, I said, “So you’re my tennis coach now?”
“Your coach, trainer, instructor—all rolled into one. Of course I’m not replacing your official tennis coach,” she added in a matter-of-fact tone. “But clearly, you need my help.”
I frowned, but I didn’t disagree with her on that point. And maybe she was right; maybe my coach’s training methods were doing more harm than good.
As I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and crossed the court, Adelaide fell into step beside me and playfully smacked my butt.
I stared at her. Then my mocking smile turned into one of genuine amusement. “What was that for?”
“Isn’t that what coaches do?” she said in all-seriousness. “It’s known as the extra-low five or the butt-slap. I’ve seen it in movies. A coach will either tap a helmet or slap a butt. Nothing says ‘good job’ like a butt-slap, am I right?”
“Riiiiiiight,” I said slowly.
She gave me a quizzical look. “Don’t most coaches do that?”
“I’m sure Sandusky did,” I said dryly.
“What?” She squinted at me, confusion on her too-honest face.
“Nothing.” My lips tugged upward at her naïve expression. “What does a butt-slap mean to you?”
“I think it’s pretty open-ended depending on the context and relationship between the slapper and slappee. It could mean ‘Nice job,’ or ‘You’ll get them next time,’ but it can also mean, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ or ‘Wow, your butt is pretty muscly today. Have you been working out?’ In this case, since I’m your de facto coach, it simply means, ‘Great job!’”
“Adelaide.” I kept from laughing, but only barely. “Feel free to smack my ass anytime... morning, noon, night, and all the hours in between—”
“Adelaide?” A gruff voice interrupted me. “Such a pretty name,” he said, staring at her far too long for my liking. “You can slap my ass anytime, too.”
She smiled at him, and their eyes lingered on each other a moment longer before she looked away.
A muscle worked in my jaw. “Cade,” I said tersely.
“Ender,” he said equally tersely.
“To what do I owe the displeasure?”
Ignoring my blatant barb, he turned his attention to Adelaide. “Why haven’t I met you before?” He grinned broadly. “Ender must have been hiding you.”
“No, he hasn’t,” she said lightly. “We just live together.”
“You live together?” Cade’s surprise showed in his voice. “I didn’t know Ender had a live-in girlfriend.”
“Oh, I’m not his girlfriend.” Adelaide let out a dismissive laugh. “We’re just friends.”
“Friends?” Cade said suggestively. “Just strictly friends?”
“Correct,” she said. There was a fine crease between her eyebrows and she was chewing on her bottom lip, looking as though she was trying hard to decipher the meaning behind his words. Then she added, “We aren’t fuck buddies or anything like that. I’m single.”
Cade let out a full-throated roar of laughter. “Well, that’s good to know.”
I clenched my jaw, not bothering to hide my growing impatience.
“Listen.” Cade whipped out his phone and placed it in the palm of her hand. “I’d like for us to be friends, too. Why don’t you give me your number?”
Smooth bastard.
Cade cut me a smug-ass smile as Adelaide began entering her phone number, tapping his phone screen using one index finger.
Ten minutes went by. Well it felt like ten fucking minutes.
Who the hell texts with one index finger?
Adelaide Vikander, that’s who!
Cade flashed her a grin as she handed his phone back to him.
It was more smarm than charm.
“I’ll call you,” Cade said. Then he took one long last look at her before striding off the court.
I stared at his retreating back with steady contempt.
“He seems nice,” Adelaide said thoughtfully as we started walking toward the parking lot.
“He’s an arrogant asshole.”
“But aren’t you an asshole, too?” she said, not unkindly. “Edric says you are. But I think you’re a sweet, well-meaning ass
hole.”
When I frowned and said nothing, she continued, “And what is it about assholes that makes them so darn appealing when they stop being assholes long enough to let a sliver of empathy poke out from the wall of assholery?” The look she gave me was long and considering. “Is it the contrast alone, I wonder?”
The fuck was she even talking about? “Look,” I said. “I know the guy. Long story short, we’ve been tennis rivals for years. I hate his guts. Cade hates mine.”
“And now you’re both on the same team.”
“Right. But other than practice, I don’t have anything to do with Cade. I’m telling you, the guy’s a player; he’s made a play for every girl I went out—”
Beep! The sound from her phone interrupted our conversation.
Adelaide glanced at the display. “It’s Cade,” she said happily. “He just texted me and asked me out on a date.”
I scowled. “When?”
“Next week. Friday.”
“So...” I hesitated. “Are you gonna go?”
“Of course I am,” she said at once. “He’s the first guy who’s ever asked me out on a date.”
“What about Miguel?”
“That doesn’t count.” She made a dismissive gesture. “I like Miguel but he’s a homosexual and we’re just good friends.”
“But why Cade?” I reached inside my gym bag, pulled out my car keys and pressed the unlock button on the key fob. “When there are plenty more fish in the sea.”
“Actually,” she countered. “That’s becoming an inaccurate term. Many ocean species are disappearing and losing their habitats due to decades of overfishing. The evolutionary process of marine species is also being altered, causing cycles of premature reproduction and relative decreases in the size of fish across generations. As predators diminish, the populations of smaller fish escalate because they were previously the food source of the bigger fish. And the disappearance of these species affects many others like seabirds and sea mammals, which are all vulnerable to the lack of food.”
“Adelaide.” I sighed heavily as we slowed to a halt in front of my car. “It’s just a saying.”
“I know that.” She opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. “But it’s a highly inaccurate one. And even if there were plenty of fish in the sea, I’m not a very good fisherman. So I’m going on that date with Cade,” she said stubbornly. “I don’t care what you say, Ender. You can’t change my mind.”
[Hemsworth Brothers 01.0] The Slam Page 11