by Amelia Wilde
I grit my teeth. I don’t want this to end, but she’s so tight, her pussy pulsing around me, that there’s no way I can make it endless like I want to. When the base of my cock goes electric with her touch, that’s the ballgame.
I lean to the right and slide open the top drawer of my bedside table, my hand making contact with a foil condom wrapper on the first try. The wrapper tears under my teeth, and on the next movement out, I slide the condom over my cock.
Sam presses her ass toward me, making a little mewling sound, and I thrust back in, hands on her waist, hard, but she meets me there in that space and tumbles over with me, fists clenching at the pillows, pussy clenching at my cock, and when I’ve ridden out the last of the release she falls forward onto the pillows, turning over onto her side, her eyes closed, breath fast, then slow, then steady.
I smile down at her, warm satisfaction running over every muscle in my body. Reaching down, I let myself have the small happiness of smoothing her hair away from her face. Her lips twitch upward in a tiny smile, but she doesn’t open her eyes. She’s fallen hard.
I’m finally home.
The first time I hear the sound, I think that maybe it’s rain, and in the muddled atmosphere of my dreams, it’s just another sound that doesn’t make any kind of impact. I’m dreaming about college, about being in a lecture hall with two hundred other people, about trying to hear the professor and I can’t because there’s so much going on. It’s like a damn casino, somehow, relentlessly loud.
The second time I hear it, I know it for what it is: a muffled sob.
I bolt upright, my hand coming down on the empty pillow. Sam—where is she, what’s—
I spot her, lit by the moonlight filtering in through the crack in the curtains, standing halfway between the bed and the door. She’s still naked, and the way her hips curve into her ass has me hard in an instant.
But this isn’t a good time.
Her shoulders shake again, her cry strange, muffled behind her hands.
I get out of bed carefully. The last thing I want to do is scare the shit out of her.
“Are you awake?” I whisper it just loud enough that she should be able to hear, but she doesn’t answer. One of those dreams, maybe.
I step over to her—three steps—and put my hands on her shoulders. Her body relaxes at my touch like she knows, and slowly, slowly, I turn her around to face me, cradle her in my arms.
Another sob.
“Sam.” Her eyelids flutter, and she takes a big breath, then startles. I hold her a little tighter. “It’s okay. It’s me. You’re dreaming.”
“I’m—” A shudder runs through her. “Beck? The baby, it—something’s—”
“The baby’s gone, sweetheart. That’s over now. It’s over. You’re dreaming. It’s all right. Everything’s all right. Come back to bed.”
She presses her face in my chest, and I feel her mouth curl down in a frown. “It’s all over.”
“Yes. It’s all over.”
“But we’re not over.”
“No.”
Sam nods against me, the movement slow. “It’s late.”
“It’s really late.”
“Your house?”
“We’re at my house. Come back to bed.”
“Okay.”
I take her by the hand and lead her back to bed, letting her curl up before I pull the comforter over her, sliding in on the other side. I wrap my arm around her waist, pulling her close to me, and she wriggles her hips, sliding into a comfortable position, one leg over the other.
She lets out a long sigh, and I can’t tell if it’s happy or resigned, but then she sways her hips side to side once more.
Happiness.
I’m just starting to drift off when another whisper breaks through. It’s so soft that I don’t catch what she says the first time.
“Tell me again,” I murmur into her ear.
“Everything’s okay?”
“Everything’s amazing.”
Another deep breath, and then she’s asleep again, body pressed against mine, no space between us. Just like it’s supposed to be.
I close my eyes, resting my head against the pillow.
I’m still riding the high of sex with Sam, but there’s also a strange heartbreak. It might be in the past, but losing the baby will never leave her.
That doesn’t mean it has to stand in our way. I see that now. So she has bad dreams. So it makes me so angry sometimes in a way I can’t explain. We can face that together. We can only avoid it if we’re apart.
My heart expands another size beyond its boundaries, my chest warm with it, and I squeeze gently around Sam’s waist.
Tomorrow, the sun is going to come up, and she’s going to have to rush to her hotel to get ready for more meetings, and I’m going to have to go in to work, and none of it will be the same.
But tonight—
I love her.
“I love you,” I whisper into her hair.
She doesn’t hear me.
It’s still true.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Samantha
“Sam.”
The whisper cuts through a delicious dream I’m having, which seems to be an exact replay of last night with Beck, only it’s taking place somewhere warm and exotic—I think it’s Tahiti, but I have no way of knowing, and I’m not 100 percent sure, but I don’t think they really have California king-sized four-poster beds on white sand beaches there. Actually, I’m not sure there even is a place that has that luxury. We’ve just reached the cuddling phase of the event, and I have a silk sheet tugged up over my breasts that must be at least a thousand thread count. It’s not creepy at all – probably because it’s a dream – but a waiter in a white suit is approaching the bed with cocktails in a crystal on a gleaming silver tray, crystal goblets flanking it. I can’t wait to feel the liquid against my tongue—
“Sam, wake up.”
I groan a little bit, burying my face into the pillow. Which is not, come to find out, one of the pillows at the Holiday Inn Express that smells faintly of industrial detergent. This one smells like Beck, which must mean that—
“Sam, sweetheart, it’s time to get up.”
I push myself up on one elbow with a jerk, and Beck has to step back to avoid getting hit in the nose with my forehead.
“I stayed here last night.”
A wicked smile spreads across his face. “Yeah, you did.”
I fall back against the pillow, throwing my arms over my red cheeks. “I stayed here all night.”
It’s coming back to me now, bits and pieces of pleasure. At some point, I dreamed about something sad—I know it was sad because I still feel that knot in the pit of my gut—but it’s fading away in the face of the Tahiti dream.
“All night. What time is your meeting today?”
I sit up again, running a hand through my hair. At some point, my hair tie went missing in action. I search around for it in the sheets, but it doesn’t reappear. Oh, well. “Thursday…one o’clock, I think, but I have to go back to the hotel and run some things by my boss before I go in. What time is it?”
Beck laughs. “You could have slept in, I guess.”
He’s clearly already been up for a while, since he smells like a manly body wash breeze and he’s already dressed. “Seven?”
“Six.”
“Jesus, why?”
“I have to be at Cerberus at seven for my shift.”
I look up at him, standing near the edge of the bed in his t-shirt and jeans, and my mouth waters. Something light and warm expands in my chest. It’s too early for last night to be over. I already want to relive it. So I reach out and hook a finger in one of his belt loops, tugging him back toward the sheets.
“Oh, yeah?” His smile goes from sweet to sultry.
“I want more of you.”
“How much more?”
“All of you. And you’re so—dressed.”
“I can fix that.”
And oh, do
es he. In an instant, every inch of Beck’s ripped body is on display, clean and fresh from the shower. He’s already hard and I’m already wet, just from the sight of him, the smell of him, the charge in the air. I wonder if this was all part of some devious plot to have sex one more time before he had to go to work. I don’t care if it was. I’m just glad to be awake and alive right now.
Beck climbs in over top of me and starts to lean in.
“Wait!”
“Wait for what?”
“Just…hang on one second.”
I’m still naked from last night. It’s not cold in Beck’s house, but it’s much cooler than it was under the sheets, and my nipples react accordingly as I scamper across the room to the master bathroom and close the door behind me, Beck’s low laugh following me in.
I dispatch the urgent need to pee first, then brush my teeth with my finger over the sink. There. That’s a little more current fantasy, a little less harsh reality. We don’t need to go there yet.
When I get back to the bed, Beck is propped up on the pillows, arms behind his head, and I clamber up and straddle him, smooth skin against hard muscles. “You’re gorgeous.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.” I run my fingertips down the ridges of his abs. It kills me that he’s spent his years post-college working in a factory instead of for any news outlet in the country, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the way it’s shaped his body into something absolutely amazing.
He reaches down, puts a hand under my chin and tilts my face up to his. My entire body sighs when our lips meet, happiness and a hot lust colliding in my gut and taking everything over, stretching out to my fingertips, down to my toes.
Beck curls one arm around me and turns, and just like that, I’m flipped over on my back, my head on one of the pillows, and he’s hovering over me, the long line of his body covering every inch. I spread my legs, opening myself to him, and he looks at me, his gaze locked deeply on mine, and then runs his fingers through my hair, moving it delicately back from my face.
“Sam.” His voice is almost a whisper, but it resonates with such strength and such confidence that it gives me a full-body shiver.
“Hi.”
He opens his mouth again, and I wonder what he’s going to say. There are a million things I could say. I’ve wanted this so long. One night with you could never be enough. Please, don’t go to the factory, stay here with me.
But Beck doesn’t say anything. Instead, he leans forward and kisses me so softly, so tenderly, that tears prick the corners of my eyelids.
I make a little noise into his mouth and his body responds, his cock jumping between us, and I wriggle upward until we’re perfectly aligned, never breaking the kiss, always trying for more contact between us, to feel more of his incredible body pressed on mine.
When he pushes inside, spreading me just enough, I’m not embarrassed by the low moan that escapes my throat. This is exactly where I want to be, right up until the moment that he has to leave or risk his job. Right up until the moment when I’d be risking mine.
But none of that is on my mind as Beck starts to move against me, my hips rising to meet him with every thrust.
It’s just sheer, perfect bliss.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Beckett
I’m standing in the middle of one of the main conveyor belts—no hero shit, it’s off—and have just finished clearing the last of the debris away when Ward calls down to me.
“Taylor! Get your ass up here.”
“I’m coming. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
He guffaws, then pulls his head back over the catwalk railing. I hook my safety line up and climb the ladder. I’m more than used to my gear after three years at Cerberus, but today it feels especially weightless.
Last night with Sam was something else. Being with her was like seeing in color after living in a black-and-white world for eight years. I can’t stop replaying it on a technicolor loop in my head. What the fuck was I thinking, spending all this time picking up women at the bars in Lockton? None of them were ever going to compare to her. Some of them were probably great girls, if I’d taken the time to get to know them, but Sam is it for me. She’s it. No question about it.
There’s a cold needle somewhere deep down in my core like a warning—this is still dangerous, for both of us, for her especially—but I can’t pay attention to it today. Last night was just too damn good.
When I got to the plant today, I couldn’t help but wonder if any of the other guys have anything like this. What a fucking pity to go through life never experiencing what I had with Sam in just one night—perfect sync. Her curves might be a little different, but at her core, she’s still the same woman I’ve loved since the day I first saw her, back in the ninth grade.
Sam didn’t always live in Lockton, or I would have known she was there. It was that fucking magnetic between us, even if we did dance around it for a couple of years before I finally got the balls to ask her out. “Out”—a ride from either my mom or hers to the movie theater downtown. Hot as hell, those dates.
I climb up onto the catwalk next to Ward and unclip the safety line. “What’s up?”
“Had a request about you earlier this morning.”
“A request?” Shit. If this is one of those damn things where they want to send me to another plant to train some dumbass new guys, I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. It’s a bump in pay and a way for them to see if you’d be any good at the next level up, but it’s always on short notice. And with Sam here, there’s no way I’m going to—
That thought makes me laugh out loud, cutting off the next words coming out of Ward’s mouth. His face goes into a cynical grin. “What’s so funny, you asshole?”
“Nothing.” Nothing except the fact that last night with Sam has changed everything—everything. She doesn’t even live in Lockton, and here I am, losing my damn mind because Cerberus might want to send me out of town while she’s here.
There’s a twist of pain in my chest as the second realization hits. She doesn’t live in Lockton. She doesn’t really work here. This is a business trip, even if it might last three weeks, and at the end of it, she’s going to go home, going to go back to the life she’s made for herself somewhere else. What could possibly keep her here? I feel the pull of the gravity between us, but she might not feel it that same way. It’s not as if I’d fucking ask her to, either. That would go over real well, I’m fucking sure. “Hey, I know we’ve spent the last eight years apart, but one hot-as-fuck night together makes me think you should quit your job and move back to our hometown.”
It sounds totally fucking stupid, even in my thoughts.
“Where’s your head at, Taylor?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before he plows on with whatever the hell news he’s come here to give me. “The request was from upper management. There’s a team leader position opening up this week, and apparently Cliff Greenfield wants you to apply for it.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “Looks like they’re fast-tracking you.”
Ward’s eyes narrow, like he’s suddenly seeing me as some kind of threat. I bite back a comment about how three years working on the crew doesn’t seem like fast-tracking and nod instead. “Okay.”
“Should I tell him you’ll submit your information?”
“Sure.”
“Great.”
Then he turns his back on me and walks away, his boots clanking against the catwalk.
Well, shit.
Being sent to another plant on a temporary assignment was one thing, but getting more entrenched in this factory job shit seems like a stale dead end as of this morning. The higher you climb, the harder it is to leave those benefits behind. I’m on the verge of full health coverage with this place. Yesterday I would have taken the damn promotion. What the hell else was I going to do?
But today—
Today everything is humming with a new energy. I’m thinking about the fucking possibilities, for Christ’s sake, an
d I can’t deny that it’s because Sam’s body curled against mine all through the night lit me on fire.
My heart rate kicks up as I pound my way down the catwalk. I want to be with her at any fucking cost, but what if the cost is still too high? That dream she had last night was like the past reaching forward to slap us both in the face, even if she doesn’t remember it. I do. What if I’m just condemning her to a lifetime of more shit like that to disturb her sleep in the middle of the night? What if—
I slam my hand down on the railing, the sound echoing through the relative silence of the plant. This is fucking stupid. For once, I should just remember the perfect night instead of turning it into a bad omen.
“Taylor! What the hell are you doing, having a tea party?”
“I wouldn’t invite your ass if I was!” I shout at Ward, then take the stairs down to the floor as fast as possible. I don’t need anything else out of today except for the memory of Sam’s body pressed up against mine, over mine, under mine, and her sweet taste lingers in my mouth even now.
Back on the floor, Ward slaps my shoulder. “Woman on your mind?”
“Screw off.”
“Everybody can tell, Taylor. You’re an open book.”
“There are worse things.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Samantha
Mr. Calley peers down at the latest printouts on his desk.
“I’m not sure about this area here.” He circles the place on the map with a lazy finger, then looks up into my eyes for several beats too long. At first, I don’t care.
I don’t care because I’m still riding the high from last night, and my giddy nerves are making it pretty damn hard to focus on plans for the Cerberus entrance road and parking area. All I want right now is to be in Beck’s arms again.