by Alice Ward
The striking part of the picture, though, was noticeable only to those who knew the subject glowering at the camera in the snapshot was me. Time, care, and proper nutrition had done more to me than plastic surgery did for many others. The fifteen-year-old was gaunt and narrow, not to mention visibly bitter. His chin came to a sharp point, his cheeks dipped into themselves, and the widest portion of his head was the top of his skull.
“If I’d had to guess, I would have thought that was a young Eminem.” Sadie had gotten up from her stool to stand on tiptoe and look at the photo over my shoulder. “I never would have guessed it was you. You’re unidentifiable.”
“Amazing what a couple square meals can do for a person, huh?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I think you’ve had some work done that you’re not fessing up to.” She leaned around me to start prodding at my face.
I pinched her side, eliciting a squeak from her and successfully getting her to stop poking me like a science experiment. “No surgeon has ever put a blade on me. I wouldn’t tell you if they had though.”
She jammed her hands onto her hips and feigned offense. “Why not?”
“You’re the press. I wouldn’t want that getting leaked.”
Her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open with the corners twitching in a playful smile. “So rude! You know I would never.”
I pretended to be doubtful, looking up at the ceiling with a long exhale. She smacked me on the arm with a giggle, and I swooped down on her without warning. Her body contorted as I lifted her into the air and threw her over my shoulder, but she was laughing too hard to call out protests. Artie smirked at us from the island.
“No foreplay in my kitchen.” Both Sadie and I stopped, turning our heads simultaneously to stare at him. He pointed two fingers at his eyes, then turned them toward us. “Yeah, I know what you’re doing.”
While I could admit to the roughhousing being flirtatious, I hadn’t intended for sexual undertones to manifest. They were there, though, and Art’s validation made my mind start to gallop off in unpermitted directions. Sadie had made it very clear that this trip together didn’t mean we were going to give our relationship another try, but I’d missed her when we were apart, and I was missing her even more now as we were joking and laughing and touching. And my god, I was horny for her.
“There goes that fantasy,” I quipped. A small palm thwacked me on the small of my back, and Artie chucked a hunk of bread at me. Carefully, I placed Sadie back onto her feet. “We should probably go, anyway. The flight back to New York isn’t exactly a short one.”
Sadie looked up at me, and I could see in my peripheral vision that she was a little surprised, but I didn’t meet her gaze. Instead, I rounded the island and enveloped my little brother in a big but careful hug.
“It was good to see you, Art.” I patted him on the back. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need, medical or otherwise.”
“Forever the big brother, aren’t you?” He thumped me with much more force than I had him.
“Always.”
We pulled apart with grins, and Sadie moved in to say her goodbyes. I watched her reach up to loop her arms around his neck in the kind of motherly yet friendly hug only women seemed able to give, and my heart started thumping a little more quickly in my chest. “It was so great to meet you, Artie. Thank you for everything.” The richness in her voice revealed a depth to her gratitude beyond the surface words.
Art reciprocated her hug gladly. “Come back again soon. I like your company.”
From a man who made it his mission to avoid human contact as much as possible, it was a high compliment. I couldn’t have been more thrilled he’d taken to Sadie so well. Artie had always been a social person, but his condition and our shared life experiences had jaded him to a point of intentional isolation. Seeing him able to connect with someone other than me was a gift I hadn’t realized I’d wanted.
***
“Are we really going back to New York?”
I paused in the middle of fastening my seatbelt and glanced up to see quizzical eyes. “Don’t you want to?”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t say you wanted to stay, either.”
She shrugged. One of the straps on her camisole slipped down her shoulder, and my pants grew tight as I accidentally imagined biting the spot where the strap had just been. “Do you have anything else you need to show me?”
There was something else I thought she definitely needed to know and showing her was the best way to go about it, but I was too emotionally drained from the day’s walk down memory lane that I had no intention of continuing with our historical tour now.
“Yes. But I’ve had enough of my past for today.” I snapped the buckle into place and straightened up in the driver’s seat with a sigh. “It’s exhausting.”
“I understand that. So, why don’t we stay the night and you can take me around some more tomorrow before we head back?”
It would’ve been nice if the suggestion was being made on a luxurious vacation filled with excitement and good times, but I still appreciated her willingness to remain in California with me for the night anyway.
“Well, I did make a reservation at a hotel in case you decided you didn’t want to go back to New York tonight, but it’s in Napa.”
Her eyes lit up. “Napa? You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Not bad, just an hour and a half drive away.”
“Let’s go to Napa.” She was practically bouncing in her seat, and I couldn’t hold back my chuckle. I’d missed her adorable girlishness.
The entire ride was spent with Sadie going on and on about how awesome Artie was, how funny and charming and smart and admirable. I would have been rife with jealousy if I didn’t agree with every fond word she had to say about him, but it was also difficult to be jealous when my chest kept feeling like it was filling with pleasant warmth.
At points, I was so overwhelmed with emotion for her that I was tempted to sing a booming opera number just to get some of the passion out. Pulling into the hotel parking lot was a strange blend of relief, that I could get out of the car to escape my confusing thoughts, and anxiety that I was now going to have Sadie and a bed to use as I pleased without a clear understanding of where we stood.
Once I’d handed the valet my keys, I turned to her before we walked in. “I booked a two-bedroom suite, but I’ll get you your own room if you’d rather.”
The giddiness she’d displayed since Artie had pulled out the photographs was ebbing away. I could see her chin stiffening and her eyes narrowing as she mulled over my offer. “Maybe it’d be better if we had separate rooms.” She bit her lower lip, the lush flesh puffing out on either side of her teeth. “I still don’t know everything yet, and I don’t want to rush into something.”
Her reason was perfectly logical, and I would’ve obliged her even if she hadn’t given a reason at all, but I still had to hide my disappointment by pretending I was only turning away to open the door for her despite there being a doorman present. “No problem.” I slipped the doorman a fifty before yanking the entrance open myself and ushering her through it.
Thanks to my foresight in warning the manager I wanted as private an experience as possible when I’d booked the reservation, the staff kept my being at the hotel as under wraps as they could. No fans were waiting for me in the lobby, and our check-in was so swift I didn’t have time to tell the bellman we didn’t need assistance before I was being handed a pair of keys. They accommodated my request for an additional room without any qualm, and ignoring Sadie’s assertions that she’d be happy with the simplest one they had, they put her in the suite directly beside mine.
Once we’d reached our neighboring doors, I set my bag down against the wall and lifted hers. “Want me to bring this in?”
“No, I’ve got it.” She took it from me with an averted gaze. I tried to read her expression, but she’d gone from cheerful in the car to quiet in the lobby to u
tterly little-lost-kitten in the corridor, and there was no definitive mood scrawled across her face. I felt like she was finally getting hit with the intensity of my life story and she didn’t know how to handle it.
I didn’t really know how to handle it either.
“All right.” I hoisted my bag again and slid my keycard into the mechanism. “Knock if you need something.”
She nodded and used her own keycard, then disappeared into her suite. I’d wanted to say more, maybe even kiss her good night, but we had become so distant from each other in a matter of minutes that pushing her limits wasn’t a good idea.
I went straight to the bedroom without giving much consideration to the rest of the space and dropped my bag on the floor, a plush carpet in a lovely shade of cabernet. I needed sleep. My brain was overloaded with memories and emotions and a myriad of uncertainties, and I felt like alcohol wouldn’t have even helped. Yet, when I fell back onto the swan-white duvet, sleep wouldn’t come.
I’d close my eyes just for them to pop open a minute later when something else leaped into my mind. It was like the remix to the sleepless nights I’d had when I first realized I needed to come clean with Sadie, except now I’d come clean with her and I still couldn’t rest. After what felt like an hour of unsuccessful slumber, I began humming “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and prayed I’d bore myself into a temporary coma.
There were sixty-four bottles of beer left on the wall when a timid knock on the suite door caught my attention. It was so quiet that I doubted its authenticity. Perhaps I’d tired myself into hearing things. My ears pricked as I listened for someone to call out, but I heard nothing. I was having auditory hallucinations. Great.
A second one sounded, and I rolled upright. This one was louder and undeniable. All the sleepiness I’d manage to acquire since lying down dissipated like smoke, and I grumbled under my breath as I strode out of the bedroom to the door.
I opened it expecting to see a hotel staff member with a complimentary bottle of champagne or, god forbid, a fan who’d learned I was there brandishing a magazine for an autograph. What I saw instead was a face I adored and a body I craved.
“Hi.”
Everything I was holding back flew out the window and zoomed all the way across the Napa orchards to somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. I took Sadie in my arms and covered her mouth with mine. Her lips parted, offering me access, and I took it eagerly. The flavor of sugar and passion swilled over my tongue. I drank in her flavor as I walked clumsily backward, pulling her with me until I was able to use my foot to push the door shut behind her.
Our bodies were already simmering with heat, and the microscopic space between us seared like an inferno. I steered her, stumbling into the bedroom with fingers hooked beneath her shirt hem and lips greedily stealing her sweet breath. One push and she fell back onto the mattress, leaving her camisole clenched in my fist. I threw it aside, snagged her shorts at the waistband, and tugged. The stretchy fabric gave way around hips, thighs, knees. She clawed for my t-shirt, but I beat her to it and wrenched the thing over my head in an instant.
Chests met in heaving gasps, mouths reconnecting with hunger. I ground my throbbing dick against her and groaned as her warm arousal radiated through cotton and denim. Nails tore at my shoulders and raked my scalp, but I relished the sting. She raised her hips to greet mine as our tongues twisted and tangled. Jesus, I’d missed her…
I didn’t bother slipping her panties off like I had her shorts. A good grip and a strong yank was enough to tear them clean off her form, though not without a brief whimper of pain. Her want was even more evident now. I looked down to unbutton my jeans and spied a damp darkness on the crotch. Shimmying myself free, I had just enough sense about me to pull a condom from my open bag. Within seconds, I pulled her legs up by the knees and mounted.
“Tate—!” The moan was desperate, and I was obliging. My cock buried itself deep inside her with ferocious claim. “Oh, god!”
Every awful memory I’d relived since we’d touched down in California came screaming back to me like a freight train. One after the other, memories rocketed through my brain, bringing with them the kind of echoing pain only nostalgia could. In the midst of the rapid slideshow, I was wracked with the pain I’d endured from the night Sadie had walked out of my life, and it made thinking utterly unbearable.
I was releasing it all tonight.
Oxygen was starting to wane in my lungs, and my middle was sandwiched between two tempting thighs that quaked and quivered with every thrust. Our panting came in simultaneous bursts, as did our pelvises. She lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped, in time with each slam and withdrawal I offered.
Sex with this woman had always been hot, but this was a beast of a different breed. Sadie was as wanton and predatory as I was. Her long-lashed eyes blazed, her shapely mouth devouring my ecstasy, her pussy swallowing me ravenously. This wasn’t a seduction. This was an implosion of everything threatening to drown us from the inside out.
She turned her chin up. “Kiss me.”
I did. I burrowed my tongue as deep into her mouth as I burrowed my cock in her core, and our mutual movements slowed just long enough to taste each other.
“Touch me,” she gasped against my lips.
With a growl, I bit her jaw. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
She let out a whining moan, but I retracted and cupped her mound with my palm, pressing the heel of my hand against her clit. The moan became a shriek, and her ass bolted up off the mattress. I pushed her back down and drilled myself into her again. She tried to squirm back, but I held her in place and rolled my hand over her nerve-laden button as I slammed forward.
“You’re not going anywhere, Juliet.”
She clamped her teeth together and shook her head from one side to the other, and the pink in her cheeks started to deepen into pale crimson. “I’m going to shatter!”
“Then, shatter. I promise to put you back together later.”
Her thighs constricted around me with enough strength to shift my ribs, and her pussy pulled me in even deeper. I felt every pulse of her climax, which made me swell to epic proportion and I had to hold myself back from detonating right then and there. Not yet…
“Oh my god, Tate!” Her scream bounced off the ceiling and came back to me like a weapon of mass destruction. I hadn’t heard her break like that in too long, and it stripped me of any control.
I came.
Hard.
My whole body bucked forward, and I dropped over her. She clutched me even more tightly with fingernails digging into my back while the scent of her shampoo suffocated my senses. I groaned into her throat and feverishly licked the delicious lines of her collarbone as I emptied myself of everything I couldn’t handle.
“God.” She breathed the word into my ear, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “God.”
“Actually, Tate’s fine.”
Air still heaving in and out of her lungs, Sadie laughed. It was such a beautiful sound. “Oh, shut up.” She shoved me off her with a delicate smirk. “Tyler.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sadie
We curled up together immediately after we finished having sex. I couldn’t even refer to what we’d done as making love because it had been so intense and raw that emotional intimacy had been left to the wayside.
Tate fell asleep within minutes, but I laid awake for a long time after he started gently snoring. I didn’t blame him for passing out because the last twelve hours had been so taxing, but I wasn’t as fortunate. My mind refused to turn off. The look into his life and what it meant for us, as well as the hurt I still felt regarding his initial secrecy, was too loud.
Though my body was calm with physical satisfaction, I was a livewire. Not even my darkest wonderings during the time Tate and I had been a couple led me to anything close to what I’d learned today.
There was no way around it… I was overwhelmed.
My heart was broken for
the little boy who’d suffered so greatly at the hands of selfish, unloving parents. I was horrified by what Tate and Artie had been forced to become in order to survive in the world. There was doubt about whether the scars those experiences had left were too deep to overcome. And as much as I hated to admit it, I was still crushed that he’d let me walk away before deciding to open up. I had a better understanding as to why now, but it didn’t ease the ache. He’d chosen his secret over me.
Eventually, when the moon was highest and pouring pearly light into the luxurious room, I drifted off. Tate’s arm was wrapped around my waist, and his front was pressed against my back. For the moment, it was enough, but only because I was too tired to think otherwise.
I blinked awake the next morning to daffodil sunshine and warm sheets swathing my body. The sound of perking coffee caught my ear first, and then I noticed the rushing noise of a running shower. The space where Tate had been in bed was empty, but I could still see the outline of his body in the blankets. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, dazed and foggy with a mental hangover.
There was one thing I knew for sure. I was in love with him. Every beat of my heart was filled with his smile, his touch, his scent. Somewhere between the interview with the infamous lie and the feeling of him inside me last night, I’d come to my knees and given in.
But it didn’t feel good.
I was confused. It had all started with that lie, and I hadn’t even known it. Yes, he’d lied not only to me but to the whole world with that interview, but the sting of betrayal remained present. I wasn’t the whole world. I wasn’t just anyone to him, or at least I had thought I wasn’t. If he’d said what he’d said about the Gold Rush because I was nothing more than a reporter he’d happened to have a connection with at first, fine, but he could’ve come forward any time after that as things had become more serious between us to confess.
Right?
I’d given myself to him physically, mentally, emotionally. I had opened up to him without qualm, and I’d thought I’d presented myself in a way that made it clear he could do the same without judgment. That deserved honest reciprocation.