Falling Like Stars

by Eve Kasey

  Elle lifted her head with effort. The hands clutching his shoulders released their death grip. What he saw in her eyes made him growl in need. Possession. Elle’s fire hadn’t dimmed. She wanted more. This woman and her endless passion were his. He didn’t know how it would work or if he deserved her, but he didn’t care. He’d teased her about love, but he was in real danger of the fall.

  “Fuck me, you’re amazing.” Sounding dazed, she stood and smoothed down her dress before dropping a deep, sensual kiss on his mouth.

  “I am going to fuck you, and it will be amazing.”

  But he was going to take his time.

  Since the day he’d met her, he’d wanted to explore every inch of her gorgeous legs. She wore sexy-as-hell strappy sandals that wound around her ankles like she was wearing a stack of bracelets. He began there, a slow ascent of silky skin coated by a sheen of sweat. Her body was warm and pliable, her sounds encouraging and taunting as he moved his fingers slowly up her body. He kissed her solar plexus, her hand fisting in his hair in response.

  Chen’s hand slid up to grip her hip bone, to keep her in place, while the other traced a lazy path up the back of her thigh to her bare bum. She wore a thong, but not for long. He squeezed her cheek, memorizing the sounds Elle made as he worshipped her body.

  Underneath her dress, he hooked two fingers into the tiny straps of her thong and dragged the material down her long legs. He kissed down the path of her dress’ neckline as he did so. Then he needed to have her ass in his hands again. Both hands.

  He flicked his eyes to hers and instantly grew harder. Her mouth was parted, her eyes shining with visions of them together.

  With his eyes still on hers, Chen moved her dress away from her breasts. Large, round tits filled his vision, but he didn’t move his gaze from hers as he tucked a nipple into his mouth.

  She cried out and Chen smiled against her skin. This moment was exactly what he’d wanted. What he still wanted. What he’d always want. Fucking in public, under the stars, unplanned. Freedom. Abandon.

  Chen feasted until he couldn’t stand the hunger. Elle read the breaking point in his face. Her mouth met his and their tongues tangled as she undid his belt and zipper and the buttons of his shirt by feel. He shimmied his pants down, and then it was Chen’s turn to cry out as her hot hand met his hard cock.

  There was no preamble. He was inside her before he could even take a breath. He didn’t know who had made the move, but they were molded together and he was seeing stars. So tight, so warm. With her hands all over his chest and stomach, Elle rode him while Chen devoted his mouth to her nipples and lips. The way she moaned his name. Fuck. Like a succubus, each move of her hips and every moan under the stars stole another piece of his soul.

  “Show me what you’ve got, Elle. Break me.”

  He felt her tighten around his cock, and he couldn’t stop the loud grunt that left him. Excitement skittered across his skin as her nails dug into the flesh of his hip and shoulder. Ecstasy left her mouth in a rush as she came for the second time. Chen pulled her closer, savoring every pulse, shiver, and gasp. “Fuck. Could you be any hotter, xīngguāng?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he found her mouth and let her tongue light him up. He lifted her off him gently and turned her around, her back against his chest. Her dress pooled on his lap, the silky fabric cool against Chen’s thighs.

  He groaned as she repositioned herself on his cock. She sent a sexy smile over her shoulder as she squeezed him with still-quivering muscles. Chen closed his eyes so nothing could distract from the sensation of them together. Then he captured her head in his hands and kissed her roughly. “Fuck me with your eyes on mine, like you wanted. Fuck me until we both come apart.”

  She arched forward with a cry at his words and initial thrust into her. Instinctively, his hands roamed to her still-exposed breasts. She gripped his thighs as she moved in a sliding motion, slowly at first then increasingly faster as Chen grew louder and more desperate. She was exquisite. She was torture.

  He moved his hands to her hips and pushed them both to standing so he could sink in deeper. She gripped the table in front of them and met his thrusts with her own. Chen’s release built. Crested. Crashed. He squeezed her hips so tightly he thought she might break as his cry ricocheted through the night.

  27

  A spark didn’t describe what she felt with Chen. No, the man panting behind her set her universe ablaze. He brushed her soul while touching everything else on the way.

  Elle rearranged her clothing, shivering as the soft jersey fabric slid over sore nipples. She’d never be able to look at this dress again without seeing Chen’s fingers slowly expose her—and the look of unchecked lust that had filled his face as he’d done so.

  Chen pulled his slacks back up, but Elle reached over to fasten the buttons of his shirt herself. She stood against him, melting from the heat of his body, as his fingers moved through her hair.

  “Each day with you is better than the one before. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  She whispered, “Tell me,” against his lips.

  “You’re mine, Elle. And I’m yours.”

  “I thought we’d already established that.”

  His lips brushed hers. “Just want to make sure you heard me the first time.”

  That grin went straight to her heart.

  He paused in the stairwell on their way back down and drew her against him, his huge hand sliding up her neck to her cheek. “You’re fucking magic. Thank you.” His lips crashed onto hers as her heart thudded, and they lost themselves one more time in the night.

  Downstairs, the crush of the crowd drained away some of their magic. But not all of it, Elle conceded, as she surveyed their linked hands.

  “Where are Tate and Rosie?” she wondered aloud.

  She pulled out her phone to check the time. She had no idea how long she and Chen had been lost in each other’s bodies upstairs. But she didn’t even notice the time due to the sheer number of messages and missed calls. She should have let their friends know they were sneaking off to “get some air.” But they had been nowhere to be found then, either, she recalled. Elle scrolled through, her heartbeat picking up speed as she went. Rage, deep and ugly, slashed through her.

  “What is it?”

  Chen must have seen the tense look on her face.

  “Someone drugged Rosie,” she told him, voice clipped.

  Her sweet, selfless Rosie. Someone had victimized her. Again.

  “What the fuck? Are you serious?” Chen’s body stiffened as he glared around the club, like the culprit’s guilt would be advertised on his face.

  “They think so,” Elle replied, still reading through texts. The frantic ones from Rosie from an hour before, looking for Elle, racked her with guilt. She scrolled back up to the most recent one from Tate. “They’re back at the jet. Let’s get out of here.”

  She ordered a ride and within minutes they were on their way.

  Elle thought back through the night. Rosie had seemed tipsy but had barely touched her drink. A drink she’d left at their table. Tate had been there the whole time, but maybe the cocktail had been tampered with before that. At the bar. “Drugging makes sense.”

  “She kept stumbling when we were dancing, but I thought maybe she was just clumsy, or the shoes didn’t fit right,” Chen said.

  She shook her head. “I noticed that, too. Rosie is graceful as a gazelle and we wear the same size. No, someone slipped her something.”

  Chen’s dark expression hadn’t lifted. “I can’t believe someone would have the balls to do that when she was with a group.” He scowled. “I can’t wait to hear what Tate wants to do about this.”

  Elle would have chuckled at the knuckle-cracking expression on his face if she didn’t feel so pissed and so guilty. Rosie loved to dance. She deserved a night of fun, not a night that dredged up her deep-seated trust issues.

  The walk from the entrance of the airstrip to the jet itself took forev
er in her heels. She and Chen bounded up the plane’s metal steps and burst into the cabin. And paused.

  Rosie was curled in a ball on a bench seat, her head on Tate’s thigh, her right hand clasped in his, covered in a blanket and snoring softly. Despite the sweet scene, Tate looked murderous.

  “You wanna do something about this?” Chen asked.

  “I filed a police report and talked to the bar’s manager. If I didn’t run a billion-dollar company, I’d do more.”

  Chen began pacing, as if he was unhappy with that answer. Elle took a seat next to Tate. “Nothing happened? You didn’t find her half-dressed in the hallway?”

  He shook his head, lips nearly invisible they were pressed together so tightly. “She figured it out herself and we left.”

  Elle’s body relaxed somewhat. The what ifs would plague her, but at least the worst had been averted. Lesson learned. No more sexual shenanigans in clubs. But then her eyes met Chen’s and she amended the thought: No more sexual shenanigans in clubs without first warning her friends. She just hoped this incident didn’t set Rosie back in her healing. Men were not doing a damn thing to redeem themselves when it came to her.

  Tate might be an exception. Elle marveled at how he looked so rigid yet so soft with Rosie in his care. If there was any man with whom she could trust her friend at her most vulnerable, it was Tate. She wondered if Rosie would agree. She wondered if, within the same hangar in the same week, they’d both found men who would change their lives.

  28

  Life with Elle, really with her, was better than any movie. They’d spent their first weekend as a couple in her bed because she owned nicer sheets. Except to cook and eat together, they never left. They drove to work together on Monday in the toaster and made out in the parking lot. They walked into the hangar, hand in hand. In the open. Different but accepted. No one even gave them a second glance. The rightness, the freedom of it all, sang in Chen’s veins.

  He had to work late that night, yet another debriefing with Thomas and the safety team, so Elle had to get a ride back to the apartments with another employee. It was late, well past dark, when he parked the toaster in his spot at the complex. He didn’t even consider going to his place.

  He knocked softly and wondered if it was too soon to ask for a key or to ditch his own apartment. He was all in with Elle. Fuck limitations like being less than two years away from an expiring visa and the end of his role at Orb—

  Elle opened the door beautifully, blissfully naked.

  Her hair cascaded over her breasts just like in the song. She had a hand on a flared hip, sexy red toenails, and pure mischief in her eyes. Maybe not pure. She was as lost in lust as Chen had been since he’d first tasted her.

  He lifted her up, earning tits in his face and two handfuls of her amazing backside. He kicked the door shut behind him as she wrapped her legs around his waist. Luckily, there was an armchair close that they hadn’t christened yet. He couldn’t resist nibbling her nipple as he went. Her sexy squeal made his dick swell. This woman and what she did to him. For him.

  That entire weekend, minus Rosie being slipped a drug, had been heaven. But Elle greeting him wet and willing after a long day at work was the universe at its most glorious. He set her down in front of the armchair in her living room and turned her so her back faced him.

  “Knees on the ground, xīngguāng.”

  He ditched his restrictive clothing while she complied, then Chen knelt behind her and spread her legs. Knees on the ground, her arms and chest leaning on the chair, her ass bunched in his hands, Elle was at his mercy.

  “I’ve been wanting to taste you all day,” he whispered against her back. Her anticipatory noises grew louder as his cock joined his hands against her bare backside. The sensation gave him tunnel vision. He backed off. He needed to maintain focus.

  Lowering himself, Chen hooked her thighs with strong arms to lock her in place. He started slow, licking absolutely everywhere that wasn’t her clit, his tongue both wide and flat and pointed. She tried to writhe against him and position herself so he’d be forced to focus on the spot that drove her wildest, but he held firm. Chen smiled as he continued his calculated assault on her senses. The skin of her thighs was smoother than silk, the taste of her more delicious than any wine he’d ever drunk. And the sound of her unraveling and pleading? They were locked in the most beautiful power struggle.

  He kept licking and sucking, faster, closer, but never there. She was so swollen he could barely get his tongue inside her. Sweat appeared on her thighs. He lost count of how many times she begged for release. But he wouldn’t. Not yet. She deserved the highest plane of pleasure, and that came from waiting.

  Finally, he let his tongue connect with her clit. Three sucks and she was screaming. He let go of his iron grip on her legs and let her chase the high, bucking against his mouth. Then he sank inside her still-pulsing body. But she felt too good. He slid in and out of heaven only a few times before he shouted his own release.

  This was what life was supposed to be like. Steeped in bliss, full of surprise.

  After his body finished shuddering, he moved her hair to the side and kissed up her goose-pimpled spine. “You’re so fucking perfect.”

  She murmured unintelligibly.

  “Let me cook for you,” he whispered.

  “Can’t eat. I’m dead.” She had collapsed against the chair, breathing hard, head on her hands.

  “That’s how I’d want to go.” He trailed his fingers down her smooth back, twisting and twirling her hair as he went. She sighed happily, a noise as thrilling as the sounds she’d made minutes before. He wanted to incite every good feeling in her, reciprocating how she made him feel.

  He kissed her shoulder blades and stood, pulling on his briefs and undershirt. He padded to the kitchen to prep dinner. A few minutes and several happy sighs later, Elle heaved herself off the floor and wandered toward the bathroom with a detour to the kitchen for a kiss first. He smacked her naked bum as she left him behind. He was in love with her after-sex hair.

  He opened a bottle of wine to breathe and made her dinner while she showered. A chicken salad with everything. He pulled a package of tortillas out of the pantry since she seemed to think all foods were better with an edible wrapper.

  As he was sautéing chicken, he heard his phone ping with a video message. He scrambled, snatching the phone up from the counter. He glanced down the hallway guiltily, hoping Elle didn’t appear. As much as he was all in, now was not the time to educate his parents about Elle.

  A too-close glimpse of his father’s impassive expression greeted him. “Jai, you didn’t check in this weekend.”

  A reminder of his responsibility and his failure. But he’d been lost in Elle, literally and figuratively, which he did not regret for a second. He didn’t own his future. He deserved his present.

  “I thought you died in that plane, jai. How could you not check in?” His mother, wailing in the background.

  “I’m sorry, mama. I’ve been really busy.” Clubbing, fucking. Another twinge of guilt struck him. “The test flight was perfect. My plane, Stratos, is a dream. There aren’t going to be any problems. You don’t need to worry.”

  Asking his mother not to worry was like asking the sun to stop shining. Wasn’t gonna happen, not for another five billion years.

  “I’ll take some pictures of me in the plane and send them to you guys. Stratos is really cool. Like a spaceship in films.”

  “Good,” came his mother’s disembodied voice. Chen was still staring at his father’s chin. “I need a new picture to show the nice Chinese girls who’ve been asking after you.”

  There were no nice Chinese girls asking after him. There were only grown adults being foisted on each other by well-meaning parents. He fought a sigh.

  “Can I speak to Xiaoming, please?”

  “Of course.”

  “How is she?” he asked. He now saw carpet and his father’s slippers.

  “Healthy. Quieter sinc
e you’ve been gone, but that always happens.”

  His chest constricted. “Have you taken her to the cinema? Please use some of the money I send to get her out of the house. Please, baba.” He couldn’t stomach the guilt otherwise. For the hundredth time, he wished his sister was with him. Bayview was perfect for her and so close to him. To Elle. To the life he wanted.

  “We’re doing what we can. Neuih, your gogo is on the phone.”

  It took a moment for the phone to transfer hands and the picture to settle onto her face. When he saw her sweet smile, every muscle in Chen’s body loosened.

  “A-go,” she murmured.

  “Hi, mui mui. I’ve missed you so much.” The admission came on an exhale. Fuck, he needed to figure out how to get her to California and make his own status permanent. Like, now.

  She nodded. That dimple and her messy hair tugged at his heart.

  “I went to space again. Only for a few minutes, but the trip was spectacular. We just wanted to see how the plane performed. This plane is totally different than being in a rocket. Lots of windows to see the stars above and Earth below. Way quieter. More comfortable, too. The seats are really nice, like the good booths at Summer Palace.”

  She cooed at the mention of their favorite special-occasion restaurant.

  “I tried bao here. It’s not bad. They prefer a food called tacos.” Chen’s stomach flipped. He wanted to tell Xiaoming about his favorite taco enthusiast. “Is baba still there?”

  She shook her head, her wispy bangs moving across her forehead.

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  Her smile widened, deepening her dimple. She loved secrets.

  Chen nodded at her silent agreement and slipped into English, a language she loved because of their favorite movies. “I met a girl here,” he whispered. “Guess who she looks like.”

  “Joo! Joo?”

  “Exactly.” Chen grinned. “Julia Roberts. Her name is Elle. She’s special. Always thinking of others. And she’s beautiful, just like you.”