Promise Me Forever (Top Shelf Romance)

by Kate Stewart

  “Bristol?” I ask in a voice that is husky and hopeful.

  “No, it’s Jimmi, you doofus.” Bristol’s voice is playful, her chuckle full of mischief as she slips away, deeper into the water, a little farther from shore.

  We’re not too far out, but I don’t see or hear the others as I turn to face her. The night cloaks her. There isn’t enough moonlight to see her clearly, but I sense her. I sense her craving because it matches mine. It’s her last night here, and I’ll be damned if she’s leaving without kissing me again. I press through the water’s resistance until our bodies are flush. Her nipples, tight from the cool night air, and maybe from desire, pebble against my chest. I dip my head and leave my words in her ear.

  “I want to kiss you again.”

  Her sharp breath is her only reply, but I rest my lips against hers to taste her consent. Palming her sides, my fingers almost meeting at her back, I stretch my thumbs up to rub her nipples, alternating between strokes brisk then slow.

  “Oh, God, yes.” She spreads her hands over my shoulders and to my neck, urging my head down. “Kiss them. Please kiss them.”

  I slip my hands over her ass and lift her out of the water so she can lock her legs at my back, scooting her up until I can take one nipple into my mouth.

  Shiiiiiiiit.

  I open wide, taking as much of her into me as I can, sucking the nipple and licking at the silky halo of surrounding skin.

  “Grip, yes.” Her hands claw at my shoulders and run up my neck. She dips her head to possess my mouth with hers. Her kiss woos me in the water. Her fingers on my skin are poetry. Her lips, prose. The rhythm of her heart against mine, iambic. Every touch, eloquence.

  The current tugs at our bodies as the tide comes in, and clinging to each other, we let the flow take us. With our mouths still fused, legs still tangled, tongues hungry and twisting together, we drift into deeper waters.

  Complex and effortless.

  My own words come back to haunt me, describing a rapper’s flow. I can’t help but compare it to what’s passing between us in the deep. The unexpected alchemy that’s been flowing between us since the moment we met. It’s layered and complicated, and yet, there’s no struggle, no force. It feels easy. Effortless. It feels so good, I can’t imagine this ending.

  “I need to know,” I mumble at the underside of her breast. “What we’re doing, Bristol.”

  “What do you mean?” she gasps. “This feels fantastic.”

  I slide her down my body and frame her face in my hands.

  “Is this like some spring break fling for you?” I ask earnestly.

  “Grip, I …” She drops her forehead to my chest, and I would give anything to turn up the wattage on the moon so I could see her face better. So I could see her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  It shouldn’t hurt. We shared a few days, a few conversations, and the best kisses of my life. That’s it. That’s all, but last night feels like the best night I’ve ever had. And to think it wasn’t monumental for her or that she’s “deciding” what we’ll be when I feel like the decision was made for me almost as soon as I laid eyes on her, hurts.

  “I’m not a casual kind of person.” She sighs, and I can imagine the jaded look on her face. “And there’s a lot that could go wrong. You’re my brother’s best friend. I’m moving here and it could be awkward if things … go south.”

  “They won’t,” I assure her. “Just give it a chance.”

  “What?” She lets out a cynical laugh. “A long-distance relationship?”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re a player for one thing, Mr. Bees with honey and chocolate. You get bored, you move on, and you probably cheat.”

  There’s a question in her voice, and I know this is the moment when I should tell her about Tessa. But I’m having such a hard time even getting her to consider making us an us, and I don’t want to make it any harder by throwing that wrench in the works. I’ll deal with Tessa as soon as Bristol is gone.

  “It’d be different with you.” I run a palm over her wet hair. “I know it would be.”

  “But I don’t know it would be, and …” I see the shape of her head as she lifts it, shaking it. “Can we take it slow? I don’t want to get hurt, and I think you could hurt me really badly.”

  Her answer is soft and honest, and it only makes me want her more.

  “We can do that.” I bend to kiss her neck, sucking at the salt-covered skin until she gasps, grinding her hips through the water seeking me. That’s her spot. One of them. She wants to take it slow? I’m willing to take my time finding all the others.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bristol

  TAP, TAP, TAP.

  I look up from the suitcase I’m packing. Someone’s knocking on the door of Grady’s guest bedroom. I hastily tuck the cheap whistle Grip won for me at the carnival into the bag and zip it up. When I open the door, Rhyson stands in the hall.

  “Can I come in?” His dark hair, always a gorgeous mess, flops into his eyes.

  “Sure.” I step back and wave him in, sitting on the bed and waiting to hear what he has to say. We’ve had very little time alone since the night we talked after the club. We spent yesterday with his friends, and he had to go back to the studio last night.

  “All packed, huh?” He eyes my huge suitcase.

  “Looks that way.” A small, sad smile touches my mouth. “I’ll miss LA. Who’d have thought?”

  “Will you miss LA, or will you miss your big brother?” he teases.

  “Not this big brother stuff again.”

  “I haven’t been much of one.” His smile fades. “A brother, I mean.”

  Instead of answering, I wait for him to go on.

  He shakes his head. “It’s so hard to know what to trust when it comes to them, to our parents.”

  “You can trust me to be who I say I am, Rhyson. Your sister.” I tilt my chin and flash him some confidence in the form of a smile. “You’ll see that when I’m managing that career for you.”

  “I don’t have a career.” He laughs and leans back on the bed, propped on his elbows.

  “But you will. You should. And when you do, I’ll be right there to help you.”

  “You can’t build plans around something that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Idiot, what do you think dreams are if not plans we make based on things that haven’t happened yet?”

  We laugh a little, and I lie back beside him, resting my head on his shoulder. What I wouldn’t have given years ago to have my brother like this. To have time with him when he wasn’t rehearsing or touring or doing whatever was required of him.

  “Don’t you have any dreams of your own?” he asks.

  Grip’s face, his soft touches and promises in the dark waters last night, come to mind. I want to believe him because those kisses on the Ferris wheel, in the fun house, in the ocean were the best of my life. The conversations we’ve had this week changed me. No controversy, no memory, no hope or fear was off limits. They have woven themselves—he has woven himself—into the fabric of my dreams so quickly it frightens me.

  “I do have dreams,” I finally answer. “And they’re all here now.”

  He smiles at me slowly and nods.

  “We better get going.” Rhyson glances at his watch, and it makes me think of the cheap watch I won for Grip last night. I shake off memories of the carnival as Rhyson rolls the Louis bag out of my room and down the hall.

  “It’s a shame I didn’t get to see Uncle Grady this trip.”

  “Next time,” Rhyson says. “But there are some people who want to tell you goodbye.”

  When we enter the living room, my new friends are all there. Jimmi, Luke, Mandi, and standing at the back of the group is Grip, his eyes a beautifully laid trap I stumble into and can’t wriggle free of.

  “Oh, you guys.” I wrap my arms around Jimmi, who squeezes me so tightly I can barely breathe.

  “I feel like I found a new bestie.” Jimmi blinks tears fro
m her big blue eyes. “We have to talk every week, and you have to come back soon. And I can come to New York, too.”

  “Deal.” I smile through a few tears of my own. “We’ll stay in touch. Don’t worry.”

  I haven’t spent as much time with Luke and Mandi, but it’s still sweet of them to show up to say goodbye to me. They’re both cool, and Rhyson is lucky to have this tight-knit circle of people in his life. I don’t really have anything like them in New York, and it makes me want to wish away the next two years at Columbia so I can move here right away.

  And then there’s Grip.

  We take a few careful steps toward each other, and I feel like everyone’s watching us.

  “Thank you for everything,” I say softly, leaving a few inches between us. His eyes burn a mute plea for more.

  “No problem. Sure.”

  He glances down at the floor before slipping his arms around my waist and dragging me against his warm, hard body. Not caring what Rhyson or anyone else thinks, I tip up on my toes and hook my elbows behind his neck as tightly as I can. His hands spread over my back, fitting my curves to all his ridges and planes.

  “You come back to me, okay?” he whispers in my ear. “Slow doesn’t mean stop, right?”

  My cheeks fire up, and I glance self-consciously at the others, but they aren’t paying attention. Rhyson is rolling my suitcase out to the car, and Mandi, Luke, and Jimmi are talking about last night at the beach swimming nude. Or semi-nude. Jimmi was the only one brave/crazy enough to be fully naked.

  “No, slow doesn’t mean stop,” I agree. “In fact—”

  His phone ringing interrupts me telling him I plan to come back this summer when I have a few days off from my internship.

  “Lemme grab this,” he says frowning at the phone. “It’s Jade.”

  I remember her name from the story he told me on the Ferris wheel. The one he still feels guilt over.

  “Hey, whassup?” He presses the phone to his ear, and his brows snap together. “Why’d you tell her I was here?”

  I turn away, heeding Rhyson’s call to come on or I’ll miss my flight. We walk outside to load up the car so we can get on the road. Rhyson and Grip are taking me, and I’m not sure if we should tell Rhyson what has been going on or not. It feels like such a fledgling thing but still substantial enough that he should know. I’m still silently debating when a Toyota Camry pulls up to the curb, and a curvy woman with dark brown skin and black, curly hair gets out. A scowl mars her beautiful face, and anger has her arms swinging at her side with her long strides.

  “Where is he?” she demands of Rhyson without any preamble.

  “Uh, hey, Tessa.” Rhyson glances up the driveway and widens his eyes meaningfully at his best friend.

  Rhyson may be looking at Grip, but Grip is looking at me, and if I didn’t know better, I would say he’s panicking. Before I have time to process what’s happening, how my world is about to be ripped into tiny pieces, Tessa begins her tirade.

  “How you gonna ignore my calls and text messages?” Yelling, she fits her hands to the swell of her hips. “For two damn weeks, Grip?”

  “I didn’t.” Grip looks at me with troubled eyes over her shoulder and then back to her face. “We just kept missing each other. What’s going on? What’s this about?”

  “This is about me trying to tell you something I wanted to talk about in person, not over some voice mail.” Her strident voice pitches across the yard at him.

  “Okay, damn, Tessa,” Grips says, irritation evident on his face. “I’m going with Rhyson to take his sister to the airport. Can we talk later? When I get back?”

  “Who is she?” I whisper to Rhyson.

  “That’s Tessa.” Rhyson stretches his eyebrows until they disappear under his unruly hair. “Grip’s girlfriend.”

  “His girl—” I choke on the rest of the word as a tight hand vices my throat. That can’t be. Last night’s water-dappled promises and sea salt kisses. The perfect kiss under the stars at the top of the world. All lies? We shared deep, dark lonely things. We shared everything, and it was the most honest connection I’ve ever had with anyone. And under it all was the lie that he could be mine? That maybe I could be his? That he didn’t belong to someone else? He would have said.

  “No, we can’t talk when you get back,” Tessa snaps. “We need to talk now. I’m sick of chasing your ass down. You are taking responsibility for this.”

  “Responsibility?” Grip shakes his head and shrugs “For what?”

  “For this baby, that’s for what,” she retorts with harsh smugness.

  His wide eyes snap to my face, and any doubt that she might be the one lying, that somehow this is all a prank, a hidden camera stunt, dissolve. That guard I forgot about and dropped all week falls back into place over my heart just in time.

  We don’t cry in front of strangers.

  My mother’s admonition, the voice of reason in my head that I ignored the last few days, slips iron discs between my vertebrae.

  “Rhyson, can we go?” I ask. “I can’t miss my flight home.”

  “Bristol!” Grip yells over the screeching banshee with wildly gesticulating arms in front of him. “Wait. I can—”

  I open the door to Rhyson’s car and get in, not wanting to hear the dollar-late, day-short explanations disguising his lies.

  Rhyson gets in, glancing over his shoulder at the spectacle on the yard, the beautiful woman screaming at Grip’s rigid face and ticking jaw. He looks at me through the car window, his eyes begging me for something I won’t give.

  Second chances.

  “Drive, Rhyson.” My voice is rock and resolve. “Let your friend sort his shit out. I’m going home.”

  GRIP (Grip #2)

  Continue reading to begin Grip.

  Preface

  “You are the perfect verse over a tight beat.”

  –Brown Sugar

  Prologue

  Bristol

  Eight Years Ago, After Spring Break—New York

  I FEEL LIKE a fool.

  Like those foolish girls who fall for the tricks of beautiful men. Men who keep women on the side. Men who cheat and don’t think twice about lying. I’m usually an excellent judge of character, but I was blinded by a charismatic smile and gorgeous body. By a brilliant mind and a silver tongue. So starved for attention, I mistook Grip’s attention for kindness. Something I could count on. Something I could believe in. I forgot I can only count on myself. Only believe in myself. But now I remember. His girlfriend screaming on the front lawn jarred my memory.

  “Cheating asshole,” I mutter, rolling my mammoth Louis Vuitton suitcase through the front door of my parents’ New York home.

  My classes at Columbia don’t start back up for another two days, so I’ll hang here until I have to be back in the city. My apartment is cold and lonely. I glance around our foyer, checker-boarded with black-and-white tiles, and up the wide staircase. This crypt of a house is pretty cold and lonely, too. After the last week in LA, surrounded by Rhyson’s friends, I feel the isolation more profoundly.

  At least there’s an elevator here. Because dragging this huge suitcase up the steps is not my idea of fun after a five-hour flight. I’m headed around the corner to the elevator when a sound above draws my eyes up the stairs again.

  A moan?

  I listen more closely, despite my suspicion that I shouldn’t. Grunting and cries of what sounds like intense pleasure.

  “Well, well, well.” I laugh despite the crappy day I’ve had. “At least somebody’s getting some, even though it’s my parents. Ew.”

  I’m not actually disgusted. I think I’m . . . happy. Happy that after all these years of thinking my parents didn’t even want or love each other, they thought I wouldn’t be home and are upstairs happily fucking in their glorious middle age. I’d always assumed their marriage was more of a business partnership than anything else, with Rhyson and me the two-for-one requisite heirs of a powerful arranged alliance. But it seems they d
o want each other. It makes my heart just a little lighter.

  That’s saying something considering I stayed in the bathroom crying until the flight attendant forced me out for takeoff. Over that . . . chocolate charm lothario. That cheat. That . . . liar. My eyes are still a little puffy, a situation I need to remedy before Mother’s sharp glance starts probing. I’ll already have to endure an interrogation about how Rhyson is doing in Los Angeles. They haven’t seen my twin brother since that fateful day in court when he emancipated. They’ve talked to him even less than I have over the last few years.

  “Oh, God! Yes. Yes!”

  They’re getting louder and more fervent. Okay, this is getting awkward. They obviously don’t think anyone else is home, or they wouldn’t be quite so uninhibited. I’ll just slip into my room and come out later.

  Someone walks through the front door behind me just as the elevator opens. Maybe Bertie, our housekeeper?

  It’s my mother.

  Oh my God.

  Every auburn hair in place, her face as smooth and lineless as it has been the last twenty-one years. She sets her Celine bag on the table by the front door.

  “Bristol, welcome home.” She walks forward, her gait even and confident, so similar to mine it’s like watching myself move. She air kisses, an insubstantial affection that falls short of my cheek. “I want to hear all about your trip, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  I mentally scramble for a way to get her out before the couple upstairs starts grunting and moaning again. Is it dad? I can’t even convince myself that my father is not upstairs fucking another woman. There’s no other logical explanation.

  “Mother, I want to tell you everything.” I leave my suitcase by the elevator and walk to the front door. “Let’s go grab coffee. That little place up the street. Pano’s?”

  “Coffee?” Mother has a way of injecting tiny amounts of scorn into just about anything, including the little laugh she offers at my suggestion. “You just got here. I just walked in the door. Why would we—”