Promise Me Forever (Top Shelf Romance)

by Kate Stewart

  “Oh, dammit, dammit, dammit, Bris.” I clench my fingers in her wild hair.

  The wintry mix of her tongue taking me in rough strokes and the smooth sides of her throat clamping around my dick push me to the edge. Brows knit, eyes press closed, her blissful groan vibrates around me. She clutches my ass with one hand and takes my balls, heavy and tight, into her other hand, caressing them.

  “I’m gonna come,” I rasp in case she doesn’t swallow. A lot of girls don’t. Groupies tend to swallow because they want to leave an impression. They’ll do whatever they think you want to get another night with you. I only want Bristol to do what she wants to do. She doesn’t have to perform. I’m hers already, and I want her to enjoy everything we do as much as I do.

  Because I’m enjoying the fuck out of this blow job.

  Never pulling back, she reaches up and finds the quart of ice cream again. She pauses only to load her mouth with another scoopful of the frigid creaminess before she possesses me again, her head bobbing at a deliberate pace between my legs. It’s apparent to me that Bristol will, like she does all things, finish what she starts, but I’ll have to watch her swallow me down to the last drop some other time. I want to be inside her again. Now.

  With gentle fingers, I tug on her chin until her mouth drops open. She looks up at me from her spot on the floor. I reach down under her arms and raise her off her knees.

  “Rain check.” I hoist her onto the kitchen island and yank the underwear down her legs. I lay her back flat and lift the heels of her feet to the marble surface, leaving her knees up and her legs wide open.

  “Hold on, baby.” I push into her, and we groan when the cold from the ice cream melts into her wet heat. I pound into her so hard she has to latch onto the counter to keep from sliding away. I break rhythm to check her face for pain or discomfort.

  “Don’t you fucking stop,” she moans, her neck exposed, back arching, pushing her breasts up under the thick cotton of her sweatshirt. I shove the material over her torso, scrunching it at her shoulders and below her neck so I can watch her breasts bounce with every thrust. I bend to take one in my mouth.

  “Take it,” she pants. "Baby, take it.”

  The exquisite slide of flesh against flesh is like nothing I’ve ever felt, and I realize I’m in her with no rubber.

  “Bris, I’m in raw.” I grit the words out because I want to stay right where I am, flesh on flesh. “I need to pull out.”

  “No, you don’t.” She pants, her nails digging into my ass. “I’m clean, and I’m covered. You?”

  “Yeah,” I answer unhesitatingly. “I’m clean. So we can . . .”

  She nods frantically, shifting her hips forward on the counter to change the angle, to deepen penetration. She wants deeper?

  I pull her legs straight up on my chest until her feet rest at my shoulders, leaving me nothing but ass and pussy. I slam into her at a bruising pace, hoping I’m not hurting her, but unable to imagine stopping. It’s a primal mating—a feral rutting, and I’m the wild beast reduced to a clump of nerves and instincts.

  “Grip.” Her hands climb her chest to touch her breasts, twisting her own nipples. Watching that, there’s no way I’m not coming, but her next words do the impossible. They stop me.

  “I love you.” Tears slip from the corners of her closed eyes. “Oh, God, I love you so much.”

  My breaths are choppy, my heart seizing in my chest.

  “What’d you say?”

  Her eyes pop open, briefly touching on my face before fixing to the ceiling.

  “Um . . .”

  I pull her up so her legs fall alongside my hips, our bodies still joined at the center, but her chest pressed into mine.

  “Did you mean it?” I demand, cupping her butt.

  “Grip, I—”

  “Don’t play games with me.” Desperation sharpens my voice. I need to know she means it. She lifts her lashes, and fear saturates her beautiful eyes. Linking her fingers behind my head, her thumbs caressing my neck, she nods.

  Not good enough.

  “Say it again.” I resume pumping in short and shallow thrusts that will stoke the fire, but won’t satisfy.

  “I’m scared to death.” Her words come on choppy breaths.

  Without breaking rhythm, I bend to her ear.

  “You have nothing to be afraid of.” I press her hand to my chest, over my heart. “This is yours. No one else’s.”

  I dip my head, slowing to nothing, but keeping her eyes.

  “I’m yours. No one else’s.” I scatter kisses over her cheeks. “Even when we fight, I feel you. Your anger, your frustration. I feel your pleasure like it’s mine. Your emotions like they’re mine.”

  I peer into the flushed beauty of her face. Her sweatshirt is still pushed up so her breasts press into my naked chest. I give her a moment to recognize the syncopation of our heartbeats.

  “Don’t you feel how connected we are?” I ask. “If I break your heart, I break mine.”

  A sweet smile spreads over her lips and she nods.

  “I love you.” She laughs, shaking her head. “Eight years in the making, but I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I whisper into her hair. “You’re everything to me, Bristol. You gotta know that.”

  Her tears come even as our bodies resume a ferocious pace. We splinter into a thousand pieces in her kitchen, becoming more together than we were apart. More than we were alone. With whispered promises and words of love, we exchange hearts.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Bristol

  BRIGHT SUN BEAMS through Grip’s windows, letting me know we’ve slept later than I usually do even for a Sunday. We spent the night at the loft, and as I shake off a veil of dreams, lines from Neruda’s “Night on the Island” filter through my consciousness. The poem follows a long night between lovers. Though I’ve read those lines more times than I can count, they were always beautiful hypotheticals. I never expected to sleep through the night with Grip or to wake with the possessive weight of his arm around me, welcome and beloved. I never expected any of what has transpired over the last two days.

  And I almost gave him away.

  I would have forfeited the perfect weight of his body over mine. Would never have felt the sweet heat of him wrapped around me, or the bold sweep of his hands over my nakedness under our covers in the morning. These are the things that cost nothing but are precious. And I almost never had them.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Grip’s whispered question mists the sensitive skin of my neck, and I scoot back to snuggle under the covers and against his hard, naked body.

  “Night on the Island.”

  “Fitting.” He opens his mouth over the curve of my shoulder in a kiss. “Because you were definitely wild and sweet last night.’”

  “You weren’t so bad yourself.” I turn over to run my thumb over his full lips. “Neruda was so romantic. I’m glad you introduced me to him.”

  “Dude had serious game.” Grip laughs. “No one writes about love and sex and passion like Neruda.”

  He grins down at me, a hint of mischief in his eyes.

  “The original Chocolate Charm.”

  We both laugh at that. I haven’t heard it in so long. It’s our own inside joke, from the first day we met, but Grip really could charm lint from your pockets.

  “I believe you promised to make me come with words alone.” My husky laugh puckers the smooth quiet of the room. “Will you be using his words or your own? Or was that an empty threat?”

  “You’ll just have to wait and see,” he teases me.

  He pauses before going on with a more solemn tone.

  “When I saw the book and the whistle on your bed, I didn’t know what to think. Even though I knew the connection between us was undeniable, the last few weeks had me questioning everything I believed was possible for us.”

  “I’m sorry.” I swallow my uncertainty and force myself to tell him things I’ve kept for years. “Whe
n it first came in the mail, I wanted to burn that book. I was furious with you over Tessa. I didn’t want it to mean anything to me.”

  Despite his hand caressing my hip, I sense a stillness in him behind me, an alertness that tells me he’s listening with every part of him.

  “But even after I told myself I would put that week behind me, put you behind me,” I continue. “I found myself reading it at night.”

  “Yeah?” He pushes my hair aside and traces the downy line of my nape with a finger. “Why?”

  I shrug, reaching for the ease we shared yesterday at my house. In my shower. In my bed. Sex has always been much easier than intimacy, but with Grip they’re inextricable. One giving rise to the other. One and the same. Sex with other men never meant much to me, but taking Grip inside my body shook me; rearranged me. Sharing the thoughts I’ve kept private for so long, I feel just as naked as I did in the shower when he commanded me to open myself for him. I feel more exposed.

  “I kept going back to the book, reading your notes in the margins and searching between the lines for what it could tell me about you,” I say. “When I moved to LA after college, the memories and emotions from that week all came back, and I had to freeze you out or I knew I’d give in to the pressure you put on me.”

  “You acted like we’d never been anything to each other,” he says softly. “And despite my part in screwing things up, it pissed me off.”

  “Oh, so was that hate fucking you did with all those other women?”

  I turn onto my back to look into his eyes, the lighthearted note in my voice forced. There’s more than a granule of truth in most jokes, and this one is no exception. It’s levity with talons, and I take the chance to dig in, even if it isn’t entirely fair.

  There’s regret, but no apology in his eyes. “Nope. Just plain old fucking fucking.”

  He props up on one elbow and splays his hand possessively over my stomach.

  “At first, I told myself I would win you back. I would remind you of how it had been between us, but you wouldn’t budge. After a year or so, I promised myself I wouldn’t give up on you, but I also assumed we’d circle back to each other when the time was right. In the meantime . . .”

  “I get it.” I rub the soft heather-colored comforter pulled around us. “It wasn’t cheating, but it still felt like a betrayal.”

  I hastily glance up at him, spreading my fingers over the hand resting on me.

  “I know that isn’t fair, but it’s how I felt.”

  “You felt that way because even though we weren’t together,” he says, caressing my collarbone. “We were supposed to be. Inside you knew us being apart wasn’t right. Me with them wasn’t right, and you with anybody other than me sure as hell wasn’t right.”

  His chuckle loosens some of my tightly wound places. He settles his eyes, still slightly sleep-glazed and growing more solemn, on me.

  “I don’t want to rehash everything.” He cups the side of my face. “We’ve wasted too much time. I want us moving forward from now on.”

  “Starting today.” He drops a quick kiss on my lips. “I’ve got a surprise.”

  “A surprise?” I trail fingers over the carved strength of his shoulders and down the hard biceps.

  He shifts until he’s over me, notching his hips between my thighs. With both of us naked, we’re one deep breath away from penetration. His lips wander down my neck and to my breast. He takes his time with each nipple. The suction of his mouth, thorough and voracious, stirs desire low in my belly.

  “We are not having sex.” I moan, wetness pooling between my legs and my hips circling beneath him, seeking friction. “I can barely walk.”

  He releases my breast with a pop, his smile triumphant.

  “What’d I tell you?”

  “Like your other head isn’t big enough, you had to go and have a big dick.” Our laughter shakes us under the covers.

  “If you’re not giving up that ass,” he says, the smile lingering. “Get dressed so we can go. I don’t want to be late.”

  “Go where? Late for what?”

  “Pretty sure I said surprise, and last time I checked, you don’t know about those before they happen.”

  The thought of leaving the loft freaks me out a little for more reasons than one, but I’ll start with one.

  “Grip, as far as the world is concerned,” I say carefully. “Qwest is still #GripzQueen. I don’t want to embarrass her, or for people to assume we’ve done something wrong.”

  “We know we didn’t cheat.” Grip’s frown and the hard set of his lips indicate this is as important to him as it is to me.

  “I know, but I pushed you guys together, and I feel bad that she’s gotten hurt in this process.”

  “So do I.” Regret shades his eyes. “She cried when I broke it off. She thinks she’s in love with me, and I feel like an asshole.”

  “So do I. And she is in love with you. It’s obvious.” I trace a thumb over the thick brows and chiseled bone structure that have fascinated me since the first time I saw them. “I know how much it hurts to love you and think someone else has you.”

  “You were jealous?” He echoes my caress, his thumb tracing my features, his eyes searching mine, his fingers working through my hair spread on the pillow.

  I nod, biting my lip.

  “And scared that you would fall for her. I know that sounds stupid since I pushed you together, but the reality of you wanting someone else . . .”

  My words die around the painful lump in my throat.

  “Bris, I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you.”

  He kisses me deeply, long strokes of his tongue inciting the same insatiable desire we’ve indulged in over the last day and a half. When he finally releases my mouth, we face each other on the pillow, foreheads pressed together, exchanging short, heavy breaths.

  “We’ll be careful,” he concedes. “But I want you to do this with me today.”

  “But, Grip–”

  “As far as the world’s concerned, you’re my manager, and it won’t be unusual for us to be seen together.”

  “True.” I still hesitate.

  “Should we coordinate a statement with Will? Formally notify the press that Qwest and I aren’t together anymore?”

  “That feels . . . I don’t know. Slimy. Like we’re shoving her out the door.”

  “So we what?” A frown knits above the frustration gathering in his eyes. “Just wait for someone to ask me or her if we’re together and then deny it? That’s too passive. I’m not waiting for that.”

  He presses my hands over my head, his rough palms scaling the sensitive skin inside my arms and wrists. He dips his head to hover over my lips.

  “I’m ready to be with you.”

  He pulls my bottom lip between his, nipping the softness and then trailing kisses down my neck. He pauses when the intercom system buzzes. Someone wants in. They must know the code to have gotten all the way up the elevator.

  “Probably Amir,” Grip mumbles, rolling out of bed, treating me to the glorious sight of a taut bronzed ass, the flare of muscled thighs, and the tempting breadth of smooth back and shoulders. Two columns of abdominal muscle stack above his navel and the fine trail of hair leads down to his long, semi-erect south pole. He slips on a pair of gray sleep pants flung over a bench at the foot of the bed.

  “Shame to cover that.” I drag myself up, resting my shoulders against the headboard. "I was really enjoying the view."

  He looks at me from under a dark line of brows, his sculpted lips tilting at one corner.

  “I thought you didn’t wanna fuck.” He leans one hand on the bed for support. and palms my throat with the other, gently tilting my chin. “Them’s fucking words.”

  “I am a little sore.” I release the sheet tucked under my arms, the rush of cool air when it falls piquing my nipples. “But who needs to walk?”

  The heat in his eyes scorches my bare shoulders and breasts. He pulls one knee onto the bed and captures my nip
ple between his lips, his tongue like fire licking around me. His thumb teases the other nipple tight.

  “Grip.” His name rushes from my mouth. My head falls back, and my fingers find his neck, pressing his teeth and lips harder into my flesh. “Please.”

  “Shit,” Grip mutters against the underside of my breast. He pulls me down flat to the bed, rips the sheet back and pushes my legs open, his eyes locked on my center.

  He presses my knees up and drops to his elbows, his long legs stretched behind him on the bed. I’m writhing at the first long swipe of his tongue. He’s lapping at me. There’s a fire hidden in my slit, and every nip of his teeth and tug of his lips fans a desire in me so strong it clenches my belly. To want him this badly and not have him buried inside me hurts. Even knowing Amir could be on his way in, I clutch Grip’s head. I roll my hips into him, a hungry undulation. Amir could walk in right now and I’m not sure I could stop. In an instant, in a matter of a few touches and kisses, I’m starved for Grip like the first time, like I’ve never had him before.

  The buzzer comes again, insistent and extended.

  “Grip, you know I got a key.” Amir’s irritated voice comes through the speakers. “Got me standing out here waiting on your ass. I’m coming in.”

  The front door beeps when it opens, and the sound of Amir’s heavy footsteps climb the stairs ahead of him.

  “Dammit.” Grip pulls the sheet over me and bounds off the bed, crossing swiftly to the open door of his bedroom.

  “Grip, you taking a shit or what?” Amir reaches the door just as Grip does, his wide eyes connecting with mine over Grip’s shoulder. “Oh, hell. I’m sorry, bruh.”

  My cheeks burn. I tug the sheet tighter over my breasts and lift my chin, refusing to hide. From the rest of the world, yes. From one of Grip’s most trusted friends who has seen all the bumps in our road, no.

  “Out.” Grip shoves Amir’s shoulder, pushing him back onto the landing overlooking the open floor below. He gives me a quick glance over his shoulder, his mouth set. “Sorry ’bout that.”