Back for More, page 12
“I’ll leave the door open,” I tell her. “If Fanny wants to sleep with you tonight, she’ll come to you.”
“She hates me,” she pouts.
“She doesn’t hate you. She just needs to get used to you again.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Not anymore.”
“But you did?”
“A little.”
She sighs. “I should have left the other letter.”
“What other letter? The one I had you draft for the client yesterday?”
She laughs through her nose. “No. The one I wrote. To you. The one I didn’t leave you.”
This is the first I’m hearing of a letter. I wouldn’t call what she left me a letter… It was just a note.
“Do you mean five years ago?”
“Mmmhmm. Question… Do you have any sweet potato fries?”
“In my house? No.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Tell me about this letter…Lily?” I say her name one more time before it’s clear to me that she’s asleep.
Yeah. She’ll never stop torturing me.
12
Lily
*Every Now and Then I Fall Apart*
I greeted the day with a dull, throbbing ache, but it wasn’t in my head. It was between my legs. I woke up from a raunchy sex dream, writhing around and moaning. When I realized where I was and what had happened before Wes put me in bed last night, I groaned for another reason.
Oh, the shame.
A twenty-minute shower has done nothing to wash away the humiliating memory of blowing chunks and crying in front of my new boss and the sexiest man I’ve ever known. I may not remember the particulars, but I wish I could forget the way I felt. How do I bounce back from that?
By making breakfast.
By making the biggest breakfast I can make and force-feeding my sexy boss until he lapses into a food coma.
I’m wearing the huge vintage gray University of Oregon T-shirt he left for me at the foot of my bed last night. There’s a picture of an angry duck running through a big O on the front of it. It’s ducking great. Reeeaaaally sexy. But I’m not in the mood to pull on last night’s tight clothes, which probably still give off the scent of vodka and puke and regret.
Fortunately, I had a fresh pair of undies tucked away in my purse, in case I spent the night at Alecia’s. Which reminds me… While the pan heats up, I reach for my phone to text my friend.
Me: Morning! FYI I told my dad that I spent the night at your house. No joke. So, you know the drill in case he calls you. LOL. He won’t call you.
A couple of minutes later, I get a reply.
Alecia: Hey! You left out some pertinent info. If you aren’t at home and you aren’t here, then…
Me:
She immediately writes back. Whaaaaaat?! Wait. What?! Follow-up question. WHAT?!?! I demand details!
Me: LOL. Nothing to tell you, unless you want to know exactly how much I puked into a bush on the way here from the bar.
Alecia: Stop lying to a mother.
Me: Would never. Wes is a gentleman. And I am his assistant. I promise, you and Neal are the only ones of us who got laid last night.
Alecia:
Alecia: I promise our next girls’ night out will be less of a sausage party.
Me: Speaking of sausages, I’m making breakfast and it’s ready now. Later. Xo
I have made coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice. I’ve made scrambled eggs and turkey bacon and toast and gluten-free pancakes. I butter the toast and pancakes while they’re still warm, and now I will go upstairs to rouse the man of the house.
I really do like this house. It’s big but also cozy, unlike the Barnes family home. Not that this house is a mansion, but there’s a lot of space. It makes me wonder if he really only bought it with his father in mind or if he plans to populate it with a wife and kids someday. The thought makes me sad, and I refuse to get sad again—at least not in front of Wes.
I’ve got to get my sexy game face on—I’m just not entirely sure which game we’re playing anymore.
The stairs to the second floor are a bit creaky, but I am barefoot and light on my toes. I don’t hear anyone stirring up there. I had spent ten minutes checking under all of the furniture downstairs earlier, looking for that damn ginger cat who’s supposed to love me unconditionally. It wasn’t desperate of me at all. I find the first door in the upstairs hallway open and tiptoe to the doorway. Sunlight is streaming in through a crack in the curtains. The bedroom is big and masculine and no-nonsense but still warm and inviting. Just like Wes.
When my eyes land on the bed, I instantly regret not bringing my phone up with me, because I want to take a picture of this: Fanny Brice curled up on the pillow, resting her chin on Wes’s sleeping head. I’m not sure which of them I’m more jealous of.
There was a time when that cat slept with me on my pillow. There will probably never be a time when I use Wes’s forehead as a chin rest. But this scene is so stinking cute, I will remember it forever. I slowly creep over to the bed. Fanny’s eyes open, and she eyes me, cautiously at first. I stop and smile at her, and she rewards me with a slow blink. I take a few more steps toward her, and when she doesn’t move, I reach out to stroke her on the head. But she bolts out of the room.
When Wes opens his eyes, all he sees is an angry duck leaning over him. Or maybe he’s just staring directly at the curve of my boobs under the T-shirt. I give him a toothy smile as I run my fingers through my damp hair and straighten up.
“Hi. I was just trying to pet the cat, but she bolted.”
“Go Ducks,” he says, rubbing his eyes, his voice gravelly. He looks so sexy with morning stubble and bedhead; it just makes me mad.
“I made breakfast,” I say. “It’s ready.”
He inhales deeply as he stretches his arms out over his head. “Smells good. Thanks. How you feelin’?”
I take a seat at the edge of the bed. It’s then that I realize he’s packing morning wood. Either that or he sleeps with a child’s baseball bat for protection. I just sat my ass right down next to it, and a less talented actress than myself would not be able to ignore it. Fortunately, what I have to say is not at all arousing and is guaranteed to deflate that thing immediately.
But before I’m able to say it, he touches his finger to the underside of my arm. “You got butter on you.”
“Oh.” I raise my arm to my mouth and lick it off before maneuvering myself to face him. Heat flashes in his eyes, but he remains still. I say what I want to say to him. “I’m embarrassed about last night. I don’t know why I…” I shrug. Sometimes only angsty eighties power ballads can adequately express who you are at your core: “Every now and then I fall apart.”
“I told you,” he says, all husky-voiced and bleary-eyed. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.”
I scoff at that. “But I cried and vomited. I mean, normally I’d just do one or the other, but both is…not okay.”
He drags the tip of his thumb up the back of my arm and then sucks the remaining butter from his fingertip. “You missed some,” he says. I just stare at his smirking mouth as he licks his upper lip. “If you’re embarrassed about that,” he continues, “then how embarrassed are you going to feel after what happens this morning?”
I have to clear my throat to find my voice. “What’s happening this morning?”
In one swift move, he has me on my back, and he’s hovering over me, staring directly into my eyes. “I’m going to make you come harder than you ever have in your life.”
Gulp.
“You gonna be okay with that tomorrow, when we’re working together? Or are you going to let your embarrassment get in the way of enjoying our weekend?”
“Try me.”
He takes my face in both hands and gives me a long, slow, deep kiss. It’s so unlike the frantic, lust-fueled, grabby frenzies we’ve experienced in the past, I don’t even recognize us. I feel myself sinking into the mattress and relaxing into the hypnotic rhythm of his mouth and tongue as it moves with mine. His hands stroke my hair and my neck before slowly making their way down my torso.
Oh God, just the weight of his big hard body on top of mine is so much better than anything I’ve ever felt.
Until his hands find their way under the T-shirt and he lets out a groan. “You feel so fucking good.”
Yes. This is the best thing I’ve ever felt. His slightly rough hands exploring my smooth skin as if he’s confident we have all the time in the world for this. His fingertips tickle the skin underneath my breasts, graze the sides of them, and when he cups both of my breasts in his hands at once and swipes his thumbs over my nipples, I sigh and tremble and try so hard to maintain this tempered pace.
Until I remember that I have hands too and that Wes is shirtless.
I reach around to grab hold of his perfect man buns and then I let my hands roam, up and down and all around his muscular back and broad shoulders. The warm skin on his body is so much smoother than I had expected it to be. It must be amazing to be him. To inhabit this body and know that he can lift anything and defend himself and build things. Every single thing about his body turns me on—the way it looks and feels and moves and what he can do with it.
I don’t know how to do anything other than resent him for making me feel this way.
I drag my fingernails across his back—not hard, just enough to make him suck in his breath and then groan.
I wriggle around and bite his shoulder, like some manic puppy who can’t control herself.
The pressure in my clit is profound, and I realize I’ve been grinding against his erection, my legs wrapped tight around the backs of his legs, and I’m moaning and swearing under my breath.
Fuck this slow, sexy rhythm—there isn’t one part of me that’s capable of being anything other than crazed when it comes to Wes Carver.
Why isn’t he losing his mind while touching me?
“Are you thinking about me crying and vomiting?”
“No.” His voice is a low rumble of thunder just below my ears. “Are you?”
“No!” I shriek. I am so close to orgasm I want to scream—he’s barely even done anything yet, and I am unraveling. “Breakfast is getting cold!” I hiss.
“I have a microwave,” he says, so calmly that it makes me want to pummel him with my fists.
I’m having the hormonal equivalent of a panic attack, and he’s being logical and taking his time kissing and fondling me.
Finally, he slides his hand down between my legs and discovers that my panties have basically dissolved at this point.
“Fuck, Lily,” he growls. “How does anyone get this wet?”
“Oh, you know. That’s what nine years of wanting a guy will do to a girl. Don’t let it go to your head… I mean…”
He smirks. “You have any idea what nine years of wanting you and waiting for you does to a guy?”
“I have a pretty good idea.” I push on his shoulders as hard as I can, to get him onto his back. I kneel alongside his legs and lift up the elastic waistband of his boxer briefs to free his massive erection. It is so hot and hard that my hand instinctively releases it and jerks back. When I uncover it and tug his underpants down, I just marvel at this magnificent, beautiful monument to Wes Carver’s attraction to me, and my hands instinctively grasp it.
He really does want me.
I nudge his legs apart so I can kneel between them.
I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to work with him if we ever had sex, but now I’m thinking I will do exactly anything this man says and absolutely everything I can to help him sell buildings or whatever it is he does again. I don’t know—I just really like this penis, and I’m not even mad about it.
I cup his balls with one hand and grip his thigh with the other while I lick up the underside of his shaft and swirl my tongue around the rim of the head.
“Fuck, Lily.”
I suck on the tip while stroking the length of him, reveling in the way he groans and mutters my name, over and over—until his rock-hard abs hit the top of my head and I realize he’s sat up and he’s flipping me onto my back and pulling me down to the edge of the mattress.
“I was in the middle of something,” I complain meekly.
“So was I,” he says gruffly. “That felt fucking amazing, but I’m going to make you feel amazing first. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” I mumble as I try to relax my neck and close my eyes.
He applies pressure to the hood of my raging clitoris with one hand while promptly removing my underwear with the other. “Jesus, you’re beautiful.” He kisses my inner thigh, and I feel two big fingers slide inside me. I contract around them, my hips bucking. He slides those fingers out and in and out and in, and then he curls his fingers inside me and I feel a jolt. I can feel his warm breath as his mouth hovers over my clit before he gently licks it, just once. My heart is racing, but my mind is too. He sucks on the inner flesh of my upper thigh again before removing his fingers and gliding his tongue up my entrance and then around the clit, and it feels so good my body can’t seem to handle it and my brain definitely can’t concentrate on this intense pleasure.
I blindly reach for the nearest pillow and cover my face with it.
I’m trembling, but this orgasm is coming out like delirious, uncontrollable laughter.
He tugs at the pillow and then lifts it up off me.
“Are you laughing?”
“No. Yes.” I’m horrified. I cover my eyes with my hands because I can’t look at him while I say this. “I was just thinking about how calla lilies look like vaginas. Have you noticed that?”
“Lily.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to be nervous.”
“I beg to differ.” I cover my face with the pillow again. Fuck this weekend. My voice is muffled, but I keep talking anyway. “I mean, it’s you. And you’ve put some kind of voodoo spell on me that makes me honest about my feelings and I don’t know who I am anymore if I’m not the girl who teases you and then runs away. I want this. I want it so badly. I want you, and I don’t know how to be.”
“Lily.” I hear his deep, soothing voice with my whole body.
“What?” I toss the pillow away like a petulant child—super sexy move.
His face is five inches above mine now, his gray eyes still hooded, and his big hand is holding my face, forcing me to stare at him. “I want you. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I meant what I said last night—if you even remember. I know who you are, even when you don’t.”
I empty my lungs. “I know. That’s the problem.”
“It’s not a problem.” He lowers his head so that his mouth is right next to my ear and speaks softly but firmly while moving one hand under the T-shirt, caressing my waist, my hip, the curve of my ass. “Right now, there are no problems. You’re a fucking goddess to me, even when you’re a mess. Everything you say and do surprises me and turns me on. Right now, all you have to do is lie here and let me work my magic on your gorgeous wet pussy. Because that is all I’m thinking about.”
Well now, Mr. Carver. When you put it that way…
He licks his lower lip and shifts his weight onto one elbow. He looks like he’s mentally shifting gears. Shit, I’ve lost him. He runs his fingers through his hair. “But I mean, if you can’t handle this…”
I shove his chest with my hand. “I can handle anything!”
He pins me down. “Prove it, little girl.”
“I’m not little!”
“Really? Because you’re acting like the little fourteen-year-old girl you were when I met you.”
I struggle under him. I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to make me mad because he knows that’s what I’m comfortable with—and I love it.
“Get this fucking duck shirt off me!”
“Done.”
He pulls the T-shirt up over my head, and his breath hitches when he stares at my naked body. I remain still at first, letting him take it all in. He makes a quick guttural sound and then gets back to the business of wrestling with my restless limbs. He holds my arms down while kissing a winding path from my collarbone to my breast, my nipple to my abdomen, just below my belly button. The tension in my pelvis and clit is unbearable, but he bypasses that whole area, planting quick kisses down my leg all the way to my toes as he stands up and begins massaging the ball of my foot. “Even your feet turn me on. Can you believe that?”
I groan so loudly it echoes around the room. He nibbles at the arch of my foot, and then his mouth makes its way back down my calf. “And these legs. These fucking legs have haunted my dreams forever.” Down to my thigh, and then my legs are propped up on his shoulders and he’s squeezing my ass. “Your perfect ass is a natural wonder.” Now he’s pulling me toward the edge of the bed again as he kneels on the floor. “And this…fucking this…”
I’m already contracting, and his mouth and tongue match my rhythm.
The delicious sounds he’s making turn me on as much as the circling and probing and strokes and nibbles.
He flicks his tongue at my clit and then sucks on it, and I yelp.
His finger is inside me, stimulating a part of me that was heretofore unknown, and I have never felt more like a goddess as I do when he moans and says my name as if I’m the one giving him pleasure, and it breaks me open and sends me to a place I’ve never been to before. A roaring quiet place of stillness and motion and blinding white light and darkness that is new and familiar and mine and his and everything and nothing.
I’m there.
I’m nowhere, for I don’t even know how long.
When I slowly come back to my body on the bed, I’m aware of how tense my muscles are, toes pointed, and Wes is on his side next to me, watching me with a beautiful combination of pride and wonder.
I’m still in an orgasmic haze when I lean over to kiss him, reach for his cock, and bring him to that same place he took me. It doesn’t take long, and when he comes into my hand and onto his stomach, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard or seen.
