19. Emily
My eyes flutter open as Ian trails open-mouthed kisses up my neck. I arch my back and my hips press into his hard length.
“Morning, Kitten.” He smiles against my neck. “Feeling rested?”
“Mm-hmm.” I press my ass harder against his hips.
“Good, you’re going to need all that energy for when I fuck you through the mattress,” he growls.
His hand slides under the hem of my nightshirt, ghosting over my hips to cup my breast. “You’re not wearing anything underneath my shirt. Dirty girl.”
“You like it,” I say.
His other hand shifts to grip my hips possessively as he presses harder against me. “You want me to show you how much I like it?”
“Yes,” I sigh.
Ian flips me onto my back and claims my mouth. Every bit of what he’s feeling is poured into his kiss. It’s possessive, all consuming, and affectionate.
No.
It’s loving.
Last night, he said it would be too easy to fall in love with me, and I think we both might have already fallen over that precipice even though we’re too scared to admit it.
He moans low in his throat as I suck the tip of his tongue.
Electricity zips through my body as his hand ghosts down from my chest, to my waist, to my hips. I part my legs for him before he has to ask, and he rewards me by lavishing attention on my clit. He traces circles, pinches until I’m short of breath, then teases me by dropping his finger down to my entrance and just barely pressing inside.
“I love seeing you writhe beneath me, begging me to fuck you with your eyes. You’re so wet and ready for me already. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he says.
He thrusts his fingers inside me, and I cry out in pleasure. It’s rough and fast, just the way I like, and in no time, I’m coming all over his fingers. He withdraws his fingers then licks them clean of my juices.
“You are impossibly perfect,” he says, kissing me.
Tasting myself on his tongue sends heat right to my center, and I’m aching for him to fill me again.
He peels the shirt off me and devours me with his eyes. A lazy smile crosses his face as he explores every inch of my exposed body with his fingertips. He traces from the inside of my wrist to my shoulder, then my neck. After carefully outlining my collarbone, he drops down to my breasts. I moan his name as he draws a spiral toward my hard nipples and pinches them lightly. The goosebumps that pop up on my skin mark the path he takes from my breasts to my C-section scar, to my hips.
I let out a frustrated groan as his hand drops to the inside of my calf, entirely bypassing where I need him most.
“Be patient,” Ian commands softly. “Let me admire you.”
He touches me like I’m priceless, like I’m fine art… like I’m loved.
When he finally slips his fingers into my core again, I nearly cry with relief. He pumps his fingers in and out of me slowly this time, massaging my G-spot with every thrust.
It doesn’t take long until I come undone again.
After I come down from the high of one of the most intense orgasms I’ve had in my life, Ian follows the path his fingers traced with his mouth. When he kisses the inside of my wrist, I can feel it all the way in my toes. Then he nips the area, and I cry out his name. I hadn’t known until now how sensitive I was there.
By the time he makes it to my inner thighs, I am embarrassingly wet.
“Fuck, it’s like you were made just for me,” Ian says reverently.
My legs shake as he drags his tongue from my entrance to my clit. He licks, kisses, and sucks on my clit until I’m right at the edge.
“Please, Ian,” I beg, “let me come.”
I don’t even finish my sentence before he thrusts his tongue inside me. I fist my hands in his hair as he fucks me hard and fast with his tongue. I come with my thighs clenched around his ears and his name on my lips.
When he comes up to kiss me, I wrap my hands around his cock and start stroking him, but he grabs my wrist and pulls me away.
“Did I do something wrong?” I worry.
His voice is gravelly with desire. “If you keep touching me like that, I’m not going to last very long, Kitten, and I’m desperate to be inside you.”
“Make me yours, Ian,” I whisper.
He moans my name as he slides his cock into me. With every thrust of his hips, I get closer and closer to finishing, but I can’t quite get there. I’m missing something.
I look deep into his hazel eyes and say, “I don’t think I can come without my necklace.”
He scrunches his nose. “Your what?”
I grab his hand and place it against my throat.
He growls. “You’re going to be the death of me, Kitten.”
The pressure around my throat only intensifies the feeling of his cock sliding out to just the tip then being buried deep inside me.
“Ian,” I moan, “I’m so close.”
He thrusts into me harder. The only sounds in the room are our heavy breathing and the sounds of our skin colliding.
I feel the pressure building in my lower abdomen, and with one more gentle squeeze of my throat, I feel my walls clamp down on him as my body explodes with pleasure. A few more pumps of his hips has him spilling his seed inside me.
“Emily, I—” But whatever he was about to say is cut off by my alarm.
Instantly, I feel myself shift between lovestruck girl to no-nonsense mom. I jump up and throw Ian’s shirt back over my head. While I’m sure my men would love to see it, I’m not about to walk through the halls naked to get to the dresser where I keep a few changes of clothes.
“Okay, I’ve got to get a quick shower, get dressed, and then get Audrey up, dressed, and fed. We’ve got to leave for preschool in about thirty minutes,” I say.
Then it hits me. I’ve set this alarm for the time it takes to get to the school from my house, not here.
Frantically, I type everything into my maps app.
Okay. It could be worse. If we take 688 instead of Route 12 like I usually do, we should be able to get there on time if we leave in—I pause to do the math in my head— twenty minutes.
Shit.
“Make that twenty minutes,” I correct and more to myself, I add, “How on earth am I going to manage all that with ten fewer minutes? This is going to be impossible.”
Ian bolts up in bed. “What do you need? Let me help.”
My heart overflows with gratitude.
“I packed her lunch before we came here, and it’s in the fridge, so… breakfast?” I ask.
“Pancakes?” Ian suggests.
“Perfect.” I smile. “Can you get that started while I shower?”
“Do you want me to wake up Audrey too?” he offers.
“No, but thanks. If you can take over breakfast prep, I can handle the rest,” I say, hustling toward the door.
Even though time is at a premium right now, I still stop to look back at him in the doorway.
Ian is hauling on his clothes with the urgency of a firefighter to help me and my daughter.
I love you.
Should I say so? Is it too soon? Will it be weird?
If you feel it, say it. You know stuffing things down doesn’t ever do you any good,I scold myself.
“Ian.”
He stops and meets my eyes questioningly. “Yes?”
“I—” Immediately, I lose my nerve. “I really appreciate you and everything you’ve done for me. You know that, right?”
Ian’s eyes soften like he heard what I’d left unsaid anyway. “I appreciate you too, Emily, very much.”
Like a coward, I turn tail and run to the shower.
As I scrub the smell of sex off my body, my eyes land on the marks Ian left on my breast and hip. They’re nearly perfectly diagonal from each other, and I wonder if he’s done that on purpose. Maybe it’s a message.
There you go again, looking for mountains inside mole hills. Sometimes, things are just coincidences.
I shake my head to clear out the nonsense.
What pops into my head next has me wishing I’d spent more time shoring up my hickey conspiracy theories.
This hot water is supposed to loosen the knots in my muscles, but the wave of anxiety that crashes over me has me clenched tighter than the lid of an unopened peanut butter jar.
If I had told Ian I loved him just now, he’ll see it as a total betrayal once they find out Oliver is Audrey’s father. He’s going to think I was using him to get close to Oliver, and it’s going to break his heart.
What if he never wants to see me again after he finds out? Could I really handle that after I tell him how I feel about him?
How do I even begin to broach the subject? Do I just drop it on them like a bomb? Should I make a presentation like I did in college? Is this a separate discussion? Obviously, I tell Oliver first, but who do I tell next? Will the person I tell last be upset at being told last? Do I just blurt it out when we’re all together? Or do I just wait and hope no one ever finds out?
My scrubbing gets more aggressive as I wrestle with myself over this.
You just committed to being their girlfriend. Things are officially serious. You have to tell them.
I groan and crank up the hot water.
Alexei’s voice drifts through my mind. “Those house meetings we have here are for more than event planning or replenishing the snack hoard.”
Okay, I’ll call a house meeting and tell them together.
That’s one problem solved, at least.
What would I even say? Hey, you know how Oliver and I fucked five years ago and I stole his shirt? Well, that’s not the only thing I left with that belonged to him. Surprise!
No, definitely not that.
I rest my head against the cool tiles of the shower and take several deep breaths.
This is a big deal. It might end our relationship.
Might isn’t a done deal. It could go either way when you tell them, but keeping something like this secret and then having them find out will definitely end the relationship.
Secrets, no matter for what reason you’re keeping them, are not a good foundation for a healthy relationship. When things were more casual, I had some wiggle room, but now that they’re officially my boyfriends, there is no excuse for my not telling them now.
You don’t have to blurt it out over breakfast, but the longer you hide this from them, the harder it will be to repair the relationship.
What Ian told me last night about the press makes my window much smaller for telling them myself instead of their finding out from someone else. A month would be too risky. Telling them in a day or two won’t be enough time.
Two weeks, then.
It will be highly unlikely for the press to dig that up in two weeks, especially since he’s not listed on her birth certificate, but it also gives me enough time to figure out what to say.
Two weeks or less. That might be all the time I have before my heart gets shattered beyond repair.