Chapter 54
CHAPTER 54
AIDEN
She stiffens in my arms.
In the distance, the sun has started to set, lighting up the sky in a glory of colors. I need to say this. Even if it breaks the bubble we’re in. I need her to know.
“Aiden…”
“Jeff was fired. I told you that.” I press a kiss to her temple. “I’ve spent a good deal of this morning in meetings. Blake won’t work for us anymore.”
She sits up straighter, her eyes flying to mine. “What?”
“He’s fired, effective immediately. The season of Expedition Island he’s on will still air. I can’t get around that. But after that, he won’t appear in another Titan Media production for as long as he lives.”
She shakes her head slowly. “You’re really doing that?”
“Yes. You don’t mind?” I watch her face carefully. “You don’t still… care?”
“Care about him? Of course not.” She lets out a breath. “Wow. Thank you for doing that. It feels terrible, to thank you for making two people unemployed, but…”
“Don’t feel bad,” I say. “It was my decision. I’ll take on that burden. It’s not yours to carry, not after what they both did to you.”
She exhales again and something softens between her eyebrows. “Okay. Thank you, Aiden.”
“I also had a meeting with my financial advisers and accountants.” I reach out and brush back some of her still-damp, salt-stiffened hair. “You didn’t make enough money from The Gamble .”
Her gaze turns cautious. “What do you mean?”
“The things you told me. The song? The T-shirts?” My voice rises, and I force it back under control. “You should have gotten paid for that.”
“I don’t want any money from that show.”
“People exploited you and what happened to you, and you got nothing from it. The DJ, with the song?” I shake my head, anger making it hard to stay calm. “You’re owed royalties. It was your voice they remixed into that music.”
Pink highlights her cheeks. There are more freckles over the bridge of her nose, a testament to the sun we’ve been out in today. She’s so beautiful like this. Bathed in the fading light, with her hair windblown and wild around her.
“It’s been years,” she whispers.
“Still, it wasn’t right. Let me handle that part of it. Please, Charlotte. Let my lawyers look into it. You deserve more than what you got.”
She’s quiet for a long moment, and I see the rise and fall of her chest. But then she nods. “Okay. I... okay. Thank you. No one’s ever thought about that. Except me, at the time. Now… Well, I believed it was a losing battle.”
“It’s not. I’ll fight it for you, sweetheart.” And I won’t stop. I’m already in contact with a journalist, too, and I’ve fed her a story idea. To look into just how problematic some reality shows can be. I want to discredit Blake publicly.
I don’t just want to fire him. I never want him to be hired by another TV network, either.
She blinks rapidly a few times, and then she falls onto my chest with a big sigh.
I wrap my arms around her. “Hey, what’s the matter?”
“Why are you so nice to me,” she mumbles against my neck.
I chuckle. “What do you mean?”
“You’re making it very, very hard to stick to rule number one.”
“Yeah. Won’t apologize for that, Chaos.”
She leans back and smiles at me. I smile at her in return.
“Is there a clear view of this patio from the beach?”
“Not if we move back a bit, no. Only the whales and the dolphins could possibly see us.”
She brushes her lips over mine. “Good.”
Charlotte kisses me, and I groan at the excitement of her touch. She’s sweet. I won’t use that word again, but there’s no denying that she’s sugar. Addictive and glorious. I grip her tightly and pull her onto my lap.
It’s easy, so easy, to untie the strings at her neck. Her bikini cups fall down, and I run my thumb over the hard peak of her pink, pert nipple. We make out until she’s boneless in my arms, her hands searching between our bodies to reach down to my hardness.
But maybe… it’s time for me to make it up to her in a different way. To apologize properly.
I pull her up off the sun lounger and lead her toward the house. I turn us, and gently push her back so her back’s to the wall.
She giggles, and fuck, I love that sound.
“What are you doing?”
“I want you to have a nice view.” I start at her neck, kissing down to her tits. They’re perfect.
I tell her that.
She shakes her head a little. “You don’t have to say that. Now that you know…”
I take her hands and pin them over her head. “Chaos,” I tell her. “I was obsessed with your tits before I knew of the nickname. You know that.”
Charlotte smiles a little. Yeah. She knows.
But I need her to believe it. “I’ve taken tequila shots off them, and it was because I wanted to. I’m still obsessed with them. Always will be. They’re the perfect size for me to suck.”
Her lips part. “Oh. Right.”
I kiss across her jaw, neck, and down to find her nipples. They’re perfectly pink, the crowning glory on top of her slight mounds. I slowly release her hands and let my own glide along her sides. Over her waist, her hips, as I continue to suck.
Her breathing speeds up. It catches when I bite down on a nipple, and I smile around the peak.
When her nipples are more ruby than pink from my touch, I drop to my knees in front of her. I kiss her stomach. She tastes like warm skin, and faintly of sea salt.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte.” I slide my hands up her bare thighs, gripping her firmly. “I’m sorry about all of it.”
“Aiden,” she breathes. “What are you doing?”
I kiss her knee. The inside of her left thigh. “I’m so sorry. Let me show you just how sorry I am.”
“You weren’t responsible for the show.” Her fingers tunnel into my hair, and I fucking love it when she grips me like that.
“I profited off your pain, and I’d gladly spend a lifetime trying to make that up to you.” I kiss further up the sweet, soft skin of her thigh, moving my lips toward her bikini bottoms. “Starting with this, sweetheart. At your pace. Let me spend an hour on my knees and kiss you here. Let me convince you every fucking thing he said was wrong.”
“Aiden,” she whispers.
I use my left hand to stroke her softly through the fabric. My mouth is at her hip. “You can trust me. And you’re in control.”
Her other hand grips my shoulder, and I see her contemplating it, see the thirst for adventure and fear warring within her. “I might not enjoy it,” she says. “Maybe there’s just something?—”
“There is nothing wrong with you. Say the word, and I’ll stop. We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to try. But if it’s because you’re thinking about him and his stupid fucking words, I want to banish him.”
Her breaths are coming fast. She wants this. I know she does, and I know it excites her, but scares her, too. And I want to help her overcome this anxiety. The idea that she doesn’t taste good? That doing this to her won’t be the best fucking experience of my life?
Outrageous.
“Okay,” she says. Her eyes are alight. “I want to try it with you. But…”
“You say the word, and I’ll stop,” I repeat. “We can use your vibrator, too. Just let me convince you there is not a single thing wrong with you.”
Her teeth dig into her lower lip. “I want to shower first.”
“Sure. But you don’t have to, not for my sake. And we were just in the ocean.”
“I think I need it. For my own peace of mind.”
“Anything you need, Chaos.” I kiss her hip again and then rise to my full height. Charlotte walks ahead of me in nothing but her red bikini bottoms and that top that’s tied only around her rib cage.
I follow her into the shower.
If she’s surprised, it melts away as soon as I take her into my arms. “If you’re clean, I’m clean,” I tell her.
She’s nervous.
But the nerves dissolve under the hot spray. I stroke her skin. Her arms, her lower back, shoulders, and legs. Let my fingers brush over her clit a few times. I kiss her beneath the cascading water until I’m so hard, it’s inconvenient. My cock trapped between our naked bodies.
She giggles and gives my erection a tug. “Sure you want to go down on me ?”
“Yes. I’m damn sure. This is an indication of just how much I want to.”
Neither of us fully dries off. I throw on a pair of sweatpants, just to keep myself at bay.
She stands in front of me in a white towel, wrapped tightly around her frame. Her hair is wet, draped on her shoulders, and she smells faintly like soap.
I recognize her expression. It’s one of determination, like I’ve seen on her so many times before.
“Come here,” I say.
She takes a deep breath and steps forward, a flush cresting her cheeks. From the hot water or the kisses, I don’t know.
“I’m turned on.” She says it like it’s a surprise.
I smile. “That’s good, sweetheart. Wanna lie down? Wanna stand?”
She hesitates at the foot of the large bed, but finally sits on the edge and lies down on her back. The fluffy towel is still wrapped tightly around her.
“I think here.” She spreads her arms out, touching the soft covers of the bed. “It’s comfortable.”
I look through the weekend bag I’d quickly packed. A few of the vibrators she has are in there. I grab two, a smaller one and its larger cousin, and put them in the pocket of my sweats.
I start at her thighs, slowly moving upward. Gradually, inch by inch, I fold the towel up. It spreads like the petals of a flower, revealing her stomach, her slender hips. The delicate pink folds between her legs.
I kiss her inner thighs, across her hip bones. Blow warm air across her pussy. The need to taste her is so overwhelming, it’s making my cock ache again. But I don’t rush this. I won’t.
“Aiden,” she whispers again. I could listen to her saying my name forever. It plays like a melody in my head.
I use my hands first. I brush the pads of my fingers up and down her seam, her legs still closed. I find her clit and circle it softly through the hood.
She watches me, her breathing quick. Seems like the anticipation is getting to her just as much as it is to me.
I part her thighs. “Bend them for me, sweetheart.”
She spreads open easily, trustingly, before throwing an arm over her face. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
She’s beautiful. All pink skin that glistens lightly in the overhead light.
She’s wet.
I lean closer, kissing her inner thigh, pausing at the crease where her leg meets her pussy.
“Trust me,” I tell her. “You smell so good, and you look perfect. Have I told you how pretty your pussy is?”
Her reply is muffled. “No.”
I chuckle, my breath warming her already hot flesh. “Well, it is. You are. Prettiest fucking pussy I’ve ever seen. And I’m going to enjoy this.” I bend and touch my lips to her. I kiss across her folds, the hood of her clit. The seam and just barely over her entrance. Soft, open-mouthed kisses. All the while, I stroke across her smooth skin. Her hips, her stomach, her thighs.
Her body slowly relaxes under my touch.
“Oh,” she whispers. “That feels… okay.”
I smile against her thigh. “Okay?”
“It feels better than I thought it would.”
I grin. “A good start, but I can get that up a bit higher.”
“You sure I taste all right?”
“You taste incredible. I could do this for hours.”
I reach for the slim pocket vibrator. We’ve played around with it a lot, and I know she likes its vibrations. It won’t hurt to keep things familiar for the first time she’s let a man eat her out in ten years.
It’s a fucking honor.
Charlotte’s clit is swelling up. I let my tongue trace the outlines of it and hear her hitched breathing. “That was… better than okay.”
I do it over and over again before brushing the head of the vibrator through her folds. Getting it wet before fitting it to her entrance.
“Aiden?” she asks.
“Trust me,” I say.