Chapter Thirteen Emily
Chapter Thirteen
Emily
A furry blanket was spread over Maya and me as we lay next to each other on the couch.
The fireplace across from us was roaring with flames, making the mood extra cozy, and the music—a mix of country, rock, and rap—was just loud enough to hear the words, but not overpowering so I couldn’t make out anything her, Jordan, or Gavin had been saying throughout the night.
Tonight had been absolute perfection, including Gavin’s surprise appearance, something I still hadn’t gotten over.
But there was one problem.
The tequila and wine and the second helping of Thai takeout had made me so sleepy. I lifted my phone from the cushion beside me, hit the icon for my Uber app, and rolled my head toward my best friend. “I love you more than life itself, but I need to go home.”
“Nooo.”
“I have to go to bed, Maya. I’m fading so fast. And since I’m off from both jobs tomorrow, I have a crapload of stuff I need to get done.”
She moved onto her side to face me. “How about a sleepover? I’ll order us breakfast in the morning, and then you can attack all the things.”
That would only lead to mimosas, and then I’d really get nothing done.
“I can’t.” I twirled one of her locks around my finger. “I’m going to call an Uber and—”
“You’re absolutely not calling an Uber.” She leaned up and looked at Jordan, who was sitting at the end of the couch, deep in conversation with Gavin. “Jordan, Emily needs to get home. Will you call your driver and have him—”
“I’ll take her.”
Gavin’s voice shot through the room like a bullet, landing straight in my heart. As he stared at me, his expression turned that bullet so that it made the hole even larger.
The man couldn’t look hotter if he tried.
He was leaning forward on the couch, his arms resting on his thighs, his glass of whatever-alcohol-he-was-on-at-this-point dangling between his legs.
With his chin positioned over his shoulder, the light from the fire showed the thickness of his scruff and the darkness of his gaze.
Heat was blazing from his eyes and wrapping right around me.
I pulled the blanket up to my neck even though I was suddenly sweaty. “No, you don’t have to go out of your way. I’ll call an Uber.”
“Em, it’s wicked late. You’re not calling an Uber at this hour.”
I knew my best friend wouldn’t bend, but I still tried to convince her. “I call one all the time when I’m on call for Dr. Kaplan—”
“I’m headed out too.” Gavin got up from the couch, emptied his glass with one gulp, and set it on a nearby table. “My driver’s right outside. There’s no reason he can’t take you home.”
“Problem solved.” Maya linked her fingers with mine. “And I didn’t even have to pull the mom card.”
The booze made me laugh at her. But my nerves about getting in a car with Gavin cut that laughter short. “Who says I’m not going to jump in an Uber the second I step outside.”
“I do.”
There was that voice again. The one so incredibly sexy, I could barely breathe.
“See, Gavin has my back.” Maya threw her arms around my neck. “I’d say text me when you get home, but I know Gavin won’t let anything happen to you. So text me in the morning, okay?”
Gavin wouldn’t let anything happen to me. Ugh, the most seductive words I’d ever heard.
I hugged Maya back. “I had the most fun tonight, babe.”
“That’s why you need to come over more often.” She squeezed me with more strength. “Ohhh, and we need to talk about Mike. That’s on tomorrow’s agenda. Do not forget, lady.”
I pulled back, still holding her arms. “I’ve agreed to nothing.”
“But you will.” She smiled. “It’s so going to happen.”
I rolled my eyes, wiggling my arms away. “You’re so extra.”
“I know.” She giggled.
I crawled out from under the blanket, slipping on my white Birkenstocks that were on the floor next to me, and I went over to where Jordan was sitting to give him a hug. “Thank you for everything. Tonight was amazing.”
“I’m glad you came over.”
As I stepped out of his hold, I glanced from him to Gavin, the brothers only a few feet apart. Football and hockey were literally towering over me, their bodies like brick, but their gazes so different as they looked at me.
I could feel Gavin’s penetrating my skin.
Did he have any idea what he was doing to me?
Could he see right through me?
“Are you ready?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yep.”
He man-hugged his brother and gave Maya a quick kiss on the cheek before he joined me in the back of the living room, and we walked to the elevator. Jordan’s setup was similar to Gavin’s condo, where the door opened directly inside his foyer.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered as he hit the button for the elevator.
“I know.”
Why was he standing so close?
Why did it feel like his hands were all over me even though they weren’t?
“I can still take an Uber home. Maya will never know.”
“You’re not taking a fucking Uber.” The blue of his eyes was more intense than ever. “I’m getting you home safely. End of story.” The door opened, and he put his hand on my lower back, leading me inside, the warmth from his fingers reaching well past my skin.
I moved to the far wall, away from his grip, and leaned my back against it. I then tucked my phone into the waist of my leggings so I could hold the thin-lipped railing with both hands.
Gavin pressed the lobby button and stayed toward the side, the door finally closing. Even though my focus was on the door, I could feel his eyes on me.
I could feel them moving down me.
I could feel the wetness they were causing.
How dare he have this effect on me. This control. This ability to trigger such a demanding need.
There was only one way to make it stop.
I finally looked at him, ignoring the chemistry exploding between our gazes and the scent of him in the air and the way my body was internally pounding, and said, “You never answered me. What’s your opinion on Mike?”
The muscle in his cheek contracted, telling me his jaws tightened. “That’s what you want to talk to me about? Now?”
If I thought my heart was pounding before, the speed had upped, and I could feel it all the way in my head. “Yes.”
He pointed his chin upward. “Fuck Mike.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because I don’t give a fuck about him.”
“I do.”
“You . . . do? You don’t even know the dude. Why do you care about him?”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant—”
My voice cut off as he closed the distance between us, his arms going above my head, his palms flattening on the wall, putting me in a Gavin prison.
I loved every second of it, but I wouldn’t show him that.
“I don’t ever want you to ask me about Mike again.”
I drew in some air, his face so close, every bit I took in only smelled of him. “Why?”
He exhaled several times, each one hitting me. “Because I don’t want to hear about you being interested in him.” His voice was getting deeper and louder. “I don’t want to hear about you being interested in anyone.”
“What is it that you want to hear, Gavin?”
He released the wall, his fingers going to my chin, which he lifted until my lips were aligned with his. “Your moans.”
I shook my head, a smile dragging across my lips.
He had it as bad as I did—the tingling, the throbbing, the needing.
“That’s the only fucking thing I want to hear right now.”
Wait.
Now?
I found my voice and uttered, “Now—”
His movement cut me off as he reached toward the front of the elevator, opening the small box below the display screen. Whatever he hit caused the elevator to come to a sharp stop.
“Yes. Now.” His hands cupped my face. “I can’t leave this elevator without having your taste on my lips.”
“But—”
“Are you saying you don’t want me to taste you, Emily?
That the entire time you were sitting on Jordan’s couch, you weren’t fantasizing about what you wanted me to do to you.
And what you know I’m capable of.” His teeth flicked his bottom lip.
“I saw you staring at me. I saw that look come across your face more than once—the one where you bite your lip and get lost in your thoughts after I tell you what I want to do to you.” I felt his fingers on my stomach.
“Let’s see if I’m right.” I felt them move beneath the waist of my leggings, heard the sound of my phone falling to the floor before his hand sank between my legs.
“Soaking wet. Just like I thought you’d be. ”
I was caught red-handed.
But I didn’t care.
This was what he did to me, and he already knew that.
“Do you have another ‘but’ for me, Emily?”
Had I said but? I was so lost, I remembered nothing before my phone dropped.
“No.”
The moment the one syllable was released in my voice, he pressed his mouth to mine. His kiss was rough. Dominant. It started with his tongue, the flavor of scotch thick and perfect, and ended with a bite from his teeth. His scruff scraped my cheek, and even that made me moan.
“Do you know what you’ve been doing to me all night?”
I drove the back of my head into the wall as he slipped a finger inside me, gasping, shaking in pleasure before I ordered, “Tell me.”
“I thought of every possible way to get you alone in that condo so I could put my mouth right here”—he tapped my clit—“and every time I came up with an idea, someone would fuck that up.”
My hands went to his shoulders, my nails digging into the thin fabric. “But you have me now.”
That smile.
My God.
It could make me agree to anything and everything.
“I do and I’m going to make it mine.” I hadn’t even blinked and he was already kneeling on the floor, tearing my leggings to my ankles, his nose on my clit. “No panties.” He breathed me in, filling the elevator with sounds of satisfaction. “Were you planning on being naughty tonight?”
My hands left his shoulders and slid through his hair, my eyes closing as he grazed his nose over me. “I don’t wear them with leggings. It feels like a traffic jam.”
He let out a short, huffy chuckle and glanced up at me as my eyelids opened. “I would prefer you not wearing them, so there’s less to take off and I can touch this”—he licked me—“whenever I want.”
“Don’t phrase sentences like there’s going to be a next time. We both know what this is.”
It was another occasion for my feelings to grow even stronger.
But were his?
He held my gaze, his tongue working its way between me, and it flicked the very top.
I quivered. “Ahhh.” And within a few swishes, I was smiling. “You on your knees for me . . . there’s nothing hotter.”
He sucked me into his mouth, holding the end with his teeth, the pressure causing my lips to part, my breathing to come out in waves.
“Fuck!” I clenched his hair and held on despite the weakness that was already moving through my legs.
He released me, and “Now I’m going to make you come” seemed to echo through the elevator.
Before I could even fill my lungs, he started to live up to his promise.
Licking.
Fingering.
Achieving.
I couldn’t look at him anymore, the movement, the build, the hunger and desire in his eyes—it was all too much. So I tilted my head back, the overhead light shining in my face, and I rocked against him.
“Gavin!” I gulped air into my mouth as everything started to increase.
Not just the orgasm that was sparking inside me but the speed he was using.
With each thrust of his hand, he was adding more friction, and with his tongue, the combination was accelerating the tingles.
They lifted from the base of my pussy and shot through my stomach and up toward my chest. “Oh! Yes!”
I didn’t know what I was holding, squeezing, stabbing, but I was on this ride, and I couldn’t let go.
The peak came hard, and with it a surge of shudders completely took over my body. It felt as though I were melting into his mouth, giving him exactly what he wanted. “Oh God! Agh!”
As lost as I was, my chin still dropped, my eyes opened, and what I met was his stare. One that was hard, determined, and more sensual than I’d ever seen.
This time, when I screamed, “Gavin,” it was because I’d reached the end. His mouth had brought me to this breathless, satiated place, and the only thing I had left was stillness.
A smile of triumph reached his gaze, and he kissed the sides of me and down to my inner thighs, his finger slipping out before he pulled up my leggings and rose from the floor.
His palm returned to the wall above my head, his lips now in front of mine. I was all over him, the wetness glistening from the light.
My hand went to his chest, immediately meeting the hardness of his muscles. “Looks like you got what you wanted.”
“A taste of it, yes. But I’m hardly done.” He focused on my eyes, lips, chest, and then roamed back up. “It’s time to get out of here.”