Chapter 16
Scarlett
Six Years Ago
“Why don’t you ever wear red?” Ryan is standing in my new bedroom, adjusting his tie in front of the full-length mirror.
I eye him from where I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, trying and failing to secure the buckle on the one pair of strappy sandals I own. “What?”
“I’ve been watching your social media updates and television interviews for weeks, and I realized I’ve never seen you wear red. Not once. I took a peek in your closet just now to see, and I was right. Not a stitch of red.”
“Do you want me to wear red?” I ask.
“I think you’d be stunning if you ever did, but you’re always stunning. So no, not particularly. It just seems like a staple color in a woman’s wardrobe.”
“This is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had,” I mumble.
Ryan chuckles warmly, running his hands through his hair. “It’s just something I noticed, and I was curious.”
“My name is Scarlett,” I remind him, as if that’s explanation enough.
“And?”
“It’d be a little on the nose, wouldn’t it?”
He shrugs. “Maybe.”
I watch him fiddle with his clothes in the mirror some more. A few months ago, Ava met someone who she swears is the love of her life. I’ve heard that from her before, but this time she fell in love with another woman, which she swears has made all the difference. I suppose when you know, you know. And now that I’ve just arrived home from two weeks on the road, we finally have a moment to meet them out on a fancy double date.
Watching Ryan scrutinize himself in the mirror is maybe one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen. Even after almost a year together, he still gets nervous and wants to impress my friends. I wish we didn’t have to go, that we could have the night all to ourselves, but I miss my friends, too.
When my lease with Ava, Mandy, and Katherine was up, we decided to go our separate ways. Or rather, I did. I had earned out my advance from JMP about a month after my debut released, and it didn’t look like anything was going to slow down anytime soon. Besides, I had been splitting most of my time between writing and a lengthy press tour with interviews and signings and the whole shebang. When I’d get home, I’d go straight to Ryan’s condo anyway, because he lives alone, and having an adult relationship with three roommates is awkward to say the least. It only made sense for me to buy a place of my own.
I bite my lip as what he said really sinks in. “You watched every interview?”
“Of course I did,” he answers easily. He catches my eye in the mirror and smiles, then goes right back to fixing his hair.
I allow myself a minute to drink him in. His dark hair is longer now than it was when we met. He got new glasses, too, though they are a barely different version of the old ones. But that ass is the same, and it’s exactly as delicious as it was a year ago.
I don’t have much room to talk about Ava and how fast she fell for the love of her life. It didn’t take me long at all to know Ryan was special, and it wasn’t long after that when I realized spending the rest of my life with him seemed like a fun prospect rather than a daunting one. We slipped into each other’s lives so easily, as if we were occupying spaces that had been left for us. Soon, I was staying over at his place for several nights, then weeks at a time. We’d work well into the night—or at least as long as we could last as we tried to resist each other’s small touches and suggestive glances—then wake in the mornings and share coffee and breakfast before he’d leave for work. It felt domestic, but not in an oppressive way. In an exciting way. A picture of the life we could lead together had emerged on the horizon, and I liked it. Loved it, if I’m being honest. And once I admitted that to myself, I started daydreaming about all of our options. A house in the suburbs. A little son or daughter running around in the backyard or shoving wrinkled pages of a story they wrote into our hands. A dog? No, probably a cat. Neither of us have the patience for a dog.
I mean, I certainly can’t have any of that now, while my book is still climbing the charts and I’m being asked to do more and more signings and interviews. But someday.
Even now, as we both get all dolled up to meet another couple out for dinner, I relish in the domesticity of it. This is something real couples do. Normal couples. Ones without a half who has to travel for weeks on end. It feels right. We’re just two people in our late twenties—him climbing rapidly toward a position as a senior editor, and me writing bestsellers—with a world of possibilities in front of us. I’m almost worried it’s too good to be true, but then there are moments like this, when he casually drops into conversation that he has watched me while I was gone. That he noticed something like my preferred wardrobe colors. When he catches me watching him over his shoulder in the mirror and winks at me. Such a small thing, that noticing, that wink, but indicative of something so much bigger.
Love? Maybe. We haven’t said it yet, but it sure feels like we could.
“Like what you see?” He tips up the corner of his mouth in a small smile, then does a three-sixty for me to see the whole picture.
“Always.” My sandals finally buckled, I push myself off the bed. I make sure to give my hips an extra sway as I walk slowly toward him, and I’m rewarded for it with a darkening of his eyes as I loop my arms around his neck.
“You’re remarkable,” he breathes into the space between us. “I still can’t believe you ever gave me the time of day.”
“It was your giant…vocabulary,” I tease. “They say size doesn’t matter, but the bigger, the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
He chuckles, then trails a hand down my spine to cup my ass. Warmth floods my core, and I lick my lips in anticipation of their meeting his. He indulges me by tipping his face downward, kissing me innocently at first, but it’s not long before he’s dragging my bottom lip through his teeth. As he soothes the little sting with his tongue, I moan. He swallows it greedily, his hands roaming and exploring.
“This dress is doing things to me, Scarlett.” He kisses down my neck and bites gently where it meets my shoulder.
A delicious little shiver works its way down my body. “We’re going to be late if we do this now,” I caution.
He squeezes my ass, pressing me against the hardness between his legs. “I don’t give a damn.”
I groan. “I’m starting to care a lot less, but Ava will never forgive me if we ditch her.”
Ryan grumbles something incoherent but releases me. When I step back, he adjusts himself before rolling his shoulders to stand taller. His eyes are hooded when they meet mine again. I step up to straighten the tie I rumpled, and he smiles down at me.
“What?” I ask when he doesn’t speak.
“Nothing,” he says quietly, shaking his head. “I like this.”
I return his smile, a different kind of warmth blooming in my chest. “Me, too.”
Dinner goes off without a hitch. Ava’s girlfriend, Marcie, is a delight. She has us in stitches most of the evening, telling stories about her time as a clown for hire and all the wild things she saw at kids’ birthday parties. She does mostly data entry now, but when she tells stories, Ava watches her with hearts in her eyes. They ask about my book, but not too much, which is nice. I’ve been talking about my book for weeks; I want to talk about other things.
The whole time, Ryan finds excuses to touch me. His hand rests casually on the back of my chair so his thumb can brush against the nape of my neck. His thigh presses up against mine under the table. He brushes my hair off my shoulder and leans to whisper something into my ear. At one point during dessert, his hand lands on my knee.
By the time we leave, I’m desperate for him. The ride back to my condo is excruciating, especially because he strokes a light finger up and down my inner thigh under the cover of darkness as we sit in the back of the cab. When we get to my building, I run ahead of him up the steps and through my hallway—heels be damned—so I can unlock my door for us to tumble inside.
He slams the door shut behind him, then spins me so my back is pressed against it. Wasting no time at all, he presses a hot kiss against my fevered neck. “I missed you.” Another on my collarbone. “I missed this.” Another on top of the swell of my left breast above the scooped neck of my dress. “And this.” Then, my right breast. “And this.”
“Ryan.” I exhale as he drags the hem of my dress upward.
“I missed those little noises you make.” He pulls the fabric up so it pools over my hip, leaving my soaked panties on display for him. His finger meets the cotton material, and he groans, dropping his forehead to my shoulder. “Fuck, Scarlett. Have you been this wet all night?”
“For you,” I say breathlessly. “Always for you.”
He tucks my panties to the side and dips a finger into my waiting heat. I cry out in pleasure, digging my nails into his shoulders, trying to gain purchase through the fabric of his shirt so I can ride his hand. He pushes another finger inside, and the way he stretches me is exquisite, even if it’s not quite enough. As if he can read my mind, his palm meets my clit. His dark eyes meet mine before he swallows my breathy moans with a kiss. Pressure builds in my core, and I claw at his shoulders, begging for more.
“I missed this, too,” he says, pulling away just enough to watch. “I want to see you come, Scarlett. Can you come for me, beautiful?”
“Yes,” I gasp. “Yes.”
He circles his fingers inside me a few more times, and I shatter, clenching and unclenching around his fingers as he tastes my mouth with his tongue.
As soon as I can breathe again, he releases me. We waste no time shedding clothes on our way to the bedroom. I don’t know where anything ends up, and I don’t care. We’re too frantic for each other, too eager. Clothes are tomorrow’s problem. Right now, we’re only skin and heat and need.
I lie on my bed. Ryan takes off his glasses and lays them carefully on the nightstand before crawling over me, dark eyes glinting in the moonlight that filters in from the window. He kisses my hip, then the valley of my waist, my stomach, the underside of my breast. Swiftly, he draws a nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, nipping at it with his teeth. I gasp and rub my legs together, trying to relieve some of the pressure already building again between my thighs. My palm meets his hard length, and he lets out a gruff moan into my chest as I pump my hand a few times.
Quickly, without warning, he circles his broad hands around my waist and flips me onto my stomach. I arch my back, which pushes my ass up into the air. He rubs a hand over it and squeezes.
“I’ll never get tired of this view.” His voice is gravelly. He uses both hands to spread me open for him, then notches himself against my entrance.
“I missed you,” I say as I rock backward, taking him inside me. We both let out a noise of relief, and I gasp as he presses even further, filling me. Another thrust, and his hips meet my ass. I sigh, content.
There are no more words as he sets an unhurried pace. All the frenzied need from earlier is gone now, replaced with a tenderness punctuated by our soft sighs and the sound of our skin meeting in the darkness. At one point, he reaches around to place a warm palm on my stomach, then drags it downward to stroke my already-sensitive clit.
“Can you come for me again, beautiful?” he asks, his voice reverent and full of emotion.
“Yes,” I breathe, arching my back even more so he can reach the spot I need. “Can you use a little more pressure?”
He obliges, and I cry out, burying my face in the blanket in front of me. His thrusts start coming harder and more erratic. I feel him stiffen inside me, and with another swirl of his finger, I come again. While waves of pleasure are still crashing into me, he shudders his own release.
After we come down from our high, Ryan goes to the bathroom. He returns with a warm washcloth and starts to clean me up. I can’t explain why, but from the way he concentrates on the task, it feels like this is important to him. When he’s done, he tosses the cloth into my hamper, then lies down and pulls me against him. We slip into a deep sleep together, holding each other close the whole night.