Chapter 33 Avery
AVERY
I was grateful I had the transparent film to keep me busy when I got back to the house with Dane.
We’d walked home from the town hall in silence, and I could only speak for myself in saying that I spent the entire time replaying what had happened between us, wishing Rosie hadn’t interrupted when she had.
And it wasn’t just my body talking, although there was definitely that.
I’d been so close to release when Rosie burst in, and then I’d been too shocked and mortified to regret the aborted orgasm, but walking home in the dark with Dane by my side, it was all I could do not to pull him behind a tree and get back to business.
Beck and Noah were nowhere to be found when Dane and I got back to the house, which was just as well. I couldn’t explain what had happened between Dane and me to myself, let alone to the other two guys in the house I wanted to bang.
I hurried to my room instead, changing into pajamas and washing my face, trying to wash away the memory of what had happened and the feeling of doom that overcame me every time I remembered that Rosie was the one who’d caught me in such a compromising position with Dane.
Good thing I planned to sell the house and leave town, because my reputation was probably already in the gutter.
I was relieved to sit down with the films I’d taken from the town meeting. Taking them hadn’t been intentional. I’d just had them in my hand when Dane had pulled me out of the room, and the doors to the meeting room had been locked when Dane and I emerged from the site of our unexpected sexcapade.
I’d return the slides to the town Hall, or maybe to Sheriff Crowe.
Eventually.
First I wanted to see what was on the film.
Except holding the first one to the light didn’t do me much good. I could make out some lines and squiggles but not much else. Ditto for the second and third pieces of film. They weren’t designed to be viewed by the naked eye.
I needed a projector, not a fancy new projector that connected to a computer but one of the clunky ancient ones like the one that had been set up in the town meeting.
I replayed the meeting in my mind, turning over everything that had happened before Mayor Biscuit got loose. The problem was that the meeting had been chaotic even before that, the townspeople shouting out comments and accusations so fast I could barely keep up.
It didn’t help that I didn’t know everyone, although I had gotten a look at Victor Ames at least. Was he a murderer? I could see it. He was smarmy and confident and didn’t seem at all concerned with what the residents of Blackwell Hollow thought about him or the Hearthstone project.
But none of that meant he was a murderer. I wondered how everyone else on the town council felt about the project. Were they in danger too? Or had Harold been some kind of tiebreaker, his sudden absence helpful to Victor’s cause?
They’d been questions I’d hoped to get answered at the meeting, but thanks to Mayor Biscuit I hadn’t gotten that far. I thought about asking Rosie, but the prospect of facing her after her interruption in the courtroom wasn’t at all appealing.
“Burning the midnight oil?” I turned in my chair to find Beck standing in the doorway.
“It was open,” he said.
His inked chest was bare over jeans and I had a visceral memory: running my hands over his smooth skin as he plundered my mouth with his tongue, his fingers buried inside me.
“Was it?” I didn’t remember leaving my door open.
He grinned. “Half-open.”
Why did his smile have to be so sexy? Why did I want to run my fingers through his thick brown hair? And why oh why did he have to have dimples? It was criminal to be so casually sexy, and I had the sudden urge to pull him into my room, shut the door, take him to bed.
I blamed Rosie, for interrupting Dane and me in the courtroom, but a little voice inside called me a liar. I just wanted Beck.
I wanted all of them. Even Dane, who I couldn’t stand.
“Thanks for getting Lena out of there.” I knew Beck and Noah had gotten Lena out because I’d texted her as soon as Dane and I left the town hall.
It had been quiet by then, Blackwell Hollow’s residents dispersed to their homes, but I’d been worried about Lena.
“Sure thing,” Beck said. “We walked her home.”
I nodded. Of course they did.
“What are you up to?” he asked.
I picked up one of the slides. “I wanted to see what was on these, but I can’t read them without a projector.”
He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the room to take the slide out of my hand. He held it up to the light. “Wow, you aren’t kidding. It’s like a hieroglyph. These from the meeting?”
“Yeah.” I looked up at him, still standing over me. “And speaking of the meeting, Dane told me you — all of you — followed me there.”
He grinned again. “So?”
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe for him to be more apologetic than Dane had been about the fact that they’d followed me to the meeting?
But if that was what I was hoping for I was going to be disappointed, because he didn’t look sorry at all.
“Are you going to claim it’s because you were worried about the murderer on the loose?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Main Street is always crowded on town meeting nights. Same for the square. I knew you’d be safe, I just didn’t like the fact that you might be meeting some other guy.”
“But you see how… stalkerish that is right? How inappropriate?”
“It seems perfectly appropriate for the way I feel about you.”
Well damn.
“And how is that?” Why was I asking for trouble? Why wasn’t I running away from the mess I was making with the nice orderly situation Aunt Evelyn had left me?
I took his outstretched hand and he pulled me to my feet. We were standing so close my nipples brushed against his bare chest through the tank top I planned to sleep in.
He looked down at me, his brown eyes liquid with desire. “I like you. A lot. And I want you. Also a lot.” He lowered his gaze to my neck. “And I know I’m not the only one.”
Sugar. I reached up to cover the mark Dane had left on my neck.
Beck chuckled and my nipples got harder, the thin fabric of my tank top no match for his bare chest and the sexy rumble of his laughter.
“No need to hide, cupcake. I don’t blame Dane for wanting you too.”
“It’s just getting… complicated,” I said.
He touched my face and stroked his thumb over my cheek, the same way he had in the bakery my first morning in Blackwell Hollow. It was hypnotizing, and I closed my eyes, already falling victim to his touch.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he murmured. “It can be simple.”
“How…” I swallowed as he lowered his mouth to my neck. “How can it be simple?”
“Easy.” His breath against my neck sent a shiver through my body. “You just do what you want to do, what feels good. Does this feel good?”
He pressed his lips against my throat and I felt the hot dart of his tongue against my skin.
“That feels… pretty good.” I was out of breath, like I’d been running.
And I guess in a way I had been.
He slipped his free hand under my tank top and closed his palm around my bare tit. “How about this?”
I sighed. “That feels… okay.”
He laughed against my neck. “I guess I’m going to have to do better.”
It sounded like a promise, and I was too far gone to do anything but collect.
He kissed his way across my jaw. “Open your eyes.”
I hadn’t even known they were closed.
He held my gaze while he licked the seam of my mouth. “This time I’m going to fuck you. That okay, cupcake?”
“Um… yep. Yes.” I wanted that. I was pretty sure that was going to feel good.
He closed his mouth over mine, and I opened for him, meeting the sweep of his tongue with strokes of my own, moaning when he teased my nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
My pussy throbbed, an orgasm sparking to life at my center thanks both to what Dane had done to me earlier and to what Beck was doing to me now, his tongue hot and demanding in my mouth, his fingers teasing my nipple to a hard bud.
“We’re going to get naked,” Beck murmured against my lips. “This time I want to see all of you.”
The thought of being naked, of being skin-to-skin with him was enough to make me breathless. “Okay.”
He reached for the hem of my tank top. “This goes first.”
He pulled it over my head and lowered his gaze to my tits. “Jesus, cupcake, look at those tits. Fucking perfect.”
He took one of my tits in each of his hands, cupping them in his big palms, teasing my nipples with his thumbs. I thought I would die with pleasure when he lowered his head to close his mouth around one of them.
A long moan escaped my lips as he sucked, and I pushed my hands into his hair like I’d been dreaming of doing since he appeared in my doorway.
He flicked my nipple with his tongue, his hot breath bringing goose bumps to the surface of my skin. “This feel good, cupcake?”
I closed my eyes while he sucked. “Yes.”
“Good.” He reached for one of my hands and guided it to his dick, rigid in his jeans. “It makes me feel good to make you feel good.”
A surge of wet heat rushed to my cunt at the feel of his engorged shaft under my palm. I rubbed while he sucked my tit and he lifted his head with a groan.
“I need you out of those little shorts.” He let go of my tits and held my face between his hands, his eyes burning into mine in the moment before he kissed me.
This wasn’t the long, slow kiss he’d delivered at the bakery. This was fire and pressure and need, and I let him drive me back to the bed, his tongue probing my mouth with urgent strokes, his hands firm against my face, like he was trying to make sure I didn’t vanish into thin air.
I stopped moving when the back of my knees hit the bed.
“Lay down, cupcake.” I sat on the edge of the bed and was surprised when he barked out a more demanding order. “I said lay down. I want to see you spread out for me.”
I lay back on the bed, strangely thrilled by the command in his voice. I’d never taken myself for someone who wanted to be ordered around in bed.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
He reached for the waistband of my sleep shorts and peeled them off with my underwear, then tossed them aside.
“Fuck me, cupcake.” He stared down at me, naked lust flaring in his eyes. “I’m going to eat you up.”
He knelt at my feet and pushed my thighs apart before reaching for my knees.
I squealed in surprise when he pulled me to the edge of the bed, then closed my eyes with a gasp when he ran his thumb through my folds.
“Open your eyes,” he said. “And get up on your elbows so you can see me eat this sweet little pussy.”
My entire body was humming as I propped myself on my elbows. I usually had sex in the dark, replaced my mediocre lovers with someone more proficient in my imagination in an effort to get off.
But now I didn’t need my imagination, because the sight of Beck’s head between my thighs, his fingers stroking my pussy, was enough to take me from zero to sixty in less than five seconds.
“You have such a pretty pussy,” he said, his eyes locked on my cunt. “So pink, so wet. I’m going to have to make sure this is all for me and not because of what Dane did to you earlier. Otherwise we’ll have to get him in here too, and I don’t mind saying I want you to myself for a while.”
The thought of Dane joining us was enough to short-circuit my brain, and the orgasm I’d tamped down in the courtroom roared back to life.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, I realized Noah was standing in the doorway.
I’d forgotten the door was open when Beck entered the room to look at the slide.
Noah’s green eyes flared as his gaze traveled my naked body.
“Does that mean I’m not invited?”