Chapter 7
Evan
If I made her feel safe enough to cry, then I would hold on tight.
I’d hold her so tight, everything she’d ever felt would come tumbling out of her.
Every fear and doubt. I’d had a fair few of those, too, and I’d kept them all inside, like she probably had.
I could help her carry them. I’d be honored to.
Lifting her was easy, like she belonged in my arms. She wrapped her legs around my waist, and I carried her like a kid to the couch. I sat and pulled her against my chest, and her tears flowed freely then.
“I’m so sorry,” she said against my shirt, the words coming out in a mumble. “This is embarrassing.”
“Stop. Don’t you dare say that. Ain’t nothin’ embarrassin’ about havin’ emotions. You’re allowed to feel how you feel.”
She sniffled and patted my chest. Her touch made my heart stutter and stop for a second. “I’m making a mess of your shirt.”
“I know how to use a washin’ machine.”
“I don’t.”
Leaning back, I tried to see her face. Was she serious? I guess fame made you forget the simple things?
She looked up, smirking. “Kidding. Jeez. I’m not that out of touch.”
Finally, she pulled away, swiping at the tears collecting and trying to drip from her chin with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry about that. It’s just, a lot has happened recently, and I guess with the car and everything, it all came to a head.”
“It’s okay.” I caught a stray tear on my fingertip and hoped she didn’t notice when I rubbed it into my skin.
“You really haven’t read about it online?”
Tucking a damp strand of hair behind her ear, I assured her, “I haven’t.”
“You said you listen to my music,” she said. “I guess I just assumed…”
“What? You assumed I was just like everybody else? That I have no respect for your privacy?”
“No one else does.”
“I’m not no one.” She laid her head against my chest and sighed, so I kept talking. It was important to me for her to know that she could trust me. “I saw an article a few years ago that said you kicked an employee and fired anyone who wore the color orange in your presence.”
She snorted and her laugh came out in a hiccup.
“Yeah, I stopped readin’ that bullshit then. I only go on social media for my photography stuff, and barely for that.”
“Are you real?”
“Whatcha mean?”
“I feel like I live my whole life online. I can’t imagine not doing that.”
It was the most natural thing in the world to wrap my hand around both of hers still clutching my shirt. I held them, felt their warmth, their delicate softness, and then pressed them harder to my chest.
I shrugged. “It’s just a facade. People post the parts of their lives they don’t mind anyone seein’.
It’s the real shit, the hard shit, the ugly, that people should be postin’.
If they did, I’d log on more. I wanna feel…
not alone, you know? All that pretty bullshit does is make me think those people are just as lonely as me. It makes me sad.”
She leaned away, studied my face for a moment. “Are you lonely?”
I nodded. Loneliness didn’t really need an explanation, but I wasn’t lonely with her in my arms. If I could’ve kept her here forever, I would’ve.
“Why?” she asked softly. “Don’t you have someone in your life? Friends? Family?”
“’Course I have friends and family, but what’s left of my family is far away and we’re not close, and my friends all have their own lives. And do you think I’d be holdin’ you like this if I had a woman?”
She blushed and looked down. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend? I figured you’d be married by now.”
“You figured that, did you?”
She looked up, right into my eyes. “Yes.”
“I never found someone I wanted.” Not since her. Since our kiss. No one had ever compared. “What about you? I saw you on the front page of a newspaper holdin’ some guy’s hand. That microdick douche canoe your ex?”
A laugh burst out of her mouth, and then another, and then she was slipping out of my arms, belly laughing as she slid down to the floor. I didn’t like the distance it was causing, so I leaned forward and pulled her back into my lap.
Just when I had her where I wanted her, she yelped, “He is a douche canoe!”
She pressed a hand to her belly and kept on, guffawing and throwing in a snort here and there.
It was infectious, and I found myself laughing right along with her.
She didn’t need to know that sometimes I wondered if I’d forgotten how to laugh.
But I remembered now. And I wondered if Ty was looking down, if he could see me happy so he’d shut his trap about the state of my nonexistent love life.
Man, I really was off my rocker.
She tried to collect herself, but little snorts kept escaping her mouth. “No one’s ever described him so well!”
The possessiveness in my voice was no surprise to me when I vowed, “He’s not good enough for you.”
“How could you tell? You’re right, by the way. He was not good enough. Not just for me but for the entire female population of planet Earth.”
“There was a vacancy in his eyes. I don’t care what situation a man finds himself in. If he’s with the woman he loves, it should be evident in his eyes. That jackass you were with wanted the attention on him, when there’s no doubt it should’ve been on you.”
She sat up, resting her legs across mine. “He’s a liar and a cheat.”
“You kick him to the curb?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Her mouth twisted. “He stole money. Embezzled from me. I caught him screwing my financial manager, so obviously, he had help.”
“He broke your trust.”
She nodded. “I don’t care about him or the money, but…”
I leaned back, resting my head on the back of the couch. She tilted her head, her eyes searching mine. Was she deciding if she could trust me?
“If you want to tell me more, Lizzie, I’ll listen and your secrets will never leave my mouth, but I understand if you can’t trust me.”
“I-I do trust you. Maybe I shouldn’t.” She took a deep breath and leaned in, sliding her hand up my jaw softly. When she reached my hair, she pushed her fingers in and lightly dragged her nails over my scalp.
It sent a chill down my spine and heat right to my dick. It had been a long time since I’d been touched like that. With care.
Finally, her eyes found mine again. All I could do was sit there, still. I wouldn’t have moved for all the money in the world. It was right like this. She was right in my arms.
A little glimmer of light sparked in her eye. “What is it about you?”
“I was just askin’ myself the same thing about you.”
A smirk started in the corner of her mouth, and then it spread into a full-blown smile. It painted sunshine on her face and took my breath away.
She leaned closer still, her lips hovering less than an inch from mine, and she looked so deeply into my eyes that I was trapped there, like a sailor in a siren’s song.
“Kiss me again?” she whispered. “Like that night six years ago. I have missed the taste of—”
My mouth was on hers so fast, she couldn’t finish the sentence.
Right before I breached the seam of her lips, she mumbled, “…of you.”
I’d missed the taste of her, too, and as soon as it coated my tongue, I groaned and kissed her deeper.
She closed her eyes and angled her head to receive my kisses better while she clutched at my shoulders, which freed my hands to push us up off the couch.
The erection I’d been trying to hide since the hallway pulsed between us, and she moaned.
When I lay her back down, I had to disconnect our mouths for a few seconds, which was a goddamn shame, but it gave me the chance to look at her sprawled out beneath me.
Her green eyes were bright and alive. They mesmerized me as a beautiful pink blush bloomed across her cheeks while she watched me.
The blush traveled lower, under her T-shirt, and I wanted to feel its heat beneath my lips, but we weren’t there yet.
She had to give me permission to touch her like that.
I wouldn’t be another schmuck who took advantage of her vulnerability.
I lay next to her on the couch, thanking my lucky stars that it was comfortable and really roomy. Her hair had loosened from the funny bun she’d pulled it into, so I tucked the stray strands behind her ear, and she sighed. Leaning down, I drew her breath into my mouth so I could taste her again.
She watched me the whole time, like she’d never seen me before. Like we were new.
We’d never been together like this before, but she wasn’t new to me. Her eyes, the honey and roses smell of her hair, and the sound of her voice came to bed with me every night and woke me every morning.
She was with me always.
She’d only asked for a kiss, but I wanted so much more. She’d followed her dream, and it’d brought her right back to me. It had taken a while, but the fact was she’d found her way back into my life.
And this time, I wasn’t planning to let go.
Could I keep her? Was that even possible?
“I’ve dreamt of you,” I whispered in her ear, “of tasting you and making you moan and cry out my name when you come.”
She gasped, and I leaned back so I could see the expression on her face.
“Should I not have said that?”
Her eyes opened slowly. They’d grown darker, and they stared right into mine. “Say it again.”
Cupping my hand possessively over her jeans and the heat between her legs, I said, “I dream of you, Lizzie, just like this, writhin’ and wet for me.”
Her eyes fell shut again. “More.”
Leaning in, I touched my lips to the sensitive skin below her ear. “I wanna watch your pussy stretch and tighten while you take my cock.”
Moaning, she clamped her legs closed, trapping my hand between them, and her head tipped back into the pillow.
I grazed my teeth over the soft curve of her neck and promised, “I’m gonna bury myself so deep inside you, till we can’t take it anymore.”
“Yes, please.”
That was all the invitation I needed. I snapped open my fly, and she groaned and sawed her thighs together in anticipation. They fell apart, her hips opened wide for me, and it was like I heard some ancient call beckoning me inside her.
I needed to be inside her.
I moved so fast down her body that I probably gave her whiplash. Felt like I had when I yanked her out of her jeans and underwear.
I tossed them behind the couch, moved between her legs, and lapped a slow trail from her pussy to her clit.
Just like that. No foreplay. Her body jolted like I’d shocked her, and the moans escaping her open mouth were electric and magnetic.
They drew me even closer, and I smothered my face between her pussy lips and latched onto her clit with my tongue and teeth.
I sucked it into my mouth, then pushed two fingers inside her.
She called out and whimpered, reaching behind her head to grip the arm of the couch with white-knuckled fingers, and I began a relentless rhythm, rocking us both up and down on the couch.
I wanted any friction I could find. I wanted to come more than I’d ever wanted anything, but I needed to be inside her when I did.
It took every bit of patience I had to wait her out.
But it didn’t take long before her hips began to lift off the couch. Her moans grew louder and shorter till they were nothing more than gasps. She breathed hard and fast, and then her whole body froze, and she strangled the shit out of my head with her thighs. But something wasn’t right.
She hadn’t come.
“Let go, Lizzie. Ain’t nobody here but me and you.” My cock was hard as a steel pipe beneath my zipper, and I stroked it out once while I watched her, but she kept her eyes closed. “Tell me what you need. What you want.”
Pulling her T-shirt over her head, she dropped it on the floor next to the couch, then shook her hair out of its ponytail. Honey-brown waves fell around her shoulders, lying shiny and silky over her naked breasts, and the needy look on her beautiful face made me so hard, I could barely stand it.
“Please, Van.”
I shook my head. “Tell me whatcha want, darlin’. You can’t have it if you don’t tell me.”
All she had to do was say the words, and I’d give her anything she asked for.
The urge to come was nearly undeniable. I wanted my DNA inside this woman.
But more than that, I wanted to make her feel amazing.
I also wanted her out of breath and dizzy.
I wanted her to come so hard she’d scream my name and beg me to fuck her again. If she did, I’d oblige.
All fucking night long.