Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
FORD
Having spent another twenty minutes attempting—and failing—to get a rise out of me for God only knows what reason, Lawson finally decided to move the party to the VIP booth I’d arranged for them earlier. However, despite my team’s best efforts, it quickly descended into a free-for-all, so I was beyond relieved when Emerson called out over the music.
“I think I’ll call it a night, Law.”
He steps around two producer friends of his to face her with concerned eyes.
“If you’re ready to leave, then I am, too.”
“No, no. You stay, Law—” Emmy holds up a quelling hand, but the asshat threads his fingers through hers and leads the way out of the VIP booth, leaving me to follow.
My eyes are helplessly drawn to the curve of her spine, following the gentle sway of her hips with each step she takes. But when I lift my head, I instantly spot Lawson Wilde's smirking face as he watches me with knowing eyes, and I instinctively glower in response, seething internally when he openly laughs at me.
Prick!
Thom and Kyle, both stationed at the booth's entrance, lead the way out of Rogue and onto the still-inundated pavement, where two black town cars are waiting.
Fans screaming and paparazzi swarming make getting to the cars difficult, and my stomach sinks when I can just about hear Lawson shout over the furor, “I’m heading uptown, so I’ll come with you, Em.”
I can’t help but clench my jaw as I open the back door for the couple, urging them into the darkness of the vehicle before closing the door.
“I’ll drive. Zane, you’re with me.” My man nods, ducking into the passenger seat as Kyle and Thom move off to take the second car, intent on following in convoy.
As I slip into the driver’s seat, Em’s eyes stay fixed on the rearview mirror. The streetlights outside the car light up her face, and her blonde hair glows like a halo around her head.
I’ve only ever been partial to peaches.
Her eyes told me she’d understood that my partiality was for her lips in particular.
As the thought enters my mind, my dick springs to life as my senses are bombarded with all things Emerson. Her unforgettable jasmine and rose scent. Skin as smooth as silk. A mouth that tastes like the sweetest fruit.
The memory of her arousal on my tongue. The feel of her tight, untouched pussy taking my dick, squeezing me, and begging for more…
What the fuck is wrong with you tonight, Holloway?
My usual stalwart control appears to be deserting me, and with each passing minute, I’m giving less and less of a shit.
“My brother’s in town if you want to come along and meet him, Em. He’s a big fan.”
Knowing he’s clearly still trying to needle me and needing to keep my mind off Emmy, I focus on getting to Ataraxia as quickly as possible. However, I’m listening keenly enough to hear Emmy decline the invitation, and I quickly jump in to query, “Is there anywhere, in particular, we can drop you, Mr. Wilde?”
Off the edge of a cliff, maybe?
As though he’s heard my thoughts, or perhaps even seen them on my face, Lawson shrugs, and his lips part in a broad grin. “I appreciate a man who can take a joke.”
When I catch them in the rearview, laughter and something akin to respect lightens his expression. “Yeah, you’re a good egg.”
I quirk a dark eyebrow, knowledgeable enough about British slang thanks to my friendship with the North family to know that he’s just paid me a compliment of sorts.
Then he leans closer to Emmy, whispering in her ear and making her cheeks flush bright pink before addressing me again.
“You can drop me anywhere here, man. Tryst isn’t far.”
I nod in acknowledgment, though I take the left ahead, bringing us onto the same street as his destination, dropping the asshat—who may be slightly less of an asshat than I’d initially thought—right outside the door.
As he bids Emmy farewell, Zane slips out of the passenger seat, rounding the car to open the rear driver’s side door. “Zane will stay with you, Mr. Wilde.” He opens his mouth to protest, but I firmly cut him off, “For my own peace of mind.”
Lawson nods his thanks before exiting the car and strolling inside Tryst, with Zane following, undoubtedly cursing me out for extending his shift longer than necessary.
Traffic is lighter than usual, and we arrive at our destination a little over ten minutes later.
Once I’ve parked in the garage beneath Ataraxia, I kill the engine and quickly make my way around to help Emmy out of the car.
She rises gracefully before lifting her head to find my eyes. There’s a look of determination on her beautiful face, one I’m very familiar with, and I know exactly where this conversation is headed before she opens her mouth.
With a furrowed brow and expressive eyes filled with questions, the one I’ve been waiting on is the first to leave her lips.
“Why did you leave, Ford?” My gaze bores into hers, indecision roiling within me. “I need to understand how you could walk away from me as though I meant nothing to you?—”
“You meant everything to me, Emerson Hart.” My voice drops to a growl as my control evaporates into the night air around us. “You still mean everything to me.”
She inhales roughly, tears glazing her eyes as five years of pent-up emotions swirl to the surface.
“And it’s because your happiness means more to me than my own— Christ , it means more to me than anyone —that’s why I broke both of our hearts five years ago. I set you free to be who you were always destined to be, and it’s been an honor and a privilege watching you live your dreams.”
She tilts her head to one side as though missing a vital point. “But why …”
And so, it comes down to the crux of the matter.
The truth or a lie…
There’s only one answer, but even so, I can’t reveal her brother’s hand in it. After all, he did nothing but point out something I’d been willfully blind to.
“I realized my father’s trial would ruin all chances of living your dream. So I did the right thing.”
My voice drops to a whisper as her sadness-filled eyes watch me bear my truth. “I took the honorable path, even though it damn near killed me. But I could never fully leave. Trust me when I tell you I’ve been with you every step of the way, Emmy. Every . Single . Step .”
Indecision plays over her face before she nods and sidesteps around me, leaving me to jog after her with a frown.
Silence surrounds us except for the rhythmic clack of her heels on the cement floor of the parking garage as we walk toward the waiting elevator.
The car ascends, making it almost the whole way to Emmy’s penthouse when she finally speaks. “So you’re telling me that leaving me heartbroken and brimming with questions was the right thing? The honorable thing?!”
Rage edges her voice as I meet her eyes.
“If I’d stayed for that conversation, you and I both know I would have never left. And ruined it all for you in the process.”
“And did you ever think I’d have to live with the repercussions of your decisions, Ford Holloway? Because here I am, five years later, faking happiness while living in the past?—”
The words are spat from my mouth before I’ve even thought them through.
“You look happy enough with Lawson Wilde?—”
“It’s a. Fake . Relationship !” She takes the wind completely out of my sails with those four words. “It’s a media stunt for Breaking Us , which, if you’d checked the front page of the manuscript the other night, you’d know was co-written by me .”
I almost fall backward under the weight of her words as she watches me with pained eyes. “Because I needed to make sense of why you left. I needed answers, even if I was only making them up. Because while you were busy being honorable, you were breaking us , or did that truth never so much as cross your mind?”
I stare unblinkingly at the woman opposite me. Still, as I wage an internal war against myself, Emmy takes the decision out of my hands, throwing her hands up in exasperation and marching off toward her bedroom. Before I can even register what’s just happened, the door slams behind her, leaving me with my dick in my hand.
Fucking idiot, Holloway.
My shoulders sag as I move after her, deciding that perhaps this is for the best. She’s thawed toward me in recent days, and her newfound affability has seen me break almost all the rules I’ve spent years enforcing.
As I cross the kitchen, I take a minute to grab the carton of cherry juice, knowing she’ll undoubtedly spend the night stewing as a result of yours truly, and I double down on my determination to see this job through as nothing more than a job .
Because Emerson Hart deserves more than the son of a convicted felon.
Emerson Hart deserves the world, and no matter how I try to better myself to be good enough for her, in the eyes of the world, I’ll never be more than Jasper Holloway’s boy.
Once I have the carton in my hand, I walk back into the hall, intent on leaving it on the console table outside her door, when it suddenly opens.
Emmy’s standing there, having changed into cream silk pajama shorts and a matching top that leaves next to nothing to my imagination that’s already been running rampant all evening.
Eyes like infinity pools shift from mine to the carton in my hand and then back again as a frown forms on her brow while her breathing kicks up a notch. Her chest rises and falls faster and faster the longer we watch one another until she murmurs, “ Fuck this .”
I don’t know who moves first, but suddenly, our bodies collide, and the cherry juice drops to the floor, spraying its contents everywhere as my hand finds purchase in Emmy’s hair at the nape of her neck.
With a gentle tug, I angle her face toward mine, my eyes flicking between hers, desperately seeking permission in her gaze. Instead, Emmy fists my tie and yanks me down, and we groan in unison when our mouths come together.
It’s a claiming of one another, a hard, raw, emotionally charged kiss as I pour every shred of longing and pain into it, giving myself over to her…to this moment wholly and completely.
As our tongues tangle and her inimitable sweetness invades my senses, euphoria flows through me, awakening my soul in a way I’d never again thought possible. I reach my free hand around her slender waist, clutching her firmly against me as the kiss turns frantic.
All caution is well and truly thrown to the wind when I palm her ass and urge her into my arms. Entirely in sync with me, she wraps her legs around my waist, locking her heels at the base of my spine when I pin her between the wall and my body, never once breaking our all-consuming kiss.
She mewls into my mouth while squirming against me, her bare nipples digging into my shirt-covered chest like bullets before she rips her mouth from mine, gasping desperately for oxygen.
I waste no time, increasing my grip on her hair to tug back until the slope of her neck is bared to me. Then my mouth is on her, licking, nipping, sucking at the expanse of tender flesh as my hips move in tandem with hers.
She cries out when I hit the sweet spot, and I don’t even think when I relinquish my hold on her hair to bring that hand between us to unerringly press the pad of my thumb against her clit.
I bite down on the sensitive part of her neck as I rub again, more firmly this time, before I return to her mouth and thrust my tongue past her kiss-swollen lips. She gasps into my mouth as my tongue and thumb move in rhythm, each pass getting rougher and rougher until she’s arching against me.
She’s almost there, on the cusp of finding release, when my base instinct takes over. I sharply tug the material of her pajamas and panties to one side and thrust two fingers deep inside her soaking pussy.
“Oh fuck !” she cries out desperately before tossing her head back and hitting the wall behind her with a thud as she thrashes against me.
“Whose fingers are buried inside you right now?”
With her eyes closed and mouth slack, she’s almost at her peak as she inhales a shuddery breath. “ Yours, Ford.”
My dick throbs against my suit pants, leaking precum into my Calvins at an obscene rate as I increase the momentum of my fingers.
“So fucking wet. You hear that, Tink? You hear my fingers fucking your tight, wet pussy…”
“Don’t stop, fuck, please , don’t stop! I—I—I’m gonna?—”
I press my thumb against her slick clit, and at the same time, lean forward to flick my tongue over a silk-encased, pointed pink nipple as I growl, “Say my name when you come all over my hand. Come on, baby; scream it for me.”
“Oh fuck, Ford! Yes, Ford ?—”
With a hoarse cry, Emmy’s pussy clenches around my fingers as I pump them deep inside her, my eyes hungrily committing the moment of her completion to my memory.
Having wrung every drop of pleasure from her body, I flick my tongue over her nipple one final time as I gently withdraw my fingers from her slick core. Her head drops forward and our gazes lock on one another.
Her hair flows around both of us like a curtain, encasing us in a shroud of our own making where it’s just us against the world. It’s just us who matter. Here. And now.
And always .
I cup her cheek as her eyes shine down into mine, and the words just fall from my lips. “Emerson, I’m still in lo?—”
Somewhere in the distance, I register the elevator sounding and slam to a stop as a voice calls out through the penthouse. “Did you really go to Rogue without me?”
Emmy jumps out of my arms, horror playing across her blatantly satiated features, and I quickly push her inside her bedroom before Hayley rounds the corner.
She stops short when she sees me on my knees, surrounded by cherry juice. “Oh, hey! Is everything okay…”
“Yeah, umm…just dropped this when I was leaving it out for Emerson, that’s all.”
I focus on picking up the juice carton and fishing around for the lid while willing the boner in my pants to fuck off and die so I can make my escape.
Blessedly, Hayley jumps into action. “I’ll grab some paper towels. One sec.” When she’s moved from the hallway toward the kitchen, Emmy steps into the hall, clad in a fresh navy pajama set identical to the previous.
“I got this.”
As I look up at her, a sudden sinking feeling fills my stomach when she doesn’t meet my eyes. I stand up straight, making to close the distance between us, hand extended as the need to ground both of us overwhelms me.
But before I can reach her, Hayley returns with paper towels, complaining loudly to her sister. “I can’t believe you went without me, Em. Rude !”
I quickly allow my hand to drop away, my eyes never leaving Emmy’s unyielding form.
“Thank you for your thoughtfulness, Ford.” She finally flicks her gaze to mine for half a beat. “Goodnight.”
Then she turns her attention to Hayley. “It was a date , Hayles. You could hardly have crashed it…”
Conscious of my still-present hard-on, I can only sidestep to allow Hayley into the hallway before making my way toward my bedroom, knowing that my dick is too horny and my mind is too fucked to even attempt sleep.