Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
Dinner had given way to dessert, and Amelia had only had two bites of it. Her stomach was in knots, which was a real shame, because they’d served an absolutely divine crème br?lée. Even downing three glasses of wine and getting a decent buzz going didn’t help her anxiety.
All too soon, Nadia and Fred were leading the whole group down a new hallway and into a huge home theater. A karaoke machine had been set up near the big projector screen, with two microphones waiting, their cables like coiled snakes.
The wine in Amelia’s belly turned sour. Throwing up was a real possibility.
But Leo’s arm was around her shoulders, and she was gripping his waist. His body was a warm wall of strength and security, and she inhaled the scent of him to calm her rioting nerves. It helped, a bit. When she exhaled and took a seat in the second row of theater seats beside Leo, she figured she could make it through this evening without embarrassing herself. Probably.
“I haven’t done karaoke since college,” Trudy said. She was seated directly in front of Amelia, and she turned around to look at her and Leo. Her arm was on the back of her seat, and her face was bright with excitement. “Rob and I are going to do ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’”
“We are?” Rob asked dubiously.
Trudy laughed. “Better believe it, hun.”
Rob pretended to grumble, but he still jumped up to help with the setup and write down their song choice. The first few turns filled up before Amelia could even settle into her seat, and she began to relax. Maybe no one would ask her to sing. Maybe she could sit here for an hour, enjoy some silly performances, laugh with her new friends, and let the stress of the day melt away.
This was just another team-building activity. Everything would be okay.
A staff member arrived with a silver tray bearing drinks, and she sipped the mojito she’d ordered earlier. Nadia started the party with a Britney Spears hit, and then Trudy and Rob were up. They brought down the house. Pretty soon, Amelia was giggling intermittently, leaning her head on Leo’s shoulder. She was pleasantly tipsy, comfortable, and finally feeling a bit more at ease.
There was no more ring thief to uncover. No more risk of exposure. Nothing more to do but sit here, enjoy the company, and drink in the last few hours in Fred’s beautiful mansion.
“Next up, Kitty Catelli!” Nadia screamed into the microphone. “Woo!”
The screen lit up behind her: Man! I Feel Like a Woman! By Shania Twain.
An anxious, exaggerated giggle left Amelia’s lips as she shook her head. “No way,” she laughed. “My voice. I need to save my voi?—”
She was hauled up and cheerfully bullied to the front of the room. Nadia thrust the second microphone into her hands and then threw her good arm around Amelia’s shoulders.
“You need to do this for me,” Nadia protested. “As a thank you for finding my ring. You owe it to me.”
“I’m not sure that logic is exactly right,” Amelia said, and the room laughed. That’s when she realized she’d spoken into the microphone and it was very loud.
Nadia leaned over, tapped a key on the laptop near the karaoke machine, and the first bars of Shania’s masterpiece blared through the speaker. Amelia’s eyes darted around the room. She saw Leo gripping his armrests, looking panicked. Everyone else was half-drunk and already singing along to the instrumentals. Fred was at the back of the room, chatting with one of his employees, paying no attention.
Amelia couldn’t get out of this. She lifted the mic and in a dramatic voice, spoke the iconic first line.
When Nadia went wild, Amelia couldn’t help but giggle along. It was so good to see Nadia happy again. She’d been morose at her few appearances during the retreat. Amelia couldn’t blame her; it wasn’t just the value of the ring. If Amelia lost the engagement ring Leo had given her, she’d never forgive herself. And if it had been stolen right off her finger? Well, that would be even worse.
Except her engagement ring wasn’t even real.
Nadia wiggled her hips to the beat, and the lyrics appeared on the screen. Here went nothing. Amelia took a breath and sang.
Leo leaned back. Amelia…wasn’t great. She wasn’t bad , exactly, but she wasn’t a professional singer by any stretch of the imagination.
But she was laughing so uproariously, bringing Nadia and everyone else along with her, that Leo couldn’t help but smile wide as he watched her. For a woman who needed a spreadsheet to tell her how much eye contact to make on a date, she sure was willing to let it all hang out when she finally let her guard down.
His heart expanded as the music filled the room, cheers and hoots coming from all corners. Amelia had to stop singing partway through to bend over and laugh. Nadia took up the slack, and at least she was a worse singer than Amelia. It meant their cover wasn’t completely blown.
Not that Leo cared about their cover story just then. He was caught up watching the light fill Amelia’s face. She brightened the room. She brightened his life .
He was hopelessly, desperately in love with her. She was everything he wanted in a woman, plus a whole host of things he hadn’t realized he needed. She was a mediocre singer and an incredible woman. She was fire and delight wrapped up in a silver-eyed package.
She was the only woman he’d ever wanted to make his wife.
As the song ended, Leo stood. Amelia came to join him at their row of theater seats, and he wrapped his arms around her, then hauled her over his shoulder. She squeaked, wriggling, still laughing with every breath.
“Put me down!”
“No chance,” he responded. “We’re going to bed. Goodnight, everyone.”
Wolf-whistles chased them out of the room, and Leo barely heard them. His heart pounded as he carried Amelia to the steps, then put her down and dragged her to their room, both of them nearly sprinting. Inside their suite, he pinned her to the door.
“Didn’t know karaoke got you so hot and bothered,” she teased. “Might have to note that down for future reference.”
“It ain’t the karaoke’s fault,” Leo replied, then crushed his lips to hers. His hands came to her jaw as he deepened the kiss, emotions running riot inside him. She tasted like wine and Amelia. She was so perfect it made his whole body ache with the need to consume her.
He’d met her mere days ago, and he knew he couldn’t live without her.
Hauling her legs up, he pinned her to the door and kissed her harder and deeper until she was tugging at his hair and begging him to strip her naked. They made it halfway to the bedroom before they collapsed on the floor. She was wearing another one of her knee-high dresses, this one black with a high neckline. He reached up beneath it and tore her panties clean in half, tossing the scrap of fabric over his shoulder.
“Oh, wow,” she breathed, eyes glassy. “That was so hot.”
His pants were in the way. He got them down to mid-thigh before he had to get a condom on so he could get inside her. His hands shook so hard he had to force himself to breathe just to get the little package open.
Then he was on her, in her, and it felt like coming home. She moaned, fingernails leaving lovely little indents in his biceps as she gripped them for dear life.
“You feel so fucking good, Amelia.”
She made an unintelligible noise in response. Leo grinned and gave it to her harder. But it wasn’t until he leaned down to kiss her that the moment changed. His movements became slower, deeper, more intense. She gasped and arched beneath him, urging him to give her more, more, more.
Leo lost his mind. Rational thought abandoned him completely, so that all that was left was the shell of his body and the beating heart that Amelia had resurrected. He gathered himself enough to reach between them and make sure Amelia found her pleasure before he lost control of himself entirely. She came, body arching, pink lips falling open on his name.
That’s how he wanted her to come for the rest of their lives: falling apart at his touch, with his cock inside her and his name echoing in the room around them. She was so beautiful like that, so sexy he could hardly stand it for a moment longer. Then the tension snapped, and he joined her in ecstasy. Pleasure blasted through him, rushing up his spine, filling his body with heat. He clutched the woman he loved as he breathed in the scent of her hair, praying that this moment would last forever.
It didn’t, but it lasted long enough. Leo peeled himself off of Amelia after they caught their breath, disposing of the condom in the bathroom and coming back to Amelia still starfished on the floor. Grinning, he gathered her in his arms and carried her to the bed.
“My brain is melted,” she mumbled, staring at the ceiling.
“Good.” He gathered her in his arms and pulled her close, spooning her so the lengths of their bodies were connected. His hand found its way to her breast like it was meant to rest there.
“No wonder you had five girls wanting to sleep with you in one night,” Amelia said, half-dazed. “You’re really good at that.”
Leo stiffened, which made Amelia go still.
She turned around in his arms and frowned at him. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say, wasn’t it? I didn’t mean… I just meant you rocked my world, is all.”
Forcing himself to relax, Leo pressed a kiss to Amelia’s forehead. He rolled onto his back. “It’s fine. I just…I don’t want you to see me that way.”
She lifted her head onto her elbow to look at him. It felt like she could see right through him. “What way?”
“As Pestilence.”
“You think I’m hung up on some stupid nickname?”
He snorted, then sighed. “I didn’t have sex with five girls in one night. You want to know what really happened?” He glanced at her, then had to look away. “I’d just been dumped, and I was a mess. We were at a house party, and I was drunk and emotional. Those five girls consoled me while I wept like a baby. We drank and discussed breakups, and one of them volunteered to start a rumor about how good I was in bed. It got all blown out of proportion because someone saw me come out of the room with all of them.”
Amelia was quiet for a moment. “Oh. So the whole Pestilence thing…?”
“Oh, everyone got chlamydia. That’s definitely true.” He snorted, embarrassment making his chest feel hot. “And after that night, I slept around. I guess the rumors worked. So maybe the clap outbreak was my fault. Maybe it was Gerard Hill. Maybe it was one of half a dozen girls that were sleeping around. Everyone was having sex with everyone. It was college.”
“Your college experience sounds like it was really different from my college experience,” Amelia noted.
Leo laughed. He finally met her gaze. “Sex isn’t usually like this,” he said quietly. “The way it is with you.”
She was quiet for a long moment, her expression unreadable. “Oh.”
He caught her hand—the one that wore his ring—and started toying with her fingers, touching them with his own, holding her hand, braiding their fingers then sliding them apart. “The past ten years…” He exhaled. Should he be telling Amelia all this stuff? Wouldn’t it just prove that he wasn’t worthy of her, of any relationship?
“Who was the girl who dumped you?” Amelia asked, then added, “You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Katie Rodgerson,” he answered. “My first and only relationship.” His smile was bitter, but he managed to keep going. “We met in freshman year. She was studying economics. I hadn’t chosen my major yet, because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do with myself. My grandparents had died barely two years earlier, Marlon had isolated himself after basically hamstringing himself financially so I could go to college, and I was totally fucking lost.”
She tightened her grip on his hand, and they lay in the bed, hands clasped, staring at each other.
“I don’t know if it was real love,” Leo admitted. “I was young. We both were. But I thought we cared about each other until she turned around and told me I wasn’t driven enough for her. She was going to do big things with her life, and she couldn’t hang around waiting for me to pick a career while I partied my way through college. It came as a total shock at the time. I don’t know why her dumping me hit me so hard.”
There was a long pause.
“Well,” Amelia finally said, reasonable as ever, “your parents had basically dropped the ball, then you lost your grandparents, and you…drifted from your brother?”
Leo didn’t want her to think badly of Marlon. “You have to understand, my brother took care of me for years. Growing up, he was the one who did everything for me when our mom couldn’t. School lunches. Homework. Everything. You wouldn’t think he was only two years older than me. He was my parent most days. Then we moved in with our grandparents and they weren’t in great health, so he started taking care of them too. When they died, I think he realized he was just…burned out. Done. I didn’t want to keep being a burden to him.”
“But that still left you on your own.” When Leo nodded, Amelia sighed sympathetically. “So he wasn’t there for you, even if it was understandable. Your girlfriend was probably the only meaningful connection you had left. It’s no wonder it affected you when the relationship ended.”
Leo stared at her, with her liquid mercury eyes and her pale golden hair splayed over her shoulders, and he couldn’t believe that she was here with him. It took her all of three sentences to explain a hurt that he’d never been able to rationalize. He’d always felt vaguely embarrassed to be so crushed by a relationship that had lasted barely two years and ended before he’d reached the legal drinking age. But his wounded heart had been injured by more than just Katie dumping him; it was every important person in his life leaving him to fend for himself. She was just the killing blow.
Amelia brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “I’m sorry I made that comment about the five women,” she murmured. “You know you’re worth so much more than your bedroom skills, right? So much more, Leo.”
Leo’s throat grew so tight, he couldn’t respond.
Amelia must have sensed the emotion choking him because with her lips curled in a witchy smile, she added, “Even though I did hire you specifically for those bedroom skills, and they are quite impressive.”
He laughed, a wet, raspy sound, then grabbed Amelia around the waist and hauled her on top of him. He kissed his way across her chest until her nipple was between his lips. Nipping gently, he groaned. “I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of kissing you, Amelia.”
She leaned down, her naked core nudging at his stiffening cock. It was intimate and erotic, and it made him want to fuck her until they both dropped from exhaustion. Her lips pressed against his in a chaste kiss. “That’s good, because I’m a pretty big fan of kissing you too.”
A shuddering sigh rattled his chest, then Leo wrapped his arms around the woman of his dreams and tried to use his body to show her what she meant to him.
It was, after all, what he did best.