Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
EMMETT
When I was a kid, my brother and I used to build pillow forts in our bedroom before we tried to destroy each other’s creations.
Last night, I could’ve built a stone wall between us, and my body would have still found a way to hold Billie’s.
Around a half hour ago, I woke up in this exact position—face buried in her hair, right arm looped around her waist, pulling her ass into my hard dick.
And as I lie here, berating myself over another line I just crossed, I also know the chances of me pulling away are as remote as the odds of me sticking to my teammates’ advice.
I’m an addict, and Billie Quinn is my vice.
Like she can sense my thoughts, Billie turns in my arms.
This morning, I’ll be the first person she speaks to, the first person she sees as she opens her eyes and takes the world in.
She isn’t the first woman I’ve done this with, but she is the first to pull those kinds of intimate thoughts from me. There’s something magical about that, knowing no matter what the next twenty-four hours hold, at least you got to share your first thoughts with your favorite person.
Reaching up, I run a light hand through her bedhead, fascinated at how someone’s hair can resemble silk. “How’s your head feeling?”
She winces a little, and the heel of her hand finds her temple. “It’s been better. How much did I have to drink?”
“Three glasses of wine.” I chuckle. “Don’t you remember?”
Her forehead flops against my chest. “I thought it was more than that. Kate bought several bottles of wine and was refilling my glass.”
I tip her chin up to look at me. “Did you enjoy getting to know the girls?”
“It was so fun.” Billie’s smile is automatic, almost like she’s recalling memories of her talking and laughing with my extended family. And a little like the way she pulls foreign feelings from me when I first wake, a rare wave of contentment settles in the morning air.
Her smile turns devilish, and I drop my hand to her ribs. I know that look, one that precedes her poking fun at me for something.
“If the next words to leave your mouth concern my age or the wrinkles around my eyes, then I will tickle you until all the air leaves your lungs.”
She doubles down, quirking a challenging brow. “That’s not what I was going to say actually. But since you mentioned age, I might as well ask the question.”
I narrow my eyes at her, fingers hovering over the training top I gave her last night.
She can keep it for all I care; it looks damn fine on her and at least she’ll have a piece of me wrapped around her when she climbs into bed alone each night.
I’ve no idea if she’s wearing panties underneath, even if I’m desperate to find out.
“Go ahead.”
Billie places a patronizing palm against my cheek, and I note that she wore her bracelet to bed. I wonder if she ever takes it off. I hope not.
“The last time we spoke, you told me that we had to put distance between us.” She looks down at where our bodies are pressed together. “This doesn’t look like a lot of distance to me. Or did your geriatric brain forget all about our conversation?”
She’s on her back in a millisecond, my fingers teasing her ribs until she can barely breathe, face turning beet red under the strain of glorious giggles.
When Billie tries to pull away, I keep her in place with a hand on her hip, and I hold myself above her by bracing a forearm next to her head on the pillow, marveling at how flawless she looks beneath me. This moment is even better than how it played out in my fantasies.
When she grows weary, I relent, letting her pull oxygen into her lungs.
She’s panting, and my chest is heaving for totally different reasons. If we ever had the chance to be together, this is exactly how I’d take her for the first time—me sliding inside her tight pussy, my dick pulling tiny gasps from her swollen lips after I ravished her mouth with mine.
She reaches up, pushing a delicate hand through my disheveled hair. There are so many words we both want to voice, and I wonder what she’ll say next when she finally catches her breath.
“You told me you’d always be honest with me, Emmett. And last night, everything you said in that room was a lie.”
I don’t bother to deny it, too exhausted to fight our reality.
I study her face for a beat, admiring the scattered freckles decorating the bridge of her nose. “What can I do to make it up to you, Mama?”
She pulls back, processing the nickname I just gave her. It feels perfect for Billie. While she’s so much more than a mother, this woman has got me wrapped around her little finger, just like she has with her beautiful daughter. I’m waiting on her every word, in awe of her strength.
“Put your hands on me, Emmett.”
It’s the first time Billie has asked me to go further physically, and, fuck me, do I want to.
I drop my face into the crook of her neck. It would be so easy to lower my shorts and free my cock.
I glide my nose along her sensitive flesh, lips paused over the shell of her ear. “Tell me how you want me to touch you. Where you want my fingers and dick.”
When I nudge my knee between her thighs, I swear I can feel heat radiating from her apex.
A breath snags in her throat before she swallows down my question. “I don’t care where your hands end up, as long as they’re making me scream.”
We don’t move, a standoff forming between us. Every part of me wants to take this woman; it’s what I haven’t been able to stop thinking about for weeks.
“If I put my hands on you, then there’s no going back. Everything will shift between us.”
Behind her lustful eyes, I know she understands the significance of this moment, the reasons why I’m holding back—and not just because of how forbidden she is.
Billie’s body isn’t even seven weeks postpartum, and while I’m no expert in childbirth, I do know that I’m larger than average.
Sure, I could tell my brain to take it steady, but that doesn’t mean my deprived body would get the memo.
My desire to fuck her is bordering feral, and my dick is desperate to destroy her tight pussy the first chance it gets.
I’m a man after all, and she is nothing like I’ve ever seen before.
No woman compares to the beauty lying beneath me, waiting for me to make a move.
Sitting back on my heels, I bring her body with me until we’re both kneeling in the center of my bed.
“What do you want, Billie?”
Rolling her lips together, she confirms, “I want to have fun with you.” She casts her eyes around the bed. “Right here, right now.”
My palm caresses the back of her head. “Do you want sex? Because …” I trail off, struggling to find the right words to convey how badly I want that but how scared I am to take it too far with her. Emotionally and physically.
Billie’s eyes reveal that she’s finding this just as hard. “I don’t know if my body is ready for that, but I do want us to explore each other.”
On a long breath, I close my eyes as relief and frustration crash through me. I know sleeping together is too far for the both of us. But, goddamn, I need to touch her, even if my conscience screams at me to keep my hands to myself.
“Are you wearing panties?” I finally ask, thinking over ways I can give Billie exactly what she needs from me.
She shakes her head, and I bring a fist to my mouth, biting down on my knuckles.
“You’re fucking killing me here. Have you been bare all night?”
Shaking her head again, she lifts my training top a few inches. “I secretly removed them a few minutes ago; they’re somewhere beneath your duvet.”
I reach out, circling her wrist with my fingers. “Show me where you caught yourself on the table last night.”
When she lifts the top on one side, a black-and-blue bruise, spanning the width of her hip bone, appears. I can’t help but trace my fingertips over the mark. It feels like I’m responsible for this.
“Does it hurt?” I ask in a gravelly voice.
“No,” she breathes out. “It hurt at the time, but not anymore.”
It’s only a bruise, but thoughts of anything hurting Billie makes my blood boil, and the same goes for Blake. I’ve never considered myself to be a primal guy, although I’ve equally never met a girl who could drive me this crazy.
Need catapults through me.
“Ride my thigh, Billie Quinn. You watched me jerk myself off to thoughts of you; now I want to see how you come apart just by grinding on me.”
Slowly, deliciously, she adjusts her body so that we’re face-to-face, her knees on either side of one of my own. Even though I haven’t set eyes on what I know will be a perfect cunt, there’s no denying the heat that radiates from it when I feel her wetness seep through my thin athletic shorts.
“Is all of this for me?” I ask, eyes dropping to her pussy.
She pins her bottom lip between her teeth, head tipping back on the first flex of her hips. “I’m soaking wet for you.”
Strands of hair tickle my knee, and I brace my palms on the bed behind me, opening my body up to grant her more freedom to grind against me.
I know that this is a foolish way to justify what we’re doing, but I let my conscience run away with a theory that if I don’t physically get her off with my own hands, then we’re still on the right side of wrong.
And if Scott ever asks if I touched his daughter, my response will be the truth based on a technicality.
Jesus, I’m the worst fucking friend in history.
Parted lips, tiny gasps, perfect thighs squeezing around my own—they all push me toward a precipice.
With the way we’re going, there’s no way that Billie will reach her own climax before I find mine. My girl is too beautiful like this, using my body to chase what she wants.