Chapter 43 #2
It wasn’t long before her low moans shifted into sharp screams. She tightened around his fingers. She gripped his hair so hard he was dazed from pleasure. Gloriously, he felt her all around him now.
As he glanced up to behold her, simultaneously thrusting with one hand and teasing out ecstasy with the other, her soft belly trembled, and her decadent thighs went stiff. She unspooled for him with melodic gasps that escaped from between luscious lips.
Her aftershocks sparkled like the Fourth of July. A unique, scintillating expression every time she breathed or shook. She lay back in the chair, body completely relaxed and skin glowing with the indulgent sheen of satisfaction.
“I think we ruined this chair.” She laughed, stroking his hair.
He laid his head on her thigh and kissed the place where his lips met damp skin. “Disagree,” he said, still catching his breath. “I think we improved on the old model.”
After a while, he rose to his feet. Jamie extended his hands out to her.
“I should take care of that for you,” she said, gripping his hands and letting him scoop her up. She dropped one down to palm the tightness in his shorts, which made him groan loudly enough to consider making an equally hot mess on his desk.
But he had other plans.
“Oh, I know you will,” he practically growled. He picked her up, tossed her over his shoulder, and carried her toward the stairs.
“What—where are we going?” she shrieked playfully.
He slapped her ass. “I promised to take you to bed, remember?”
Brinton laughed and squeaked the whole way there.
Some time later, after Jamie made her hoarse from screams of a more sensual origin, Brinton awoke with her head on Jamie’s smooth, warm chest, his even breathing an entrancing meditation, his scent cloaking her skin.
It was heaven—except that she desperately needed to pee.
She kissed his chest and wriggled out from beneath his arm, hand lightly gripping her hip, and tiptoed to his bathroom.
As she washed her hands in the creamy white marble sink, she studied her naked body in the mirror.
She was the same person, but she appreciated every curve, dip, and dimple with a newfound confidence.
Jamie, and his patient, gracious affection, amplified it all.
She thought about the song he had written for her and felt giddy all over again.
Jamie outstretched his arm, expecting the sleek contours of Brinton’s body.
Instead, he found a shock of cold sheets stretched across his king-sized bed.
It was still dark out. Across the room, a faint breeze carried the chorus of cicadas and tree frogs through the open sliding glass doors.
He sat up, eyes still glazed with sleep, instinctively searching for proof that Brinton hadn’t escaped into the night.
What if she decided he wasn’t worth the gossip—and erosion of her credibility—when the teaser article went live later that morning? He’d been trying to evade those poisonous thoughts, but like most did, they bared their fangs after midnight.
His pulse slowed as he spotted her cowboy boots and dress in a heap at the foot of the bed. He swung his legs over the edge and peered out at the lake. The moon shone like a spotlight, and he needed clarity.
Jamie reached for his phone on the nightstand. He knew he shouldn’t; it would absolutely make him feel worse. But he had to see it for himself. Like his father had warned.
Jamie googled Brinton’s name.
As he scrolled through the results, clicking into gossip websites rehashing their Grammys interview and scanning seedy comment threads, an icy wave of disgust crashed over him.
She’d screw him on camera for five more seconds of fame.
Hideous! She should k*ll herself and save us the embarrassment.
Black girls are so nasty. There’s your proof.
Nausea and shame rooted in Jamie’s gut. He’d been so self-absorbed to ignore this.
Hell, Brinton had to tell him that he’d embarrassed her on the Grammys stage; it hadn’t even occurred to him.
All because he was blinded by his own optimism—no, his privilege—both as a white man and as someone who’d been insulated by wealth.
Someone who’d never weathered the storms of a real, committed relationship.
What if he couldn’t comfort Brinton like she needed? She said she could handle the critics. Ultimately, despite being the most talented woman he knew, she would be judged—and defined—by who she slept with, for the rest of her career. Her character would be assassinated. It would be his fault.
His father was right.
Jamie ran both hands over his face and filled his lungs with as much oxygen as they’d take. If he did make new music, his own music, and it wasn’t any good, he would have ruined her career—and her life—for nothing. What if she blamed him for that? He’d lose her.
His stomach seized. It reminded him of the tunneled loneliness of losing his mother. He fruitlessly tried to shake it away.
Brinton had saved him from his nightmarish future, but he couldn’t guarantee he’d do the same for her. That worried him most. Somehow, he’d fuck it up. He couldn’t take what hurting her again would do to him.
“Can’t sleep?”
Jamie jumped as Brinton pressed her soft lips between his shoulder blades. He hadn’t heard her come in.
“I can now,” he said, clasping his hand over hers as it caressed his chest.
Her fingers danced along the hollows of his abs. “What if I’m not sleepy yet?”
Sleep-thick and husky, her tone was unambiguous.
Ordinarily, it would have lit him up like a Roman candle.
But now, he needed something more than her body.
He was scared, and he needed to know that, at least for the next few hours, he was everything that she needed. Before everything between them changed.
He turned to face her, knees touching, and took her hands in his. “Can I hold you?”
Even in the dim moonlight, her caramel-brown eyes warmed. “Of course, Jamie.”
He slipped his fingers through her braids and gently pulled her closer, letting his lips say everything he wasn’t ready to yet.
She lay on her side, and he fit his body tightly around hers.
Jamie breathed in her sweet scent, one hand smoothing her hip, the other resting on her steadily beating heart as it lulled him to sleep.