Chapter 14 Emory
FOURTEEN
EMORY
The next morning, Emory plied Amelia with breakfast she barely touched.
A croissant disintegrated in a pool of pineapple juice on her plate, and a piece of melon was left skewered on her fork.
He stretched his legs beneath the table.
When his calf brushed hers, Amelia turned sidesaddle in her seat to avoid his touch.
Emory created pockets of silence Amelia refused to fill, so the quiet animosity brewed between them. She stared out the window of the breakfast nook and rubbed the inside of her wrist. Self-soothing, he assumed, until he glimpsed the rope marks there.
He tried the next day and the day after that.
A week passed where they bickered and brawled.
There were afternoons of fraught silence and evenings of bitter dispute.
Emory made promises at dusk that he broke come dawn.
He tried at softness then turned to stone.
He was, in turns, her ally and her adversary.
The only fixed variable was Amelia. Her denial and affront; the way she assumed the worst of him and that every gesture was done in bad faith.
It started to feel like extended foreplay with no avenue for release. Emory had even told her so with no expectation that she’d drop to her knees and be good to him, but the statement must’ve galvanized something in her.
“I don’t want to fight anymore. It’s become too personal,” she told him that morning, her tender contrition merely a smokescreen.
Emory knew what she meant. It wasn’t what was said or that it had gone too far. It was that it felt like make-believe where they maligned each other the way only lovers could. Too personal meant too intense, too intimate, too liable to escape fantasy and become something real.
At the breakfast table, Amelia scooted as close to him as she could tolerate to still keep with the lies. Legs crossed, her interwoven fingers cupped one knee. The pose exaggerated the fullness of her breasts in a loose tank top.
“I think we should clear the air. I heard you have business tonight, so whenever you’re free, I’m ready to open up to you.”
Open up to me.
She chose the suggestive words with care, but it’d taken her a week to try that approach. A woman adept at weaponized seduction would’ve already batted her lashes and showed some skin. Out of her depth, the attempt almost endeared, but Emory discerned her intent to disarm and distract.
Still, he drank in the sight of her—auburn hair aflame in the morning light, pillowy lips parting with what he swore was an invitation, and the illusory warmth of her gaze. The last bit bothered him the most, that she’d toy with his heart to earn her freedom.
“Sure,” he replied tepidly. “I can’t reschedule my meeting tonight, but tomorrow works.”
It wasn’t a lie per se, just an embellished truth. He had dinner plans with a few associates, nothing he couldn’t cancel. As expected, the detail roused her interest, and Amelia flashed a heartbreaker of a smile.
A lesser man would’ve shattered. If only she meant it. She didn’t, and that was her fatal flaw. She overplayed her hand, and when he left for Vegas in the evening, she watched him go and even waved goodbye as if she might ache at his absence.
Emory enjoyed a nice meal and productive conversation that would’ve continued at a members-only gentlemen’s club, but he cut the night short.
Just before midnight, he arrived back at Liam’s and parked in the garage to hide his arrival.
With a fine bottle of bourbon from the basement lounge, he crept through the mansion turned down for the night.
In the parlor, he poured a drink and waited in a chair with clear sight of the stairs. At a half past midnight, the doubts arrived as he freshened his glass—maybe he’d misread Amelia’s intentions—but a door creaked on its hinges upstairs, and light footsteps padded down the hall.
With his eyes well-adjusted to the dark, Emory watched Amelia tiptoe down the stairs in bare feet, her ballet flats hooked on her fingers and her purse clutched to her chest.
When she reached the landing, he yanked the pull-chain on the lamp beside him. Amelia jumped with a startle and expelled a sharp gasp.
“Going somewhere?” he asked, delighted at trouncing on her great escape.
Poor thing looked devastated as she stashed her shoes and purse by the front door and crossed the foyer.
“You’ve been waiting for me?” Amelia asked as she entered the parlor.
“What do you think? That I trusted you to stay put?” Emory chuckled as he lifted the bourbon glass to his lips. “You’re determined. I’ll give you that.”
He eyed her over the rim as he sipped and wondered if her choice of attire was deliberate—denim shorts that barely covered a damn-near perfect ass, thin white t-shirt slipping off her shoulder, a black bra visible underneath.
She’d have to hitch a ride somehow and showing some thigh to a lonesome trucker wasn’t the worst idea.
A thunderbolt of jealousy knocked Emory off kilter. He downed his drink but poured another finger of bourbon and studied the way Amelia’s body moved as she slinked toward him. It drove him crazy; all that doe-eyed innocence he just wanted to wreck.
Amelia wasn’t so innocent, though. With the face of an angel, she’d probably fuck him like a fiend. If she planned to seduce him, he wished she’d get on with it. He was tired of the dance and in need of some affection, more than just a warm body in his bed.
Amelia sat on the sofa adjacent to him and didn’t seem to mind that his outstretched legs rested perilously close to hers.
Emory offered her the glass. He didn’t know if she liked bourbon or even drank at all.
That was their paradox. The heated exchanges implied depths of knowledge not at all earned.
“I thought you had business tonight,” Amelia said and cautiously took the glass.
“Were you counting on it?”
She held his stare and took a sip. “What do you think?”
“What do I think?” Emory knit his fingers behind his head and reclined in his seat. “I think you should reconsider running out on me.”
“Don’t count on it,” she mocked.
With a flicker of defiance in her eyes, she held out the glass. Complicated impulses had convinced Emory that he despised her. It wasn’t her, he realized, but the fool for the fantasy he’d become. Night after night, his thoughts faithfully beat a well-worn path back to her. Always to her.
Emory snatched Amelia by the wrist and wrenched her toward him. The glass tumbled from her fingers and shattered against the floor. His mouth hovered close to hers, enough that her frantic breaths caressed his lips.
“Every word from your pretty mouth has been a lie,” he said. “Either you start telling me the truth or I turn you over to the other side.”
Amelia’s eyes darted over his face, panic perhaps that he might crush his mouth to hers.
Maybe he would.
Maybe a hard kiss and rough sex was the watershed moment they needed.
His cock hardened at the thought. She could hate-fuck him for all he cared. What he wouldn’t give to have her long legs wrapped around him as he buried himself inside her; on all fours, his hips slamming into her ass; on her knees with her perfect lips wrapped around his dick.
Emory had thought of it so often, craved it night and day, and it’d become the engine to his instincts. It’d drive him into madness if he let it. Keep your head.
“Good,” she said, her famed fire burning in her eyes. “I’d rather die than spend another minute here with you.”
Amelia couldn’t lie like him, nor could she see how her body betrayed her. She didn’t know that her nipples hardened, chest heaved, limbs trembled as he leaned in close.
Emory called her bluff with a simple act of intimacy—a nuzzle of his nose against hers.
Amelia’s instincts betrayed her too. She closed her eyes and returned the gesture.
Emory released her arm and traipsed his fingertips across the top of her thigh.
A ghost of a touch, it elicited from her a gentle sigh as her hand found his shoulder.
“I don’t believe that,” Emory whispered against her lips. “Give me tonight and you’d die just to spend another with me.”
With a shuddering breath, Amelia’s head lolled back and exposed the length of her neck.
Emory gripped her thigh and drew her onto his lap.
She came willingly and didn’t object when he pressed his lips to her pulse.
He slipped a hand to her ass and dotted soft kisses up her neck.
He’d be good to her too. She had to know that.
His lips slowed as his fingers met the juncture between her legs. By the heat coming off of her, she had to be soaked. Emory lifted his head enough to look at her. Wide-eyed, Amelia stiffened as if waiting for him to take more than he already had. Emory wouldn’t, not unless she made the first move.
And she did.
Her knees fell open, and her arms snaked around his shoulders to draw him near. Emory kept her eyes as he hooked his middle finger beneath her underwear and pushed it aside. He traced her slit with his fingertip in a light stroke and stared between her legs.
Her pussy was as perfect as her mouth—plush pink lips he wanted so badly to fuck, to taste. When she didn’t pull away, he sunk into the delicious wetness there and slipped a finger inside.
“Emory,” she gasped.
He couldn’t tell if it was a protest or a moan. It had facets of both as his thumb gently circled her clit. With her eyes shut, Amelia arched into him and rolled her hips.
“Is this what you wanted from me?” he asked and slid another finger inside. Amelia bit her bottom lip to disguise a smile.
She could only lie with one set of lips but seemed to have forgotten that as she unraveled with his touch. Emory dropped a kiss to her bare shoulder and stroked her from the inside until Amelia relaxed against him.
“Look at me,” he commanded. Her lashes fluttered as she met his gaze. “Say it. Tell me you wanted this.”