Chapter 21
21
Our kiss is incendiary—a match struck in a room filled with kerosene. And I feel like I could stay this way forever, engulfed in this simmering desire and still somehow never be consumed. It may not be the first time we’ve touched and tasted and explored each other. But this time, it’s not a performance. There are no cameras or onlookers. This time, it’s only us and none of it’s for show.
Miles interlaces our fingers and, raising our clasped hands above my head, he presses us hard against the wall. “Tell me if you want to stop.” He breathes the command against my skin while pressing his thigh between my legs. As the movement presses me into him and braces me against the wall, I wonder how I could want anything in this moment but more .
Shaking my head, I am momentarily lost for words. Then finally a broken plea of “Please. Don’t. Stop.” cascades from my lips. I’d be embarrassed if I could find the will to care about anything outside of the press and pull of his full lips and the warm slide of his tongue.
We play like this for minutes, or hours, I really wouldn’t know. Then just when my hands start to tingle from the loss of blood flow, Miles releases them, bringing his to either side of my face. I lean into his warm, rough touch and let my eyes flutter closed. Gripping his strong forearms, I savor this closeness—a feeling I haven’t had in so long, if ever. I want to bask in this, let it seep into every pore. But I won’t. Because if I allowed myself to dwell on this feeling for any longer, I’m certain I’d ruin the night by doing something absurd like crying.
“Hey,” Miles says softly, which prompts me to open my eyes. When I do, I’m met with a look so fierce but tender it overwhelms me, like being pulled into the deep end. “Tonight, it’s just us,” he says. “Anything you want. Everything I’ve got, it’s yours.”
I might have just whimpered. I can’t be sure, though, because every synapse in my brain, every nerve in my body, is firing at once. Still, by some stretch of magic, I manage to nod and say, “I’ll hold you to that,” in response, which solicits a rumbling chuckle from deep in his chest.
With one hand Miles traces a line from my clavicle to my breast, down my side and to my hip. As he ventures lower, the rough calluses of his palm scrape the exposed skin of my outer thigh until the top of the slit of my dress stops him. Not deterred, he dips farther beneath the fabric to grip my ass, pulling me tighter against him.
He throws his head back and groans, “You feel perfect in my hands,” sending shivers down my back. I arch closer and get confirmation of just how good that feels for him.
Emboldened by his response, I grip his chin and draw him into another searing kiss. If all we did tonight was make out against this wall, I would not complain. An hour ago, the prospect of being here with him like this felt like nothing more than a fantasy. But after having a taste of this, I don’t just want more. I want the everything he promised.
Almost like he’s read my mind, Miles firmly braces his hands on my hips and drops to the floor. I nearly black out with anticipation when he sweeps away the fabric of my dress. Then he traces his fingers downward from the tops of my thighs, setting me aflame as he goes. And when he reaches my ankles, he toys with a golden bracelet dangling over my left foot.
“I like this,” Miles says, glancing up at me with sparkling eyes. “What’s it for?”
“A sparrow,” I tell him. “My first album.”
“ Songbird ,” he says.
Then he lifts my foot to his mouth, dropping a soft, warm kiss on the instep before repeating that kiss on the inside of my ankle and my calf, all the way up my shin. And since it’s sensory overload, watching and feeling him at the same time, my head falls back against the wall, and my eyes slam shut.
He cups my knee and slides my leg over his right shoulder, and instinctively I drop my hands to his head for balance. Then he uses his teeth to tease away the thin layer of lace that covers the center of my arousal. I am bared to him, and he doesn’t waste one second before giving me absolutely everything I want and more.
I’ve practically gnawed off my first knuckle to avoid getting us a noise violation from hotel security. So when Miles finally rises up from his knees, I’m equally relieved and bereft. But before I can even get my bearings, he spins me around to face the wall.
“Think I can get you naked the right way this time?” His question ghosts across the nape of my neck, making me shiver.
With my limp arms splayed against the wall and my legs like Jell-O from the residual pulses of pleasure Miles just wrung from me with his mouth, I’m absolutely no help.
“It’s a lot of hooks. Just rip it,” I sputter out.
“No, ma’am. Not this time,” he says, with a smile I can hear even if I can’t see it. “I’m already on Rodney’s bad side.”
I laugh and lean against his chest. I think back on that first night we met backstage as Miles peppers kisses from my cheek, down my neck, to my shoulder—he’s driving me up the very wall I’m facing. And he hasn’t stopped toiling with the tiny hooks.
After several hits and misses, he gets in the swing of things and deftly unlatches me one by one.
“Okay, if you lean forward just a bit, I think I’ll have it,” he says, with his voice steeped in concentration.
Smiling to myself, I do as he says, shimmying my ass a little as I go.
“Woman, I’m trying to focus,” he playfully scolds me, and now we’re both laughing. I love this—how we can flit from moments of breathless heat to breezy fun. “Oops. Got it!” he exclaims and I could cheer.
Still facing the wall, I flick off the shoulder straps, and the dress falls, pooling around my feet. I hear a sharp intake of breath from Miles and look over my shoulder, where I find his brow furrowed and his lower lip caught between his teeth as he takes in the view.
“Tell Rodney I loved the dress on you, but I liked it even more on the floor,” he says.
I turn around, and under his intense stare, my breasts ache for his touch. But as much as I want him all over me again, the next time he touches me, I want us skin to skin. I step out of the circle of fabric at my feet and kick it to the side, then lean back against the wall and meet his eyes. He moves forward like he’s ready to pounce, but I lift a finger and shake my head.
“Not so fast. Now it’s your turn,” I say. “Only fair.”
A sly smirk curves the corner of his mouth, and I have to hold myself back from launching forward and tasting it. He slowly tugs his dress shirt from the top of his pants and unbuttons it from the bottom to the collar. Then, with one hand, he pulls his cotton undershirt over his head and my mouth goes slack. Clearly, not an ounce of energy was spared in crafting the muscular perfection of Miles Westbrook’s shirtless form. I could skip pennies off his stomach, nickels off his pecs, and quarters off his arms. But when he steps out of his shoes and socks and undoes his belt buckle, I’m not thinking about loose change anymore. Because in one fell swoop, he rids himself of his briefs and pants and, no matter how many times I imagined this moment, I was not prepared for what he has going on under there.
“I’m dying over here,” he says. “We good now?”
All I can do is nod, and in a flash, he is flush against me. Lifting me. Wrapping my legs around his waist. With only his hands under my ass, Miles supports my full weight while walking us toward the bedroom. When we reach the king-size bed, he lowers himself to the edge, bringing me down to straddle him. I reach up to loosen my ponytail—thanking the universe that I already took down the extra hairpieces Sheryl clipped in before he arrived. Then, with strong, purposeful movements, Miles reaches up to help free my hair from its constraints by massaging my scalp.
“I thought I’d memorized every angle of you by now,” he says. “But this…this one is new. And I think it might be my favorite.” Playfully, he nips at my neck and then covers the spot with a kiss. Smiling, I lean backward into his touch, an action he takes as an open invitation to taste the tips of my breasts.
There is a phenomenon in vocal performance called a polyphonic overtone. Achievable by only the most skilled of vocalists, it’s when you manipulate your vocal cords to produce the sound of singing separate notes all at once. Lalah Hathaway comes to mind when I think of it. I’ve never achieved such a feat, but if there’s anything that could make me come close, it might be the sparks of pleasure spurred by Miles’s touch. “God, that feels so good,” I manage to say. And in response, his erection jumps between us, which seems to momentarily ground us both.
“I didn’t bring anything,” Miles groans across my collarbone before looking up at me with concern in his eyes. He threads his fingers through the hair at the base of my neck. “That is…a-assuming you want to keep going…and it’s p-perfectly fine if you don’t.” His words are now cautious and slow, eyes locked on mine. “But if you do, do you have—”
“I’ve got condoms in the top drawer,” I tell him, smiling down from my perch on his lap. I tilt my head toward the nightstand.
With one strong arm wrapped around my waist, he scoots us down the bed toward the headboard and leans me back so he can reach for the drawer. After he retrieves the condom and takes care of putting it on, I smooth my fingers over the scruff of his jaw in my attempt to massage away the tension I just noticed take hold there.
A line forms between his brows and he exhales heavily. “Contrary to what it might look like in the headlines, this”—he motions between our chests with his index finger—“sharing this part of myself with someone else has never been a small thing for me. I get what you’ve been through. I wouldn’t let myself be here with you like this if I didn’t. So I want you to know that I got my pre-season physical last week and all my tests were clear.”
With his disclosure, some unknown tension deep inside me releases, causing me to sink further into him. “I’ve been tested since Elliot,” I offer him in return. “And there hasn’t been anyone since.”
He kisses me again. First soft, then demanding. Then, slowly, we begin to grind our hips with rhythmic contrast, like a perfect duet. The feeling obliterates any thought of what might exist beyond his body and mine. Once we’ve rocked ourselves right to the edge of climax, Miles tilts us backward and gently lays me down on the bed.
With his hips settled between my thighs, he rests his forehead on mine. “Ella?” He breathes my name with almost reverent desperation, like the opening to a prayer.
“Yeah?” I reply, feeling half dazed, half crazy.
Miles smiles before he speaks, his dimples sinking deep into the hollows of his cheeks. “Can I have this dance?” he asks.
I nod. And now I’m grinning, too, like a fool. “I thought you’d never as—”
But I don’t finish the sentence because with one purposeful thrust, he’s inside me and slowly moving to music only we can hear. And as far as I’m concerned, the world stops for us. Maybe the universe too. In this moment there is only his body and mine, and the sounds of the breath between us. His groans and my gasps, and all the blissed-out proclamations you make to a person when it’s never felt this good before.