Chapter Seventeen
America
Indy’s calling me because of course she is.
Gray clears his throat, slips his hand from the front of my panties. “You should answer it.”
How am I supposed to answer her call and not give away my guilt when I’m still straddling Gray’s lap? How do I make small talk and pretend everything is fine when he turned into a statue the moment he saw who was calling me?
“Do you need me to do it for you?” His voice is rusted, dark. His heart is still broken, and he hates her for it.
He reaches for my phone and I lunge to pick it up first. My hand shakes as I hover my thumb over the red circle. The sound cuts out. “I’ll call her tomorrow.”
A message comes through almost instantly. Then another.
“Look at it,” he orders. “I don’t mind. She’s your best friend. It could be important.”
I bite my lip as I peel the screen away from my chest and open her text. It’s a selfie of her and Theo. The biggest, cheesiest smiles stretch across both their faces as they stand in front of what looks like a batting cage only with a wooden target on the back wall.
Indy: Awesome double date idea for when you finally introduce us to your HE. That way I can pull out the old if you hurt my friend line…
“Double date?” Gray snorts and there’s no humor in it. His palms flatten on the leather seat. “So you’ve already told her about Everett.”
“No.” But she did send me that image of the two of us outside Bambino’s. “Yes. A little. That’s not the point. She knows there’s someone else.”
“You’ve told her about me?”
“She noticed the hickey you left on my neck. I had to tell her something. She doesn’t know it’s you. She only knows there’s someone.”
“And that’s why she’s planning a double date. Me and that prick in the same room… you know that’s never going to happen without me giving him a black eye. And Indy…”
The euphoria from my orgasm evaporates. He hates her because he’s still in love with her. And he hates Theo because he’s the one who Indy chose.
I’m the one allowing myself to pretend that Gray and I could be more. That he could have feelings for me instead of my best friend. I ease off him, surreptitiously adjust my underwear and smooth my dress. “I know. I—”
“You should tell her that you’ll bring Everett.” His expression is devoid of emotion as he discreetly fixes his pants. “He’s dying to move you back home.”
I already told him that I wasn’t planning on seeing Everett anymore. I thought that was what he wanted too. “But I—”
“What are you hoping to find here with me?” He straightens and snatches up his beer. It spills over his fingers as he lifts it to his lips and swallows. “I warned you—”
“How long are you going to hold onto her?” I toss my phone in my purse.
“I’m clearly not holding onto her at all.” He slams the glass down. “She’s with him.”
“I know that. I’m the one who was riding your cock just now. In public,” I hiss at him. “I’m the one willing to settle for my best friend’s scraps. I’m such an idiot.”
“America.”
I stand. “I need to go before I say something I’ll regret.”
“America.” He leaps to his feet. “I told you how it was. I can’t just switch my feelings for her on and off. I wish I could.”
“I’m not asking you to. I don’t expect that. I thought I could do this.” I shake my head. “But I think I’m fooling myself.”
My eyes prickle with emotion by the time I make it to the exit, but like hell will I let my feelings get the best of me when I’ve kept them under lock and key for so long.
He grabs my arm as I reach the pavement. Hauls my back to his chest. “I’m sorry, Rica. I’m so sorry.”
“So am I.” I tug my arm free.
“I’ve been thinking of her less and less since Positano. The more time I spend with you the less it hurts in here.” He grabs my hand before I can walk away and places it over his heart. “That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”
My heart skips a beat.
“I don’t want you with Everett. Thinking about him touching you makes me want to punch him.” He brings me back to his chest. His hand settles on my nape. His voice is full of emotion. “Thinking about touching you has me obsessed. Can that be enough for you, Rica?”
Right now it’s enough. My heart won’t let it not be.
I lift up on tiptoes and press my lips to his. “It’s enough.”
“Come back to the hotel with me,” he says when we break apart.
“Okay.” I smile.
With a hand to the small of my back he ushers me into a taxi. Closing the door, he calls out the address for the driver and then pulls me into his side. Maybe it isn’t forever, and his affections might never be as strong as mine, but I couldn’t quit this giddy, golden feeling if I tried.
“I’d give you head if the driver couldn’t see us,” I whisper in his ear as we’re whizzing through city traffic.
He groans as my hand creeps up his thigh. He covers it with his bigger one. “You keep that up, you’ll be in trouble when we reach our destination.”
“Stern Gray is my favorite, just so you know,” I say in a voice that leaves no room for misinterpretation.
“Good to know.” He smiles wickedly.
“I wasn’t expecting you to be so dirty,” I admit. “Or so bossy.”
A skitter of awareness wrinkles his brow. “She told you things, didn’t she?”
“We talked. Women talk.”
“I see.” His eyes darken. “Go on. What did she say?”
“She said you were sweet. Considerate. That you were really good with your tongue.”
The taxi driver sniggers.
“Am I?”
“I…” feel bad that I’ve brought her up. That the only words I can think to use are sweet and considerate when my time with him needs much more expressive words like filthy and addictive. “Wouldn’t say that.”
“Oh?” He raises a brow. “So I’m not good with my tongue?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He smirks.
It’s like a weight has been lifted off me. “You’re not mad?”
“About you not thinking I’m doing a good enough job?” He turns my hand over and curls our fingers together. “I’m going to rectify that as soon as we get to the hotel.”
My clit pulses. Attempting to ease the sudden influx of heat between my thighs, I cross my legs. I’m still dripping.
“If we’re going to see each other I can’t see how I can possibly expect you not to ever mention her,” he says. “She calls you every day, I bet. Like she always did. I might not want her in my life, but she’s your best friend. I’ll find a way to be okay with that.”
“It’s her loss, you know.” I grab his jaw and lock eyes with him. She wasn’t right for him. She needed to throw out the plan and learn to live. Being faced with her mortality just pushed her to make the move sooner rather than later.
He needs someone who appreciates those parts of him that aren’t so considerate and sweet. Those filthy pieces that make me want more and more and more. Someone who appreciates how far he’ll go for the people he cares about, even when it’s frustrating.
“I can’t be sorry about that when it means you’re mine.” Even if a part of me feels guilty for finding something for myself in their heartbreak.
He stills. “Yours, huh?”
My breath catches. Calling him that… it’s too much like admitting how much I care about him.
His eyes crinkle in the corner. His lips curve. He leans forward and brushes his lips over mine. “I’m not mad about that, you possessive little minx.”
The cab pulls up outside the hotel and Gray pays the driver while I step out onto the pavement.
He climbs out behind me and places his hand on the small of my back as we head inside. “She never struck me as someone who would appreciate all the things I was into, but I didn’t think it mattered. It wasn’t about sex. I loved her and her plan for our future. It would have been enough.”
“Would it?”
“I thought so…” He presses his key card to the scanner in the elevator and the box starts to rise. “But I’m not so sure anymore. I was in love, and I thought we were happy, but… if we were that in love and that happy then she wouldn’t have fallen in love with him. He would never have gotten between us.”
“I’m sorry.”
His shoulders rise and fall. “I also wouldn’t be having the best sex of my life with you. And that would have been a damn shame.”
“Well… my ego thanks you.” I rock on my heels, unable to keep my smile from taking over my face. “That’s quite a compliment.”
“I mean it.” He crowds me back against the wall. With a hand pressed against the wall above my head he leans in and trails a knuckle down my neckline. “Are you still dripping with my cum?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He growls and presses a button that forces the elevator to halt abruptly. Falling to his knees, he pushes my dress up my thighs, his lips caressing my skin, inch by revealed inch. “I should really clean that up.”
His hands skim up the outside of my legs, his fingers curl in the waistband of my panties and drag them down.
My breath hitches. I’m so sensitive that the movement of the material creates electricity on my skin, but that’s nothing compared to the sensation of his tongue rasping up my thigh. “What are you doing?”
“Tasting you.” He kisses the spot he’s licked. “Tasting me.” He grips the back of my thighs and opens me up so that he has access to my pussy. His tongue there makes my knees almost give. “Tasting us. We’re fucking incredible.”
He drives his tongue into me, eating me like a starving man. Warming every inch of me with slow, maddening swipes.
It’s filthy and sexy and I can’t get enough of him on his knees for me. I curl my fingers in his hair and hold him to me. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
“Do you really think I have that kind of willpower when you’re squirming on my tongue and your orgasm is so close?” He groans, digging his tongue in deeper, licking every trace of his cum from my pussy. “Your pleasure is everything to me. I need it. Give it to me.”
“Oh God.” When he puts it like that…
Sucking my clit between his lips, he slips two fingers inside me and strokes that sensitive spot deep inside. It sends me crashing into a mind-shattering orgasm.
Easing his fingers out of me as I collapse against the wall, he straightens to his full height. His gaze burns hot as he sucks the remnants of my arousal from his digits while I adjust my panties back into position.
“That was…” No words. With Indy he was a good man. Sweet. Considerate. Gentle. Not this feral, wicked man in front of me. But God, this man… this man I would let do anything to me that he wanted.
He grins—his lips shining and puffy— and starts the elevator moving again. “I’ll take that as I’ve proven myself.”
“Mmm.” My breath is still coming in pants. My grin is as wide as his. I grab his face and taste myself on him. “You’re right. We do taste incredible.”
“Exquisite.” He slips his tongue into my mouth and kisses me hard, his body pressing against mine with no shame over how much he wants me. “But now all I want to do is fill you all over again.”