Famous (A Famous novel) Page 19

  A hand snaked around his dick and he groaned, then nipped her breast in return.

  “A preview of what?” he asked, almost taunting her. The time for teasing was done, and he wanted to hear her say it. He liked the dirty-mouthed Emmy.

  “A preview of your cock,” she answered immediately. “Of what it’s going to feel like inside me, stretching me out.”

  They were almost out of time, and not only because the clock was ticking. She had moved her hand around to gently squeeze his balls, but he batted it away and took himself in hand. He paused at her entrance, raising his eyebrows in a silent question.

  “Yes,” she said.

  They both cried out as he breached her hot, tight channel. He started moving, attempting to go slowly, but she was arching and grinding against him, and after a few strokes, on the brink of losing his mind, he started slamming into her and using one hand to rub her clit. He watched her closely, trying to gauge what kind of pressure she liked, to learn what made her gasp the loudest. He would have been embarrassed at how quickly his orgasm came barreling down on him, except for the fact that she beat him to it, freezing for a moment in her writhing to stare at him in silent, wide-eyed astonishment before her inner muscles started fluttering and clenching around him.

  “Oh my God!” she whispered.

  Then the alarm went off.

  She lifted her head, which looked like it took a lot of effort, and started laughing.

  He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, and laughed, too.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Emmy was rather pleased with herself as she lay in bed that night waiting for sleep to come. Well, fighting off sleep, to be more accurate. She was exhausted, but she wanted to spend a few moments basking in the aftermath of the best day she’d had in a long time. And it hadn’t been just the sex. She hadn’t been prepared for how much flat-out fun the fair had been. She’d been there every year as a kid, but seeing and experiencing it anew through Evan’s eyes had been exhilarating. And bickering good-naturedly with him about Jace going off with Brianna had all felt so deliciously, joyfully…normal.

  But okay, who was she kidding? The basking she was doing? It was ninety-nine percent about the sex.

  God, it was almost like that had been her first time. But honestly, it had been like nothing she’d ever experienced before. The absence of the fear that she’d told him about—that someone she was sleeping with would compromise her—had created a safe space. She had suspected she would be more comfortable with him—that’s why she’d propositioned him to begin with—but she’d had no idea how much power that fear had held over her all these years. Because holy shit.

  Maybe it wasn’t only the absence of that fear, though. Maybe it was Evan in particular. Everything he did made her feel safe. The importance he placed on discussing their sexual histories, the way he encouraged her to say specifically what she wanted.

  And the laughing. She also hadn’t known that sex could be so funny but simultaneously be so hot. She’d never laughed like that with a man.

  All of that had swirled together to create some kind of alchemical magic that, to be crude, had resulted in her coming harder than she ever had.

  Or ever would again, she feared.

  God, she was getting hot thinking about it, despite her exhaustion. Sighing, she rolled over and wrapped her arms around Cheer Bear. Maybe she’d have some good sex dreams.

  Oh my God, she was having a sex dream. She sighed, luxuriating in the sensation of him stroking her back.

  “Emmy,” he whispered.

  “Mmmm,” she purred, but she was waking up. She fought against it. She hadn’t even got to the good parts yet. So she kept her eyes closed and concentrated on the deep breaths she hoped would lull her back into full sleep, trying to grasp at the tendrils of the dream, to use them to lever herself back into it.

  “Emmy.” His voice, though still a whisper, was a little louder this time, and all of a sudden it wasn’t just his hand against her back, it was all of him. She burrowed back against the hardness of him—his solid chest, his erection nestled up against her bottom.

  She smiled in the darkness. “You’re real?”

  He reached a hand around and threaded it up her shirt and lightly stroked her stomach, whispering, “As far as I know.”

  “I thought I was dreaming,” Then reality, unwelcome as it was, truly hit her. “Where’s Jace?” she whispered urgently. They had all watched some TV together when Jace got home, she and Jace forcing Evan to watch the shallowest show they could find, which had been a rerun of Real Housewives of Orange County, and teasing him as he treated it like an archaeological expedition. Then she’d taken her leave and retreated into her own room.

  “He’s asleep. It’s three in the morning.”

  She tried to turn to face him, but he banded an arm around her, keeping her back snug against his front. “What are you doing here?”

  “I need to borrow a cup of sugar,” he said without missing a beat. “What do you think I’m doing here?”

  The words, hovering somewhere between a whisper and a growl, went straight to her core.

  “Being with you earlier was amazing, but it was too damned rushed,” he went on. She was going to argue, to tell him that sometimes rushed was exactly what the doctor ordered, but when he said, “I can’t stop thinking about how much I want to take my time with you,” slid a hand down under the waistband of the stretchy sleep shorts she was wearing, and teased her clit, she shut her mouth.

  Shut it over his fingers, to be precise, because she used one of her hands to grab the arm that had been keeping her prisoner, stuck his first two fingers into her mouth, and sucked on them.

  It made his dick pulse against her, which, in turn made her bolder. She took his fingers deeper, and he used his other hand to enter her. “Jesus Christ, Emmy, one hand in your mouth and one hand in your…” He moaned, and so did she.

  Letting his fingers come out of her mouth with a pop, she tried to turn over again, and this time he let her. She kissed him, opening her mouth the moment their lips met, accepting the deep sweeps of his tongue into her mouth and licking into his in return. They sank into each other for a long time, kissing and letting their restless hands roam and stroke. For his part, he would tease her clit for a while, start getting her ramped up, and then he’d back off, and move to stroking her collarbones, or her hair. It was both delicious and maddening, and it went on and on. He hadn’t been kidding about taking his time.

  Just when she was about to tell him she couldn’t take it anymore, to use her newfound directness to order him to get on with it, he pushed her onto her back. It was a sweet relief. She couldn’t wait. She was still a bit sore from last time, but she craved that delicious burning sensation of being breached by him, and— “Oh my God.”

  He was going down on her.

  “Evan!” she cried as he licked across her slit. She didn’t know whether she meant to encourage him or to stop him, but either way, she’d spoken too loudly. Jace was on the other side of the wall, and though she assumed Evan had locked the connecting door, their teenage charge couldn’t discover them like this.

  Evan slid back up Emmy’s body, holding himself over her with one arm and clamping his other hand over her mouth.

  “We’re going to play a game,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  She nodded, trying to calm her heart.

  He kept his hand over her mouth as he spoke. “This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to eat you out. I’m going to feast on you, actually.” An involuntary whimper escaped, even with his hand over her mouth. “And you’re going to lie there and take it, and you’re not going to make a sound.” He stared at her silently for a moment, and she was sure she was blushing so intensely that she was glowing red, even in the dark. “Okay?” he asked.

  She nodded vigorously, because she wanted that, too. Oh, how she wanted that, and she wasn’t going to risk even a whispered yes that might endanger the likelihood of her
getting what she wanted.

  He removed his hand slowly, like he wasn’t sure he could trust her. She forced herself to meet his gaze unflinchingly, even as her heart beat a crazy rhythm she could feel directly between her legs. It was like her body, having heard him state his intentions so boldly, had decided to light the way for him. When he still didn’t move, merely remained where he was, like he was trying to memorize her or something, she used the toe of one foot to catch the top of her shorts and panties, which he had only shoved down as far as her knees.

  The movement seemed to jolt him, and he came to life, pushing himself back down her body and finishing the task of undressing her from the bottom. Then, suddenly, they were back on the lounge chair in his backyard, because he banded his hands around her ankles like he had that night. It was quieter here, though, their hotel room lacking the soundtrack of cicadas and leaves rustling in the wind, so she could hear his labored breathing. And he didn’t stop at her ankles this time. No, his big hands moved slowly but decidedly upward, exactly as she’d wished they would that night. She felt like she had a fever; her body didn’t know whether to be hot or cold, to shiver or shudder. She wanted to yell, to curse him, to exhort him to move faster, but she bit down on her lip, hard. She hadn’t shaved her legs since yesterday morning, and the hotel’s air conditioning was powerful, so as he made his way up her shins, he encountered stubble. She had enough non-stunned brain capacity left to spare a thought that maybe she should be embarrassed. Certainly if anyone had a picture of her leg right now, tomorrow she’d find a horrible zoomed-in version in a “Celebrities—they’re just like us” feature in some rag.

  But instead, inexplicably, it was the single most erotic thing that had ever happened to her. The room was so silent, his hands made a slight scratching noise as they traversed her legs, the little prickles providing drag.

  He didn’t have his mouth on her—yet—but his face was tracking closely behind his hands as he made his way up her legs, close enough that his hair flopped into his face and tickled her skin as he went. She exhaled a shaky breath, and finally, finally, he reached the top of her thighs. He hooked his thumbs in the crease where her thighs met her hips and rotated her legs outward, so they fell open for him.

  She squirmed, hot, restless, aching. He responded by pressing down hard on her thighs, immobilizing her. Then he stretched out his legs. He had crawled up on his hands and knees as he’d made his way up her body, but now he lay flat on his stomach with his head between her legs.

  And then, oh God, he lowered his mouth to her. He didn’t move it at first, just exhaled a couple times, the heat of his breath coming through lips that rested unmoving against hot flesh, like he was breathing life into her. She tried to lift her hips, to rock into him, but he continued to pin her to the bed. He waited a moment, ignoring her silent plea, before he finally began moving his mouth. He licked her outer folds, and she swallowed a gasp. He used his nose—his entire face—to nudge them open to reach a deeper part of her, and she swallowed a scream. When he plunged his tongue inside her, she couldn’t do it anymore—a whimper escaped.

  She was surprised he didn’t stop, didn’t scold her, but one of his hands did come off her, floated up a few inches, and then came back down on as much of her butt cheek as he could reach in their position, a little slap of admonishment.

  Oh shit. She grabbed Cheer Bear and stuffed his ear into her mouth. She was going to come.

  He must have sensed it because he moved his mouth to her clit and sucked on it gently, and that was the end.

  She came and came and came, with a teddy bear in her mouth and her in his mouth.

  He didn’t want to leave.

  Evan extricated himself from Emmy’s arms enough to crane his neck to see the digital clock on the nightstand. It was four thirty.

  Shit.

  He’d been lying in Emmy’s bed for fifteen minutes, and he was nowhere near recovered from what had been the most intense orgasm of his life.

  Emmy. He had forced himself to stay awake after their encounter, promising himself he’d stay only long enough to catch his breath. But she had fallen right asleep, exhausted, he flattered himself, after two orgasms. And maybe also—still flattering himself here, probably—because she knew she was safe. Safe with him like she hadn’t been with anyone else. He didn’t want to go back to his room. He didn’t want to walk around the fair all day tomorrow and pretend there was nothing between them.

  He wanted more. He wanted her to swallow his cock again, like she had earlier, nearly causing him to have a nuclear meltdown, but he wanted to do it at high noon, with the full force of the Midwestern sun beaming down on them so that he could see everything, her pink lips stretched around him, that little ring of gold in her blue eyes peeking up at him from behind her lashes. And, as hot as their little silence game earlier had been, he wanted to hear her moan. No, he wanted to hear her scream.

  But—fuck—he wanted more than that, even. He wanted to be able to fall asleep with her. He wanted to wake up with her in his arms. In his house. Then he wanted to eat her oatmeal and go grade some fucking exams while she fiddled around on her guitar. He wanted her to finish that goddamned album.

  But he was an adult. An adult who had learned, better than most, he suspected, that you can’t always get what you want.

  So, with the last vestiges of his will, he climbed out of bed.

  She looked younger when she was asleep, more like the nineteen-year-old he’d met so long ago. Or maybe it wasn’t younger so much as less guarded. He understood, from being with her and from listening to her stories, how hard she had to work to keep her guard up. How it had to be up all the time. How elementally alone she was.

  Her bear had fallen onto the floor, so he bent over to retrieve it, then tucked it into bed with her.

  He had almost made it out of the room when she stirred.

  “Evan?” she whispered, and he knew—feared—that in that moment he would do anything she asked. Give up anything.

  “Yes?” he answered, heart pounding.

  “You really do suck at chaperoning.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Evan was sheepish in the morning. He didn’t regret anything. He shifted in a booth at the hotel restaurant as memories of last night washed over him. No, a man would have to be insane to regret the best sex of his life.

  Just that he was a bit embarrassed over the strength of his emotional reaction, how nearly unhinged he’d become simply watching her sleep. But, he reminded himself, sleep was the key word there. No one had witnessed his little gushfest. No one had heard his interior monologue about how exposed she was, how in need of haven and protection. He just didn’t know what it was going to be like when—

  “Hey.”

  Emmy, bundled back up in her baggy armor, slid into the booth across from him and nodded her thanks when a server appeared offering coffee. “Jace will be here shortly. He fell back asleep after you left.” She upended a creamer into her coffee. “He sleeps like the dead, which turns out to be kind of handy.” She shot him a playful grin. “Retrospectively, I mean.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, so it wasn’t going to be awkward. That would make it much easier to say goodbye after the competition tonight.

  When the server came back, Emmy declined to order any food. He raised his eyebrows. “I’m going to my parents’ for brunch,” she said, and like that, the impish light in her eyes went out.

  Unsure how to respond—other than to curse her parents—he raised the eyebrows higher.

  She sighed. “I know. I just…”

  “You want them to love you,” he finished.

  The way her eyes widened and filmed over with moisture told him he had hit the mark. He couldn’t say he understood. He maintained a cordial relationship with his mother and brother, but some things were too wrenching. Sometimes the past—and the people from it—had to stay in the past. But she was kinder than he was.

  “Even though they threw you out,” he add
ed. He didn’t want to make her feel worse, but he did want to remind her of the context.

  “Isn’t that dumb?” she said. She’d been trying for cheerful self-deprecation, but it hadn’t worked—she deflated right before his eyes. “I don’t know why I keep trying. I guess because I want them to understand that doing music…wasn’t a mistake.”

  “How can they not understand that?” he said, trying—and probably failing—to temper his anger. “For God’s sake, look at you.”

  She shook her head. “It’s more like…I want them to understand that I love it. Why I love it.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he said, suddenly determined. She was making a mistake, but he wasn’t going to let her make it alone. Even if they only had this last little bit of time together, he still felt protective of her. Still saw it as his job to try to create a safe space for her to…be her.

  She smiled, and for a moment it looked like the tears that had been threatening were going to spill over, but she beat them back, staying true to her declaration from earlier that summer that she was not a crier. “Thanks, but I’ll be okay. My assistant Tony, who’s also a great friend, is coming with me.”

  “Well, then it will be three against two,” Evan said, because now that he’d decided, he wasn’t backing down.

  He could tell she was about to protest, but he could also see Jace entering the restaurant. He waved the teenager over.

  “Hey,” he said, when Jace slid in beside Emmy. “Slight change of plan. We’re going to drop you at the fair for the rehearsal and then catch up with you later. I need to help Emmy with something.”

  Emmy was about to object, he could tell, but Jace cracked a smile, and said, “What happened to Mr. Overprotective?”

  Evan looked at Emmy as he answered Jace. “I’m over it.”

  Or, to be more accurate, he’d transferred it to someone else.

  Emmy had made arrangements to meet her assistant at a coffee shop near her parents’ house.