“Ethan, please,” she begged.
“Tell me,” I replied, pulling her bottom lip between my teeth. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Need you,” she gasped, pulling away just far enough to free my straining cock the rest of the way. “Need you now.”
Snatching up the condom, I ripped it opened with my teeth and slid it on in record time. My hands went behind her knees and jerked her ass to the edge of the counter, but, as much as it killed me, I didn’t push into her. “You mine?” I asked, taking my erection in my hand and sliding the head of my cock it through her folds.
She nodded and wriggled, trying to force me into her.
I circled her clit, still refusing to give her exactly what she was craving. Not until I heard the words I needed. “Say it.”
“Stop playing games,” she panted, dragging her nails across my waist from back to front. Her hazel eyes were completely glassed over, and just knowing I was the one that made her look like that, who drove her out of her mind, made my chest expand.
“No games, baby. Need to hear it from your beautiful lips.” I pushed in, just an inch, but even that was enough to almost make me lose control…almost. “Please, sweetheart,” I whispered. I’d never begged for anything in my life, never had anything so important it was worth begging for. But for Eliza I’d drop to my goddamned knees and bleed myself dry at her feet. “I need the words.”
“I’m yours.”
With that, I plunged in to the hilt.
“ETHAN!” Her head snapped back and her hands came to my shoulders, holding on tight.
“Look at me,” I growled, pulling out and driving back in as one of my hands dove into her hair. I fisted it and used that to pull her head back up. I wanted her gaze on mine while I fucked her. “Fuck, fuck!” I grunted as I thrust into her like a mad man. “Feel so good, Eliza. Christ, you were made for me, baby. You’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” she answered as her hands slid from my shoulders into the hair at the base of my neck. “Harder, Ethan.”
With one hand already in her hair, I wrapped my other arm around her waist and pulled her chest flush against mine, loving the feel of her naked breasts against me as I gave her what she asked for, fucking her harder.
“Always, mine,” I said as I buried myself deep and circled my hips, grinding into her clit, causing her to moan into my mouth.
“Always. Faster.”
I drove harder, faster, to the point where I would have feared I was hurting her had her walls not been clutching around my dick like a vice. She was just seconds from going off like I rocket, and I couldn’t think of anything better than feeling Eliza come all over me. “Been mine your whole life.” My next words were punctuated by the snap of my hips. “Always. Will. Be.”
With that, she clamped down around me so hard it almost hurt as I swallowed down her screams of release. She came for what felt like an eternity, so hard a tear slipped passed her eyelid and trailed down her cheek. It was too much. Being inside her, feeling her core holding tight, I couldn’t stop myself from coming right along with her. I thrust once, twice, three time before driving in and exploding, letting her pussy milk me dry, demanding everything inside of me, draining me completely dry. Fuck, fuck, fuck! “Oh, Christ, Eliza! I’m coming!” I buried my face in her neck as an orgasm so strong I thought I’d pass the hell out washed through my entire body.
In the back of my mind, I heard her cry out again, felt her tighten up around me, and I knew my own climax had spurred yet another one for her. I don’t know how long I stood there, my entire body trembling thanks to the best sex I’d ever had in my life, but it wasn’t until Eliza’s hands started gliding up and down my back in a soothing gesture, that I was able to find the strength to pull my head from her neck.
“That was…” she trailed off on a sigh as one of her hands came up to push my hair off my damp forehead before resting against my cheek.
“Yeah,” I answered, pressing closer into her touch.
Her eyes cleared and focused as her gorgeous face lit with a smile. “You broke my dishes. What is it with you and kitchenware?”
With a chuckle, I released her hair and circled both of my arms around her, loving how it felt to just hold her. “I’ll buy you more. Anything you want or need. I’ll give it to you.” I pressed a quick kiss to her lips before pulling back and finishing, “For the rest of your life, baby.”
Something unsettling flickered across her face, causing my arms to squeeze. “Don’t shut down on me,” I demanded, knowing exactly what that look meant. “Not now. Not again.
“Ethan,” she sighed, dropping her hand from my face. I immediately missed its warmth.
“No,” I snapped.
Her eyelids lowered into slits. “You don’t even know what I was going to say. You won’t even let me speak.”
“I don’t need to hear it to know what you’re going to say. And I’m not letting you go there. Especially when I’m still fucking inside you.”
“Just listen—”
“No.” At my clipped word, she let out an agitated huff. “Whatever you’re about to say is bullshit.”
Her back stiffened and her palms came to my chest to try and push me away, but I wasn’t moving. I wasn’t ready to lose our connection. “That’s not fair!”
“You need to listen to me right now, and get what I’m telling you. I’m. Not. Letting. Go. Understand?” I proved my point with another squeeze. “I’m in love with you. I lost you for six years and those have been the most miserable years of my life. I’ve finally got you back, and I’ll be damned if I let you slip through my fingers again. I’ll do whatever I have to do prove that you’re safe with me. Please, Christ, Eliza. Just…” I sucked in a much-needed breath in an attempt to calm the aching pressure suddenly building in my chest. “Please, just let me show you. I can’t lose you again. I can’t lose you,” I finished, my voice sounding completely ravaged, even to my own ears.
“Okay, okay,” she said quickly, cupping both my cheeks in her hands. “I’m here, Ethan. I’m right here…okay?” Dropping my forehead to hers, I let out an unsteady breath. “I’m right here,” she repeated.
“Thank you,” I whispered as the last of the pain in my chest eased.
“Come on,” she said, lifting my face and placing a kiss on each of my eyelids before moving to my lips. “Let’s go upstairs.” I watched as the concern that had been marring her brow quickly melted away and she smiled. “My mattress is much more comfortable than this counter.”
We both laughed as I pulled her in for a hug before finally breaking our connection. She wanted to take me to her bed, I was totally fine with that.
She didn’t have to tell me twice.
Eliza
I WOKE UP feeling slightly confused at the tight, persistent throbbing between my thighs. My eyes slowly peeled open, blinking against the rays of sunlight peeking through the curtains of my bedroom window. It took me a few seconds to clear the sleep from my brain, but as soon as I did, I knew the source of the throb.
“Morning,” Ethan’s raspy morning voice rumbled in my ear before his mouth return to the bare skin of my shoulder.
The arm beneath me twisted, his hand palming my breast as the other rested on my thigh, his fingertips tracing a random pattern on my flesh close to my center. But the thing I noticed the most was the thick, hard length of his erection digging against my ass as his hips pressed tighter against me.
“How’d you sleep, sweetheart?”
“Mmm,” I moaned in response, closing my eyes as I dropped my head back against his shoulder. “Like a baby. You?”
“Best sleep I’ve had in my life. But waking up was even better.”
“Yes,” I hissed as he lifted my left leg up and pulled it over his hip, opening me up for him to continue to play.
“You love it when I touch you,” he growled, biting at the sensitive place where my neck met my shoulder before soothing the sting with his tongue. “
You’re so goddamned wet for me.” I moaned again, incapable of speech as he toyed with my body in the most delicious way. “You want me to make you come, Eliza?”
“God, yes.” And I did. I felt like I’d tear apart if he didn’t let me come, which was amazing considering I’d lost count of the number of orgasms he’d given me the night before. “Please, Ethan.” As soon as those two words escaped my mouth his heat disappeared from my back. “No!”
I twisted my head and began to turn, only to have his large hands hold me in place as he moved back against me a second later. “Relax, baby. I’m not leaving you.” My chest tightened and my heart flipped at those four little words. I’m not leaving you. God, how I wished those words meant something altogether different at that very moment, but before I could lose myself to the melancholy, the sound of a condom wrapper being opened tore through the room. Ethan hooked my thigh around his once more and pressed in, blanking my mind to anything and everything that didn’t have to do with how he felt inside of me.
Last night had been fast, hungry, a desperate joining of two people who craved each other, but this was something completely different.
Ethan’s strokes were slower, methodical, yet no less potent. He was taking his time building me up toward that glorious finale, and while his touches and kisses were more gentle, the release I felt brewing promised to be no less intense than all the others he’d given me in our short time together.
“Kiss me,” he said against my neck.
Unable to deny him anything he wanted, I tilted my head back and twisted, giving him perfect access to my mouth as his thrust began to speed up. “You feel so amazing,” I whispered against his lips, completely lost to the sensation of what he was doing to me. “I love having you inside me.”
His hand at my breast tightened, his other arm wrapping around me to pull me closer. “I just love you.”
His response made me pull in a surprised breath. No matter how many times he’d said it, I never grew more used to hearing those words come out of his mouth. “Ethan—” I started, unsure of what exactly I was going to say, but he silenced me with another kiss.
The arm around my waist loosened and his hand slid down to where we were joined together. His fingers worked magic as he continued to thrust, and within seconds I was spiraling down, crying out his name as starbursts exploded against the backs of my eyelids.
“Eliza,” he groaned, burying himself as deep as he could go, his face in my hair, and his arms holding me tight as he rode out his own climax.
After a few seconds, once we both caught our breaths he lifted his head and gave me a peck on the lips before gracing me with his brilliant smile. “Now that’s the kind of wakeup I’m looking forward to.” Before I could respond, he pulled out and climbed from the bed, grabbing my ankle and yanking me across the mattress. “Come on, baby. I want to shower with you before you have to get to work.
I followed behind him in a fog, feeling like I’d just woken up in a twilight zone.
When had my life become so complicated?
“THEY’VE DOUBLED IN numbers.” I turned at the sound of my waitress Megan’s voice. “And one of them even tried to come in and sit down like he was going to order something, but when Becky got to his table all he asked about was you and Ethan, so she told him to get his hairy ass out, we didn’t need his money.”
“Did he listen?” Chloe asked from the other side of the kitchen where she was working with her pastry team.
Megan giggled. “Not at first, but when she held a hot cup of coffee over his crotch, he got the idea that she wasn’t playing around and bolted out the door.”
“Good grief,” I groaned, the happy little cloud I’d been floating on all morning suddenly disintegrating. “That’s the third one. And it’s barely passed lunch!”
Megan headed back out to the front and Chloe looked at me with a sympathetic smile. “You know what you’re going to have to do, sweetie.” I did. But I really didn’t want to do it, so I groaned again. “Just get it over with, like ripping off a band aid. Quick and painless.”
I glared at her. “If you think this is going to be painless, you’re sadly mistaken.” That earned me another sympathetic look. I ignored it and pulled my cell from my back pocket and dialed a number I so did not want to dial.
“Hey baby girl. To what do I owe the pleasure?” God, my dad sounded so happy, it really was a shame that I was about to burst that bubble.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“How’s work? The café busy today?”
“Always,” I answered with a grin. “But I actually need to ask you a favor. I have a little bit of a problem.”
“What problem?” he snapped, automatically going into protective-dad mode.
“Well…” I hesitated, fiddling with a pieces of hair that had fallen from my bun while Chloe mouthed, “like a band aid,” at me. “You see… there are a bunch of reporters hanging around the restaurant. There’s kind of harassing the customers and just being general pains in the ass. I was kind of hoping you could come down here and… I don’t know… be all Sherriff and get them to go away?”
“Reporters?” he barked. “The fuck are reporters doing at the café?”
And now came the hard part. Well…”
“Swear to Christ, Eliza, if you don’t spit it out, my head’s liable to explode. Stop dragging ass and say what you need to say.”
So I did. In one really long breath. “Someone took pictures of me and Ethan at the football game and sold them to the trash magazines saying we were dating, then again at The Moose when he’d had a little too much to drink, saying that we were a couple. We weren’t… at least not then, not that I’m a hundred percent sure what we are now, but the magazines didn’t seem to care about the truth so they started calling me about doing an interview. Ethan’s agent is supposed to be fixing this, but we only found out about the photos yesterday, and now they’re all outside the café wanting an exclusive on Ethan Prewitt’s new girlfriend, and I’d really appreciate if you could just make them go away. You know how much I like my privacy, and they’re totally messing with it!”
I sucked in a massive breath once I was finished and waited for my father’s reaction… and waited… and waited some more. “Daddy? You there?”
“You telling me my little girl is dating a professional football player?” he asked in a not very nice tone.
“Daddy—”
“A goddamned football player who’s known just as well for the number of women he’s slept around with as he is for his number of rushing yards?”
“Dad—”
“And I’m just now hearing about it because some goddamned reporters want a story about him dating my daughter? Is that what your telling me?”
“Well…”
“Goddamn it, Eliza!” he boomed.
“Don’t yell at me!” I boomed back. “I didn’t say anything because I’m not really sure what we are right now. It’s very… new.”
“Jesus Christ, baby girl! The man’s a total player!”
“He’s Ethan, Daddy!” I argued back, the need to defend him outweighing everything else. “He’s Ethan, not some football player who screws around. You know him. Stop acting like this is some guy you’ve never met. You’ve always loved Ethan.”
“That was before he put his hands on my fucking daughter,” he seethed through the line.
“Dad, just—”
He cut me off. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“What?”
“Five minutes, Eliza. I’ll handle the reporters, but then you and I are going to talk.”
That sounded like the very last thing I wanted to do, but before I could argue, he’d hung up.
“So…” Chloe came up, throwing her hand over my shoulder. “How’d it go?”
I shot her a killing look before dropping my head against her shoulder. “It’s a toss-up which one of us he’s going to kill first.”
I felt her shoulders shake with silent laughter. “Oh,
sweetie, he’s not going to kill either one of you. You know how your dad is. He’s just protective. Once he’s had a chance to process everything, he’ll come around.”
“You sound surprisingly optimistic. You didn’t hear how he sounded just now. Last time I heard him this pissed, I was thirteen years old and crying because my mother was a raging bitch.”
Both her arms came around me in a maternal gesture that I greatly appreciated just then. “You’ll talk him around, honey. If this is what you want, he’ll eventually see that. He’d never take away any of his girls’ happiness. That’s not his way.”
“But,” I started in a small voice, “what if I’m not totally sure this is what I want?”
She pulled back and studied me, a serious expression plastered across her face. “Then we’ve got bigger problems than your father’s head exploding.”
My head cocked to the side in confusion. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it would mean those walls you keep up around yourself are more reinforced than I thought.” The fact that she sounded so sad when she said that sent a sharp, uncomfortable pang through my chest.
“Chlo—”
“Uh, Eliza?” My head spun around to see Megan peeking through the swinging double door that led into the dining area.
“Yeah?”
“Ethan Prewitt’s here. And he looks pissed.”
My eyes grew wide and I turned to look back at Chloe. She was wearing a similar expression that screamed oh shit.
“Batten down the hatches, honey. The shit’s about the hit the fan.”
Something told me she wasn’t wrong about that.
Ethan
I’D BEEN IN such a good mood. I woke up with the woman I loved in my arms, followed by some world-class sex. Except for the fact that I had to leave her after our shower to make my rehab with Fletch, it had been the best morning of my life.
Coming Full Circle (the Pembrooke series Book 2) Page 17
