After not answering her calls for days, Ruth had shown up at my place this morning. Her disapproving stare put a damper on my high.
“I’ve been worried sick, Emmett. You just up and left without saying goodbye or anything. I thought… I worried…”
“We didn’t talk for years and now we go a few days and you’re showing up here?” I returned to my chair – and my glass of Jack. “Why are you here?”
“There’s not going to be a funeral.”
“Excuse me?” I sneered, watching as she took a seat on my couch.
“She didn’t want a funeral. I-I wasn’t thinking.” She held out a piece of paper for me.
The contents? Miriam’s desire to be cremated and have her ashes spread on the mountain. By me.
“Is this a fucking joke?” I should have felt bad for yelling. “Are you fucking kidding me? I finally come out. I finally make things right and then she leaves. For good. And now, she wants me to be responsible for putting her to rest?”
Un-fucking-real.
“Get out.” It was all too much. The thought alone had my regret ripping my insides to shreds.
“I’m staying in town until Sunday. If you… won’t… then I will handle it, Emmett. I understand if it’s too much.”
The sound of the door shutting told me she’d left. The swish of the whiskey in the bottle told me that I still had work to do.
Unfortunately, my attempt to escape my darkness into the solitude of the slopes was obliterated when I saw the woman with the white snow gear and sunshine hair heading towards the lift. Even as trashed as I was, I didn’t need to see that she was carrying the snowboard with the sun on it to know it was Ally.
What in the living fuck was she doing getting on a lift by herself?
I was surprised to see the board in one piece. I thought my little spitfire would have torched it by now and forgotten all about snowboarding and anything else that reminded her of the asshole that broke her heart.
Christ.
Next thing I knew, I was on the same lift, many chairs behind her, but still; someone had to save her from herself. What did she think she was doing? Was she trying to kill herself? Was she trying to get my attention?
Was I really trying to save her? Or save myself?
No, she didn’t even know I was here; I shouldn’t even be here. Already my body fucking ached for her and her softness.
“Alice Daisy Ryder.” My voice echoed off the mountain. She froze. Well, to my mind, she still spun for a few seconds before coming to a standstill.
At least she turned around slowly.
It happens like that. Out of the blue sky, lost in her blue eyes, everything I’d tried to smoke and drink into oblivion came back ten-fold. I’d never not want her, not need her, not protect her. I’d never stop loving her
Fuck Chance. Fuck Miriam. Fuck everyone and everything.
I was the King of the Mountain and it was time for me to get on my knees and beg for forever with the Queen of my heart.
Ally
It was a shot of adrenaline straight to my heart. Can pain cause you to hallucinate? Because that seemed like the most likely explanation for what was happening. I almost kept walking. He’d called my name a thousand times over the past few days. Every time, I’d looked. Every time, he wasn’t there.
Who was I kidding? For him, I would always be looking.
I’ll never understand how it was possible for a man to be wearing the baggiest clothes that existed on the planet, his face still sporting spots of yellow-green from being used as a punching bag, and yet still be the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. It just never seemed possible for someone to look that good. Another reason for me to believe my delusions were getting worse.
But then my heartbreaker-hallucination spoke.
“What in God’s name do you think you are doing up here alone?”
Relief became irritation. Irritation became anger. “Snowboarding.” My eyes narrowed. “Are you… drunk?”
“You shouldn’t be snowboarding alone.”
“You shouldn’t be snowboarding drunk,” I said sharply.
His eyes flared and I figured it was time to make my escape. I didn’t have the strength to argue with him. I barely had the strength to keep myself together in front of him.
A strong arm wrapped around my waist. “Don’t walk away from me.”
“I wasn’t walking. I. Was. Gliding.” Now, if only I had a car hood that I could slam my hands down on like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality. I wonder if slamming them onto his helmet would produce the same effect.
“And I was talking,” he growled into my ear.
I really should want to punch him or something after what he’d done to me – and my heart. Instead, all I wanted to do was jump him.
His touch wasn’t much, but it was like water to my dry and arid body. Seeping into every crack and crevice. Cold, soothing, suffocating, healing. I didn’t move. I needed more.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I hadn’t had to ask this question in a very long time.
“Because it’s not safe for you to be up here alone. You could fall and hurt yourself.”
“So then call ski patrol and get me an escort, I’ll wait.” Gauntlet. Thrown.
This time though, I was prepared for his retreat. For the reality of being left again.
“Oh, is that how you think this is going to work?” He laughed cruelly. “What did you think you were going to do up here? Fall? Hurt yourself? Hope I’d come rescue you?”
“No, actually. I came up here to forget about you and everything that I felt for you.”
“Felt?” He growled. I’d struck a chord. A bad one. One that was off-key and twanging with danger. I heard something hit the snow before his hand threaded through my hair and pulled my head back. His lips brushed my ear, the warm musk of whiskey floating around me. “And how’s that working out?”
“Fine,” I squeaked.
“Have you forgotten what it felt like to have me touch you?” His hand on my waist slid under my shirt, resting on my stomach. “Have you forgotten, sunshine, how your body rises and sets beneath my hands?”
No. I would have sooner forgotten how to walk.
“Have you forgotten what my mouth felt like?” His lips moved hard and demanding along my cheek; I knew their destination. I awaited their arrival. “Have you forgotten this?”
His mouth attacked mine and I, I whimpered because I wanted nothing more.
His kiss was everything I remembered, topped with anger and depraved need; he tore into my mouth for the audacity that I had to want to forget him – the man who’d turned my heart to dust. I should be trying to hit him over the head with my snowboard. But here I was, the addict, snorting up the powdered remains of my heart because I’d do anything for one last taste of his high.
“Have you forgotten what it was like to hold me in that sweet pussy of yours?” The hand on my stomach dove south with no concern for the clothing that was in his way. I gasped as his fingers slid into my folds, his chest rumbling against my back. “No, I’d say that some parts of you haven’t forgotten.”
“E-Emmett… someone could see.” We were only pulled off to the side of one of the green marked trails. It was only a matter of time before someone came. I moaned as his fingers expertly toyed with me. I hated how he knew just what to do to me.
“My back is to anyone coming,” he said as he took my mouth again, his tongue punishing me for trying to dissuade him. “Have you forgotten how I make you come? Say yes and I’ll make you come so many times that you won’t even be able to walk down this goddamn mountain your legs will be so numb.”
Even if I had, I was going to remember again very soon the way he tugged on my clit.
“Emmett…” I moaned, hips arching against his hand. I should hate him for this. I should hate him for a lot of things. I didn’t.
“Have you forgotten, sunshine?” He whispered in my ear. “Have you forgotten anything about me?”
<
br /> “N-no.” His mouth swallowed my scream as his fingers took me over the edge.
“You don’t get to forget me, sunshine. You don’t ever get to forget me.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
My brain came back together like snowflakes falling on the ground. Two skiers flew past us, but their eyes were focused on the trail ahead. Still, my breath caught. The release was too much. It broke the dam inside of me.
“Have you forgotten, Emmett?” My voice gained strength – and volume – with every word. Emotions. All of them. Poured out of me like snow from the heavens. “Have you forgotten anything about me? Have you forgotten that I love you?” His solid body tensed behind me.
Yes, I did realize how ridiculous this looked. I was yelling at the man who’d broken my heart less than a week ago, yet whose hand still cupped my sex, whose fingers had just been knuckle-deep inside of me, and whom I still loved.
“Have you forgotten that you were the one to leave me? That you were the one who’d said you’d gotten everything that you wanted.” I tried not to whimper when his hand left me, slipping up to my stomach to hold my waist.
“Ally…” Tortured. Pleading.
I gave him no mercy, pulling out of his grasp and spinning around, my board moving awkwardly with me. “Or was it not enough? Am I some sort of game to you, Emmett? Maybe I should just start calling you ‘King’ since all I am is just your stupid pawn.”
Stay. Go. Every option promised more pain. So, I continued with a pitifully watery voice, “I don’t have anything else left to give you, Emmett. Or have you forgotten that I already gave you everything?”
He closed the space between us. And I let him because I was weak. I didn’t want to go. I’d rather be fighting with him than be without him any day of the week.
“No, sunshine.” His hand cupped my face. “I haven’t forgotten a single fucking thing about you – or what I said or did.”
“So then just tell me why you are doing this to me.”
Hoarse words caressed my cheek. “Because I want you and I shouldn’t. Because I need you and I shouldn’t.”
Something wasn’t right.
“What’s wrong, Emmett?” I whispered. The man had destroyed me. I’d still do anything to save him.
He swayed. “Come home with me.”
Yes. “Why?”
He groaned like there was a knife buried somewhere in him. There wasn’t – I checked.
His eyes swam in front of mine. “I need you. I just—Fuck.” He pulled away so fast I was surprised he didn’t fall over. “Forget it. I have no right—“
“I’ll come,” I insisted, reaching for him.
If it was the wrong decision, then it shouldn’t have felt so right. Maybe I was just following any chance I had for one last hit of the ecstasy that was Emmett Jameson. Or maybe I went because the pile of shards that used to be my heart quaked and trembled with an unreasonable and unjustifiable hope that this was their chance to be pieced back together again.
Every woman has her guilty pleasure. The one thing that is oh so good, yet so, so bad. Well, he was mine.
Whatever happened next, I only had myself to blame. But, it’s not like my heart could be much more damaged, right?
I don’t get nervous when I fly. But there is one moment, the brief second where the front of the plane has lifted off the tarmac but the rear is still planted where I get this pit of uncertainty in my stomach. It’s not fear; I wasn’t afraid. Just purely objective uncertainty.
What if we don’t have enough speed? What if the back is too heavy? Will we take off? Will we crash back down and burn?
I’m not an engineer by any stretch so these are all probably silly questions, but the same ball of uncertainty spun like a top the entire ride down the mountain and in the car to his house. He might have been perfectly fine snowboarding down the trail, but I still drove and he still fought himself the whole way.
The cabin in the woods appeared just as magically as the first time. I wondered if Emmett had just shown the contractor a Thomas Kinkade painting and told him to build it.
“Ally…” my hand was on the doorknob when he spun my back against it.
I couldn’t bear to hear him tell me again how he didn’t deserve me. Sorry, King, that’s my decision.
“Don’t ask me again, Emmett,” I said quietly as I opened the door and stumbled back into his house, the sweet scent of weed mixed with the dark, earthy spice of pine immediately assaulting me.
I kept moving farther inside to where I stood between the couch and the fireplace that crackled behind me. Like the more distance I put between myself and the door, meant the harder it would be for him to throw me out.
He kicked the door shut, following me – predator to prey – as though I might not be real. “Just tell me what you need.”
“You,” he growled, with eyes that flickered like a dying fire just begging to come back to life. “You’re all I want, sunshine, so bring me the dawn,” I heard before his mouth took mine.
The first touch finally had me forgetting something about him: I forgot about his words from the other day because those words were lies. I forgot that he’d said them to hurt me in some twisted attempt to protect me and save my relationship with Chance. I forgot any thought that suggested my heart would ever be whole without him in my life.
He destroyed my mouth and I, in turn, destroyed any doubt in my mind that he was anything other than my everything.
Snow clothes, cold gear, underwear… they all fell to the floor like the layers we’d tried to build between us.
“Perfect,” he growled into my neck.
Emmett’s hands were the best thing to happen to my breasts since light padding and comfortable sports bras.
And that was before his mouth got to them.
He lifted and laid me onto the pile of clothes even though there was a couch a few feet away and a bed upstairs. But this, this was raw. It was broken. It was not where it was supposed to be, but it was everything it was meant to be. Just like us.
My gasps competed with the burning fire for available soundwaves as his mouth claimed its turn at my chest. I swore the way he sucked my nipples you’d think that they got him high.
High. Hard. Same difference.
“Always ready,” he nipped my sternum as his fingers slid through my folds, “always ready for me to take…”
My hips arched against him. “A-always ready…” I moaned as two fingers entered me, “to give…”
Even if I could have said something else, I was silenced with his tongue. Moaning into his mouth, molten desire spread like lava through my body, so deep, so penetrating, my bone marrow turned to magma.
He lifted off of me, goosebumps following in the wake of his retreat. Cursing until he found them, he pulled out a condom from his discarded pants and handed it to me.
“Cover me.”
My teeth dug into my lip as I tried to focus on getting the slippery rubber out of the package. It didn’t help that it seemed like he was purposely trying to make it as difficult for me as possible, rubbing my G-spot over and over again.
My body sang only for him – loyally, reverently, and with everything it had because the only song that it knew was his national anthem.
Once I had the condom out, I pushed myself up to sit as he remained upright on his knees between my legs, his thick arousal pointing squarely in my face. I could see the blood pumping through the engorged vein; the tip leaked slightly underneath my stare.
His hiss as I gripped his hard, hot length was motivation. His curse when I wrapped my lips around his head, was my success. Now, it was his turn to sing while I sucked him hard, feeling him push all the way back against my throat, as groans and curses formed a melody out of his mouth.
His fingers in my hair, alternately gripped and massaged my head as he let me pleasure him, before he used my hair to hold me steady and pull himself from my mouth.
“Cover me, Ally.” This time, there was no ro
om to disobey.
I rolled the condom down over him, it barely reaching to the end of his shaft. Back on the floor, his mouth covering mine, I felt him rub against my entrance. Without the distraction of pleasuring him, his fingers that had never left my sex threatened to take me over the edge.
“Emmett…” I pleaded just as his mouth covered mine. His tongue filled my gasp as he slid inside of me.
“Christ, Ally…” Our bodies moved unconsciously. In and out. Like breathing.
Except not like slow, programmed breaths. We moved as though we were suffocating without it. Every thrust I pulled and he pushed, gasping for life.
He moved up and pulled my legs up to his shoulders, letting him slide deeper into my core.
“That’s it, sunshine,” he bit out, frantically slamming into me, his eyes holding mine. “Take me. Take everything.”
Just like my knuckles as they gripped into the clothes around me, I felt like my whole body had turned white with how taut every muscle was. His fingers skated down my stomach and I knew I was done for.
Every push he hit my sweet spot. Every push he teased my clit.
It was like the night of Halloween – except this time, it was his erection filling me and tearing me apart from the inside instead of just his fingers.
Like DNA, my orgasms spiraled together – a double helix of pleasure and pain, love and hate – tighter and tighter until the coil broke. And so did I.
Annihilating. Tantric. Consuming. Grounding.
“Yours.” His promise to me as his restraint broke. He drove into me, roaring as he found his release.
My legs slid off of his shoulders as he collapsed on top of me, the cracking of our breaths echoing the fire. Sweating, panting, he slid out of me and off to the side, peeling the filled condom off of his still-impressively hard cock.
It wasn’t the right order. The sex was supposed to come after the make-up. But this was us – we ran before we walked, hated before we loved, forgave before we fought. Maybe it wasn’t right, but it definitely wasn’t wrong.
Coarse fingers turned my face to his.
“I’m such as ass,” he said gratingly.
On the Edge (Winter Games Book 2) Page 31
