And fuck, if you didn’t get enough of the visual of her legs, you got breasts with deep cleavage too.
That was my thinking after six hours. I was pretty certain I’d had two bottles of wine to myself and a few cocktails. All that alcohol, and instead of forgetting what it was I wanted to forget, I remembered. I remembered it all.
Her disappointment in me because I wouldn’t sleep with her. The look of hurt on her face because she thought I didn’t want her.
At ten o’clock, I decided I’d had enough, then I saw her with two guys outside on the balcony. One had her sitting in his lap, and the other was feeding her champagne.
I was about to make my descent down the stairs and stopped in my tracks, looking at them. Abby with two meathead types who looked like the sort of idiots she’d go for last year.
“Which one of you am I going to have first?” she said out loud, giggling, then swayed so much the guy holding her had to catch her to stop her from falling off his lap. The drink spilled all over her dress, and she laughed again.
“How about both, princess? You could be our new toy,” the guy giving her the champagne said.
I balled my fists at my side. I’d had too many drinks. I was probably drunk, but I hadn’t lost my mind quite yet. No way was I going to allow her to go anywhere with either of them.
“Yes.” She nodded. “That is a very good idea. Yes, please. I just want a baby. Is that too much to ask for? The last man I spoke to about it told me no. Can you believe that? And, he’s supposed to be my best friend. He thought I was ugly and gross. Why else would he turn down sex?”
Oh my God. She spoke so loud people around passing by glanced over to her.
I made my way over to them, and she scowled at me.
The guys looked at me and recognized me straightaway.
“Give her to me now,” I said to them.
“Relax, man, we’re just having fun,” the guy who was holding her answered.
“Fun’s over. Abby, come here.” I stood my ground.
“No. Go away Gilly. I’m staying here,” she replied, shaking her head at me.
“Abby, please, come on.”
“Get lost, man. She doesn’t want to go with you,” the guy with the drink countered and was dumb enough to come at me and push me hard in my chest.
I was at least a whole foot taller than him, and they didn’t call me The Tank on the field for nothing.
I was quick with muscle and right now, I was pissed off and drunk. That equaled not in the mood to be fucked with.
I grabbed his neck so fast he didn’t quite register what was happening. He shrieked and tried to reach for my hand. I just tightened my grip on him, making him gasp. It was a loud enough message for the guy holding Abby to release her and back away.
“Gilly, you are such a drama queen,” Abby bubbled, finding the whole scenario funny.
I practically threw the guy I was holding onto the ground, and he jumped up and rushed away, fleeing as fast as his legs could carry him.
Abby started walking in the opposite direction, but I took her hand and pulled her to me.
“Come, we’re going home,” I told her.
“No, I want more drink. More rum.”
“Abby, come on.”
“No, Gilly. I’m not a chore. Leave me and go back to the blonde and redhead. Leave me alone. You spent the whole day avoiding me and talking to everyone else. Not me though.” She swayed and stumbled, and I steadied her.
“I’m sorry.” I actually meant that.
“Are you? Really?” she asked in a sarcastic tone.
“Yes.”
She looked at me like she was considering the idea. “I still want more rum.”
“There’s rum at your place.” I nodded. The last time she got drunk like this, she thought it was a good idea to dance on top of some guy’s car. Then she fell off and broke her collarbone. That was back in college. She hadn’t gotten wasted like that since.
“Yes, Gilly, great idea. There’s the Spanish rum Grandpa brought back from his vacation. Let’s go have some.”
I groaned inwardly. As a rule, I didn’t have anything that man gave me. Food nor drink. It was guaranteed to be some fucked-up shit he called the good stuff straight from the source. As if the other stuff we all had was fake. If it would get her to come with me though, I’d agree.
When we got to hers, I’d just look for something else.
“Yes, let’s have that,” I agreed with a nod.
* * *
A taxi ride from hell later, and we were at her place.
If Abby wasn’t hanging her head out the window like an Irish Setter and singing her heart out along with the radio, she was sitting in my lap straddling me with her arms around my neck like we did that all the time.
By the time we pulled up in front of her house, I had to pick her out of the car and carry her in. When I found myself stumbling, I knew the drink I’d had was taking effect on me. What I needed was sleep. Sleep it off, and then I knew tomorrow would come the dreaded Sunday morning hangover.
Abby circled her arms around me and nuzzled her face against mine.
“Have I ever told you how much I love your beard, and I love your little lip ring too. You make it look cool and sexy,” she cooed in my ear.
“Abby, you hate my lip ring. You said I looked like a pirate, and not a very good one either.”
She giggled, and I set her down as we went through the door.
“I lied, Captain Gilly.” She laughed and headed to the kitchen.
I followed her and took her hand as we walked in.
“Abby, I think you should go to bed. How about we drink tomorrow? Looks like we got the place to ourselves. We could have a breakfast party.”
She smiled and ran a hand over my chest. It was a little like how Giselle had done it, but when Abby did it, I actually felt something different.
“I heard the word ‘bed’ and thought of sex again. Silly me.” She laughed. “Got to get my mind right out of the gutter. Don’t worry, come Monday, this here girl’s heading right down to Santa Monica Boulevard to the clinic. I’m going to be a sperm bank mama. I get to pick, after all. You were so right, and who cares if they do whatever they do to me? I reckon they use a turkey base and shove it right up my ass.” She started laughing uncontrollably. “Not my ass, I mean… no, not there. The other place.”
I stared at her. This was the part where I was supposed to laugh like she was, but it wasn’t funny. The wealth of sadness in her eyes was evident.
“Abby, no.”
She pouted and stepped away from me. “Yes. I’m doing it.” She continued to the cupboard, opened it, and grabbed a bottle of rum with a Spanish flag on it. There was one of those old ships on the logo, and it looked like the good stuff indeed.
I watched her wobble around to the counter to grab two glasses from the cupboard above. She poured the rum in each of them and held out a glass to me.
“I can’t have any more, babe.” No more drinks, or else that would be me gone. I’d gone past my limit already, and I had a feeling that losing my mind with her in my present state would turn out worse than me getting a tattoo.
She frowned. “You won’t sleep with me, and you won’t drink with me. What happened to us?”
She said that as simply as if she were talking about something trivial, like I disagreed with something she’d bought.
I sighed and rolled my eyes at her.
“Abby, we need to talk about that.” We should because we hadn’t and needed to. I hated leaving anything out in the open with her, and I hated that this couldn’t have been a worst time to talk.
Her drunk out of her mind, and me on the verge of falling over.
She took the bottle and drank from it, then winced like she’d tasted something terrible. I didn’t know anyone besides her grandfather to drink rum straight up like that.
She took another swig, slammed the bottle down hard on the counter, then glowered at me.
“You…” Abby pointed and shook her head. “I’m hardly the ugliest woman you’ve ever been with. But you treat me like a leprechaun. No not that…I mean a leper. Yes that’s right. A leper with my skin falling off. There was that girl last month who followed you around like a dog. A groupie. I know you slept with her.”
I was ashamed to admit I didn’t know who she meant, because that could have been any of the sea of admirers I’d had last month. It didn’t take much for Abby to call someone ugly, and that was either because they were—which I never liked to say—or because she thought they were prettier than her.
Only God could count the amount of times she’d called Giselle ugly. She didn’t know how Victoria’s Secret decided to allow everyone through the door, and she all but boycotted Chanel when Giselle got her contract.
“Abby, you know my decision was not based on how you look.” I tried to explain.
She picked up the glass and walked around to me, once again holding it out for me to take.
“Drink it.” She shoved the glass in my chest. “Drink it! Damn it… don’t say no.”
God… what the hell was I going to do with her tonight?
I took the drink and sipped it, of course, because it was super strong. I didn’t expect anything less from Grandpa Cartwright. That man was something else. I saw him tonight drinking his heart out. The man even left with a woman more than half his age. He was in his mid-eighties and acting like he was in the prime of his life. He’d done his grieving for a whole five years when Abby’s grandmother passed, then it was like he became something else. The sugar daddy who flashed around his wealth and riches and bought authentic, unusual drinks from all around the world.
Shit, this rum was so strong it burned the back of my throat, and the little sip I had seemed to hit my mind straightaway.
“Drink more,” she ordered.
Another sip was all I had, and that was it. I was over that line and hanging on to the edge of logic.
I chuckled even though I didn’t know why I was laughing, then set the glass back on the counter. No more, no matter what she said.
“Abby, I need to go…home. It’s been a long night.”
“You said we should talk.” She frowned. “You want me to wait another day when we haven’t spoken in days?”
I didn’t know how she was managing to be so coherent, because my brain wasn’t working. It felt like mushed up peas.
“Not tonight. I can’t.”
“It’s me, isn’t it. That’s the answer.” She nodded, and her eyes filled with tears. “Just tell me. It would be easier for you to be with someone else. I’m not your type. You think I’m ugly and gross. I’m not the Victoria’s Secret model or the beautiful groupies you always have on your arm. I’m so stupid. I already knew all of that, so why would I ask you something so outrageous?”
I reached out and cupped her face. “It’s not you. Abby, you’re beautiful.”
Through the drink-filled haze of intoxication, something sparkled in her eyes and brightened her face.
“You told me that once, right before you kissed me. At least I think you kissed me.”
I widened my eyes and stared at her. She was talking about that moment over ten years ago. She was talking about it now. She nodded and placed her forefinger to her bottom lip.
“It was here and probably no more than a second, but it felt like… fire.” She nodded. “Fire. Like a jolt of fire washed over me and burned my soul.”
“Fire…” I said mindlessly.
“Fire from a one-second kiss. I’d never been kissed like that before.”
Her words seeped into me. Right into my mind and deep inside me to that part of me I didn’t realize I’d suppressed until now.
She held my gaze, looking at me with those beautiful eyes of hers. Her skin felt so soft against my hands. I took advantage of the moment and ran my finger over the edge of her jaw and loved the way she closed her eyes, savoring the touch.
When her eyes fluttered open, she reached up to my jaw and ran her fingers across my beard and over to the top of my lip.
“I’m going to kiss you, now.” She nodded. “And, just to be clear, it’s not going to be the way a friend should kiss another. I’m going to kiss you because I want you, Gilman Hawkins, the sexiest man alive.”
Even if I weren’t drunk, there would have been no fucking way I would have said no to that.
She clutched the edge of my shirt and pulled me down, but she didn’t need to. She didn’t need to move. I smoothed my hand behind her head and brought her to me as I lowered my lips to hers to claim her mouth.
When my mouth crashed down on hers, she stopped being Abby, my best friend. In that instant, she became Abby, the woman I’d seen turn into this amazing being I wanted too. Abby, the girl I’d considered being more than friends with when I was eighteen and wished like hell now I’d manned up and said something about that one-second kiss I’d called a near kiss.
It had actually happened, and fucking hell, this was happening now.
Fire was exactly what it felt like.
Fire and electricity rushing through my body and coursing through my veins.
I swept my tongue into her hot, wet mouth, tangling with her delicious tongue and angling her face so I could kiss her deeper. That was when the kiss turned hungry and she tugged at my shirt so hard the buttons popped off.
I gripped her tiny waist, relishing the feel of her in my hands, and moved with her so I could pin her against the wall. That was where I definitely lost my mind. The savage, primal need to have her consumed me and fueled my every move. We tore at each other’s clothes. My jacket came off and my shirt lay open, hanging off my shoulders. Her dress was ruffled around her waist. I trailed a line of kisses from her mouth to her neck, and the little moan that left her lips nearly made me embarrass myself right there.
She pulled back, ready to say something, but then her gaze dropped to my chest and stayed there.
I didn’t know what she was looking at until she ran her fingers over my bare skin and smiled.
I glanced down at my tattoo. She ran her fingers over the swirl of her name inked over my heart in rich black italics.
“Abby Cartwright?” she breathed. “That’s …me.”
“Yes, that is you. Abby Cartwright,” I answered. I looked to her chest too, at the ample flesh of the huge swells of her breasts held snug against her strapless bra.
No more of this resistance. Time to really step over the line. Time to see her chest too and satisfy that curiosity of mine that I knew I should be restraining.
I reached forward and snapped the little butterfly clasp open.
It unleashed her massive globes as her bra fluttered down her waist and drifted to the ground as if in slow motion.
Tight, pert, pink nipples pointed toward me, begging to be sucked. With a wicked smile, I filled my palms with her breasts and moved back to her lips deciding I would indulge in her tonight.
I absolutely fucking would.
That was my last thought, then I lost my mind at the same time as I got lost in her lips.
Tasting.
Chapter 7
Abby
* * *
I rolled onto my side, and my head felt like it was going to fall off and explode.
It didn’t help that I was…
Where was I?
I felt around the flat surface where I lay and decided it had to be the floor. Smooth and cold, so it had to be the kitchen. We had a marble floor in the kitchen. The rest of the house was floorboards.
Warmth fluttered over my stomach and a hand cupped my right breast and squeezed. That made me snap my eyes open, and I found myself looking at the light wood of the kitchen cupboard.
Yes, I was on the floor, and next to me were my clothes. Bra and panties in one pile, my dress next to it along with a shirt. A man’s shirt.
A deep groan rumbled against my back, and I turned over again finding myself cocooned by strong arms.
Very str
ong arms with huge bulging biceps attached to a torso that looked like it had been chiseled from stone. I was so lost in admiring the masterpiece of each muscle that it froze the part of my brain that should freak out because I had no memory of last night, or how I came to be with this perfect being. There was a Japanese character on his hip, then nothing until I got to his chest.
On the hard surface of his left pec were the words ‘Abby Cartwright’. That was me. My gaze ran up to see who the owner of the tattoo was, and I froze up, joining my brain. I froze right the hell up as Gilly’s handsome face seemed to loom just above me.
Gilly, fast asleep and beautiful even in his sleep.
Full beard, his face all angles and planes, the little lip ring hooped at the corner of his lip, the little scar just above his cheek from where I accidently threw a mug at him and hit him when we were kids and …
God, it was Gilly!
He was naked, and I was naked and… I couldn’t remember.
I gasped, and his eyes opened.
“Baby… what?” Funny, when he’d called me that previously, it seemed so commonplace. Today it felt different.
He closed his eyes again, but I shook him to wake him up.
“Gilly, get up.”
He scowled at me, opened his eyes again, and his gaze landed on my naked breasts, which I just realized were naked. I reached for my dress and covered myself.
“Abby, what the fuck?” He bolted upright, and his mouth dropped.
This was possibly the most insane thing that had ever happened to us, but when my eyes landed on his massive cock, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything even though I knew I shouldn’t be looking, and that somehow this was my fault.
He freaked when he saw me looking and gawking at him and grabbed his shirt.
He grabbed his shirt and stood up, covering himself with it while he looked around for his pants.
Pregnancy Scandal: Bad Boy Bachelors of Orange County BK 2 Page 5
