by Lauren Dane
This is what she brought to him. This is what she was to him. Family. He could do this. They could do this.
He put his guitar aside and took her hand, pulling her to the couch. She settled at the far end and snatched her hand back and he simply scooted over and hemmed her in.
He took her hand back, holding it firm with both of his. “We need to talk, English, and you’re going to listen to me.”
She sniffed and, God help him, his cock got hard.
“So you know, as you’ve seen, I have sort of a crazy life. It’s so chaotic outside, I’ve built a safe space for myself here in Seattle. My family, my few places, they’re what I know and what I can trust. You saw the paparazzi when we were in Miami and even up in Canada. The people camped at my driveway. I just get exposed and it makes me feel helpless.”
She looked up at him at long last.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my father. Despite the fact that I did hurt you all, I never wanted it to come out like that. I wanted to tell you. I did. I waited for the right time, but there’s not really a right time for it. I can’t lie, I could have a few times but I didn’t want to ruin things. I never wanted to hurt you and your family.”
He sighed. “I know. I’m an asshole, English. I’m trying to tell this and then you go and apologize and make me feel even worse. You should have told me, if for no other reason than to share what had to be a heavy weight all these months. But my reaction was stupid. It was stupid because I love your voice and I was knocked back on my heels that I didn’t know. And then it just blew up into a clusterfuck of epic proportions with Larry. I just flat overreacted when I should have stopped to work it out with you.”
“I’m glad we can be friends.”
He snorted, leaning in to kiss her hard. When he broke the kiss, she was short of breath and her eyes had gone dreamy. All very good signs this was on the right track.
“Friends? Fuck that. Gillian, I love you. You love me. Look, last night I realized some stuff. The big one was that all my anxiety about you holding back was really my own shit. I was holding you to a standard you couldn’t possibly meet. I wanted you to be more at ease with people who’ve had, some of us, a lifetime to know each other. It was something you could never achieve and I set it up that way just to keep that bit of distance. But I blamed it on you because I’m a coward and I couldn’t just admit I was scared to leave my comfort zone.”
“My father is a murderer. He killed a girl just barely older than Miles. He sold drugs. He used them. He was a petty thief and a thug for money launderers and betting houses. He beat my mother and she let him come back over and over until I was about eight and he just never came round anymore. My mother was a drunk and a whore. My sister was a drunk and a whore. This is going to come out in the press, Adrian. I thought they’d leave me alone because I’m not exciting. But that’s not the case. They’ll hurt you and your family and they’ll hurt Miles. I can’t expose him to that. Or you.”
“I don’t care what he was or who he is. I don’t. You aren’t him or your mother. You’re the mother to my son. The other half of my heart. You’re my lid, English. I spoke with Jeremy this morning. I had to share some stuff with him, so I apologize for not getting your permission. But his suggestion was to do an interview so you can talk about it on your terms. We can control the spin and remove that from the media’s hands. We can make this work, damn it. I’m not going to let you go.”
“I did write a score for a movie, but I would never use your name to promote it or sell it. I tried to tell you last night but it just kept getting worse.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand and he knew she was still reeling to do such an uncouth thing.
“I know. Todd had a little word with the filmmaker last night. He won’t be pulling that shit anymore. But I would like to see it. Just because I love your music and your creativity. The singing thing, I just handled it all wrong. Christ, last night was supposed to be wonderful and it all went so terribly wrong.”
“It won’t be the last time, Adrian. Things are bound to happen like that. You’re a celebrity. They want to get a rise out of you. Want to hurt you for sport. If it’s not this, it’ll be something else.”
“Yes, and I know this. I should have known it last night. This happened to me earlier this year. Only it was a piece on Erin and her two love slaves as the article termed them. The piece suggested Alexander should be taken away from her and her sex grotto.”
Any doubts he might have had about her were gone when he saw the devastation on her face. On Erin’s behalf.
“Yeah. It sucked. But we stuck together and it’s fine.”
“I can fight with you all the time. Really, it’s rather like foreplay for us, I think. But I can’t do what we did last night. I can’t. If that’s what it’s going to be like, I really must say right now that we can’t see each other anymore.”
He went to his knees before her. “I love you. I want us to be together and married and as a family. Last night was a big wake-up call for me. The biggest ever. We turn to each other, first and always. That’s my pledge to you.” He held out a hand. “Pinky swear.”
She eyed his hand and then his face again, narrowing her gaze. He wiggled his hand again and she sighed. “You’re very bad for my constitution. I find myself breaking all sorts of personal Gillian Forrester rules for you.”
“From you, this is a great declaration of love.”
“Hm.”
“There she is.”
She sighed. “Really, if you’re a beast and you call me to tell me mean things again, I will carve your bits off with a rusty spoon I’ve sharpened against the pavement.”
He was the best thing as he knelt there. Earnest and beautiful. Loving. He wanted to make this work and she thought they might just do it if she could let him in more and he could expand his life to include hers.
“Take a risk on me and I swear I’ll spend the rest of my days making you smile.”
She grasped his pinky with hers and crooked it.
“I love you, Mister Brown. So much I won’t even tell Jules you brought traitor coffee and pastry into my house.”
He grinned. “That is love, English. Truth be told, I figured you might have talked with her about what happened and I’d get chased out. I saw how quick she can get over that counter. She’d be deadly with a knife.”
“Yes, well. It might be safe if you let me handle her and Mary for a while. Though they both urged me to try to make things up with you. Mary told me I loved you.”
“And she was right.”
“Yeah, she was.”
“If Miles wasn’t here—” He looked side to side and she couldn’t stop smiling.
“But he is! Stop it. None of that for hours. But when I get my hands on you tonight, I’m taking all my feminine pique out on your back and those arms of yours.”
His grin was wicked. “Promise?”
“Yes.”
It was nearly midnight before they found themselves alone. She’d gone off to shower and he’d hung out with Miles until the boy finally dropped off to sleep midsentence.
A lot like his mum in so many ways. Miles had seemed quiet and shy at first, but by that point he chattered and teased, and it made Adrian proud to be trusted.
Trust.
He moved to her, needing to reconnect after their fight. Needing the make-up sex portion of the program, not just for the physical release, but for the emotional connection as well.
There was a reason make-up sex existed.
He had to pause to catch his breath when he turned the corner from her room into her bathroom and found her, one leg on a stool, applying lotion. She wore the silky robe he’d given her for Christmas, the tie open at the waist, her bare skin just beneath gleaming from the heat of the shower she’d taken and the lotion she’d applied.
She looked up, catching his gaze. “Mister Brown, that look you’re wearing might scare off a lesser woman.” One corner of her mouth lifted and she put the lotio
n aside before moving to him at last. “Good thing I’m not a lesser woman.”
“Much to my delight.”
He danced her back to the bed and dropped on it to get out of his clothes and turn back to where she’d knelt on the bed, naked now and waiting for him.
“Hot damn.”
“Well said.” She held a hand out. “I need you.” And she did. So very much.
Getting on the bed, he leaned in close to take a deep breath of her and then groaned. Each time he did that she understood what it meant to be cherished and loved. To be desired by a man who touched her with sometimes rough hands, but never intended to harm.
His hands on her kept them both anchored. To each other. To this moment. This would heal that last bit of the rift left between them. The heat they made together would make it all right again. They’d fight again, she knew it, and it was part of their energy as a couple. And so they’d fuck again and again, laugh as well.
“I’m going to use a blindfold on you next time. But for tonight I want to look into your eyes when my cock is buried deep in your pussy. So you know who’s bringing you your pleasure.”
A poke on her shoulder and she let herself tumble back to the bed as he followed her quickly. The teasing look had gone, replaced with stark, raw need.
She slid her hands down her belly and back up, taking the weight of her breasts, idly flicking her thumbs across her nipples just to watch him swallow hard a few times.
“Hold them for me.” He bent his head to her, licking and then using the edge of his teeth over her nipples as she held them for him.
Her breath gusted from her lungs when he took her hands, banding her wrists in his grip and positioning her arms above her head.
“Yes, that sound.” He licked the hollow of her throat and she made it for him again.
He held her bound in place as he spent long minutes kissing her. Lips and mouth. Jaw. Neck. It made her faint that he wanted her so much and yet took such exquisite time to taste her.
But his free hand shook a little. She knew he needed this as much as she did.
When the fingers of that hand brushed over her mound, she spread her thighs, rolling her hips. “Please.”
He hissed as he spread her open and drew a fingertip from her gate up and around her clit. “You’re so wet and hot. I love that your cunt is this way because of me. I love that here it’s just you and me, Gillian and Adrian, and you are the finest thing I’ve ever seen.”
He removed his hand and she gasped and then moaned when he licked his fingers and then kissed her. That taste, her pussy mixed with his taste, the way he changed her even at that most basic level, knocked her utterly off balance until she nearly spun with it.
“Please what?” he asked into her mouth.
“Put your cock in me and fuck me. Come inside me. I want you.”
He rolled and was on her so she wrapped her thighs around his waist to keep him from going anywhere. And then he was pushing in. She should have been embarrassed at how wet she was, but there was none of that between them.
“Oh god, English, you’re so good.” He pressed all the way home and paused.
She writhed and he hissed.
“More!”
“I’m not going to last very long if you keep that up. I want to rut on you. Mark you. I’m trying to take this slow.”
Oh. My. She shivered at his words.
She tightened her legs around his waist to draw him in deeper. “I don’t want slow.”
He let go of her wrists and grabbed the edge of the bed for purchase and, true to his words, let go of that control and began to fuck her in earnest. Not slow. Not gentle. And yet reverent. The tenderness even in such a raw moment brought emotion to her throat.
She scored her nails down his shoulders the way she knew he liked, the way she liked to mark him.
“Yes. Fuck yes.”
He delivered a series of bites and sucks across her chest, leaving a love bite on the side of one breast. He moved on her, in her, like a man barely leashed.
She reached down between them and fingered her clit. He whispered something close to a curse and his speed picked up. This loss of control, this frenetic pace, the intensity of his thrusts as he fucked into her body made her swoon.
That he knew it, understood it and loved it as much as she did, was a gift she’d never cease to be thankful for. Even when he was a prat.
So close . . .
“I want to feel your juicy pussy grip me when you come. Do it,” he whispered, his voice taut.
It was the hard nip to her left nipple that tipped her headlong into orgasm. She arched and rolled her hips over and over to meet his thrusts as he also drew close to climax.
Her body clamped down, inner muscles gripping him so hard that even without the way she writhed underneath him as she came around his cock, he’d have gone over. He came so fucking hard his head hurt.
Gaze locked with hers, with this woman he’d found in a completely unexpected way, he came home at last.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I mostly have this tracklist on shuffle as I work:
“Daydreamer”—Adele
“Melt My Heart to Stone”—Adele
“Hometown Glory”—Adele (this one is Gillian’s song)
The Goldberg Variations—Bach
“Is There a Ghost”—Band of Horses
Sonata no. 8 in C Minor for Piano, op. 13, “Pathétique”: II. Adagio cantabilonata—Beethoven
“Ain’t Nobody”—Chaka Khan
“I’m Every Woman”—Chaka Khan
“Dog Days are Over”—Florence + The Machine
“I’m Not Calling You a Liar”—Florence + The Machine
“King of the Rodeo”—Kings of Leon
“The Face”—Kings of Leon
“This Could Be the End”—Kings of Leon
“Pyro”—Kings of Leon
“Revelry”—Kings of Leon
“Blue in Green”—Miles Davis
“Starf*ckers, Inc.”—Nine Inch Nails
“Long Snake Moan”—PJ Harvey
“Yuri G”—PJ Harvey
“Is This Desire”—PJ Harvey
“Corduroy”—Pearl Jam
“Go with the Flow”—Queens of the Stone Age
Piano Concerto no. 3 in D Minor, op. 30: I. Allegro ma non tanto—Rachmaninoff
“Creep”—Radiohead
“Soul Survivor”—The Rolling Stones
“The Weary Kind”—Ryan Bingham
“Depression”—Ryan Bingham
“Country Road”—Ryan Bingham
“Wishing Well”—Ryan Bingham
“Burn My Shadow”—UNKLE
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
AUTHOR’S NOTE
