by Brooks, Tori
Then Kenny settled himself back in place again, his body a comfortable weight on hers and her legs cradling his hips to hold him close. Her lips found his and he teased hers apart immediately, letting her tongue dance alongside his. One hand rested on her hip, holding her close. His other hand slide between her legs and spread her lips just slightly.
Instead of thrusting himself into her as she expected, braced for, Kenny let the length of his manhood glide along her slick channel, teasing her and stimulating her clit. It was driving Paige wild and she dug her nails into his back to encourage more. He laughed and did it again, and again. Paige broke off the kiss, arching her body and pressing against him. She might scream at any moment.
Kenny plunged inside of her without warning and Paige clung to him tightly in response, her breath catching in her lungs. Pulling away, he thrust in deeper, now holding her hips in place with both hands. Holding her hips still as she arched again. There were so many sensations, Paige was lost, torn; she didn’t know what to do. She writhed beneath him as he fucked her. And she realized that was exactly what it was. Kenny may love her, but this wasn’t making love, it was something more primal. He didn’t dress it up, disguise it, or pretend it was anything else. He knew what he was doing, and he wasn’t holding anything back.
She loved it, the feelings, but didn’t know what to do with it.
Kenny’s heavy breathing near her ear got her attention. He paused, just briefly, and kissed the cover of her eye before returning his lips to her ear. “Come for me, baby,” he prompted in a low voice.
Paige tried to respond, but it was only a gasp.
“Come for me,” Kenny repeated and drove into her again. Paige found her focus in Kenny’s words. The bubble of sensations popped and she cried out in pure ecstasy. Kenny drove into her again and she tightened reflexively, eliciting a similar cry of pleasure from him.
He caught himself from collapsing completely on her, although she wouldn’t have minded. Wrapping her arms around him tighter, Paige pulled him closer and buried her face in his neck.
This was what she wanted, she decided. A man who moved his world for her without asking anything in return. Kenny didn’t make any demands on her, he waited for her to extend every invitation. And she was glad she did. He excelled at everything.
Perfect for her. Plus he was rich, famous, in the center of media and public attention –and she would be too. He wasn’t the eye candy Alastair was, but Kenny wasn’t bad. And he wasn’t so vain that he cared that Paige would turn heads. He didn’t even care that she was taller when she wore heels.
Kenny had near perfect control of his band, which made Paige think he’d probably be a great father. If he could handle Jess and Dev, a toddler shouldn’t be a problem. But his controlling nature might be when it came to her. She had to get him to agree she could handle things on her own, despite his recent tendency to repeatedly come to her rescue.
“You’re thinking pretty hard for someone who should be basking in the afterglow,” Kenny chided her gently. He followed it up with a soft kiss and Paige surrendered to him, but it ended too quickly. Damn. He wanted answers.
“Just thinking you’re perfect,” she answered with a smile and drew his lips back to hers. Thankfully, he let it slide and Paige focused on just the two of them and this moment. Let the future wait.
○ ○ ○
Kenny was happy to let Paige distract him, after all she had a nice way of doing it. Something was bothering her. It had to be something serious, in her mind at least, to distract her when nothing in the world should have been able to. And she almost sabotaged this moment by insisting he was going to be angry with her. So twice now something was intruding on their intimate seclusion.
Given the trouble he’d seen her through, that there was something new she was sure he’d be angry about made Kenny slightly apprehensive. Paige didn’t seem capable of small problems. He doubted she’d ever bother him with anything as trivial as her shoes not being precisely the right color for her new dress, or not enough room in her walk in closet for her summer wardrobe.
Actually, Kenny realized, Paige was going to be expensive. He lived simply: buying new clothes when their stylist told him to, and sticking to jeans and T-shirts when not specifically expected to dress otherwise. Most of his jeans had faded knees or outright holes worn in them. Kenny had four pairs of sneakers, and he felt that was being excessive.
Paige would have different expectations of him. No more living over Flynn’s garage. She probably wouldn’t like his truck either.
“Now who’s mind is wandering?” Paige smiled with a playful twinkle in her eyes.
She wasn’t trying to distract him anymore. Kenny sighed. He was the one who studied psychology. He was the one who had years of practice handling Jess, and worse, Dev. Yet she clearly expected to be the one to handle him. As long as he knew where he stood. If it wasn’t serious, he’d let it go.
With that decision made, Kenny kissed her quickly and sat up.
“All right. Tell me whatever it was that you wanted to earlier,” he prompted.
She reached across the aisle for her dress, hesitated and eyed him briefly, and chose the champagne instead. Kenny reached over to pick up the glasses and held them while she poured. So whatever it was, Paige decided she stood a better chance of sneaking it past him nude and with a celebratory glass of champagne. Interesting.
Kenny smiled and watched her replace the champagne in the basket. The graceful way she slid the bottle back into place barely disturbed the ice now floating in the chilled water. It drew his attention to the fog droplets on the window. As if Jeeves had any doubts what ‘Miss Hart’ was up to. He wondered if Hale was really here or if it was a pretext to move their dinner to somewhere more intimate. He didn’t care, Kenny decided.
“What shall we drink to?” Paige asked when she settled back beside Kenny.
“Considering I have you in my arms, in a way I wasn’t expecting, my first thought is to drink to Hale,” Kenny said.
Paige winced. “Only because you won’t have to answer to my mother later.”
Maybe Hale really was here. Why? Kenny wondered. “I was under the impression he was going to let Alastair handle it himself. Then why is he here tattling on you behind his son’s back?”
Paige uncrossed then recrossed her legs the other direction to allow her to snuggle closer to Kenny. It also had the effect of making her face slightly away from him, something he doubted was accidental. She toyed with her glass and he watched her long, graceful fingers in the nervous gesture.
“I spoke with Alastair.”
“Spoke with?”
“All right, I met with him. We had lunch.”
Kenny didn’t like it, but it was done –for better or worse. Worse he suspected. It was time to be supportive and deal with the fallout, again. He hoped this didn’t become a habit.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess it didn’t go well.”
“Don’t be a cynic.”
“His daddy’s here to tell on you. Is that cynical?”
Paige turned in place to give him a look he couldn’t quite read. Kenny sighed.
“I’m sorry. Tell me how it went. Please.”
“I thought it was okay actually.”
“Really?” Kenny heard the sincerity in her voice, but having met Alastair a few times now, he couldn’t see how it could have gone well.
“Yes! He seemed to understand. I didn’t expect Hale to show up just before you did. Jeeves answered and then came to warn me.” Surprise, betrayal, even maybe tears were evident in her voice.
Kenny leaned forward and set his champagne flute back on the tray on the opposite seat. He relieved Paige of hers and it joined his. Trying not to jostle her overly, he pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her protectively.
“I’m sorry, honey.” Kenny knew Paige had reasons for the abortion that went well beyond simple ambition for her title. She wasn’t ready. Alastair wasn’t ready.
They weren’t a couple anymore and a baby would make things difficult.
Alastair’s father was part of the reason she refused to consider him as a serious suitor, and one of the main reasons Paige didn’t want to have a child with Alastair. She refused to be tied to Hale in any way. Kenny suspected she was diplomatic about the handling of every point except for Hale, and chose to simply leave that point out when pitching her reasoning to Alastair.
Stroking her dark waves as she cried on his shoulder, Kenny let his mind continue considering the problem. So Alastair seemed to accept her explanation. Then he went home and told Hale, who didn’t accept it. Kenny wasn’t sure what he could do about that. What Hale told Gladys was out of his control. How Gladys reacted was also out of his control. There was nothing to do but await the consequences, and deal with them when they came. And comfort Paige.
Chapter Nine
After a month of theoretically jumping through hoops, Dev stopped to re-evaluate the plan. James’s reasoning sounded good on the surface, women were women and Lindsay was biologically a woman. Not to mention Ruby was an unknown influence that probably made Lindsay react more like a normal woman and less like Dev was used to.
All the same, emails and flowers felt too easy and were clearly ineffective. It was normal. It might work on one of James’s exes, but not on Lindsay.
He’d screwed up again, and wasted a month trying to fix things the wrong way. Dev thought back to his big snafus of the past.
In Chicago, Dev realized he hadn’t been listening to Lindsay about her needs. All the little things He’d been doing to show her how much he loved her were essentially worthless. He spent a small fortune over two years with less impact than letting her blow him would have been. Dev shook his head again at the revelation. If nothing else it showed him the value of paying attention.
Since then, he considered several times that he should have just married her, but he wasn’t ready. Dev stopped. He wasn’t, but maybe she was. Lindsay wasn’t pushing him on the subject. Did she hint and he’d missed it? No, they’d talked about it, but nothing specific. She mentioned repeatedly how much she hated being separated from him ... there it was.
They weren’t married, and they weren’t living together. She graduated, but nothing changed. A few weekends or a week here and there, but not enough real time together. Dev was still being pulled between the band, modeling, and school, but Lindsay had a lot more free time. She was taking a few classes to keep herself from going crazy, but mostly because he pushed her to.
He didn’t learn anything after all.
Dev picked up his phone and called James.
“Did you even consider the time before you called?” James answered.
“No.” Dev glanced at the time on his computer monitor, it was one-thirty in the morning. “You’re trying to tell me you were asleep?”
“No, but I was busy.”
“And you answered for me? Nice of you.” Dev grinned. He had no idea who James was seeing, only that James was taking unusual measures to keep the information from him. That James cared this time when he didn’t in the past piqued Dev’s curiosity, but only slightly. He had his own problems at the moment.
“Don’t get full of yourself. I’ve been worried. Problem?”
“Just came to the realization that this ‘wait her out’ approach isn’t working, and that I screwed up and missed something big.”
“What?”
Dev hesitated, he never told James about Chicago, or specifics about Lindsay’s history.
“High points,” James prompted.
“Long story short, she graduated and I left her sitting on her own in Seattle when I should have either brought her out to Boston or just married her. At least gotten engaged.”
“You said you weren’t ready.”
“I’m not, but I think she might be. At least put it on the table. She’s alone out there. I’m busy, she’s not.”
“And now she’s listening to the wrong people, in your opinion, and you think this is the solution,” James said. Dev heard the disapproval in his voice and ignored it.
“Listen, it was always assumed, it was only a matter of timing. I left her hanging. Now she’s doing the same whether she means to or not.”
“From what I understand, Lindsay does little on accident.”
“True. So I need a ring, then I’m heading west. Where do I get a ring?”
“I haven’t done that one before,” James admitted. “I’m in New York. I’ll meet you at Tiffany’s at ten. We’ll figure it out. Do you know her size?”
“I have it here somewhere. What are you doing in New York?” Dev asked, wondering if James would actually tell him.
“Somewhere between ‘you know’ and ‘none of your business.’ See you in the morning.”
Dev met James at Tiffany’s & Co. in New York City at ten the next morning, and found nothing he liked in the way of engagement rings. Everything was close, but just wasn’t Lindsay. James shook his head and motioned for a middle-aged sales woman with a predatory way about her to join them. Dev almost ran for it.
“He needs an engagement ring, and he’s particular,” James told the woman, Liza by her name tag.
Liza took one look at Dev and escorted them both into another room. She offered them drinks, and Dev appreciated the effort she made to calm him down. She probably just didn’t want him to have a meltdown in the middle of her jewelry store, but it was nice of her anyway.
After what seemed like hours of questions, Liza showed Dev a computer model of a ring that he thought Lindsay would like. He glanced at the figure at the bottom that included the special order price and an up-charge for expediting the job. She’d better like it. Dev signed off on it
“It’s one of a kind, Dev,” James said, patting him on the back. “Women love that kind of thing.”
As Dev sat on the plane a few days later, playing nervously with the ring box in his hand, James’s words echoed in his mind. He hoped and prayed he was doing the right thing.
He loved Lindsay, and if this was what it took to get her back, he wouldn’t bat an eye. As long as it worked. Dev worried it was a patch though. Why hadn’t he invited Lindsay to Boston? He always suspected she’d hate it there, but why? He made friends, there was no reason not to think she would too.
He caught up with the rest of his class and would get his Bachelor’s on time. He would have gone through the graduation ceremony with them if he wasn’t cutting out early to fly across the country to make up with his girlfriend. His professors got a kick out of that. Whatever. Dev didn’t care about the ceremony and made arrangements for the work, so it was fine. Dev always planned on grad school. He got accepted, but he didn’t have to go.
It was all up to Lindsay.
○ ○ ○
“Lin, will you please come out and talk to me?” Dev asked. He didn’t want to have this conversation through her bedroom door. Becky walked by on her way downstairs, clearly stifling a giggle. He ignored her. Bryan stood a few feet farther down the hall and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was probably bored. Dev ignored him too.
“Please?” Dev tried again, and again received no answer. He knew she was in there. She ran upstairs and slammed the door when Becky let him in. Dev was familiar with the roofline and knew she couldn’t have climbed out her window to escape him. He had her trapped, although he wasn’t sure that was a good thing. She was a captive audience, but likely to be in a bad mood now.
He leaned against the wall and knocked softly. No answer. At least she didn’t have her TV on. She was listening even if she wasn’t answering.
“I didn’t sleep with Erika,” Dev said. He listened for any reaction.
“How can you not believe that?” Dev sighed at the silence that answered. “Lin, how can you know me and not know that?”
“Dev, just go away. It’s over,” Lindsay yelled back through the door.
That wasn’t the answer he was looking for.
“It’
s not,” Dev told her and slid down the wall and sat on the floor by her door. “This, what you’re doing, I suppose I get it. You believe it, what Ruby convinced you I did. In retrospect that stupid marketing idea of Kenny and Alec and Mark’s was a bad idea. It’s over now. It has been since you left. The video went too far. I wasn’t paying enough attention, baby, and I’m sorry. I had it re-cut and toned down. Better late than never. I accept Ruby and Olly believe whatever they told you, but I haven’t slept with Erika.
“I’m sorry this hurt you. It’s frustrated me but it made me stop and think about a lot of things. It showed me my plan to wait to marry you might have been equally ill-conceived.
“Baby, I didn’t think you’d be happy in Boston, so I never asked you to join me. I didn’t talk to you about it, and I should have. I just knew you and made an assumption. But I’m graduating, I have my bachelor’s. I was going to go on to grad school, but you’re more important.” Dev took a breath, he was babbling.
“Lin, baby, will you open the door. Please?”
“No.”
“Devin?”
Dev looked up to see Jack towering above him. He didn’t hear Lindsay’s father come up the stairs.
“Come on, I’d like a word. Give her a minute to have a bathroom break and think over what you’ve said so far. I’m sure Becky and Bryan can keep her from running off.” Jack turned and walked toward the stairs, no doubt with the expectation Dev would follow.
Dev looked at the ring box in his hand and considered leaving it at Lindsay’s door. He stood and took it with him, following Jack to his wife’s study.
“Close the door,” Jack said when Dev walked in. Dev paused, then nodded and closed the door.
He always felt a little odd in Sabrina’s study. The books were all about teen issues, usually focusing on sex. Lindsay’s mother made Dev nervous. He suspected it was because Lindsay was constantly engaged in all-out psychological warfare with her and dealing with Sabrina was akin to fraternizing with the enemy. He didn’t see Jack as the enemy. In fact, Jack was one of his lawyers and Dev viewed him as an ally, maybe even a friend. The study was enemy territory though.
