by Payne, Lyla
Chapter Twenty
Quinn
She waited, beautiful and glowing with the surety of her feelings, but the response she wanted choked off long before it reached my tongue.
The fact that Emilie had admitted her feelings—after everything I’d said or done—scared the shit out of me. It changed nothing, in that I had less to offer than ever before, and she deserved everything. But with her pliant little body on my lap, it grew harder to remember why she should go away.
The fact that she hadn’t last night confounded me. Her face when I woke up this morning, gorgeous and determined, had been my undoing.
She’d stayed. After everything.
Emilie’s expectant expression dropped away at my prolonged silence, disappointment quickly hidden. I hated myself more than ever, tried to get the words out again but couldn’t. They were stuck.
Maybe they weren’t there. I’d never spoken them aloud.
I cupped my hands against her cheeks and pulled her lips back to mine, devouring the taste of blueberries and toothpaste, coffee and sunshine, while the chemistry between us worked its magic. Her silky hair dripped between my fingers like water. I’d never wanted a girl the way I wanted her, my body aching with need after a simple kiss and the feel of her heat against me.
Her arms went around my neck, moving her head to allow me the freer access I desired, but when my hands went to tug her tank top over her head she pulled back.
“Quinn, I…” She bit her lip, flushed and battling her own desire.
“You started out as a player—a very beautiful and intriguing player—in Sebastian’s game, Emilie. But I lied at the house the other day. Everything that happened between us was true after the circumstances of our meeting.” Something occurred to me. “And Toby’s bailing on the theme party.”
She sucked in a breath. “You hurt him so you could take me to the party?”
“What? No!” Guilt refused to let me outright lie, though. Even if I couldn’t admit how I felt about her, I couldn’t leave half-truths in between us. “Well, Sebastian hurt him for interfering. I wanted to hurt him because he’s half in love with you.”
“And that bothers you why?”
In that moment I saw my out. I knew how to make her see that she only thought she wanted to hear that I loved her, too. “I tried to get you out of the game. That’s where I went after the party, when I said I had to get condoms.”
“I knew that was a lie. No way Quinn Rowland goes anywhere without condoms.”
“Guilty. But Sebastian refused to let you—or me—off the hook. Because he’s blackmailing me with some compromising photographs in order to stay close once my father turns Rowland over to me.” I watched her, waiting for the disgust and the inevitable exit.
“I know, I saw the pictures.”
Horror squeezed my lungs. Telling her about them in order to scare her away was one thing, but thinking about her seeing me like that made me want to disappear.
“How?” I wheezed out.
“Sebastian. I went to him yesterday, looking for you. He was very forthcoming about all of his…feelings.”
Shame turned to protective fury in a split second and my fingers gripped her hips. “What did he do to you?”
“Do? Nothing. He made some rather graphic remarks about the particular taste and smell of my nether regions, tossed around some racial slurs, and showed me what he’s using to keep you in line.” She smiled and shrugged. “I’m not as innocent as you seem to think, Quinn. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before.”
I looked away, too ashamed to meet the love in her dark eyes, but her soft hands on my cheeks forced me. “It hurt seeing you that way. Not because it was shocking. Because I could feel your pain.”
My arms tugged her tight against me. With my nose in her neck I breathed deep, memorizing the summery perfume and the way her pulse pounded against my skin. She knew it all and she’d come, anyway. I’d pushed her away, humiliated her on purpose, yet she’d stayed.
She’d stayed.
We held each other for several minutes before she squirmed loose and stood, straightening her shorts when I all wanted to do was slide them off of her, take my time this go around, maybe spend the next year naked in bed.
“Did you really love her? Alexandria? Is that how this whole thing started—as some kind of twisted way to get over her?”
“It started as a way to get back at her. We had an understanding more than a relationship—that our stars would rise faster if they were linked, and that two people as compatible on paper as the two of us should make it happen—but I didn’t love her. The fact that she didn’t love me, either, burned my pride more than anything.” My eyes raked up Emilie’s body, enjoying the view and the quickening of her breath, the desire I could smell from two feet away. I locked on her gaze. “I’ve never loved anyone.”
It was the truth. Until now. Then again, how could I know that what I felt for Emilie was love if I’d never felt it? Maybe it was only an extreme attraction coupled with a girl who refused to give up and walk away no matter what.
“The question is, what are we going to do about your father?”
“What do you mean? It’s over. He’s giving Rowland to Rick.” Saying it aloud squeezed my gut all over again, dragged down my uplifted mood.
“Quinn. I watched you play tennis from the time you entered your first junior tournament at fourteen. Do you know what I loved about watching you?”
“Besides the changeovers when I took off my shirt?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, besides that. You never gave up. You could be down two sets to love, serving like shit, and out of your league. But goddamn it, those fans were going to get the match they came to see. No rolling over. No feeling sorry for yourself.” Emilie crossed her arms in front of her chest, pushing up her boobs and distracting me briefly from her words. “So why should your post-tennis life be any different?”
“What are you saying?” I shook my head, trying to focus. I never dreamed a girl could make me want her so badly without touching me.
“I’m saying if you want your father’s company, then it’s not too late. The match isn’t over until he’s in his grave, which means you’ve got years to convince him you’re an asset. Figure out how to do it.”
“Come here.” I reached out for her and indecision flickered in her gaze.
Emilie had confessed her love but now she stood, hesitant. I knew in my bones it was my inability to return her sentiments. That her suspecting how I felt and my saying it were two different things. My fear would make me lose her.
“Quinn, I just threw myself at you. Told you I love you. You didn’t say anything back and maybe you’re not ready, but…I can’t put myself out there without hearing it from you. And I want to.” Her eyes fell to my mouth and breath caught in my chest. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that I want you, but it can’t be all there is. Not for me.”
“I understand.” The pause that grew like a mushroom in the spring grass infected the warmth between us. She waited for my confession. It wouldn’t come. “Do you have any brilliant ideas about how I could win my father’s approval?”
“We can come up with something.”
The determined set to her jaw made me want to kiss her all over until it melted away. Emilie shouldn’t worry about any of this. “And what should we do in the meantime, I wonder?”
“Quinn, you have a one-track mind.”
“It’s a new development.”
The smile that lit her face made the small admission, ripped loose from the inside of my heart, worth it.
“I have an idea.”
“About wasting time or my father?”
“How long has it been since you’ve been out of this cottage?”
“That depends. What day is it?”
“It disturbs me that you’re not kidding. It’s May twenty-third.”
Oops. The French Open started in three days. No wonder Sebastian’s texts were getting increasingly thre
atening. “Then it’s been…a long time.”
“I assume you have a tennis court or seven on the grounds?”
The sparkle in her eyes brought an immediate smile to my face. “You assume correctly. Except it’s only four.”
“How about you teach me a thing or two?”
The flirtatious challenge was too much to resist. I stood up and grabbed Emilie’s face with both hands, pulling her against me and crushing her sweet mouth under mine. Her lips parted without prodding, her willing tongue exploring my lips and tangling with mine until I couldn’t breathe.
Our bodies pressed together, her hands found my hair and gave it a gentle yank. I think I growled a little and pushed harder against her hips, my tongue plundering her mouth and wishing it could be everywhere inside her at once.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew we should stop. Emilie had opened her heart to me and I hadn’t had the courage to respond. I didn’t deserve to have her body and her heart and give her so little in return. Then her hands moved lower, sliding down my chest with gentle pressure and dipping lower until she held my hard length in her palm. I forgot everything but making the most of every moment we had left.
The bed was ten feet away but that was too far. I’d thought minutes ago that I wanted to take her slow the next time, relish every single bit of her for as long as possible, but now I didn’t. I just wanted her.
An impatient groan escaped and she dropped to her knees, tugging my shorts down as she went. Her lips went around me, tongue sliding and teasing until my knees buckled. “Jesus.”
I braced myself on the table, shoving plates and glasses crashing to the floor in the process. The feeling of her mouth went beyond anything I’d felt in a long while—it wasn’t something girls offered, usually, and I usually didn’t care enough to ask for it.
Before I could get totally lost, I reached down with shaking arms and cupped her chin, brushing hairs away from her face. She slid up the length of me at my insistence, until I greedily captured her lips again.
It felt like this would be the last time we were together like this.
We swung around until her back was pressed against the table instead of mine, and I slipped the tank top over her head. Emilie’s purple lace bra went next and I took my time, tasting each new exposed section of skin and taking great pleasure in driving her as mad as she’d just driven me. I let her feel my mouth and tongue on her with rampant attention until her head was thrown back, her arms leveraging me for support.
“Quinn, I want you. Please.”
“I’m teaching you a thing or two, Emilie Swanson. Don’t rush me.”
The trembling intake of breath encouraged me. The lust pooling in her dark gaze drove me to the edge of my control, and when her hand wandered down again I almost lost it completely.
She forgot about me when my own fingers explored south, unbuttoning her white shorts and dropping them to the floor. The matching panties went next, deliciously soaked with her need, her center hot and tight around my fingers. I laid her back on the table with my free hand, letting it roam over her boobs until she wriggled underneath my fingers. The sensation of her skin puckering against my touch stood every nerve on end, made me hyper-aware of our joint desire.
Then I got down to my knees and returned the maddening favor she’d doled out for me, tasting her while whimpers and the sound of my name in her throat pounded so hard in my heart I thought I’d explode.
Emilie surprised me so many times since we’d met, but her willing desire turned me on more than anything else. The girl knew what she wanted and wasn’t embarrassed by her hunger, which drove me fucking wild. We were quite a match in that way. There were a hundred different places I could imagine having her like this, and I wanted to try every one of them.
She came against my lips, knees squeezing the sides of my head, spine arched off the table. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.
I stood her up on shaking legs, holding her sweaty, trembling body against mine. The ache in my groin hadn’t abated, had only grown, but there was a problem. “I really don’t have any condoms.”
“I do.”
My eyebrows shot up and I watched her naked body move smoothly to the table by the door. She grabbed a foil package out of the front pocket of her purse.
“Why, Emilie Swanson. Did you come here hoping to seduce me?”
She took my hand and it felt good, her fingers threaded possessively through mine, and when we reached the bed she shoved me backward onto it. The foil packet fell in my lap. When I looked up at her, the sight of her swollen skin making me hot again.
“Where you’re concerned, it never hurts to be prepared.”
I slid the condom on and she crawled next to me, and for a while we touched one another while our lips and tongues drank like we’d crossed a desert. I eased between her legs slowly, taking my time pushing deep just to watch her eyes roll back in her head. The same explosion of intense pleasure I’d felt the other night crashed around me, blacking the edges of my vision.
We moved together, slowly at first but building quickly. I memorized the way she looked pressed into the blue and white pillows, her inky hair tumbling around her shoulders and onto the sheets, creamy skin glowing sweat. Her pitch-black eyes held onto mine. In them, the love she’d confessed earlier swam through the lust controlling us at the moment and poured so many emotions through me that every last nerve ending ached.
This girl bewitched me. Made me feel alive just by being beside me. My insides thrummed with conflict; the desire to stay buried inside her for the rest of my life warred with the knee-jerk response to get far away from the painful wrench of feeling.
Her fingernails dug into my back as her legs wrapped around my sides. The movement tipped her hips up off the bed, sliding me deeper. I forgot about feelings and love and whether or not I would lose her, choosing to disappear into the slippery heat of our movements. We finished together this time, our foreheads pressed tight and gasped breath mingling between our panting mouths.
I moved, which was the last thing I wanted, and her whimper of regret at the separation of our bodies shot straight to my groin. With my head propped on my hand, I stared down into her sated smile.
“How is it so good?” The question emerged a little wondrously, her voice scratchy and sexy as hell from all the gasps and screams.
“Emilie, I have no idea, but I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you.”
Surprise shot into her gaze. Maybe that would be enough. Maybe it would keep her here.
“Why?”
“You’re beautiful. You’re smart and driven and talented. You don’t fall down my rabbit hole of innuendo unless you want to tumble with me.” I traced a finger from her neck down to her waist, teasing where it pleased me most to see her reaction. “This little body responds to mine like someone built it for me. You know all of my secrets but you’re still here.”
She leaned up and kissed me, her tongue paying me back for teasing her. “Wow.”
It wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted it all. To hear my deepest desires and the feelings ripping me to shreds. She deserved it.
“What’s wrong?” It was a question she knew the answer to. I knew she knew.
“It’s not fair of me to withhold my expertise in all arenas. Plus if you don’t get dressed we’re never going to leave this bed for the rest of our lives, and your evil plan to thwart my father will be dead in the water.”
I watched the hope and light fall out of her face. When she hid it with that reluctant smile I felt like the biggest asshole ever born.
Chapter Twenty-One
The exercise helped clear my head.
Emilie’s tennis was above average and we had more than a few good volleys. Sweat dripped off me by the time my knee started to ache, and we sat cross-legged at the back of the court with bottles of water.
“You’re not bad.”
“You were taking it easy on me,” she panted, wiping her forehea
d with a wristband.
The tennis clothes Ang brought to the cottage had included a teeny tiny white Lacoste skirt that displayed Emilie’s perfect legs in a way that thoroughly distracted me. The way it flipped up and showed her ass didn’t help, either. But I had taken it a little easy on her.
“I wasn’t looking for a brawl. It felt good to be out on the court.”
“When was the last time you played?”
“The last day of Wimbledon almost a year ago.”
I gave her a smile in an attempt to hide the pain, but as usual she saw right through it. She handled it with as much grace as she did everything else, reaching out and squeezing my hand, then tossing her empty bottle into our bag.
“What do you miss the most?”
“About tennis?”
“Duh.”
I had to think about it because there were so many things I loved. The travel. The friends, the smell of the balls, the way racket strings sounded when I pummeled a perfect serve. Crowds cheering a good point. A night match under the lights. The parties, the free clothes, the fresh air.
One thing most of all. “The competition. Nothing feels better than stepping out onto that court ready to go to battle. It’s all fresh at the beginning. No points on the scoreboard, no flubbed volleys or shanked serves. A blank canvas to be painted.”
“You loved winning.”
“No, not necessarily winning. I mean, I always wanted to win but it was more the feeling of possibility. Every new match was a wrapped gift waiting to have the ribbons yanked off. You could stink it up but manage a win because the other guy pulled a hammy. Or play the best game of your life and still not be able to find a way to win.”
The last part was the truest, and it didn’t just apply to tennis. It was the same with my father, and maybe with Emilie, too. I could step onto the court but it didn’t mean I would win. I could tell her I loved her, too, and still watch her walk away eventually.
With a game, it invigorated me. When it came to real life, it scared me shitless.
