Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3 - New Adult Romance)

by Helena Newbury

  His hands cupped my shoulders, his rough thumbs stroking my smooth skin again and again. He started to toy with my bra straps, lifting them just a little and rubbing at the skin underneath, but he didn’t try to take it off yet. He was letting me take my turn undressing him.

  His shirt came open and I wrenched it back off his shoulders, pressing myself up against him as he shoved it down his arms. By the time it hit the floor, I was already running my hands over his chest and back, smoothing over the firm plates of muscle and stretching up to kiss him. This time, his tongue invaded my mouth immediately and I welcomed it in, a little groan escaping me as I felt it plunge between my lips. I twisted against him, my breasts rubbing across his chest, and he groaned in return.

  Both of us were in just our underwear, now. He suddenly bent his legs and, wrapping those thick arms around me, lifted me off the ground and up onto his waist. I wrapped my legs around him, my groin nestling hard against his abs. The same thing we’d done when we’d filmed the bedroom scene...except this time, it was for real.

  He started toward the bedroom.

  I broke the kiss. “Wait,” I said breathlessly. I didn’t even know what I was going to say until I said it. “Not in there.”

  He stopped in the hallway. I jerked my head toward the kitchen. “Back in there.”

  He frowned, puzzled.

  I sort of shook my head to indicate I couldn’t explain and he nodded and carried me back through to the kitchen. I was glad because it would have been difficult to make him understand that the bedroom was where Jasmine had sex, all boudoir chic and wicked promises. I wanted this to be different. I wanted this to be for Emma.

  He set me down with my ass on the kitchen table. His hands started rubbing up and down my thighs, over the smooth nylon of my stockings and then onto my super-sensitive bare skin, right the way up to the crease of my hips. I began to pant, squirming. His hands on me felt so good. And it felt as if I was experiencing everything for the first time, as if I’d been wrapped in plastic for all these years, little more than a mannequin. He’d brought me back to life.

  He started kissing me again, hungry, open-mouthed kisses across my lips and cheeks and neck, both of us gasping. The sound of our breathing and our lips on each other was the only sound in the room.

  “You have no idea,” he said suddenly, “how much I’ve wanted you.”

  His fingertips slid under the left-hand shoulder strap of my bra...and hooked it down off my shoulder.

  “I’ve dreamed about what you look like,” he said, staring into my eyes. “Not just daydreamed. Dreamed dreamed.” He hooked the other bra strap off. Now my bra was barely staying on my breasts, just the tightness of the rear strap holding it. My breathing had gone slow and deep, and I could hear a little tremble on each out breath.

  He leaned in and started to kiss me again, his kisses leaving a tingling trail. Down my neck. Along my shoulder. Down the length of my collarbone. Growing closer and closer to the softness of my breasts.

  Back when we’d filmed the bedroom scene, I’d thought that the pasties on my nipples had made no difference at all. I’d felt naked. Now, I realized they’d made all the difference in the world. Now he was really going to see me, after all this time. See me—

  He reached behind me and unclipped my bra. It fell loose around me and he drew it off my arms, and suddenly my breasts were bared to him, throbbing in their nakedness. He stood there frozen, gazing at them, his stillness all the more shocking because of his size. “Perfect,” he breathed, and the word itself was a warm breeze across my nipples that made me gasp.

  He took my breasts in his hands, weighing the soft flesh, and I drew in a long, shuddering breath at the feel of his fingers on my skin. He didn’t even touch the nipples at first, just stroked me over and over, working his way closer, and we both watched as the little pink buds stood out stiffer and stiffer, aching with anticipation. When neither of us could bear it any longer, he suddenly let out a groan of need and filled his hands with my breasts, his thumbs rubbing across the nipples, and I arched my back and pushed hard against him.

  I fell back on the table and he leaned down over me, squeezing and rubbing, making me twist and gasp on the wood. Keeping his hands on my breasts, he moved his head lower, his shoulder muscles bunching. I felt his hot breath on my inner thighs and then the jerk of elastic as his teeth caught my panties...and pulled.

  He managed to draw them down a few inches before his arms were at full stretch. Enough to show the pale skin I keep waxed and the tuft of flame-red hair just above my lips. I could feel his eyes on it, burning into me. I’d always been secretly proud of being red, down there. It seemed violently sexual, Jasmine’s secret weapon. Every man was curious, as soon as they saw I was a redhead. And once they saw me there….

  Ryan reacted like every man did and, for once, I liked that. I liked that there was some part of me I was carrying across from Jasmine to Emma. He stood there transfixed, the heat of his breath soaking into me, his hands barely moving on my breasts.

  Then he grabbed my panties with one hand and wrenched them down my legs and off. He pushed my legs apart, grabbing my ankles, and pushing my knees up so that I folded, and never once did his eyes leave my groin. The cool air of the kitchen slapped against my sensitive flesh as I opened to him, pink folds that were already glistening.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. One word. Reverent.

  I’d let my arms fly up over my head when I fell back on the table. Now I was stretched out across it, my naked ass resting on the edge, my head almost to the other edge, my arms dangling down off the side. I stared up at him and then my eyes lowered to the bulge in his jockey shorts. I was actually going a little heady, thinking of it. Was he going to fuck me, now? Right there on the table? I started to breathe faster, faster—

  He sank slowly to his knees and pulled me closer to the edge of the table. Two kisses, one on the inside of each thigh. Then—

  My head rolled back on the table and I let out the first cry as his tongue tasted me. My feet hooked under his arms, heels digging into his back.

  He had his hands on my thighs, pressing them back, opening me. His tongue started tracing spirals from the very outer edge of my lips toward my center. Every minute touch of the hot, flicking flesh made me suck in another gasp of air, my ass clenching and grinding against the hard wood of the table. I could feel the heat inside me ratcheting higher and higher, building to an irresistible peak. His hands had slid down from my breasts to my stomach and sides, caressing me there in smooth strokes. He began a rhythm of long licks that traveled from the very bottom of my folds to the very top, each one just barely grazing the aching bud at the top. Each time that contact was completed, it felt as if every cell in my body had lit up, my back arching and my toes drawing circles in the air.

  And the rhythm was getting faster.

  I found myself trying to close my thighs. I didn’t want to stop it—it was just my body’s instinctive response to try to cling onto some sanity. But his big hands were like iron on my legs, holding me braced there. I was spread open and available to him, completely under his control. I could hear my own gasps echoing around us as his tongue whipped over me quicker and quicker and I could feel the way I was slickening under his touch. I closed my eyes...and then immediately opened them again because I couldn’t bear not to see him leaning down over me. The broad shoulders, the soft waves of dark hair, and that brooding expression as he glanced up. That clear blue gaze, almost chilling in its intensity, pushed me even closer to the edge.

  He stopped and lifted his mouth for a second, keeping his eyes on mine. I could feel that I was open and wet. I was helpless, vulnerable to whatever he wanted to do to me, and I went weak at the thought.

  He closed his mouth and pressed forward until his upper lip was rubbing my bud. He parted his lips a little, his mouth clamped to me, and I knew what he was going to do. I felt for the edge of the table and gripped it with both hands—

  His tongue thrust int
o me, hard and fast, and I was suddenly careening toward my peak. His lip was caressing my throbbing bug, the hard length of his tongue plowing into me again and again. Pleasure was cascading up from the silken friction of it, the heat twisting and building in my chest, unstoppable. I was sucking in air through my nostrils but there wasn’t enough air in the room, in the state, in the universe. My hips were grinding and pushing against his face and he must have been using a good portion of his strength just to keep me pinned there. My hands were gripping the table edge so hard my fingers ached and I could feel my hair sticking to my forehead with sweat.

  His thumbs stretched inward and just managed to caress the edges of my lips as he thrust and rubbed, thrust and rubbed. My back arched even higher, breasts straining for the ceiling, and I let out a noise between a scream and a moan and—

  The pleasure coiled and whipped and then exploded. The energy of it raged through me like a train, the thundering of it so hard and violent that I had to clutch at the table. Every part of me was alive, vibrating, and singing to his touch. It was deafening—my ears were ringing. And then I realized that I was screaming in pleasure.

  When it passed over me, I had my head and shoulders up off the table, Ryan’s face between my hands. At some point I must have pulled his mouth from me. I was drawing in huge gulps of air, panting like a sprinter after a race.

  He gazed up at me from between my legs. He didn’t have to ask if it had been good. I don’t know exactly how loud I’d been, but it felt as if the walls were still shaking.

  Every muscle in my body had gone slack. I was just a limp, panting wreck on the table in front of him.

  I watched as he slowly straightened up. He was big, but from my position on my back on the table, he looked enormous.

  He pushed his jockey shorts down his thighs, let them fall to the floor, and stepped out of them. For the very first time, I got a look at his cock. Just as long and thick as it had felt, the shaft the same soft tan as the rest of him, the head bulging and smooth. A little tremor went through my body as I imagined what he’d feel like inside me.

  He reached down to his tangled jeans and pulled out a foil packet, then rolled on a condom. His forearms hooked around my legs and he pulled me to the very edge of the table. When I felt the head of him brush my folds, I thought I was going to faint.

  He slid inside me and there was no pain, just a feeling of exquisite tightness. God, I was so wet. I’d never been so wet. I gazed up at him as he stood over me, inching closer, and closer between my thighs. Even straining forward, I couldn’t do much more than brush his arms and wrists with my fingers. I wanted to touch him everywhere, wanted to run my hands over his chest and abs. But in some ways, this was better than being pressed close together. I couldn’t touch him, but I could look at him. As he went deeper, it began to all come together in my mind—the visual stimulation of that huge, muscled body towering over me; the feel of his cock spreading me open, deep inside. I could feel a second climax building, different to the first. Deeper and darker and hotter.

  Ryan’s hands came down on my hips, his thumbs brushing the crease of my thighs while his fingers dug into the sides. He was in me all the way, now, and he started to thrust, his muscled ass pumping in long, hard strokes. I’d never felt so filled, so complete.

  He leaned forward over me, grabbing hold of the table for leverage as his groin slapped against mine. My eyes were wide, drinking in the way his chest flexed as he moved. He locked eyes with me and his hands moved to my shoulders, running all the way down my body in one long caress, like stroking a cat. “I love you,” he panted. “I’ve always loved you. And I always will.”

  The words burrowed deep inside me, lighting up parts of me I’d thought had gone cold and dead long ago. I wanted to weep with how good it felt. “I love you, too,” I said in a rush, my hands coming up to grab at his forearms. The orgasm was approaching and I squeezed my eyes tight shut, overcome. “God!”

  With a sound that was almost a snarl, he leaned forward over me and his thrusts became frenzied, almost savage. It would have been scary, that much strength and power, if it had been anyone other than Ryan. But I knew he’d never hurt me. I knew I had nothing at all to fear from him. He was right up against me, stroking in and out of me to the root. He was panting as hard as me, barely able to control himself.

  As the pleasure rose and rose, the rest of the room seemed to disappear. Nothing mattered except what I could touch. I felt his hands rubbing over and over my breasts, my nipples damp with the sweat of our exertions. I felt my fingers digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders. I felt the brutal, wonderful slapping of his groin on mine, again and again. But most of all I felt him, solid and real, deep within me, making me his. My whole world became just the perfect, pounding stroke of him.

  As I felt the tremble starting in my legs, rising rapidly up my body, I scissored my ankles behind him and drew him into me, hard. “God! I’m—”

  It stole my breath. It swept over me in a hot rush of power that made it impossible to talk or even think. My body went bow-taut and twisted, rotating around him, just a puppet controlled by my climax. I could feel myself tight and smooth around him, spasming, clutching.

  I was still coming when he cried out and lunged deep into me, and I felt him pulse and shoot. Then he was leaning lower, our upper bodies pressed together.

  The last thing I remember is him laying endless kisses down my neck.

  Chapter 56

  Emma

  Daylight.

  That’s what made me open my eyes. Lazy late-summer daylight, oozing in around the edge of the curtain. Of course, Ryan hadn’t been used to the way you have to precisely arrange my cheap, too-small curtains if you don’t want to be woken by the dawn.

  Ryan!

  I lay perfectly still and tried to get my bearings.

  I could feel him behind me, spooning me, the warmth of his chest against my back. I could feel the slow movement of his lungs and hear his breath in my ear. Still asleep.

  I assessed the feel of him. Shoulders. Chest. Leg. Groin—

  Yup. He was naked and so was I.

  We were on my bed, so he must have carried me there right after the sex in the kitchen. Holy shit—had I passed out?!

  I eased myself gingerly off the bed and stood up. Without thinking about it, I took a look in the mirror.

  I was Emma.

  Completely. Not like when I’d cautiously become Emma for a few minutes with Ryan, after he’d asked me to stop acting. That had been Emma slipping to the surface from beneath Jasmine. Now I was Emma. Before, she—I—had been peeking out from behind the mask. Now, the mask was gone.

  I blinked and stared back. It made no sense. We both had the same face and the same body. I couldn’t look any different and yet...I did. Smaller. More vulnerable, somehow. And yet it also felt better. It was the difference between hearing a song recorded and seeing the band live. Everything suddenly felt...real.

  I felt for Jasmine and tried to close her around me, but she was gone. The fragments of her slipped through my fingers and wouldn’t come together into a whole—if she’d ever been a whole. I was just...me, now.

  My legs buckled and I slumped to my knees on the carpet. What did this mean? Was Jasmine gone forever? What was going to happen when Ryan woke up and expected her bounciness? Sure, he liked Emma, but he still thought it was all the same person, that I’d just opened up some new part of myself. He didn’t know that he’d destroyed my whole identity. What about Nat and Clarissa and Karen? What would happen when they expected Jasmine...and got Emma?

  I started to go into full-on panic. Maybe it was my panting that woke Ryan. He sat sleepily up and rubbed his face. “Morning,” he said.

  “What happened?” I jumped to my feet. My voice was strained. “What happened last night? After we—”

  He rubbed his eyes and yawned again. “Very little,” he said. Then he laughed—a good, big, honest laugh. “You had a...what do they call it? The French thing. A
petite death.”

  “A petite mort?”

  “Yeah. You came, and fainted. It was quite dramatic.” He laughed again. “I carried you in here.”

  I blinked. It hit me that I’d been Emma now for fully ten seconds in his presence. “Do I seem different?” I asked.

  He swung his legs out of the bed and sat on the edge. “Different?”

  “Like a different person?”

  He stood up. “Is this that woman thing,” he said. “Where you think it’ll all be different because we’ve had sex?”

  “No!”

  He came over to me and put his hand on my cheek. “No,” he said, grinning. “No, you seem just the same as always. Beautiful and sexy and great.” And he kissed me.

  And suddenly the panic started to ease. For years, I’ve lived in fear of the dark waters that lay underneath Jasmine. I’d thought that that’s all Emma was—bad memories, waiting to rise up and consume me. But now I’d finally let Emma out and... everything was…

  ...okay?

  I tested it very, very carefully, like edging out over thin ice. I relaxed...and no nightmares leaped out.

  “Okay,” I said quietly.

  “Good,” said Ryan, and kissed me again, slow and sweet. Then he folded his arms. “Do you normally do that?” he asked. “The fainting thing? Because you should warn a guy.”

  “No,” I said slowly. “No. I don’t think it’ll happen again.”

  “Maybe I was just that good.”

  His grin and warmth finally began to penetrate as my fear died away. “You weren’t that good,” I lied in a mock-gruff voice.

  “You were. That was the Full Jasmine Experience, huh? I can see why you give lessons.”