Closer (Closer #1)

by Mary Elizabeth

  I pick her up, wrap her legs around my waist, and carry her to the room, never breaking our kiss for anything more than a quick breath. Laying her on the bed, I come up only long enough to remove my shirt.

  The room’s pitch-black behind thick curtains, glowing orange and yellow with the pre-lit fireplace, and it’s hot, stifling, airless. Ella curves her back, reaching under to unclasp her bra. A thin sheen of sweat covers her bare skin, glistening in the low light. Seeing her naked, body flushed from the heat, is almost too much for me to handle.

  We take the rest of our clothes of in a rush, kissing messily, bumping heads and laughing in the heat. I climb onto the bed and hover above her, between her legs. She places one hand behind my neck and the other on the small of my back. Fate’s beautiful in the fire’s burn. This moment’s intimate and precious, and I plan on making her feel just that way.

  “Tell me what this is,” she whispers.

  A single tear runs down the side of her face, and I kiss it away, smirking against her skin because I finally have an answer.

  “This is falling in love.”

  I have one hand on the side of her head supporting my weight and the other tangled in her hair. My knees are between her legs, and my cock rests against her stomach, hard and throbbing. Electricity flows freely between us, and I feel her everywhere, and I want her in ways I never imagined. Our souls and our hearts are so fucking close, and they’re just going to get closer.

  Seven years of blood, sweat, and tears got us where we are now: desperate, devoted, and irrevocably in this.

  Softly kissing her mouth, I dart my tongue along her bottom lip, pulling it between my teeth. She tilts her head back, opening her throat for me. I press my kiss to bruises I inflicted, drawing her pulse to my lips, feeling the stream of blood under her thin skin. Dampness pools between our bodies, making us slick and sticky and warm in bends and curves. I lick the spot between her breasts, and Ella inhales a sharp breath. Her nipples harden between my lips.

  I’m taken off guard when she stops me from going lower, and a sinking feeling raids my stomach, like I knew she could still tell me no. She urges me back with hands that tremble on my arms, and the small smile on her lips sets me at ease.

  “None of that tonight, Tell. I need you.” She slides her palm to her sex. “I need you here.”

  I know what she means, and I feel the same way. We have a lifetime for the rest, but right now we need to be connected.

  “We don’t have a condom,” I say, pushing her to the top of the bed. I lace our fingers together, sliding her hands above her head and holding them there as I thrust my knees up, spreading her thighs.

  I hate the idea of having something between us, but I don’t want to do anything that makes her uncomfortable. Especially when it wasn’t a consideration in Vegas.

  “No. I need you, only you.”

  Her eyes are wide, pooling in love we’re experiencing for the very first time. I may not be able to put into words how much I love her, but I have every intention of showing it.

  Lifting my hips to position myself at her entrance, the sensation of having the tip there is mind-numbing. I slowly push myself inside, watching her eyelids slowly lower and dropping my forehead to her chest at the initial pant that comes from between her lips.

  We’re one person.

  Literally.

  Finally.

  Our bodies are connected, but she’s tapped into my very being. Her touch alone screams that it was all worth it. I’ll take on all the pain in the world for her. I’ll fight to make her happy, and kill to keep her that way. After everything—the obsession, desperation, jealousy, spite—we have pure, unadulterated love.

  Just love.

  Gently lifting out of her, I rock back inside, rolling my hips at the slowest pace to feel all of her—every inch of what I’ve been missing, touching every spot, memorizing the way her mouth parts and eyelids flutter.

  She’s beyond hot and soaking wet, luring me back every time I pull out. Her thighs tremble at my sides, and I release her hands so she can hold on. Not quite capable of kissing her anymore, our lips lazily touch, sharing breath and brushing lips. She lets her hand fall from my neck to my lower back, guiding the pace of my strokes. Always slow, never too quick, relishing in the feeling of being inside of her, where I belong. She wraps her legs around me, opening wider, letting me in deeper.

  “Oh, fuck, baby.” I sigh, gripping the pillow under her head.

  Closing my eyes, I thrust deeper and more profoundly, incapable of pulling out. She kisses the side of my face, holding on to my sides, locking her ankles around the back of my thighs. Passion takes over, and our moans get louder, our breathing more erratic, and there’s nothing more than Gabriella.

  She places her hand on the side of my face, asking me to look at her as pressure builds between us. Ella pushes my hair away from my forehead, drags her fingers across my mouth, and hooks her elbow around my neck. Beautifully tragic, beautifully crazy, beautifully mine rocks her hips, meeting me stroke for stroke, digging as deeply as I am.

  Ella’s back curves away from the mattress, and she goes completely still, begging, “Harder. Harder. Harder.”

  “I love you,” I say as she contracts around me. “I love you, baby. I love you.”

  Dropping her arms to the bed, she grips the bedsheets and whispers, “I love you, Teller.”

  Now

  “What’s on your mind, babe?” Teller asks, kissing the back of my bare shoulder. He smells like hotel soap—part fragrance, part plastic, all skin drying.

  After an entire day and night in bed, exploring parts of each other we didn’t get to dry humping in our early twenties and fucking in a dirty hotel hallway a couple of days ago, the bed’s stripped and my muscles are sore. We fell asleep in a sweaty, sweltering heap of limbs and bared souls, waking up in the early morning to shower.

  Early enough for me to drag him onto the balcony to watch the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. Settled on a chaise lounge, I’m between his legs, resting against his chest, wrapped in a blanket Teller grabbed from the floor to cover us in the cool pre-dawn air.

  “Our family. Work. Joe and Kristi,” I say. His heartbeat pounds against my back.

  Teller goes rigid. “What about them?”

  I shrug, bringing his hand to my mouth and kissing his scarred knuckles. “We wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t died, Tell. But I can’t imagine a life where they’re alive anymore.”

  “You said you wouldn’t have accepted his proposal,” he replies in a tight voice. “We probably wouldn’t be in Arizona, but where the fuck would you be if not with me?”

  Smiling at the edge in his tone, there’s comfort in routine, and unease dissipates with jealousy’s predictable reaction. I half-expect him to pat his pockets for his pack of smokes, but the only clothes we have are thrown across the room, and he left his cigarettes in the G-Wagen.

  “Who knows what I would have done in that situation. You saw what he had planned. Any girl would have been thrilled to be proposed to that way,” I admit, even if the thought makes me feel trapped in a small room with the walls closing in. “And what difference would it have made between you and Kristi? Would you have left her because I didn’t want to marry Joe?”

  “Yes,” he answers immediately.

  I sit up and turn to face him, expecting to see the lie etched in a smirk across his lips, but his expression is blank and his green eyes glow sincerity. It’s another dose of reality: we are anything but normal; we’re addicted, defeated, and obsessed, and I can’t lose him, because without him, there is no me.

  “It doesn’t matter, Smella,” he says to himself as much as he says it to me. “They’re not here. But we are.”

  Returning to my position against his body, we’re quiet as tangerine light radiates over the horizon, shooting beams of color across the dark blue sky. The temperature seems to drop, and Teller tightens his arm around my naked body. Three-day old cuts and scrapes between my legs have scab
bed, itching as they heal, and the bruises spotting my body have mostly disappeared.

  This new ache is the best kind.

  The loving kind.

  Violet chases orange past dots of gray clouds, streaked with pinks and yellows as the sun kisses the new day. The entire canyon is tinted rose-gold, peppered with dark green from bushes and trees scaling the massive split in the earth. Jagged edges cast dark shadows on rock faces, and the sound of flowing water tempts me with sleep.

  Blanketed in love and brand new sunlight, I blink moisture from my eyes and sink into the be-all and end-all, knowing this is the only place I belong.

  Disturbingly in love.

  The next time I open my eyes, the sun’s shed shades of sunrise in exchange for glaring light, and the sky’s crisp blue. Maby’s standing beside the lounge chair Teller and I dozed off in, with our suitcases in each one of her hands. I’ve turned in her brother’s arms, and the blanket’s fallen to our waist.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, unashamed. “The important parts are covered.”

  I blink against sleep’s haze, incapable of coming up with a single thing to say. I’m so used to discounting the reason why Teller and I have been caught in a compromising position, excusing inappropriateness with a lie, that the truth sticks to the roof of my mouth.

  “I thought you’d like to have your things. The maid let me in,” Maby says. She sits in the chair across from us. “I might have torn up the Do Not Disturb sign first.”

  Teller groans, scrubbing his hands down his face before realizing we’re almost naked in front of his younger sister. He pulls the blanket to my shoulders, tucking it around our bodies so it won’t fall twice.

  “Long day?” Maby asks. “We hiked some amazing trails yesterday. You guys really missed out.”

  I hide my smile beneath the comforter, not deeming the activities Teller and I spent the last twenty-four hours engaging in as “missing out.”

  “Thanks for dropping our things off. Feel free to kick rocks before I call the front desk and tell them someone broke into my room,” Teller says, leaning his head back.

  “No need for the drama, jerk.” Maby stands, light in a pair of hiking boots I don’t see her wearing after this trip. “A few things came up while you two were holed up in here. Can we meet for dinner downstairs tonight around eight? Everyone will be on their best behavior. And by everyone, I mean Emerson.”

  “Is he mad at me?” I ask. The four-hour drive from Las Vegas was loaded with conflict and words we wish we could take back, ending with me jumping from a moving car. I didn’t expect him to want to spend any amount of time with me so soon.

  “Not at all,” the younger Reddy child answers. The tip of her nose is sunburned, and she smells like banana carrot sunblock. “He’s concerned, but that’s got to be expected from your brother-slash-father, you know?”

  Maby leaves us with an easy smile, almost through the French doors when Teller calls her back.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks, turning his head to see her face.

  She smiles from ear-to-ear, effortlessly, naturally, promisingly. “Good. I’m doing good.”

  Tension should have its own place setting. It’s our uninvited guest, sucking all the joy from the table, intensifying inelegance and discontent. No one’s bothered to order a meal, and our drinks drip condensation onto the starched tablecloth, untouched. The waiter gave up and hasn’t come by in twenty minutes, focusing on customers who are here to eat.

  Teller scoots my chair beside his and drapes his arm across the back of my seat, chewing a toothpick as he browbeats my brother. Disorder lounges with his legs parted, unbothered and unashamed of what put us in this situation. He twirls the saliva-soaked wood between his teeth, flipping it with the tip of his tongue, wearing a throat of hickies arrogantly.

  “If we’re just going to sit here all night, Ella and I are going to excuse ourselves. It’s been a long fucking month. I hope you understand, and if you don’t, I don’t give a shit.” He spits the toothpick onto the table.

  Unamused and cool, Emerson rolls his brown eyes the same color as mine, picking the label from his green bottled beer.

  Nicolette’s indifferent, scrolling through her phone, tapping the screen with her acrylic nails. Maby and Husher, on the other hand, do their part and pretend we’re not being eaten alive by awkwardness, breaking bread from the basket of rolls our server dropped off when we arrived forty minutes ago.

  “Pass the margarine, honey,” Maby says, eating her third dinner roll.

  “I’ll butter it for you, sweetheart,” Husher replies, incapable of stomaching another piece of cold bread himself.

  I sip water, leaning into Teller’s side. It’s all I can do to keep from climbing onto his lap to hide my face between his neck and shoulder. Em’s gaze swoops across my throat when he’s not murdering my boyfriend with his razor-sharp glare, stewing. Someone should take the knives off the table before they’re used as weapons.

  “Say the word and we’re out of here,” Teller whispers. His lips tickle my earlobe, and a wave of desire rolls through my nervous system.

  Crossing, uncrossing, and crossing my legs again, I squeeze my thighs together and try not to blush, ineffectively. The echo of his touch on my body reheats my skin, and I don’t need to close my eyes to recall his hands spreading my knees apart, his cock gliding inside of me, or his words changing everything.

  I love you, baby. I love you.

  Charmer watches my cheeks redden, and he grins, rubbing his thumb in circles on the back of my neck. We only showed up to dinner because I wanted to come, hoping that when they saw us together, they’d somehow feel what we feel and understand there’s no choice in the matter.

  We’re written in the stars.

  Nic drops her cell to the table and sighs. “I hate to admit it, but I’m with Teller on this one. If we’re not going to get to the point, I have a bag to pack, and we have a long drive home tomorrow. I’d like to get some decent sleep tonight.”

  Sitting straight, my heart plunges to my stomach, and I ask, “What do you mean you have a long drive home? I thought we were going up north first?”

  Driving through St. Helena with Emerson was a huge deciding factor when I agreed to this road trip in the first place. He made it seem like it was important to him, so returning to the house we grew up in suddenly became important to me, too. What could have happened to change his mind?

  “This is what we wanted to talk to you about, Ella,” Maby reveals. She chews on her last bite of bread like it’s a mouthful of sawdust, rubbernecking my brother.

  Sincerity diffuses bitterness, easing Emerson’s defensive posture. He clears his throat, softening his gaze until it’s almost bashful, unable to keep his mouth from bending up. Nicolette projects admiration by his side, smiling shyly and squeezing his hand.

  “I wanted this to be a surprise, but nothing seems to go as planned lately.” Em’s tilted grin falters, but he recovers right away, running his hands through his hair. “We’re going home early because I was accepted into the police academy, sissy. I got the call yesterday.”

  “What?” I choke on overwhelming thrill. Genuine shock and happiness spring tears in my eyes, and resentment melts away. “When did you even apply?”

  Tension leaves the table, and we all sigh in relief, able to breathe again. With heaviness’ exit, the mood noticeably changes, and it’s as if nothing happened at all. That’s the wonderful thing about a family like ours. Unconventional and downright erratic, when the going gets tough, we trash entire vacations with irrational arrogances, but we come together in the end to support one another regardless of what was said and done.

  “A while ago,” Emerson replies. “There’s a lot of paperwork, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up until I passed the background check. When the accident happened, I put it on the backburner, but the call came yesterday afternoon. I can’t pass up this opportunity, Gabriella.”

  For as long as I can remember, Em wante
d to serve and protect, aspiring to be a police officer as soon as he was old enough for the police academy. When we were kids, I didn’t play with dolls like normal girls did; I played cops and robbers with my older brother. He was always the cop, and my role as the bad guy changed depending on the crime. Sometimes I was a bank robber, other times a car thief, but most of the time, I was under arrest for being annoying.

  His dreams of a future in law enforcement disappeared with his independence when our father died. He knew he couldn’t take care of me and go through the academy at the same time. It was Emerson’s first sacrifice as my legal guardian, and one a career in security and bodyguarding never fulfilled.

  “I … I don’t know what to say.” Reaching across the table, I take his large hand between my small ones. “I’m so proud of you. Dad would be really proud, too.”

  A sign of a boy who was forced to grow up too fast, Emerson’s self-conscious, unaccustomed to putting himself and his needs first. I feel him pull back, and I recognize the look of unease on his face. It’s the same expression that swiped gentleness from his features when his younger sister became his responsibility and he didn’t know how to care for her.

  “I wanted to make the trip home—” insecurity starts.

  “The house isn’t going anywhere, Em.” I smile reassuringly, smoothing the lines between his eyebrows. “We’ll plan something after you graduate. I don’t mind going back to California early. There are three more Ikea boxes that need to be put together.”

  I look to Teller for confirmation, and he nods hesitantly, resting his hand on my lower back. “For sure, babe. Whatever you want to do.”

  “Actually, Ella,” Maby interrupts. “We’re going to drive back with them. Husher should get to his classroom next week, and I need to be on a normal routine before I return to work, too. But you guys should go on without us. The hotel room in San Francisco is already paid for, and you’ll still able to check on things at your house.”