Rebound

by Noelle August

  “Personally, I’m glad Jazz isn’t here.” The sight of her draped over me, all long limbs and silky blond hair, is making me rock hard. I’m straining against my pants, and since she’s sitting on me, against her too. “That’d be awkward for me, especially if you moved from my lap. But you bring up a good point. As your trust partner, it’s my job to make you comfortable. What do you say, Quick. How about we get you set up for the night?”

  She looks up at me, her blue eyes so open and trusting. “That sounds great.”

  I help her onto the bed. It’s not even fifteen steps away and I’m carrying most of her weight, but her eyes are glazed and her face is pale as I get her perched at the edge of the mattress.

  She slides onto it, and her face goes pale.

  “You’re hurting,” I say. Seeing her in pain brings back the same tunnel vision I felt earlier at the clinic, like I can’t focus on anything except making it go away. “Wait here. I’ll get the pain meds.”

  “Not yet, Adam. Maybe after some food? I’m really sensitive to medication.”

  “All right. I’ll order something.” I’m so locked into tasks right now, into easing her pain that, mentally, I’m already offering the hotel kitchen a two hundred dollar tip if they can get my order up in twenty minutes.

  “Wait,” she says, catching me by the hand. “Thank you.” Her face lights up with a smile so raw with kindness, it guts me.

  It’s only now that I remember the things we told each other yesterday about Ethan and Chloe. How she’d looked at me the same way then. I didn’t get a chance to finish telling her about Chloe. We were interrupted by news of the storm before I could, but when it’s the right time, I will.

  I lean down and kiss her lips lightly, once and then again, hovering over them a second, and then another second, relishing the taste and feel of her. Kissing her feels like the most natural—but incredible—thing in the world. I have to tear myself away.

  “Whatever you need, Quick. I’m right here. Rest.”

  In the living room, I get on the phone with room service and order soup, salad, and white wine pasta—which I’m ensured will be here in twenty minutes. I grab a quick shower, pull on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Then I get Ali’s suitcase open, find pajama pants and a soft shirt, and I lay those out for her.

  I start a fire, then text Grey to let him know I might not make it back for a few days. Finally, when there’s nothing left to do, I watch waves of snow coat the world outside—until I hear Ali calling to me.

  “Adam? Can you come here?”

  Chapter 35

  Alison

  He’s at my side in a second, his eyes sweeping over me, worried. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes. I just wondered if you’d help me change into something else.” I’m warm in my ski pants, and the slippery fabric’s making it difficult to get comfortable on the bed.

  “Already ahead of you,” he says and heads off to the living room, returning before I know it with my pajama pants and a cotton shirt.

  “Those will be so much better,” I tell him.

  Gently, Adam helps me sit on the bed, straightening my injured foot carefully, his touch so gentle.

  “Pants first?” he asks.

  I smile. “That’s probably best.”

  He leans close to me, and again his leather and spice scent washes over me. His hair’s still wet from the shower, and he gives off a delicious warmth that makes me want to lean against him, breathe him into me.

  “Can you ease up a bit?” he asks, getting his hands under my body to pull down the pants.

  We work together to get my pants off, and he doesn’t hide his interest in taking in the length of me. When he lifts me against him to help pull my shirt off over my head, I feel every bit of that interest, hard and firm along my thigh.

  “Bra on or off?” he asks.

  “Off, please.”

  He leans against me to unclasp it, his hands heating my skin, then pulls the filmy material over my arms. Again, his gaze sweeps over me, and his eyes grow serious, their gray turning smoky and full of depth. “You’re beautiful, Ali.”

  “So are you.”

  And he truly is. I want to drink in every bit of him—his elegant, aristocratic features, strong square jaw, his bright, intelligent eyes. And his beautiful hands—artist’s hands, I think—with their long tapered fingers and neatly squared nails. They have a roughness to them and a polish—so perfectly him.

  We decide it’s too much work to put on my pants and shirt, so he helps me into a plush white robe and settles me gently back down against the pillows. I can feel the warmth of the now-roaring fire across the room. It’s warm and delicious, and I want to sink into the pillows and pull him down with me.

  “Do you want to put your foot up?” he asks, sitting down beside me.

  “No, I’m fine, really,” I say. The ankle is still sore, throbbing a little, but it’s the last part of my body that needs attention right now.

  He takes my hand and brings my palm to his lips. He plants a kiss there, trails his lips over my wrist. I wonder if he can feel how wildly my pulse is pounding. “What can I do for you?” he asks. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I really want your hands on me,” I say, surprising myself again. I could get used to saying it, to asking for what I want. Something about Adam makes me feel safe to do that. And here, in this lush room, with the fireplace, and snow sealing us in, it seems right to express any desire, to claim every need.

  Adam makes a sound like a groan, and his arms come around me. “I want you so fucking much, Alison,” he says. “It’s killing me.”

  He buries his hands in my hair and moves his mouth down to capture mine. His kiss is fierce, and I fall into it, clutching onto his broad shoulders. My robe falls open, and the buttons of his shirt chafe against my bare skin, his jeans rough against the inside of my thighs. I pull him tighter to me, my tongue seeking his, needing the taste of him, the softness of his lips, the taut strength of his body.

  His lips trace a path down my throat. I sink back against the bed, all of me open to him, wanting him everywhere. He stretches out beside me, the bed sinking beneath his weight. I want to wrap my legs around him, pull him against me to feel again how hard he is, how much he wants this too, but the pain in my ankle makes that impossible. So I clutch onto him, running my hands through his soft hair, feeling his lips and tongue move over me, down to my breasts, circling them with his tongue, bathing me in a warm, perfect pressure.

  His thumb spirals over my nipple, his tongue teasing the hollow of my throat now. He feels so good. Every part of him feels like perfection, and I want so much more of it.

  Someone knocks at the door, and we freeze.

  “That would be dinner,” Adam says and offers me a sexy, devilish smirk.

  “But I don’t want dinner,” I say, holding his face in my hands and rising up to tease his earlobe with my teeth. “I want you.”

  They knock again, and Adam buries his face in my shoulder. We’re laughing. And everything feels so slow and sexy and right.

  “You’ll have to get rid of them,” I tell Adam.

  He takes my hand and presses himself against me. The feeling of him, the weight of his need, fills me with warmth, starts an insistent, throbbing ache that pulses from the center of me. “And you’ll have to get rid of those panties,” he says.

  Another knock, this one more urgent. With a sigh, Adam pulls away. “I should get that, or they’ll just keep knocking.”

  “I suppose.”

  He kisses me and then does his best to tuck himself back into his pants and leaves his shirt untucked.

  “Stay where you are,” he tells me.

  “I wouldn’t leave this spot.”

  He goes to answer the door. My cell phone vibrates on the nightstand—Adam must have put it close by for me—and I look at it.

  My father. Of course.

  I fire off a text to let him know about my ankle and that I’m stuck here for anoth
er couple of days because of the storm. He texts back something about being in the perfect position now.

  Dad: Hope you’re getting the goods on Blackwood.

  I smile at his phrasing and answer back.

  Ali: Definitely getting everything I need.

  He doesn’t have to know that I mean Adam—his strength and intelligence and goodness. Or that what I need, I’ve decided, is to forge my own path. That will be a discussion for my return.

  “What’s funny?” Adam asks.

  I turn to him. “Just life.”

  He sits and runs his fingers over my skin. Again, that heat, that feeling of being lit from within by another person’s touch.

  “You know what I think?” he asks.

  “No. What?”

  Adam leans down, his lips against mine. “I think the hell with dinner. We can eat later.”

  He traces my lips with his tongue, and I capture it between my teeth, draw it into my mouth. I can’t get enough of the taste of him, the feel of his tongue darting between my lips. His kisses are perfection. The weight of him against me the best thing I’ve ever felt.

  I know we should be making promises. I should tell him I’ll quit working for my father. Or he should tell me he doesn’t need my father’s money. We should say that we’ll carry this moment back out into the real world with us, that it means something, that it’s more than the magic of being contained together, our two bodies drawn to each other in a way that feels inevitable. Eternal.

  But I don’t speak, and neither does he. If he’s like me, he doesn’t want to be reminded of all that. He just wants to be here, in this moment. The two of us and the storm and no tomorrow. Not yet.

  I reach up and unbutton the first few buttons of his shirt, rising up to kiss the tan flesh exposed there. I’m dying to feel more of him, to be skin to skin with him, to take possession of his beautiful, solid body.

  “Can you take this off?” I ask. “Or like, maybe everything?”

  He laughs and peels off his shirt, tossing it onto the floor beside us. Once again, I can’t get over the sight of him. His broad swimmer’s shoulders, lean tapered torso. The shadow and light of his muscled abdomen, and the beautiful artistry of his tattoo, the birds falling—no, flying, becoming clouds.

  I run my fingers over the marks and think about Chloe and what he’s lost. It makes me feel close to her, the way I did when I saw her picture, charged with carrying her love forward into the future I share with Adam. It feels like an honor.

  “Better?” he asks.

  “Much.”

  Adam kisses me again, his warm muscled chest grazing my nipples, carving my insides. His touch is electric. It’s heaven. And I never want tonight to end.

  His fingers leave a searing path on my skin. They brush over my breasts, my belly. He helps me take off my panties. Everything feels seamless, predestined. His tongue trails against my throat, my mouth, my collarbone, as he parts my thighs and touches me, gently at first, and then more insistently. His fingers move against me, and I’m open to him, so ready for the touch I’ve been craving for months. Wanting it more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.

  “I want to make you feel good, Ali.”

  “You . . . are . . .” I tell him, but my words are air.

  His hands move over me, firm then light, flicking then circling. My body arches up to him, and I capture his hand in mine, pressing him to me, moving up against him, reaching for that place of burning light that I can feel tingling at the edges.

  He rises up, our hands locked, bodies moving together, and he looks down at me. The firelight gives his skin an even more golden hue, turns his brown hair to shades of gold and amber. And then I realize that he’s truly looking at me. His gray eyes lock onto mine, his expression more tender and more searching than anything I’ve ever seen. It feels like coming upon something wild and rare, something you don’t want to frighten away with sudden movement.

  The sight undoes me, and the burning spreads through me like a forest fire, hard and lashing, seizing me, searing everything away. I have to close my eyes, to give myself over to the devastating, insistent pull. My body trembles fiercely, and all I can see in my mind is his expression, his gray eyes locked onto my own. Wave after wave sweeps through me until I’m emptied of everything but a floating lightness—joy.

  Finally, I open my eyes again, and he’s still looking at me. Beautiful. Strong. And now, it seems to me, more boyish somehow. Unburdened.

  “Alison,” he breathes, and he doesn’t have to say anything else.

  I put my hand against his face and cradle it for a moment, taking in his direct, beautiful gaze. Without saying a word, I try to tell him everything I feel. We lie together like that for a long time, and then we break the moment with a slow, deep kiss, the kind that makes me forget who I am, who he is, where either begins or ends.

  Chapter 36

  Adam

  When I wake up, Ali is sprawled across the bed beside me. I have to smile at how much real estate her legs take up.

  “Look who’s a little bed hog.”

  My lowered voice sounds louder than it should. The quiet and stillness in here is the kind that’s only possible in the middle of a blizzard in the mountains. Through the window, I see snow coming down heavily, but it’s not a whiteout like last night.

  I take a minute to appreciate the long, graceful groove of Ali’s spine. All that smooth, flawless skin sweeping down and then back up to the curve of the one round cheek not covered by blankets. Toned legs that go on forever—one of which ends with a thick bandage.

  That ankle’s putting a definite damper on my sexual prospects for the foreseeable future. She’s a temptation. I’ve never wanted anyone this much, and I’m aching for her. But I won’t do anything that could worsen her injury.

  I’m glad she seems comfortable asleep.

  Climbing out of bed, I pull on sweatpants and find the bag of supplies from the clinic in the living room. Laying a pillow under Ali’s leg, I break open the activator in an icepack and drape it over her foot. Then, reluctantly, I pull the blankets over her. It’s a crime to cover her body, but the room has a chill this morning.

  She stirs a little, sweeping her blond hair away from her face. “Adam?” she says, sleepy blue eyes fluttering open.

  “Right here.” I sit next to her and smile, loving that she asked for me before she was fully awake. I reach under the blankets and rub my hand over her warm back, then brush her hair away from her shoulder. “Hey, beautiful. Go back to sleep. It’s early.”

  “Why aren’t you in here?”

  “I will be in a minute.” I’d join her right now, but I hear my phone buzzing in the other room, and part of me never fully relaxes when I leave Grey alone for a few days.

  “Good.” Her eyes close again. “We have unfinished business.”

  “Is that right?” Just like that, my body’s responding. “What about your ankle?”

  “You can’t keep using that as an excuse, Blackwood.”

  I laugh. “Okay. You’ve talked me into it.”

  Smiling, she peers at me through her lashes, sleepy and seductive, and I find myself wanting to frame her face and stare into her blue eyes, because anything less than that feels like not enough now. Amazing how that happened. She flipped a switch inside me with that sweet smile, and I want her. Body. Mind. All of her.

  “Sleep a little more, Ali. We have time. We’ll get to everything.”

  “Everything? That sounds good.”

  “Aim higher than good, Quick. We’re going for mind-blowing.”

  “You mean again?”

  “I mean always. Every single time.”

  She laughs. I kiss her bare shoulder then give her perfect ass a little pat on my way into the living room.

  “Hurry back, lovely,” she says, already sounding sleepy.

  “Will do, you exquisite creature of beauty and light.”

  In the living room, I throw a few logs on the fire to get it burning aga
in, then I grab my phone from the coffee table, and set it down when I realize that Ali and I have the same model, and hers is the one I heard buzzing.

  I find mine in the inside zipper of my ski jacket. There’s a message from Rhett—nothing from Grey—but what grabs me is the time. I’m shocked to see that it’s ten o’clock in the morning. I can’t remember the last time I slept this late. And I can’t remember the last time I felt this good, either, and then I’m just a complete idiot blinking back tears in my sweatpants, staring at my phone, because holy shit. It feels so good to feel this way and I never thought I’d have it again. I never thought I’d have anything even close to this again, like I want to do everything for a girl. Everything, just like I told her.

  It’s real, and I feel different inside, like I’m vibrating with this insane power. This need to protect her. To hold her. Make her happy. And then I’m fighting off a laugh, because Jazz had it right.

  I am made up of millions of energetic molecules—and each and every one of them feels charged and sure and just—fucking—awesome because of Ali.

  I want to head back to her side but instead I summon a huge amount of willpower and check Rhett’s message. He wouldn’t call unless something legitimate was up.

  When I play it, the quality of the recording is poor, like the storm’s affecting service.

  “Adam, hey. It’s Rhett. You’re not going to like this but, remember I told you I was looking into things? Well, I just heard from my contact at Quick Enterprises. Graham Quick’s been digging around. He’s doing deep background checks on you, man. He’s spending a mint on them. And he’s been in contact with the Board, too. He’s met with Inoue and Sladek in private. This looks like mighty shady shit, Adam. He’s pulling out all the stops trying to get some dirt on you. I wanted to tell you as soon as I heard. Call me back.”

  I’m hitting the call back icon before the message has fully played, pacing up to the window. There’s nothing outside but snow. No one and nothing. Just the white, rounded shapes of the lodge, the restaurants below. The trees and mountains in the distance.