by Grace James
The sincerity and regret in his voice stopped me from snapping, Y’think?! Instead, I stayed silent.
“I called Aiden on my way over here,” he continued. “We’re gonna put Cody on you ‘til everything calms down. If I can’t be with you, he will be. You don’t have to face them alone again, okay?”
“You really think that’s necessary?”
“I really do. What happened today won’t ever happen again, I promise.”
I didn’t like the idea of having a bodyguard – in fact, it seemed a stretch too far – but at the same time, I felt reassured. Especially if Mrs. Flint was right and reporters really were going through my garbage, because that was just creepy.
“Okay,” I agreed quietly.
His thumb stroked over my cheekbone again. “Are we okay?”
I couldn’t tell him we were, not when we hadn’t actually solved anything yet. “I – I think we still need to talk about the article,” I started hesitantly. “I know you don’t want to, but I think we should.”
His jaw tightened and he pulled his hand away. “Why?”
I couldn’t hide my exasperation. “Because the things they printed hurt?”
“Yeah. Well, that’s why you shouldn’t read that shit.”
“Blake, this isn’t something we can just ignore. It upset me, and I know it upset you – it’d be weird if it didn’t. But I want us to be able to talk about it.”
He looked at me in silence for a moment, and then closed his eyes and dropped his forehead onto the pillow next to mine.
“You used to talk about your mom all the time, Blake. You never shied away from talking about her, and that was healthy – you have to know that. So, don’t you think talking about Connor would be healthy too?
“…I didn’t.”
“You didn’t what?”
“Talk about her.”
“But you did. We –”
Blake lifted his head abruptly. “I talked about her with you, Princess, not with anyone else. But I can’t talk about him with you, okay? So just leave it alone.” My hurt must have been pretty obvious, because his tone instantly softened. “Shit – look, I’m sorry for how that sounds. But I need you not to make me talk about this. I need you to let it go and let me deal with it my way.”
I blinked back the sting in my eyes at his rejection, looking away from him and up to the ceiling.
Blake curled an arm around me and nuzzled into the crook of my neck. “Not trying to upset you, Princess.”
“…I know.”
And I did know. I believed him. I even understood it to a degree. I was Connor’s ex…it was all so complicated. But that didn’t take the sting out of it. I wanted him to want to talk to me, to confide in me. And I wanted to tell him how guilty I’d felt when I first read the story, even though I knew that I had no reason to. I wanted him to reassure me and maybe tell me that he’d felt the same…
I felt his warm breath on my skin as he started to skim soft kisses along my collar bone, making me shiver. “Let me make it up to you,” he muttered.
I tried to ignore the way he was combining the brush of his lips with a touch of his tongue as he moved lower down my chest. “You don’t need to make it up to me. If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s your choice.”
I’d meant for that to sound reasonable and mature – instead, it sounded petulant.
But Blake’s gritty murmur was playful. “Well, see, fuck talking…I’d rather use my mouth to do something else.”
He pulled the sheets down far enough that he could shove up my pajama top, then he moved down the bed. His mouth landed on my stomach, his tongue circling my navel, before he started to trail it upwards slowly. I bit my lip as I looked down, watching as he continued to push my top up over my breasts…then his mouth covered one of my nipples and he started to suck gently.
Mmm…
I was torn.
Part of me thought I should resist him, that I shouldn’t give in so easily after the way he’d behaved – but the other part of me wanted to accept his apology and move on. It wasn’t like I could make him talk about Connor if he didn’t want to.
I didn’t stop him as he moved from one hardened nipple to the other, teasing, sucking and flicking them with his tongue. Every touch sent tiny electrical currents through my body.
After a minute or two, he pushed the sheets away all together and tugged at my pajama shorts. I lifted my hips to help him remove them. Then he grabbed my legs, tossed them over his shoulders, and buried his head between my thighs.
I gasped when his tongue slid wetly along my slit, parting my folds, before he dragged it back up to swirl across my clit. At the same time, his hands travelled up over my hips, stroking up my sides, to cup my breasts. He thumbed my nipples lazily as he thrust his tongue inside me over and over, making my back arch off the bed.
“Fuck, I love your taste,” he muttered against my sensitive skin, right before he covered my clit with his mouth and sucked, simultaneously tweaking both of my nipples in unison.
“Oh, God – Blake!” I cried out, before remembering where I was. Grabbing the pillow next to me, I covered my face and moaned into the fabric as he released my right breast and lowered his hand to easing his fingers inside of me, curling them up to hit that bundle of sensitive nerves.
I ground my hips up into his face, probably almost crushing him with the tension in my thighs as he continued to stroke and suck me in just the right way to make me come apart.
I crushed the pillow over my face as my orgasm roared through me, white hot and liquid.
My body was still shaking when Blake pulled the pillow off of me and kissed his way back up my body, lingering on my hip bones, the curve of my ribs, the swells of my breasts…
“Come back to the hotel with me.” He dropped light kisses up the column of my throat. “Stay with me.”
My heart skipped a beat. “…stay with you?”
He lifted his head to look at me. “Yeah. Come stay with me – at least ‘til those fuckers move on to their next story. We spend almost every night together anyway, it wouldn’t be that different.”
“And you want that?” I whispered. “Me there all the time?”
He smirked. “You planning on quitting your job and spending all day on the couch?”
“You know what I mean.”
His smirk softened. “Yeah, that’s what I want.”
I bit my lip, wondering how we’d gone from him avoiding me to him asking me to go stay with him in the space of a few hours. But the thought of going to bed with him every night and waking up beside him every morning was drowning out my doubt.
“Princess?” he prompted when I didn’t respond, and the flicker of uncertainty I saw in his face made my heart melt a little.
“Okay,” I agreed. I was so far gone on him, there wasn’t another answer in my head.
He broke into a wide grin and immediately pushed himself up off the bed.
“Wait – now?” I asked in surprise. I at least thought we’d stay the rest of the night where we were. “It’s late –”
“And everything else I wanna do to you is loud, so unless you want Derren and Hayley to make you blush over your Cocoa Puffs in the morning, telling you what they heard, get your gorgeous ass out of that bed and come home with me.”
“Jeez, you’re bossy.”
“And you love it. Ass. Up. Now.”
Damn it, I did love it.
75
“Where do you want it?”
“Everywhere.”
“…there. Is that enough?”
“No. More…more…fuck, yeah, that’s better.”
“I’m a little disgusted.”
“Here. Wrap your lips around it. You’ll be coming in your panties in five seconds flat, I swear.”
“Um, okaaay…mmm…oh, God! Blake, that’s incredible!”
He grinned at me around his own mouthful of waffles and pancakes (stacked alternately), bacon, eggs, maple syrup and, the grand fin
ale that I had just slathered everywhere for him: salted caramel sauce.
“Told you,” he said smugly. “Worth moving in with me for, huh?”
My eyes went wide as I almost choked on my food.
He howled with laughter. “Shit, Princess, you should see your face! Would living with me for real really be that bad?”
I rolled my eyes, trying to brush it off, but I could feel my face heating.
Because, no, it wouldn’t be that bad at all.
It would actually be…
Well, it wasn’t really worth finishing that thought. The situation was temporary. Blake had said so himself the night before. I was only staying with him until the reporters that had been hounding me decided I was too boring to waste any more time on. And that had to happen soon, right?
A cell phone started to ring, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“Think that’s you,” Blake said, shoveling another forkful of his breakfast into his mouth.
I went through to the bedroom where I’d left my phone on the nightstand. Seeing that it was my dad, I picked it up just in time to answer before it went to voicemail.
“Amy, where are you?” The abrupt demand surprised me. My dad was normally a lot more laid back than that.
“Dad? What’s wrong?”
“I’m standing outside your apartment with Mrs. Flint. She told me you couldn’t come home last night because this place was crawling with reporters. Where are you? Are you okay?”
“You’re in Vegas?!”
“Yes, honey,” he replied in that falsely patient tone parents use when they really want to say something like, Well, duh!
I was shocked that he’d actually followed through on his idea of visiting me – and mid-week, too. He was a school teacher, which wasn’t exactly the type of job where you could pick your vacation days. He’d probably had to cash in a hell of a lot of favors to get the day off work, or else called in sick.
“Oh, well, I’m at Blake’s place. I, um, stayed here last night.” It was ridiculous, because I was twenty damn three, but I still blushed up a storm when I said that to my dad. Like he hadn’t already figured I had ‘sleepovers’ with my boyfriend.
For a beat, there was silence on the line, then I heard him clear his throat before he said, “Thought you might have. Look, honey, I have to fly back home this evening, but I thought it would be good if we could spend the day together. You could bring Blake too, if you want – or not, it’s up to you – but it’d be great to see you.”
“Yeah, of course I’ll spend the day with you, Dad. When’s your flight home?”
“Six-thirty.”
I checked the clock on the wall. It was already past eleven. “Okay, I’ll get dress – uh, I mean, I’ll get ready and come meet you.”
“Well, how about I come pick you up instead? I hired a car.”
“Is that a really subtle way of finding out where Blake lives so you can add that information to your ‘Dad Audit’?” I asked wryly.
He answered just as dryly, “Jeez, you’re quick as a whip. You must take after your father.”
I laughed. “Fine, get a pen, we’re at the Bellagio.”
“That’s where he lives? A hotel?” There was maybe a little bit of judgement in those questions, which I chose to ignore.
“Yeah, for now. He doesn’t have a place back here yet.”
There was another small silence before he said, “Well, alright then. I’ll call you when I get there.”
“See you soon, Dad.”
When I hung up the phone, I stood in the bedroom for a minute, chewing on my lip, thinking over what my dad had said.
You could bring Blake too, if you want…
My dad obviously wanted to meet Blake, if only to check he was ‘treating me right’ or whatever.
But are we ready for that? Would Blake even go for that?
“That’s a thoughtful face.” I looked up to see Blake standing in the doorway, a small smirk on his lips. “So, I’m gonna meet your dad?”
“Oh, well, I mean you don’t have to. He’s coming here to pick me up but – how did you…did you listen in?”
He broke into a chuckle and shook his head. “Y’know, the table is about twelve feet away from where you’re standing. It wasn’t so much listening in as just having ears.”
“Right…so, do you want to come? I get it if you don’t.”
“The guy flew in just to spend a day with you, Princess, of course I’ll come meet him.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Besides, it seems like we’ll have stuff in common. He’s the one responsible for introducing you to live music, right? Taking you to all those shows as a kid?”
My mouth dropped open in surprise.
“Keep telling you,” he said, tapping a finger against his temple. “I remember everything.”
76
As soon as Blake and I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby of the hotel, Blake spotted my dad. “That’s him by the desk in the khakis and the button down, right?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “What was your first clue?”
“Could be the fact that if he wore a wig he could pass for you.” His face morphed into an overexaggerated grimace. “Yeah…this is gonna be confusing…fuck, I think I might be gay.”
I burst out laughing and smacked him on the chest. “We are not that similar!”
To be fair, me and my dad were both tall and slim, plus we were both blond and had grey eyes – you could definitely tell we were related.
Blake laughed at my reaction. “Yeah, but it got you to loosen up.” He squeezed my tense hand. “It’s gonna be fine, Princess. Parents love me.”
I shot him an incredulous side eye. “Suuuure they do.”
“What? C’mon, what’s not to love?”
My dad had seen us by then and was walking our way, a tentative smile on his face.
“Hey, Dad,” I smiled as I let go of Blake’s hand and stepped into my dad’s hug.
“It’s so good to see you, honey,” he said into my hair, giving me the type of squeeze that made me feel like a terrible daughter for letting so much time go by since I saw him last.
“You too, Dad, I missed you.”
He kissed the top of my head before finally letting me go and turning to Blake, holding out his hand. “Greg Scott, you must be Blake.”
Blake shook his hand. “Yeah, good to meet you, sir.”
My eyebrows flew up.
Sir?
Blake glanced at me, narrowing his eyes a little, like, What? You think I can’t do ‘respect’?
“I hope I can say the same about you by the time I leave here today,” my dad replied, making absolutely no secret of the fact that he wasn’t convinced that would be the case.
“Dad,” I started in exasperation, but Blake jumped in.
“Look, Mr. Scott, I don’t know how much Amy told you about me, but I just want you to know that I care a lot about your daughter and –”
“I think it would be safe to say that she told me and her mother enough to warrant our caution,” my dad cut him up, making me wince.
Blake’s jaw ticked as he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“That being said,” my dad continued. “I believe that everyone deserves a second chance. And Amy clearly cares a lot about you, too, if she’s willing to grant you one after what happened between the two of you last time, so for what it’s worth, I will too – on one condition.”
“Okay,” Blake said slowly, glancing at me.
My face was already burning up. I knew what was coming. “Dad, can we please not do this? You can’t weed out people with just three questions!”
He just smiled at my discomfort. “It’s a great ice breaker, honey, you know that.” He looking back at Blake. “I do this type of exercise with the students in every one of my classes at the beginning of each semester.”
Blake’s expression turned more curious.
I wanted to die.
“Alight, I’m
going to ask you three questions,” my dad explained to Blake. “You must answer each one immediately, without thinking about it – I want the first choice that comes to you. Are you ready?”
“Uh…sure,” Blake said cautiously.
Why can’t my dad be normal? WHY?
He locked eyes with Blake for a long moment before he spoke quickly, “Lennon or McCartney?”
Blake’s answer was instant. “Lennon.”
My dad nodded like that was a given. “Billy Joel or Bruce Springsteen?”
“Shit…” Blake’s face scrunched up in consternation.
“Come on!” My dad clicked his fingers. “No thinking!”
“Jo – no – Springsteen! Springsteen. Gotta be.”
“Damn right.” My dad allowed himself a small grin. “Now, a tough one – Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley?”
Blake looked stricken. “Ah, man, you can’t do this to me! I don’t know…”
“Come on, come on.”
“We’re in Vegas! They’re both – you can’t ask me to pick!”
My dad’s grin took on a sadistic tint. “Clock’s ticking…”
“Ah, goddamn you’re evil.”
“You’re dating my daughter, that’s my prerogative.”
Blake barked out a laugh. “Okay, if I had to pick one…I guess it’d be Elvis.”
My dad sucked in a breath, shaking his head as he looked at me. “Lost him on the third.”
I laughed as Blake exclaimed, “C’mon, there’s no right answer to that question!”
“HEY! Hey, you’re Blake Maxwell, aren’t you? Holy shit, you’re really him!” The excited shout came from a young guy who’d stopped a few feet away from us. He was looking at Blake the way you might look at Santa and his reindeer if they landed on the street in front of you.
Blake’s laughter shrank to a polite smile as he said, “Yeah, man, that’s me.”
“Oh, shit! Dude! My girlfriend’s gonna freak the fuck out when I tell her about this! Can I get a picture?!”
“Yeah, sure.” Blake stood next to the guy long enough for him to snap a selfie, then he nodded a goodbye and started to turn back to me and my dad –
