by Nella Tyler
I rocked back and forth and lifted myself up and down, doing my best to match each one of his powerful thrusts. I was no expert at this, but I was definitely getting better. I looked up at his face and if the look of ecstasy there was any indication, he was enjoying it as much as I was. I bounced harder and he moved faster, and my body jerked and jolted repeatedly with each one of his delicious thrusts. I was lost in the feelings he was creating inside of me and I never wanted to be found.
He startled me by lifting my butt with one arm and flipping me back onto the bed. He was suddenly on top of me with his tongue in my ear. I lifted my butt up and tried to get him back inside of me. His mouth trailed down from my ear to my neck, and he sucked a piece of it in between his lips and teeth. He was teasing me, torturing me, denying me what he knew that I wanted – and I loved it. My entire life, I’d hated being told what to do. I hated men who thought they could control me. But part of my incredible attraction to Drake is his dominance. I want him to be in charge. I want him to take me to places that I’ve never been…and never bring me back.
He flipped and turned me. He lifted me and held me down, taking me from every conceivable position and in every orifice. He would slam into me for a while until I came screaming and scratching like a wildcat and then he’d slow down and rock me like a baby while I calmed down. I was like a woman possessed. Every time I thought I couldn’t take any more, he would take me again. He kissed and sucked and licked and nibbled my entire body. I was practically a puddle of smouldering liquid by the time I felt him harden and swell inside of me and let himself go. After he milked himself into me, every last drop, he collapsed down and laid his head on my chest while he calmed himself down.
I held him against me and ran my fingers through his hair, enjoying our quiet moment just as much as I had enjoyed the other. I was fighting sleep, trying not to give in to it because no dream I could have would possibly compare to the one I was living.
I had finally let my eyes close when I felt his mouth against mine again. Then, I felt it begin to slide down my body agonizingly slowly. He stopped to hover his lips just out of reach of my nipples. I arched up and tried to meet his mouth with them, but all he gave me was a lick before continuing downward across my belly. When he reached my clit, he did the same thing. I whined and tried to push his face down, but he was too strong for me. He let his lips brush against the outer part of my wet ones before sliding his tongue along my slit and stopping just short of touching my clit. I opened my legs wider and pulled my butt up off the bed, grinding myself into his face until he finally wrapped his lips around my swollen clit and sucked it into his mouth. He held it there and stroked his tongue back and forth across it wildly. He licked and sucked, driving me mad with passion. I dug my fingers into his scalp, and it didn’t take long before I was arching my back and crying out his name. The orgasm hit me harder than any wave had so far and for a second, I honestly couldn’t breathe.
The rest of the night was more of the same. The sun was rising and the orange glow was peeking through the blinds of his bedroom before his breaths finally turned long and deep and I knew he was asleep. I snuggled into him and held him for a while before kissing the side of his face and slipping out of the bed. I knew leaving him wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t know it would feel comparable to amputating my own fucking arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY
DRAKE
The first thing I realized when I woke up was that Summer wasn’t in the bed. I stretched and rolled over to look towards the bathroom. The door was open, and she wasn’t there. I looked towards the bedroom door and saw it was open, too. Pulling myself up on my elbow I called out to her,
“Summer?” I sniffed the air, hoping she got up to get something to eat. The second thing I had realized was that I was starving. Summer and I had marathon sex all night long. I reached for my cell phone on the nightstand and I was shocked to see that it was after two in the afternoon already. “Summer?” There was no noise from anywhere in the apartment. She was gone. The pleasure sensors in my brain were still raw and they didn’t want to believe she left me. I told myself she went to run errands. I’m not sure what kind of errands she might have. Maybe she went to cash her check – that would make sense.
With a heavy sigh, I climbed out of the bed and pulled on a pair of clean shorts. I’d get something to eat and if she wasn’t back by the time I finished, I’d go see if I could find her. I was headed down the hall and almost to the living room when there was a pounding on my door. With a smile, I pulled it open. I just assumed it was Summer coming back. My hopes were dashed when I was confronted by the angry face of her little protector.
“Where is she?”
“She’s not here.”
“She was, though, right? All night she was here with you and then sometime this morning, while she knew we would all be out, she came by the homestead and left this.” He handed me an envelope. His hand was shaking. I took it from him and saw that the front of it said,
“Bennie.” That was his name. Now I remember. Bennie the great protector. I turned it over and slid it open. When I saw the cash, my stomach clenched. I knew what she had done as soon as I saw it. My hand was shaking as I looked back at Bennie, my mouth so dry that I could hardly swallow.
“She left?”
“There’s a note in there.”
“I don’t want to read it. Obviously, she didn’t say where she was going or you wouldn’t be here.”
“No. She said she loves us and she hopes we take the money and use it to better our lives. She said she was going to use her half to better hers.”
“Her half? She left you half of it?”
He visibly bristled at that. “We didn’t ask her for any of it.”
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t know why I’m surprised. I know that she has a good heart. What time did she come by and leave this?”
“I left at eight this morning. Ace was there from ten to noon and he says he didn’t see her. Phoebe got back at one and she didn’t see her, either. I just got back. So, sometime between eight and ten, I guess.”
“She’s got at least a four hour jump on us.”
“Are you going to go after her?”
I didn’t answer that question. I didn’t know the answer. This was definitely not how I expected this day to go. I needed time to think. “I don’t know. Are you?”
Bennie half-laughed and half-snorted as he said, “Summer would only kick my ass and tell me to fuck off when I got there. She has no idea she’s only five feet tall. She thinks that she’s as giant on the outside as she feels on the inside. I love her, but as much as it pains me to admit it, I’m not the one she wants.”
“Obviously, neither am I.”
Bennie left me after that. For the next few hours, maybe longer, I was like a fucking zombie. My brain wasn’t functioning, it was just numb. I felt so fucking stupid. She came home with me last night after I told her I was falling in love with her and the whole time, she knew she was going to leave me. She knew she’d have to fight me and Bennie if she told either of us what she planned to do. I felt like a fool and a simpering child because all I could think at the moment he said he wasn’t the one she wanted was, “You got a fucking note.” Once I had that idea in my head, I started searching the apartment for my note. How could she love me the way she did all night long and then just leave me without so much as a note?
I checked the bedroom, knocking things down off of the nightstands and dresser, and then I moved from that room to the next and the next. I lost my mind and at some point, I was no longer looking for a note, I was simply tearing shit up. When the anger finally turned into exhaustion, I slumped down against the wall in the living room and held my head in my hands while I wondered what the fuck I was going to do.
The knock on the door didn’t penetrate the fog in my head at first. It started as a knock and turned into a pounding. When I heard the pounding I looked up. “Summer?”
“No, Spence, it’s Kobe. Let
me in, man. You have no idea what I had to go through in order to get past the doorman. Why do you live in this fancy ass place, man? Why would you want to live your life in between four walls?”
“I’m not in the mood for visitors today, Kobe.”
“Come on, man. I don’t want to yell back and forth through the door. Phoebe told me. Let me in.” Fuck! I drug my ass up off the floor and went over and let him in. He was as dishevelled as ever, but he gave me a disapproving look. “Have you eaten?”
I turned and walked away from the door. “No. I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat. I’ll fix you something. You look like you need some caffeine, too. Which way is the kitchen?” I pointed and he left me where I stood and went into my kitchen. I heard him opening the refrigerator and cabinets and banging and slamming things around. Against my will, he had stimulated my curiosity. I wondered for a second if he’d intended to and then I remembered it was Kobe. He rarely did anything with that much purpose in mind. I went over and pushed open the kitchen door. He was at the counter slicing mushrooms. “Nice set-up you’ve got here. Do you cook often?”
“No. My mother sends a woman in to clean and stock the place once a month. She does the shopping.”
“Oh, well these are nice digs. You should cook.” I pulled out one of the chairs and sat down to watch him. Once he finished slicing the mushrooms, he moved over to the coffee pot and started that. Then he slowly moved back to the stove and turned on the burner. Somehow, watching him perform these mundane tasks calmed me. Once again, I had the silly idea that this was exactly what he intended. By the time he was finished shuffling back and forth, he’d made two vegetarian omelettes. He sat one down in front of me with a mug of coffee. It seemed wrong somehow to eat when I missed Summer so badly, but my damned traitorous stomach had other ideas. Kobe took the seat next to me, dumped salt on top of his eggs and instructed, “Eat.”
I ate and surprisingly, it was delicious. When I finished, I poured myself another cup of coffee and sat back down. “Why, Kobe? Did Phoebe say why?”
He finished his last bite and then he put down his fork and said, “She loves you.”
I chuckled, not happily. “That makes it make even less sense. If she loves me, then why wouldn’t she stay? I would have taken care of her. She could have had anything she ever wanted. I would have let her have anything she ever wanted.”
“Man, you don’t get it – that’s exactly why she left.”
He was right. I really didn’t get it. I get that she’s stubborn and proud, but if you love someone and they love you, then what’s wrong with taking care of each other? “Just a simple note may have helped.”
“No, it wouldn’t have. She wasn’t going to tell you where she was going and she wasn’t going to say that she loved you right before she left…that would be cruel. She did what she had to do, man, with as little pain as possible.”
“Fine, I’ll get over the note. I still don’t understand the other.”
“She can’t be who she needs to be if you give her everything, man. She’s a cute girl. You and I both know that a girl who looks like her could have found a man to take care of her a long time ago if that’s what she was looking for. She doesn’t want to be pampered and coddled like your pretty little society girls. She wants to be at a place where she can be a partner to the man she loves, not a princess. Phoebe thinks that Summer will come back when she’s ready. You should be ready, too.”
“You think I should just sit here and wait for her to come back?”
“No. I think that would only piss her off, too, from what I know of her. I think you should live your life, make yourself happy. You won’t ever be able to make a woman happy, any woman, if you’re not happy yourself.”
Hippie mumbo-jumbo, but somehow, it made sense. I knew that I had to go on with my life. That much was never really in question. The question was which path I should take. If I took the job my father had for me, I’d make a lot of money, I’d be here in case Summer came back, and I would be miserable. Summer knew that. If she comes back and I’m gone to Bali, she’ll understand. She knows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SUMMER
NINE MONTHS LATER
“Order up!” Jace called out, way too loud as usual. I brushed the loose strand of hair back out of my face. My back and my feet hurt, and my head felt like it would explode. The smell of bacon grease and pancakes has permeated my skin and embedded itself in my nostrils. I even smell it after I get home and take my shower every night. But when all is said and done, it’s beats old piss and booze.
“Summer!” The major drawback of having a job is putting up with people like Jace. On the streets, I would have just told him to fuck off. Here…well, I’ve told him to fuck off once or twice, but then I still have to work with him all day, which sucks. Just the sight of him in the morning makes me mad. For some reason, he has made it his sole purpose in life to torment me. I went over to the window and slid down the plates. I rested one on my forearm and the other two on my palms. “It’s probably cold by now,” he grumbled as I walked away without a glance in his direction.
I sat the plates down in front of the three young men who were waiting for them. “Do you guys need more coffee?”
“No, we’re good on coffee. Brandon here would really love your phone number, though.”
The one called Brandon was staring down at the table. His face was as red as a beet. I smiled as pretty as I could and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have a phone.”
They giggled like little girls. I didn’t go to high school, so I never knew how silly teenaged boys could be until I started working here. We’re down the street from some fancy prep school and the boys love this place. The girls, not so much. Jace’s portions are large and greasy. A teenage prep school girl is much too worried about the size of her jeans for all of that. “Your address then,” the one who seemed to be the leader said. “He’d love to take you out on the town.”
“Maybe when Brandon is grown up enough to ask for it himself, we can talk.” The poor kid was probably not even eighteen years old yet. He looked like one of those guys whose body grew much faster than his face and even his brain matured. He still wasn’t looking at me. The other two laughed as I walked away, and when I got to the counter and looked over at them, Brandon was looking at me. He was a cute kid; I’ll give him that, but a kid for sure. I had just turned nineteen, but when you add in my years on the street, it’s more like thirty-five. Besides, I have turned down every offer I’ve gotten in the past nine months anyhow. The closest I’ve come to “a night out on the town” was the over eighteen club downtown that I go to every so often with my roommate Matt. I don’t need that kind of complication in my life.
“Summer!” My body jerked and I’d be willing to bet that the asshole was smiling behind me.
“What, Jace? I’m standing right fucking here.”
“Don’t curse at me.”
“Don’t fucking yell at me. What do you need?”
He slammed a plate up onto the stainless steel lip of the window. It had a giant biscuit in the center of it and a big bowl of gravy. “It’s for table nine, remember?”
“I remember. Why can’t you just sit a plate up there underneath the warmer like a normal person, instead of a crazy one?”
He smiled. I remember when I started here six months ago how attractive I thought he was.
Now, I just think he’s an asshole, plain and simple. “Because I’m not a normal person.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” I picked up the plate and carried it over towards table nine. I was almost there when the diner door opened and I was caught staring into the face of Derek’s friend, Lance. I looked down at the floor quickly and slipped past him, but it was too late, he’d seen me. What the hell was he doing here? I had a hard time imagining he was just in the neighbourhood. I tried to linger at table nine when I dropped off the biscuit, but I could feel him still standing there behind me the entire time. When the peo
ple at the table I was hovering over started looking uncomfortable, I was finally forced to turn back around. Lance was still looking at me and smiling like he just found a wallet on the sidewalk.
“You can take any table you like.”
“Summer.”
I grit my teeth and just got it over with. “Lance. Please don’t tell him you saw me.”
“I’m going to take that table over there by the window. Before I leave, you’re going to take a break and come over and sit with me. We need to talk.”
“I’ve already had my break.”
“Take another one.”
“You’ll have to discuss that with the big guy behind the grill. Coffee?”
“Yeah.”
I watched him go sit down with a lump in my throat and butterflies in the pit of my stomach. What did he want? Surely, Drake has moved on by now. I have…for the most part. I went and got the coffee pot and a menu. Taking a deep breath, I walked over, poured him a cup, and sat the menu down in front of him. “Just let me know when you’re ready.”
“Summer, please sit down.” He was resorting to please; I’ll bet that was hard for him. I looked around. Table nine was good and the three boys were still lingering over their breakfast. No one else was here. I glanced behind the counter. I could see Jace glaring at me. Fuck him. My work is caught up. I slid into the booth across from Lance.
