by Emery Rose
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing for our birthday? Do you want to celebrate it together?”
Our birthday was the fifth of June, and I’d be celebrating it with Starlet. “Can’t. I’m taking Scarlett to Cabo for a long weekend.”
Her brows raised in surprise. Yeah, I know. We were going on a weekend getaway. Shit was getting serious.
“Wow. Okay.” Remy tilted her head, studying my face a little too closely, a smile spreading across her face. “She makes you happy, doesn’t she?”
“Guess so.” Scarlett made me happy. And even though I hadn’t said the words, hadn’t really wanted this to happen, somewhere along the way I’d fallen in love with her.
“At the risk of sounding like a bitch, Sienna never deserved you. But Scarlett does.”
On that note, Remy reversed out of my driveway and took off down the street with her precious cargo.
Question was, did I deserve Scarlett?
30
Scarlett
Dylan handed me a fruity rum cocktail and tipped his chin in thanks as the bartender handed him a rum and soda with lime.
I clinked my glass against his and smiled. “Happy Birthday, Dylan.”
We drank to that and Dylan pulled me into a rum-drunk kiss under a blazing sun, the sky so blue it hurt your eyes to look at it. From the swim-up bar in the infinity pool, we had a view of the crystal sea. We were staying in a private spa villa at a luxury resort in Cabo that cost as much as my month’s rent per night. I should be happy. On top of the world. I was with the man I loved and even though I thought he loved me too, he’d never said the words whereas I had let it slip twice.
It was Dylan’s twenty-seventh birthday, and I just wanted to live in the moment and enjoy the day without thinking about those three little words or the fact that we had no future together.
“Move in with me,” he said a little while later when we were poolside, lying side by side on lounge chairs, his hand skimming over my thigh.
I laughed to cover my shock. Where had that come from? Most likely, he was joking. “I can’t move in with you.”
He was silent for a beat and I thought he’d just drop the subject. “You spend most of your time at my house anyway. Half your shit’s over at my place.”
I rolled onto my side and studied his face. His eyes were shielded by Wayfarers but his expression told me he was dead serious about this. “How many of those rum cocktails have you had?”
He scowled. “I’m not drunk.”
“I still have my own apartment. Nic and I signed a lease.”
“When’s it up?” he persisted.
“November.”
“I’ll buy you out of it.”
“Um, no. I can’t let you do that.”
“Why the fuck not?”
There were so many reasons, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. We’d spent months sneaking around. We were a badly kept secret and it was a miracle that nobody in my family had found out about us. But I couldn’t keep living like this. I was as bad as my father with his mistress, but the difference was that the guilt was starting to eat away at me and my conscience was troubled.
“Why do you want me to move in?” I asked, picking up the conversation again on our way back to the villa. I was sun-drowsy and a little bit buzzed from the rum cocktails.
“I’ll show you why.”
I padded across the smooth dark wood floor, knowing exactly what he intended to show me. We stripped naked and fell onto the bed diagonally, the sheets so crisp and white, the ceiling fans cooling my skin, a sea breeze floating through the open doors. It was the golden hour, the light softer and warmer, magical, making this feel almost dreamlike.
His hands, lips, tongue caressed every inch of my body, leaving chills in their wake on my sun-kissed skin, sending ripples of heat between my quivering thighs. Damp heat circled my nipple then he tugged it between his teeth, pinching my other nipple between his fingers. I thrust my hips, seeking the friction as his hard length glided through my slick heat, teasing me with the promise of more.
“You’re so wet for me,” he said, his lips ghosting down my neck, his voice low and husky. “Fucking drenched.”
“I want you inside me,” I gritted out as he continued his gentle assault on my body, teasing and coaxing, withholding the one thing I wanted most. It was a familiar theme. Him making me wait until I was so desperate, he had me begging for more. Dylan liked to have that control.
“I love the way your sweet little pussy clenches my cock.”
I whimpered, my core clenching just at the mention of it. I ached for him. Nobody could turn me on like Dylan could. He didn’t even have to touch me to make me wet for him.
“Love the sounds you make when I pound into you.”
Oh God. I whimpered again.
Arms braced on either side of me, he hovered above me, his muscles flexing and bunching. I reached up with both of my hands and cradled his face, pulling his mouth to mine. We moaned into our kiss, and I inhaled his exhales, filling my lungs with his every breath, my hands gliding to the back of his head, fingers tugging on the ends of his hair.
Until finally, finally, he guided his tip to my entrance and he was inside me in one quick thrust. My legs clamped around his back, his hips gyrating, grinding and circling, not giving me a chance to adjust to this fullness.
“Do you need more incentive?” he asked, and I’d forgotten the reason for his question.
“I need more of everything,” I panted. More of you. All of you.
He was kissing me again, his hands strong and gentle, stroking me. And I was nothing but my body. This sweet exquisite torture with no barriers between us.
“Fuck. You feel so good.” A groan escaped my lips when he slid out, leaving me empty. Bereft. “Tell me who owns this fucking pussy.” He pinched my clit between his fingers and I let out a yelp of pleasure mingled with pain.
My fingernails dug into his back, scraping the skin, my breathing labored.
“Say it,” he commanded.
“You do,” I gritted out as he drove back into me.
“Nobody else gets to fuck you.” Thrust. “This pussy is mine.” Thrust. “Mine.”
Then he stilled and he looked down at me, his blue-gray eyes locked on mine, and something in his expression had me furrowing my brows in concern. I placed my palm on his cheekbone, wanting to soothe his troubled mind. “What’s wrong?”
“Fuck, Starlet. What have you done to me?” he asked, his voice raw, anguished like it was painful to say the words.
I didn’t answer. It was the same thing he’d done to me. Ruined me for all others.
I watched his face and it felt like this was the first time he had ever let me see him, really see him. His naked vulnerability, so real and raw and beautiful. It felt more intimate than any of the other times. It was heady, so intoxicating it was almost too much.
This wasn’t fucking. He was making love to me. His eyes never left my face, and I took the weight of his body, welcomed it, as our fingers entwined, our hands clasped on either side of my head while he glided in and out, his pace unhurried like he wanted to make this last forever.
Nothing, nothing, could hurt as much as it did when Dylan made love to me. And it was in that moment that the thought of losing him became almost unbearable. A physical ache that squeezed my heart and stole the breath from my lungs. I would have cried if he hadn’t been watching me so intently, like he could read my every emotion.
Our climax wasn’t fast, it wasn’t pounded into me, rather coaxed and drawn out, my body unfurling like a flower reaching for the sun. A slow climb to uncharted territory. It felt like he was deeper inside me than ever before, our bodies fused to the point that I didn’t know where he left off and I began. My thighs clenched tighter around his hips, my clit rubbing against him as our bodies soared into shared orgasms that left us breathless and clinging tightly to each other. Like we might fall off that imaginary cliff if we let go.
His forehead dropped to mine, our chests heaving as we struggled to regain our breath, and for a few long moments we stayed like that, not talking, not moving, just breathing the same air with him still inside me.
Afterward, he rolled off me and we lay side by side, staring at the ceiling, his tattooed hand wrapped around my thigh, his thumb making lazy circles on my skin. It felt like the point of no return. An all or nothing moment. I wanted all of him. Nothing less would satisfy me. And that revelation was as exhilarating as it was frightening.
Like free falling off that rock cliff with no safety net to catch you. I was all in, but was he?
Love was only for the brave. It made you more vulnerable than anything ever could. When you gave someone your heart, you also gave them the power to destroy you. Here, take my heart and don’t trample all over it was what you were saying by uttering those three little words. And maybe that was why he’d never said them. Down deep, he was just as scared as the rest of us mere mortals.
I rolled onto my side and propped my head on my hand, peering down at his face, my hand over his beating heart. He was just staring at the ceiling fan, lost in thought. I wanted all his thoughts and all his words and all his memories. I wanted all of him, every broken piece and jagged edge and twisted truth. “Why did you leave this space blank?”
He didn’t say a word. His stormy blue-grays studied my face, and there was so much intensity in his gaze that I had no idea what he was thinking. He was silent for so long that I gave up waiting for an answer. I withdrew my hand and flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling fan. Mixed up, confused, and hopelessly in love with someone who couldn’t say the words. Was I the only one who felt this way? Maybe I’d been fooling myself all along. Why had he asked me to move in?
My head turned when he grabbed a Sharpie from the bedside table and guided my hand to his chest, placing my palm flat against it. Tipping down his chin, he traced my hand onto his skin in blue marker then lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the inside of my wrist before he released it. I watched the marker move over his skin as he wrote a word in block letters inside the hand: HER.
It almost filled up the blank space. Almost. Unshed tears swam in my eyes, distorting the image.
“Dylan,” I whispered, brushing away the tears. He was mine, and I was his.
He smiled like he hadn’t just stolen another piece of my heart. “Yeah, babe?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just…” I swallowed, trying to find the words but there were only three words and I’d already overused them. So, I just kissed him, a long, lingering kiss that would turn into something more if I didn’t stop it now. This was an emotional overload. I was two seconds away from bursting into tears, and I didn’t know how to handle it. So I pulled away and stood up. “I’m going to take a shower and get ready for dinner.”
I could feel his eyes on my back as I walked away. Before I stepped inside the bathroom, I looked over my shoulder and my eyes met his. He was lying on his side, his head propped in his hand, heart beating under the Sharpie tattoo, an expression on his face that I couldn’t decipher.
“What are you thinking about?”
I expected him to make a sexual comment or not even bother to answer. But he rarely did or said what I expected. “I was thinking that this is the best birthday I’ve ever had. Nobody has ever loved me the way you do. Don’t let me ruin this. Don’t let me ruin us.”
And I died. I was so choked up I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe.
This was what Dylan did. This was why he owned me. Body, heart, soul. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His naked body was a masterpiece. A work of art, from the tattoos inked on his sun-bronzed skin, so dark against the white sheets, to the chiseled muscles, he was lean and lithe and so masculine.
But how could I promise him that? I couldn’t.
He was busy on his phone now, dark brows drawn together, scrolling through texts or emails, not even looking at me. “Go take your shower, Starlet,” he said, his eyes still on his phone screen.
After I showered, I slipped into a short cotton dress. It was simple, off-the-shoulder, the color of the clear blue sea on our doorstep. Dylan stood behind me and I watched him in the mirror. He brushed my hair off my shoulder and placed a kiss on it, the stubble on his jaw lightly scraping across my skin sent shivers up and down my spine. It didn’t matter how many times he kissed me, touched me, devoured me, he still made my knees weak. This couldn’t be good. Why did I have to feel so much of everything?
He left the bathroom door open and I watched him step under the rain shower.
Before I had a chance to fully appreciate the view, my phone rang, dragging my attention away from Dylan’s naked body. It was my mom, and while I was tempted to ignore her call and let it go to voicemail, after what had happened to Dylan, I closed the bathroom door and answered the call, taking my phone outside to the terrace with a sea view.
“Hey Mom. Are you okay?”
“Hello darling. Are you at home?”
I watched the pink and tangerine sky as the sun dipped lower into the sea. This wasn’t home. It was the place where I came to lose my heart. “Um, no, I’m—”
“Just a minute. Your father’s home. Simon,” she called. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”
I sighed as my mother conducted a conversation with my father before she came back on the line a few seconds later. “He’s been working too hard. He comes home exhausted.”
“I’ll bet,” I muttered, not bothering to point out that today was Saturday.
“Good news. Your father was able to pull a few strings at the club. So the date is set for the last Saturday in October. It’s a lovely time of year to get married.”
“They’re getting married at Bellavista? But I thought Sienna wanted to get married in—”
“It’s perfect,” my mother said. “Your father has already paid the deposit. So we need to get moving. Two weeks from today we have a busy day planned. We’ll start with brunch on the verandah at the club at eleven so we can sample the menu and choose a cake. Followed by dress shopping. I’d prefer to do it the other way around, but we’ll have to limit our intake so we’re not bloated…”
I paced the terrace. I couldn’t do this. How could I be my sister’s maid of honor? I couldn’t. The very idea was giving me heart palpitations. The wedding wasn’t supposed to be until next spring but now it was only a little over four months away. Which made my need to tell Sienna more imminent. “Mom, I have to work that Saturday, I can’t—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is your sister’s wedding. Besides, it’s not like you have a real job. Ask for the day off.”
“Mom, I—”
“Have you seen my watch?” Dylan called from inside. I turned as he appeared on the terrace in a white linen button-down cuffed to his elbows—white—and shorts. He looked delicious, good enough to eat. I held my finger to my lips, pleading with my eyes for him to keep his mouth shut. His brows rose in question and I mouthed. My mom. I thought that would have him running for the hills, but he plopped down on the daybed as if he didn’t want to miss a word of this conversation.
“Who’s that?” my mom asked. “Who are you with?”
I turned my back to Dylan so I wouldn’t have to see his face when I betrayed him. “It’s, um… it’s nobody.” I squeezed my eyes shut. Dylan was not ‘nobody.’ “I need to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.” I cut the call and winced as I turned around to face Dylan.
“Am I your dirty little secret, Starlet?”
“No. Yes. But I don’t want you to be. I need to tell Sienna. I can’t keep doing this.”
“You want me to tell her?”
“What? No. You’d do that?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Why not?” His eyes narrowed on me. “We’re in this together, right?”
“Right. And I swear on my life that I’m going to tell her. But it has to come from me. I’m seeing her in two weeks so I’ll tell her then.” The th
ought of it made me feel sick to my stomach. I took a few deep breaths, trying to keep the nausea at bay. Oh my god, I was going to be sick.
“You okay?”
I mustered a smile and nodded. He wasn’t fooled.
“Hey. It’s going to be okay,” he assured me, sounding more confident than I felt.
I nodded again, wanting to believe him but I knew in my heart it wasn’t true. It wouldn’t be okay. But it was his birthday and tonight we were celebrating and I didn’t want to think of how Sienna would react to the news that I was in love with her ex-boyfriend. “I need to get ready for dinner.”
“You look ready.”
“I need to do my makeup.”
“You don’t need that shit.”
“I want to make an effort. We’re going out in public.”
“Let me do it.”
I laughed at the ridiculousness of that, but he was dead serious. “Do you know how? Have you ever done it before?”
“If you don’t like it, you can wash your face.”
“Okay,” I said, perplexed but intrigued as I walked my makeup bag over to him and handed him his Omega Speedmaster that I’d found in my bag. He patted the coffee table in front of him and I sat on it, my legs between his spread ones while he studied my face like he was a cosmetician at a makeup counter.
“Close your eyes,” he commanded, a smug look on his face like he had this all figured out.
I did as he said and heard him rooting around in my makeup bag. This whole thing was so ridiculous, I couldn’t stop laughing. “What are you doing?”
“Shh. No peeking.”
No peeking. Well, that had me doubling over with laughter. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. Dylan said ‘peeking.’ That was hilarious.
