Chapter Eleven
After work the next day, I met Heath at his place. I brought the fixings for a Caesar salad and he’d bought the ground beef and stuff for hamburgers.
Things were awkward at first. I could tell Heath was studiously avoiding the entire subject of Adam and the auction. He was done, it seemed.
But when we were about halfway through our hamburgers, I asked him the question that had been burning on my mind. “How do you do a hand job?”
Heath choked on his burger, his eyes widening. “Damn. At least give me warning to clear my mouth before you pop that shit on me.”
I giggled. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I was reading this Cosmo article and it confused me because—”
“Stop right there. If you get your sex education from Cosmo then you are in for a world of hurt—or he is. Those articles are insane.”
“Okay. So would you be embarrassed if I asked you to explain to me how it works?”
He laughed. “Embarrassed? Doll, I’m gay. Penises are like my favorite subject—shit, that’d probably be the case if I was straight, too, with boobies a close second.”
Over dessert—I’d picked up fresh strawberries at a local stand and served them over cheap angel food cake for strawberry shortcake—he used a banana to demonstrate the art of pleasuring a man with your hand. I might have had radiation burns on my face from all the blushing after that, but I did follow his advice and dump those back magazine issues into the recycling bin when I got home.
***
Lindsay’s cocktail party was an absolute dud. When she saw us arrive together, she widened her eyes in exaggerated surprise—or mock horror, I couldn’t tell which. She then pretended to be called away on some very important errand. I think she had planned on being Adam’s “plus one.” For the rest of the night, she pretended I didn’t exist. The other guests might have done the same but for the fact that Adam stuck to my side like Velcro the entire time.
I wore the red dress. It was modest at the top with a sweetheart neckline, short-sleeved but formfitting and rather short to showcase my legs, which were, in all, not bad legs. And I’d taken extra special care shaving so I wouldn’t have any cuts or scrapes to hide. I wore the glittery black shoes I’d worn in Amsterdam with the black dress. I didn’t even try with my jewelry. Anything I wore would look fake compared to all the shiny real jewels I was bound to see at the party. I chose the only real gems I owned—cultured pearl earrings. And that’s it—no ring, necklace or bracelet.
We kept up our affectionate routine. Adam held my hand the entire time and was very attentive. He stood close and when he spoke to me alone, he whispered in my ear, hooking an arm around my waist. I could tell we were the talk of the party because we got a lot of speculative looks. Adam was not seen in public acting affectionate with women, it seemed. Was this act solely to discourage Lindsay and her designs or to set others on alert as well—an elaborate plan to keep people at a distance? If anyone was capable of elaborate plans, it was Adam.
Afterward, he took me back to his place, which was only a few miles from where Lindsay lived in Laguna Beach. I wondered what he had in mind for the rest of the evening. Another trip out on the yacht?
To my utter surprise, his plan was to sit in his movie viewing room, watch The Lord of the Rings and eat popcorn. I loved popcorn and Tolkien, so I was perfectly happy with that. However, at one point he disappeared and came back wearing pajama pants and a T-shirt.
I muttered something about it not being fair that I had to stay in my dress and he vanished again, returning with a T-shirt. I went into the bathroom and put it on. As it was one of his, it went down past my panties and left my legs bare. When I came back into the room, his eyes followed me to where I sat in my recliner just next to him. We had our own little theater to ourselves with a high-definition widescreen and top notch sound system—like I said, hardware got me giddy. And we could attend this nice little private theater in our pajamas.
When the first movie was over, he was about to key in the command for the second. By then it was after ten and I mentioned that I should probably be getting home. “Why don’t you stay? I have half a dozen guest rooms you can choose from. And two more movies.” So here it was, his next request for more.
I hesitated. “Wouldn’t that count as one more night?” I said.
His eyes shot a challenge into mine but his smile didn’t fade. “Nope.”
“What makes you think I’m inclined to give you a freebie?”
He held up his remote. “Come on...you know you want to…”
I sighed. “If I can get another batch of popcorn and a toothbrush—and you turn off your phone until the movies are over—then I might consider it.”
“Done, done and…” he gave an exaggerated sigh, pulling his phone out of the drink caddy where he had rested it. “Oh, what the hell. Done.”
He turned the phone on twice to check it during the slow parts—Arwen’s dream and that silly scene where Aragorn gets knocked over the cliff by a warg.
After the second time, I hopped into his recliner, grabbed the phone and stuck it down my shirt. We watched the remainder of the movie pressed against each other, our legs intertwined, his strong arms wrapped around my waist.
During the prologue to the third movie, we started kissing. And from there we pretty much ignored The Return of the King. His hands were all over me—though I suspect that might have been partly an effort to locate his phone. My hands feasted on him as well.
We spent the entire two and a half hours making out like teenagers in the back of their parents’ borrowed minivan. And I don’t think I’d ever been so turned on in my life. Which, of course, wasn’t saying much, since my three weeks in this man’s company comprised about 98.5 percent of my sexual arousal experience. It was stunning, the feelings that were stirring in me—like parts of my body I hadn’t known existed previously were coming alive.
After Aragorn was crowned king and the credits rolled, we were in the dark and still going. He’d had his hands on my breasts for the previous hour, driving me insane with the continuous stimulation, teasing them to points, putting his hot mouth on them. Because, yeah, my T-shirt (or, rather, his T-shirt) had hit the floor long before—along with the phone—and was quickly joined by the one he was wearing.
Then I reached down and started stroking him through his pajama pants and he uttered a harsh groan. Oh, he liked that very much. We wouldn’t be having sex tonight, but it was about time he had some fun. After all, he’d been so attentive to me before. And I had to admit that Heath’s accusation of Adam having a weird little self-denial fetish was at the back of my mind, too. Maybe he gets off from denying himself.
But once my hand slipped inside his pajamas, he wasn’t protesting. I wrapped my hand around him and stroked softly up and down just like Heath had instructed. His organ was hard—long and thick. I loved the feel of the soft skin gliding under my hands, the rigidity, the sound of his husky groans as he surrendered to my stroking.
I moved my hand faster and his arms around me grew tighter. He sank his teeth into my neck, sucking, and I knew I was probably going to be covered in hickies for the next few days. But I didn’t stop, because it was really turning me on to have this power over his body. I lowered my head and kissed his hard, muscular chest, licking and sucking his nipples, as he had done to me.
Then my mouth went to his ear, “I’m going to make you come.”
His hoarse reply, “Yes, you are.”
“I want you inside me, Adam. I want to know what you feel like in me.” I said those words and I meant them. It was time. I was tired of waiting. It wouldn’t happen tonight, but it had to be soon or I thought I’d explode from the tension of it all.
I stroked faster and faster until his body went rigid and I could feel the contractions of his orgasm. Hot semen dripped across his flat abs and my hand and when finally he came down from wherever I had taken him, he glanced down, carefully removing my hand from his now too-sensitive flesh. “Look at the mess you’ve made, naughty girl.”
My lips found his and we kissed, long and languorously. “I might need to be punished later.”
“Yes, you might.”
There was a full bathroom near the theater and we moved in there for a shower. Another warm, sexy shower together. After he had cleaned himself off, he moved to me with the soap and insisted on lathering me from head to toe. From behind, he massaged my shoulders and again displayed that interesting habit of paying special attention to soaping my breasts.
“I am going to be inside you, Emilia,” he breathed against my ear when he was done.
Then his hand was between my legs. I leaned my back against him.
“I’m going to slide it in slowly. I’m going to watch your face when you take it in. I’m going to fuck you until you scream. And then I’m going to make you beg for it again. And again.”
His fingers glided over my yearning, sensitive flesh while he pinched my nipple in his other hand. In hardly any time at all, he returned the favor I had just done him. My orgasm came fast and intense. I stiffened in his arms and he held me against him. His hot breath scorched the back of my neck. He pressed against me, hard once more.
Even given that conversation I’d had with Heath, I didn’t know a man could be ready again that quickly. Of course we hadn’t actually had sex, so that might have had something to do with it. As much as I tried to educate myself, it was thoughts like these that showed me how little I really knew about these things. Adam had been a patient and thorough teacher thus far. He’d been too patient for my tastes. I was ready for the next lesson and he withheld it like an obdurate schoolmaster.
Maybe it was time for the student to rebel.
***
It must have been two or three in the morning by then but neither of us was tired.
He grabbed a change of clothes, and a new shirt for me—this one a rugby jersey that came down a little longer on my legs but also had sleeves that ran well past my hands. I ended up rolling them past my wrists. We went to the kitchen and snacked on cold cuts and cheese, both of us famished.
I tried to take advantage of his orgasmic afterglow by prying out his closely held secrets, but no luck. “Okay, what about the tiniest fraction of a microscopic hint?”
His mouth creased with suppressed amusement. I’d been at this for over ten minutes. “I don’t do hints.”
“What about bribes? I could bribe you.”
He laughed now. “With what?”
I leered at him suggestively.
“Okay, one hint.”
“Oh, goody!”
“Yellow.”
I glared at him. “Wait, what?”
He shrugged, “That’s my hint. Take it or leave it.”
“I’m leaving it right where I’m going to leave all the naughty things I was about to do to you in return for a good hint.”
“You’re a little late on your bribery. You should have been throwing out that offer while we were watching the movie.”
“Oh, I think a good bribe might get you going again.”
His gaze slid down my bare legs again. “I think you might be right.” He said. “Are you tired? I need to check on a few things, but I think I could stand to get a few winks before the sun comes up.”
He gave me my promised toothbrush and showed me to a guestroom not far from his. But after I brushed my teeth, I made my way to his bedroom. Wherever it was he’d wandered off to do his work, it wasn’t here. I used the time to inspect his room, struck by how impersonal it seemed. It was exquisitely decorated to look like a beach cabana, with canted ceilings lined with bamboo and dark beams. Voluminous buff-colored linen drapes hung over floor-to-ceiling windows and the smooth floor was inlaid in different colors of wood in intricately patterned parquet.
But there were few personal touches that gave any clue about who he was, except for the desk. I moved to it, my eyes sliding over its shiny surface. There were pictures of his Uncle Peter with an arm around both of his cousins, Britt with her two adorable boys. There was a picture of Adam and the kids at Disneyland standing beside Mickey Mouse. I smiled at each photo, relieved to have found even small clues to the person underneath the persona that he showed the world, even me. I noticed no pictures of his parents and given what I knew of his situation growing up, I wasn’t surprised. But the last picture in the row gave me pause. It was a snapshot in a 4 x 6 frame and I picked it up, studying the two children in it.
The color was faded but the younger child, a dark-haired boy, was obviously Adam. He had teeth missing but was grinning wildly nevertheless. He had his arm around the neck of an older girl, this one honey-blonde with green eyes. She looked to be in her preteen years. She glanced at the camera sidelong, as if irritated at having her picture taken, but her arm was wrapped tightly around Adam. She was lovely and I guessed that this must be Sabrina, his sister.
While I studied the photo, I felt a presence behind me before I even heard a thing. I spun and faced Adam. When he saw the picture I was holding, his expression sobered.
“She was a pretty girl,” I said lamely.
He threw a furtive glance at me, then laid the laptop hooked under his arm on the desk, avoiding my gaze. I had guessed right. “Yes,” was all he said.
“You don’t look very much alike.”
“We had different fathers.”
I looked down at the picture again and replaced it gently. “I’m sorry for your loss. You loved her a lot.”
He took a deep breath, still staring at the picture. “Yes. I loved her more than anyone else on the planet.”
I approached him and wrapped my arms around his torso. “She was very lucky, then. To have your love.”
Adam didn’t move, didn’t respond to my show of affection. I glanced up and he was still staring fixedly at that faded photograph. “That’s the only picture I have of her and yet in my memory, I can’t remember what she looked like then. Or later, before she died.”
“How old was she?”
“Twenty.”
“And you were…?”
“Thirteen. Happened just around the time I came back to California.”
Despite the fact that he had neglected to respond to me, I released one of my hands to caress his back. “I would have loved to have had a sister, even if for a short time.”
His mouth set and he seemed to finally grow aware of me, looking down. “I would have rather not had a sister than to have had one and watch her die the way she did.”
I pulled away from him and sat down on the edge of the bed. He watched me for a moment, his face all tense planes and rigid angles. I patted the space beside me.
He glanced at it but didn’t move.
So I asked him the unasked question. Because I sensed that despite his reluctant demeanor, he wanted to talk about it.
“How did she die?”
His eyes fluttered closed and open again. “Overdose.”
Addiction. There was that family theme again. He’d once mentioned to me that he feared it more than anything else, that he firmly believed in the genetics of addiction. It seemed his beliefs had ample basis in the personal lives of the people closest to him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, completely at a loss to say anything else.
“Don’t be. It’s been thirteen years. I tried to save her once and she refused to let me.” He shrugged but it was an affectation rather than a show of indifference. He was pretending a nonchalance that he didn’t feel.
“No matter how hard we try, some things will always remain out of our control,” I said.
“I can’t accept that.”
Of course he couldn’t. That was a huge part of what made him him. But maybe that was the crux of his problem, too.
“Maybe you should.”
He ran a hand through his hair and looked at me. “Emilia, it’s getting late.”
I took a deep breath, aware that he was trying to blow me off. It was late, but I wasn’t going to let him off that easily.
“You’re right. It’s too late to work.”
He quirked a sad smile. “It’s never too late—”
I shot a significant look at the laptop sitting on the desk. “If I leave, you are taking that to bed with you. So which is it, that or me?”
He watched me with hooded eyes but remained silent. He was actually considering choosing the laptop over me! Heat rose in my face. “Okay. I see how it is.” I was getting too close. I was making him uncomfortable, so now he was getting rid of me to work on his computer. I wondered if he took that damn thing to bed with him every night. Maybe he habitually kicked whatever fuck buddy he had at the time to the curb after sex and ran back to his laptop.
I turned to leave.
“Emilia,” he said, reaching for my arm and closing his strong hand around my wrist. “Stay.”
I clenched my teeth. “Only if that thing stays on the desk.”
He gave a long, resigned sigh. “It’s late—early. Let’s get some sleep.”
Without another word, I went to the top of the bed, pulled back the covers and slipped in. He watched me, his handsome face impassive, but the light of something in his eyes said he was not unmoved by the gesture. I rolled over on my side, my back to his side of the bed.
He went around to the other side and turned off the light, and after a moment, I felt the weight of the bed shift. We were still some distance apart, as the bed was a massive king-size. Another long pause before he reached out, hooked an arm around my waist and pulled me back flush against him. His legs curled under mine. We were spooning. I never took Adam for the type of guy who would spoon. And here, this display of affection was for me alone. There was no potential girlfriend or ex here to deflect. This was just him and me. Us. Curled together.
In this safe environment in the darkest hour before dawn, I turned my head toward him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He didn’t answer for so long that I thought he wouldn’t. Or that maybe he had fallen off to sleep when I hadn’t noticed. “She was all I had. She was a sister and she was a mother when our mother was incapacitated, which was most of the time.”
His hand slipped under my shirt to rest atop my belly. Despite my fatigue, a curl of excitement tightened there in response to his touch. I put my own hand on top of his, lacing our fingers together. He curled his fingers inward, locking them in a tight embrace.
“But things between her and my mother got bad, really bad. My mother couldn’t stand the sight of her and drove her out of the house when she was fifteen. We were homeless shortly thereafter—bouncing around from shelter to shelter.”
“Shit, that’s horrible.”
“It’s worse. She ran away, hit the streets—the same old cliché. She was soon addicted to drugs and selling herself to support the habit.”
My breathing froze and I went cold inside. That hung in the air between us for a few moments before he drew in a deep breath, the cool air rushing past my neck. His sister had sold herself for money, drugs, to her ultimate destruction. Intuition told me he had drawn a parallel. I’d sold myself, too, for money. An ominous feeling covered me like a shroud. Was this the reason Adam had been putting things off between us?
He spoke again, his voice quiet and a little groggy. “Last time I saw her, I hopped a bus when I was twelve and went down to Seattle to find her. She looked horrible. I begged her to come back with me but she wouldn’t. Threw me back on the bus and yelled at me to get the hell out of the city. I never saw her again.”
I turned around in his arms so that I was facing him. The watery light of predawn was just starting to seep into the room. I couldn’t see his eyes, but stared into them anyway, his face inches from mine.
“There’s nothing you could have done differently.”
He was silent.
“Adam…” I said and on impulse, laid a hand on his whisker-roughened cheek. My courage died out along with my voice. I was going to tell him that my feelings for him were now growing to an inappropriate level. But to say those words was to believe that these feelings were true and right and I just couldn’t trust them. I could never let myself be vulnerable again. Every time I had in the past, I’d been stomped down. This was business. My heart thudded at the base of my throat.
“What?” he said, his voice thick with emotion, his warm breath scurried over my cheeks.
“I’m so sorry about what happened to her. It’s a terrible, tragic thing. You can’t blame yourself.”
“I don’t.”
I took a deep breath. It hurt to inhale. “Good. And I also think you shouldn’t compare her situation to mine.”
A long pause. “How could I not? The moment I sleep with you, you become a prostitute and I become your john.”
I shook inside. “Is this the reason, then? Why we haven’t—why you keep stopping it?”
He didn’t answer. Even now, he wouldn’t answer. But hadn’t we crossed into this forbidden territory already—whether or not we ever slept together?
“So we won’t do this. Really. I’m okay with it. We can end this here.”
He went still, even holding his breath. “It’s not your decision to make, Emilia. You’re in too deep for that.”
“But why—” He cut me off softly pressing a finger to my lips.
“Remember who’s in control,” he said, his voice edged with exhaustion. And I knew that now was not the time to argue this. Not with him having just laid himself bare to me.
So I didn’t. Instead, I curled in close to him, nestling against his hard chest. He wrapped his arms around me, rested his chin on my head and he slept.
But I couldn’t. Despite the fact that I was utterly exhausted, my mind raced through the ramifications of what had just occurred—of the knowledge I’d just gained. Adam and I would never have sex, because he believed that the minute we did, he’d become like the men who had destroyed his sister.
But could I go through with this after hearing Sabrina’s story? After hearing of the innocent who’d been forced to allow herself to be used? Used and thrown away, like trash. I had refused to think that what I was doing was the same thing as prostitution, but Heath, and then Adam, had rightly disabused me of that notion. And now the implications were finally sinking in.