CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elijah
Dancing to the beat of her own drum and shaking up Charleston’s stuffy upper crust. The mayor-elect never knew what hit him. Getaway Girl for the win.
—TheTea.com
Opinion: Bar-hopping Getaway Girl does not “getaway” with lack of dignity.
If she’s governing the mayor-elect, does she in turn govern our principles?
—Southern Insider News
Cell phone cameras lift and snap as I guide Addison from the bar. I should probably be concerned with tomorrow’s gossip section. Should probably be wary of the black sedan idling behind the SUV waiting for us at the curb. It’s most likely a photographer who will snap a shot of us walking into the house together—and that picture will be printed beneath some suggestive headline that will make me see red…but what I’m really concerned about, despite all the noise around us, are Addison’s caveats.
I deserve the distance she’s trying to put between us, don’t I? After the way I checked out the first time we slept together, she’s probably throwing up barriers to protect herself. Yes, she’s just being cautious. I really dislike that I’ve given her a reason to be skeptical of me, though. She might have agreed to be my girlfriend, but she immediately whittled us down to roommates who fuck before returning to their own rooms.
This is what I wanted, right? Walking into the bar tonight, I didn’t plan on asking Addison to be my girlfriend. Commitments and expectations were supposed to remain by the wayside. My course of action changed when faced with her big, beautiful eyes and the husky voice I’ve been going crazy missing. When I said the title out loud, it felt right. It feels distinctly wrong that she didn’t even want it. So am I satisfied that she’s giving me exactly what I wanted? Sex and companionship without the faulty trappings of couplehood? No. I should be. But I’m not.
I wave off the driver and open the back door for Addison myself, helping her climb in and following behind. The closed door cuts off all sound and when it’s just us, my stomach settles. Stop looking for a problem. This is exactly where I want to be, going home with Addison, her hand beneath mine on the seat.
“Maybe you should call and warn your father,” she murmurs, scanning the interested bystanders lining the curb. “His morning oatmeal is going to be ruined.”
I pick up her hand and guide it to my mouth, kissing her knuckles. “I should have asked for my own caveat.”
She looks up at me through her eyelashes. “It’s not too late.”
Yes, it is, says a voice in my head. Referring to what, though? “People disagree about the color of the sky. As sure as the sun comes up, they’re going to form an opinion about us. Maybe they already have. And it’s going to be wrong.” I move closer to her on the seat as the SUV pulls into traffic. “We’re the only ones who know what’s going on here.”
Addison turns in the seat and curls her fingers in my collar, tugging my face close to hers. I go in for the kill without hesitation. A week. I haven’t kissed this mouth in a week—and before that, I didn’t taste it for months. How did I stay away when it was right in front of me? It’s cool, sugar-mint paradise. Her head falls back and I surge closer on the seat, taking her chin and pulling it down, down, so I can explore every corner, driver be damned. Her head falls back with a whimper that would tent my fly, if I didn’t already have an erection to beat the band.
Satisfied that her mouth will stay open wide for me, I let my hand slide lower than her chin. I can’t touch her fast or thoroughly enough and God. God bless this girl. She arches her back and gives me options. I drag my hand down her tits and plump them high in her neckline, squeezing, one by one. When I release her mouth so we can breathe, we both look down at my knuckles where they rest on her belly. So close to that pussy I’ve been craving.
“Sorry for distracting you,” she whispers. “Your caveat is…?”
Knowing she’s not the least bit sorry, I breathe a laugh against her cheek. “When you hear or read something that makes you doubt what we’ve got…” I rub our damp lips together, setting her off purring and shifting on the seat. “Close your eyes and think of my tongue in your pretty mouth. Think of us on the bed making ornaments. Do whatever you have to do to get through the moment and back to me. Agreed?”
I hear her swallow. “Aye aye, captain.”
Since the bar was so close to the house, it takes no time at all to pull up out front. We don’t get out right away, staring in silence at the massive three-story, its palm trees swaying in the nighttime wind. Behind us, the black sedan flips off its lights and waits. Tomorrow there will probably be more black sedans and journalists hunting for the money shot, asking questions. I’ll handle it then. Public interest has touched every damn thing in my life. It won’t touch this thing with Addison. It will try, but I’m going to make sure it loses.
The driver opens the door and I climb out, offering my hand to Addison. “Is the lady of the manor ready to retire for the evening?”
With her head high, she takes my hand and hops out, throwing a wink at the black car. “Not a chance.”
I’m still laughing as we walk up the pathway, my arm sliding around her waist halfway up the steps. She leans her head into my shoulder and I squeeze her tighter, a goose egg forming in my throat. “I missed you.”
She winks up at me. “You’re cooking tomorrow night.”
When we reach the door, I let her go and lean against the doorframe, watching as she digs the key from the purse. There’s a little tremble in her hand as if she’s nervous, but her smirk tells me she doesn’t want me to know it. Complicated woman. Doesn’t she know I would crawl over hot coals to reassure her? I keep my observation to myself as we walk inside and lock the door behind us. Met with the sudden fall of privacy, my body acts on its own, flattening her against the door. Letting her feel my hard cock.
I drop the briefcase and tangle my hands in her hair—
“Curtains,” she breathes. “All the curtains are open.”
“Right.” My head hits the door above her with a groan. “Wait. When did we even get curtains?”
“You hired someone.”
“That’s right,” I hedge. “I forgot.”
“No, you didn’t. You’ve bullied me into being comfortable here.”
I swoop in and capture her mouth in a hard kiss, smiling against her lips when she moans, giving me a slow wiggle. “Guilty.”
She runs her hands up my chest and starts to remove my tie. “Two window treatment designers—both named Lenore—”
“Liar.”
“Hand to God. They came yesterday and annoyed me with a bunch of questions.”
“Like what?”
“They asked me about my aesthetic.” She sighs. “They didn’t find North Pole Chic acceptable.”
“We better get these damn curtains closed, Addison,” I growl. “You’re standing there being cute and pouting and shaking. A thousand things at once and they all make me need to get inside you more. To fuck.”
Her eyelids flutter and close, pink climbing her cheeks. “Bossy man.”
With a concerted effort, I peel myself away from her perfect curves. After one final, teasing meeting of tongues, we move to opposite sides of the room, throwing heavy cream curtains over the windows, careful not to leave even a sliver of glass visible. When I’ve closed the final curtain, I turn around to find Addison stripping her dress off in the middle of the foyer. At some point, she turned on a soft lamp and it glows behind her, the light playing on her hips and thighs as the dress comes off. The sandals are kicked off next, her bra unsnapped and tossed toward the staircase. And she’s left in nothing but a barely-there black pair of panties.
She crooks her finger at me and I just go, shedding my jacket along the way, hastily pushing the buttons of my dress shirt through their holes. I’ve only managed about half the row when I reach her, but they’re forgotten when she climbs me, the sexy, goddamn siren. One second she’s standing, the next she’s got her legs hitched around me hips, her mouth open on mine. “Not complaining. At all,” I grind out, taking hold of her ass cheeks. “But I’m going to need more time to look at you standing around in your unmentionables.”
“Pervert.” She uses her thigh muscles to climb higher, dragging her hot pussy over my cock and a strangled curse leaves me. “I have a nice little treat for you, Captain,” she murmurs at my mouth. “Find somewhere you can lie back and unzip your pants.”
Whatever I say in response isn’t even English. It’s a combination of thank you and what? And her name, too, possibly. Blood is pounding in my ears and the pressure behind my zipper is so uncomfortable, it hurts to walk. But I do it anyway, obviously, leaving the foyer and entering a front room that—thank Christ—has been furnished. I drop down on a chaise lounge, gritting my teeth when gravity presses Addison down on my erection, her thighs tight around my waist. Not just Addison, though. Enthusiastic kisser, naked except for her panties Addison, for the love of everything holy. She’s even more unrestrained than I remember, whimpering and fucking me through my pants.
“You want your treat now?” she asks, discarding my tie and unbuttoning the rest of my shirt, slowly. “I really want to give it to you.”
“Sugar.” I dive in for a taste of her neck. “I want anything you have to give me.”
Finished with the row of buttons, she pushes my shirt open. Time passes in a thick beat—tick, tick—before she scrapes her nails down my chest. Hard. Right over my nipples. Pleasure and pain go nuclear in my middle, my cock swelling beneath her. “Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
“I’m sorry, Captain. Did that hurt?” Addison slides off my lap and lands between my thighs, her fingers wasting no time wrestling with my belt buckle, my zipper and finally my briefs, freeing me from the waistband. “I promise I’ll make up for it,” she purrs, wrapping her lips around my cock and sucking deep. Deep, long and hard, her tongue flickering at my head when she reaches the top.
“Yes, Addison,” I groan, my hands shooting to her hair, getting lost. There’s no description for what she does to me. The slow, rough way she runs her thumb up the underside of my dick, up and back, like a hypnotist. I’m caught between marveling over the fact that she clearly loves giving me head and hell, just savoring the experience. In the end, the former heightens the latter until I’m falling back on my elbows to let her work. Goddamn. She strokes me with both hands, twisting, wetting me with adoring licks until I’m so slippery and tight in her grip, it already feels like I’m inside her pussy. My hips pump off the lounge, desperate grunts grinding free of my mouth. My cock has never been so thick or hard and it’s all about her worshipping it, her eyes squeezed shut, her cheeks hollow with the effort to clean me out.
My hand scrubs down my stomach, because there’s only one thing that can make this better, but Addison beats me there. She hums, taking me deep into the vibration of her throat…and she does it. She cups my balls, weighing them in her palm and I hold my breath, the air rushing from my lungs when she begins a tight massage.
I don’t recognize the groan that comes out of me. It’s from inside a cave or deep in the forest and I have no control over it. “That’s what I need, sugar. Ah God. You’re making me need to fuck so bad. Shit.” She gives my balls a long squeeze and my thighs shoot wider. “Feel how heavy? That’s my treat for you. I’m going to pound everything inside me into your pussy soon as you’re done sucking.”
The man who says these things to a woman isn’t me. It’s a version of me that only comes out to play with Addison. Would I ever have known he was inside me if I hadn’t met her? Coming apart and being put together at the same time—that’s what this is. Look at what such filth does to her, her thighs pressed together, her sweet little tits jiggling as she sucks my cock, struggling her way to the base. My God, I’ve never wanted this badly. Needed to lick every inch of Addison, sweat and all. I want to absorb her.
“I’m losing my mind, Addison.” I wrap her hair around my fists and lift her head away from my lap. “This is what it’s like to have a man obsessed with you. Do you like it?”