Ellie Goulding sang in the background with only candlelight around us. It felt perfect. It felt like a dream, it was so damn perfect. I just hoped that I would never wake up.
Blake talked excitedly about his new season and how they were going to be filming some scenes in Miami in a few weeks’ time. We had decided that as long as my schedule didn’t interrupt, I would join him there for the duration. It would be our first vacation, as he called it. I didn’t care where we were, as long as we were together. The thought of him being there without me brought out a little of my jealous streak, so yes, being with him would be the best option.
“Can I ask you something?”
He smiled. “You can ask me anything beautiful.”
“Have you dated anyone that you currently work with?”
He smirked. “No.”
“But you date a lot of women you work with,” I stated matter-of-factly. “Should that worry me?”
Blake leaned his arm on the sofa behind him and studied me. “Do you think it should?” he asked carefully, but his eyes were full of amusement.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”
Blake smirked, but he didn’t reply. Instead he leaned forward and placed another forkful of food into his mouth.
“What has been the longest relationship that you have had?”
Blake seemed to think about it for a short moment. “Probably this one,” he finally answered.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I laughed.
Blake moved, and before I knew it we were both flat on the floor with Blake towering above me. He had both my hands pinned above my head with one hand while his other hand moved under my T-shirt and up to my breast as he nipped my neck gently. “I’m being totally serious,” he said. He lifted his head and held my gaze; his face was impassive. “I’ve told you before; I have never met anyone who I wanted to be with, like this, until you.”
He released my hands, and I immediately took his head in my hands and guided him to my mouth, letting my legs fall open. He slid between my thighs, pressing his erection firmly against me.
“Any more questions?” he asked against my mouth.
“Yes, the one you didn’t answer. Should I be worried?”
“No, you shouldn’t,” he answered seriously.
“Okay,” I panted. “You haven’t dated many brunettes. Why?”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly,” I replied, trying to pull him closer to me as I squirmed beneath him.
“I don’t have a type,” he replied, “so that question is void. Now, have you finished with your twenty questions?”
“For now,” I panted, pulling him closer, but he held his head up and stared down at me.
He smirked. “Good, now it’s my turn.”
“First things first – where did you get all this information about me from?”
“Google,” I answered simply.
“Google, of course.” He shook his head in amusement as he laughed.
“Should I be worried that you only seem to date sport stars?” Once again his hand started to travel up my T-shirt. He took my nipple between his fingers, gently tugging and twisting as his eyes remained firmly on mine.
“They’re better looking than the actors in England,” I mocked, and he tugged my nipple harder. It was only slightly painful, but it sent shockwaves through my entire body.
“Witty, Miss Summers, I like that.” He smirked and kissed me yet again. “And they all seem to have the same look,” he said, pulling away from my mouth. “Clean-cut blondes fresh from college.”
“Well, if you do the maths, you will see that they probably were fresh from college.” He tugged my nipped again, harder. I liked it, but I gasped out loud.
“Do you know what your witty mouth is doing to me?” he nudged his ever-growing erection against me again.
“Is that one of your twenty questions, MR Mackenzie?” His hand left my breast, and he tugged my T-shirt roughly over my head before removing his shirt too and lying back down on top of me. His skin felt hot against my breasts. I desperately wanted him inside me, but he was teasing me, leading me on, seeing how far he could take me before I would give in and rip the remains of his clothes from him.
“Should I be worried that you only date sport stars?”
“You’ve already asked me that question?”
“And you dodged the answer. Should I be worried?”
“We will see when I meet your father,” I laughed. Blake’s dad had been one of the New York Yankees’ most famous players; it was very well documented that in his day, he was as good at baseball as David Beckham was at football.
Blake gasped sharply and tugged at my jeans, unbuttoning them and practically dragging them from my thighs.
“I think your witty mouth is my new favourite form of foreplay, Miss Summers,” he said as he worked at ridding himself of the rest of his clothes. “I have one more question.” He turned serious as he lay back down on me and swept his hand down past my waist, resting it gently on the scar that sat just above my left hip. “Does this have anything to do with how you feel about happiness?”
I swallowed hard past the lump that had formed in my throat. “Yes.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not right now, no. I just want to forget about it. I want to forget about everything that has ever happened to me, even if just for tonight,” I said as I linked my fingers behind Blake’s head.
“I am gonna show you how sorry I am for everything that happened with Sara. I will. And I am going to prove to you that there is no price to pay for feeling happy. Okay?” I nodded. “I’m going to make it all better, Jo, I promise.” His mouth took mine again, this time gentler, more loving. He was reassuring me that he meant every single word that he had just said. As he pulled his mouth away from mine, our eyes locked as he pushed his hard cock inside me. Watching me closely, he rocked forward and back slowly, carefully, his eyes never leaving mine, no words leaving his mouth or mine, just eyes, mesmerized, trying desperately to read each other. I reached up and stroked his face as my legs tightened around his waist. My body was building towards the pleasure that I believed only Blake would ever be capable of. And in this moment, I believed that he could help me, that he could rebuild my broken body, and that only he could help me to be happy again, only Blake.
Blake collapsed on top of me, burying his head in my neck as we both came down from another earth-shattering orgasm. “Only you, Jo,” he said against my skin before lifting his head and looking into my eyes. “There will only ever be you, forever.” He took my hand and placed it over his heart. “This is all yours now; take care of it.”
Waking up in Blake’s arms as the sun was rising felt amazing. Waking up together after spending the whole day making love felt even better.
We barely made it out of bed on Sunday without ending up back there completely tangled up in each other’s bodies. It definitely had been the best weekend of my life, bar none.
“Hey, sleepy,” Blake said quietly as he pressed his lips to my temple.
“Hi,” I replied quietly, wrapping my arm around his waist and moving closer to him.
“As much as I don’t want us to, we had better get up soon. Casey and Alex are due back later, and this will take some explaining,” he chuckled.
“Oh.” I couldn’t hide my obvious disappointment.
I felt Blake’s body tremor as he laughed. “That’s how I felt when I realized.” His lips gently grazed my temple again. “We’ve been caught up in our own little bubble this weekend, haven’t we?”
I pushed up and leaned on my arm as I pouted while looking down into Blake’s bright blue eyes. “I like our bubble.”
“Me too,” Blake reached up and pushed the stray hairs from my face. “This weekend has been …”
I was searching for the right word when Blake replied, “Perfect.”
“Yes, perfect.”
Blake inhaled a deep breath and brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. “You know, I was so nervous when I turned up here on Friday. I thought you would slam the door in my face.”
I lowered my gaze to where I was tracing the line of his collarbone with my fingers. “I never stopped thinking about you all week. I would wake wondering what you were doing and” – I sucked in a deep breath – “who you were with.” I lifted my eyes back to his.
“I’m sorry I screwed up.”
I managed a sad smile, unable to tell him it was okay. But I was beginning to see why he had done what he did that night at the party. There was never going to be a good excuse, but I could at least understand. I had, after all, kissed Cooper because of Blake. What he did was a million times worse, but I was beginning to understand.
“Is this your father?”
He reached for the photo of Dad and me that sat on my bedside table. In the picture, we had just finished building a giant snowman in the garden of our old house. It was my favourite photo of Dad and me; it held so many memories from that one day – my smile in it showed that.
“Yes, that’s my dad.” I smiled, reaching up and stroking the glass that framed the picture.
“You look just like him.”
“Everyone always said that I was a miniature version of my dad. He would beam with pride when someone would say it.”
“How old are you in this picture?”
“That was taken on my seventh birthday.”
“It snowed on your birthday? What a gift.”
“We thought so too,” I laughed. “Mum, on the other hand, was not impressed. They had spent a fortune on me, yet all I wanted to play with was the snow.” I felt Blake giggle.
“Of course.”
“I was supposed to be having a big party at the house that afternoon. Mum had paid for caterers, children’s entertainers, the lot. But that house was inaccessible in the snow, so everything had to be cancelled. I think Mum was more upset than I was. I remember that I didn’t mind. Neither did Dad; we spent the whole day on that snowman. Look at him; he was brilliant.” My smile faded a little. I was talking about one of my favourite memories of my dad when I realized that there would be no new memories any more, but I had a lifetime of them stacked up. I was thankful for that. Blake’s arm tightened around me before he placed the picture back down.
“I loved that house. It was everything a family home should be. Dad and Uncle Anthony even built me my own tree house. It was huge. I would spend hours in there playing, and then reading as I became older. I wonder if it’s still there.” Blake’s fingers stroked the length of my back as I recalled my memories.
“Then there was the tree swing. I must have fell off it over a hundred times over the years. The last time I fell off, I broke my arm. I have never been on a swing since then,” I laughed.
“You have some wonderful memories.”
“I do. It was the perfect house to bring up children. When I have kids, I want a house just like it, in the country, away from all the hustle and smoke. I want that house.”
“That sounds perfect. Your dad was a lawyer wasn’t he?”
I looked up at Blake and smirked. “Google?”
“Google,” he confirmed with a wink.
Shaking my head with amusement, I placed my cheek back onto Blake’s chest. “Dad was the best in the business,” I recalled. “He wasn’t always so high profile, not until he represented an MP. I can’t remember much about it, but he won a case that was against all odds. Then, as if it happened overnight, the demand for him was instant. Celebrities from all walks of life wanted him; they would pay way over the odds for him, but he was very professional and would only take on their cases if he knew they were suffering an injustice. I really respected him for that. It took a toll on us, though; he was hardly home, and the travelling was too much, so that’s when we moved closer to London. I think it saved us all, to be honest.”
We sat in silence for a moment. I had really opened up to Blake, and it felt so good to share. I could tell that Blake was happy to have sat and listened too.
“I really miss him, Blake.” A tear rolled down my face, and before I could stop it, it became a constant flow.
Blake turned to face me, wrapping both of his arms tightly around my waist as he buried his head in my hair.
“When he died, I decided I wasn’t coming back to New York.” I sniffed. “But Mum insisted and said it was what Dad would have wanted. I sat at his graveside and asked him; he gave me the sign to come back,” I said quietly.
“I’m glad that he did,” he whispered into my hair, placing gentle kisses between whispers.
“I wish he had known you,” I sobbed. “He would have been so happy to see me happy.”
“He knows, beautiful; he knows how happy you are, I promise.”
I wiped the tears and looked up at Blake. “Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t you ever apologize for showing your emotion.” He wiped the last few tears from my face. “I’m sorry that you had to face it all alone; I’d have gotten on that plane with you if I’d known. But once I found out where you had gone, and why, I was too ashamed to even contact you; I felt dirty, horrible.” He held my gaze. “So don’t you ever say sorry for being sad, or for anything. You have done nothing to apologize for, do you hear me?”
My heart melted. I had fallen so fast and so hard for Blake it was frightening.
“Blake?”
“Hmm?”
“You know what I said about being happy?”
I felt his head nod against mine.
“I’ve never felt this happy in my life. It scares me.”
“Well, maybe now it’s time to face that fear and conquer it,” he said gently. “This time, your happiness is going to last, I promise.”
“What happened to you that made you so guarded?”
“I told you, a bad relationship.”
“Did he cheat on you? Is that why you keep yourself so guarded?” I felt my body begin to tense, I wasn’t even near enough ready to talk about it yet, especially after the weekend that we had just spent together.
“I’m not ready to talk about the past, not yet anyway. Do you think Sara is okay?”
I felt Blake’s grip tighten on me. “Forget about her; she’s the part of my past that I never want to think about ever again. Let’s concentrate on the future, our future.”
The truth was, I couldn’t forget about Sara. What she did that night at the party was unforgivable, but I couldn’t help wonder how she was feeling now, and how she felt about me. She would see me as the one who took her happiness; I just hoped she didn’t think there was a score to settle for it.
“Where are you going?” Blake complained, moving his hands and holding out his arms for me as I climbed off the bed.
“Casey and Alex, remember?”
Blake shot up quickly and leaped off the bed quickly; grabbing me by the waist and pulling me back down. “Blake!” I complained with laughter.
“We still have a couple of hours,” he said as he removed my nightgown yet again and quickly placed his mouth around my nipple. Once again I forgot everything else that mattered in life; I was lost yet again in the power of Blake Mackenzie, and at this precise moment in time, I never wanted to be found.
Casey’s laughter filtered through the apartment. We had fallen asleep again after making love for at least the tenth time that day. I shot out of bed quickly, noting that every muscle in my body ached from all of the pleasure, quickly grabbing a T-shirt and jogging bottoms out of my drawer. “Blake,” I whispered loudly. “Blake, get up; they’re here!”
Blake slowly opened his eyes as a lazy smile graced his lips “Why are you panicking? They’re not gonna be shocked by us being together.”
“Get dressed.” I threw his shirt at him with force before quickly tying my hair in a loose ponytail and walking innocently out of the room.
Casey and Alex were laughing in the kitchen when I walked in. “Hello, you two, have a good time?” I asked as if Blake weren’t lying naked and alone in my bed.
Casey went to answer, but she frowned instead. “Are you okay? You look flushed.” She went to place her hand on my brow, which I dodged. I headed to the fridge for a bottle of water.
“How was Vegas? You married now?” I joked, taking a long swig from the bottle.
“Not quite yet, no,” Casey grinned widely as she held up her left hand, flashing me a massive diamond ring.
I gasped loudly. “Congratulations!” I hugged Casey hard before releasing her and taking her hand in mine for a closer inspection “Wow, just wow! I was not expecting this!”
“You and me both.” Casey hopped from foot to foot before walking over to Alex and wrapping her arms around his neck, planting a lingering kiss on his lips.
“You weren’t expecting what?” Blake filled the doorway wearing only the suit trousers he had come over wearing the day before. I closed my eyes and sighed.
“Oh … my … God” I heard Casey say before she burst out in loud laughter. “You sly devil, you.” She nudged me as I opened my eyes to see her staring at Blake.
“Put your tongue away, Casey; you are engaged now. And Blake, I thought I told you to get dressed.” I rubbed my brow frantically, the embarrassment creeping in slowly.
“You did it, then,” Blake said. He headed over to Alex, completely ignoring what I had just said to him. Alex was smirking as he looked from Blake to me and then back again. “Congrats, dude.” They did the typical man celebration, with a shake of hands and a few good slaps to each other’s backs. “And the club?”
“All official, I now own my very own slice of Vegas!” he said cheerily.
Blake let out a low whistle through his teeth. “I smell a Vegas bachelor party then.”
“I’ll second that.” Alex nodded and grabbed two beers from the fridge for him and Blake.
“Okay, can we stop avoiding the obvious now,” Casey screeched; her eyes wide as she stood straight with her arms folded over her chest. “When did this happen?” She released her arms and waved her fingers between Blake and me. Blake walked up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me into his body.
“Friday,” I answered.
“I couldn’t stay away any longer. I took the chance, and I’m glad I did.” Blake placed his lips to my temple gently.
“Finally!” Casey said excitedly. “So this is a triple celebration! I know it’s late, but let’s go out, just to Sugar Lounge. You know, just invite a select few and celebrate. What do you think?”
I could tell that Blake sensed my dislike for us going out and he gave me a reassuring squeeze.
“I’m not sure; it is quite late, and I really could do with having a clear head tomorrow in preparation for my audition Tuesday,” I said.
“Please!” Casey placed her hands together as if begging me.
“It’ll give me the chance to make sure the club is still standing,” Alex said looking up from whatever he was reading on his phone. “I’ll get the VIP area roped off, keep it private.”
Sugar Lounge was one of Alex’s many bars. They were scattered all over New York, with Sugar being the most upmarket and most popular amongst the rich and famous. It was also where Casey and Alex had met for the first time, so it held a special meaning for them.
“It’s entirely up to you,” Blake said quietly into my ear.
“Okay,” I replied, trying not to sound disappointed. Blake squeezed me once more.
Casey bounced excitedly. “Yay!”
“I’m gonna need some fresh clothes; I’ll head home and meet you there,” Blake said, loosening his grip on me.
“I’ll come with you,” Alex said, placing his phone back in his pocket before tossing Casey his car keys. “Take the car, no cabs,” he demanded.
“Got it,” Casey said as she caught the keys.
“Jo?” Blake tilted his head towards the hall as he walked away. I quickly followed, closing the bedroom door behind us as we entered.
“You okay?” his arms snaked around my waist, pulling me to him.