Authors: Shelby Reed
Billie exhaled, sickened by the web of deception Adrian had spun around himself. It was so expansive; it even draped its silky skeins over this warm home and the people within it.
“So how’s he handling it?” Rosalie went on, deep furrows appearing between her dark brows.
Billie swallowed. “You mean Adri—”
God, Billie.
“Uh, you want to know how your brother’s—”
“He’s so hush-hush. He won’t tell us anything. I didn’t even know Luke had killed himself until a couple of days ago when my mother called. She found out from Luke’s family, of all things. Zio never even told me about it, so I guess he thinks we still don’t know.”
Billie studied Rosalie’s round, animated face. She obviously didn’t know Adrian was under suspicion with the authorities. How could he come from an adoring family and maintain the icy shield that seemed to be such an integral part of his persona? Did
anyone
get close to him?
“I think he’s deeply saddened by what happened,” she said finally. “And it’s hard for him to talk about it. But we’ve only known each other a little while. He doesn’t tell me much, either.”
Rosalie scratched absently at a burn mark on the countertop. “Billie, do you know what he does for a living?”
Billie’s heart jolted and her palms went damp. “Oh…he’s in sales.”
God
.
The other woman’s eyebrows shot up. “He tells you that, too?”
“That’s what he says.”
“And you don’t ply him for details?”
She shrugged, anxiety coiling in her middle like an agitated rattler. “I have no reason to doubt him.”
“But he’s always been so vague about it. I worry. He’s too secretive, always has been. It makes my mother and sisters crazy. It makes
me
crazy, especially if a month 103
Shelby Reed
goes by and I don’t hear from him. Sometimes I think we might as well live on opposite sides of the continent, you know?”
Billie had to scramble for a judicious reply. “He’s not an easy person to know, Rosalie. But he enjoys spending time with his family, that I do know, because he’s told me how important you are to him.”
Rosalie patted Billie’s hand. “And now he’s got you, yes? And he looks so happy.”
Billie blinked. “He does?”
“More than I’ve seen him in a long time. You’re a nice, wholesome girl, Billie.
You’re good for him.”
Billie tried not to think about the decidedly unwholesome touch of Adrian’s hands on her body, or the way he could make her go all soft and quivering with just a slow, searching look.
And here she sat, in his family’s home, surrounded by people who’d known him for years, and yet knew nothing about his life. Everywhere, hints leading to the truth. It only confused her more.
When she snapped out of her bemused reverie, Rosalie had crossed to open the back door.
“Kids! Dinner! Somebody get Daddy and Frank and Zio from the garage and tell them it’s time to eat.”
* * * * *
Dinner was a noisy, stimulating blur until the six kids—with Rosalie’s hard-won permission—dashed from the table to return to their outside play. Then the adults lingered and slid into easy conversation over cups of Rosalie’s flavorful espresso.
Billie wasn’t sure whether it was the potent shot of caffeine or the way Adrian laced his fingers with hers beneath the table that kept her heartbeat at an uneven tempo. His thumb drew slow lazy circles on her palm that made her stomach go light and funny.
Countless times she felt his steady regard on her profile, and somehow knew she was being weighed and measured. In return she compared the weight of his secrets with the warm, loving man sitting beside her, and decided she could pretend for one night that Avalon didn’t exist for either of them.
By the time they cleared the dishes it was nearly eight o’clock. Dusk fell in that slow, bluing manner so characteristic of summer evenings, heralded by the appearance of drifting fireflies. A few at first, then enough to give the creeping night the appearance of flickering, falling stars.
A sultry, grass-scented breeze lifted Billie’s hair from her face as she let Adrian lead her down the sloping yard toward the woods, through a throng of nieces and nephews who leapt and laughed in their uninhibited bid to capture the glowing insects.
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“Where are we going?” she asked him, sensing the purpose in his stride as the grass crunched softly beneath their feet.
He slowed and drew her into the cradle of his arm. “There’s something I want to show you before it gets too dark.”
He led her through the verdant, scattered trees, across a carpet of decomposing leaves, and stopped only when the lights from the house twinkled like distant luminaries through the woods.
“It’s so quiet here,” Billie said in a hushed voice.
“Yes. This was my secret world when I was a kid.” He released her hand to move ahead of her and gently nudged the toe of his leather loafer against the crumbled ruins of a child’s clubhouse. “This used to be a fort. My dad and I built it twenty years ago, and it stood forever, until last winter’s blizzard finally knocked it down. In high school, I used to come out here to get away.”
She glanced around and her gaze fell on a large, rectangular hammock stretched between two massive maples, its woven ropes weathered and inviting. “This place has the distinct feel of a bachelor pad. Sure you didn’t come here to make time with the girls?”
His smile flashed in the gloom. “On the rare occasion.”
“Ah-ha. I thought you might be entertaining unwholesome intentions, whisking me off into the deep, dark woods.” She wandered over to the hammock and picked off the leaves and branches gathered in its cradle. “Let’s swing.”
Stretching out on its buoyant expanse, she made room for him and Adrian climbed into place beside her. He laid an arm above her head, then beneath it when she lifted her neck and snuggled closer to him. Their bodies melded and settled together in instant concurrence, and after a moment of staring at the stars through the boughs overhead, he let one denim covered leg drop over the side of the hammock and gently swayed them into a lulling rhythm.
Billie was enchanted. Cicadas and crickets performed a maracas symphony in the trees, punctuated by the low timpani of bullfrogs nearby. Adrian’s scent, faded aftershave and soap, filled her senses as she closed her eyes and floated on pure, sensory pleasure. A velvet breeze blew across them and his arm tightened around her shoulder as though to warm her, a tender, unconscious reaction that made her feel safe, and somehow adored.
“Thank you for coming.” His quiet words stirred the tendrils of hair against her forehead. “I’m sorry I snapped at you in the car.”
Surprised by the quiet apology, she struggled to find an even reply, and settled on a simple, “You’re forgiven.” Her palm rubbed the soft material of his maroon jersey, reading the hard muscles of his abdomen beneath, while desire sparked and ignited between them. “I’m glad you asked me here. It’s lovely.”
“You’re lovely. When I saw you tonight, you took my breath away.”
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Billie shifted to see his face, found it somber and watchful. Under the standard silky disguise of a courtesan lay an intensity and vulnerability far more exciting. His emotions ran deep, his sensitivity even deeper. Not so very different than herself, she realized with surprise. Something about the man under the mask was strikingly familiar.
She searched her mind for a way to bring the humor back to his features. “Say it in Italian, Zio.”
A hint of a smile touched his lips. “
Lei sono bello
,” he whispered, finger curling around a strand of her hair. “
Il mio amore
.”
She shivered with giddy delight and kissed the spot where his heart thudded steadily beneath his shirt. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Just you. You’re beautiful, Billie.”
“Even in old jeans?” she asked, secretly pleased.
“Especially in old jeans. Unaffected. Real. You’re the only thing around me that feels real anymore.”
Before she could grasp the magnitude of the admission, before she could weigh its significance and what it meant in the constantly shifting tide of their odd relationship, his breath brushed the hair at her temple, followed by the warm pressure of his lips on her brow.
For a man whose life encompassed the raw, emotionless aspect of base human urges, he was unequivocally inclined toward gentleness. The tenderness of him, the dichotomy he was proving himself to be drove all rational thought from her mind, snagged her breath in her throat and filled her with longing. Deeper than sexual. Soul deep.
The world seemed to stand still as Adrian said with the touch of his lips what he couldn’t put into words. He scattered soft, feathery kisses down her nose, over her cheek, evading her mouth, even when she turned her head and tracked the path of his caresses.
Cool air drifted over her stomach as he tugged her shirt free from her jeans and slipped his hand beneath, palm to her concave belly, and rested there.
“I’ve wanted to touch you all night.” His lips were at her ear now, while her throat went dry with desire and other parts of her flooded with liquid need. “I watched you at dinner, talking and laughing with my family, and thought about putting my hands on you. How I would touch you later when I got you alone. How I would taste you. Your skin. Your warmth. All of you.”
She closed her eyes and held his head in the crook of her neck, pulse thrumming as she realized something had happened to him tonight, a peeling away of disguises and defenses. Something that possibly had to do with her presence here, in this sacred place that no one else knew about. His secret world, he’d called it. And Billie knew, though he hadn’t said it, that she, too, was his secret.
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He shifted, his foot left the ground and he slid his hand higher, between her breasts, located the front clasp of her bra and freed it.
“We’re out in the open,” she said, half-mortified, half-titillated by the potential risk of his actions.
“Then we’ll have to be silent.” His palm swallowed her breast, circled her nipple until it tightened into a hard little knot beneath his touch.
“But your sister—”
“I told her we were going for a walk.”
“Will the kids come back here?”
“No.” He brushed teasing kisses across her mouth, his lips flavored with the warm remnants of wine. “They think the woods are haunted.”
She shivered and lifted her head to capture his elusive mouth, but he drew back, obsidian eyes even darker than the falling night.
“Ask me what I’m going to do to you,” he whispered, “here, in the haunted woods, under the trees.”
“What are you going to do to me?” A suspicious smile curved her lips, but his face was void of humor.
“I’m going to make you come.”
The words, part threat, part promise, feathered across Billie’s lips and stole her breath. “That’s—that would be—”
“I want you to know more pleasure, here in this hammock, than you’ve ever known in your life.”
She stared up at him, suddenly frightened by the promise, knowing how easy it would be to dissolve under his hands. Her common sense was slipping away. She grasped at it, shuddered at the sudden realization that she couldn’t remember what her life was like before him, before this fluttering sentience. “Adrian…”
“Don’t, Billie.” He spoke fervently, surprising her into watchful silence. “Don’t act modest with me, not now, when I want to touch you so much I ache from it. Not after everything we’ve shared.” Beneath her shirt, his hand hovered above her breast, withholding contact, his fingers so close to her sensitive flesh that she felt their heat emanating through skin and muscle and bone, all the way to her hurtling heart.
It wasn’t modesty that gave her pause, but rather a strange premonition that he would strip her, expose her, destroy her so easily. She was falling. Seduced.
Unequivocally spellbound. And because she had no choice, because she was so drunk on desire and the long-repressed need he’d awakened in her, she nodded.
“Tell me.” He rubbed his nose against her cheek, one fingertip tracing the curve of her breast, circling her beaded nipple, raising goose bumps on her sensitive skin. “Say the words.”
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It was all he knew. Specifics. Flagrant demands, blatant expressions of want. She could give him this, what felt familiar to his worldliness. In return he would give her ecstasy, and these tiny glimpses of vulnerability she could so easily become addicted to.
“I want…” She licked her lips, closed her eyes, leaped. “Touch me, Adrian. Make me come. Right here. Like only you can.”
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The Fifth Favor
Adrian dipped his head and captured her mouth, inhaling her breath and replenishing it with his own.
Instantly rapacious, Billie strained to meet the sweet hunger of his kiss, the gentle but determined caress of his fingers across her nipples, first left, then right, back and forth, distributing equal attention to both hard, aching tips until she moaned and arched into his touch.
Wedged between their bodies, her hand found freedom and curled into the material of his shirt, twisting in a spasm of delight as she drank him in; his passion, his tangible uncertainty, the mutual surrender to the sublime and wordless conversation of bodies in need.
Her pelvis shifted restlessly beneath him, one leg hooked over his hips to bring his heat and hardness closer, until the demanding ridge of his erection rubbed against her core. And it was torture, torture with so much denim between them, when their bodies strained as closely as if he were already sheathed inside her.
He settled in the vee of her thighs and rocked against her, seeking to soothe the rigid demand of his body, thrusting hard, relentlessly, the breath torn from his throat in harsh rasps. Her knees rode his hips, holding him there in that rhythmic dance. The hammock thrashed beneath them, the world spun.
For the first time in Billie’s life, she thought she might orgasm simply from the press of a man’s body against her own. Colors exploded behind her eyelids, her heartbeat a riotous, climbing thunder in her ears.