Undeniably Infatuated (Boston's Irresistible Billionaires Book 3), page 24
What’s in it for him? My legs have been closed for weeks.
I snap a picture of everything and send it to Loomis. I need a little backup right now and as much as I love Wren, I need a male’s opinion on this.
Loomis: Looks scrummy.
He sends me a picture of the Italian feast he’s eating in front of his own fireplace with the television on something I can’t make out.
Me: Stone did all of this for me. After he made me breakfast and held me all night when I had a nightmare.
Loomis: So why aren’t you in his bed right now sucking him off under the covers?
Me: That’s not helping.
Loomis: Fine. Because I know you, I know what you’re asking without asking, and the answer is simple. He loves you. A man wouldn’t go to all that trouble otherwise.
Me: Not even for sex?
Loomis: Nope. Not even for that. He doesn’t have to work that hard to win your panties, luv. But he does have to work impossibly hard to win your heart.
I shake my head and call him. I can’t do this over text.
Loomis picks up with a chuckle. “Don’t like my answer?”
“It doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that?”
“He might not be consciously trying to win your heart, but he loves you. That I’m sure of.”
“But to what end?”
“I don’t know. He’s the one you should ask that question to. Not me. Now go enjoy your goodies. I’m watching an Alfred Hitchcock film and trying not to have my own nightmares.”
We hang up, and I sit with what he said about Stone trying to win my heart for a very long minute.
Humans are inherently selfish creatures, but we’re driven by love. Lust too, but love is what speaks to our hearts and souls. Lust doesn’t make it past our brains and blood supply. So again, what is Stone doing with me?
I have more questions and no answers, and either way, it feels like I lose. I sit in front of the fire, drink my drink, and eat every crumb and morsel of pastry. It’s impossible not to marvel at the fact that Stone is doing all of this with me. He gains nothing but a headache full of bullshit. But…
He’s been doing one thing after another, and despite my cold behavior toward him, I’m not oblivious to it. It’s messing me up.
Why do all this for me? Why try to make me fall in love if we can’t have a future?
I lean forward, my hands covering my mouth as I stare into the dancing orange flames and then down at the ring on my hand. A ring I don’t have to wear right now, but I am.
I think Stone may love me.
I think he might have fallen in love back on Benthesicyme and never stopped.
And I think it’s time I stopped caring about what my ex might think. I can leave that up to Stone to decide. But for me, I no longer care. And the thought of moving back to LA without Stone doesn’t hold much appeal. Boston is my home. It’s always been my home. LA was a stopping point, a jumping-off point, and I don’t see why I can’t make music and film work from here.
But what if he doesn’t want that in return? What if this is just his way of showing me this, knowing it’ll never lead to more?
“You’re killing my carb high! Argh!” I shoot off the couch and storm down the hall. I’m pissed off. At least I’m telling myself I am. I don’t quite buy it. But who cares? I ride this wave until I stumble into his mostly closed door and push it open without invitation. Then I freeze like I just stepped outside naked.
Speaking of naked…
Stone just got out of the shower. The bathroom door is open, and a small amount of steam curls into the bedroom like a beckoning fog. Somehow, he didn’t hear me burst in, and for a moment, all I can do is stare. His back is to me as he stands by his bed where his clothes are laid out, and I make note of his smooth skin and strong, toned muscles as he briskly rubs his towel over his hair to dry it. His perfect ass with the sexy dents above it. Those incredible tattoos. I categorize them all.
But the beautiful boat on his left shoulder blade that looks a hell of a lot like Benthesicyme with the entire mast snaked in ornate purple roses, surrounded by a compass is what finally makes me gasp and give up my voyeuristic enjoyment.
“Let me know when you’re done ogling and I’ll turn around so you can get the frontal view.”
His teasing tone isn’t all that teasing. It’s tense, and I wonder if he knows what made me gasp. “Stone?”
He rolls his head over his shoulder, but he doesn’t do anything. Not put on his briefs. His shirt. Nothing. His eyes linger on mine, and he knows precisely what I’m staring at.
“Can I help you, little rose?” The way he emphasizes my nickname. The way he follows that up with, “Your purple eyes seem a little lost. Or perhaps stuck on something.”
I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m crossing the room. Finally, he pulls on his briefs and turns to face me. I point at his chest. “That’s what Owen was talking about, isn’t it?” It comes out as an accusation. “You’re shirtless. I haven’t seen your back shirtless since the boat. The same one that’s tattooed on your back. With purple fucking roses on it.”
His hands find my hips, holding me in place. “Ask me then.”
I can’t. Oh, hell, I can’t. My heart thunders and my palms grow sweaty. I’m about to cross the Rubicon, and there will be no turning back.
“Go on, ask me,” he cajoles when I still can’t find my voice.
“You call me Little Rose.”
“I do,” he confirms.
“You have roses on the tattoo of your ship. A tattoo you didn’t have the last time I saw your back.”
“Correct. But none of those were the question you were supposed to ask. Those were a gimme. A layup. Simply stating facts.” He leans in, pressing against me until his lips are right over mine, his eyes pinning me in place. “Ask me, little rose. Ask me if the tattoo on my back, the one with a vine of sweet, pretty, little purple roses, is about you.”
Oh god. How do I ask that? Especially when I already know his answer.
I gulp and muster up my strength. My pissed-off resolve is faltering, practically nowhere to be found. “Is that tattoo about me?”
“Yes.” No artifice. No embarrassment. Just honesty that cuts me to the quick and my knees give out from under me.
“Why?” I grit out.
“Because those ten days changed my life, and you were part of that.”
Okay. I blow out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. That makes sense and I can live with that.
His hands slide up the sides of my body, up along my shoulders until they frame my face, and continue through my hair before he cups me, holding me steady, forcing me to see him. He moves in closer, and somehow, someway, he’s all I can see, smell, feel, and taste. He’s everywhere.
“Keep going.”
“What do you mean keep going?”
He smirks and starts to trickle kisses along my jaw. “I know that’s not your only question. Something brought you in here. Something had you storming down the hall.” He continues with his kisses, pulling my oversized sweatshirt off my shoulder so he can kiss that spot between my neck and shoulder that he likes so much. I haven’t stopped him. I can’t stop him. “What had my girl so hot and bothered that she came to find me and didn’t even stop to knock?”
“Why are you doing all of this?”
“All of what?”
“You know what.” I shove him back, my anger ratcheting back up. “Why are you doing all of this?! Why am I in your house and wearing your ring? Why do you make extra food for me and goddamn croissants? Why did you hold me all night when you could have easily come back in here to sleep?”
“Because I fucking love you!” he yells, his hands flying about. “That’s why. How do you not see that? You’re my goddamn north. I have no direction without you. No path forward. Without you, I’m lost. I’ve been lost. Only the irony behind that is that you made me feel found and then took it all away.”
I shake my head, and this infuriates him.
“Goddammit, Tinsley. You don’t like my answer? Fine. Forget you fucking asked and forget I fucking answered. Just wear your ring and be mine for the small amount of time I can call you that. That’s all I want with this.” He puffs out a breath, his hands on his hips and his gaze on the small space between us. His voice simmers, his expression a contradiction of fury and despair, battling to see which wins. “I get it, okay? I get all of it. We’re a mess, and I don’t even know what I want or what I’m asking for from you. But fucking give me this. Give me this one piece of you I can call my own.”
“You’re so dumb.”
He grunts. “How am I dumb?” He tugs at the long strands of my hair, trying to push me back and away from him, giving me one last out that I know I won’t take.
“Because for the last two years, all I’ve been is yours.”
With that declaration, I jump on him. He staggers back two steps and falls onto the bed with an oomph. My lips collide with his, and he groans, not skipping a beat as his hands dive up into my hair and he kisses me back like my mouth holds the only source of oxygen in the room. The heat of his lips and tongue light up a well inside me.
“I’m yours, Stone,” I pant against his lips. “But I don’t know how to truly be yours. I don’t know how this works.”
He flips us on the bed until he’s above me, and I’m staring up at him in the waning winter light. “I love my brother. I love him with all my heart. I do. So it breaks me to say this, but I can’t live my life for him. I’ve tried to be better. I’ve tried so hard to put the selfish bastard I was behind me. But if you’re telling me I can have you—for real, have you—then I’ll risk being selfish to make that happen. No matter the consequences.”
29
Her hands find the back of my head, and she forces my face to hers, our lips smashing together in a painful bam of teeth and misaligned lips. I can do this. I can take her mouth and her body and make them all mine. I can. And I wouldn’t look back. I’d just keep moving forward, taking more of her. The selfish bastard in me who still likes to peek his head out every now and then would demand it.
The truth is, she can say whatever she wants, but I told her I love her. And she didn’t say it back. Just that she’s mine. But what does that actually mean? I know she likes me. I know she might even be infatuated with me. But is it enough? Is it enough to keep us together when everything about our worlds would seek to tear us apart?
I love her. But I’m afraid of loving her. Afraid of losing her. Afraid of losing myself in the process. I’ve worked so damn hard to get where I am. To be the man that I am. But she’s a love I can’t shake no matter how hard I try. She’s burned into me. A tattoo on my skin—literally.
I kiss her back, and I lift her sweatshirt over her head so I can kiss my way along her perky breasts and tight nipples that are anxious for my mouth.
I don’t know how to stop when I’m with her.
She’s right here with me, anxious for more, and so beautiful she makes me ache. I want to demand a million things from her, but I won’t. I’ve already given up. I’ll take what she gives me and fight for the rest and hope I land somewhere on my feet with her by my side.
My hands fist deep in her hair as I lick and suck on her pretty nipples. Her head leans back, her eyes closing as she holds on tight. I press into her, letting her feel me. She tastes like chocolate and raspberries, and her skin gets so warm when it’s touched. The best thing about fucking Tinsley Monroe is how I smell her like her after. For hours, I smell like her. To the point where I refuse to shower until the very last remnants of her are erased from my skin.
I tear down her leggings, toss them to the floor, and trail my hand back up to her wet heat barely hidden beneath tiny, thin satin. Satin. That’s what she likes. Soft and silky and sweet. Just like her cunt.
I pull back and catch her face, hair wild on my bed, lips bruised and swollen red, eyes lavender and glowing. Fucking. Gorgeous. I’ve never been this raw or primal with anyone. I want to fuck her into tomorrow. I want to pound into her and come inside of her until she’s sore and dripping me.
A wave of possessiveness boils within me, and I plunge my fingers inside her, pumping them furiously so she knows I will give up everything for her. And it’ll be worth it. My regrets when I’m a hundred and thirty won’t be that I didn’t try, and they won’t be that I didn’t give her every piece of me.
I roll us once more until she’s straddling over me. “Sit on my face, baby girl.”
I pull her panties to the side, and she inches her knees up my bed until her cunt is above my lips, her smell goddamn everywhere.
Her head falls back, and her hand grips the hair on the top of my head as she rolls her hips into my face. “God, yes.”
She’s so wet, already dripping into my mouth, and I lick it up, tasting her and groaning because, fuck, she tastes good. I’ve opened myself back up to this. My Pandora’s box. I’ll be done for and ruined when she leaves. And she will leave. I have no illusions about it.
I hate how much I need her.
My tongue dives up and in, circling around, and my nose presses on her sweet, tight clit. I wiggle my face back and forth, fucking her like this. It’s not enough for her. I know it’s not. But I can’t help but want to punish her a little for making me so goddamn desperate.
“More.” It comes out as a whisper. A sigh. A plea. “I know I can be such a bad girl, but please. I just need to feel you.”
My balls tighten the moment she calls herself a bad girl and then nearly explode when she says she needs to feel me. I reach down and pull my boxer briefs off, kick them to the floor, and squeeze my cock so I don’t come right now. I lift her a little and spread her thighs so she’s completely exposed to me. My tongue strikes a path, ringing her asshole and playing with her opening, all the way up to her clit, where I suck her deep between my lips. Her hips buck, and her hand in my hair rips.
“Oh, god!” More grinding. “I want to come, Stone. I want to come so bad. All over you.”
“Then do it, little Rose. Make me take it. Make me take all of you.”
“Ah!” She falls forward, her hands hitting the bed above my head to hold herself up so she can watch me eat her out like a man starving. I devour her pussy. I hum and groan and lick and kiss and suck and even use my teeth. I never know with her. From one day to the next, I never know if I’ll get this again, and I never take it for granted. I like taking her so roughly that she’ll be thinking about me tomorrow. That her pussy will clench with want and get wet from thoughts of this.
“Fucking bad girl, you’re such a tease.” I spank her ass. Hard. “Come on me. I need it too.”
And she does. With those words she comes on my face, undulating her hips and pussy in my mouth as I take her over the edge.
Before her orgasm fully ends, I lift her hips, shift her again, and slam into her. “Fuck! Stone! Oh!”
Her pussy convulses around my cock, squeezing it with the aftershocks of her orgasm.
“Jesus.” I throw my arm over my eyes. I was not prepared for that.
“You okay down there?”
I hold up a finger. “I need a minute.”
“That’s it? That’s not exactly an enticing number to give a woman when you’re inside of her.”
I wheeze out a laugh, and my arm falls back. “You feel too good.”
“That sounds like a you problem and not a me problem.”
“Is that a challenge?”
I flip her over, making her yelp. My hands snatch her wrists, and I lock them above her head as I slide back into her when a thought strikes me. I pull out, much to her dismay, climb off the bed, and go to my closet.
“Oh my god! What are you doing?”
I laugh under my breath. “I just realized we’re out of milk. I’m going to get dressed real quick and run out.”
“What?!” she shrieks, and now there is no hiding my laugh.
“Relax. Be patient. Trust your sir.”
“You’re not my sir!” she yells. “If you’re in there longer than two minutes, I’m going to make myself come, and I won’t even let you watch me this time.”
I shake my head as I open a drawer I have in here. A drawer I’m not sure I’ll even be able to explain because it makes me come off as an obsessed psycho, but so be it. Maybe I am.
Pulling a few items out, I shut the drawer and return to my bad girl.
Her eyes widen and then narrow into slits when she sees what I’m holding, and she props herself up with her elbows. “Uh-uh. No.”
I stop dead in my tracks. “What?” I never expected her to say no.
“I’m not letting you use that stuff on me.” She looks like she’s about to bolt out of here, fury dancing across her face, and I climb back on the bed and straddle her thighs before she can escape.
I set the items down and lean over her. “Tell me why.”
She bites her lip and turns away from me, covering her tits from my view as if this all made her feel vulnerable. What the fuck is going on?
“Tinsley.” I move her jaw back. “Tell me. If you don’t want me to tie you up or use a toy on you, that’s fine. But why do you look angry that I have these?”
“Because I don’t want you to use something on me that you’ve used on countless other women!”
Oh. I smile because my chest feels like it’s about to explode. My girl got jealous. I push her back down and kiss her lips even though she doesn’t kiss me back. “I’ve never used them on anyone. I was in a sex shop with Vander—don’t ask.” I follow up quickly when she throws me a bemused look “I saw these things and thought of you. The rope. The toys. I bought them not knowing if I’d ever get to use them.”
She gulps and takes them in with new eyes. “You bought these for me?” Her fingers run along the soft black rope, bottle of lube, butt plug with a purple jewel, and silver vibrating bullet.
