“Barely.” Adam’s eyes narrowed. “Do you care?”
“I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
His expression softened and he gently tugged his hand free from mine. “Don’t worry,
sweetheart, according to sources I was nowhere near New Town or Rich last night. We’ve
got a dozen witnesses who will all claim that I was at Bar Khol last night at the time of the
said attack.”
I nodded but worried my top lip with my teeth.
“Els, how are you really?” Adam asked softly, tentatively.
Instead of answering right away, I turned around and slowly made my way toward his
comfy sofa, listening to him follow behind me. I settled on the couch and Adam sat down
close to me, relaxing his arm along the back of it. Finally, I met his gaze and shrugged. “I’m
an idiot.”
Adam’s eyebrows puckered and his mouth got tight. “You’re not an idiot.”
“I’m an idiot,” I insisted. “I’m stupid and naïve and… humiliated.”
He slid closer to me, his fingers touching my wrist gently in comfort. “You have nothing
to be humiliated about. He’s a prick who played you. He’s the idiot. He’s the stupid fuck
who’s going to look back and realize that for five months he was the luckiest bastard on this
planet to be with you. He’ll regret this, baby.”
Baby.
For a moment I forgot how to breathe. Adam had never called me “baby” before. There
was something somehow intimate about the endearment. I liked it. I liked it a helluva lot.
I smiled at him. “You always know the exact right thing to say.”
“Because I only ever tell the truth. You’re one of a kind, Els. Any guy would be lucky to
have you.”
I gazed into his eyes feeling his words like a caress across my body and as I stared his
gaze flickered over me again, surreptitiously checking me out before he took another sip of
wine. It occurred to me that perhaps all Adam needed was a push. Yes, I was Braden’s wee
sister, but I was also Ellie, the girl he apparently thought the world of and admitted he
thought was beautiful. Blame it on the wine or the fact that he’d stood up for me once again, I wanted him
and had decided impulsively that I was tired of hiding the fact.
I let Adam make me feel better as we finished off our glasses of wine. An hour had passed
before I knew it and I had kicked off my Uggs and curled up on his sofa, sitting close to him.
His arm still rested along the back of the sofa and every time I laughed I touched his bicep or squeezed his knee. I was an affectionate person, tactile and open, but it was more than that,
and Adam knew it. I could see it in his eyes as we chatted and I hoped my plan was working.
You would think hurt and betrayal would make me shy away from opening myself up and
laying it all out there but I just didn’t have it in me to close myself off. It wasn’t who I was, and I definitely didn’t want to be that way with Adam.
As the hour drifted into two, I became more determined than ever that tonight things were
going to change between me and Adam. I was sick of dating guys I couldn’t seem to fall in
love with, and even sicker of being duped by them.
Adam was in the middle of telling me about the Skype chat he’d had with his mum a week
ago and his parent’s plans to return to the UK for a few weeks in April, when I stretched my
arms up, pretending to need to crack my back. The movement pulled the hemline of my top
up, baring my flat stomach, and it also pushed my breasts out. When I brought my head back
down and relaxed, Adam had stopped talking and I could see a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“Ellie, what the fuck are you doing?” he asked hoarsely, his voice quiet.
Although my face burned with the possibility of rejection I shrugged nonchalantly.
“Stretching.”
His gaze drifted down my body and I watched his own tense. “You know what I’m talking
about. The touching, the flirting, the stretching…”
Heart pounding I shifted closer to him on the couch until my knees touched his outer
thigh. I licked my lips, nervous but completely turned on just by the mere thought of him
touching me back. “I think you know,” I whispered.
Our eyes met… and clung. The air thickened between us. Adam swallowed hard. “Ellie,”
he breathed.
Holding his gaze I reached a trembling hand out and placed it on his thigh and slowly I
moved it up, caressing him. It had almost reached the heat of his crotch where to my utter
satisfaction and delight I watched his erection strain against his zipper, when his strong hand grabbed mine tightly.
I’d barely let out a surprised gasp when he tugged on my wrist, yanking me against him. I
collapsed on him and he used my momentary disorientation to his advantage— he gripped the
nape of my neck and slammed my mouth hungrily down on his.
I melted against him. Just melted.
My fingers sank into his hair, and I rearranged my legs so I was straddling his lap. My
body sank into his. My mouth sank into his.
It was everything and more than I’d always imagined.
My skin burned and my nerve endings sparked and I was tingling all over. Adam tasted of
wine and heat and… home. I moaned into his mouth and Adam’s arms tightened around my
waist, somehow drawing me even closer, the kiss changing from passionate to dirty in a
nanosecond. It was suddenly biting and wet, our tongues tangling and licking and learning
every inch of one another’s mouths.
It wasn’t close enough.
As we continued to kiss, everything lost in a fog of sexual chemistry so electric I would
never again doubt romance novels, I felt his rough hands on my ankles, coasting along the
skin of my calves, and up the back of my thighs as he drew my skirt free of our tangle and
bunched it around my waist. Those hands of his caressed my bottom, giving me a squeeze
that sent a streak of heat between my legs and made me gasp into his mouth.
Adam groaned and put pressure on my hips, pushing me down on his lap so his hard-on
rubbed me directly between the legs, nothing between us but denim and the thin cotton of my
underwear. I sought the delicious friction, riding him until our mouths parted in brief
increments to catch our breaths.
Needing closer, needing him inside of me I sank down on him and dug my fingers into his
shoulders as I rubbed harder.
Adam growled and broke away from me to tug my top off. I raised my arms, our
movements hurried and frantic as he divested me of my top and then my bra. He cupped my
breasts in his hands and I arched my back into his touch.
“So perfect,” he murmured hoarsely, “So fucking perfect.” He captured my nipple into his
hot mouth and I cried out at the rush of pleasure that coursed through me, pushing me closer
and closer to orgasm.
My being so turned on seemed to fire Adam up. After I cried out I found myself flat on my
back on the length of the couch and watched threw hazy, lust-blurred vision as Adam
whipped off his shirt and pulled down my skirt and pants. The muscles of his ripped abs
flexed deliciously and I felt another rush of wetness between my legs.
He was so goddamned beautiful it wasn’t fair.
Our lips met again as he braced himself over me, my hard nipples brushing his naked
chest, my legs spread to fit him between them. He still wore his jeans, and the coarseness of
the denim was sensual torture against my naked skin.
As our kisses grew even more desperate I sought what I wanted from him, finding the
button and zipper on his jeans and undoing it. I pushed at his boxers, my hand sliding inside
to grasp him and tug him out. He was throbbing and hot and hard and I couldn’t believe this
was actually finally happening. Now I knew everything about him.
“Fuck,” he groaned against my lips, his hips thrusting as I pressed the mushroomed head