At Any Price (Gaming The System) (26 page)

His eyes shot a challenge into mine but his smile didn’t fade. “Nope.”

“What makes you think I’m inclined to give you a freebie?”

He held up his remote. “Come on…you know you want to…”

I sighed. “If I can get another batch of popcorn and a toothbrush—and you turn off your phone until the movies are over—then I might consider it.”

“Done, done and…” he gave an exaggerated sigh, pulling his phone out of the drink caddy where he had rested it. “Oh, what the hell. Done.”

He turned the phone on twice to check it during the slow parts—Arwen’s dream and that silly scene where Aragorn gets knocked over the cliff by a warg.

After the second time, I hopped into his recliner, grabbed the phone and stuck it down my shirt. We watched the remainder of the movie pressed against each other, our legs intertwined, his strong arms wrapped around my waist.

During the prologue to the third movie, we started kissing. And from there we pretty much ignored
The Return of the King
. His hands were all over me—though I suspect that partly might have been an effort to locate his phone. My hands feasted on him as well.

We spent the entire two and a half hours making out like teenagers in the back of their parents’ borrowed minivan. And I don’t think I’d ever been so turned on in my life. Which, of course, wasn’t saying much, since my three weeks in this man’s company comprised about 98.5 percent of my sexual arousal experience. It was stunning, the feelings that were stirring in me—like parts of my body I hadn’t known existed previously were coming alive.

After Aragorn was crowned king and the credits rolled, we were in the dark and still going. He’d had his hands on my breasts for the previous hour, driving me insane with the continuous stimulation, teasing them to points, putting his hot mouth on them. Because, yeah, my T-shirt (or, rather, his T-shirt) had hit the floor long before—along with the phone—and was quickly joined by the one he was wearing.

Then I reached down and started stroking him through his pajama pants and he uttered a harsh groan. Oh, he liked that very much. We wouldn’t be having sex tonight, but it was about time he had some fun. After all, he’d been so attentive to me before. And I had to admit that Heath’s accusation of Adam having a weird little self-denial fetish was at the back of my mind, too.
Maybe he gets off from denying himself
.

But once my hand slipped inside his pajamas, he wasn’t protesting. I wrapped my hand around him and stroked softly up and down just like Heath had instructed. His organ was hard—long and thick. I loved the feel of the soft skin gliding under my hands, the rigidity, the sound of his husky groans as he surrendered to my stroking.

I moved my hand faster and his arms around me grew tighter. He sank his teeth into my neck, sucking, and I knew I was probably going to be covered in hickies for the next few days. But I didn’t stop, because it was really turning me on to have this power over his body. I lowered my head and kissed his hard, muscular chest, licking and sucking his nipples, as he had done to me.

Then my mouth went to his ear, “I’m going to make you come.”

His hoarse reply, “Yes, you are.”

“I want you inside me, Adam. I want to know what you feel like in me.” I said those words and I meant them. It was time. I was tired of waiting. It wouldn’t happen tonight, but it had to be soon or I thought I’d explode from the tension of it all.

I stroked faster and faster until his body went rigid and I could feel the contractions of his orgasm. Hot semen dripped across his flat abs and my hand and when finally he came down from wherever I had taken him, he glanced down, carefully removing my hand from his now too-sensitive flesh. “Look at the mess you’ve made, naughty girl.”

My lips found his and we kissed, long and languorously. “I might need to be punished later.”

“Yes, you might.”

There was a full bathroom near the theater and we moved in there for a shower. Another warm, sexy shower together. After he had cleaned himself off, he moved to me with the soap and insisted on lathering me from head to toe. From behind, he massaged my shoulders and again displayed that interesting habit of paying special attention to soaping my breasts.

“I
am
going to be inside you, Emilia,” he breathed against my ear when he was done.

Then his hand was between my legs. I leaned my back against him.

“I’m going to slide it in slowly. I’m going to watch your face when you take it in. I’m going to fuck you until you scream. And then I’m going to make you beg for it again. And again.”

His fingers glided over my yearning, sensitive flesh while he pinched my nipple in his other hand. In hardly any time at all, he returned the favor I had just done him. My orgasm came fast and intense. I stiffened in his arms and he held me against him. His hoarse breath scorched the back of my neck. He pressed against me, hard once more.

Even given that conversation I’d had with Heath, I didn’t know a man could be ready again that quickly. Of course we hadn’t actually had sex, so that might have had something to do with it. As much as I tried to educate myself, it was thoughts like these that showed me how little I really knew about these things. Adam had been a patient and thorough teacher thus far. He’d been too patient for my tastes. I was ready for the next lesson and he withheld it like an obdurate schoolmaster.

Maybe it was time for the student to rebel.

***

It must have been two or three in the morning by then but neither of us was tired.

He grabbed a change of clothes, and a new shirt for me—this one a rugby jersey that came down a little longer on my legs but also had sleeves that ran well past my hands. I ended by rolling them past my wrists. We went to the kitchen and snacked on cold cuts and cheese, both of us famished.

I tried to take advantage of his orgasmic afterglow by prying out his closely held secrets, but no luck. “Okay, what about the tiniest fraction of a microscopic hint?”

His mouth creased with suppressed amusement. I’d been at this for over ten minutes. “I don’t do hints.”

“What about bribes? I could bribe you.”

He laughed now. “With what?”

I leered at him suggestively.

“Okay, one hint.”

“Oh goody!”

“Yellow.”

I glared at him. “Wait, what?”

He shrugged, “That’s my hint. Take it or leave it.”

“I’m leaving it right where I’m going to leave all the naughty things I was about to do to you in return for a good hint.”

“You’re a little late on your bribery. You should have been throwing out that offer while we were watching the movie.”

“Oh, I think a good bribe might get you going again.”

His gaze slid down my bare legs again. “I think you might be right.” He said. “Are you tired? I need to check on a few things, but I think I could stand to get a few winks before the sun comes up.”

He gave me my promised toothbrush and showed me to a guestroom not far from his. But after I brushed my teeth, I made my way to his bedroom. Wherever it was he’d wandered off to do his work, it wasn’t here. I used the time to inspect his room, struck by how impersonal it seemed. It was exquisitely decorated to look like a beach cabana, with canted ceilings lined with bamboo and dark beams. Voluminous buff-colored linen drapes hung over floor-to-ceiling windows and the smooth floor was inlaid in different colors of wood in intricately patterned parquet.

But there were few personal touches that gave any clue about who he was, except for the desk. I moved to it, my eyes sliding over its shiny surface. There were pictures of his Uncle Peter with an arm around both of his cousins, Britt with her two adorable boys. There was a picture of Adam and the kids at Disneyland standing beside Mickey Mouse. I smiled at each photo, relieved to have found even small clues to the person underneath the persona that he showed the world, even me. I noticed no pictures of his parents and given what I knew of his situation growing up, I wasn’t surprised. But the last picture in the row gave me pause. It was a snapshot in a 4 x 6 frame and I picked it up, studying the two children in it.

The color was faded but the younger child, a dark-haired boy, was obviously Adam. He had teeth missing but was grinning wildly nevertheless. He had his arm around the neck of an older girl, this one honey-blond with green eyes. She looked to be in her preteen years. She glanced at the camera sidelong, as if irritated at having her picture taken, but her arm was wrapped tightly around Adam. She was lovely and I guessed that this must be Sabrina, his sister.

While I studied the photo, I felt a presence behind me before I even heard a thing. I spun and faced Adam. When he saw the picture I was holding, his expression sobered.

“She was a pretty girl,” I said lamely.

His threw a furtive glance at me, then laid the laptop hooked under his arm onto the desk, avoiding my gaze. I had guessed right. “Yes,” was all he said.

“You don’t look very much alike.”

“We had different fathers.”

I looked down at the picture again and replaced it gently. “I’m sorry for your loss. You loved her a lot.”

He took a deep breath, still staring at the picture. “Yes. I loved her more than anyone else on the planet.”

I approached him and wrapped my arms around his torso. “She was very lucky, then. To have your love.”

Adam didn’t move, didn’t respond to my show of affection. I glanced up and he was still staring fixedly at that faded photograph. “That’s the only picture I have of her and yet in my memory, I can’t remember what she looked like then. Or later, before she died.”

“How old was she?”

“Twenty.”

“And you were…?”

“Thirteen. Happened just around the time I came back to California.”

Despite the fact that he had neglected to respond to me, I released one of my hands to caress his back. “I would have loved to have had a sister, even if for a short time.”

His mouth set and he seemed to finally grow aware of me, looking down. “I would have rather not had a sister than to have had one and watch her die the way she did.”

I pulled away from him and sat down on the edge of the bed. He watched me for a moment, his face all tense planes and rigid angles. I patted the space beside me.

He glanced at it but didn’t move.

So I asked him the unasked question. Because I sensed that despite his reluctant demeanor, he wanted to talk about it.

“How did she die?”

His eyes fluttered closed and open again. “Overdose.”

Addiction. There was that family theme again. He’d once mentioned to me that he feared it more than anything else, that he firmly believed in the genetics of addiction. It seemed his beliefs had ample basis in the personal lives of the people closest to him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, completely at a loss to say anything else.

“Don’t be. It’s been thirteen years. I tried to save her once and she refused to let me,” he shrugged but it was an affectation rather than a show of indifference. He was pretending a nonchalance that he didn’t feel.

“No matter how hard we try, some things will always remain out of our control,” I said.

“I can’t accept that.”

Of course he couldn’t. That was a huge part of what made him
him
. But maybe that was the crux of his problem, too.

“Maybe you should.”

He ran a hand through his hair and looked at me. “Emilia, it’s getting late.”

I took a deep breath, aware that he was trying to blow me off. It
was
late, but I wasn’t going to let him off that easily.

“You’re right. It’s too late to work.”

He quirked a sad smile. “It’s never too late—”

I shot a significant look at the laptop sitting on the desk. “If I leave, you are taking that to bed with you. So which is it, that or me?”

His watched me with hooded eyes but remained silent. He was actually considering choosing the laptop over me! Heat rose in my face. “Okay. I see how it is.” I was getting too close. I was making him uncomfortable, so now he was getting rid of me to work on his computer. I wondered if he took that damn thing to bed with him every night. Maybe he habitually kicked whatever fuck buddy he had at the time to the curb after sex and ran back to his laptop.

I turned to leave.

“Emilia,” he said, reaching for my arm and closing his strong hand around my wrist. “Stay.”

I clenched my teeth. “Only if that thing stays on the desk.”

He gave a long, resigned sigh. “It’s late—early. Let’s get some sleep.”

Without another word, I went to the top of the bed, pulled back the covers and slipped in. He watched me, his handsome face impassive, but the light of something in his eyes said he was not unmoved by the gesture. I rolled over on my side, my back to his side of the bed.

He went around to the other side, turned off the light and after a moment, I felt the weight of the bed shift. We were still some distance apart, as the bed was a massive king-size. Another long pause before he reached out, hooked an arm around my waist and pulled me back flush against him. His legs curled under mine. We were spooning. I never took Adam for the type of guy who would spoon. And here, this display of affection was for me alone. There was no potential girlfriend or ex here to deflect. This was just him and me.
Us
. Curled together.

In this safe environment in the darkest hour before dawn, I turned my head toward him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He didn’t answer for so long that I thought he wouldn’t. Or that maybe he had fallen off to sleep when I hadn’t noticed. “She was all I had. She was a sister and she was a mother when our mother was incapacitated, which was most of the time.”

His hand slipped under my shirt to rest atop my belly. Despite my fatigue, a curl of excitement tightened there in response to his touch. I put my own hand on top of his, lacing our fingers together. He curled his fingers inward, locking them in a tight embrace.

“But things between her and my mother got bad, really bad. My mother couldn’t stand the sight of her and drove her out of the house when she was fifteen. We were homeless shortly thereafter—bouncing around from shelter to shelter.”