Long ago, she’d loved a man like that with pushy hands and hard kisses that hurt more than they aroused. Her friends had told her it was passion and that men in lust didn’t know how to behave. Their advice: collect that token of affection—how flattering to be devoured—and spread your legs.
And hadn’t Emory once been the same? Yes, he’d been manic with longing that night in the parlor, and she’d lost her senses right there in his arms. She’d almost accepted his offer to come upstairs and finish what they started, if only to call his bluff. She would have found no bluff that night but no romance either. Just another man dying to get inside.
The intoxication had matured since then. Though heady with complexity, it felt far less like spinning out of control. It wasn’t what Emory said, but the way he moved so calm and confident. He was self-assured and not for the conquest, but in his commitment to the moment. True to his word, he didn’t go by halves, and she saw what he meant when he said she’d have all of him; a man who’d eat her alive then love her right.
Inside his bedroom, Emory flicked on a lamp, and Amelia stood rooted at the end of the bed. The tidy space spared no excess other than the full-length mirror in the corner. A pleasurable chill pervaded the room that held the faint scent of jasmine and fresh greens, though she didn’t know from where. It was pristine, but not quite lived-in enough to know that it belonged to him.
“You looked surprised,” Emory laughed as he unfastened his watch at the dresser.
Her stomach flipped at the sound and the glance he gave in the mirror’s reflection.
“Maybe a little. It’s very clean,” she remarked, though that didn’t surprise her.
Amelia wasn’t entirely sure what she expected and had only caught rare glimpses of his space, just a sliver through a crack in the door. Much like the man, the rest remained a mystery. She existed on the other side of that divide now, and there was nothing left for him to hide. If that scared Emory, even in the slightest, she wouldn’t have known as he emptied his pockets and removed his belt.
Like a strip tease, he made a ritual of the wait, and Amelia found herself transfixed in watching him slowly shedding his shirt. Bare chested, he approached in deliberate steps that bid her to remain still. She couldn’t move, even if she wanted. Her knees went faintly numb, and thin, shallow breaths issued from her lips, not unlike the first few times they met. In fact, shades of that past flickered, and she trembled as Emory eased up behind her.
“Someday soon I’ll take you to my place in Vegas,” he said and dropped a kiss to her shoulder.
Amelia stretched her arms overhead and draped them around his neck. “Soon?”
She had no anchor to time anymore. Days, weeks, months—soon could mean just about anything.
Emory nodded as his hands engulfed her waist. “Soon as I can.”
With a shuddering breath, Amelia sunk into him. Emory slipped the straps of her dress from her shoulders, and the poppyred fabric pooled at her feet. He didn’t seem to mind her mismatched lingerie—a red bra and black thong—and neither did she as they admired their reflection in the mirror.
“We look good together,” Emory said, and his lips grazed her cheek.
With his arms protectively wrapped around her middle, Amelia rested her head against his chest. Skin to skin, it was the closest they’d been, and neither rushed through the moment to get onto the next.
Amelia luxuriated in the warmth of his bare chest and closed her eyes as his fingertips slid to the heat between her legs. He touched her sweetly, a gentle tease until she melted further into him. The man was a master at commanding his touch. It could be anything she wanted, and when she wanted more, he sunk a finger inside and then another to fill her up.
“I missed you these last few days,” Emory muttered with a gratifying pant against her neck as he worked between her legs, the confession as satisfying as his touch. “Look how gorgeous you are.”
Amelia cracked her eyes to the reflection. She looked small in his arms. Her cheeks flushed and lips parted with ragged exhales. With another swipe between her legs, her eyes fluttered shut once more, and a soft gasp escaped her.
This can’t be real.
The thought broke loose from a distant fantasy, the feel of her fingers between her legs, imagining what Emory Holt might feel like inside of her; before she ever met him, that time when she came hard with inevitable shame. There’d be no shame tonight. With a roll of her hips, Amelia ground against his hard cock nestled against her ass and watched with delight as he clamped down hard on his bottom lip.
Hand in hand, Emory led her to the bed, and Amelia’s heart skipped a beat. There was something wildly intimate about the gesture, that they arrived in the moment joined together. Amelia absorbed the sight of him in the murky light, his body carved in lean muscle and tattoos covering his chest, shoulders, and back.
“Lie down,” he commanded with a nip at her bottom lip that softened into a kiss.
Amelia obeyed and relished Emory’s weight as he climbed on top of her. Where this once might’ve intimidated, it thrilled instead.
“I can’t stop looking at you,” he said as his fingertips traced her curves and his gaze followed.
“Are you afraid if you look away I’ll disappear?” Amelia laughed and swept her fingers through his hair.
Emory grinned as he undid her bra. “Little bit.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered into another kiss, one burning with heated urgency. She needed him inside of her.
Emory cupped her breast and rocked against her as his tongue plunged into her mouth. Lost in his taste and the feel of him on top of her, Amelia was only vaguely aware of her underwear sliding over her hips and down her thighs and then discarded somewhere nearby.
His touch swept her nipples, enough to make them hard and for the rush to go to her head. Naked beneath him, Emory nudged her knees apart and admired her body laid out in offering.
