He didn’t even pause to lick his lips or wipe his mouth. Quickly, he made his way up my body and kissed me fervently, my taste everywhere on him.
I didn’t care, couldn’t bring myself to worry about that while he was grinding into me, his length touching my sensitive spot, not allowing the tremors to die down.
We kissed, our tongues colliding and playing, our pelvises doing a dance . . . until he slipped inside me. When he hit the natural barrier, he paused.
“Bex?” His brow furrowed. “You okay with this?”
I nodded, and he slowly pushed inside.
Bringing his hand down to mine while he kept his weight up on the other, he took his time. Languidly, he drifted in and out, the tension heightening, pleasure rising. The pain quickly forgotten, I lifted my hips to meet his, and he picked up the pace.
Maybe he planned it, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like it was supposed to happen like that, the most natural thing that had ever happened to me.
Aston Prescott buried himself deep inside me, taking all of me, making love to me in a way I was certain I’d never have again. We never discussed birth control, other than that I was on the pill to regulate my periods. I didn’t care.
At that moment, all I cared about was Aston Prescott being mine.
Bexley
I wasn’t exactly a prude, but until I met Aston, I’d rounded all the bases except two—doing the deed, and letting a guy go down on me. Both seemed to require commitment.
When it came to Aston, there was an intimacy between us I hadn’t been quite ready for . . . my soul was assaulted with lust, love, unnamed feelings. The moment he shook my hand and introduced himself behind the snack shack, I was his. His abundant arrogance and enormous ego should have been a turnoff, but somewhere in there, I found a redeeming man.
I saw through both his ego and pride for what they were—an armor. I’d made it my summer mission to put tiny chinks in that shell until it was chipped away.
When he’d sat me down on the golf course and told me about his life—the true story, his mom, the pain, and the guilt—his drive to succeed made sense. It was all he really had. Despite all the wealth and trappings, his desire to take over the family business and make it great was all that was important to him.
A week after we had sex for the first time, I sat in his lap one night on the golf course, a blanket spread out underneath us and the stars above, while he ran his nose along my neck. He’d pushed my hair to the side, exposing my skin to the evening air, but it was his touch giving me goose bumps and his words making my pulse race.
“I can’t stop thinking about you. I want to make love to you every second of the day,” he said softly.
My eyes squeezed shut, and a shiver ran down my spine at the mention of making love. Is that what he thought we were doing?
“I want to touch you . . . all the time.” His perusal of my neck stopped, and he nudged my face toward his. “What? I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“What are you talking about?” The words squeaked out of my mouth.
“You clenched up, went rigid in my arms. Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for.”
I slid off his lap and knelt before him, my knees pressing into the soft grass under the blanket. “No, not that. You didn’t hurt me or anything. It’s just you . . . you said . . . make love,” I stammered.
“Right, make love. Make no mistake, in my mind I’ve had you seven ways until Sunday, but when I’m inside you, it’s something else. Making love.”
A nervous giggle floated from my mouth, and Aston kissed it away.
“Believe me,” he said. “I never thought that expression, those words, would come from me. It’s all you, Bex.”
“I’m falling for you, Aston Prescott. You’re nothing like the boys I know. Not like the men my mom knows.”
“That’s good, because I’ve fallen for you, Bexley Rivers. You most definitely aren’t like anyone I’ve ever met, and I don’t ever want to go back to anyone like that again.”
At the end of the summer, he took me home to my house for the first time and saw exactly how different we were. We were complete opposites, but he still acted like I was better than sliced bread.
Aston was gracious to my mom, drinking iced tea from an old coffee mug and shaking her hand in a way that made my heart beat a little faster. He kissed me good-night on my stoop, pretending not to notice the chipping paint and cheap siding. He promised to visit me often, and offered to pay for me to visit him when he couldn’t come to me.
And he made good on all of that until he graduated the next semester and began working for his father.
Then all he saw was the cheap facade that was me, Bexley Rivers.
Aston
Present day
I walked out of the putrid county building, thankful for the dark of night hiding the purple circles under my eyes. Yes, I was vain enough to think of those. Probably because I’d spent so many years being photographed.
Glancing at my watch as I refastened the expensive timepiece to my wrist, I noted how late it was. “Thanks, Patrick,” I said to one of my oldest friends, who was waiting for me outside the shitty building.
He’d brought my car over for me without asking a single question.
I didn’t dare ask Mike for help. I wasn’t ready for him or his inquisition, or more specifically, Milly’s wrath. Yeah, Mike had promised to keep everything related to me to himself, but Milly had a way of inserting herself and her opinions into everything. Including my life.
“Listen, you good?
