“Fuck yes,” he grunts. “Make a mess, baby. You know I love it.”
His words send me over the edge and as my orgasm hits and cum lands on my chest, Merrick tenses up above me.
“Shit!”
He speeds up for a few seconds before coming to a stop as he roars his pleasure, his body spasming above me. He starts slowly moving in and out again, and I let go of my spent cock and drop my arm to the side, completely done for.
“You’re so good,” I pant.
“At fucking?” Merrick asks with a chuckle as he eases out of me.
“Yep. Everything else too.” I close my eyes, ready to go back to sleep.
“I’m glad you think so,” he says, kissing my forehead.
My eyes pop open and I smile. “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
“Pft.”
He laughs as he struts his sexy naked ass to the bathroom. While he’s gone, I check my phone and find several texts from my sister and Jordy.
“Oh shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Merrick asks as he walks back in.
“You better check your phone.”
Without hurry, he finds his pants and pulls them up before grabbing his phone from the end table. “I turned the ringer off last night.” I watch his face as he scrolls through what I’m sure is a million notifications. He lets out a low whistle. “Well, looks like I need to make a few calls.”
“It’s everywhere,” I tell him, clicking on a link Lili sent me. “There’s pictures from last night, and video.”
“Yeah.”
I watch as he continues to stare at his phone, tapping the screen to either read more messages or find the internet articles himself. “Did your manager call?”
“Five times. He also sent a few scathing text messages.”
“Merrick.” I say his name, not knowing what else to say.
We can’t take back last night. We can’t change what people saw and heard. But I can’t help but feel slightly responsible. A picture of us kissing is all over all the gossip sites. There’s a few different shaky videos of Merrick’s speech last night. People are posting them all over social media and re-tweeting articles that journalists wasted no time writing.
Merrick walks over to the bedroom window and barely pulls back the curtain, gazing down. “Lots of people out there now.”
“Damn,” I say, moving to get out of bed. “I’m sorry.”
He lets the curtain close and turns to face me. “Don’t be. I’m not.”
“All these stories. Details about your personal life.” I step into my boxer briefs right as Merrick rounds the bed and takes my hand.
“Stop. I told you I don’t care. They’re gonna go on about this for a little while, but they’ll eventually move on.” He tips my chin up with his fingers. “Your personal life is gonna be out there too. Our lives. You gonna be okay with that?”
I nod.
“Good.” He kisses my lips. “Now, I need to call Evan then probably Kit, and maybe my publicist.”
“Okay. I’m gonna take a shower and order breakfast.”
“Sounds good.”
Merrick turns and has the phone to his ear before he leaves the room. As I’m about to get in the shower, I hear his raised voice and hope like hell the label doesn’t make this harder.
50
Merrick
Present Day
I ended up being on the phone for over an hour and a half. First with Evan, who was furious that I disobeyed him and came out anyway. I told him he could go fuck himself, which he didn’t appreciate. I think he was mostly mad that I didn’t give him a warning, because he wanted to go to Kit first, and now he has to explain why he didn’t inform the boss about what I was going to do.
After talking to Evan, I called Kit and explained that this is what I wanted to tell them a couple weeks ago, and also admitted that I told Evan and that he wanted me to keep it to myself. I couldn’t care less that I was throwing him under the bus.
The good news is that Kit isn’t too angry. Well, he’s definitely mad, because he likes to know everything ahead of time so he can have a good plan in place. Had Evan had gone to him when I told him, things likely would’ve been handled better, but Evan was too afraid of Kit. So I don’t need to find a new label, but we will be looking for a new manager.
After a conversation with the guys to let them know what happened with Evan and Kit, I called our publicist who was already working on something. Instead of releasing a generic statement that reads “Please respect my privacy at this time,” I told her I’d write something up and send it to her for approval, and then we’ll release that. There won’t be any press tours and interviews or any shit like that. I don’t find it necessary.
I toss the phone on the table and rest my hands on the arms of the dining room chair Ali’s sitting in and give him a kiss.
“Everything okay?” he asks once I pull back.
“Perfect. Sorry it took so long.”
He shrugs. “It’s okay. Your food might be a little cold.”
“I don’t care,” I say, sitting next to him and uncovering the different plates of food.
I tell him everything that happened, and I can tell he’s relieved that it didn’t cause too big of a problem with my label.
“So, now what?”
“Well, I imagine the next few days will be crazy. Paparazzi won’t leave until they get some pictures, so we might as well not even try to avoid that. The quicker they get their shots, the sooner they’ll leave. Hopefully.”
“Okay. I’m fine with that,” I say, taking a sip of my coffee. “Another thing we have to deal with is my mom. She’s not happy that we didn’t tell her what was going on between us.”
“Uh-oh,” I say around a mouthful of cold pancakes.
“Oh, and by the way, my sister knows. I mean, she
