The Romance Revival(74)
“We could go to Vegas?” I suggest.
Emery’s eyes light up with another idea. “Or we could drive to Yosemite? It was your favorite trip we ever took.” She pauses, her shoulders tightening. “It was, like, one of the only trips we ever took. A weekend in Santa Barbara, but—”
I appreciate her honesty, but I told her yesterday: I’m ready to let go of all that. She’s here now. That’s what I care about. I think about the photos of pine trees in one of the vacation albums on my phone and can somehow remember the smell of the park. It’s a visceral memory that feels tangible. “Yosemite sounds perfect.”
“I’ll see if I can book us at Tenaya. That’s where we stayed last time. It’s our favorite hotel in the park and, if I remember correctly, it’s pet-friendly, so we can take Honey.”
“I love it.”
I watch her sip her coffee, noticing how her eyes seem to come to life with energy, curiosity, determination. She slept like a log last night; coffee isn’t her coping mechanism from staying up too late, it’s just her routine. The realization that it’s just who she is and not dictated by the career she’s been so tied to is such an odd relief that I step forward and hold her again.
With a laugh, she sets the mug back on the counter behind her and winds her arms around me, stretching for a kiss. “Well, hello.”
“You just look so fucking fine in my shirt.”
She laughs again. “It smells like you.”
“You like that?”
Emery nods. “Sometimes you smell so good I want to bite you.”
“Be my guest.”
Grinning, she stretches, mouth open like a vampire, and gently sinks her teeth into my collarbone. It sets off a spark of need in my gut that immediately travels south.
There’s a heat to her skin, a greediness to her touch that reads as insatiable to me. Thinking back on yesterday, I get hard just remembering how she looked kneeling between my legs with her hand and mouth on me. I had to keep looking away, tilting my face to the ceiling so that I wouldn’t come too fast, and even then, I finished faster than I’d wanted. I suspect there’s no savoring with Emery; she’s unrelentingly sexy.
She’d climbed back onto my lap with a look of such victory, I’d nearly flipped her face down and lifted her hips to press my face between her legs. But I wanted to see her expression the first time she came again with me too much to do it, and, honestly, getting her off with only my hand was worth it just for that expression of euphoria alone.
But right now, there’s nothing stopping me from getting something else.
Lowering myself to the kitchen floor, I grin at her, reaching for her hand to coax her down with me, guiding her when she moves to straddle my hips. “Up here,” I say, and when I gesture with my finger for her to turn around, she grins knowingly and does, kneeling with her knees on either side of my shoulders, her perfect peach of an ass in my face.
“You remember,” she whispers, bending to kiss my thigh.
And I do. I don’t know why I know this, but I want to hold on to her ass while I do this, and she likes the angle better; my tongue flicking down against her clit rather than up.
The sweet heat of her comes over my lips and she gasps, pulling away, teasing me, making me lift my head to get back to the intoxicating taste of her, until with a giggle she settles over my face, taking no time before she’s gently rocking, digging her hand into my boxers to pull me loose. Whatever she’s doing feels good, but my focus is all on her: on the slick sweetness of her need, her tiny gasps and cries, the increasing weight of her on my mouth as she gets closer and closer before she’s bracing her hands on my abdomen and riding my face in earnest, so wet and warm and coming with the sexiest hoarse cry I’ve ever heard.
Slumping forward onto her forearms with an exhaled “Holy shit,” Emery goes ass up in the air and I give it a good slap, scooting back a little to sit up and stare at her. The view makes me feel lightheaded.
“Woman, you’d better get that pussy out of my face if we’re going to Yosemite anytime in the near future.”
She gives a little ass wiggle, looking coyly at me over her shoulder before she pushes to stand and, turning, reaches down to give me a hand.
“Tenaya, you said?” I ask, standing and staring down at her sated, disheveled self.
She nods. “Tenaya.”
“I tell you what: They’d better have thick walls.”
36 EMERY
As we’re packing our weekend bags, my phone lights up with a message on the encrypted server.
I’ve thought about work so infrequently in the past few days that the sight of a message from Claire—which once would have sent my brain happily soaring—now makes my stomach sink.
I don’t want to leave my Luca bubble.
I haven’t put in a full day at BioNEX since Luca’s accident, and it hasn’t put a dent in the hundreds of hours of leave I have saved up. I always thought of our allotted vacation days per year as sort of a perfunctory gesture of goodwill more than time off I would ever actually use. On the rare instances we did go away, I found it hard to unplug and be fully present. With perspective, I see that the root of that was an emptiness I’ve carried since my parents died. I thought having a purpose would fill that void, but there’s a difference between being productive and being happy.