Page 72 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
“I would think that was obvious,” I said, feeding her words back together. I jerked my jeans down and made quick work of her jean shorts, then leaned over her again, taking in her tousled hair and wide, darkened eyes. “After all, we have the whole place to ourselves. Are you going to stop me?”
“No,” she breathed.
I didn’t need any more than that. I parted her legs a bit more and found her seam with the head of my cock. God, she was wetand ready and so, so hot, like she’d been waiting for this all day. She caught her lower lip in her teeth and gazed up at me, daring me to do it.
So I did. I held her gaze with mine as I slid into her, making sure to go slowly enough that she could feel every inch. When I was fully seated, her eyes turned upward in pleasure, but I put a hand to her cheek.
“Look at me, Lila.”
She did.
So I could see how it affected her when I started to slide back out...and then back in again. I saw exactly how much she liked the smooth, even rhythm. Her eyes got darker and darker the longer I went, and when I started to speed up, they closed again, as if it was all too much.
I didn’t stop. I moved in and out of her like my life depended on it, because in that moment it felt like it did. I gave her every inch of me again and again, reveling in the tight feel of her and the fact that she was grasping me as hard as I was grasping her, hanging on for dear life while we rode each other right to the edge. I didn’t know what this was. I didn’t know if it was love or something a whole lot like it. But I knew that she reached me in ways no one else had ever dared, and I knew her in a way that made me feel like I owned her.
My tempo got faster again, and she began moaning my name, which undid me completely. I looked down at her one more time, registered that she was about to come undone, and let myself go, taking her over the edge of the cliff with me and down into a darkness that only she, Lila Potter, could light.
38
LILA
The night ended far too quickly.
I got a ride back with Rivers, who held my hand the entire time and then left me at the elevator. He kissed me softly, his eyes dreamy and his lips parted, but when I asked him to walk me to my room, he told me that I didn’t need anyone seeing us together after the announcement he’d made.
“They will have seen us together at the bowling alley,” I pointed out.
“And that was a public event with lots of people. I’m not going to mess with your reputation by returning you to your room after midnight,” he argued.
He’d melted away into the shadows before I could respond to that or stop him, and though I’d stared at the space where he’d been for some time, I didn’t go after him.
I chose to turn and walk toward my room, forcing my mind to dwell on the memories of him during the day—and the lingering glow of what we’d done afterward—rather than the fact that even after that, I hadn’t been able to hold onto him. Five minutes back in the realm of the music industry and he’d been like smoketrailing through my fingers. Wispy and impossible to grasp, disappearing so quickly it felt as if I’d never had it at all.
I wasn’t discounting the feeling. I knew that part was real. The part where he couldn’t quite bring himself to commit to anything, particularly when it came to me.
I also wasn’t discounting the fact that there was something there. He’d pursued me time and again, his eyes watching me as I passed through a room and his lips parted as if he wanted to say something to me. He’d come after me tonight, and it wasn’t the first time. He looked at me like I was the only one who could truly see him, and he held me like he never wanted to let me go.
You didn’t do that with someone you didn’t care about.
I just needed to find a way to make him feel safe. I was positive that there was more than I knew about his past, even after my talk with Matt. I knew that people had made him feel like he didn’t belong or didn’t matter, and I knew it must have created a tendency in him to think he didn’t deserve anything out of life. He probably went out of his way to undermine anything good that came to him, subconsciously, and he probably hated that he’d done it.
I doubted he knew why he did. Maybe he didn’t even realize when he was doing it.
He needed to heal from some decades-old trauma so he could stop. It was the only way to help him, and also, by default, the only way I thought he’d ever be able to have a strong, functional relationship with anyone else. One where he let himself be loved and taken care of rather than pushing the other person away the moment he decided they were too good for him.
I had an idea for how that could happen.
But I was going to need some help.
I unlocked the door to the suite I was sharing with Anna and opened it quietly, praying that she was either still out—I really needed to ask her what was going on with her and Matt—oralready asleep. The light from the hall sliced through the room to show one bed, then the other, and I saw that Anna was indeed already in her own bed. I stopped short, worried that I’d wake her, but her slow, even breathing told me that she was well and truly asleep.
Thank God. I didn’t think I had the energy or patience to tell her all the things that had happened today or listen to her lecture me about the dangers of letting Rivers back in.
I already knew them by heart. And I was running out of ways to tell her that I didn’t care.
I crept to the desk, picked up the laptop I’d brought with us, and tiptoed into the sitting area, where I at least had a wall between me and the sleeping Anna. With a sigh of relief, I opened the laptop and went right to my email. I’d sent several out last night, and if people were at all organized...
Yes. I had several emails, most of them junk, but at the top of the list was one from the Jonesboro Children’s Society.
