Page 18 of Enemies in Earnest

When I’d plucked them from my drawer prior to going out for dinner, I told myself I wore them for confidence. That if I wanted to form a truce with Edwin, I needed to feel powerful and assured. Now, watching him prowl toward me across his bed, I felt powerful in an entirely different way.

“Run your hands through your hair,” he commanded, voice tinged with gravel that skittered across my skin and teased a riot of gooseflesh across my skin.

It felt awkward. Surely it was something I did every single day. I probably played with my hair absentmindedly nine million times a day. But doing so while imprisoned by the heat of Edwin Wheeler’s gaze, watching him stroke his cock while I twisted the curls around my fingers and shook the bulk of my hair back behind my shoulders, it felt otherworldly. Seeing him, watching him watch me, suddenly the shy bookworm was doused in magic and realized all this time she was in fact the most beautiful, gossamer winged fairy.

“Just like that. Acacia, how are men not falling at your feet?”

His thumb traced gently from between my breasts, down the softness of my belly, to the banded waist of my panties.

“I have never witnessed a single man at my feet, let alone more than one.”

I tried to smile and make it lighthearted. But saying the words out loud just reminded me of how little experience I had with men and being invited to their houses and into their bedrooms. And on the heels of that realization came the fear that Edwin would somehow find me lacking, and the shame that would result when he did.

“Would you like me at your feet, Sweet Acacia?”

Edwin slunk off the bed and knelt directly in front of me. His lips should not have felt as if they scalded every area on my body they touched. Yet, with every heated press, my own body surged to life in response.

“Is this the kind of apology you were waiting for?”

The rumble of his voice oozed sex. As if I stood beneath a waterfall and each of his words, the caress of his fingers against my skin, the soft kiss of his lips across my satin covered mound, were individual beads of pleasure threatening to drown me in a sensation I’d never stop craving.

Did I want an apology anymore? The word lost its meaning. He had my panties rolled just at the top of my thighs, his lips centimeters from where I ached with need.

I wouldn’t be able to stand through it. Especially not still in my heels from dinner. Edwin Wheeler did not justperformoral sex, he made love to my pussy with his mouth. The first gentle kiss and every muscle in my body forgot how to function. Each of them melting concurrently.

“Bed.” He commanded, twisting me gently until we’d rotated enough the backs of my thighs connected with his mattress.

Edwin stood, gathering my hair in hands, pulling it away from my ear far enough that he could whisper in it.

“I’m not a fan of rushing.”

With the grace of a ballroom dancer, he collected me in his arms, and swept me onto my back across his bed. His mouth worshipped at my ankles as he removed my heels, the clatter of them bouncing against his wood floors echoing through the room. His hair was mussed, pointing in various directions, a result of my fingers. Seeing that dichotomy play against the intense look in his eyes, had my body squirming in anticipation of what was to come.

That stupid drink probably had some strange concoction that messed with my body. I had never felt such an intense high simply from the feel of my underwear tracking down the skin of my thighs. Every sense was dialed up to a million. I swore I could hear the crickets singing outside, and the refrigerator kicking on downstairs. Edwin’s heavenly beach smell wrapped around me like a scarf while I lay against his pillows. Even his comforter felt as if I prostrated on a bed of clouds and singing angels. Heaven. I existed in heaven and that was before Edwin’s mouth made a topographical map of my calf, knee, and thigh.

“Patience, Acacia.” He hummed, moving to the other leg and repeating the same process. “I’m sure there’s a quote from some old famous literary windbag about how the best rewards come to those who wait.”

His words buzzed in my brain like a hoard of fruit flies. I knew he was saying things, but I’d already careened past the point of caring about processing them. His fingers and lips had become both my heaven and my hell. The feel of them pure bliss but the need they created rivaled that of Dante slowly slogging through the nine levels of the Inferno.

While his lips drew patterns on my inner thigh, his fingers teased along either side of my cleft, tickling through my pubic hair, glancing softly down my slit before retreating to repeat the process once again. Edwin touched everywhere and caressed every place except the one that shouted and begged for relief.

“I see you shooting heated missiles from those launchers you call eyes.” Edwin smiled at me across the expanse of my naked and shaking body. “You can give me all the dirty looks in the world, gorgeous, but I’m going to take my sweet time. If this is my last meal before my execution—I’ll savor every crumb until sunup.”

If he didn’t start soon, his last meal would be a burned and blackened, combusted pile of ash.

ChapterThirteen

Klaus deserveda bottle of twenty-year-old bourbon and a box of the Cubans that Manny down the street sold to his favorite customers on the down-low. That motherfucker really did know what he was talking about. After leaving Acacia in the parking lot, I spent my entire drive home convinced I was the world’s biggest asshole.

I’d wanted to text her. Or call. Something that saidhey I’m still interested, but I want to give you space. But we weren’t technically friends. Not like that. I only had her number because the island was so damn small I practically kneweveryone’snumbers by heart. But she hadn’t given it to me. Or ever in the history of our friendship told me to call her, text her, send her a smoke signal. Nothing.

Imagine my surprise then when Acacia showed up at my doorstep looking sexy as hell with those wide eyes and kiss swollen lips. I should have asked her if she wanted something to drink. Or anything to show I actually cared about her as a person and not just a warm body. But the moment she delivered herself to my doorstep, the neanderthal in me wanted to lay claim.

Now that she sprawled on my bed, panting my name, something in me needed to make her feel so incredible that every other man that had ever had the pleasure to be with Acacia would be forgotten. Obliterated. To the point that Acacia would wonder if she was a virgin before me.

“Your skin is so soft, Sweet Acacia.”

I couldn’t stop running my lips against the silk of her thighs. And her smell? Heavenly. That didn’t even cover the heady perfume of her desire that wept for me. My mouth watered knowing that was next on my list of places to explore. Those lips shone with her spent desire, and I was desperate to bury my face between her thighs and lick her clean.

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