Never Enough (33 page)
“I hate being away from you both. You two could live here, you know. We can convert your room to a home office.”
She breathed deep. “I hate being away from you too. As does Miles. But you see us several times a week, including every weekend. Moving isn’t an easy thing. My friends live on Bainbridge. I’ve built a life there. Miles has room to play and run and practice with his friends in the garage. If we moved here, he’d lose that.”
“He could start a new band. You can take the ferry to see your friends and you have friends here too now. Erin and everyone already like you. I could wake up every day with my two favorite people with me under one roof.”
“That last line saved you, son.” Her eyes narrowed and he took a step back because she was
pissed off
. “Who do you fink you are?”
pissed off
. “Who do you fink you are?”
“Fink? Is that a Britishism?”
Her narrowed gaze went wide and he realized, too late, that she had said
think
and her accent had thickened.
think
and her accent had thickened.
“I didn’t mean to offend you with that.”
“Do you
think
you can just plug me and Miles into your life and all will be well?”
think
you can just plug me and Miles into your life and all will be well?”
While she’d said
think
extra clearly, the rest slid back into her
Newham
as Miles had called it after the area she’d grown up in back in England.
think
extra clearly, the rest slid back into her
Newham
as Miles had called it after the area she’d grown up in back in England.
Miles skidded into the kitchen and looked from his mother to his father and chuckled. “You’re in big trouble, mate. When she starts sounding like an episode of
EastEnders
I usually just run for it. Protect your junk.” And with that, he turned and bolted from the room.
EastEnders
I usually just run for it. Protect your junk.” And with that, he turned and bolted from the room.
“I don’t think that at all. Come on, you know I’m just saying that you have a life here too if you want it.” Jesus, he wanted her to move in to his house and she was mad at him for how he phrased something?
“Let me ask you a question, Mister Brown. In my place, if I said please come live with me and Miles and don’t worry about missing Erin and the bunch, you can take the ferry to visit your old life. Don’t worry about your friends, you already have a friendship with Cal and Ryan—you tell me how you’d feel.”
“That’s not what I meant, or even what I said.”
“When I lost my gran I was a mess.” She stepped back and leaned against the center island. “She was everything to me. The only real mother I’d ever had. She’d been such a huge part of my life, of Miles’s life, that when she died the only thing I could manage to do was cry.”
He wanted to touch her, but knew if he moved, he’d break the spell, so he remained, just listening to her.
“I never heard a thing from my mother or sister. So I made the arrangements. Or I should say I put it all into motion because my gran was a very organized woman and she had everything she wanted outlined and even paid for. And on the day of the memorial service Jules showed up in my gran’s car to get me and Miles. She knew I needed it. Cal had taken it to the shop and gotten it detailed. It was Jules’s plum thumbprint cookies we had to eat with our coffee and tea. They were Gran’s favorite.” She looked up and met Adrian’s gaze.
“That’s just one example, but these people are as important to me as your sister and brother are to you. I’m flattered and touched and very tempted by your invitation to live under the same roof. But I have a life already and I’ve never seen being with a man as a way to simply stop what I was before he came along. I want to live with you, not through you.”
He took a deep breath. He got it. Understood how she could see what he said the way she did, and perhaps she wasn’t entirely wrong that he’d sort of expected her to blend in with everyone as closely as Elise had, or Ella.
“I just hate that you hold back.”
“How do I do that?”
“I want us to hang out with my family more. Don’t you want to go out with my sister?”
“I’ve arranged a lunch on Sunday to have your family and friends meet mine, if you recall. I don’t think it’s a crime for me to like my friends. I love your sister, she’s a lovely woman and I enjoy time with her, as I do Elise and Ella and everyone else.”
“I just . . . it feels to me that you like them better.”
“Well, of course I do!” She began to pace, muttering. Her reserve had melted away entirely. “I never lose my temper with other people this often,” she tossed back over her shoulder as she continued to pace. “I like the people in your circle. But I have friends too and it’s absolutely ridiculous for you to expect me to like people I’ve known for four months more than I do people I’ve known for twelve and thirteen years.”
He wasn’t used to fighting with women this way. With the people he’d been with before, if he discovered something that would have made him mad enough to argue over, he just would have moved on.
But as they stood there in his kitchen arguing, he realized he only bickered and fought like this with people he knew and trusted most. With Erin and Brody. With Cope. He wasn’t worried this would be the end between the two of them. His assumption was that they’d fight and work it out.
Huh.
“I just realized something. Would you like to hear it?”
She turned and made an on-with-it movement with her finger and he made the herculean effort not to snort.
“I fight with you.”
“Because you’re a particularly vexing man who is very attached to getting his way.”
He smiled despite his annoyance.
“Yes, I admit that. I only fight like this with people I love. What does that say that we’ve been like this since the first time we met?”
“Are you trying to defuse a fight with this romantic stuff?”
“It just occurred to me. Answer the question.” He’d just told her he loved her, damn it. He wanted her to face that.
“I think it’s probably true that I love you too. And quite honestly you’re too vexing for any other woman with a weak constitution to handle, so I must take this on myself. You know, for the good of the world and all.”
He swooped down and kissed her again, this time backing her against his fridge.
“Miles will be waiting. There’s food and he left it in here,” she whispered into his mouth as he slid a hand down the back of her pants to cup her ass.
He groaned.
“Welcome to parenthood.”
After the last movie they’d both tucked Miles in and headed to his room. She was nervous, which was new for her when it came to Adrian.
She did love him. More than was wise, and not without a hard fight against it. God, how many times had she watched her mother lose herself in yet another man? The way Adrian made her feel had been the first time in her life that she’d understood her mother.
And it stood to reason that since her mother was a featherheaded slapper and each man she’d fallen for was as big a loser as she was, what Gillian felt for Adrian was far deeper.
Because Adrian’s greatest allure was that he was a man who believed in fidelity and commitment. Which seemed funny, given that he was a rock star and all, but he was. A good, strong man who was more than worthy of her love and the return of that fidelity.
He saw through her. Which was exciting. Flattering that he hadn’t run screaming. She wanted to believe everything he said and made her feel.
In the dark, the pale light of the moon outside giving enough light not to trip, his hands found her first, pulling at her clothes, getting her naked. She writhed against him as his mouth was everywhere his hands weren’t.
He brought her to the rug, kissing down the line of her spine. The rustling at her back alerted her that he’d been undressing too, but even so, when he stretched against her, skin to skin, the feel of it made her suck in her breath.
She kept her eyes closed as he laid hot, openmouthed kisses across her shoulders.
“Head down, ass up,” he growled into her ear as he pulled her up the way he wanted. “I’m going to fuck you right here.” His fingertips wet from her pussy trailed over her asshole.
She shivered at the darkly sensual promise.
She waited for him as he briefly left her and then returned.
“We good?”
Her answer may have been different before the warm flow of lube over her hole and then the slick fingertip on her clit.
“Mmmmph,” she managed to say in assent as he worked her clit with one hand and stretched her out with the other.
“I want every part of you,” he said, voice taut as he stroked the head of his cock against her, the cool of the condom against the slippery warmth of her body.
She wanted him to have it just then, even as the burn of entrance rode that line between pleasure and pain.
Being fucked this way stole her wits. In that act, in the time he began to fuck her and keep her pleasured and open with his fingers on her clit and the occasional slide back to her cunt to fuck her there as he fucked her ass—in that he dominated her fully. In body, in heart and in mind.
She was utterly his, which is why it worked for her when the only other time she’d done this, it had been uncomfortable and not very exciting. Like something you agreed to because it was a birthday or an anniversary.
Each time he dragged nearly all the way out of her ass, a guttural sound came from her lips as her fingers sought purchase in the carpet. Each time he slid back inside, firing nerve endings she’d not known she had, he won his way deeper past her defenses.
She felt the throb of his cock, the frantic beat of his pulse.
His fingers on her clit got a little clumsy but kept their rhythm. Relentless until she exploded, the inner muscles of her cunt grasping at nothing, body writhing around each invasion he made with the thrust of his cock.
His groan as she came echoed through her body, and it wasn’t a breath more until he pressed in deep one last time and she felt the jerk of his cock, knowing he came.
It wasn’t until he’d picked her up and carried her into his bathroom that she began to rouse from the sexual stupor she’d been in.
It was as he ran the bath, hot with soaking salts included, that she fell totally in love with him. Past the point of no return.
And all she could do was smile lazily at him as he picked her up again and took them both into the bath with a sigh.
“You all right?” he murmured against her hair.
“Yes.” She curved into him, letting him hold her tight against his chest.
“English?”
“Hm?” She hoped he wasn’t ready to get out yet because she might just want to sleep in this bath for a while.
“Your car, the one with all the problems you keep having to fix? Was that your gran’s car?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you keep replacing carburetors and brakes and steering columns and other things.”
Moved beyond words, she nodded and hoped he didn’t ask for more because she didn’t trust herself to speak.
Adrian Brown laid waste to her reserve. Barging in and taking up residence inside her. In her heart and head and damn it, it felt good. And right. He understood her, darkness and all.
She knew she should tell him about her father. Right then would have been a good time. Sort of. But it was ugly and it had been years since she’d seen him. Her mother had never taken his name anyway. Tina and Gillian had Candace’s last name—Forrester—instead of their father’s.
He kissed the top of her head and murmured to her that he loved her, and that closed her throat with unshed tears.
So she burrowed in tighter. He held her tighter and she let him love her.
16
“You’re eating all my food, Miles!” Mary called out. Her grin was so wide it filled Gillian with joy at the sight of it.
“These are brilliant.” He held up a Thai chicken slider.
“You like? I think they could be a tad bit hotter. Wanna be my test subject?” She held out another slider.
“Yeah!” He grabbed the plate as Mary sat next to him, ready to get his opinion.
The day had turned out utterly gorgeous. Clear and cold, but the sun was out and Mary’s backyard was perfect for year-round entertaining with many seating areas, shade and direct sun. Tables were scattered across the pretty brick patio.
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