“Not. Yet,” he gritted out. “A little longer.”
“Okay, then.” I went back to my slow and steady pace, taking just as much pleasure in watching his struggle not to come as I was at the decadent feel of him filling my pussy with his glorious cock. “A little longer.”
A little longer turned into only a few minutes before he was gripping my ass to hold onto me while he rolled us. He lifted onto his knees and thrust into me so hard that I cried out in surprise. My hands went straight to his back, my nails sinking deep without my realizing it. He cursed and thrust harder, faster until I was hanging on the edge of an orgasm that was going to destroy us both.
“That’s it, baby. Come for me. Come all over my dick, Natalie.”
I screamed his name at his naughty command, falling over the edge. My hot liquid release gushed from my pussy all over him, the convulsions of my inner walls as I came hard milking him of his own release. Devlin stiffened over me, his head thrown back as he groaned my name over and over again while his body emptied deep inside of me.
The sound of an all-too-familiar ringtone forced me to open my eyes. The sound was distant, but persistent and I lifted my head in search of it only to realize I wasn’t in my own bed, and I was definitely not alone. I sat up quickly, stifling a moan when sore muscles protested.
Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
The man lying face down just inches from me didn’t move as I jumped from the bed and searched for my phone almost frantically. What had I done? How many times had I done it? Oh. Fuck. Had we used any protection?
Those were only a few of the questions flooding my brain as I finally found my phone in the sitting room of the penthouse and snatched it up. When I saw that I had fifteen missed calls, some from Emmie, some from Linc, and two each from my mother and sister, I groaned. My text message count was even worse. I knew why they had all called so much. I hadn’t gone home last night, and with a glance at the clock on the wall by the television, I saw that most of the day was gone. I’d promised Linc I’d be home by eleven the night before. Shit, he was probably worried sick.
Sighing, I skimmed my finger over his name. It hadn’t even finished ringing the first time before he was answering. “Where the hell are you, Natalie? Are you okay?”
The first question was easy to answer. I was in Devlin Cutter’s penthouse room. The second one? Not so much. I didn’t know if I was okay, I didn’t know anything about what I was feeling right then and there. My body was sore, but satiated. My heart was racing, hurting. My head was a jumble of thoughts and emotions because I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before or today for that matter. Devlin had made love to me countless times and I was still trying to remember if we’d used protection at any time.
Nope. Not one time. And I’d gone off the pill after my last female doc appointment because I’d had no need for them. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Natalie?” Linc sounded almost hysterical now. “Are you okay?”
I realized I hadn’t spoken yet and let out a tired sigh. “Yeah, Linc. I’m…I’m fine. Look, I can’t talk right now, but I’ll be home within the hour.”
“Do you need me? I’ll come get you if you tell me where the fuck you are.”
The sound of footsteps behind me had me turning to find a naked Devlin walking toward me with a satisfied smile on his devilishly sexy face. “No,” I spoke into the phone. “No, I don’t need you right now. I’ll be home soon.”
“Nat…”
“Bye, Linc. Love you.” I ended the call and glanced down at my nakedness. I couldn’t go out like this and I no longer had a dress or even panties to put on. Devlin had destroyed both last night.
“Muscle-head worried about you?” Devlin asked as he stopped inches in front of me and lowered his head to press a kiss to the top of my head.
“Don’t call him that,” I snapped, pulling away from him. “He has a name. Use it.”
“Okay, was Linc worried about you?” he asked calmly as he reached out for me.
I moved away so he couldn’t touch me. If he touched me then I didn’t know what I would do. My brain clouded with desire too quickly when he touched me. I needed a clear head so that I could figure out what I was going to do. Damn, damn, damn. Okay, I could stop at the pharmacy on the way home and get the morning-after pill. Yeah. That was a good idea.
I stomped back into the bedroom and opened Devlin’s closet. There was no way he had anything that would fit me. He might be lean but he was wide as hell and all his clothes would fall off me. I heard him behind me but ignored him as I pulled out a pair of sweats from the suitcase open below the clothes hanging. I pulled on the pants, pulled them up as far as they would go, and then rolled them down before tying a knot in the side. Then I had to roll up the pants legs. Next I grabbed one of the OtherWorld T-shirts and knotted it at the back.
I didn’t bother to look in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. I knew how I looked. Like some slut who had just had a one-night stand. It couldn’t be helped. It was either this or go naked.
“So you’re leaving?” Devlin asked, his tone angry now.
I turned to face him, refusing to meet his gaze. It was dangerous to look him in the eye right then. I was too vulnerable, my emotions were too close to the surface and I still didn’t understand the majority of what I was feeling. “Yes. I’m leaving. Last night shouldn’t have happened.”
“But it did, and now you regret it.” He clenched his jaw. “And you don’t want to talk about it. Like you never want to talk about anything that has to do with us. Typical Natalie. Running away like a scared little girl.”
I closed my eyes, hurt at him calling me a little girl more than anything else he could have said. Our age difference had always been one of the things that stood in our way. He hated that he was older than me. Hated that I was only twenty-two to his thirty-six. I’d never considered our age difference anything more than a number, but before our very short relationship he had thrown barbs in my face on a daily basis like ‘little girl’ and ‘kid’ and countless other things to remind us both that I was so young .
“Damn it, Nat. I’m sorry.” His apology came too late. I jerked away from him when he touched my arm and walked around him, picking my shoes up when I finally came to them.
“I don’t regret last night,” I finally told him when I reached the door, not surprised to find him just a few feet behind me. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it. Because I’m too fucking scared that you got me pregnant last night to think about anything else.”
“Pregnant?” Aquamarine eyes widened and he actually paled, telling me loud and clear that the idea of me having his baby wasn’t something that he was prepared for. “But… You were on the pill last time, Nat. I didn’t even think about…”
“No. It’s not all your fault,” I assured him, glancing around for my purse for a moment before realizing I’d left it downstairs the night before. Perfect. This day was going from bad to worse. “But don’t worry about it. I’ll pick up the Plan B pill on my way home. You won’t have to deal with a pregnant ex-girlfriend again, I promise.”
“What?” He shook his head. “That… I don’t… Damn it, Natalie! Just stop for five minutes and talk to me about this. You don’t have to take that fucking pill. We can deal with this if you are pregnant. I’ll take care of you.”
Take care of me? I didn’t stop to think about what I was going to wear home before I threw one of my shoes at him. His quick reflexes failed him and my shoe hit him in the chest. I threw the other one, hitting him in the stomach. “I don’t need you to take care of me. I can take care of myself, you prick.”
I saw his eyes darken in anger, but didn’t stick around long enough to hear anything he might have said. The door slammed behind me and I pushed the button for the elevator. It opened just as the penthouse door opened behind me. Not wanting to talk to him or even see his face right then, I stepped inside and punched the button for the lobby, desperate to get away from him.
r /> When the doors closed, I leaned back against the elevator wall and closed my eyes, fighting tears. Damn it. I blew out a long, emotionally filled breath. Last night had been so amazing, but also stupid. Having sex with Devlin had done nothing but make things even worse. And now…
My hands covered the flatness of my stomach as a tear spilled free. And now I could be carrying his baby.
As I left the hotel, with my purse finally in hand, I was so emotional I didn’t even notice the stares. Knowing stares that were a mixture of disgust and interest. I took a cab and asked him to stop at a little pharmacy just a few blocks from my apartment. I had no shoes on and when I asked the tech for the morning-after pill she gave me a pitying look. My cheeks filled with shame as I handed over my credit card.
By the time I got back to the apartment, Linc was standing by the front door waiting on me. My promised hour was nearly up. When he saw me his eyes widened, taking in my borrowed clothes and trembling chin. I tucked my purse with the little package from the pharmacy tighter under my arm and brushed past my best friend, not wanting him to know that I was about to kill any chance of having the baby of the man I loved.
“Nat…”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Linc.”
Natalie
End of May
Jean Pierre lifted the ponytail full of my hair and gave a sad shake of his head as he lifted his silver scissors. From the chair across from me, Marissa bit her lip as she watched with glassy eyes. Both acted like I was committing a crime punishable by death, but to me it was like getting rid of the heartache that constantly felt like it was choking me.
The stylist lifted a brow at me in the mirror, silently asking me if I really wanted him to continue. I gave one firm nod and he tut-tut-tutted at me as he cut away my hair. At the first sound of the scissors slicing away my hair, I felt a stab to my heart and blinked my eyes to keep the sudden burning of tears from falling. I was not going to cry, I wasn’t.
Cutting my hair had to be done. Maybe then I would be able to move on. Maybe then Devlin wouldn’t want me. Maybe…
There was a fuck-load of maybes that I was hoping would become actualities with this haircut. And the biggest one? Maybe cutting my hair would make Devlin hurt as much as I’d been hurting for the last six weeks. The man had loved my hair; it was probably the only thing he had ever loved about me. And with each snip-snip of the scissors, I envisioned the pain that would fill those aquamarine eyes when he saw that all that hair he had worshipped like a holy man worshipping his lord was gone.
It took less than a minute and Jean Pierre was handing me the ponytail of hair. Fourteen inches of silkiness. I’d been prepared to let the hair just fall to the floor, but Marissa had told me about Locks of Love and I’d decided to donate my hair to them so that some little girl would get to feel pretty as she placed on a wig made of the hair that had once been desired by a rock legend.
I ran the ends of the hair through my fingers a few times before clenching my jaw and handing it over to Marissa who already had a large brown envelope ready for the locks. She sealed it up while Jean Pierre finished my cut, going for a pixie kind of style rather than the shaved head that Marissa had talked me out of just ten minutes ago. When the stylist was done I glanced in the mirror, saw the same blue-gray gaze that was filled with the pain I’d been keeping bottled up for the last two months and grimaced.
I’d thought that with the end of my hair I’d also have an end to the choking pain around my heart. But it had only left me feeling even sadder than I’d been that morning. For just a second I let my chin tremble, let my weakness show, and then I squared my jaw, nodded my head and stood so that Marissa could have her hair trimmed.
While Marissa had just an inch cut away, leaving her hair in all its long glory, I paid for both our cuts, added on a generous tip and walked out onto the busy New York City sidewalk to wait for my friend. Pulling out my phone, I took care of the fifteen emails that I’d gotten in the thirty or so minutes I’d been inside the salon, as well as the three text messages I’d gotten from various people that needed my immediate attention.
Being Emmie Armstrong’s assistant was a twenty-four-seven job and I was starting to feel the strain. I needed a vacation. To get away from New York, away from the craziness of stupid rockers, and especially away from the constant emotional pain that I was in.
I was still answering emails when Marissa came out of the salon. She hailed a cab for us. I quickly finished up by the time we got to the exclusive boutique across town where we spent a few hours finding the right outfits for the big dinner party Emmie was throwing tonight downtown. After one more stop, where Marissa took her time picking out the perfect stud to put in her nose, we arrived at the club where the party was.
Marissa stepped out of the back of the cab first and stiffened. That was my first clue that something was wrong. When I stepped around her I saw exactly what had caused her to pause. Damn it! I’d known that there would be a line of fans outside the club that I’d rented out for the evening for Emmie, had been expecting it.
I hadn’t, however, been expecting to see the sign three stupid bitches were holding up. My blood began to boil as I read the filth that was on the sign. ‘I Can Give You A Baby Shane! Drop The Wife And Come Be With A REAL Woman!’ For fucking real? My brother and Harper had just gotten back from their trip to Germany, where they had gotten new news on Harper’s inability to have a baby. Neither of them had mentioned what the doctors had told them, I didn’t even think Emmie knew, but some sleazy tabloid had gotten a picture of them leaving the élite fertility clinic and some lower level staff member of the clinic had given them the bits and pieces they had needed to start a round of scandalizing daily reports on how the ‘biggest playboy in rock was getting his comeuppances with a wife that couldn’t give him a much desired child’.
Harper had been having her inability to have children thrown in her face by countless trash magazines for two weeks now and I knew it had to be wearing on her nerves. She was already one of the most hated females in the rock-n-roll fan world because she had taken Shane off the market, and now she had to face bitches like the ones standing in front of me right now? No fucking way.
I ripped into the three bouncers keeping the line of fans from entering the club. I made them get rid of the three bitches with the sign and gave them strict orders to make sure that no one else with the same idea was around in case my brother and sister-in-law came out and saw them. If Shane happened to see something like that I was sure I would need to bail my brother out of jail before the end of the night.
I was so mad I was shaking by the time we got inside and I handed over my purse. I knew everyone was there. Harris had been texting me throughout the day and I’d gotten a text from him twenty minutes ago asking where I was. I loved that boy to death. He was always worried about me. Even more so lately, but I didn’t want to think about that tonight.
As soon as Marissa and I entered the bar my senses zeroed in on the only person I didn’t want to deal with tonight. Devlin was standing with his back to me talking with two members of Alchemy, but I could tell by the stiffness in his shoulders that he wasn’t really paying attention to whatever they were discussing. My hungry eyes ate up the sight of him. His long dark hair hung down his back, ending just shy of the top of his jeans. He was wearing old jeans that had a hole in the left hip that broadcasted the fact that he was wearing black boxers underneath. The jeans hung low on his narrow hips, and I could just picture the sexy V that was hidden under the T-shirt he was wearing.
What was it with him and his friends wearing old, tattered clothes? They had the money to buy a new designer outfit every day for the rest of their lives, but instead they wanted the same clothes that they had worn a decade ago. Not that I was complaining, because the older clothes looked just as good on Devlin as new ones did. Maybe even better.
My attention was pulled away from Devlin when Emmie came over to chew me out for cutting my hair. I hadn’t thought ab
out how my brothers would react to my new haircut. They hadn’t been on my mind while I was going through a mini nervous breakdown over the last several weeks. Call me selfish but I just didn’t give a damn about what they thought about me cutting my hair. It was mine and I was an adult. It wasn’t any of their freaking business.
But of course Emmie made me realize that it was their business. Especially if I wanted to continue to keep my brothers and everyone else in the dark about Zander and Devlin’s stupid-ass bet, and of course the end result that had shattered my heart. I might hate Devlin Cutter, and yeah I was still pissed enough at Zander to despise him too, but I still cared about both of them enough not to want them dead. Of course, I also didn’t want to be the reason that my brothers ended up in jail for the murder of two of their closest friends. Or depriving my one-point-five nieces of their father.
Thankfully Marissa quickly distracted Emmie from my haircut with her adorable nose piercing and soon Layla had joined in our group. From nose piercings to the newest antics of Luca and Lyric and even Jagger’s latest developments, our conversation was a rainbow of colorful topics and I couldn’t help but feel a little more sad at the talk of babies and growth spurts and first haircuts.
When Lyric came over and offered me a hug, I nearly let a few tears fall as I bent to wrap my arms around my honorary little nephew. I wasn’t sure how he had known that I needed a hug, but I was happy to accept it as I lifted him into my arms and rubbed my nose with the little guy. “Hey, big guy.”
He started jabbering at me, nodding his little head and cupping my face like he knew what was wrong with me and was giving me some awesome advice on how to make it better. I grinned down at him and nodded along with him, getting a toothy grin in return. I was content to hold him and then his twin came over to give Marissa some loving...
Loving that quickly turned into a peep show of Marissa’s very lovely shear bra and her gorgeous breasts. I burst out laughing for what felt like the first time in a year and moved to stand in front of my friend while she fixed her clothing.