Page 22 of Dedicated
Sure, I’d seen him fucking or fooling around on plenty of occasions. But never up close like this. Never where I could feel his breath on my skin and feel his movements translated by another body into mine.
He gave me a sublime nod and kissed Ella’s shoulder as I swallowed hard and said, “Your hand—jerk me.”
To Les’s credit, he didn’t miss a beat; he just took me in his fist again, and the flood of pleasure and relief at having the friction I craved sent my head falling back and my throat swelling with a moan.
Les urged us backward until my calves hit the bed. I wrenched off my clothes, Ella shed her bra. God knew how long Les had been naked. When I sat on the bed again, Ella climbed into my lap. I slid on the condom Les handed me, and it was crazy how naturally all of it happened, as if choreographed. There was no awkwardness, no random jarring moments where we didn’t know what to do. It just… flowed. Ella and I both groaned as she sank down on top me, and Les didn’t stop—he kept talking in that seductive whiskey drawl while he ran his fingers through her hair and plucked at her nipples as she rode me. I fell onto my back and dragged her with me, grabbing for her hips so I could plunge deeper. Les’s gaze was pinned on me, and fuck, it was hard to explain what it did to me, but it felt less like I was fucking Ella and more like she was a conduit between Les and me. I grabbed a fistful of her ass and quickened my rhythm, and the next thing I knew, Les’s hand was on top of mine, spreading her cheeks. He slid his finger in alongside my cock, and another thrill rocketed through me.
When he asked her if she wanted him to fuck her in the ass, she moaned out ayes.
Les put on a condom and eased into her slowly, liberally dousing all three of us in lube and murmuring to her softly when she clenched up at the invasion.
Then I couldn’t fucking move. Because once he was inside her and thrusting, the pressure of him against me, the seemingly negligible separation between our bodies, had me seeing stars. It was intimate and filthy and so fucking hot. I thought maybe this was what Les had meant about the magic of orgies. But it wasn’t Ella getting me hot. It was Les’s presence.
Ella dropped her head to my shoulder, fisting the covers as Les pounded into her and we became a tangle of limbs—her legs straddling my waist, Les between my thighs, one hand propped on the bed beside him, the other closed over mine on her hips. But his gaze was all mine, searing me as he thrust into her, and I couldn’t fucking look away. Couldn’t stop watching how pleasure twisted his face up, how much joy he was getting out of this. It was like a drug, and I lost myself in the flex of muscles running along his arms, his abs contracting with movement, and the tendons straining at his neck.
“You like this, sweetheart?” he growled, and the way his eyes were still locked on mine, almost felt like he was asking me, but it was Ella who answered in a groanedyes, and thenplease.
“Fuck,” he ground out, then lost it, hips whipping against her before he pulled out and snapped the condom off. He jerked himself roughly against her ass, the tip of his cock brushing over the back of my hand where I gripped her, and exploded with a cry, hot liquid jetting all over my knuckles and her ass and sending me tailspinning into my own orgasm. Les seized the top of my thigh with one hand and wrapped the other around the base of my cock as I arched into Ella and fell apart while she spasmed against me. To say my orgasm was intense would be doing it a disservice. It was so otherworldly, it left me quivering for minutes afterward.
We collapsed in a heap, then straggled up to the head of the bed and passed out.
* * *
And that wasthe second half of the problem. I hadn’t minded Les’s hands on me that night. In fact, I’d enjoyed every second of it, and ever since then, I’d been so fucking twisted up on the subject of my bandmate, I didn’t have a clue where to pull the string that might unravel all of it into some kind of sense.
Evan, you’ve been spotted frequently in the company of Jessica Nash. Are the two of you serious?
Evan:No comment. Next question.
Les:Seriously, you’d have better luck asking the White House for the nuclear codes.
Chapter 18
Present Day
Evan stared at the cereal display like he was a judge on one of those competitions on TV and he was trying to decide which one got to move to the next round. He had his fist under his chin, eyes darting back and forth between Cheerios and Cocoa Krispies, his mouth set in a tight line of scrutiny. This was pretty much how shopping with him had gone since we’d stepped foot inside the deep freeze also known as Food City. I was halfway to hypothermia in a T-shirt and jeans, my skin pebbled with goose bumps, my nipples diamond hard, and I just wanted to get through it so I could get back outside and thaw, but Evan applied the same kind of consideration to grocery shopping that he did to music. The cold seemed to have zero effect on him. He appeared perfectly comfortable in his shorts.
“Just get both,” I huffed, growing exasperated. The cart in front of us was full of stuff I’d basically just thrown in Supermarket Sweep style. That’s how damn cold it was inside, and plus, it was just groceries. Admittedly, I hadn’t done my own grocery shopping for a while. I had a service that did most of my errands when I was at home in Nashville—which was rare in the first place—but I was pretty sure nothing had changed in the supermarket world that it required a doctorate to shop now.
“I don’tneedboth.” He gave me a cool blink of his eyes and went back to his internal quandary.
“But you want them both. So just get them both and let’s move on before you have to debate over which ice pick is best to chip me from the block of ice I’m about to become.”
He glanced over me again, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully, and I could tell he was considering making a point out of the fucking cereal somehow. “Just because you want—” And there it was, so I cut him off at the pass.
“This is grocery shopping, not couch time with Freud.”
What he wanted to tell me was that just because you wanted something didn’t mean you needed it, and I knew that perfectly well, but I also knew what we’d each earned over the last few years, and debating over an extra box of cereal was like worrying about stealing a glass of water from the ocean. I knew he couldn’t help it to some degree; it was just how he was made. That and growing up with so little to his name that he held tightly to everything he got. His whole childhood was want versus need. On a photoshoot once, the wardrobe assistant had a bunch of shoes lined up for us to choose from, and Evan had just stood there, frozen by the choice, going back and forth as if it really mattered which shoes we wore until the woman finally picked for him. As he’d sat down to pull off his ratty Vans, she’d said he could keep all the shoes if he wanted, but he’d just shaken his head.
“Why the fuck not?”I’d asked. I’d had a bag in the corner already loaded with more dress shirts and hipster pants than I had closet space for.“What’s the point if you won’t even let yourself enjoy some of the perks?”
He’d given me a disconcerted look, like I’d insulted the very core of his being or something.“I’m not doing this for perks and these”—he toed at his Vans where a piece of rubber was peeling back from the side of the fabric—“keep my head in the right place.”
I reachedpast Evan toward the cereal shelf, my shoulder brushing his. The contact was light and innocent, but I felt him stiffen. I got it. We were both hyperaware of each other now that we were supposed to be portraying a couple. It was freaking me out, too, how conscious I was of his proximity, his every look. It was different than before, when I could just sit back and ache for him from a safe distance. Now, we were trying to navigate building this grand illusion that was a farce to him, but more like my wish come true. Minus the part where he was completely not into it.
The second we’d gotten out of the car in the parking lot, I could tell he was starting to overthink and doubt things. He’d scanned the parking lot repeatedly as we walked toward the double doors searching, no doubt, for the photographer who was supposed to show up at some point. When I’d slung my arm around him casually, like I’d done a thousand times before, he’d withered inside my grip like water put to a straw wrapper.“Relax,”I’d said, leaning into his peppery aftershave.“It’s just a different kind of stage.”
“You’re getting both.” I flipped my hand so the boxes of cereal careened over the ledge of the shelf and toppled into the cart. “And if you don’t eat them, I will. In fact, I want them. I want themboth. And now they’re in the buggy, which is great, so let’s move on because what I doneedis to stop freezing.” I reached for the handle of the cart, and Evan edged me out of the way.