It’s fucking beautiful.
“Will you make love to me?” she whispers.
I blink. Twice. “Baby, you never have to ask me that.”
I reach for the bedside table for the condoms when she grabs my wrist with her hand. Her grip is firm and purposeful. I move my eyes from the table, over the blankets, and to her.
She shakes her head. “Can we not use them? Just this once?”
Fire flames through my veins.
I swear I misunderstand. Yet when I look into Bells’s blue eyes, I know I didn’t.
I fight a broad, stupid smile and look at her like she’s an angel on Earth.
“If you don’t hurry up, I might change my mind,” she teases.
There she is.
I slip off my jeans as she shrugs off hers. They fall together to the floor.
I hover over her perfect, curvy body. She grips my hips with her hands.
“We’re going to be okay, aren’t we?” she asks.
I nod because I see it too. I can do this. I can be all the things she needs me to be.
All the things I want to be.
“You can count on it.”
She rewards me with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen.
I slide inside her with nothing between us. She doesn’t close her eyes, doesn’t make snarky comments, or tease me about going slow.
It is, without a doubt, the best night of my life.
Twenty-One
Coy
The closet door opens. Then closes.
Clothes hit the floor.
A hairbrush sweeps through Bellamy’s hair, the sound much louder than I ever realized that brushing hair can be.
Then, as if I wasn’t prodded awake enough, the curtains are pulled back, and sunlight shines in the room.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” I ask, covering my head with a pillow. “I thought we were sleeping in today.”
“Who said that?” Bells asks.
“I don’t know. Me. You. Logic?”
She laughs and sits next to me on the side of her bed. “Bree will be here in a little bit.”
I groan.
“I’m going to assume you want to put on some clothes before she gets here?” Bellamy asks.
I peek out from beneath the pillow. My brain is still a haze from sleep, and my body just wants to pull her under the blankets and have a lazy day together.
“Can you cancel?” I ask.
“No. It’s my job. You can’t just cancel.”
I grin sleepily. “I had a number-one album most of the year. I’m pretty sure I can cover your pay.”
She takes a pillow from beside my head and hits me with it.
“Fine,” I grumble, yanking the blankets off my body. My cock is on high alert with a fine morning wood. “Look at what you’re missing.”
She gets up quickly and walks to the other side of the room. “I’m not going to touch it, or I will end up canceling, and then I’ll lose my job.”
“Again, I can pay you.”
“Will you shut up?” She laughs. “Get dressed, and then we can talk.”
I grab myself and jack it a few times just to get a reaction out of her. Her eyes go wide, and she bites her bottom lip.
“We could do some oral reciprocation,” I offer her. “My tongue on your pussy and your little mouth right here.”
“I don’t have time.” She pouts. “Why do I have to be a nanny?”
I snort and sit up.
A phone rings on the dresser. Bellamy keeps her eyes glued to my cock as she picks it up.
“Maybe it’s Lauren canceling again,” she says, whimpering as I stroke myself again.
She brings the phone in front of her. “Oh.” The playfulness leaves her face. “This is yours.”
My hands fall from my body as a cold chill kills my hard-on. I take the phone from Bells and look at the screen.
Meadow.
“I’ll call her back,” I say, hoping Bellamy doesn’t hear the strain in my voice. “I think she wants to talk contract.”
And when I need to leave.
The idea of leaving Savannah causes a visceral reaction inside me. It’s an intuitive, buried-in-the-depths-of-my-guts kind of feeling that Meadow’s call isn’t just a scheduling or contract issue.
It’s more.
Something I’m not going to like.
I look at Bells and smile. “Rain check on the oral?”
She nods, her eyes weary.
“What time is it?” I ask her.
“Eight. Or close to it.”
“Shit.” I scrub my hand over my face. “It’s too early for me to deal with Bree. Can I go to Mom’s and get a shower, and you can bring her over in an hour or so?”
She nods again.
I get to my feet and walk over to her. “It’s you and me. Right? No matter what Meadow has to say or what happens otherwise, it’s you and me.”
A slow smile ghosts her lips. “Yes. It’s you and me.” She kisses me softly. “Now go before Bree gets here and sees you naked.”
“I’d be more worried about Lauren seeing me.”
Bellamy laughs and picks up my clothes off the floor, and hands them to me.
I get my jeans and sweater back on with an audience of one.
“Want to go with me to take Gramps to dinner?” I ask her. “I haven’t seen him yet and want to before I leave.”
“Sure.”
“He loves Judy’s, this place downtown. It’s pretty good. I can call him and make sure he doesn’t have a pressing golf re-run on television tonight.”
She laughs. “Sounds like a plan.”
I kiss her again. “Now I’m going to head out before I run into Lauren and Bree. I just don’t have it in me this morning.”
“Go.” She swats my ass. “I’ll see you in an hour or so.”
I make my way through her house and down the path toward the gate. My stomach churns as I get farther away from Bellamy’s house.
My phone feels like a bomb in my hand. As soon as I’m on the other side, I open my telephone app. There’s a missed call from Meadow and a voicemail.
I click the icon for the message.
“Hi, Coy, it’s Meadow. I hope you’re having a good morning so far. I need you to get on a plane and get back to Nashville today. We have a meeting with the label at nine in the morning. Apparently, Willa went out over the weekend and stupidly made some statement to a paparazzi about you—which I’ve already contacted her about—but it’s going to break today, and that’s not going to do you any favors. We need to get in there and get this contract signed and the ink dry before they can change their mind. Call me back as soon as you get this.”
I stop next to my parents’ trash can.
My blood runs cold as I look at my phone.
There’s too much to process to be able to do it quickly or well.
Meadow’s words fly through my brain like a kite on crack.
Stupidly made a statement.
Going to break today.
Not going to do you any favors.
Change their minds.
My brain immediately picks up on Willa making a statement that will break, and concern flips to Bellamy.
“What the fuck did Willa say?” I wonder out loud.