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  Once we’d stripped, he pushed me down on the bed, dropped to his knees, and yanked me toward him. When his hot mouth made contact, I arched and closed my thighs around his head from the intense, sudden sensation.

  “Mmmmm.” He burrowed his tongue between my folds and slid his hands under my ass. With steady pressure, he forced me to open my legs, to give him free rein.

  I let my legs fall open, and he fastened his lips to my clit, sucking and tonguing it slowly, languidly. Over and over he slid his mouth down to my entrance, then back to my clit. He drew me to the edge, but never pushed hard enough for me to fall into the delicious waters below.

  “You’re torturing me.” I covered my face with my hands.

  He laughed against me, the vibration drawing a moan from my lungs.

  “You want to come?” His eyes held mine.

  “Yes.”

  “Beg me.”

  The challenge in his eyes ignited my own competitive demon. I let my head fall back on the bed.

  “Okay then.” He returned to his infernal work, so slow and painstaking, but so damn good. “I can do this all night.”

  After a few more minutes of the perfect torture, I was writhing and grabbing the sheets. Whenever I tried to move my hips to get more friction, he pinned me to the bed and continued his leisurely destruction of my last shred of sanity.

  I’m not proud of it, but I broke. I had to.

  “Willis?”

  “Hmm?” He dipped lower and pressed his tongue inside me.

  “Please?”

  “I’m going to need better than that.”

  “You wicked, sadistic, son of a bitch!”

  I could feel his smile against me, the crinkle next to his eyes a sign of his amusement.

  “Just a little more”—he flicked the tip of his tongue across the sensitive nub, making my legs shake—“and I’ll let you come. Beg.”

  “This is just a stupid power game.” I barely got the words out on a pant.

  “Give me what I want, and I’ll give you what you need.” He gripped my hips and increased the pressure of his tongue, giving me a glimpse of what he could do if I would just play his game.

  I didn’t just break. I shattered. “Willis, please let me come. Please.” I thrust my hips up. “Please.”

  “That’s it.” He dove down, his tongue flying across my clit with a speed that turned my brain to mush.

  “Willis!” I arched my back and came hard, the crest of the wave breaking over me as I rode it like a champion surfer. Each wave of pleasure was like another expanse of water unfurling before me like a red carpet. I followed the orgasm down until my body stilled while my heart beat furiously against my ribs.

  When I went limp, Willis didn’t stop, only slowed to his unhurried pace once again. I tried to close my legs, to hide my over-sensitive flesh from him, but he placed his big palms flat on my thighs and kept me open.

  “I…can’t…again.”

  “You can.” He slipped two fingers inside me, igniting a new set of nerve endings.

  I moaned and pushed myself down onto his fingers. “I need you.”

  “Yeah?” He added another finger, stretching me.

  “I want your cock inside me.”

  “Not yet.” He sucked my clit, and my thighs twitched.

  It felt so good, but I wanted him—all of him. “You said if I begged—”

  He groaned. “If you beg for my cock…” He returned to licking me before finishing his sentence.

  In and out, his fingers pulsed, driving me mad with need for him.

  “Please, Willis. Fuck me. Please.”

  “But I’m eating.” His eyes twinkled as he rested his cheek on my thigh and darted his tongue to my folds.

  “Jesus. Please, please, please, Willis.”

  He sighed and rose, his thick cock wobbling. My mouth watered, and my pussy clenched.

  I spread wide for him and beckoned him with my hands. “Please.”

  He settled on top of me and sucked a nipple into his mouth. I whined and rubbed my pussy along his shaft.

  “Please.” I’d said the word more in ten minutes than I had in my whole life.

  “You need it?” He met my eyes, his lips hovering above mine.

  “Yes.”

  He pressed inside me slowly, giving me a moment to adjust. Pulling back, he eased all the way home, our bodies knitted together as he stole my breath again with a searing kiss. Slow and steady, he thrusted again and again.

  “I need to see you.” He rolled over onto his back, perching me on his cock. “Show me.”

  I settled my knees next to his hips and rose, then dropped down onto him. His groan told me he liked it, so I did it again, then put my hands in my hair, pulling it off my sweaty shoulders.

  “Fucking hell.” He reached up and palmed my tits as I rode.

  My tempo increased as he pinched my nipples. His body was flexed tight beneath me, corded muscle straining across his chest.

  He wrapped his palm around my neck and pulled me down to him. “I want you to ride me until you come.”

  “Easy,” I breathed and began grinding my clit against him.

  When he kissed me this time, it was rough, hard, and just right. I rode him, using his cock to get myself off. He grabbed my hips so hard that I knew I’d have fingertip bruises in the morning. I didn’t care.

  Close to the edge again, my movements grew jerky. I bit his lip as I came, and he pistoned up inside me, wringing every last drop of pleasure out of me.

  His jaw tense, he gritted out, “I’m going to come.”

  I moved off his cock at the last second. Thick spurts of come landed on his stomach as I stroked him, and his face twisted and then relaxed in the purest form of bliss. God, he was a beautiful man. More than that, a beautiful soul.

  The thought of breaking him sobered me far too quickly, and I rose. “I’ll get you some tissues.”

  “Thanks.” He leaned over and started opening his nightstand. “I may have some in here.”

  I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror for a long moment, questioning who I was and what the hell I was doing.

  Then I noticed the open box of “all-natural” tampons on the back of the toilet. And next to the box sat an action figure of some military alien guy with two tampons glued to his back. I picked it up and stared at it.

  “What the hell?”

  Willis, one hand full of tissues, appeared behind me. “Oh.” He tossed the tissues into the wastebasket and took the action figure from me. “This, um.” He laughed and toyed with the hanging strings. “This guy is Commander Reptilian’s second in command. First Lieutenant ScaleyThorn. I always thought he’d be cool if he had a jet pack kind of like Star Lord’s. And then I got these tampons, so it made sense for me to—”

  “Glue feminine hygiene products to an alien?” I gave him the wide-eyed “what the fuck?” look.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, they need to be painted, of course. I have model paint for that. The jet packs”—he tapped the cotton tip—“will be silver, and the strings will be orange. Fire coming out, you know?”

  “How can the man who just gave me two amazing, mind-blowing orgasms be the same man who glues tampons to action figures?” Chagrin with a dash of disbelief flavored my tone.

  He grabbed me from behind and kissed a line down my shoulder as I laughed.

  His eyes sparkled as they met mine in the mirror. “Just lucky I guess.”

  Everything that I’d worked to make hard and cold inside me softened under his touch and the warmth in his eyes. He was beautiful inside and out, and in this moment, I was his. What was more, I wanted to be his.

  “Stay the night.” He took my hand and drew me back to his bed.

  “I should go.”

  “I know.” He dropped onto his bed and pulled me down with him, snuggling me against his chest. “You keep telling me that you should put distance between us, but I won’t let you.” He yanked the comforter over us and kept one arm wrappe
d around me. “Getting rid of me isn’t an option.”

  I wanted to believe him, but it was foolish. Once he found out what sort of person I really was, he wouldn’t feel the same. I sighed.

  “Hey.” He grabbed my chin and pulled my face to his. “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not nothing.” He pulled me up his body until we were nose to nose. “Tell me.”

  Honesty forced its way to my surface. “I’m scared.”

  “Of what?”

  I blinked away sudden tears. “That this can’t last.”

  “Why can’t it?”

  “Because we’re so different.” I buried my face in his neck.

  “Opposites attract, right?” He surged his hips toward me, his cock already at half-mast.

  I smiled, but couldn’t trust myself to respond.

  “Listen.” He smoothed a hand down my back. “I’m the king of overthinking things. So let me handle that part. You just keep being you. That’s all I want.”

  “But you don’t know me.”

  “I’ve heard that from you before. But I’m pretty sure I know you, the real one beneath the bluster and sass. The one who loves her sister, the one who enjoys helping others with sometimes-good advice—”

  I huffed a laugh against his throat. “I’m not as good as you make out.”

  “You are a good person.”

  I’m not.

  “Don’t shake your head.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did.” He kissed my hair. “I promise you’re a good person. And since you’re my namesake—well, my dick’s namesake—you should give my opinion extra weight.”

  I stopped fighting him and fell into the lovely fantasy where I was a good person, one who deserved Willis’s affection and maybe, one day, his love.

  His arms held me tight as I drifted off to deep, pleasant sleep devoid of my usual demons.

  22

  Willis

  The helicopter shot upward at a hellish pace, and I gripped my seat harness and clenched my eyes shut.

  “Awesome, right?” Jason’s voice crackled through my headset as the Hudson glistened far below us.

  The helicopter leveled out as we hovered somewhere over New Jersey. Jason had called me earlier in the day and asked me to fly with him. “I’m supposed to be a helicopter pilot in Mission Impossible Sixteen. It’d be pretty cool if I had some real-life lessons. You want to come with?” I couldn’t pass up a chance to fly with Commander Reptilian, so I’d agreed.

  Now I wished I’d taken a raincheck. My lunch tumbled around in my stomach and flirted with my esophagus.

  “It’s great,” I managed to eke out.

  “You’re a natural pilot, son.” The instructor’s voice almost instilled confidence in me, but my innate fear of death won out. I kept my death grip on my seatbelt and tried to calm my heart. It must have been thumping at a breakneck pace, but I couldn’t feel anything except the vibration of the engine and the roar of the wind.

  “How you doing back there, Willis?” The instructor turned to look at me, his aviator sunglasses reflecting my terror right back at me.

  “So good.” I smiled, though it settled into a grimace.

  “You’ll get used to it.” He grinned and turned back around.

  “What does this do?” Jason leaned forward, his finger aiming for a red button.

  “No!” My shriek could not be contained. What sort of psycho sees a bright red button on an aircraft and presses it? It might as well have had a sign over it that said “Wanna die? Press Here!”

  “Whoa, buddy.” The instructor guided Jason’s hand away. “Keep your eye on the sky. I’ve got the panel.”

  It was totally a death switch. Had to be.

  “How’d it go with Scarlet last night?” Jason put both hands on the wheel. Was it a “wheel” if it was a helicopter? Whatever.

  The correct answer to his question was “it was the most fucking spectacular sex I’ve ever had,” but I was a gentleman, so I went with. “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “Yeah. We just, you know, hung out and stuff.”

  Jason laughed into his mic. “So, you did it like you were on the Discovery Channel?”

  Accurate. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “That’s cool, man.” He swooped the helicopter lower, and my stomach lodged just below my tongue. “This Vanity Fair thing is supposed to be pretty stuffy. I can’t wait to see her work her magic on some poor bastard looking for love advice.”

  “It needs to go smoothly. The book is out next week.”

  “She’ll do great, and that book will be on the front page of the New York Times.”

  “You mean the bestseller list?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “I don’t read too much. Just my scripts.”

  “Could we, um, level out?” I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore.

  “Sure.” The helicopter settled in a more horizontal position as the ground morphed from buildings and scrub brush into coastline.

  “Beautiful day for flying.” The instructor stretched his arms out, leaving the flying completely up to Jason.

  “Have you heard about Elias’s Shitake Shocker?” Jason did the shocker hand signal.

  The instructor guffawed.

  “Yeah, he’s kind of bummed that Jizzlywinks isn’t interested in it.”

  Jason tapped his temple. “I’ve got an idea for it.”

  “What’s that?” I’d happily discuss sex toys if it took my mind off my imminent death via helicopter wreckage.

  “I’ve always wanted to diversify. This face won’t be young forever. Commander Reptilian will eventually have to meet his fate—”

  “No way.” I shook my head. “The franchise needs you.”

  “Yeah, but they kill off Superman every so often, you know? So my gig is bound to go the same way.”

  “They’d bring you back. The Vampires would run rampant throughout the universe without Commander Reptilian and the Vocknar Fleet to hold them at bay.”

  Jason laughed. “The point is, I need to get some other ventures going. Elias’s ability to come up with these sex toys, and my ability to contribute some startup cash, could make for a great side project.”

  An idea flitted through my mind. “You could make them in the Vocknar Fleet’s signature green with neon insignia.”

  “Now you’re talking.” He nodded, and the helicopter bobbed with the movement.

  My lunch began to make its protestations known again.

  Jason glanced back at me. “Speaking of green, maybe we should head back.”

  “No vomit allowed in the bird,” the instructor barked as we banked out over the ocean and headed back north.

  “Anyway, I think I’m going to seed him the startup money. Have to talk it over with my accountant first and all, but I’m down to invest.”

  “Wow, that’s… Wow.”

  “We’d need ad space on your site, of course.”

  “Not a problem.” I let out a relieved breath as the New York City skyscrapers appeared far away on the horizon.

  The instructor leaned forward and swiped a toggle.

  “Take the stick, Jason. I’ll even let you land us.”

  “Sweet.”

  Jason grabbed the stick with a little too much verve, and we swooped downward, the earth approaching faster than the paparazzi on a Kardashian.

  23

  Scarlet

  “You don’t have to do this.” Hannah stared at me in the mirror as I put on my earrings.

  “I do.” The big night was here—the one where I blew everything to bits.

  She leaned against the doorframe behind me. “I like Willis. I like you and Willis together.”

  “He’s just a mark.” It rang false even to my ears.

  “He’s not, and you know it. There’s more.”

  I dropped my eyes, for once unsure under her steady gaze. “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it
matters.” She grabbed my shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll find another way. Blackmailing Willis could backfire. What if he would rather have you out him as the real Scarlet Rocket than pay you off?”

  “He won’t. He’s built this little empire brick by brick. It’s his pride and joy. The book comes out in a few days.” I shrugged. “I’ve timed it perfectly. After the party, I’ll tell him to pay up or have his name trashed all over the blogosphere and the book deal destroyed.” Cold, but necessary. I stared at my own eyes in the mirror, loathing what I saw.

  My plan had been shadowy at first, but when I’d discovered how much was riding on Willis continuing the Scarlet Rocket ruse, I knew just where to turn the screw. If his fans found out he’d been tricking them all along, they’d abandon him in droves. I had no doubt the scandal would destroy him. My only question was, if I followed through with my plan, would it destroy me, too? Could I do such a horrible thing to Willis and live with myself?

  Hannah dropped her hand from my shoulder. “There has to be another way.”

  “What other way?” I whirled, anger and pain crossing paths inside me. “Fifty-thousand dollars isn’t just going to come knocking. We have three more days before Pauly comes to collect on your screw up!”

  She flinched and paled. Her voice, barely over a whisper, cut my heart to shreds. “You’re right. I-I’m sorry.”

  “No.” I sighed and pulled her into my arms. “I am.” Stroking her hair, I held her as she trembled. “Everything will be all right. We’ll get the money, pay Pauly, and leave this dump. Start a new life. It’s almost finished. I just have to get through this.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Shh.” I held her tight and tried to think of what Mom would say in this situation. “We’ll make it through and be stronger on the other side.”

  “But Willis—”

  “I know.” I closed my eyes. “He’s turned into more than I ever intended.”

  “You fell in love with him.”

  Tears welled in my eyes, but I couldn’t let them fall. “I don’t know when it happened.”