Trashed (33 page)

I let out a long breath and meet her eyes. “Emma. He told me about that.”

Lani seems surprised. “He did? He’s usually very reticent to speak of that time in his life. That was just so…public, which made it that much more painful for everyone involved. Except her, of course.”

I nod. “He made it seem like the whole thing was no big deal to her. Which is just…insane to me. The way he explained it, at least.”

“Well, we never met her, but every time I saw him during the time they were dating, he seemed…stressed. As if keeping up with her, keeping her happy was more a full-time job than even his acting career was.” She glances at me. “If you ask me, a person is only as beautiful as the contents of their soul.”

“You never met her?” I find this odd. “They dated for what…a year and a half?”

“Perhaps closer to two years, yes. And no, he never brought her here.” Lani’s expression is thoughtful. “How long have you and Tory been dating?”
 

I shrug. “Not long.”
 

Adam is behind me, his arms sliding around my middle. “I never brought Emma over because I just…I guess I knew you and Dad wouldn’t approve. And I didn’t want that conflict. Des is a different story.” He moves beside me, leans a hip against the island. “And Des, you’re the only girl I’ve brought home to meet my parents since…what, Mom, high school?”

Lani nods. “Your first girlfriend. Sarah Wexford. That was your sophomore year.”

My heart lodges in my throat. “So I’m in pretty exclusive company, huh?”

Adam laughs. “Babe, you
are
the company. I brought Sarah here once after we’d dated for a month, but then she dumped me two days later for the quarterback, who happened to be my best friend at the time. So that doesn’t even count.”
 

“Wow.” I’m not sure what else to say, so I don’t say anything.

The rest of the evening passes easily. I like this family. I like sitting around the dinner table, passing a basket of bread, laughing, talking, feeling as if I belong. Perhaps it’s just how kind and open his family is, but I
do
feel as if I could belong. Which is heady, and addictive, and frightening. I pinch my leg under the table several times throughout the evening, but it all remains real. Lia and Lizzy and I discuss fashion for a long time, especially once they discover that I was a model. I tell them modeling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and Lizzy especially seems a little let down by that. I find out Erik used to play football, too, for the USC Trojans, and then second string for the Forty-Niners for four seasons, which explains Adam’s build and natural athleticism.

As scared as I was when we first got here, by the time night has fallen and Adam seems ready to go, I feel like I’ve known this family forever, which makes it hard to leave.
 

But we do leave, sometime close to ten p.m., and Adam is quiet on the drive into downtown L.A. He takes me to a high-rise condo building in the bustling heart of the city, where a valet parks his car and a porter unloads our luggage and whisks it away. We board an elevator, Adam inserts a small key and presses ‘PH’, and then we’re shooting up, up, up, forty-three floors above the ground.
 

The elevator doors open directly into a huge foyer where the luggage is somehow waiting for us. It’s an open-plan penthouse suite, the kitchen, dining room, living room and a library all sprawled across the entire upper floor, more square footage on one level than I’ve ever seen before. The walls are white, decorated with black-and-white photographs of old Hollywood, a few framed high-gloss color action photos of Adam playing for the Chargers, and some antique-style maps. The floors are black wood and so shiny they reflect the track lighting. There are floor-to-ceiling windows running along one entire wall, a white couch in the living room area facing a TV that has to be at least ninety inches. It’s a beautiful condo, masculine and lived in.
 

I’m still taking everything in when Adam tosses his keys on the kitchen counter, kicks off his shoes, and then peels his shirt off. His dark skin and rippling muscles catch my eye, and then the gleam in his gaze, the hungry, predatory expression has my breath lodged in my lungs and my core going hot and damp.
 

“Seeing you with my family was incredible,” he says, reaching for me.

“Your family is amazing. They’re all wonderful.”

“They loved you.” He rolls the waistband of my yoga pants down. “I told you they would.”

“I felt very welcomed. It was…nice.”
 

“Nice? That’s all it was?”

I set my purse on the floor and leave my hands at my sides, look into his fierce, ravenous green gaze. “They made me feel like they could be…like I could—” I can’t finish the thought, though. It’s too much to hope for.

“Like you belong?” His mouth slants across my jaw.
 

“Yeah,” I breathe, tilting my head to the side, offering him my throat.

“That’s because you do.”
 

“I do?”

“Yeah.” He takes my offer, nipping across my throat and then down, his hands rolling my yoga pants down a bit further, revealing the indent where my hipbones lead to my core.

“I want to belong.” My hands flutter and find his skin. “I’ve never belonged anywhere before.”
 

He tugs my pants down so I’m nearly bared to him, but not quite, and then his hands cup either side of my jaw. His eyes find mine. “Well, you belong now, Destiny.”
 

My heart stutters at the way my full name sounds on his lips. Words stick in my throat.
 

“Where do you belong, you ask? Well, let me tell you.” He speaks into the silence of my inability to reply. “To me. With my family. In my life. In my home.”
 

“I like all those places,” I whisper.

“In my bed.”
 

“I’m wearing too many clothes to belong in your bed,” I say, looking up at him.

He peels my pants off, then my shirt. “Let me fix that,” he rumbles, his eyes raking and roving over my body as he bares it, bra then underwear.
 

“And so are you.”

“Then you should fix that, too.”
 

So I divest him of his jeans and underwear, and then he’s walking me backward, kicking open a door. I pause to look around. The bed is set in a nook to the left of the doorway, on a raised platform. It’s a massive bed, custom-made by the look of it, piled with pillows and throw blankets. There’s a set of French doors to the right, leading out onto a balcony, and straight ahead is a door leading through to a mammoth walk-in closet that, in turn, leads to a bathroom.
 

“I like your condo,” I tell him.

“Me too.” He grins at me, his hands roaming over my ass. “I’ve only owned it for a year. You’re the only person other than my parents, my sisters, and my agent who has been here.” I know what he’s saying, that Emma has never been here. That the memories we make here are solely ours. He kisses my shoulder, cups my breast. “So, my sexy Destiny…you have two choices. Number one, I lay you on the bed over there and eat you out until you can’t breathe, and then I fuck you six ways to Sunday. Or number two, I bend you over the bathtub, and then fuck you
in
the tub. And then maybe the shower.”
 

I reach behind me and grab his erection. “How about option number two, followed by option number one?”

His finger slips between my thighs, finds me wet and ready. “I like the way you think, baby. Guess I’d better get started.”
 

“Guess so.”
 

He moves past me, through the closet—which extends at least two or three hundred square feet to either side—and into the bathroom. The floors are marble, and warm under my feet. There’s a palatial glass-walled shower with more heads and nozzles than I can understand, a double sink, several shelves of thick, white, folded towels, and a separate room for the toilet. But the centerpiece is the tub. Claw-foot, circular, and gobsmackingly enormous. Big enough for even a man as big as Adam to lie in, with room for me as well. The faucet and knobs are brass, matching those at the sink and shower.
 

And, coincidentally, the tub’s walls are the perfect height for me to hold on to. I discover this the fun way as Adam guides me to the tub, places my hands on the rim, gently but firmly presses on my shoulder blades until I’m doubled over, and then nudges my feet apart. My hair is still in the ponytail, so he slowly pulls the elastic band free, feathers his fingers through my hair, and then drapes it over my shoulder. I crane my neck to watch him, trembling in anticipation.
 

He palms my ass cheeks, lifts them and lets them fall with a heavy bounce, slides his hand between my thighs and finds my entrance. Guides himself to the opening and slides in, no warning, no easing in, no foreplay. I gasp and then moan at the sudden fullness of him inside me, lean forward and relax into his movement for one…two…three…four thrusts, and then he’s out.

“Don’t move,” he tells me, giving me a light pat on my ass.

He circles the tub and twists the faucet on, adjusts the temperature, then sets the plug. While it begins to fill, he rummages in a cabinet beneath the sink, finds a bottle of some kind, and squirts it into the stream of water. Bubbles immediately form.
 

I glance at him in curiosity. “Bubble bath?”

He grins somewhat sheepishly. “I had the place done by a company. They staged all the furniture, picked out everything from towels to silverware. And, for some reason, they provided a bottle of bubble bath. I’m not sure why they stocked a bachelor’s condo with bubble bath, but now I’m glad they did.”
 

I reach down and swirl my hand in the water, find it steaming hot. Adam points at me. “I told you not to move, Des.”
 

I put my hands back on the tub. “Well hurry up. I need you.”
 

He grips his cock in his hand and strokes it. “This?”

I nod. “That. Bring it over here.”
 

He shakes his head. “How about you touch yourself for me. Let me watch you make yourself come.” So I slide two fingers against my clit and gasp as I circle myself, slowly at first, and then faster. “Stop,” he commands, when I’m moments from climaxing.

I halt, quivering, aching, and then Adam is behind me, pressing the broad, soft head of his massive cock to my clit. He cups my tit with his other hand, thumbs the nipple until I moan, and then massages my hypersensitive nub with his head until I’m rocking against him, gasping and moaning.
 

“Adam, I’m—shit…
shit
, I’m coming!” I feel it hit me all at once, rockets shooting outward from my core, making my knees tremble.
 

He shoves his cock into me at the moment of my orgasm, and I squeal in shocked pleasure as he fills me. I fall forward, gripping the tub rim for dear life, and then push back into him, bowing my spine inward to get him deeper. He grips my hips and pulls me into his thrust, pushes me away as he pulls out, and then slams back in, and my climax is still ripping through me, stealing my breath and making me dizzy.

And then, abruptly, he pulls out, leaving me fighting for balance and for breath. “Fuck…Adam, why’d you stop?”

“Because I’m not ready to come yet.” He growls this, and I can tell whatever game he’s playing is costing him in terms of control. He wants to come, and I know he was getting close, but he stopped anyway.
 

He steps into the tub, helps me in, and then he’s lowering himself down and settling me between his thighs, and I’m relaxing against his chest. The hot water swirls around us, bubbles popping and tickling. The sudden heat is relaxing, an abrupt about-face from the frenetic urgency of my climax, which still shudders through me.
 

But Adam isn’t done with me, it seems. We sit in stillness and silence for a few minutes, just long enough for the aftershocks of my orgasm to fade and his erection to subside a bit, and then his hand cradles my stomach just above my pussy, his other hand smearing soapy water across my torso, cupping my boobs and caressing them and fondling them, pinching and rolling my nipples until I’m biting my lip and squirming. And then his hand slips between my thighs, covers my pussy, and his long middle finger slides in.
 

He massages my clit slowly, so slowly, god, so slowly. Maddeningly slowly. It takes him several minutes to bring me to quivering completion, writhing against his middle finger, just that one inside me, circling my clit and then fucking my entrance, alternating in an arrhythmic pattern.
 

I come with a sigh, and then he’s lifting me by the ass and I’m impaled on him, sitting on him. His knees are spread apart to bear my weight, the water sloshing around us, spilling out. His hands find mine, guide my fingers to my clit, and urge me to touch myself. So I do, and aftershocks become the precursors to something else, something bigger, and his hands are at my tits, holding on and kneading and caressing, and all I can do is ride his thrusts and let him fuck me however he wants.
 

“Come again, Destiny. Right now.” His command works like a trigger.
 

I come again,
hard.
And this time, I scream.

As soon as the initial wave of climax leaves me, he’s lifting me and sliding out of me, groaning and moving shakily, as if the effort to withhold his own orgasm is nearly too much.

“Adam, what game are you playing? Just come, baby,” I tell him, watching from my place in tub as he turns on the shower.
 

He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
 

He hands me up and out of the tub, leads me to the shower, and washes me. He wets my hair, lathers shampoo from scalp to tip, rinses, works conditioner in, and then his hands are scrubbing a bar of soap across my skin. I can’t not touch him, so my hands roam his shoulders, slip over the hard muscles sheathed in smooth dark skin, down to his erection, which I caress until he forces my hand away. He washes every inch of me, and then lets me do the same to him.