Beautiful Illusions Read online

His lips expand a moment. He’s holding that amused smile in his eyes, and I die inside. Gavin lands his mouth over mine with the delicate care you would give to defusing a bomb. His tongue plunges into my mouth, and he’s in me, loving me in a way he hasn’t in so very long. I’ve yearned for his kisses—dreamed of them. But in all my fantasies his mouth has never tasted so good. Gavin is a god with his hot kisses.

  A moan gets buried in my chest as his tongue explores my mouth so thoroughly, so sweetly it feels far more erotic than any kiss we’ve ever shared. Gavin picks me up and carries me to the bed without breaking stride in his meticulous kiss. He lies over me, and I take the weight of his body. I missed this. I missed Gavin’s magic—the way his tongue moves over mine with such exquisite care. I can actually feel him carving out a place in his world for me. I’m choking, trying to hold back the tears as I drink him in. Gavin makes love with his kisses. He moves his tongue inside my mouth as if this singular task were the most important in the universe, as if he were made to do just this. He’s loving me, leaving me breathless, leaving me hopelessly aching for more, and tonight there finally will be just that, more.

  An urgency rips through me. I want to taste him. I want every last part of him in my mouth. I want to love him—fuck him—bite through him, swallow him whole. This is beyond a sexual frenzy, this is an insanity that’s worked up to a fever, and I’m finally able to unleash it.

  I work the buttons on his shirt, ripping, pulling. Gavin dressed for the occasion and this tiny tribute to the evening warms me. I claw it off and toss it to the floor, examining his broad chest in the flickering light—his arms, his abs, his entire body is cut strong as steel. My panting increases. I can’t catch a breath. It’s obvious he’s been working out like a prisoner in the time we’ve been apart. I give his jeans and boxers a quick tug as he evicts them from his body. In less than three seconds, Gavin Jackson is naked as the day he was born.

  His kisses trail down my neck, and it all feels familiar. It feels like home, like love. His mouth glides over the fabric of my nightgown, soft and rhythmic as a poem. I can feel his hot tongue penetrating the barely-there lace as he traces down to my nipple and takes it in his mouth, biting, sucking so hard I have a slight orgasm with each pull. A surge goes off in me as if he were about to vacuum my entire existence.

  My fingers fumble to the hem of my dress, but Gavin does the honors for me. Carefully he pulls it off, extracting it from my hair and laying it on the nightstand as if it were a newborn. I’ve never had a man respect every single part of me, pay so much focused attention, all in the name of love. At least that’s what he used to claim. But he doesn’t have to say it. I can feel it in his kisses—taste it as he pours it into my mouth like a divine cocktail. He pulls back and his gaze dips to mine. Our eyes lock in the candlelight, and my body combusts from the inside out. Gavin and I exchange silent secrets. His love for me, mine for him, it was about to be aired out between these cheap satin sheets Reeva furnished us with. But what we’re about to share is anything but cheap, our souls had accidentally bled over one another. We had the same stains over our lives whether he knows it or not. We were alike in more ways than simply how we mistreated our flesh—or at least used to. We were one and the same in every way—two sides of a coin.

  He leans in and feathers his lips over my face as if he were painting a picture, a landscape with two upturned cars, a little girl with tears.

  His hand slips between my thighs as my breathing picks up. He’s working me into a frenzy with his slow hands, tormenting me with this building ache. His fingers glide over the slick bundle of nerves between my thighs, and I choke out a groan. Gavin’s lids hang low as a drugged look takes over. We’re enjoying the hell out of this and we’re just getting started.

  It’s as if we’re teenagers who just learned something this wonderful existed, and we want to experience it together.

  My eyes close as I feed myself lies. We’re high school sweethearts—we live in Normalsville, USA, with families who are plain as toast. But mostly they’re alive and there isn’t a hint of a tragic circumstance for miles. Tonight it’s just Gavin and me—prom night—the king and queen about to consummate their union. Lies can be so much sweeter than the truth.

  I reach behind me and pluck a condom out from between the headboard and the mattress. I’m required to store them in a pouch sewn into the sheet—all the girls are. Kangaroo sex pouch—that’s what Eva calls it. Eva has a name for just about everything. My pouch has never needed to be refilled, and Eva’s pouch is nearly always barren. I’ve never used one of the condoms Reeva has supplied. Not until tonight.

  Gavin looks down at the tiny plastic square with a newfound grief. It must make him feel less special—like he’s one in a long line of men who have had me on this bed. But it’s just him. I shake my head because I’m fighting myself from spilling the big reveal. I want him to think the worst of me. It’ll be easier that way in the end. And this, too, will end badly, for the most part, but not before we’re gifted the memory of a lifetime. At least it will be for me.

  “Emmy,” he whispers as if trying to pull me from a trance.

  I touch my finger to his lips. “You don’t take instruction very well, do you?”

  A laugh vibrates from him as he bends his head back. The hard line of his neck distends in a series of corrugated ridges and demands for me to kiss it. I lean up and taste him there. The slight hint of his cologne takes over my senses. I pull him down onto me as his kisses migrate to my ear.

  “I’m going to love you with my body, Emmy. But I’m also going to love you with my heart and my words. You can’t stop me.” He grazes his teeth over my ear, and a mean shiver rips through my spine.

  I can’t stop him. I don’t want to.

  His hard-on grazes my thigh, and I reach down taking it in my hand. Gavin is rock solid, long as he is hard, and my fingers barely close over the girth of him. I inhale and forget to stop.

  A soft rumble comes from him as he cups my breasts, bringing his mouth down over one. That first soft bite extinguishes all of my resolve to keep my guard up. I’m his. There’s isn’t one part of me willing to fight this. Gavin spends a near eternity bringing me to the brink of my existence as his heated mouth pulls and tugs, bites and licks. He’s waging a war with his mouth, unleashing all of his aggression in an effort to win me over by way of his scorching tongue.

  My legs open for him as I raise my knees to either side of his chest. I tear open the condom and roll it over him, marveling at the skyscraper at the base of his hips. Gavin runs his hand over himself, smoothing the condom into place, and my sweet spot clenches at the sight. This is happening. Gavin and I are about to connect in the most intimate way possible.

  “I want you to know, I don’t deserve this,” I whisper. “I don’t deserve anything you’re willing to give me.”

  “Em.” He closes his eyes in frustration. He comes at me with a furtive kiss, his tongue drilling down over mine as if refusing the idea. He presses his lips over mine with a rough, desperate passion. “You’re worthy of anything and everything, Emmy.” He pants it out in stop and go gasps. “You deserve the world, and I want to be the one to gift it to you.” He dots a simple kiss over my lips, wet, hotter than the sun. “Let me love you.”

  I swallow hard and give the idea of a nod.

  His hand glides down over me. Gavin pushes his fingers deep into my body, and a groan rips from the both of us.

  “Shit,” he whispers, his head knocking back. Gavin pulls up on his elbows guiding himself in excruciatingly slow, and my body clenches around him as if putting up a fight. A heated rush of pleasure rips through me like a burning fuse, and I arch my head back, lifting my shoulders right off the mattress. I want to be closer. I want to close the gap of time and space as I take in the sensation of his body entering mine. A broken groan escapes me, ricocheting through the room like a heart-shaped boomerang.

  “Gavin.” I roll his name out in a heated rush as if I were casting a spell.


  “Am I hurting you?” He’s watching me from above, studying my face for a hint.

  I shake my head and press him in by the small of the back.

  He’s killing me in the sweetest way possible.

  My body stretches and burns. Tongues of fire unleash between my legs, raw and beautifully painful, searing right through to my soul. I want to feel it all, the pleasure the pain—all of the heat and flames he’s willing to give me. I’m burning for Gavin from the inside out, and I want to. I never want to extinguish this blaze.

  Gavin. He’s burrowing deep, tunneling into my body as if settling in for the winter—for the rest of our lives—and I want him to.

  “Em”—he pulls my chin up and bows to kiss me—“I can’t stop loving you. I will never stop.” Gavin pushes in until my body demands to burst from the pressure. He thrusts himself in and out, slamming into me hard and fast, in a passion fuelled rage. Here we are locked in a tempest, the perfect storm of our own making with Gavin spearing his way back into my life, and me surrendering in the most spectacular way. We’re finally making love, fucking. It’s both beautiful and primal. It’s dizzying and sensual, fire and ice, love and perhaps hate—frustration in the least. Gavin is unleashing it all. He’s loving me, shaking me, showering me with affection, teaching me a lesson. His body praises mine and punishes it, venerates and condemns. We’re building our love up, then setting it on fire and starting all over. I’ve never experienced anything so intense, such perfection as we sail into the stratosphere.

  “Don’t stop,” I whisper, pulling him down to take a quick bite of his ear.

  He pulls back, his gaze locked over mine. My eyes scream I love you with everything in me. I hope the sentiment trickles down to his bones, hot and bright as lava. An amused smile glides over his face as if he heard, and I’m hoping he did.

  Gavin plunges into me, loving me with his hard as steel muscles, his heated skin, slicked with sweat. His rough fingers interlace with mine. He pulls my hands up to the headboard and kisses them as he launches an assault that has the room vibrating with tension.

  He pulls out swiftly and runs a fire line down my body with his tongue until his mouth finds a home over the most intimate part of me. I dig my fingers into his hair, grinding into him, demanding he meet every one of my trembling needs. My mouth falls open—can’t breathe. I fist the sheets, writhe my cheek into the pillow as his tongue makes a revolution around the tinderbox that’s been crying out for him since the day we met. A violent pressure builds inside me. I’m disintegrating for him one molecule at a time. The old me melts away in a cloud of grief while this new version skyrockets with pleasure, quaking into him with a horrific release, gushing, sweet as rain in paradise. His tongue dives lower, entering me quick and hard before he glides on top of me again, his body in mine as if it never left. Gavin pounds his way right into my heart until he seizes, locking up stiff as concrete. He digs his fingers deep into my arms and gives a painful squeeze, straight to the bone. His body is hiked so far into mine it feels as if I’m about to snap in half. Gavin lets out a roar that lights up the night brighter than any flame could ever hope. A breath escapes my lungs as he collapses over me, his body dripping with sweat, the cool air already licking our searing flesh.

  But the pressure is still building in me, still trying to spew its way out, this time in the form of words, and I give in.

  I lean up and plant a kiss in his ear, whispering the exact thing I’ve wanted to say for so long.

  “I love you.”

  Gavin

  I love you. There. She said it. It’s one of those things people say in the heat of the moment, so I don’t know how seriously to take it. But I memorize it—memorize the sweet sound of her voice singing those words, the way it felt reverberating off my ear like a cool breeze. I’m saving it all for later to replay over and over when those words are hard to come by and Emmy all but denies them, who knows, she might even be out of my life by then.

  I pull back and trace her with my gaze as we pant into one another. Her lips are parted, her eyes hungry to meet with mine. Mind blowing is the only way to describe what just happened.

  “You love me?” I could have said anything else. Hell, I should have said I love you right back and left it at that. I already had her in the best way possible, but deep down I know my heart won’t be satisfied with something temporal. It wants the emotions to line up with the miraculous way her body just moved with mine.

  My hand glides over her, right down to her hips, and I hold on for dear life. God I love this woman. It’s as if I’m caught in a dream, and, any second now, I’ll wake up in the cabin, alone in my bed.

  “Yes, Gavin.” She leans up and gives a playful bite to my lip. It feels as if we’re right back to where we were all those months ago—better than before. “I’ve always loved you. Couldn’t you feel it?”

  “Yes.” I hiss it out expanding the S into the night. “I’m so glad I found you, Em.” My voice breaks as I try to hold it together. Really, there is no better scenario than this one. Emmy was made for me. I want nothing more than to take care of her. And I don’t give a flying fuck what any feminist on the planet thinks about that. She has my heart, and she always will. “It killed me not knowing where you were, wondering if you were dead or alive or if you just wanted to be out of my world for good. I couldn’t take it. It was hell on earth. I can’t do that again. I need you. In the worst way, I need you.”

  “I’m so sorry I put you through that. It was hell for me, too. I swear it was. It was constant darkness.” Her eyes squeeze tight a moment. “I buried my heart when I left, and, without you, I didn’t want to find it. There’s been nobody but you. Not another man has touched me, Gavin. You changed me. I wanted to be better—and you made me that way.” My heart breaks and rejoices with a hell yes all at the same time. She pulls back to get a better look. “Do you know why I left?”

  “Tell me.”

  She shakes her head. “Not in this bed. Not after what just happened.”

  “Then it can wait. Because I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.” I plant a kiss in the hollow of her neck. “Did you enjoy that?” I skim my hand from her back to her hip.

  “Are you kidding? I saw colors I didn’t know existed.”

  A dry laugh trembles from me. “I’m glad because I was just about to offer up a repeat performance.”

  I give her ribs a gentle pinch, and the sound of her giggling echoes into the room like a happy string of hearts. I drink it down, let it swill in my soul because I still can’t believe it’s happening. Five months of silence then our bodies combust like gunpowder. My fingers twitch over her ribs again, and she laughs harder with her elbows drawn down in defense.

  “There. That’s my girl. I like seeing you happy.” My lips brush over hers. “I like being the one to make you happy.”

  “Gavin.” She tries to bind my wrists, and I won’t let her as my lips curve up in a smile. “You’re going to hate me when this is over.”

  “We’re never going to be over, Emmy. It’s you and me to the finish line. I can feel it in my bones. We last for all of time and beyond.”

  Her eyes steady over mine. “You will hate me, and I will never blame you.”

  “It’s not possible. I can never hate you, Emmy.”

  “It’s Demi.” She presses her lips tight and stares into me as if holding back a smile.

  “Demi?” Something loosens in me. She’s tearing down her walls one stone at a time—letting me into her fortress. “I was off by one letter.” I relax my head onto the pillow and smile.

  “When you said it—it sounded just right.”

  “Demi.” I try it out on my lips. “I love that.” I kiss the tip of her nose. “It’s beautiful just like you.” I pull up on my elbow beside her. “So tell me, who gave you such a beautiful name?” I’m probing, trying to fist my way into her world. She opened the door just enough for me to stick my shoe in, and I’m not pulling away.

  “It was my
mother’s name.” She lowers her lashes, rolling onto her side to face me fully. “It’s true what I said, she died giving birth to me. But I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “I would have given anything for that not to be true.” My heart aches for her ten times harder than I ever thought possible. “You lost your parents. You’re just like me.”

  Her lips press tight as she gives a stiff nod. The pain sears itself over us like a membrane, and at that exact moment our beings fuse as one. I’ve always felt the innate desire to protect her, and now I know why. Demi and I are two sides of a double edged sword, strong yet dangerous if not handled properly, and most of that destruction we rain down on ourselves by lending our bodies to anyone who’ll have them, at least we used to.

  “But I’m not just like you, Gavin. I’m a train wreck. I’m cursed, and I’ve clouded your world with my madness without ever meaning to. I don’t know why destiny brought us together, but it feels like a knife in the heart.”

  “Why would you say that?” I want to make her stop. I want her to smell the bed of roses we’ve landed in. We’re here, together. Doesn’t she see that’s all that matters?

  She closes her eyes in frustration. “Let’s drop it for now.” She drapes her hand over my hip and gives my bare ass a firm squeeze. “Let’s focus on what we have in front of us.” Her finger glides down my chest in the shape of an S.

  I pick up her hand and kiss her forefinger. “We have our entire future ahead of us.” I dare her to suggest otherwise.

  Demi collapses over me and wraps her arms around my neck. Her even breathing cools me as she lays her cheek against my chest.

  “A future,” she whispers as if asking herself the question.

  “A good one,” I assure, digging my fingers into her hair.

  “How’s Zoey?”

  “She misses you.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  I rumble with a laugh. “Okay, she’s asked twice. She does care in her own twisted way. She wants to know if she’s the reason you left. I told her she wasn’t.” I pull her to me and kiss the top of her head.