Beautiful Illusions Read online

  His chest pumps with a laugh, and I waste no time in undoing the remaining buttons on his shirt. Gavin Jackson should be shirtless every possible moment. And if he’s not, it’s an unforgivable sin.

  “I’ve got one, but I’ve sort of been holding onto it.” He pulls me over onto his lap, and I feel the growing mound in his jeans. “You tell me everything there is to know about you, and I’ll share my big secret.”

  “Easy enough.” Easy as peeling my skin off. “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with the basics. How about your name.”

  “It’s Emmy.” It almost sailed out. The truth was on its way, and it took a U-turn.

  “Okay. Tell me about your parents.”

  “My mother died in childbirth—with me.” I shudder for a moment. I don’t think I’ve ever verbalized that before. “Anyway, I’ve felt guilty since I found out. My dad was great. He never wanted to tell me, but my stepmother let it slip. Up until then I was told she got very sick after she had me and couldn’t recover.” A breath expires from my lungs, and I land softly over Gavin’s warm chest. Those pink walls come crashing over me, and I take a sharp breath. The past is a tricky bitch. I can hold it at bay, pretend it never happened, but it keeps coming back in jags like Polaroid snapshots that I could never tear up.

  “And your dad?” Gavin knows how to listen with his eyes, his sad frown. Every part of him is consumed with knowing more.

  “He remarried when I was fourteen.” I trace his lips with my finger. Gavin has unreasonably full, kissable lips for a man. “He wanted to raise me, make sure I was well taken care of before inviting another woman in his life. And then he found Nora.” Even her name feels like a wrecking ball, shattering all my teeth on its way out of my mouth. “She had an older son, he was sixteen. Fast-forward a year, my dad died—Josh crawled into bed with me. There was nowhere I could go. I don’t have any other family. Both sets of grandparents died when I was young—no aunts, an uncle who’s off drinking himself to death. So there’s that. You pretty much know the rest. I’m here. The end.” I wipe the tears from my cheeks that I hadn’t even noticed were falling. I hate that I’m so ready to sob like a baby. It’s the anger I try to hold onto. I was a ragdoll fed to a pack of wolves, left in tatters in the hands of her enemies. That’s what Nora and Josh had become. The tears only make me feel that much more vulnerable. But, anger, that just makes you strong. It’s a vitamin for my tarnished soul. The shield I use to fight this all-consuming war. The big and final battle starts on my birthday.

  Gavin buries a kiss in my neck and takes a hard sniff as if he’s trying to hold it together himself.

  “Now tell me about you.” I twist to face him better. The reflection of the fire colors his face in reds and golds. Gavin is an angel sent from God. There isn’t any other explanation. He’s the archangel Michael with a sword by his side, ready to head into battle right along with me. “I want to know everything.”

  “I told you about my parents—about Zoey.” He makes a face when he says her name. He was pretty disappointed she didn’t come home for Christmas. Gavin is a great big brother and the fact his sister, his only living relative, treats him so poorly makes me think less of her. Gavin would die for the people he loves. And here Zoey can’t be bothered with a simple phone call. All he wanted was one lousy holiday. “I started the business in high school. Just fooling around one day I spotted some old dudes from down the mountain and watched as they hauled wood all afternoon. I thought I could do that.” He picks up my finger and kisses the tip. “And I did. I ran their sorry asses out of town and stole all of Loveless from under them. It’s been a lot of work, but sometimes I feel it’s all I’ve got.” His eyes meet mine, and he holds me there as I sink into them. “But I still felt empty.”

  “Enter the endless parade of vaginas.” I meant to say it light and comical, but the words tumble out like clots of mud. I pull his tie in and make him kiss me. “Tell me about them. Did you ever have a serious relationship? Do you remember your first?”

  A wine-soaked breath rinses over me as he considers this.

  “There were a lot of girls. My first was in high school. It was stupid. I was pretty much sticking my tongue down the throat of any girl that would have me. I specialized in heart-shaped hickeys. That just shows how stupid we’re talking.”

  “I want one before the night is through.” I want him to mark me. It doesn’t surprise me that he turned sucking on a girl’s neck into a work of art. I’ve seen the eagles, the bears he’s hewn from a stump of wood. Gavin is an artist straight through to his soul. I bet he makes love with every last inch of his body. Now there’s a performance piece I’d like to see before the night is through.

  “Maybe to the hickey.” He gives my hips a squeeze. “Anyway, there was a dance, and we were both pretty wrecked. I had an old VW van, and we went in and partied some more. The next thing I knew it was over, and I was no longer a virgin. Believe me, that’s about as much as I remember. Turns out it wasn’t her first time, so I didn’t feel too bad. As far as any lingering relationships, that never happened. A few tried, but”—he shrugs, and I offer up a spontaneous kiss to his chest—“there wasn’t anyone I really wanted that with—until now.” He runs his fingers through my hair, and the entire back side of my body electrifies. “That afternoon, I hopped out of the shower and saw you standing there, I took one look and knew something was different.” Gavin rides his arms up and down my back. His eyes bear into mine with an intensity I’ve never felt before. “Something inside me whispered she’s the one.”

  My heart dissolves to nothing. I’ve never felt so special, so wanted, in all my life.

  “I’m ready to tell you my secret, Emmy,” he whispers it hot over my lips, his mouth already tangled with mine. Gavin pulls back and swallows hard—his eyes trained on me once again. “I’m in love with you, Emmy.” My heart, my entire body melts at the idea of Gavin loving me. I could feel it. Intrinsically I knew it. But now the words have escaped like a flock of happy birds flying around the room in a spiral, and it’s real in every way. His fingers drift to my lips. “Don’t worry about saying it. I know how hard, how complex something like saying I love you becomes, especially when you’ve been through what we have.” My heart melts double when he says we. “I want you to feel safe with me. I will always protect you, Emmy. I want you to know that no matter what life throws your way, I will always have your back. I don’t care about the past as much as I do about the future, and I can definitely see a future with you. I don’t want any other future, Emmy. The lights would turn out in my world forever if I lost you.”

  “Gavin.” I bury my face in his neck. I’ve craved those words, and now he’s given them to me on a shiny silver platter. All I have to do is take them, accept them, and they are mine. I wanted to feel love, to really feel it, and now he’s crushed me under the heft of his devotion. This moment, right here, is what I’ve waited for since I lost my father. “I see a future with you, too,” I mumble against his warm skin, and he pulls me back, demanding that I face him.

  “You plus me equals forever.” That infectious grin of his threatens to burst to life as he picks up my hand and kisses my ring finger.

  “That’s my favorite kind of math, Jackson.” I yank his tie as if it were a leash. “And forever begins tonight.”

  Gavin

  Forever begins tonight. Her words pump through my veins. They burn over my soul like a branding iron.

  Emmy straddles my chest. Her dress rides high on her hips, and I’ve got a view to heaven’s door that I wouldn’t trade for anything right about now.

  “You going to sit there staring all night?” She gives my tie another tug, and my hard-on threatens to burst through my boxers. “Because personally? I prefer to be dominated.” Her tiny pink tongue laps the rim of her lips.

  This woman is perfect.

  I flip her over, and now I’m the one doing the straddling. I pull off my tie and gently bind her at the wrists, more as a pla
yful gesture, but, hell, if that’s the direction she wants to take the party, I’m all for it. I take her in like this, panting, anxious for me. Her long blonde curls roll over the carpet like a glassy sea. She’s beautiful. It’s hard to believe that the woman I’m in love with, the one God himself landed in front of me with nothing short of a miracle, just so happens to be the most gorgeous woman on the planet. I feel like a kid again, lying on the grass, watching amazed as the stars spray out in the night, and here I am about to kiss the sky in the most spectacular way.

  I bow down and crash my lips to hers. Her mouth glides over mine, sweet and soft as an apology. Gone is the dominatrix, the overconfident, mouthy girl that I can’t get enough of, and here she is relinquishing her needs, surrendering to me like a dove. I drop kisses down her neck and linger before moving to her collarbone to savor her taste, the sweet honey of her skin. This is it, the line we’ve yet to cross.

  “Take off your shirt,” she commands with a smile edging on her lips, but she won’t give it. “Undo your belt.”

  “Pushy are we?” I dip a kiss to her collarbone. “I’m enjoying the hell out of it.”

  “Sometimes you need to bark out a few orders to get what you want.” She grazes over my lip. “Besides, I sort of like my hands bound like this.” Her finger skims over my boxers. “All the important things are still within my grasp.”

  I do as I’m told and give her dress a good tug in either direction, but it doesn’t budge. It’s strapless, so it’s got that going for it. It’s short, yet another redeeming quality, but right about now, I’d just like it off.

  “Gavin.” She peppers my face with her lips.

  I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was waiting for her to say it. I haven’t heard anyone say I love you in a good long while—maybe Brylee in jest. Zoey may have said it once, but only then. Mostly she’s too busy blaming me for things. But Emmy is the one person I really want to hear it from. Right now would be a good time for that. I pull back and trace her lips with my eyes, trying to will the words from her mouth. But they don’t come. Instead, she pulls me down by the neck and brands me with a kiss that says take off your damn clothes quick as you can.

  My shoes flick off. I work off my jeans with my mouth still diving over hers. Her tongue glides over mine with a viral intensity, and I want to bite it, trap it in my mouth and never let it go. Her cool fingers dip into the back of my boxers, and she lets out a moan as if touching me like that were enough to get her to where she needs to be.

  “Hold on, little girl. I want to be right there with you.” I pull up her dress a few inches. It’s so damn tight it hardly budges. I try to pull it down at the top, but it’s stealth.

  “Did you graft this onto your body when I wasn’t looking?” I’m suddenly hating dresses of all makes and models.

  She moans through a laugh. “There’s a zipper for that.” She glides it down her entire left side, and her dress opens a crack like a secret door.

  “Much better.” I peel open the front, painfully slow, my eyes still locked on hers. I want her to feel this moment, to want it more than she wants her next breath. And there she is, naked for me. My eyes dip to her perfect tits, and I’m done. I reach down and lay a careful kiss over each of them. “I plan on spending an hour doing just this.” I sink a kiss in her cleavage and hold it there as my heart tries to fist pump its way out of my chest. My adrenaline shoots through the roof, and I’m amped up too damn much for it to ever be safe. Tonight is going to be one of those nights that penetrate into my memory forever. A good memory. I’ve needed one for a very long time.

  Emmy wraps her legs around my back, and I take in the feel of her smooth thighs pressed against me. I’ve been waiting for this night for six, long weeks. My entire body aches to have her. I’m a man—who happens to like sex, and every second with Emmy has been an exercise in celibate futility. I run my tongue down her neck, and she glides the boxers right off my body. I give her ear a playful bite, and she gags on her next breath.

  “I’m going to run my tongue right down to here,” I whisper, rolling my thumbs over her tits. “Then I’m going to move the party south.” I run my fingers down her thigh and glide over her panties, already soaked and in desperate need of removal.

  She chokes out an inaudible sound. I love this version of Emmy. Lost in lust, without the ability to formulate a single thought.

  “I bet you’re sweet through and through.” I move my mouth down and sink over her soft flesh just shy of my first target of the night.

  She lets out a hard groan as the door bursts open.

  “Shit.” I spike up, more pissed than curious. I fully expect the wind to have kicked it in, because it’s happened on more than one occasion.

  But it’s no storm blowing through.

  It’s hurricane Zoey.

  The night ended abruptly with screaming and cussing and an overall air of contention, and that was just from me. Zoey ran off to her room and locked the door. Emmy insisted on sleeping on the couch. I let her borrow my sweats since her things were in quarantine with my sister before taking off for bed. There’s no way I wanted to finish what we started with my sister in the next room. The cabin is the size of a thimble to begin with, and not one part of me wants to restrain myself when I make love to Em.

  A quiet laugh pumps through me as I start the coffee. Emmy has the blanket pulled up to her nose with her hair splayed out, falling over the couch like a blonde waterfall.

  She moans and stretches, and before I know it, she’s standing by my side, dripping kisses off my neck like wild honey.

  “Give me a minute. I’ll make breakfast with you.” Her hand slips into the back of my sweats and glides over my bare ass before she heads down the hall.

  Damn. Why couldn’t Zoey have waited a week?

  Her bedroom door squeaks open, and she stumbles out, looking all of thirteen. No matter how old she gets, she’ll always be thirteen in my eyes.

  “So who was she?” Zoey plucks a bowl from the cupboard before dragging three different cereal boxes to the table.

  “None of your business. Why aren’t you in school?”

  “It’s ski week. Why aren’t you giving me a big fat hug?”

  “Because the last time I hugged you, I ended up with a broken toe.” It’s true. She drilled her high heel into my foot, and I limped for a week. I head over, risking life and lower extremity digits, and pull her into a strong embrace. “You didn’t come home for Christmas.” I give a dull smile at the thought of sounding like a nagging father.

  “I sent a text.” She flicks my nose before heading to the fridge for milk.

  “Yes—the text. I believe it read Merry X-Mas in its entirety. I’m glad you didn’t expend too much energy on your big bro.”

  “Brevity is the new black.” She rattles a cereal box before opening it. “Anyway, it looks like you had a big hoe to comfort you.” She gives a cheesy grin. The oversized sweatshirt she’s wearing makes her appear downright fragile. Her hair is platinum, far more over-processed than I remember, and it makes her look like she’s pulling out all the stops to impress the boys. “What am I saying? This is probably a different skank. That was two entire months ago. Speaking of the mattress mites you like to haul home nightly, you should consider putting a do-not-disturb sign out front. Because that’s the last time I want to see your hairy ass hiked in the air.”

  I close my eyes a moment. “I don’t have a hairy ass. You imagined the whole thing.” At least I’d like to believe both of those ideas. “How about next time you knock?” I swat her arm with a kitchen towel just as Emmy comes back into the room.

  Zoey sucks in a lungful of air as if she’s choking on a Fruit Loop.

  “She’s still here?”

  “She can hear you, too.” I pull Emmy in close. “Zoey this is Emmy, Em this is my sweet little sister, Zoey.” It comes out dry and sarcastic without meaning to. It looks like Emmy is rubbing off on me, and I don’t mind one bit.

  “Emmy?” My sister br
eaks her name into two equals parts as if she might be sick. “Where are you from, Emmy?” She says it slow in the event Emmy is from another planet where they don’t speak English. If Zoey keeps this crap up, she’ll be camping out on another planet, also known as the boathouse.

  “Be nice, Zo. I’m not letting you talk to her like that.”

  “That’s right.” Emmy strokes the back of my neck with her cool fingers. “When Gavin doesn’t let a woman do something, he means it.” She gives a little wink and defuses me just a bit.

  Zoey’s mouth falls open. She looks genuinely stunned as if I had just told her to nosedive off the side of the mountain. Zoey has been known to pour on the drama. It’s part of her questionable charm.

  “No, it’s okay.” Emmy pulls out a chair and sits across from my sister as if hostage negotiations were about to break out. She’s got balls. That’s one of the reasons I’m in love with her. “I’m originally from Hay—” Her fingers cover her lips a moment as if that just slipped out. I don’t remember her telling me where she was from. Who knows, maybe Zoey is the missing link that causes Em to pour out her secrets like pages from a diary. “I was just passing through Loveless, and I met your brother.”

  “Nobody passes through Loveless with the exception of truckers and fuckers. Which one are you?”

  “Watch your mouth,” I snipe.

  “Relax.” Zoey pushes me away, and I take a seat next to Emmy. “She knows I’m kidding. It’s not like she’s some two-dollar whore you picked up at a bar.”

  “Nope, she’s not.” I glance over at Emmy. I know what she’s thinking. “Have a little respect, Zoey.”

  “So”—Emmy straightens, and her sweatshirt rides up her back just enough to tease me with the curve of her spine—“what are you majoring in?”