Hooked on You: A Bliss Brothers Novel Read online

  Hooked on You

  A Bliss Brothers Novel

  Amelia Wilde

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Connect with Amelia

  Also by Amelia Wilde

  1

  Driver

  The most gorgeous girl in the world is in my bed.

  In my bed, in this instance, is a technicality. We’re not in it. We’ve destroyed it. At this moment, it’s a mattress with a fitted sheet surrounded by an explosion of cotton in a thread count of Who the Hell Cares.

  I don’t care about anything, except the way she’s straddling me.

  When I tell this story later, it’ll be simple: I met her on the beach, and I took her to bed.

  It’s past late, edging into early, and everything about this moment is simultaneously hazy and oversharp, the details burning themselves into my skin.

  My hands on the curves of her hips. My fingers pressing into the delicate bone there. The way it feels when I move one of them to brush the pad of my thumb over the soft, trimmed hair at the apex of her legs.

  The way those legs are spread, one knee on either side, and the way I’ve taken her to the hilt.

  No. She’s taken me.

  She purses her rosy lips and braces her hands against my chest. “I’m going to do it again,” she murmurs.

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  She leans down, her hair falling in a curtain on either side of my face, and nips my bottom lip between her teeth. “I’m going to do it again,” she whispers.

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I pulse inside her. My cock is an impatient bastard, and he wants her to move and move now, but my mind is half-drowned in the ridiculous pleasure of holding her hips in place.

  Right until she rolls them.

  Another burst of pleasure thunders on the heel of the movement. It curls my toes. It tenses my calves. Even my abs respond, tightening hard. “Not fair.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  I answer with a thumb against her clit, the other hand bracing her in place, and she drags her fingertips down as she straightens her back. One circle and her head falls back, exposing her throat. Another circle and she clenches around me. Three, four, five—her hips dance to the rhythm of those tiny circles. She needs a tighter grip. I give it to her.

  “Oh, you can’t—you can’t—”

  “I can stop any time.”

  “You can’t stop.”

  Her face is flushed even in the echo of light from the street lamp outside. I always thought they were stupid, here on the club side of the Bliss Resort & Club. Who needs street lamps when it’s a gated community?

  Turns out, I need them.

  Because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see the way her lips part when she gasps.

  I wouldn’t be able to see how she reaches for one of her nipples when she’s on the verge.

  I wouldn’t be able to see the particular motion of her hips jerking side to side when she comes.

  I feel it—Christ, I feel it. She squeezes me tighter, taking me along for the ride, and that’s a sensation I’d rather die than have lived without. But seeing it? Seeing her face makes me want more.

  I grip her hips with both hands, holding her down harder against the steely length of me so that even as she bucks in my hands, she can’t go anywhere.

  “Oh, oh—”

  Music to my ears. A teasing, taunting music, and I can’t resist it anymore.

  I have to do the thing I’ve been dreading and lift her off of me, but the moment I do she’s scrabbling at my chest, begging.

  “You think I’d let you down?” I pant, turning her onto her hands and knees. “Is that what you think?”

  “No,” she moans, sliding her knees apart, rocking back toward me. The air in the room snaps and expands, like the universe is telling me to pay attention. As if I could pay attention to anything else. She wouldn’t do this at any other time, I realize. I don’t know how I know it. I’ve known her all of two hours. But I do know it, like I know that this is special, like I know that this is one-of-a-kind, like I know that I’m living through a moment that will make all other moments pale in comparison.

  “Please, Driver, please…” The sound of my name on her lips has me up on my knees behind her and my hand at the back of her neck. I push her head down into the mattress and she shivers, another little moan escaping her. She stays in place when I take that hand away and use it to stroke my fingers between her legs. Slick sweetness, delicate folds, another huge portion of my brain now exclusively dedicated to remembering this forever.

  “I’ll give you what you want. But enough teasing. Tell me your name.”

  Her head is turned sideways so she can breathe, and also so I can see the smile that crosses her lips. “Does it matter? We won’t see each other again.”

  “Tell me.” I line myself up with her entrance, teasing her with the head of my cock. She tries to push back, tries to take it in, but I won’t let her. “Tell me.”

  “H—H—” It’s a valiant effort, for sure. But her body, bent over like this, so exposed to me, is no match for the strength of my hands. And this mystery woman loves it. She’s wetter with every second that passes. “Holiday.”

  “Holiday.” I taste her name in my mouth, rolling it on my tongue. I give her an inch of me and she fists the fitted sheet. “Holiday…” Another inch.

  “So…unfair…”

  “You’re right, Holiday.” I give her the rest of me in one hard thrust and reach for her clit again. She’s right on the edge and it takes one touch, a single touch, and I’m lost in her cries. I’m lost in the surge of my own release. It’s so strong my vision goes dark at the edges.

  How long am I frozen behind her? I don’t know. But when I finally release her and collapse onto the bed, Holiday turns over onto her back and spreads her legs. “Again.” Her eyes are luminous and wide. “I need one more.”

  I turn onto my side and slide my hand over her chest, catching the rise and fall of every breath. “Just one?”

  HOLIDAY

  I found a man out of a dream on the beach tonight.

  Is he the man of my dreams? In broad daylight, I might say no. But right now, with his gloriously naked body stretched out next to me in the bed…

  Right now, he’s the man of my dreams.

  He was the man of my dreams five minutes ago, when he gave me a third orgasm using only his fingers.

  Driver Bliss lays on his side, his head propped up on one palm. Is he really that mind-blowingly gorgeous? In the gentle yellow glow of the streetlight outside there’s no question that he is. That light catches in his hair like a halo, and I follow the sheen down over a muscled shoulder and then lower to the nip of his waist. Even now, he’s ready for action—that’s clear at a glance.

  But his eyes rest easily on me. For once, I’m not crawling out of my skin at the attention.

  I’m perfectly…what’s the word I’m looking for? Content.

  My skin hums with the aftershocks of pleasure. So much of it. And those hands of his…

  I reach out and trace a pattern with one fingertip across the skin
of his chest. His eyes flutter closed at the touch. “Do you play the guitar?”

  My own voice sounds like it’s coming from deep underwater. Driver opens his eyes. When the light catches them at the right angle I can see how blue they are. Not now. “The guitar?”

  “Yeah.” It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life, but I roll to my side so I can face him without hurting my neck. “Do you?” Those fingers worked between my legs at a level I can only describe as expert.

  “No.” The corner of his mouth rises in a half-grin. “Why?”

  “You’re good with your hands,” I murmur. It’s too much effort to stay on my side, so I roll onto my stomach and lean my head on my arms. “It’s almost a shame we won’t see each other again.”

  His palm is warm when it comes to rest on the small of my back. Driver rubs back and forth with an intimacy that makes my throat tighten.

  I can’t say why I chose tonight to walk along the beach. Maybe it’s counterintuitive, but I feel safer in the dark, there on the beach where my parents and I vacationed every summer growing up. The Bliss Resort is as familiar as my uncle’s house, and maybe that’s why, when I saw Driver standing there…

  I like a little risk in my life. A little. And he seemed more reward than risk, with the moonlight in his hair and his feet in the sand. Want. My brain took in the image of him, flipped it right-side up, and I wanted.

  “We won’t see each other again.” In his mouth, it sounds thoughtful, on the edge of bewilderment.

  “I don’t get out much.”

  He makes a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat, hand still stroking the small of my back. “Only for midnight walks on the beach?”

  “I don’t always walk on the beach.” Back and forth, his fingertips gentle on my skin. I want to look at him—I never want to stop looking at him, come to think of it—but the rhythm is a hell of a lullaby. Closing my eyes doesn’t mean I’ll fall asleep. It only means giving an inch. My eyelids are weighted down with sex hormones and peace—how can I fight that?

  “Even if you did, I’m not there very often.” A note of wonder stirs itself into his voice. “I’m usually out on the road.” He laughs, the sound a smooth rumble. “The odds were against us meeting tonight.”

  “Must have been fate.” My lips hum with the echoes of his kisses, and I drag one hand upward so I can brush my fingertips against them. “The universe meant for us to meet tonight. A one-time miracle.”

  “A one-time miracle,” he repeats. “Aren’t miracles always one of a kind?”

  “I don’t know that much about miracles. I’m not much of a miracle girl.”

  “No?” Driver shifts on the bed, his hand going away, and for the life of me I can’t drag my eyes open to see what he’s doing. “I don’t know if I agree with that.”

  A cool, featherlight touch over my naked skin—the sheet. It’s followed on its heels by the weight of the comforter. Last I saw of the comforter, it was bunched in Driver’s hand, his bicep flexed and tight. I burrow under it and, through all the fabric, feel his hand settle on the small of my back. I’m too tired and too happy to be embarrassed about the noise that finds its way between my lips.

  “Easy,” Driver says, a warm familiarity in his voice. My heart hitches in my chest. Nights like this—you can’t repeat them. Who ever repeated a miracle.

  “I’m so easy,” I mumble, sinking into the mattress. “Not easy like that. Taking it easy. You know. Easy.”

  “I know.” He brushes my hair back over my ear. The heat of a singular kiss warms my cheek.

  Don’t, insists a voice in my mind, so quiet I could ignore it. “Don’t want to waste it,” I tell him, trying and failing to inject urgency into my voice. If I could only open my eyes.

  “The sun is coming up,” Driver says. “We didn’t waste a second.” His weight bows the mattress next to me. “If I don’t see you again, just remember.”

  A long time goes by.

  “Remember what?”

  Maybe he says it. Maybe he doesn’t. But I hear it: Miracle girl.

  2

  Holiday

  Four Weeks Later

  “I can’t believe you’re staying in that massive house all by yourself.” My best friend, one Sophia Maclean, sighs into the phone. “You should throw at least one party before you leave. There’s plenty of time to plan it, and—”

  I lose the rest of her sentence to a gigantic yawn and push my foot against the stand of the hammock. It’s become one of my all-time favorite places lately. I can look out over the lake and be in the shade from the house at the same time. The hammock swings a bit faster, and I turn my gaze to the cloudless blue of the August sky. My Diet Coke ran out an hour ago. If it weren’t for that, I could stay here forever. I press my paperback to my chest.

  “—plenty of people down at that resort.”

  I burst out laughing. “If you think I’m going to invite a bunch of strangers from Bliss to come party at my uncle’s house, you’re crazy. Have the pies finally gone to your head?”

  A week after we graduated college, Soph bought a food truck and drove it out to Portland. Now she makes pies out of it and lives in a vintage Airstream. When she wants to move it, she pulls it behind a big truck. The thought of having a home on wheels like that has a certain draw, but I like thing to be a little more…permanent.

  Sure. Just like the apartment I’ll be sharing with four other women at the end of the summer. My stomach turns over.

  “It could be fun,” Sophie insists. “If you did that, I’d drive over to attend.”

  That makes me laugh. “You say that like you live down the block.”

  “I live wherever I want,” she sniffs. “If I wanted to live down the block, I could.”

  My stomach gurgles again. It’s unsettling, the gurgling, and yet…I don’t quite have the energy to sit up. I put a foot out to stop the rocking motion of the hammock. There. That’s a bit better.

  Here in the shade, the temperature is perfect. I had the brilliant idea of bringing a pair of sunglasses out here with me, so really, all I could ask for is another Diet Coke. I wonder if Margie, the housecleaner my uncle keeps on all summer, would bring me another one. Is it her day today? God, why is it so hard to think?

  I stifle a big yawn.

  “—hear me?”

  “What? Sorry, Soph, you must have cut out.” Or my brain must have cut out. Given how the last week has gone, it’s more likely my brain.

  “I said, are you feeling okay? You sound tired. Or maybe you sound bored. If I’m boring, just tell me. It won’t hurt my feelings.”

  “Please.” I swallow another yawn. “You’d be devastated. But it’s not you, it’s me.”

  “Nice.”

  “Really. I think it’s all the writing.” All the writing that I…haven’t done. Not for the last two weeks. “I think I just need a nap. I’ll call you back, okay? I’ll call you back.”

  * * *

  Sick.

  I’m sick.

  Oh, god, I’m really sick, stomach churning. I hate throwing up but it’s too late to stop it. It’s too late to do anything but shove myself upright and try to miss my clothes.

  This would be a semi-decent plan if I were anywhere but a hammock.

  No.

  The cloth bulges under my hand, rocking the hammock to the side. My leg catches on one edge and I go over hard onto the deck. The impact dislodges the last of the control I had over my stomach and up comes everything I’ve been snacking on for the day.

  The…night?

  When my stomach stops heaving my brain manages to catch up with my general surroundings. I came out here when it was daylight and now the sky is painted in the faded pink of an early summer morning.

  I haul myself up from the deck.

  This is so gross. My paperback landed in a very unfortunate spot. New Moon bites the dust.

  I pick it up by its one vomit-free corner and walk it over to the covered garbage can. Next step: a hose.
r />   My uncle’s house is one of those places where everything you could possibly need is somewhere nearby in a concealed planter. I saw the guys who clean the windows haul a hose out of one of the shelves designed to look like they’re part of the house. Bless my rich uncle for this detail. Or, I guess, bless the people who designed this house. The connection for the water is in the concealed shelf, and inside a minute I’m washing my own puke off the stained-hardwood surface of the deck.

  What is happening?

  The sky lightens over Ruby Bay as I squeeze the spray nozzle of the hose to the beat of Stayin’ Alive, a song I haven’t heard since the last time I watched one of my favorite workplace sitcoms on Netflix. It’s burned into my brain just for occasions like this. You know. Daybreak deck-cleaning sessions in advance of anyone at all showing up at the cottage. I’ve gotten the desk sufficiently wet and clean by the time the sun puts one tentative edge over the horizon. Other than the enormous puddle draining through the slats, there’s no sign of my freak sickness.

  It’s really too bad about the paperback, though.

  What am I still doing out here, anyway? It doesn’t feel great to be on my feet. In fact, it still feels like I’m swaying in the hammock—back and forth, back and forth. I can’t think about it too much or my stomach swerves sideways along with the phantom motion.

  I’m missing something.

  There, under the hammock. The little rectangle that’s been my trusty sidekick for two Christmases, ever since I found it in my stocking. My iPhone.

  It’s blessedly far from the hose water and was totally untouched in the Stomach-pocalypse that was this morning, and I snatch it up and cradle it to my chest. It’s still fine, with the tempered-glass screen protector and case still whole and unscratched. That’s a plus, because if this thing breaks there’s no way I’m buying another one. Not with rent in New York City costing what it does. Oh—okay. Don’t think about that either. Or the imminent end of the summer.