Kiss the Sky (5 page)

She glowers, her entire body responding to the emotion. Her
eyes narrow, her stance closes, her shoulders pull back, forcing me to straighten
up.

I almost get hard.

“Don’t patronize me,” she says. “
Lo’s
going to get my sister pregnant on accident. He’s impulsive and careless. So
you need to do what you do best and instill some common sense into him.”

“I imagine that conversation blowing over as well as a
hurricane.” I twirl her by the waist so she leans against the counter, facing
me. “So it’s going to cost you.”

She peruses my body with a sharp gaze. “I’m prepared to
pay.”

My lips slowly rise. “Are you?”

“Yes.” But her eyes speak differently, and my smile fades.
She’s really, truly scared.

“You’re safe with me, you know that, Rose?” I ask her. “I
won’t ever hurt you.” I’ve always treated her like she’s an extension of
myself.

The more hostile, torrid side—that is.

 
It’s a reason I’ve become
so possessive of her throughout the years, even when we weren’t together.

“I know,” she says, relaxing her shoulders.

“Then I’ll talk with Lo.”

“What do I need to do for you?” she asks, too stubborn to
back down, even if the unknown frightens her.

“Stop thinking for a minute.”

“What—”

I kiss her, my large hand cupping her delicate face, my lips
against her soft. Her breath rises to her throat, and her body curves to meet
mine. She rouses, clutching my muscular arms with her free hands. The uncertainty
still lingers on her lips, hesitating.

I break apart. “Get out of your head,” I tell her, my hand
lowering to her ass. I push her against me, her pelvis tucked neatly to mine.
Her robe slips between her legs, revealing the bareness of her thighs.

A moan pushes through her lips. I pin her against the
counter, only the towel separating my cock from her body, and she struggles to
gain control with me. Her head dips back in arousal, and she desperately grips
my arms, her fingers digging into my biceps. But she looks lost on what to do
with her legs, one wanting to wrap around my waist, the other half off the
ground with the force of my body.

I hold her left leg up to my side, stretching her, and she
lets out a staggered breath. “Wait, wait…” she starts, her hands on my chest.
She’s flushed and warm to the touch, but she plummets right back in her fucking
head.

“Rose,” I chastise and drop her leg to the ground.

She rests her elbows on the counter, confusion lacing her
eyes.

You liked that. It’s
okay to like that, Rose.
My hand returns to her jaw, caressing her cheek as
she processes what happened—my dominant movements that trounced her into a
puddle.
My
puddle.

I run my thumb on her bottom lip.

“Je
suis
passionné
de
toi
,” I say.
I am passionate about you.

Her chest falls, understanding me well.

I slip my thumb into her mouth, and a sharp noise catches in
her throat. She blushes at hearing herself. I leave my thumb there and press a
soft kiss to her neck, and then I suck sensitive spots, trailing up her collar
to her cheek.

She can throw me off at any second.

But surprisingly, she closes her lips over my thumb. She
doesn’t suck it, doesn’t run her tongue against it. I don’t think she really
knows what to do, but I adore her more for trying. I let her off the hook and
quickly replace my hand with my lips, my tongue, trying to lose her with the
moment.

Her movements are more assured now, her hands drifting to my
hair, tugging, clenching, kneading. Her spine curves again, her body meeting
mine once more.
That’s it, Rose. I have
you.

You’re safe with me.

A full minute passes before that all disappears, before she
retreats into her head again, before her kisses shorten, before her lips close
and she pulls back altogether.

It was a brief, fleeting moment where I almost had her
vulnerable and bare. But if I can put my thumb into her mouth without her
biting it off, it’s only a matter of time until I’m inside her completely.

[ 4 ]

CONNOR COBALT

Well, I learned what increasing the production
value entails.

Here’s a new one for me.

Scott Van Wright somehow manipulated
my
girlfriend into moving out of her sanctuary, leaving
our
Princeton house. I really wish I had
been there for the conversation and not been stuck in a college lecture hall. I
would have rebutted every argument he had that began with “
The Real World
” and ended with “you’re
all
living together.”

We all lived together in Princeton, New Jersey.

The difference now: Loren
Hale’s
half-brother,
Ryke
Meadows, is moving in for six
months. So is Rose’s little sister, Daisy. That’s six people in one house.

I’m trying to be the encouraging boyfriend, but I can’t be
at fault for however I act around Scott. I don’t like that he convinced Rose to
do something that I would have trouble talking her into. It makes me nervous.

Rose stares up at the open ceiling, microphones and wires
dangling from the rafters of our new home. Her forehead scrunches at having to
live in a Philadelphia townhouse designed especially for production. Three
levels. Five bedrooms. One communal bathroom. No yard. A nice hot tub and patio
area. And an even larger dining room and kitchen.

“He promised we wouldn’t be filmed in the bathroom or the
bedrooms,” she says with tight lips.

“Promises from anyone other than me mean nothing,” I say.
“Has he hit you over the head?”

She glares. “It’s in the contract.”

“Then Lo and I will make sure there aren’t any cameras in
the rooms.”

“And the bathroom,” she says quickly.

“That too.”

She nods to herself and raises her chin to appear more
confident about the matter, but privacy means a great deal to Rose. And this is
a lot more intrusive than she anticipated.

“You can always tell him to fuck off,” I remind her. “You’ve
said it to men many times before.”

“And yet, you’re still here.”

I smile. True.

She lets out a breath. “No. It has to be done this way.”

“And why is that?”

“He said that there’ll be more viewers if we all live
together. Rich families being filmed in their natural environment has been done
before. This hasn’t.” She pauses. “Except for
The Real World
but—”

“All I hear is Scott Van Wright in your mouth, and that’s
really the last place I want another man to be.”

She gives me a cold look and says, “I happen to agree with
him. I did the research.”

“Fine.” But what Scott really wants is the most drama
possible, the most chaos, and this is the type of setting that’ll grant him
what he desires. And if Rose is a part of that package, he’s going to fucking
lose this battle. I just don’t want it to be at the cost of Rose’s fashion
line. If I ruin Calloway Couture, I’ll lose her too. Her company is why we’re
swimming in a fish bowl after all. I’d do almost anything to help her achieve
her dreams.

“Plus,” she adds, only to provoke me, “our house had poor
sound quality. We would’ve had to move anyway.”

“Right, because they couldn’t spend a couple thousand
dollars to rig better equipment at Princeton. This alternative, moving out, is
a hell of a lot more expensive.”

“You’re turning green. And for your information, you look
ugly in that color.”

“I’m not jealous,” I say. “I hate him for the same reason you
do—because he pisses where he eats.”

“You haven’t even met him yet.”

“I already know.”

She flattens her black maxi dress with her hands, walking
back and forth in the living room space. “You’re incorrigible.”

“You’re pacing. What other things should we point out?”

She hits me with her handbag, and I try hard not to grin.

When she settles down, she says, “After six months, we can
go back to Princeton.”

She can keep listing off the reasons why the move to
Philadelphia is better—that her parents live close by, that Daisy can still
attend prep school, that
Lo’s
comic book business is
already downtown, that my commute to Penn has been shortened by an hour—but in
the end, she wasn’t given a choice. Scott
told
her to move. And she did.

Not even that, he chose this townhouse. He didn’t let Rose
look for a new place that would fit production’s ridiculous requirements.

I glance at the purple fringe cloth that covers the coffee
table, large white candles lined in a row. Production actually hired people to
decorate for the psychic’s arrival. As though she’s living here too.

“Just don’t ask me to be nice to the psychic,” I tell her,
just now noticing Ben, the skinny cameraman, walk down the stairs. He directs
the lens at us.

“I don’t care what you do,” she says, “as long as you’re
here.”

I try not to look shocked by her declaration. Our tight
postures relax, and I draw her to my chest and rub the back of her neck. She
melts into me, her normally stiff body finding a moment to slacken. I stare at
her fiery eyes that never seem to soften, even if her body does.
 

“But I thought you could do everything by yourself,
darling.”

“I can,” she says, raising her chin again. “But I like your
help…sometimes.” Her gaze falls to my lips, unsure of herself again. She’s
waiting for me to make a move.

My lips brush her cheek. “I’m going to spread you so wide,
Rose. Your whole body will ache for my hard cock.” She tightens against me.
“You’ll come
before
I fill every inch
of you.”

A noise catches in her throat, and her hands drop to my
waist, hurriedly feeling around for my battery pack to the microphones we wear
beneath our clothes.

“Forget about the cameras,” I tell her. Ben takes this
moment to skirt around us, the camera whipping towards Rose’s face. He’s
another obstacle, a puppet of Scott’s.
Just
fucking wonderful.
I could shove the camera at the wall, but I resist the
violent urge.

I bring my hand to the back of her head, my lips right
beside her ear. “You saw how big I am. Imagine that inside of you, all of it,
pounding hard until you can’t breathe.”

“Connor,” she warns, her voice weaker than normal.

I grip her hair between my fingers and tug, her chin jutting
up.

Her mouth opens, and she stifles a sound that wants to come
out.

With one hand to the small of her back, I push her body
harder against mine, and her cheeks flush.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” I whisper lowly in her ear. “I may
not always be on your side, but I have your best interest at heart.”

When I release her, she withdraws, taking two steps back and
clearing her throat. She readjusts her handbag on her arm and then says, “I
don’t think I can forgive him for that bathroom.”

She completely drops what just happened. And Scott is the
last person I want her to divert to after
I
just talked about fucking her hard.

“To be fair to Scott,” I say with a dry smile, “the bathroom
has four sinks and two showers. It’s not as if it’s small. Each shower is even large
enough to fit five co-eds.”

“It’s
communal.
I
don’t know how they did it at Penn, but I had my own bathroom, shared with
one
other girl.”

“Yes, we’re all savages at Penn. You should see the football
team. They live in caves and eat with their hands.”

Her shoulders fall. “I know I’m spoiled and a bitch, but I’m
uncomfortable at the idea of someone walking in on me.”

“The showers have misted glass. You can’t see through them.”
That’s not entirely true. I’d be able to see her body fairly well. “And you
walked in on me three days ago.” The mention of our moment in the
bathroom—where she found me masturbating, where I hiked her leg around my
waist—has her whole body tensing in arousal. She crosses her arms to cover the
flush that rises on her neck. Only the mention of her sex life (or lack
thereof) can make her so flustered.

“This is different.”

“I know.” Lo, Lily, Daisy, and
Ryke
will be sharing the space too. Adding me was like skipping two stairs at a time
for her. With them, it’s like trying to stretch over five. “But everyone’s
uncomfortable, not just you.”

She groans in distress. “I didn’t want to put them in this
situation. The reality show wasn’t supposed to uproot their lives like this.”

I usually say the right thing. I’m obviously doing a shitty
job today. The psychic and Scott have scrambled my head.

I wrap an arm around her shoulder. “Lily wants to help
Calloway Couture. She’d do anything for you. And they’ll all adapt quickly.” To
make amends with Rose, Lily even sacrificed being close to her college. She’ll
be taking online classes so she doesn’t fall behind.
 

Rose stops pacing with my touch. Ben documents her reaction
with the zoom of his camera. She stares up into my blue eyes and leans close,
her leg pressed against mine.

I comb her glossy hair away from her cheeks, and her arms
cling to my waist. I ask, “Are you going to talk about Scott when I kiss you
from now on? Or is it only going to be when we have sex?”

She clenches my button-down, fisting the fabric, and tries
to throttle me for that comment, but I stay unmoving at her attempt, too strong
to be overpowered by her, even if she puts up a good fight. With a huff, she
stops trying to shake me. “One day,” she says, “I’m going to slap you on
impulse, and then I’m going to feel like utter shit.” I read her eyes that say:
maybe we should break up before it
happens. Maybe we’re not good together.