Only With You (22 page)

“
Syd, why?”

“Because
I’ve never let go like that before, and I’m sure I looked so ridiculous. I feel like an idiot,” she said, shaking her head.

“Just now?” I questioned, and she nodded.

“Yeah. I’ve, um, never really had an orgasm during sex, and I think I got a little carried away. I’m sorry.”

My eyebrows rose in shock. She hadn’t? But she did. I saw her. Was I the first guy to get her to that point? Holy shit that was cool.
But why was she apologizing?

I tried to relax my face as I focused my gaze on her. Then I leaned down and kissed her, because I felt like she needed it.

“Syd, you looked so beautiful,” I said when I pulled back to look at her again, smoothing her hair back from her face. “Don’t ever think differently. I loved seeing you like that. It was incredible.”

“
Yeah? Are you sure?”

I nodded.
“You were beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous.”

“Well
, thank you,” she said, finally wrapping her arms around me again, pulling me close.

I buried my face in her neck, loving the warmth of her skin against my lips. “I love you for you. Remember that. Don’t ever feel like you have to hide any part of yourself from me.”

“Do you really mean that?” she asked, and I wondered how many of the jerks she’d dated had messed with her head. Why was she so self-conscious? I’d never seen her like this before.

“Every word of it. You’re perfect. Trust me. And I want to see you let go like that every time we do this, because it was incredible to watch.”

Her arms wrapped tighter around me. “I can be kind of aggressive during sex, and I usually hold back, but for some reason, you make me feel things I’ve never felt before. It makes me a little crazy, I guess, and I don’t want to hold back with you. It doesn’t turn you off, does it?”

“Uh, exactly the opposite.”

“You’re not going to think less of me, are you?”

I held her as tight as I could. “
Never.
Not at all. I think it’s so hot, but because it’s you, it’s ten times hotter. Please feel free to be as aggressive as you want. Shit, what you said in the car earlier, it about did me in. Why are you so self-conscious about this?”

“I’ve d
ated a lot of assholes, I guess,” she said, but she didn’t expand on that. I could imagine how they’d treated her, and frankly, I sort of didn’t want to know the details. Those guys were idiots.

I pulled up to look at her. “Well, I’m not an asshole. I love you – every part of you, no matter how embarrassing you might think it is. I don’t want you to hide from me, ever. Just be yourself. And remember that you’ve seen me cry.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I have. That’s right. But to your credit, it was a bad fall.”

By
ninth grade, I’d gotten much less afraid of the half pipe and had in fact gotten a little cocky. I’d gone up to do a 360 Flip and fell hard. I broke my left arm in two places and although I hadn’t cried at the time, once we’d gotten into the ambulance, with Sydney holding my hand, I’d burst into tears. I hadn’t cried in front of another girl since then.

“I love you,” she whispered, and I leaned down to kiss her.

“I love you too.”

Chapter Seventeen

Sydney

Never in my life had I experienced
anything like what I just had with Ryder, and it was slowly starting to sink in that he was perfect in so many ways. I felt like I didn’t deserve him, but I wanted him so much, and he wanted to be with me, so I wasn’t going to argue with it. And after everything we’d hashed out earlier in the night, I was surer than ever that we were going to be alright. I just needed to talk to Chris and tell him to get things rolling with ending my fake relationship so I could start my real one with Ryder.

Lying there with him in the dark as the candles I’d lit burned softly around us, my head was on his chest as he stroked my hair and started to lull me to sleep.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

“Hmm?”

“I can order room service if you’re hungry,” he offered.

“No, I’m okay,” I said sleepily.

I didn’t want to move. Food wasn’t even something remotely on my radar. All I could think about was how I never wanted to lose what I felt right then at that moment. As he’d made love to me, it was as if everything I’d ever wanted to experience while in the arms of a man had come true in the one moment that told me he was the guy for me. If I’d ever had any doubts that taking our relationship to the next level, they’d been squelched when he’d looked down at me with eyes boring into my soul. I felt like for the first time since I’d started dating that I was with someone who truly saw
me
when he looked at me.

Ryder might have been enamored with the girl I was when I performed, but when we were alone, it was just me and him, and he saw me for who I was underneath the stage make-up and the music and the lights. I was just the little girl who’d wanted to play with the boys and do everything they did, and he was the shy little boy who’d latched onto me because I was fearless
and because I didn’t make fun of him for not learning tricks as fast as the other boys or for being afraid of the skate ramps. When we were together, no one else in the world existed, and that’s how it had always been with us.

But he wasn’t that little boy anymore, really. He wasn’t scared. He was strong, confident, and he knew his place in the world. He was smart as hell, but he also had one hell of a rockin’ body with none of the arrogance that most guys who looked like him had.

Why hadn’t I noticed him sooner? Why hadn’t I asked him if he was gay or questioned why he never talked to me about it? So many things that were clear when I looked back on them, but I was just too blind to see them when they were right in front of me. I guess it didn’t matter now, but what about all that time lost that we could have spent together? What about the past five months of not speaking and being so miserable because I felt like half of myself had been torn away?

There were s
o many questions that didn’t really matter now that we were here, because I wasn’t going to let him go. I was going to hold on as tight as I could to what I knew was right and who I was supposed to be with.

Ryder kissed my forehead and pulled me tighter against him.

“What time do we have to leave tomorrow?” he asked me.

“The bus leaves at ten,” I mumbled, so close to drifting off completely.

As I let the darkness sweep over me, I vaguely registered that Ryder was on the phone asking the front desk for a wake-up call. I didn’t want to tell him that he didn’t need to do that. Someone from my team would have already taken care of it, but it was sweet that he wanted to make sure we were up on time.

* * *

The shrill ringing of a phone had me groaning and rolling over in bed.

“Hello?” I grumbled.

“Good morning, Ms. Chase. This is the front desk with your eight o’clock wake-up call.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled, instantly annoyed with
whoever on my team had scheduled a call for eight in the morning. They knew I wasn’t a morning person, and sleep, especially after a concert was a must.

But then I remembered I wasn’t alone and getting some more time with Ryder before we had to pretend to be platonic again wasn’t exactly a bad thing. I hung up the phone
and rolled over to wake him up but was met with nothing but an empty bed.

“Ry?” I called out when I didn’t see him anywhere in the room.

I heard a noise coming from the kitchen area, a clanking of some sort, and then he was in the doorway wearing only his plaid boxers, leaning sexily against the door frame. In the light streaming in behind him I could just make out the ripples of his stomach muscles and the definition of his broad, tanned chest. He looked incredibly yummy.

He smiled. “Good morning.”

“Why are you up?” I asked around a yawn, stretching my arms over my head.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I was up reading the book for the Comparative Politics class I’m taking this summer.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “You’re joking, right?”

He shook his head. “No, I wanted to get a head start of the reading since the professor put the syllabus online yesterday.”

He didn’t even know how adorable he was when he got all studious. I loved it. I actually always had loved that about him. He was so smart.

“You’re such a nerd,” I told him, shaking my head and smiling.

He started to walk toward the bed. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, watching him
stalk slowly toward me. “It’s a wonder you ever scored any girls with your nose in a book all the time.”

He shook his head and smirked before he suddenly leapt forward and landed half on me and half on the bed. I giggled and looked up at his gorgeous face, his hair slightly rumpled from sleep.

“I’ve scored plenty of girls in my time, thank you very much. Hell, last night I slept with this ridiculously hot pop star and made her call out to God about nine times.”

“Ooh, you’re so cool. But maybe she was faking,” I teased him.

He shook his head, his eyes locked with mine. “She wasn’t.”

“You’re sure?”

He nodded. “Yeah, in fact, I can make her do it again, just to prove to you that I’m right.”

“Well, in the name of science, I don’t think you have another option outside of proving me wrong. I’d say go for it.”

His hands smoothed my hair back from my face as he lowered his lips to mine, kissing me deeply for a few minutes. Then his lips drifted down my cheek to my ear where he sucked on my lobe for a few seconds as his hand came up to cup my naked breast. He squeezed and pinched my nipple, setting my nerve endings on high alert. Without conscious thought, I reacted to his touch, curling into him and letting my head fall back as I moaned. I loved that I could let go with Ryder and not feel self-conscious about it.

I’d never told him – mostly because I knew he would have gone ballistic – but
I found out a few weeks after we’d broken up that the first guy I’d slept with, Sam Douglas, a notorious music world bad boy, had openly shared some of the more intimate details of our three week relationship that made me regret ever saying hello to him. After that I’d always been afraid to let go with anyone else I slept with, because the guys I dated were egotistical assholes, and I was so afraid they’d brag about sweet, young Sydney Chase getting all crazy between the sheets. Those were the last things I needed being said about me.

Ryder was the first guy I’d trusted not to do that. I knew whatever happened between us wouldn’t ever leave the bedroom. He wouldn’t even tell Jake. And that just reconfirmed my thoughts that he was the most wonderful guy I’d ever known.

“Challenge accepted,” Ryder said softly, as he chuckled against my neck, his breath warm, his voice reverberating against my skin. Then he started to kiss his way south, his lips taking care to kiss and suck and lick almost every inch of my body as he made his way lower and lower.

I was instantly glad I hadn’t put clothes on the night before when his head dipped between my thighs and his tongue met my most sensitive area.

“Oh God!” I cried out, and he chuckled against me.

“That’s one,” he said, so I smacked his head.

He looked up at me. “You want me to stop?” he asked, but I knew he wasn’t really serious. He was just bating me.

“Hell no,” I said, putting my hands over my head to brace myself as he slid a finger inside me and started moving it rhythmically, slowly driving me absolutely mad. “I think you proved me wrong.
” It came out breathless. “Please, carry on.”

He smiled and lowered his head again, making me cry out again and again until I lost control completely and called out his name in one loud outburst, my hands pressing the headboard as hard as I could, my toes curling involuntarily as wave after wave washed over me in sweet ecstasy.

Ryder pressed one kiss to the inside of my thigh before he slid off the bed, leaving me there to ride out the high I was feeling.

“Where are you going?” I asked
when I saw him walking away.

He smirked at me over his shoulder. “Follow me if you want to find out.”

Oh damn. When did he get so sexy? Seriously!

Giving myself a few minutes to come back to earth, I
finally slid out of bed and followed where he’d gone into the bathroom only to find him back in the hot tub, the water bubbling around him, his head leaned back against the tile. I noticed he’d closed the blinds, blocking out most of the morning sunlight from the room and essentially bathing us in complete privacy.

“Found you,” I said, as I leaned against the doorway to the room.

His eyes opened to look at me, drinking me in for a few seconds. “Care to join me?”

I smiled. “If you insist.”

He shrugged. “We only have about thirty minutes until you have to be up, so I figure we’ll make the most of them.”

“I’m already up,” I reminded him.

“Thanks to me.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “When I called last night to ask for a wake-up call, I was informed that you’d already requested one for nine. I changed it to eight, because I wanted us to have some time.”

“Yo
u really are a smarty-pants. I love the way you think,” I said, smiling as I started to walk toward him.

As I stepped into the water, I took note of the condom wrapper lying on the tile behind his head. He’d thought of everything.

“I just know that in a few hours, I’m not going to get to touch you the way I want to, so I figure the only way I’ll be able to get through is by wearing us both out so I’m not tempted.”

“I’ll still be tempted,” I told him, knowing it was true.

“Yeah, me too,” he said, grinning at me.

Just liked I’d done the night before,
I slid over his lap, my knees on either side of his legs, and he pulled me closer so our bodies were flush against each other. I let my hair fall around his face like a curtain, closing off everything around us as he kissed me, slow and languid, his lips moving in time with mine, slowly seducing me with such a simple yet erotic gesture. I felt his hands run up my wet back as the bubbles around us splashed and sprayed, and I sunk down onto him so close that he was practically inside me.

He pulled back from the kiss and looked up at me. “Good morning,” he said softly.

“Best morning I’ve had in years,” I told him. “Although it would have been better if you’d been in bed with me.”

“Sorry about that. I
was up at seven-thirty, and I couldn’t sleep. Had we been at your house, I would have made breakfast, but here all I could do was order room service. I hope you’re hungry for pancakes.”

I smiled. “I’m starving.”

He grinned back at me. “Well, as soon as you want them, they’re in the kitchen.”

I leaned forward and kissed him. “I want you first.”

“Ah, I was hoping you’d say that.”

He nodded and brought his hand to the back of my head, kissing me softly again.
Reaching my hand blindly, I felt along the tile for the condom and pulled it down under the water. Still kissing Ryder with everything in me, I slid back enough to give myself room to open the condom and slide it over the hardness that had been pressing against me in such a sweet and agonizing way. We only had so much time left, and I was going to make the most of it.

* * *

Another ride to a new city, an interview with a magazine, two fan meet-and-greets, another show that was incredible, and the end of another long day, but what made this one different than any of the others was that I’d gotten to share it all with Ryder. And because of his sheer proximity the whole day, I couldn’t keep the smile off of my face. A part of me was fearful that everyone around me would know exactly what was going on between us, but if they did, they didn’t say anything.

Even my styling team was relatively quiet, even though I knew they suspected something. I wasn’t giving anything away, and neither was Ryder as he sat on my couch reading his textbook while I got ready for the different activities lined up for me throughout the day. The drive
up to New York had been relatively short, but I’d been busy since we’d arrived, and Ryder had alternated between watching me in action and reading for his classes. He’d broken out a textbook for his other class, Agriculture and Natural Resource Law, halfway through the day and had starting reading that for a while.