Stripped (29 page)

And so am I.

“Are you mad?” he whispers to me, his voice in my ear, low and intimate.

I let him press me up against the door, and I plant a soft kiss to his jaw. “No, I’m not mad,” I whisper. “Surprised. I was starting to wonder if you were ever—”

“I wanted it to be something you’ll never forget.”

“I don’t think there’s ever been a proposal like it.” I giggle as his mouth descends to my neck, to the hollow of my throat, and then down to my cleavage. I stop him there, though. “Not here.”

“No?” He glances around us, to the bustle at the entrances to the stage, the black-clad stagehands scurrying back and forth, quiet whispers in headsets. We’re isolated here, but still visible.
 

I shake my head. “No. Too public.” His mouth doesn’t leave my skin, and I have to wrench myself out of his grip, laughing. “Come on, Dawson. Not here. Take me somewhere more private, and you can do whatever you want to me.”

“Whatever I want?” There’s a dark edge to his voice.
 

I take the dare. “Whatever you want.”

He kisses the slope of my cleavage once more and then straightens, tugging his suit coat back into place and fixing his tie. I adjust my dress, shifting my breasts and pushing at the loose strands of my hair. When we’re both presentable, he leads me out and back into the foyer area, which is bustling with reporters and men and women with cameras and microphones. We’re assaulted immediately by a flood of lightbulb flashes and questions. I hold on to Dawson and smile, let them see the ring, and try not to panic. These situations always make me a little crazy, and it’s usually all I can do to stay calm and let Dawson do the talking. If it was just me, I’d freak out and try to run, but Dawson is always calm and in control.
 

And then someone asks me a direct question. “Grey, over here, Grey. Were you surprised by Dawson’s proposal? Did you feel pressured to say yes because it was so public?”

Dawson starts to answer, but stops when he sees I’m answering. “Was I surprised? Yeah, clearly. I mean, you saw my reaction. Did I feel pressured? No, not at all. I knew he was going to ask me—I just wasn’t expecting it to be in the middle of the Academy Awards.” I laugh at that, and the crowd of reporters laughs with me. “I said yes because I love him and I want to marry him. There was no pressure at all. Except, I mean, having millions of people watch you in a situation like that is always scary.”

And then Dawson is shutting down the questions and pulling me into a walk to our waiting limousine. Greg is behind the wheel, and I don’t even know how Greg knew to pick us up, but he’s here, and I’m sliding in across the seat as gracefully as it’s possible to get into a low-slung limousine in an evening gown.
 

It’s a quiet ride through L.A. Dawson’s hand is on my leg, our fingers tangled together. I halfway expect him to make his move in the limo, but he doesn’t. I’m tense, wondering what he’s going to do to me, but it’s an excited tension. I want him. I wanted to let him take me backstage, but I’m not brave enough for that kind of public display. The proposal was public enough.

Dawson rummages in a console, finds a cord of some kind, and plugs it into his phone, then pushes a few buttons in the console. After a moment, music comes over the speakers. I laugh when I hear the song: “Marry Me” by Train.
 

“Really? Cute, Dawson.”

“Originally, I was just going to play this song while we were driving around, and I was going to pull over and propose in the car. But then I realized that just wasn’t anywhere near good enough. You deserve everything. The whole world. Certainly you deserve a show-stopping proposal.” He lifts my left hand and examines the ring. “It was a risk doing it that publicly. I wasn’t sure how you’d react. I mean, I was 99.9 percent sure you’d say yes, but—”

“You’re a public person,” I say. “So if I wasn’t willing to be seen by the whole world, I wouldn’t be with you. It was scary, but…I think a cliché proposal at a fancy restaurant just wouldn’t have been you.”

“You mean the whole ring at the bottom of a glass of champagne thing?” I laugh, and he shrugs, seeming almost embarrassed. “I almost did that, too, actually. I’ve spent so many months trying to figure out the best way to ask you that it turned into this whole snowball thing. I was freaking out. No lie. Then when I got the Best Actor nom, I knew that was it. I just wasn’t sure if you’d, like, pass out or something.”

I laugh, remembering all too vividly how close I came. “I nearly fell over!”

His gaze turns to mine. “I’ll never let you fall.”

“I know.”
 

He kisses me then, and, as always, I get lost in it, tumble willingly into the bliss of his mouth on mine.

And then we’re under the arch and Greg is opening the door for us. Dawson sweeps me off my feet, into his arms, and Greg trots ahead to unlock the door and let us in, but he doesn’t follow us. I hear the door close and the limo driving away. My heart is pounding again, because he’s staring at me with moss-and-bark eyes, hot, hungry eyes. He carries me through the house, to the door that leads to his—our—garage. I hold still and wonder, wait.
 

He licks his lips as we pass car after car. Old, new, shiny, battered, in various stages of completion. We come to the end, the Bugatti. The mirrored finish reflects the soft white glow of the overhead lights, and our shapes as we approach. He sets me down on my feet at the hood end of the car. I stare up at him, waiting and expectant.

I’ve learned him, over the past year. He’s never satisfied, never sated. He always wants me. He wants me seconds after he finishes inside me. He wants me in his sleep, in the shower, in his study, on the set.
 

And he’s had me in most of those places. Including the set of Tara, during filming of
Gone With the Wind
. He brought me there late one night, to the front porch of the full-size plantation house built in the countryside near Atlanta. He took me right there on the porch, lying on a blanket he’d brought with him, stars shining and frogs singing in the warm fall night.

I went on birth control while we were in Macon, and I’ve come to love the feeling of him bare inside me, nothing between us.
 

“Anything?” he asks again.

I don’t hesitate. “Anything.”
 

There’s only one thing we haven’t done. I’m still not comfortable with any of the normal terms for things, and Dawson thinks my clean and proper speech is cute. I’m willing to let him do that, but I’m not sure he’d bring me to the garage for it.
 

He smiles, a predatory, erotic gleam in his eyes. He brushes a strand of hair away from my eyes, and then his hands glide over my shoulders, around to my back. I’m wearing a Givenchy Couture gown that Dawson surprised me with for tonight’s appearance. It’s both modest and sultry, showing off my curves while not revealing too much skin. Since I stopped stripping, I’ve found my own style, a meeting of sexiness and taste. I’m gradually finding out who I am.

I’m Grey Amundsen, and I am desired.

His hands go to the zipper between my shoulder blades and pull it down so slowly, I shiver as his knuckles brush my skin between the widening gap. He slides the thin straps off my shoulders with a flick of his hands, and the dress billows with a soft
whoosh
to the floor, pooling at my feet in a slowly settling pile of lace and chiffon.
My surprise for Dawson is revealed: I’m not wearing anything under the dress. His breath leaves him in a slow sigh, and he gnaws on his upper lip as he drinks in my body.
 

Instead of touching me, he backs away, turning at the last second to face the wall where a built-in iPhone dock is located. Those speaker docks are in every room of the house, including the bathroom. He sets his phone on the dock, scrolls through his songs until he finds the one he wants. A fast electronic beat fills the garage, and I immediately recognize the song. It’s “Palladio” by Silent Nick, one of Dawson’s favorite songs to work out to, and one of my favorite songs to dance to. He approaches me with a sway to his hips, a bounce in his step. Of course, he can dance. He can do pretty much anything.
 

He takes my bare hips in his hands and moves my body with his, a sensual writhing of our bodies to the music. In rhythm to the music, I reach up and pull his slim black necktie free, drape it around my neck, and then slide his coat off. I slip his buttons free, one by one, popping them loose to the beat as we dance together, and then toss the shirt to the floor on top of his coat. As we move, his hands slide up my sides, hold my ribs just beneath my swaying breasts. His eyes lock there, so I accentuate the movement of my upper body, making them jiggle and sway even more, and his lips curve in a smile. I unbuckle his belt, whip it free of his pants, toss it aside, far from the car, and then slowly work his pants open. His body ripples in time to the music, his sculpted abs shifting and tensing as he dances with me, cupping my backside, tangling his fingers in my hair, tracing the curve of my belly to hips. I let his dress slacks fall to the floor, and he steps out of them.
 

He’s in nothing but his boxer-briefs, dark maroon cotton molded to his taut backside, bulging where his manhood strains at the cotton. There’s a dot of moisture where his tip touches the fabric. I run my fingers around the gray elastic waistband, gradually working it down his hips to the beat of the music, swaying my hips, shaking my cleavage at him, leaning in to steal a quick kiss, and then I grow impatient and shove the underwear off him and he steps free, kicking it away.
 

And now we’re both naked in the garage, dancing, our bodies reflected in the mirror-finish of his Bugatti, his darker skin blending with mine. The song has shifted, another entrancing, quick-beat house song. We keep swaying, keep dancing, our bodies closer. My breasts brush his chest, and he dips at the knees to take a nipple in his mouth. I gasp, and he suckles until my knees flex, and then he’s back upright, dancing chest to chest with me. His hand steals between our bodies and I shift my legs apart to let him in. By the song’s end my cheek is pressed to his and I’m panting as we sway together, losing the rhythm as I come apart under his touch.

Dawson turns me in his arms as I come. He’s still moving to the music and all I can do is let him hold me as waves shock through me. He leans me forward over the hood of the car, his erection hard against my backside. I’m anticipating him inside me, but I’m still not sure what his plan is.
 

“I’ve wanted to do this since the first day I met you,” he growls in my ear.

“Do what?”

“Make love to you on the hood of this car.” My body is pressed to the cold surface of the hood. “Open your eyes,” he commands. “Look at us. Watch us.”

This close, our reflections aren’t distorted. My breath has fogged the mirrored surface where my cheek was pressed to the metal, but I can see him behind me, all brawny bulk, ripped stomach and massive shoulders and thick arms, and my breath is lost as it always is by how perfect he is. I see me, my face, my cheeks flushed red, my hair coming loose from the up-do Luisa, my stylist, put it in. Thick strands flutter around my cheeks and mouth. My eyes are wide and my neck is curved as I watch us, and the reflection of my breasts merging with my flesh as I’m bent over the hood.

His hands are on my shoulders, and his eyes meet mine in the reflection. He caresses my back, my spine, my shoulders, my ribs, my hips. He settles his grip on my hips and pulls me hard against him, and I can’t help grinding into him, needing him inside me now. I need it. I’m as insatiable as he is. I never take the lead, though, not until we’re in the moment together. When I feel him close to release, that’s when I take over and bring him to climax. Otherwise, I let him take me as he will, let him decide how he wants me. I love the mystery of it, because he’s always inventive and creative and always thinks of my pleasure before his. He’s never come before me, unless I use my mouth on him. So now I’m still, and waiting. But I need it, so badly, and that little grinding roll of my hips is my way of telling him to hurry.
 

He lets go of my hips and takes the generous bubble of my bottom in both hands, and then his finger, the middle finger of his right hand, slips into the crease and finds my rear entrance. I shiver and gasp and shake, sure of what he’s going to do now, and not entirely sure I’m ready for it. I want it, I do, but I’m not sure I’m ready.

His finger glides over me, back there, and I flinch. “I want you, here.”

“Now?” I gasp the question.

“No, baby. Not yet. You’re not ready.” Even as he says this, his finger presses, just slightly, the gentlest application of pressure.

“I’m not?”

“No.” He chuckles, but then quickly sobers, and his eyes narrow. “You sound…almost disappointed. You want that?”

A little more pressure, and I’m trying not to squirm away, but the pressure is gentle and relentless, and now there’s an ever so slight intrusion, and I’m breathless. “I’m…oh…
god
…I’m curious.”

“You’ll love it. I know you will. You’re so perfect, so sensual. So responsive.”

“I’m loud.” A little more, and those two words are all I can manage. I can’t believe I’m letting him do this, but then, yes, I can, because I love anything and everything to do with him, and I trust him. And it feels…so good.

“I love that about you. I love that I can make you scream. It’s a game I play with myself. To see how loud I can make you scream. When I fuck you in your ass, I might have to do it somewhere far from people, because baby, you’re going to
scream
.”

I moan as the intrusion becomes presence, and my hips push back, just a little, of their own accord. My eyes are closed, and I feel his other hand find my cleft and my clitoris, and I’m unable to stop the small shriek of ecstasy as he brings me to climax again. I’m out of patience now. I lift up on my toes and rub my folds against his hardness, begging him silently.
 

He slowly and gently withdraws his finger. “Are you ready, babe?” His voice is silk sliding over me, his mouth against my ear, his chest against my back.