Stay for Me (8 page)

“Sam.
Sam
,” she said louder and more clearly the second time. “I do want
to see you get dressed. Please. It’s just…this room.” And then she went quiet.

Yeah, he could see where the room could
be intimidating at first.

Sam did his best military about-face. Barefooted,
he did the move pretty smoothly. But once he saw her face, the doubts came
back.

She hated this room.

His need to reassure her returned. “Hey,
you know you’re safe in here with me. I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to
you.” He wanted to say he’d never hurt her but knew he’d already done that in
the past. It would be a blatant lie and a big promise to make and then break
should things not work out again—should they even get that far.

She nodded and he took it to mean she
would try and put aside her aversion to these four dark walls and this one
chair.

Facing her now and knowing she wanted to
see this, he pulled the long-sleeve shirt on the rest of the way, tugged hard
at the two pointy tips of the collar, and then let the rest hang loose. She
watched him with an even face and a hint of blush he knew she’d never admit to.

Sam took one step forward, nudging his
legs so they met up with her knees. He pushed a little more and won the space
between her thighs. Even though he felt the elation of the win, he kept a
straight and serious face, one worthy of the proud soldier he’d been not so
long ago before turning erotic dancer. For a second, he wondered what his
father’s thoughts would be on the stint at the club. When he’d passed, he’d
only asked that Sam take care of Mom. Cancer hadn’t left Dad the time to write
out instructions on how exactly an eleven-year-old kid went about doing that.
Two years he’d tried and failed. Mom handled it by
not
handling it, which from experience, Sam knew never worked.
But this girl sitting right here in front of him.
Her
family…

“Doing okay?” he asked to take his mind
off the thoughts.

She nodded yes.
“You?”
Emma asked.

He nodded yes. “Good.” Were they just
lying to each other? Sometimes that’s what friends did to push each other
through.

Maybe she knew he was about to do this
next part, but the look on her face said maybe he’d managed to surprise her
when he took her two hands from the remainder of the pile and placed her palms
flat against his still bare chest. Now it was his turn to sound like a broken
record.

“Just trust me,” he said.

To his surprise and delight, they were clammy
as she let them settle there, warming him to the core. She must have felt her
own dampness. “Hey, it’s okay,” he whispered at the side of her cheek. “The
good girls always have sweaty hands.”

He’d just finished the thought that her
hands were stuck in place over his
pecs
when on her
own, Emma dragged them downward, causing the highest level of heat he’d ever
known to burn along underneath them, centimeter by slow centimeter. The lower
her fingers went, the closer the contact became, the harder and more turned-on
he got. He sucked in a breath and licked his lips, then grabbed her wrists.
Finally, he managed to choke out, “I need to button up. You’ll have to remove
these and put them in your lap, young lady.”

Button after excruciating button, he
sealed up her view of his chest and then clumsily he smoothed down the front of
the white shirt jacket made to resemble a naval officer’s dress uniform. He
started to go for the gloves. But she covered them with her hand. “Do these
last, please?”

“All right,” he said, hoping she heard
the ways he was desperately trying to remain tender and in control.

He donned the white head cover and then
nearly laughed. “I’d get so dinged for this in the real service.”

He looked down at his bare feet and then
back up at her. She smiled and bit the corner of her lip. Seeing that, his
mouth watered at first with relief, but then it was for something else.
A taste.

How long had it been since he’d had one?

Their last kiss had hung around in his
memory for a very long time, but after two years, he couldn’t recall if this
vision was a memory of the real thing or just the fantasy he’d made up.

“Ready for these?” she asked him, a tiny
hint of flirt in her words. He silently thanked God for that.

This time he was the one not to answer
and instead just nodded and leaned down, until he realized that hadn’t gotten
him close enough. Sam went down onto both knees and still had a few inches on
her. He tried not to be so turned on by how petite she was, but he couldn’t
lie, it was a definite turn-on and made him want to protect and shield her. With
their size difference having been their downfall before, he leaned in to her
face to hide the desire flaming on his. He couldn’t help but let out a nervous
chuckle. She apparently couldn’t help but swallow a couple times. “Emma, stop
me if I’m wrong about…any of this. This first,” he said, close enough to feel
his lips move against her throat with his words.

He then watched her eyes close.

He committed the beauty of it all to
memory, and then with his hands clasped and locked behind his back parade-rest
style to maintain a modicum of restraint, he let his lips brush against hers a
couple times. He shivered from his head to his toes.

Finally, after seeing how she’d gone to
sitting with her hands wedged under her thighs, he closed his eyes, too, and
opened his mouth enough to breathe her in. He knew his lips were bigger than
most dudes, and he got high on how good it felt to feel her breathing into them.
It felt like she enjoyed their fullness when she kissed him back and lingered
there a little longer than he’d expected. When she let her tongue slip out
before he had the chance to make that first move, he licked her, nearly dying,
and let their tongues touch for a couple unbelievable seconds. When her small
hand snaked up the side of his neck, he had to open his eyes to make sure he
wasn’t dreaming. It was real. Her fingers were petting the short hairs that had
grown since his last trip to the barber, and he was getting unbearably hard.

That’s when the neck massaging started.

Subtle but
dangerous.
He stopped her.

“Now, I’ll take those.” He stole her
hand from his neck, feeling his body’s pull to explore more of her and make his
way inside, and fighting it like hell. The chance was still there that he
wouldn’t fit. He’d only pumped up more since high school and his stint in the Army,
and she was still perfect and petite. She had to blink several times before
releasing the hands tucked under her thighs and handed him a glove.

Still on his knees, he pulled it on one
finger at a time, but it felt unnatural and clumsy. “You know, I just realized
this is way better when they’re coming off. Hold on.” He snatched up the other
glove and turned on his knees away from her. When he turned back around, he had
two white, glove-covered hands. There. After taking her chin in his gloved hand
and daringly stealing another kiss which she slowly melted into, he then went
about pulling them off one finger at a time.

Finally, at that, she smiled.

Inside, he did, too. There had been no
plan for this. It was just happening. And so far, it felt natural.
Right.
He prayed that didn’t change.

He had to ask. “Of all the things, why
do you like that so much?”

A full-on blush spread up from her neck.
“Your hands, Sam.
There’s just something about them.” He’d
bet underneath her shirt, her chest was where the rosy color had started. It
was now all over her face and she wiped at her cheeks like they’d been dusted.
“I know how hard you work with those hands. I could say it’s incredibly sexy,
and it is. But it’s more than that. You know?”

“Mm-hmm,” was all he could get
out.
With his heart thudding in his chest, he’d never felt
more touched at his best friend’s words. This was the most genuine thing anyone
had ever said to him. He realized then that the top ten genuine things said to
him had all come from this girl’s lips.

“Emma, do you understand why you’re here
with me?”

“I think so.”

“Well, I need you to be sure what this
is about. Tell me if you are.”

Maybe she was about to say yes. Maybe it
would be a no.

He got up and walked over to the door
which he tested. It wasn’t locked. This time, he needed it that way in case Gabe
had to pop in with another warning.

Her eyes watched him like a hawk—one
that wasn’t completely convinced. When he walked back toward her without having
locked the door, she gave him that look like he’d forgotten something even a
first-grader would have known to do.

But then it must have dawned on her, and
together they again named their mutual lookout. “Gabe.”

He took her hand in his and squeezed it
tight. “This is about trust and the night I lost it where you’re concerned. If
I can’t earn it back, tell me now and
we
both walk out
of here.
Friends and nothing more.”

“And the other option?” she asked him.

“We stay. You stay for me, and I stay
for you.” He kissed the top of her head and said the rest into her hair. “In
this room, right now, we stay for each other, no matter what.”

The way her body went from having fallen
into his so soft and supple to sudden stiffness, he wondered why exactly that
was. She would run the club someday. And he sure as hell wouldn’t have her
working in a place where one damned room brought her so much anxiety and grief.
It was why he was so insistent on making this impromptu meeting in here work,
so all the hurt would be blanked out for good.

“Stay for me?” he asked her one last
time.

Chapter Seven

Fifteen minutes into their session and
Sam’s clothes littered the floor. Emma glanced for the umpteenth time at the
wall clock and mentally excused their messiness. Time ticked and ticked. He sat
there, waiting, letting her make the first moves.

She kneeled and watched his teeth come
out on display as he tugged in on his lower lip.

They were doing this, right? It’s what
they both needed.
Closure?
New
memories?
A proper send-off?
She nearly got
dizzy.

Sweat glistened off the massive muscles
of his chest when she looked up from her new and very foreign place on the
floor. Her knees could have used some extra padding but the discomfort was
second to what she just decided would happen. The words echoed in her head.
Stay for him
.
Trust each other.

"You want me to touch you,
Sam?" She would, happily. At this point she was dying to have more,
continue this once-forbidden play with the best friend she'd always loved.

He guided her hand that he held up to
his lips and kissed her fingers, then let it go loosely as if he was letting
her go to make the next decision on her own.

"I want you to touch me with your
mouth, Emma.
If you want to."

Emma wanted to, so badly, and now,
seeing him at the point of pleasure and pain, she had what she needed to go
through with it. She blew out a breath. His chiseled abs tensed and she prepared
to take her best friend into her mouth.

Fighting the inability of her jaw to
expand wide enough, she rubbed her hands up his naked and equally muscled thighs
and squeezed. “I want this,” she said, feeling she needed to state it out loud
before he inevitably questioned her.

“Are you sure, Emma?” He groaned that
last bit out through a tight jaw, even tighter abs, and a deep, rumbling voice
that had several moans lined up to leave her throat. “You don’t have to.”

He seemed to sense the “but” she didn’t
add and looked at her with that serious, captivating darkness of his. Emma
ignored the doubt in his eyes and let her lips fall down until they met the thick
head of his penis. He sucked in air and a hiss. His abs tightened. She willed her
mouth to fit him inside.

She let her tongue explore him. The
second her tongue found his sensitive underside, shivers cooled her body. His body
shuddered in response. The telling action boosted her confidence. But as she
tried to take more, she found it embarrassingly harder than she’d thought and
resorted to more tongue probing and kisses along his shaft. The butterflies in
her belly became less about the thrill of this long-awaited intimacy and more
about her inadequacy. She looked up and his eyes came open again.

The look on his face wasn’t right. Was
her time up? Had he tired of her fumbling attempt?

She’d already pleaded with him to stop
the sweet kisses along her neck, the explorative hand and fingers that had
travelled up her spine and back down to tenderly take of her bottom. She’d
asked him to give her the chance to go first. To find something he liked that
she could be good at. He’d agreed after several clever pouts and glances at his
erection. And now here they were, with her failing miserably.