The Apartment: The Complete Affair (63 page)

“Well, you’re the one who climbed in here to relax. How can you relax if it’s torture?”

“It’s the best kind of torture,” he whispered against her wet shoulder. “And it is relaxing. I just need to shift my focus a little—which is hard to do when you wiggle your ass like that.”

“Sorry,” she blushed. “I was just trying to get more comfortable.”

“No worries, I’m only teasing you.” He paused to grab his own glass and raise it out in front of her. “Now let’s have a toast, shall we?”

“A bathtub toast?”

“Of course! Bathtub toasts are the most sincere, didn’t you know that?”

“No, can’t say I did. I’m starting to think that you are making a lot of this stuff up as you go along.”

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful?” he chuckled. The vibrations his warm laughter caused against her back were instantly her new favorite sensation. “We can make it all up as we go along now. There are no rules or boundaries, just a clean slate.”

“Or a blank canvas,” she smiled.

“Even better!” He held his glass closer to hers. “To blank canvases.”

“To blank canvases,” Lily sighed.

The clink of their glasses echoed lightly through the room. After sipping quietly for a moment, Ethan could see that her eyes were starting to droop again. “Okay, give me that.” He took her glass before she could drop it, then sat up a little higher in the tub and reached for a sponge. “Let’s get you cleaned up before you pass out on me.”

He dipped the sponge down into the bubble bath, bringing it up to squeeze the warm suds over Lily’s shoulders. Scrubbing lightly at the charcoal smudges, he watched as her porcelain skin became clear again. At one point she accused him of paying extra special attention to the marks on her breasts, which he wholeheartedly denied, only to continue doing.

After everything was scrubbed properly multiple times, they both rinsed off and dried each other with enormous towels. Ethan sent her to bed while he blew out the candles and drained the tub, and when he slipped in next to her she was already fast asleep.

Pulling her to him in the dark, he wrapped his arms around her possessively and kissed the top of her head. Looking back on the day they had shared, Ethan wondered if it could have possibly been any more perfect.

Sleep claimed him moments later, and it was the most peaceful he’d had in years.

When Lily woke the next morning, it was to the sound of something being wheeled into the room. She opened her eyes to see Ethan looking groggy and disheveled, his already wild hair sticking up in different directions as he pushed a food cart toward the small table near the bed. He was wearing one of the hotel robes, and it had parted enough that she could make out a decent amount of bronze chest hair.

He looked positively delicious.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” He smiled down at her when he saw that she was awake. “I hope you don’t mind, but I ordered us some breakfast. I didn’t really feel like going out just yet.”

“Why would I mind?” she said around a yawn before sitting up to stretch her arms. “This way we can stay buried in our cozy sex cocoon until it’s time to check out.”

“I see we think alike,” he laughed. “Did you want to eat in bed or sit here at the table?”

“Table’s fine with me. I’m just going to run to the bathroom first.”

When Lily was finished she splashed some water on her face, trying to rid herself of the last remnants of sleep that made her eyelids feel puffy and heavy. Finding a matching robe hanging on the back of the door, she threw it on quickly and joined Ethan at the small breakfast table he’d arranged.

“You better watch out,” she teased. “I could get used to all of this spoiling.” She lifted the cover off her plate to find a large pile of eggs, bacon, sausage, and toast. “Mmm… yes, I could definitely get used to this.”

“Good,” he mumbled around a large forkful of food. When he’d swallowed, he reached over and grabbed her hand. “You need a little spoiling. I’m looking forward to spoiling you for the rest of my life.”

Lily ate in silence for a while, the only sign that she’d heard him showing in the pink hue of her cheeks. In reality, she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding in her chest at his words. She knew how she felt about him; there hadn’t been any doubt in her mind that she had found the one for her. But to hear her own thoughts of forever spoken back to her so easily—she thought her heart might explode right through her chest from the happiness.

The look she saw in his eyes when they finally met across the table mirrored her own. They didn’t speak any further about it after that, switching the topic to less important things. It was silently understood between them that they would be speaking of it again in the future, because they both knew that their futures now belonged to each other.

And in the same way, she knew without asking that he wouldn’t be returning to his family’s home when they went back to Aledo. His home was with her now.

When they finished breakfast they decided it would be a wonderful timesaver to shower together. Ethan told her to think of all the water they would be saving as well, and Lily was fully on board to do her part for the environment.

That is, until they began sudsing each other up under the hot spray.

For some reason, they lost track of the time they were supposed to be saving, and ended up wasting twice as much water than if they’d showered separately.

Ethan pulled her closer to him, allowing his hands to slip and slide along her flesh as he washed her. He scrubbed her hair as she did the same to him, and when he asked her to lower her head so that he could apply the conditioner, she dropped to her knees in front of him.

“Go ahead,” she purred, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. As soon as his hands began to spread the thick fluid through her hair, she took him deep into her mouth, bobbing up and down on his shaft, moaning loudly around him. He did his best to concentrate on the task at hand, nearly falling over more than once as she made him weak in the knees, and before long he was pulling her back to her feet frantically.

Positioning her under the spray, he told her to tip her head back so that she could rinse her hair. The moment she closed her eyes and leaned back, his hot mouth was everywhere. He began loudly slurping water from her slippery breasts, sucking each nipple between his teeth and biting lightly before dropping down and throwing one of her legs over his shoulder, sinking his tongue between her folds to lap at her moisture.

It was Lily’s turn to nearly fall over, reaching out to grab onto the tile for balance. Within what felt like seconds, she was teetering on the edge and wanting nothing more than to fall over the cliff together with him.

“Please,” she begged, dropping her leg to the side and tugging on his shoulders.

“Do you want me?” he whispered in her ear once he had slid his way back up her body. As he spoke, he was grabbing onto her waist and moving her, pushing her back against the side wall of the shower.

“Yes,” she groaned, loving the feeling of him pinning her there with his body. She could feel the heat of his erection rubbing against her, so very close to where she needed him most.

“Tell me,” he said through choppy breaths as he bit her earlobe. “Tell me that you want me.”

“I more than want you,” she gasped, feeling him sliding against her more fully. “I
need
you. I need you more than oxygen. I need you inside of me
now
.”

With that, he gripped her hips and lifted her legs around him, slipping inside her body.

They both cried out at the contact, words lost to them. He began to slowly move in and out of her, wrapping her legs around him tightly between his thrusts. Lily held him to her for dear life, loving the feel of his muscles rippling under her hands as he moved.

They were lost in each other for what felt like an eternity, and yet it didn’t last long enough before they were both careening into the abyss. Lily felt herself shattering into a million pieces around him, and through her euphoria she heard him groan his release, pumping his seed inside her as he thrust his hips rapidly.

They stood there for a moment after he slowly released her, gasping for air, staring into each other’s eyes as the now-cold water rained down around them.

“I need you, too,” he panted. “Always.” He kissed her roughly, sucking at the water dripping from her lips. “I never want to face a life without you again.”

“Never again, Ethan,” she whispered against his lips. Reaching up to brush the soaking hair out of his eyes, she kissed him tenderly before pulling back to look deeply into pools of jade framed by long, wet lashes. “We’ll never be apart again.”

“‘… And as the familiar strains of their waltz began, Evan pulled Lacey onto the floor for their first dance together as man and wife. He knew then, as he twirled her around the room before the eyes of God and his entire family, that their heated embrace on that long night so many months ago hadn’t been their last dance after all. It was only the first of many.’ The end.”

Maggie Foster looked up at the large crowd who had gathered in the bookstore in Chicago and smiled her most dazzling smile. “Thank you so much for coming to my reading of excerpts from my new release,
Our First Dance
. Before I get to the signing, does anyone have any questions?”

A large sea of hands flew up in the air, all fans wanting the chance to speak to their favorite romance author. However, in the back of the room, standing against a shelf of books with their arms crossed, were two people in a mild state of shock. Ethan Foster had a large scowl on his face, and his new wife Lily was shaking her head in disbelief, her mouth hanging wide open.

“Did you know?” he whispered loudly to her, trying to be heard over the many fans laughing excitedly over something Maggie had said in reply to a question.

“Of course not!” she gasped. “Don’t you think I would have said something? I’ve been asking her for months if I could read her manuscript, and she kept telling me it wasn’t ready yet.”

“Well, I think it’s safe to say that’s bullshit, since it has to have been with the publisher for months. Looks like I’m going to have to do some ass-kicking.”

“Now, now,” she patted his arm, trying to make him calm down. “It’s not like it was
exactly
the same. She just sort of took how we met… and a few other details here and there.”

“A
few
?”

“Yes, only a few. They were an important few, but still only a few. Besides, how did you not know anything about this? She used your waltz painting as the cover!”

“She asked me after she bought it if she could use it for her next cover. I never told you because I thought it would be a nice surprise, but I had no idea about all of this!”

“Well, that makes two of us, then,” Lily sighed.

“What a welcome home,” he grumbled.

The newlyweds had recently taken an extended honeymoon to New Zealand, renting out a flat in Wellington for a month. Ethan even secretly worked in a stopover in Australia as a surprise to his new bride. He had managed to complete a few new paintings (one in particular was headed to his private collection), and Lily had managed to do the sightseeing she had always dreamed of with her husband by her side.

They hadn’t even returned to their new home in Aledo yet, having flown straight into Chicago so that they could make it in time for Maggie’s reading. Despite buying a house, they hadn’t given up the tiny apartment where their relationship first began. They kept it for Ethan to use as a studio, at least until he finally got around to renovating the empty space above their new garage. Neither one of them could bear to part with it just yet.

Now, all of their bags were sitting unpacked in their hotel room. They had been late, and, not wanting to disrupt the reading, they hid in the back until they had a chance to move closer.

“I’m sorry, but that’s going to have to be the last question for now,” Maggie said to the many people with their hands still in the air. “I’m going to take a short break before the signing so that I can feed my little one before my boobs explode,” she laughed, gesturing to Eric, who stood behind her next to Emma and Brandon, bouncing a tiny girl in his arms with huge raven curls and even huger dimples. The crowd laughed at her candor and applauded loudly as she left the podium.

“That’s our cue,” Ethan said, watching as Maggie took the baby from Eric and disappeared into a private break room. He grabbed Lily’s hand, weaving through the large crowd of women forming a line at the side of the store.

Emma was the first to see them approaching. “Oh my God!” she yelled, running over to hug them both. “I was worried that you didn’t make it back in time!”

“It was quite a rush to get here,” Lily sighed.

“Well, at least you made it,” Emma said with a smile. “I didn’t even see you!”

“We were just hiding back there.” Ethan pointed towards the wall of books. His expression turned grim. “But we did make it in time for most of the reading.”

“Yeah… uh, about that,” she blushed. “I swear I didn’t know until it had already been sent to the publisher.”

“Don’t you think she should have asked us, Emma?” Ethan frowned. “Or at least
told
us?”

“Dude, you’re here five minutes and you’re already whining?” Eric interrupted, standing on their other side next to Brandon.

“Whining? Eric, that’s our life. Our
private
life. Don’t you think we should have been warned? Don’t you think she should have asked someone?”

“She did ask someone,” he answered, his tone becoming serious. “She asked me.”

“What do you mean?” Ethan was thrown off by Eric’s protective stance.

“She told me a long time ago that she thought how you two met was the stuff of romantic legends. She wanted so badly to use that as a beginning to one of her stories, but she was afraid if she asked, you would shoot it down before even hearing her out. Now, I know that you’re shocked right now, but if you take the time to read it over, you will see that there are really not that many similarities. I told her if she felt like she had to write it, then to go ahead and do it and stop worrying what you might think.” He sighed, scratching his hands through his short hair in a frustrated gesture. “It’s some of the best writing she’s ever done, and you two were her inspiration. Be proud of that.”