Hollywood Love: Book 7: A sexy celebrity romance (Hollywood Billionaires) Page 6
Then I look into her eyes and know that time doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter that we’ve only been together for a short time.
When you know it, you know it.
“I love you,” I say.
“Now you're really going to make me cry,” she says, smiling through her tears. “I love you too.”
“I love you three! Harlow yells, running over and hugging both our legs.
“And I love you four,” Ava adds, wrapping her arms around Vanessa.
Vanessa hugs her back tightly, tears now freely streaming down her face.
I usually hate to see tears.
With Whitney, tears were a bad thing.
The start of another bout of depression.
But these tears seem cleansing.
Freeing.
After we tuck the girls into bed, I take Vanessa's hand and lead her out to the pool.
I stand in front of her. “Take your clothes off.”
She looks surprised by this.
And normally, I’d want to undress her, but not now.
She needs this.
“Um,” she says, looking puzzled.
“I’m taking my clothes off,” I say as I strip them off and throw them into a chaise. “Get naked with me.”
Her eyes trail hungrily down my body. I love the desire I see in them, but that's not what this is about.
If it were, I'd have her stripped and pinned under me in about two seconds flat.
I walk down the steps and into the pool, the water the perfect soothing temperature.
She takes her clothes off and joins me in the center.
“I don't like being told what to do,” she says softly.
“I know you don't, but sometimes you need it.” I give her a long, sweet kiss. Then I hold her shoulders, keeping her away from me. “You're naked,” I state.
“Yeah, I am,” she flirts.
“That means right here, in this pool, it's just us. Naked.”
“You've said the word naked like four times. I get it. We’re naked.”
“We are physically, but I want you naked emotionally.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me what happened. Why opening that playroom door hurt so bad. And why do you have a room like that?”
She takes a breath and slumps her shoulders, her body defeated.
I touch her face. “Tell me.”
“I was pregnant. Almost four months along. I was happy. Bam was happy. We’d told everyone we knew. He wanted to start decorating the nursery, but I was afraid to. I’d had two other miscarriages. But they happened during the first trimester and once I got past that point, and got to see an ultrasound, I really got excited. I still was afraid to decorate the nursery, so I decided to do a playroom instead. I told myself when our friends with children visited, they would have a place to play. But, really, I was doing it for our future children. I bought all the stuff in the playroom. A few weeks later, I let myself start dreaming and thinking of names.”
She starts tapping her foot.
I can tell this is the hard part.
“I started, um, losing the baby. Bam was out, supposedly at a business meeting. I called him when I was going to the hospital. He showed up about four hours later, after it was over, and I took one look at him and knew that he'd been cheating on me. There had been signs before, but he always reassured me. He said that I was silly and he loved me. Things would be amazing for a while. He could be amazing and attentive. He made me feel like a real life princess. Jewels the size of rocks, planes, yachts, traveling around the world, box seats, champagne. Whatever his heart desired. When you're little, you hear fairytales about princes and happily ever afters, but what you don't hear is that the prince is a spoiled brat who throws jewels and furs at you because he feels guilty for screwing around.”
She keeps going, barely taking a breath. It’s just rolling out of her.
“He admitted it that night. Said he loved me but that he's not a one-woman man. He tried to get me to understand that it should be okay. That the girls he did—and apparently there were many—meant nothing to him. That he loved me. I told him to get out. That I never wanted to see him again. The next day, as soon as I was released from the hospital, I filed divorce papers. I was on a mission. It drove me through the grief of losing the baby and the marriage.”
I run my hands across her shoulders. My heart breaking for her.
“I shut my emotions off. Never cried. Never opened that door to the playroom . . .” She's been lost in her story, but she stops and looks into my eyes. “I haven't opened the playroom door since that day. Until tonight. It was so . . . freeing.”
“I love you, Vanessa,” I tell her. “And I swear I will never, ever cheat on you.”
“I know you won’t,” she says. “In the office the other day, I almost told you I loved you. I wasn’t even thinking, it just came out. But I stopped myself because it seemed too soon.”
“Vanessa, it’s never too soon to tell someone how you feel.”
“When you rightly wanted to spend time alone with your girls, it hurt me. More than it should have. And I felt stupid for letting you into my heart. I’ve been trying so hard to protect it.”
I run my hands down the sides of her arms then entwine my hands with hers.
“We both have painful pasts. That’s what this is about, letting go and opening up your heart to me. Telling me what you want. What you need.”
“I want you to know what I need. I don’t want to have to tell you,” she says.
I pick her up and move us closer to the side of the pool, kissing her the whole time.
Her eyes fill up with tears again.
“Don’t cry, baby. No more crying.” I slowly kiss her wet cheeks, then her neck, then her lips. Taking my time. Showing her that with each kiss I want nothing more than to do just that.
But then she wraps her legs around my waist and deepens our kiss, her tongue tantalizing me, her curves flattened against me, her voice whispering my name.
“Dawson,” she says.
And with one word, I know what she needs. It’s the same thing I suddenly need. To be inside her.
I move my hands under her ass, lifting her toward me and causing her back to press against the side of the pool, as I pull her on top of me.
She leans her head back exposing her neck, so I take the opportunity to slide my tongue up its length, then rest my lips against hers.
Our lips are touching but not moving.
We’re both perfectly still except for a gentle, occasional thrust of my hips.
I feel like I should come clean. Tell her the rest of my story. But it’s not the right time. Not when she’s clinging to me. Not when I finally feel the way I should feel.
Like I’m finally home.
Like I’m exactly where I belong.
She moves her lips against mine, kissing me slowly, then deepening the kiss while she grabs ahold of my ass.
I move faster, kissing her in time with my thrusts.
Until I can’t kiss her any more.
She puts her lips on my shoulder, biting down slightly as she sighs with pleasure, and I feel my own release.
Then we’re still again for a moment.
I bring my mouth to her ear and whisper to her. “You need me to take care of you and love you forever.”
“That’s exactly what I need,” she replies, as I pick her up, carry her out of the pool and through the patio doors to her master bedroom.
I’m going to make love to her.
Slowly. Sweetly.
All night long.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jillian is a USA TODAY bestselling author who writes fun romances with characters her readers fall in love with, from the boy next door in the That Boy trilogy to the daughter of a famous actress in The Keatyn Chronicles to a kick-ass young assassin in the Spy Girl series.
She lives in a small Florida beach town, is married to her college sweetheart, has two grown children, and two Labrador Retrievers named Cali and Camber. When she's not working, she likes to travel, paint, shop for shoes, watch football, and go to the beach.
Check out Jillian’s website for added content and to sign up for her newsletter.