Unable to breathe, unable to stand the tension, she shattered into a million pieces. Arching into her release, she embraced the waves of her orgasm.
He continued to kiss her as she came down from a state of ecstasy. When she finally focused, she kissed him back. Gripping his hair between her fingers and tugging him to her body, she focused on the sounds he made with his mouth.
“I need to be inside you.” He could do whatever he wanted, because this time she wanted more. She wanted it all and everything he had to offer because boring, vanilla Sterling was out for the night.
The words she wanted to say so desperately were on the tip of her tongue. Fuck me. But she couldn’t get them out.
He gripped her hair at the nape and tugged her head back, exposing her neck, gliding his tongue along her skin.
An overwhelming urge to push him back and straddle the sexy man who held her bubbled under her skin. This man made her feel things she thought were a myth. Maybe you just never found the right man. The right man should make you feel all these things.
Just as she reached for his body, the ring, ring, ring of her phone interrupted them. Again.
“Son of a gun,” Sterling whined. It was late. It could be an emergency. “I have to get this.”
Jack let out a heavy breath and his head fell forward. She crawled to the other end of the limo to grab her phone. Surprised at her comfort level, her naked body revealed, as if a stranger in her own skin. A more outgoing stranger.
She had expected to see Penn’s name displayed across the screen, but when she glanced at the brightly lit area, a strange number stared back at her. She sighed and hit the talk button.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Andrews. We’re calling about some suspicious activity on your credit card. Do you have a few moments?”
That light feeling that fluttered in her stomach turned to lead. This call could only mean one thing. The moment she had been dreading for the last five years.
She looked over her shoulder at Jack, who still had that come-hither look on his face. How the hell was she going to tell him that their night had just been trumped by a credit card?
Chapter Four
Sterling stormed inside the small Tudor-style home without knocking. She didn’t have to—her name was on the mortgage. “Mom? Dad?” she called from the front hallway.
They had just interrupted her life—again. And at the worst possible time. She had been mortified at having to rush off. Jack seemed understanding, but she had remained tight-lipped and didn’t go into details about the situation.
“We’re in the kitchen.” Her mother’s voice carried from the back of the house.
Sterling kicked off her shoes and padded through the hallway, past the family room on her right and the pine staircase that led to the second floor on her left.
When she entered, her mother scrambled to clean up a mess of papers on the kitchen table. “Sterling, honey, we didn’t expect you tonight.” Her mother spit out her words in flustered huffs of breath.
Her father sat at the head of the table playing solitaire; his hair was cut close to his scalp, predominantly dark but graying at the sides. He hadn’t even acknowledged her arrival.
“I was just in the area. The girls out?” she asked, directing the question to her mother. Her younger twin sisters, Surrey and Sidney—named after the last two cities they’d lived in—had been a surprise as well. In their junior year of high school, they were part of the reason she felt obligated to support her family. She wouldn’t wish her childhood on anyone, and if she had the means to provide her sisters with a stable and supportive environment, she’d do it.
“Of course,” her father said. “They party too much. Just like you did.”
She shook her head. She had never partied a day in her life. How soon he forgot that her late nights were spent working at movie theaters and fast-food restaurants. She wanted to believe that inside, under his prickly demeanor, he was a loving man. But she knew better.
John and Leslie Andrews were high school sweethearts. Hippies who never grew out of the lifestyle. During her childhood they had moved Sterling from province to province. She’d never had the chance to make lasting friendships, never went to a school dance, never even kissed a boy until she had moved out on her own.
It’d been a long time since she’d felt anything but obligation toward her parents. Call it the residual effects of being related to addicts. They were constantly trying to worm their way around the truth, spinning it to their advantage. Over the years, she’d learned to deal with their games. She didn’t want to stay here any longer than she had to, but first she needed the truth. And since they weren’t going to offer it up willingly…