Chapter Fourteen

It took longer than they wanted to finish out their duties for the evening, but eventually they were able to hand over their crowns and slink out of the dance unnoticed. There was a rush of adrenaline surging through Ivy’s veins as they slipped into his Corvette and peeled out of the parking lot. She felt seventeen again, her stomach aflutter with nerves about giving herself to Blake for the first time.

That night had been romantic and wonderful. She didn’t expect the same from tonight—they weren’t blissfully in teenage love like they had been then. Still, she hoped it would be an occasion to remember for all the right reasons.

If she’d thought kissing Blake was a bad idea a few days ago, going to his house with the intention of having sex with him was a horrible plan. But so much had changed since she came home, she couldn’t help herself. Obviously this wouldn’t turn into anything serious, but there was something cathartic in their reunion. The two of them making up and making love felt like it would somehow heal their old wounds.

Even hearing him say the things he’d said tonight had done a lot to help her put those past hurts behind her. Even after they’d apologized for what they’d both done, the doubts that Lydia planted in her head back in school had always bothered her on some level. Blake thought she was good enough. She had to believe he meant that.

She also had to believe that nothing had really happened between him and Lydia. It had taken time for her to get back to that mental place, but it made more sense. She’d watched Lydia chase him all through school without success. Blake had never been interested in her, even before he asked Ivy out. If at any point he’d wanted Lydia, he could’ve dropped Ivy and had her in a second. But he hadn’t. From the way he spoke about her now, nothing seemed to have changed.

“So, I thought you still lived in Rosewood,” Ivy said after they’d been driving for quite some time.

“I do. We’re almost there.”

They turned off the highway onto a dirt road that meandered through the trees. They rounded a corner and crossed a small bridge that spanned a creek before they came to a large clearing in the woods.

Blake’s house was exactly what Ivy would’ve expected but nothing like she could’ve imagined. It was rustic in style, with clean, contemporary lines. It was two stories high with a large, sloped A-frame roof on one end and floor-to-ceiling windows.

They pulled around the back and Blake hit the button to open one of the four garage doors that lined that side of the house. Inside, the garage was large and immaculate with white linoleum floors, white walls, and bright lights. His truck was parked in the far bay, with his boat and his two dirt bikes parked in between.

Blake helped Ivy out of the car and walked her to the door. It opened into the large open space of his great room.

Ivy walked in, a little stunned by the beauty of his home. It was as though someone had taken every bit of his personality and shaped it into a house.

The two-story-high ceiling of the kitchen had skylights on the sloped roof that came down and fanned out to the more intimate dining room. The near wall was entirely covered in stone with a professional grade stove carved into it. The kitchen island was made of distressed ebony cabinetry and a shiny black granite countertop. There were arched exposed beams overhead and worn, reclaimed wood floors underfoot.

“Do you like it?” he asked as he tugged at his bow tie and slipped out of his tailcoat. “It used to be an old mill. I had it pretty much gutted and redone, although I tried to reuse as much of the original material as I could. All the stone and beams are untouched. And the floors.”

Ivy wandered into the living room. There was a massive fireplace and plush leather couches that invited sitting and watching football on the wide-screen television mounted above it. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anyplace like it. It must’ve cost you a fortune.”

“Well,” Blake said with a shrug, “real estate is cheaper out here than it is in California. Still, I put a lot into it to get it just right. I wanted a place to live out the rest of my life, and this is it.”

Ivy walked over to a pair of French doors that opened out onto a deck. Blake followed her and opened the doors up. “Go on outside. I’ll get us a drink and meet you out there.”

Blake returned to the kitchen as Ivy stepped outside. It was cool in the woods, but not uncomfortable. The deck was large and partially covered with a set of furniture for gatherings and an outdoor kitchen. There was another fireplace near the seating area, which roared to life as she got close to it. Ivy leaped back, turning when she heard Blake laugh.

“Sorry. It’s gas. I flipped the switch as I stepped out,” he said, offering her a glass of white wine.

Ivy took a large sip to calm her nerves and walked over to the railing. The property sloped down a little where the creek flowed by. She looked out into the woods, but couldn’t spy a single light in the distance. “Got any neighbors?” she asked.

Blake leaned on the railing beside her and shook his head. “Not really. I bought twenty acres and my nearest neighbor owns fifty, so I’ve never even seen the guy.”

“That’s nice,” Ivy said. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have enough space to breathe. Sometimes it feels like I’m never truly alone. There’s always someone around, someone watching.”

“Have you ever . . . considered getting a place a little farther from the rat race of LA and Manhattan?”

Ivy turned to him with a smirk curling her lips. “You mean like moving back here?”

He shrugged and sipped his wine. “I know California and New York are where you conduct a lot of business, but there’s nothing that says you can’t have a place to go that’s away from all that. Where you could have some real downtime, be that here or a mountain house in Tennessee or a chalet in Colorado.”

“I’ve thought about it. The last few years have just left me so little time to devote to anything other than work. When I go back to LA, it’s back into the studio to record a new album. That means new videos, promotional trips, maybe another tour next summer. Kevin is pushing me to tour Asia this time.”

“You have to make the time to have a life, Ivy. There’s a whole world outside the music business. You deserve to have a home that isn’t crawling with press and a relationship that isn’t documented daily online.”

Ivy heard what he said, but it seemed like an impossibility.

“It took a three-hundred-pound linebacker to make me reevaluate things. Since high school, my life had been nothing but football. I was going to be Brett Favre or Joe Montana and play ball into my forties. And then, there I was, lame at twenty-four. It took a long time for me to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life. Hell, I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“You really can’t play anymore?”

Blake shook his head. “It was a freak occurrence. I’d been hit harder a hundred times before, but this time ruined everything.”

“May I see?” She didn’t know why, but she wanted to see the scars. They’d both changed over the years, but his injury was physical proof of everything he’d been through. She needed to see and understand what had happened to him while they were apart.

He hesitated for a moment, biting his lip, and then he finally nodded. Blake didn’t seem comfortable with the idea, but the fact that he would do it anyway spoke volumes. He lifted his foot up onto the nearby patio chair and tugged up his gray slacks. There were red scars running across his kneecap and down his calf. Another on his thigh disappeared beneath the rolled cuff of his pants.

“It’s pretty gruesome, so I don’t show many people. I got a new knee and some titanium rods that reinforce the shin bone and femur. It took twenty-three screws to hold it all together. Unfortunately, it didn’t make me bionic. It made me a benchwarmer.”

Ivy reached out and ran her fingertips gently over the scars. He shivered under her touch, squeezing his eyes closed for a moment. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, pulling her hand away.

“No.” Blake sighed and put down his leg. “I’m just not used to people looking at it, much less touching it.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Yeah, although not as much as my pride. Even after all the physical therapy, I’m still only at sixty percent of my previous flexibility and mobility. I can jog slowly, but not for long. There’s no way I could make it through training camp, much less take another hard tackle. Out on the football field is a line of guys looking to lay the quarterback out on the turf. I couldn’t risk it again. But it was a good excuse to get a spa put in,” he said, pointing to the hot tub set into the deck on the far side. “Therapy,” he said with a smile that seemed hard wrought.

“Do you miss it?”

“Every single day. The only thing that makes life bearable some days is working with the kids.”

Ivy was glad he had something. She felt more than a touch of guilt knowing she had exceeded her every goal and he had lost it all. “Coaching seems to come naturally to you. I’ve heard nothing but how great you are with the players and how much they seem to love you.”

At last, Blake smiled with genuine warmth. “Sometimes things work out the way they’re meant to. Grant likes to remind me of that when I’m feeling down about things. I still have football, it’s just not the way I envisioned it. And now I have time to settle down, start a family, and have a life outside of the game if I want to.”

Settle down. Those were words she hadn’t considered in a long time. Ivy wasn’t sure if it was the cooling air or the serious turn of the conversation, but she started to shiver in her strapless dress.

Blake looked at her and frowned. “Let’s get back inside. I’ll give you the tour of upstairs.”

Ivy followed him back into the house and up the circling wood-and-iron staircase that led to the second floor. Blake’s injury hadn’t been noticeable to her before, and even now he wasn’t limping. He’d ridden horses and danced. He’d walked all night around the fair. However much pain he was in, he did everything he could to hide it.

“There’s an elevator in the far corner of the house,” he said as they neared the top. “I had it put in because I knew eventually these stairs would be a problem, but I refuse to use it until I absolutely have to.”

Blake opened a door into a dark room and flipped the switch. “Here’s the media room, used most often for watching football with my brothers, of course.” There were rows of leather chairs facing a large screen and a projector mounted in the ceiling.

Down the hall was his office. The space was lined with dark wood bookshelves that were filled with leather-bound books, trophies, plaques, and photos of his football glory days. Ivy expected him to spend more time showing off some of his achievements, but he skimmed right past them. The layer of dust on the desk indicated he didn’t go in there very often. He tried to be positive, but the office was proof to her that he wasn’t over losing his football career yet. It had to be hard to be trapped between pride in your achievements and sadness over having to stop before your time.

“Here at the end is my room.”

Blake opened a set of double doors made of old wood. “These were repurposed outer mill doors,” he said. The sharp A-line of the ceiling continued into the room with sloped ceilings that framed the king-size bed in the center of the room. The bed had a stone-and-wood headboard they had to circle around, since the bed faced the wall of windows, not the entrance.

Sitting atop a frame that looked like old railroad trestles stacked up, the bed was covered with a quilt that must have taken someone forever to piece together. He had put so much thought into every detail of the home. It was one of the things she’d appreciated about him when they dated. He paid attention to every detail, be it a coach’s play on the whiteboard or the secret spots on Ivy’s body that made her arch up and cry out. She looked forward to experiencing that once again.

Ivy sat on the edge of the bed and kicked out of her heels. She gave the bed a test bounce with a mischievous smile. “This is a little more comfortable than making out by the lake,” she noted.

Blake sat down beside her with a chuckle. “I did the best I could. A blanket by the lake seemed like the best plan.”

Ivy looked into his eyes, remembering that night with the stars overhead and the soft blanket below. “It was a great plan. I couldn’t have asked for a better night.”

A sly smile curled Blake’s lips as his hand went to her bare knee. “I think I might be able to beat it tonight. I’ve picked up some sweet moves over the last few years.”

Ivy giggled.

It was a soft, familiar sound that made Blake’s heart stutter in his chest and his crotch throb against the too-tight fit of his tuxedo pants. The woman on the television and radio was not the Ivy he thought of on lonely nights. What he imagined was his sweet, creative Ivy. Thoughtful, sensitive, and unbelievably trusting. He might have been responsible for destroying parts of the old Ivy, but that giggle was enough to make him believe she might still be in there.

He wanted to lose himself in Ivy Grace tonight, not the rock icon. Part of him was driven to peel back each of her layers, one by one, until he fully exposed her. He would start with that god-awful dress.

He leaned in, planting kisses along the sensitive line of her neck. He let his hands roam over the back of her dress until he found the metal tab of the zipper. The slow, rhythmic sound of it unfastening mingled with her soft gasps.

Ivy’s neck had always been her weakness. He could talk her into anything as long as his lips were dancing along her skin. The zipper reached the end of its path, his fingertips brushing over the hollow of her lower back.

“You know,” she whispered, “I’ve learned a few sweet moves over the years, too.” Pulling away from him, she stood up, holding her limp dress to her body to keep it from falling.

Blake leaned back onto his elbows, watching the dark silhouette of her body move in front of the wall of windows behind her. She turned her back to him, looking coquettishly over her shoulder. She smiled and let the dress drop to the floor.

The light in the room was dim, but it was bright enough for him to make out every detail of her body. She was wearing a black lace thong that exposed the hard, round cheeks of her ass. She kicked out of the dress and turned back, showcasing the tight little bustier she’d worn beneath her outfit. The boning and lace clung to her ribs and the satin cups pushed the full swell of her breasts nearly up and over the top.

“You packed that,” he said, “to come home to Rosewood?”

Ivy softly chuckled and shook her head. “No. This came courtesy of a shop in Birmingham that Pepper and I stopped at when we went dress shopping.”

“I like that store,” he muttered, unable to tear his eyes from the body he’d ached to touch for a week. It was just as well he hadn’t known what she had on under that dress. He would’ve rushed them out of that dance before they’d had a chance to get their crowns.

Ivy slipped her arms behind her neck and lifted them, letting her dark hair fall back down into a cascade of waves around her shoulders. Her eyes were focused on him as she started a seductive little dance. Ivy gyrated her hips, her hands sliding down her body and touching the places his own palms tingled to touch. She moved to the rhythm in her mind. She didn’t need music to dance when there was always a song in her head.

She came closer, settling between his thighs. She boldly reached for his collar, unbuttoning his shirt. If she wanted to show off some moves, he wasn’t about to stop her.

Pulling the shirt open to expose his chest, she ran a palm down his stomach, stopping at the waistband of his trousers. She dropped down to her knees, then unbuttoned his fly. Ivy leaned in to press her lips against his stomach. They left behind the mark of her light pink lipstick. Ivy tugged at his waistband and Blake arched his back to raise up off the bed so she could get those pesky pants out of the way.

“Tighty-whiteys?” Ivy asked as she desperately tried to hold in a laugh.

“I had to,” he said in self-defense. “With the cut of those pants and the light-colored fabric, I couldn’t wear boxers or anything with color.”

“I understand,” Ivy said as she stroked his large bulge. “Panty lines can be so annoying.”

“Panty lines?” Blake sat up on the bed and scooped Ivy into his arms. With a roar of mock outrage, he lifted her onto the bed and plopped her beside him on her back. His body covered hers in an instant. He was happy to have this distraction from her caresses for a moment to regroup and gain the upper hand. “The only panties in this house are in my way.”

Ivy giggled again, but this time he smothered the sound with his mouth. Settling between her thighs, he pressed himself against the black lace barrier. With a slow grind of his hips, his tongue glided along hers. After a few long strokes, Ivy was writhing beneath him and groaning against his lips. When her cries grew louder and more desperate, he pulled away.

Breaking the kiss, he focused on removing the lace-and-satin top. With a practiced flick of his wrist, it came undone and he whipped the garment onto the floor.

This. This is what he’d been dying to taste. The small, firm breasts she’d hidden beneath her hands that first day were finally on full display. He took in the sight for a moment and then noticed the elusive tattoo he’d only glimpsed at the cabin. On the left side of her rib cage were a bass and a treble clef, combined to make them look like a heart. His fingertips brushed over it. “Nice tattoo,” he said.

Ivy curled her neck up to look at the ink. “Yeah. Don’t ever tattoo your ribs. Trust me when I say that. It was supposed to be bigger.” She laughed and the movement drew his attention back to her nipples where it belonged.

His tongue flicked over one hard pink tip, eliciting a sharp gasp from Ivy. He ran his tongue over the firm nub again, taking the other one into his hand.

Blake drew the nipple into his mouth at last, sucking hard until Ivy cried out and arched her body, burying her fingers in his hair.

“Blake,” she gasped. Her bare leg drew up his side to cradle his hip. The movement brought him in more direct contact with her sensitive center. “Please.”

How long had he waited to hear those words from her lips again? Sometimes he’d imagined it just like this, a desperate plea in the dark that he gladly answered. Other nights, when that song had earned him a particularly suck-ass day, it had been an appeal for mercy, which he denied.

There were so many emotions wrapped up in his past with Ivy. Sometimes it was purely painful, but with so many other women, he was numb. After his accident, he’d screwed his way through a dozen women trying to convince himself that he hadn’t lost everything. It hadn’t helped. Part of him shut down the day they cut him from the team. With Ivy, he felt alive. There could be no high without the lows, and with Ivy he had it all.

Blake buried those thoughts as his lips found her throat again. His tongue glided over the saltiness of her skin while his hand slid down her side to her hip. He grasped a handful of the lace panties and tugged down around the curve of her ass. She arched up off the bed and the fabric moved easier. His fingers danced across the soft, smooth skin of her legs as he slipped the panties off and threw them to the side with the rest of their clothes.

He was tempted to continue exploring, but he knew himself too well. Once he touched her, he wouldn’t want to stop, not for anything. And some things were necessary. Blake kissed her, long and deep, and then climbed from the bed.

Ivy pouted. “You’d better not be going far.”

Blake turned back to see her nude body splayed across his bed. No, he wasn’t going far at all. From the dresser on the far wall he grabbed a handful of condoms and carried them back with him.

Ivy watched him with hooded eyes as he slipped out of the last of his clothes and walked back to the foot of the bed. He crawled up until he was kneeling between her ankles. Blake leaned down, slipping his arms beneath her knees. With a quick tug, her body slid to him and he was ideally positioned between her thighs with her knees hooked over his shoulders.

His gaze flicked down to the pink flesh he’d exposed. Dipping down onto his elbows, he sought her out with his tongue. The first contact drew a sharp cry. The second stroke, longer and more leisurely, left Ivy panting and squirming. He continued his pleasurable assault on her body until he could feel her every muscle tense and hear her cries grow more desperate. He’d made love to Ivy enough times in the past to know she was on the verge of coming undone. He wanted to stop just short of that. They would ride that wave together, at least this first time.

Reaching for the headboard, he snapped up one of the condoms and made quick work of putting it on. He lowered himself between her thighs and hovered there just as they touched.

Ivy wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Slowly, oh so slowly, Blake eased forward. Inch by delicious inch, he sank into the welcoming heat of her body. He buried himself fully, letting a strangled groan escape his lips. God, she felt good. Her body gripped him as tightly as it had when they were clumsy teenagers.

Ivy’s breath was hot in his ear. “Take me,” she whispered.

Withdrawing at an agonizingly slow pace, Blake thrust back into her again. He fought the urge to roll his eyes back into his head. Biting his lip, he did it again and again, feeling the coil of pleasure winding tighter and tighter inside his gut.

Ivy’s soft gasps of encouragement urged him on even after the ache in his leg started to burn as fiercely as the one in his groin. He ignored it, knowing that eventually the pain would fade. He eased up onto his elbows to focus on Ivy instead. Her eyes were pressed tightly closed, her attention centered on the pleasure he was coaxing from her body.

With single-minded determination, he thrust into her, watching every flicker of pleasure dance across her face. It wasn’t long before her pink lips parted and her brow furrowed in concentration.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, Blake, yes!”

Her fingers grasped desperately at his back. He felt her body tighten around him as he moved faster, harder, into her. Closing his eyes, Blake focused on that feeling. When she came undone a moment later, her desperate cries echoed through the room, bringing on his own release.

His low groan joined hers as he poured into her, surging forward one last time. They were both still trembling and gasping for air when he collapsed onto his side beside her.

Blake’s lungs burned and his arms trembled, but he didn’t care. Whatever the price, it was worth it to make love to Ivy.

After several rounds of lovemaking and naps, Ivy found herself wide awake, her brain spinning. She was staring up at the skylights overhead, watching the stars twinkle in the inky black sky.

Blake was awake, too. He shifted beside her and cleared his throat. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“What?” Ivy asked.

“I can hear you thinking. Listening to those wheels turning is keeping me awake.”

“Blake?” She struggled to voice the thoughts in her head. “What is . . . this?”

Blake’s arms sought her out beneath the blankets and pulled her body against his. “You should be basking in afterglow, not overthinking things.”

“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But I just want to make sure we both know what’s going on.”

She could feel the low rumble of his chuckle against her back. “So what’s going on?”

Ivy squirmed anxiously in his arms. “You and I. You know that this isn’t . . . I mean, it won’t . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“You mean my lovemaking skills are not so stellar as to make you give up your music career and move back to Rosewood to be with me forever?”

Ivy was pretty certain that he was teasing her, but even then, she wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Blake, I . . .”

“Relax. I’m not planning to propose anytime soon, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not,” she said. “It’s just . . . you know that I leave in a week.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

He wasn’t taking this discussion seriously at all. “And this thing that has developed between us . . .”

“Was a lot of fun until you started overthinking it. Breathe, Ivy. We’re just two people enjoying each other’s company while we can. When you leave . . .”

“You can go back to Lydia.”

“What?” Blake’s sharp voice cut through the darkness. “Not if she was the last woman in Rosewood.” His mock anger was soon drowned out by giggles as his fingertips sought out her sensitive sides and belly. His hands and lips eventually found more interesting territory and giggles were quickly silenced.