Lila and Ethan: Forever and Always (The Secret #0)

Ethan watches me with a curious expression, the sleeves of his plaid shirt pushed up so I can see all his tattoos and the lean muscles in his arms. “Since when do you know ‘Creep’ by Radiohead?”

“You’re always listening to it,” I point out. “And somehow, despite my protest, the lyrics have managed to get themselves stuck inside my head.”

He gives me this strange look, like he’s realizing something that scares him. Then he fixes his attention on the menu in front of him, his forehead creasing. He reads for a few moments and then lets out a frustrated breath, shutting his menu and turning in the booth toward me. “Okay, was that like some sort of reverse psychology or something?”

I gape at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”

He roughly rakes his fingers through his hair, seeming irritated. “That stuff back in the truck… about being okay with not knowing now…” He lowers his arm onto the table. “About being okay not knowing if we’ll be together five or ten years down the road.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I say. “What I meant was that I felt better because you said we had a lot of stuff ahead of us and that’s all I really wanted—to know we had some sort of future ahead of us.”

He still looks confused, his lips parting, and I can tell he’s about to say something that’s going to either completely and utterly make me happy for a very long time or break me apart. But then he snaps his jaw shut when the waitress returns to take our orders. I order mozzarella sticks, a chicken sandwich, and piece of chocolate cake, and Ethan orders enough to feed a small village.

“We’ll have leftovers for the road,” he says after the waitress leaves. “That way we don’t have to stop a lot.”

I glare at him. “Please. Not the no-stopping-unless-we’re-in-dire-need policy. I revoked that after the near-peeing-my-pants accident.”

He laughs, recollecting the memory with a thoughtful look on his face. “Hey, there was an upside to that,” he says. “I got to watch you pee in a cup.”

“You got to see me try peeing in a cup,” I remind him, narrowing my eyes. “It didn’t work.”

“Hey, it always works for me,” he says, still grinning. “It’s not my fault your girl part can’t aim right.”

I maliciously reach over and grab his manly part, giving it a good rub to mess with his head. “Need I remind you what my girl part can do to your boy part?” I take his hand and put it between my legs; then I smile when he starts to touch me between the legs. We’re completely hidden by the table, although the orgasmic look on his face might give us away.

“Never make fun of my girl part again,” I say. “And stop calling it a girl part. It’s weird.”

“What do you want me to call it?” he asks with a dark grin. “Your wet, dripping—”

I slap my hand over his mouth, stifling a laugh. “Not so loud.”

Ethan has this thing with never getting embarrassed in public. In fact, one time he proceeded to tell me, in a very loud voice, the various positions he was going to fuck me in over the course of the night. He then proceeded to give me a demonstration of what I was going to sound like when I was coming. We were in a McDonald’s and a lot of people weren’t very happy about it. Still, he did make good with his word and tried all the positions on me and I did scream out just like he had predicted.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, his fingers wandering to my side. They dig inward and he guides me closer to him in the booth until I’m practically on his lap.

“How you did me that one night in all those different, crazy positions,” I say, biting on my lip when his grip tightens even more and hot tingles course up and down my inner thighs.

Hunger consumes his eyes. “You want to do it again?” he asks. “I’ve got a ton more positions I can show you.”

I bite my lip harder, so hard, in fact, I taste blood in my mouth, feeling the shift in our mood and wanting it more than anything. “But we don’t have a hotel room.”

He glances around the mostly vacant café like he’s almost forgotten where we were. Then his eyes wander to the window at the front of the diner where it’s dark, a faint stream of light trickling in from the lampposts in the parking lot. “Why don’t we get a room?” he asks, turning his attention back to me.

The look in his eyes pushes me nearly over the edge. I swear if he doesn’t tone it down, I’m going to have an orgasm right here at the table, in a restaurant full of people. Granted, it’d be worth it. “I thought we had to hit the road tonight?”

He shakes his head, his expression filling with lust and making my body feel like it’s going to combust. “We can still make it back in time… we’ll just have to make a few less stops…” His gaze flicks to my breasts. I’m not wearing a bra and my nipples have gotten so hard that they’re visible through the thin fabric.

His fingers find them and trace them in soft circular motions, while he waits for me to respond.

“We can do that,” I say, but it comes out a groan and his fingers clamp down on me.

The next thing I know we’re headed up to the counter, telling the waitress that we’d like our food to go. Then we wait very impatiently, sneaking touches when no one’s looking, and sometimes when people are looking, until our food arrives at the counter in to-go bags. Ethan pays and then we leave, driving across the street to this sketchy-looking motel that has about five rooms total. I don’t care, though. I just want him now. It’s amazing what he can do to me just with the simple promise of being inside me, how far I’ve come because of him. I remember when sex was just numbing. I felt nothing. Felt like I was too worthless to enjoy it. Then Ethan came along and all that changed. He made me feel alive and worth something.

Almost every moment is perfect with him and hopefully we’ll have a thousand more moments just like this.

Ethan

Normally, I would have said we didn’t have enough time to stay for an extra night, not if I want to stop at all the places I want to on the way home. But all of that stops mattering the moment I start thinking about being inside her. Hell, I’ll give up making a stop in Tennessee like I was planning on… see one less mountain as long as I can just touch her a little bit longer.

My dick’s so hard it fucking hurts. Touching her like that, especially in public, feels so forbidden and it’s such a turn-on, especially when she touches me back. Only Lila can challenge me like that and get me so riled up. I swear to God I was on the verge of peeling her clothes off and slipping inside her right there in the booth. Luckily for the sake of giving everyone in the café a live porn show, we managed to make it across the street to a crappy-looking motel. It’s definitely not the best place in the world and I’m a little worried that Lila’s going to flip, but as soon as we step into the room, her lips collide with mine and she’s stripping off her shirt eagerly.

And just like that I get lost in her; all the stuff bouncing around in my head momentarily dissipates as my tongue explores her mouth. Our bodies line perfectly together as she traces her fingers up my back, shivering when I do the same to her. I sketch the lines of the tattoo on her back as I steer us through the dark toward the bed. Moments later, we stumble backward and the mattress collapses beneath us as we land on it together. I brace my weight onto my arms, her head pinned between them, as I keep kissing her. Her legs drift to my hips and she bends her knees and wraps them around my waist, hitching her ankles behind my back. She starts to grind her hips against me, making my cock go rock-hard. I move with her, letting her veer toward the edge while I try to hang on, wanting to be inside of her so goddamn badly my body is pretty much sweating in desperation, but she’s too close to coming and I want to see her lose it before I slip inside her because I enjoy watching her get lost like that, especially when I’m the one doing it to her—making her feel like that. So I keep going, watching, her eyes glazing over. Finally she stops moving with me, her muscles tightening as she cries out. Her head falls back and her eyelids flutter shut as she drifts off, her fingertips delving into my shoulder blades so sharply I feel the skin break.