Winning Brynn (Seattle Strikers)

37. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Leo

Brynn is screaming. And I'd love to say it's because we're both naked and my dick is inside of her, but no. She’s having a nightmare.

Wiping my bleary eyes, I shoot a glance at the baby monitor to check that Salem is okay then swing my legs out of bed, tiptoeing down the hall to Brynn’s room.

She is still lost in her dream when I crack the door open and pad over to the bed. Though the screaming has stopped now, she's writhing as she fights against something, her bare legs twisted in the bedsheets, chestnut hair spiraling in disarray around her face.

"Brynn?" I whisper, curling my fingers gently around her wrist.

She doesn't wake up, doesn't stop fighting either, her limbs punching out in all directions, narrowly missing my nose. Without thinking, I climb onto the bed, scoop her into my arms, and hold her in my lap. "It's okay," I soothe against her hair. "I'm here now. You're safe."

And just like that, her body sags against me. It's immediate, the way she calms down. And though this isn't the first time it has happened, I'm mystified by how easily it seems I'm able to comfort her while she's sleeping.

Even when her eyes blink open and find mine staring down at her, she doesn't startle, as if she knew I was here already, like she was expecting to find herself in my arms, my presence having found her in her dreams somehow.

"What was it this time?" I ask gently, a teasing smile on my lips.

She sighs, rubbing her eyes but making no move to get off my lap. I guess she's comfortable where she is. Truthfully, I'm not in any hurry to let her go either. It's startlingly natural, how it feels to touch her like this. Even if it does make my dick ache like a motherfucker and force me to recite the first fifteen digits of Pi to avoid poking her in the butt with my raging boner.

The point I'm trying to make, though, is that I like her right where she is.

"I was trapped inside a goldfish bowl."

Ah. Apparently, she wasn't fighting at all, then. She was swimming .

"Must have been a tight fit," I offer in response, because what do you even say to that?

Not that, apparently.

Her glare turns lethal. "Are you calling me fat?"

"What? No!"

"Kinda sounds like you were."

I'm an idiot.

"I promise, I wasn't. I was thinking more about the size of the bowl, rather than the size of... well, you. I wasn't thinking about your weight at all, actually. 'Your weight.' I feel like that suggests I think there's something wrong with it, which there isn't. There isn't anything wrong with anyone's weight, really, if you think about it. As long as you've got your health and happiness, who cares about your weight? Apart from assholes on the internet, obviously, and—"

"Leo?"

"Yeah?"

"Stop talking."

"Right." I clear my throat and shoot her a sheepish smile. "Sorry."

She shakes her head, her lips tilting into a small grin. "You’re adorable."

I am many things, a Herculean record-breaking goal scorer with size fifteen feet and a six-inch dick circumference for one, but adorable I am not.

Reaching up, she lays a soft hand on my naked chest. Her palm, so warm against my skin, burns an electric current straight through to my heart. It's so disarming that I forget all about her "adorable" insult, my mind lost to the sensation of her touch, the heat of her hand, the overstimulation of having her so close yet not close enough.

I want her beneath me, naked and writhing.

I want my hands in her hair and my lips on her neck as I push, inch by inch, inside of her.

I want to feel her shudder around me as I make her come undone, and I want so badly to see the expression on her face when I make her fall apart.

Fuck.

3.14159265359…

I'm not aware I'm mouthing the numbers until Brynn speaks. "Leo, what are you doing?"

"Reciting Pi." My words are strained, rasped through clenched teeth.

3.141592…

"Why?"

3.14…

Damn it.

Between us, my cock thickens, straining upward until it meets resistance. And by resistance, I mean Brynn’s ass.

Dropping my gaze, I stare shamefully down at the comforter. “That’s why.”

“Oh,” she gasps then readjusts herself in my lap.

On instinct, my hands clamp down on her thighs to stop her from squirming. “Please don’t do that.”

“Why?” she asks again.

My cock twitches against her, and I drop my forehead to her shoulder with a long, defeated groan. “That’s why,” I repeat.

“Maybe I should…”

“It would probably be for the best if you got off my lap, yes.”

Her brow tilts in amusement. “I was going to suggest I give you a helping hand, but fine, have it your way.”

The worst part is, I can’t tell if she’s joking. And if she’s serious, well then…

No.

Alex is your best friend, I remind myself. Alex trusts you. Alex will literally castrate you if you touch his sister, and then you’ll never be able to fuck anyone ever again.

Except, apparently, I don't have any interest in fucking someone else. The other night, I couldn't even get hard for porn. My dick has a one-track mind for a certain feisty—low-key unhinged—chestnut-haired hellion, otherwise known as Brynn Wolfe.

Regardless, the thought of betraying my closest friend is enough to shock me into gear. Picking her up, I drop Brynn onto the mattress beside me and shift my body away from her.

And just like that, the air turns cold. Confusion and annoyance radiate from her, my rejection stinging the both of us.

"Thanks for coming to check on me, I guess," she says dismissively, curling her knees into her chest and staring at the wall.

Even in the darkness, I can see the flush in her cheeks. The rosy burn of embarrassment. Self-consciousness isn't an expression I've seen her wear much, and it's disarming every time it happens. This occasion, though, is by far the worst.

"It's fine," I answer.

Her head tilts to one side. "Is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You blow very hot and cold, Leo." It isn't an accusation, more an observation. Her tone isn't sharp or admonitory, but jarringly even. "You can see that, right? How your mixed messages can confuse a girl?"

Sighing, I move to sit beside her and drop my head back onto the headboard. "I'm just trying to do the right thing. But sometimes, it's really fucking hard."

I don't say that the "right thing" often feels like the opposite. That being close to her, touching her, tasting her skin, just as I did earlier this evening, never feels anything other than right. And that the only thing that ever feels wrong between us is the moment I have to drag myself away.

"The right thing?"

"It'd break your brother's heart if something happened between us, Brynn. You know that. He'd see it as a betrayal."

"I love my brother," she says, frustration thick in her voice. "I do. But if I want to fuck someone, then best believe he doesn't get to tell me that I can't."

Just hearing her say the word fuck gives my dick a new lease on life. And even that's without considering how she's using it in the context of doing it with me.

3.1fucking4...

"Maybe not." I shrug, defeated. "But he does get to tell me."

Why do I have to be so wildly attracted to my best friend's little sister of all people? Why can't I obsess over the nice redhead who always upgrades my coffee to a large for free at the Starbucks opposite the training ground? Or the blonde who works at the supermarket, the one who always gives me sex eyes whenever she buzzes my protein bars through the register?

Beside me, Brynn sags and turns her face away.

Reaching out, I cup her cheek and gently tilt her until she's looking at me again. "I don't want you to feel like I'm rejecting you," I whisper.

"Aren't you, though?" she asks quietly, the vulnerability I hear in her voice shattering me.

With my hand still on her face, I brush my thumb back and forth across her skin. "Not because I want to." I suck in a shuddering breath. "Not because I don't want you ."

And fuck it all if she isn't the most heartbreakingly beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. Bathed in the dappled silver light of the moon, her hair a tangled mess and eyes misty with both sleep and hurt, her beauty breaks my soul in two.

"You want me?" she asks.

"You know I do."

"Then show me, Leo." It's a plea, stifled by diffidence, spoken on little more than a shaky breath, but a plea all the same.

And it hits me right where it needs to, because I know what it means for her to do it. Letting me see her vulnerability, her desperation for me to ease the pain of rejection, to make it better, to make it stop feeling like an abandonment that takes her right back to being a frightened little girl in a home for orphaned children... She's showing me that she trusts me.

I can't betray that trust by rejecting her again. Not when it's something we both want. Not when it's just us, hidden by the darkness of night where no one can see.

Even if it does mean betraying her brother in the process.

Brynn, or my best friend.

It's the most difficult decision, yet the easiest all the same.

Just a kiss, I tell myself. Just one kiss won't hurt.

Using my hand on her cheek to bring her face closer to mine, I ghost my lips over hers. It's just a brush. It could barely be called a kiss at all, honestly, but I feel the electricity of it sear through my veins.

" Leo, " she sighs.

And with that, my lips crash back down onto hers. Forceful, this time. Yearning, wild, and savage. Her lips, so goddamn soft, part against mine, and then my tongue is slipping inside to slide against hers.

She moans. Or maybe I do. Maybe it's both of us. I don't know, and I don't care.

All I care about is the uninhibited passion of her kiss, the sweetness of her taste, and the perfection of having her in my arms.

Her hands wind into my hair, her nails scraping across my scalp, making me growl into her mouth. I hold her at the waist, so small in my large hands, if for nothing but to stop myself from tearing her clothes right from her body.

Because this moment...this kiss? It's fucking everything. And I don't know how I'm ever going to stop.

But I have to.

One kiss. That's what I promised myself.

I'm smart enough to know that us finally giving in to our inexplicable chemistry is inevitable, but I'm not ready to betray my best friend right now. Not yet. Not tonight.

With a final press of my lips to hers, I take her hand and press it to my crotch. My cock weeps precum under her palm, even with the barrier of my boxers between us, and it twitches into her hold.

Dropping my forehead to hers, I suck in a long, steadying breath through my nose and tell her, "Next time you doubt how much I want you, I want you to remember this. How goddamn fucking hard I am for you right now. How much my cock aches to be buried inside of you. How much control it's taking for me not to drive it home right now. Understand?"

Blown pupils stare up at me, as wild and enraptured as my own. But she nods, her cheeks rosy with arousal instead of the embarrassment that stained them earlier.

"I understand."

"Good girl." Lips spreading into a wide smile, I drop a chaste kiss to the end of her nose. "Goodnight, Brynn."

"Night, Leo," she whispers. "Dream of me."

“Didn’t you know already, baby?" I chuckle darkly. "I only ever dream of you."