Chapter 40
FORTY
G RANT
“Do you remember the last time we were in this room together?” she whispers through the dark. We’ve been lying here silently awake for at least a half hour. We’re in some sort of self-imposed purgatory tonight where neither of us can find the right words, and I’m too afraid to touch her for fear of making her head worse while she’s recovering, or worse yet, begging her not to leave tomorrow when I’ve barely gotten her to agree to it in the first place.
“I thought we silently agreed to never talk about that again,” I whisper back.
We’re in my old bedroom, the one I stayed in while she lived with my parents when Jesse left me in charge of his estate and her until she went off to college. I had no business trying to look after anyone but me in the wake of his death. I was a mess. Blaming myself. Drinking heavily. Wishing I could go back in time and take the bullets instead of him. But I was doing my best to make sure she was financially secure while my mom helped her make it through the day-to-day.
“We did…” She turns over to look at me through the darkness. We said our goodnights and laid down to go to sleep, but the tension in the room had been building as a million unspoken things passed between us in the quiet. “But it’s all I can think about right now.”
“Did you ever forgive me?” I ask because, at the time, she was furious. She barely spoke to me for a year afterward.
“When I was old enough to realize you did the right thing, even if it hurt my feelings.” She shifts in the bed, and the moonlight catches the side of her face. “You’ve always been like that though. Doing the right thing even when it hurts, I mean.”
“Guess I got that going for me at least.” I chuckle. “Now that we’re old enough, I can tell you it wasn’t easy.”
It was the week after her eighteenth birthday, and she’d come home drunk. She found out that her boyfriend had cheated on her, getting a blow job from another girl she’d considered a friend in the back of his truck after she’d told him she wasn’t in the mood for sex. She’d fallen into a deep depression after Jesse’s death the same way I had, and all the psychologists and antidepressants in the world hadn’t stopped her from coming home every night to cry in her room. Nothing I said or did, nothing I bought for her, no amount of distractions or bargaining could fill the void he left.
“You made it seem easy with the way you told me no. You practically climbed the wall to get away from me.” There’s a soft laugh from her, but at the time, it had only been tears. “And then you moved out the next day.” The laugh disappears, and the quiet of the ranch at night returns.
“I’m sorry I fucked that up.” I’d put the incident in a black box and had done my best to forget it ever happened. We’d both silently agreed to never bring it up. At least until now.
“You didn’t fuck it up. You did the right thing, and that speech you gave me in the mirror. I still think about it.”
“I don’t even remember what I said; I just remember I didn’t want you to cry anymore. Felt like all I did back then was drink, and all you did was cry, and neither of us knew how to make it stop.” I turn on my side to get a better look at her.
“I think he’d always kept us both grounded, and we just kind of… came unraveled without him.” Her eyes search mine in the pale light. “You stood behind me and made me look in the mirror while you told me that Graham was a moron, and I was better than that—letting him get to me. You told me the best thing I could do was stop giving boys who didn’t deserve me my time and stop giving men who were too jaded to appreciate me my attention. You made me repeat it back to you. Then you said that the right guy would wait until I was ready again.” She smiles in the darkness, rolling her lower lip between her teeth. “You muttered something about how you didn’t even know how he could look at anyone else given how gorgeous I was.”
“Sounds like I was drunk, but not terrible wisdom.”
“You were drunk… I’m sorry I put you in that position,” she apologizes quietly.
When she’d gotten home from drinking with her friends that night, instead of going to her own bedroom, she’d come into mine, claiming she couldn’t sleep. She crawled on top of me and kissed her way down my neck while I was still half awake and then cradled my cock with her palm while she begged to give me a blow job. I fully woke up just in time to see her strip out of her clothes and realize what the fuck was going to happen if I didn’t stop it. My heart had nearly exploded out of my chest in my race to get her off me and keep her from doing something we’d both regret.
“I was a shitty fucking guardian.”
“You had your own grief you were working through, and your mom was so good to me. I still think about her pancakes.”
“Her pancakes were fucking amazing.” I smile, remembering her making them in the kitchen on Saturday mornings, smothering them in butter and pure maple syrup. “Hazel still has the family cookbook. You should see if they’re in there someday.”
“Someday.” She reaches out and brushes her fingertips down my arm. “And you weren’t a shitty guardian. Honestly, that speech alone probably saved me from a couple of bad relationships.”
“You still dated a couple of guys whose jaws I would have loved to crush under my boot for the shit they said.” I roll my eyes and shake my head.
“Did you really threaten Chris’s life?” she asks. “You said you didn’t, but he swore that you put him in a chokehold and told him you’d rip off his balls and let him bleed out that way.”
“I might have done that.” I laugh as I remember the look on his face. He embarrassed her once at the bar, being a loud dick and talking about her like she was his property to play with.
“I defended you!” She punches my shoulder lightly.
I open my mouth to say something, but there’s a loud feminine moan from above us, and I hear the sound of the bed rocking against the wall. We stare at each other in the dark, and then Dakota descends into giggles.
“I guess he finally convinced her to end the dry spell since they postponed the wedding,” she giggles in amusement.
“What dry spell? I didn’t think those two went a day without fucking. ”
“She put him on time-out the week before the wedding. Said she wanted the wedding night to be extra special.”
“Fuck… no wonder he was so cranky all week.” I laugh a little too loud, and Dakota’s eyes widen. She covers my mouth with one hand and presses her finger to hers.
“Shhh. If we can hear them. They can hear us,” she warns.
The bangs of the bed against the wall start to take on a rhythmic quality, and I hear the sound of Ramsey’s sharp, demanding voice, but I can’t make out the words. There’s another moan, and a series of soft begging sounds out of Hazel. It fills the air around us, and the tension we managed to dissolve talking about our past is back in full force. Maybe even thicker for it.
“It’s kind of hot… Hearing them, I mean.” Dakota’s eyes search mine, and her tongue slides slowly over her lower lip, wetting it and making it glisten in the low light.
“If I forget who they are.” I shrug, but I’ve forgotten anything but her. I’m just imagining the sounds Dakota makes for me now, and fuck if I don’t want them. “We should go to sleep. We both have a long day tomorrow.”
Their sounds have quieted, and I’m hoping it means they only needed a quick fuck before they fell asleep. Can’t blame my brother if she really made him wait. I don’t know how long I’m gonna survive without Dakota now that I’ve had a taste of her.
“You’re right.” She lets out a soft sigh and turns over, facing the window, giving me her back. “Goodnight, Grant.”
“Goodnight, Dakota,” I answer, closing my eyes and resettling myself on the pillow.
I’m drifting off, trying to think about anything else other than sex right now. No matter how much I might want it, I’m worried about her head injury .
“Oh fuck… yes… Right there. Ramsey, please.” Hazel’s begging pierces through the night.
Dakota doesn’t say a word, but I can tell she’s awake, and she shifts on the pillow.
“Cowboy,” she whispers.
“The doctor said no vigorous activity for at least a week,” I protest immediately because otherwise, I’m going to give in.
There’s a frustrated sigh on her part. One that creeps through my mind and down to my cock telling me where there’s a will there’s a way.
“That’s the other thing they don’t warn you about when your whole house burns down—it takes your toys too,” she mutters under her breath.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly.
“If you were truly sorry, you’d fuck me.” She scoots back, and her ass brushes over my cock and then nestles up against me. I might have my own head injury soon, an aneurysm from trying to resist her.
“We could go slow,” she adds in a whisper.
“I’m trying to look out for your health,” I grumble back.
There’s another loud groan from upstairs, this time from Ramsey, and the sound of him permeates the room. I see her shoulder move, and the covers shift subtly in front of me.
“What are you doing?” My tone is harsh even to my own ears, but I hear the sounds of her fingers slipping through her wetness.
“Getting off to the sounds your brother’s making if you don’t do something about it soon,” she answers, and I can see the wicked little smile forming on her lips as she looks back at me over her shoulder.
“The fuck you will.” I make quick work of my sweats and boxer briefs, and then I grab her panties, wrenching them down her thighs. I slip inside her easily a moment later, a groan ripping from my chest when I feel how wet she is. “That better fucking be for me.”
“It is.” She lets out a muted cry as I start to fuck her slowly. “The way you talked to me in that mirror that day is one of my most reliable fantasies. It just ends a little differently in my head than it did in real life.”
“Hellfire, fuck.” I pull the collar of the T-shirt she wore to bed to the side so I can kiss the crook of her neck as I ease in and out of her at a tortured pace. “You can’t tell me things like that. It gives me fucked-up thoughts.”
“So I shouldn’t tell you that I used to get off after our arguments, imagining you hate fucking me up against the wall?”
“I thought that was a given. That’s my favorite fantasy.” I grin against her neck as I go to kiss her again.
“You feel good like this. I needed this after everything,” she murmurs quietly as she rubs a circle over her clit and lets out a soft gasp.
“I needed this too,” I whisper back, sucking a small mark onto her neck as my hand slides over the soft skin of her stomach. “Something about you makes the rest of the world fade away.”
“Same,” she sighs as I shift to a new angle. She adjusts her position, which lets me take her deeper, and I run my hand over her hip and down her thigh.
“How does your fantasy end in your head?” I ask. “Because I want to know them all. Give them to you.” I dot kisses down the curve of her spine and over the top of her shoulder blade.
“You bend me over the bed and take me, fast and hard, like you can’t control yourself while you tell me what a good girl I am for taking your cock.”
“You are good, you know. Underneath all the fight. You’re so fucking good I don’t know if I’m worthy of it.”
“Honestly, Cowboy…” she starts, the words faltered by her ga sps as she gets close. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known in my life.” Her voice fades into a soft cry as I hit her just right.
“That’s right. Come for me, work that perfect little clit for me while I fuck you full.” I bury my face in her neck, groaning as I come inside her and listen to her soft murmured curses as she comes all over my cock. “Fuck… That’s my girl. Just like that.” She rocks back against me, and we both fall into a quiet silence as I wrap my arms around her, and she leans into me.
“I don’t know if you’re a devil or an angel sometimes,” she breaks the silence after a few minutes.
“For you? Both.” I smirk and kiss the side of her cheek. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” I stand and hold my hand out for hers. If I ever needed a reason to live, her happy, sated smile as she stumbles out of bed and into my arms would be it.