Chapter 28
BOBBY
I kiss her and keep kissing her until she relaxes against me. I understand overthinking. Personally, I prefer this method of ending the loop of words in my head rather than drowning my fucked-up mind in work or a round of drinks.
“Every kiss with you gets better and better, sweetness.” My palms cup her face. We’re forehead to forehead. I’m staring into deep, chocolate-brown eyes that turn shades of copper and rust when sunlight hits them just perfectly.
“I feel the same,” she murmurs shyly.
I glide the pads of my thumbs over the arches of her cheeks, unable to stop touching her.
Ever has this angelic face that calls to the darker side of my desires.
I want to claim her. Dominate her. Lay her body to waste.
I’d use her so well she’d let only me be the one to break her before begging me to put her back together and break her again.
Carlos was her lover. Has she been with a man since? I see red. I’ll hunt down the motherfuckers and make sure they forget they ever touched my girl.
“Let’s go inside, assess the damage, and formulate a plan.”
“You want me involved with your investment?”
“Why not? It’s a stone’s throw away, and I’ll be staying with you.” I drop my palms from her face and reach for her hand.
She backs up and folds her arms across her chest. “About that. It’s not a good idea.”
“Your shadow?”
“My brother.”
“I hear he has his own problems to deal with.”
“Like what?” Her hands go to her hips.
“A love triangle from years ago that’s biting him in the ass.”
Her shoulders tense. “There’s no love triangle. What José, Asher, and Ty have is complicated and none of your business.”
She’s wrong. I make it my business to know every piece and part of Ever’s life, down to her class and work schedule, when she’ll be studying at the library, which parties she’ll be at with her friends for the next two weeks, and when she’ll visit her father in prison next.
I’m not a stalker.
I’m upping my game by having the upper hand. I gathered intel on her the moment I watched the taillight of her car disappear into the night.
Later that night, or more like zero one thirty, my phone pinged with a text.
ThatOneAwesomeDancer: Home
That one word hit me straight in the chest like a bullet at close range. Home.
Taking Ever’s hand, I walk us to the house. She looks up at me with her eyes narrowed. I bring her hand to my mouth and drop a kiss on her knuckles. Her face softens. I smile. I have the secret to changing Ever’s mood. Kisses. Tender ones.
We walk the few steps to the house behind her rental. My thoughts wander. Home is what I’ve been searching for since I realized I’ve never had one to begin with. Not a physical place, but a feeling.
I didn’t feel like I belonged, not in McMillan, where I grew up, or in Alexandria, where my mom moved us. She said the move was for better schools for me and more job opportunities for her.
What she left out was that she couldn’t stand running into Branson’s wife and kids. Genevieve Bliss owned and ran a lavender farm in McMillan.
I didn’t feel part of anything, even when I was the star quarterback, and the parties and girls came into my realm of reality so fast and furious that my head spun with the elation of finally thinking I belonged.
But it was an illusion. It wasn’t me they wanted to hang out with or get screwed by. My quarterback position and my winning games became status symbols.
Strip me of that and I’d be a nobody, a mistake, a shameful reminder that my mother was the other woman, and the man she’d fallen hopelessly in love with had chosen his wife over his lover. What hurt most was that in the end, on her deathbed, my mother asked for him.
He came. Thank fuck he did. Otherwise, I would’ve hauled my father’s ass to the hospital myself.
I shake thoughts of my mother aside and refocus my attention on Ever. If everything I have planned goes down without a hitch, I’ll remove every obstacle and fear of Ever’s. Then I’ll keep my word and take her dancing at Crimson for all to see she is my woman.
At the end of the sidewalk on the dead-end street, I stop and stare at the house, then Ever’s small feet.
She’s wearing the Chucks that her best friend gave her for learning the bachata. That’s what she said on the ride back to Sweet Creations’ parking lot.
The sadness in her voice filled my helmet. There was also relief, as if she were glad to have someone to talk to. Carlos was the best friend. He meant a lot to her, and what she felt and still feels for him doesn’t fuck with my head. Jules cheating was a mindfuck. Ever speaking about Carlos?
I understand a different side of him that he would’ve never shown me—the softer side of him who fell in love with a young girl with an old soul.
No way in fucking hell will I let her ruin her shoes with shit bombs littered in the grass. I pick her up by the waist. Muscle memory takes over, and she wraps her legs around my waist. Fuck, I’m in heaven.
She opens her mouth. I love when she talks, but I love it more when my mouth is on hers. With my mouth, I silence whatever Ever was about to say and walk us inside the house. My tongue sinks inside her mouth, and I eat up her moan. Her body relaxes against me.
Before I can deepen the kiss and take this heat to a level that’ll have me rushing to her place for more than mouth-on-mouth action, Slate calls out my name from behind a broken and large window in what must be the living room.
“Bro, my bad. Buying this place was a shitty fucking idea.”
“Be right there.” With Ever’s arms and legs around me, I walk across the shit-littered grass and get to the back gate.
I open the gate and walk us through the open sliding glass door. Ever taps on my shoulder and looks at the floor.
Uh-uh. She is staying put until I do a walk-through with the guys.
I pull my shirt over my head one-handed, clear a spot on the kitchen island, put it there, then her on it, with an order for her to stay put.
Don’t want any grime touching her.
I hand her my phone and bring up my notes app. “Help a guy out and take notes, yeah?” By no means is she my secretary. I can easily use the dictation app to make a laundry list of what the fuck needs fixing and replacing, but I have different intentions for handing over my phone to her.
Text messages have tone, and I knew she was jealous when she texted about whether I was alone when I slept at my nightclub, too happy to go home to an empty house.
Staying inside the walls of Crimson was like cocooning myself in the memories of Ever, of us, and I didn’t want the experience to end by stepping inside my bare-bones place.
She looks from the phone to me. “Are you sure you want me to have access to your contacts list? I could delete any name that is a woman’s.”
“I already did, sweetness.”
Her beautiful eyes widen. Unable to resist the pull between us, I drop a kiss between them. Her eyes cross, and she is sexy as fuck. “Will you do that with your eyes when I fuck you for the first time?” I say in a low voice.
Her eyes widen more before crossing.
I lean into her space until all she sees is me. “Do that again and I’ll take you here and now with an audience. Now take the phone.” I hold the phone between us.
“What if I don’t?”
I drop my attention to her luscious mouth before I raise a brow and look over my shoulder for show. “You, me, this counter here with your ass up, and the guys watching as I eat you up.”
Her face turns a pretty shade of pink.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
I wouldn’t. I don’t share, and that includes an audience, but Ever doesn’t know that. I cage her in with my arms alongside her hips. “Try me.”
Her throat visibly moves, and she swallows down her nervousness. Her gaze darts from the guys to me. I cock my scarred brow and wait. I’m patient. I have to be.
Military service wasn’t one battle after another.
There was downtime, and then there was fucking waiting with a sledgehammer as your heartbeats, bile coating your throat from fear, and your thoughts racing with all sorts of fucked-up scenarios on how the day would play out—with me going home in a casket or seeing my friends get blown up.
Having patience also makes me excellent at playing chicken. I’ve learned well during my time downrange. I won’t be taken down by a five-foot-five college coed with an angelic face and sad eyes.
She removes my cell from my hand and clutches it to her chest. I swipe my finger along her bottom lip. “Good girl.” My voice is deep and commanding.
I’m preparing her for my dominance in the bedroom. Or inside my truck. Or on my motorcycle. I’d fist her hair in one hand and guide her mouth over my cock with the other, all while she keeps her hands behind her back.
There’d be no touching me unless I gave her permission. Dominance is about submission, and submission is the key to her pleasure and mine.
Ever trembles from my caress and my praise. My cock stiffens. I wet my bottom lip. She stares. I’m deep in my head, of me and her in my bed, her bed, and inside my lifted truck.
I had ten vehicles before I sold eight after meeting Ever, and I’ll have ten again with her input. Then we’ll christen every one of them with our lovemaking.
She’ll ride my cock, tits bouncing, as I put pressure on her throat with my hand until she breaks apart and slicks me from head to base with her arousal.
Fuck. Fuck.
Slate’s voice slices through my desire and yanks me out of my fantasy.
“Drop the hard-on for your girl and come look at this here. We have a problem.”
I blink and turn to check out this “problem” we’re having, but not before I give Ever a love tap on her outer thigh and tell her to stay put.