13. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
Evie
B eing here was weird. There wasn’t any other word for it. I knew what the house looked like, but I’d never actually been inside it. I did all of the paperwork in Nashville, and then hired a company to pack anything worth salvaging from the dump where I grew up. Everything else Mom needed, I bought online and had shipped to her, paying for setup whenever it was necessary.
Fortunately, I’d also paid for very good insurance, so we’d be able to replace everything the intruders had broken or taken. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been glad that I didn’t have the sort of family who passed down heirlooms or sentimental items. Everything that’d been stolen or trashed was replaceable.
Dealing with my mom, however, was a different sort of headache. The kind that usually required alcohol or chocolate. I tried not to use the first one too often. Because of my mom, I’d always been cautious with booze, and since I’d already gotten a bit buzzed with Jenna and Isabel the other night, I planned on raiding the kitchen for junk food. With Mom finally in bed, either asleep or passed out, it was definitely time to indulge.
Except when I entered the kitchen, Levi was leaning against the counter, sipping a beer that I assumed he’d found in the fridge. Mom might not have much food, but she always had beer. I just hoped she still kept her stash of chocolate bars in the freezer next to the vodka.
“You can go,” I said as I went to the fridge. “The cops are gone, and whoever did this isn’t going to come back tonight. Mom and I will be fine.”
“I’m gonna assume I didn’t hear you right,” he said. “Because no way in hell am I letting you stay here with just that drunk to protect you.”
I raised an eyebrow as I dug around in the freezer. “I figured I’d be the one doing the protecting if it came down to it.”
“I’ll say it again. No. Way. In. Hell.”
I found what I was looking for and went over to the counter across from Levi, hopping up on it before I unwrapped the candy bar and snapped off a piece.
“Look, I appreciate what you did for my mom while I was gone, even if your mom’s the one who made you do it, and I appreciate you watching out for me, but you’re not my boss. You can’t tell me what to do.”
Levi’s eyes narrowed and he put down his beer, as if he needed all his focus to deal with me. He folded his arms over his massive chest, that aggravating stubborn set to his jaw.
I could write a hundred songs about how he looked right now.
“I think we need to get clear on a few things,” he said. “I’m not letting you put people I care about at risk.”
“You’re not,” I argued. “It’s just me and my mom here. You can go watch out for Isabel and Jenna and your mom. And if Jenna gives you any shit about it, you can tell her to blame me.”
“When I leave, you’re coming with me.”
“Look, you might be used to everyone at your boys’ club jumping when you bark, but I’m not one of your boys. I take care of myself.”
“You’re not sleeping here alone.” He said it as if it was a fact.
“I don’t have to sleep alone,” I shot back. “Give me five minutes on the phone and I’ll find someone who’ll be more than happy to share my bed.”
I didn’t know why I said it like that, especially since the only people I was interested in sleeping with were his brothers, but he just got under my skin and the filter between my brain and my mouth stopped working.
He pushed himself off the counter, his eyes burning like blue flame. “Like hell you will.”
Then his mouth was on mine and I was drowning in him. His hands settled on my hips and squeezed until I gasped. Or I tried to, anyway. It was hard to do with his tongue plundering my mouth.
As the heat of his body soaked into me, my hands found their way to his chest and my arousal spiked at the feel of all that hard muscle under the soft cotton. Burning, I caught his bottom lip between my teeth, loving the way his body jerked when I bit down, how his fingers dug into my flesh until it hurt.
In a very good way.
He growled, tangling his fingers into my curls and yanking my head back. I moaned as his mouth moved down my jaw to my exposed throat. The scruff on his face chafed my skin as his lips and teeth worked over my neck, the combination of sensations making my eyes close and something low in my stomach tighten.
“Levi,” I breathed as I ran my hands up his chest and across his shoulders. “I want to see you.”
He pulled back, desire making his eyes darken to a deep sapphire. The cocky smirk on his face should’ve pissed me off, but he reached back to pull his t-shirt over his head and all I could do was stare.
Being Jenna’s friend meant I’d seen her brothers without shirts before, but it’d been a while. In that time, Levi had packed on muscle and added numerous tattoos up his arms and all across his torso and, I assumed, his back.
“Damn.”
His grin widened into something I’d never seen on his face before. Something that felt less like lust and more like…affection. I didn’t have time to think about it too much, because he was kissing me again, and when Levi kissed, it was impossible to think about anything other than him and what he made me feel.
And I was feeling it down to my toes.
He slipped his hands under my shirt, and the sensation of him touching where he hadn’t before sent a shiver through me. And the confidence he did it with just made it that much hotter. It was like something had snapped and there was no going back. He had no hesitation as he covered my breasts, his fingers and thumbs pinching and tugging at my nipples through my bra until they were tight little points.
That familiar arrogance of his showed itself in how he took possession of my body, claiming it in a way I should have hated, but didn’t. I knew he’d back off if I said no, and that made it easy to let him take that control. To let him pull off my leggings and take my panties with them.
He pushed my legs further apart, spreading me wide as he pushed two fingers inside me without any warning. I cursed, digging my nails into his shoulders until I drew blood. The pain only seemed to turn him on more, his fingers driving into me, twisting and stretching me.
“That’s right, little hellcat,” he murmured into my ear. “Mark me up.”
The moment his thumb pressed against my clit, an orgasm exploded through me, taking me by surprise. I cried out, my body going stiff as I clamped down on those two digits inside me.
“So fucking tight.” He bit my earlobe. “Can’t wait to feel that cunt around my cock. If you don’t wanna get fucked, say it now.”
“Please.” My voice was hoarse as I managed to get out the only words I could form. “Want you.”
He pulled back for a moment, and before I could start thinking with my brain rather than other parts of my body, he shoved down his jeans and rolled on a condom he’d gotten from somewhere.
“Commando?”
He chuckled as he moved back between my legs. “You’re something else, you know that? You see my cock for the first time and that’s all you can say?”
As he stroked his cock from base to tip and back again, my eyes followed the movement, realizing for the first time just how big he was. I wasn’t a virgin, but I’d only had sex a handful of times, and only with Randall who wasn’t even close to Levi’s size. Logically, I knew it would work, but seeing that thick shaft, the considerable length of him, I understood why characters in books sometimes wondered if a guy’s cock would fit.
“That’s better,” Levi said. “You keep staring while I fill you up so you know who it is who’s making you feel good.”
I was fairly certain this would be burned into my brain until the day I died, so there was no chance I’d ever forget who was fucking me on my mom’s kitchen counter. I didn’t say that, though. Levi’s ego didn’t really need stroked.
“You might wanna hold on to something, hellcat,” he warned.
I barely had time to grip the edge of the counter before he slammed into me, burying himself deep in one almost-brutal thrust. My mouth opened in a silent scream as all the air left my lungs. Spots danced behind my eyes, and I wondered if I was going to black out. It was too much. My nerves were on overload, my brain unable to process what was happening to me.
And Levi didn’t give me a chance to adjust. He just pulled back out until only the tip remained, then drove forward again. My hands moved from the counter to his forearms, clinging to them like they were the only thing keeping me grounded.
This was no slow build, no dragging things out while we learned each other’s bodies. Levi pounded into me with the same single-minded determination I’d seen him apply to other areas in his life. It was what made him a good leader. It was also what made him an asshole sometimes. But now, having all of that focused on making us both come, it was appealing in a way it hadn’t been before.
His fingers curled around the back of my neck, and he yanked my face toward him, crashing our lips together in a bruising kiss. His other hand dropped between us and stroked once, twice, across my clit, and I shattered. He swallowed my cries and followed me over the edge only seconds later.
With my body still quivering with pleasure, my head dropped forward until my forehead rested on his shoulder. I had no idea what this meant, but for right now, I was just going to bask in the afterglow of the most intense orgasm I’d ever experienced—and try not to think too hard about who had given it to me.