Chapter 16 #2
Brody rolled his hips in a steady, deep rhythm that had me feeling every single inch of him, and I couldn't look away from his face. Couldn't find the exit. Every time I tried to tip my head back, break the circuit, his hand came up and cradled my jaw like I was something worth holding onto.
"Stay with me," he murmured.
Damn him.
"I'm here," I said. Barely.
"No." His hips rolled forward and I gasped. "Stay with me."
I understood the difference. I hated that I understood the difference.
My fingers curled into the warm skin of his back and I pulled him closer because it was the only response I had. He pressed his forehead to mine and kept moving, kept that slow, wrecking-ball pace that was doing something to me I had no framework for.
Sex had always been something I did to people. Something I controlled from start to finish, kept at arm's length even when there was no arm's length to be had. I choreographed it. Directed it. Walked away from it clean.
There was nothing clean about this.
"Brody—"
"I've got you." He said it like a fact. Like it wasn't even a question.
I turned my face into his throat so he couldn't see my expression. He let me. His hand slid into my hair, not directing, just holding. His lips brushed my temple and I squeezed my eyes shut.
My body seemed to have already signed a contract my brain hadn't approved, because I was arching into him, meeting every slow thrust, pulling him closer when the smart thing—the Calvin thing—would have been to create distance.
To perform. To be the viper and not whoever the hell this soft, trembling woman underneath him was.
He shifted the angle slightly and I bit down on his shoulder to keep from saying something I couldn't take back.
"There," he breathed. "Yeah, baby, right there."
The endearment landed somewhere tender and I absolutely refused to examine that.
"More," I managed. "I need—"
"I know." And boy, did he. He knew without me finishing the sentence, without me explaining or directing or performing. His hand slid between us and his thumb found my clit and I stopped being able to think in full sentences.
Just sensation. Just him. Just this gutting, gorgeous thing happening in the half-dark of a house he'd bought for someone else.
The orgasm that crested was nothing like the others.
It didn't crash—it opened. Like a door I'd been pressing my whole body against finally swinging wide.
I gasped his name against his shoulder, hands gripping him hard enough to bruise, and he followed me over the edge with a wrecked sound against my neck that I felt in my spine.
For a long moment after, neither of us moved.
His weight pressed me into the tarp and the sweatshirt and the ratty towels, and I let it. His breathing was ragged against my throat. Mine wasn't any steadier.
Then, carefully, like I was made of something fragile—a theory I had always vehemently rejected—he rolled to his side and gathered me against his chest.
I should have made a joke. Should have stretched and reached for my shirt and started reestablishing the perimeter.
Instead I lay there with my palm flat against his heartbeat and listened to it slow.
"Calvin." His voice was low, a little undone.
"Don't," I said quietly.
A beat. "Don't what?"
I didn't have an answer. Don't make this mean something. Don't look at me like that. Don't be someone I want to stay for.
His arm tightened around me.
And I let it.
Idiot, I told myself.
But I didn't move.
A while later, our sweat-slicked skin had dried. Brody lay with his head on a rolled up sweatshirt, and I lay with my head on his chest. One of his big paws held me close while the other toyed with the ends of my short hair.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Anything," he said.
I pressed a kiss to his sternum.
"What made you finally call it quits with Sassy? From what I gather, seems like you always kinda knew…"
I felt his chest tighten beneath my cheek. "It's not as selfless as it sounds. Guess it's probably easier to say I did it for them. But I did it for me, too."
He was quiet for a beat. If that's all I'd get, it'd be fine. Enough. Hell, there was plenty I hadn't told him. He owed me nothing, just because we'd had soul-shattering sex.
He'd stopped playing with my hair, and just when I thought he may have fallen asleep, he finally spoke again.
"My dad died. 'Bout a year ago."
The ache came out of nowhere, the burn of tears stinging my sinuses before I could stop them.
"He was my best friend. Luke's, too."
Luke's stricken expression when I'd mentioned his parents being busy flashed across my mind.
"But the way we loved him, worshipped the ground he walked on… it had nothin' on the way my mom looked at him. Like he was the fucking sun."
He was quiet for a second, and I held my breath.
"I want that. And Sassy never looked at me like that."
"But that's how she looked at Rhett," I guessed.
The words sat heavy, and I felt his nod against the top of my head.
"I'm sorry, Brody. For your dad, and for having to go through all of this with them."
"Thanks, viper." He gave a little squeeze. "Feels easier sayin' it to you."
A breathy laugh came out of me. "Pretty sure I'm lookin' at you like gum beneath my boot half the time. Don't quite think that's what you're aiming for."
He kissed my hair. "Nah, you're not so bad."
"Back at ya, boy scout."
I let myself fall asleep to the steady rise and fall of his chest.