Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I had Mom wrapped up in a big bear hug when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I let her go to fish it out.
Calvin's name on my screen had me grinnin'. The message made that grin grow.
CALVIN
Your friend is being an idiot
brODY
Where?
CALVIN
BP
I locked my phone and tucked it away. When I looked up, Mom was just starin' at me, a soft smile on her face. "Happy is my favorite look on you. I'm sorry I didn't see you were hurting sooner. Clear as day now."
I hugged her again. "You had a hard year, Ma. I love ya," I said with a kiss to the top of her head.
"Love you, too, sweetheart."
She walked me to the front door and I kicked my ass into gear to get to my girl.
Fortunately, The BP was close. I pulled into my usual spot behind the bar—and my apartment—in just a couple minutes.
The vibes when I rolled up to the bar were…
tense. I stood between my best friend and my…
girlfriend? I didn't know what she was to me, TBH.
With an arm around each of them, I asked, "What're we drinkin'? "
"Shots," Rhett said as he threw one back without lookin' at me.
I shot Calvin a wide-eyed look that I hoped she interpreted as, The fuck is going on with this guy? I read her answerin' look as, Not my problem. He's your friend.
I leaned down to whisper in her ear. "A little over a month and we're already communicatin' with just a look." I pulled back and shot her a wink that she returned with an eye roll—and a smile she tried to hide.
"Hey Hank!" I shouted. He turned my way and flipped me the bird. Calvin cackled.
Rhett stood so quickly, I all but fell into Calvin's lap.
"Hey, baby," I said, waggling my brows at her.
Rhett sneered at us. "I'm out."
He stormed toward the door without another word.
"What the hell happened?" I asked Calvin, takin' Rhett's vacated seat.
Hank dropped a glass full of bright red liquid in front of me. "Shirley Temple. Enjoy."
He walked away and I slowly turned to Calvin who had tears trackin' down her cheeks, she was laughin' so hard. "D'you do this? Think you're funny?"
I reached over to tickle the shit outta her. "Brody, stop!" she shrieked over her laughter. "I'm going to pee!"
"Alright, you're cut off. Let's go." I stood and threw her over my shoulder, firefighter style. She laughed her ass off—the one I slapped a few times on our trek—the entire way up to the apartment.
The stairs were a narrow and steep death trap, same as they'd always been, and somewhere between the third and fourth step I had a flash of the last time I'd been here with Calvin.
Except that time I'd been five whiskeys deep and desperate and she'd been a stranger with a septum ring who looked at me like she could eat me alive.
She still looked at me like that.
But now I knew—maybe not the whole story, but enough.
Now it meant somethin' different entirely.
Now I was so goddamn gone for this woman it scared the shit outta me on a daily basis.
Because she could load up her truck any ol' day she felt like it and be three states away by sundown.
And there wasn't a thing in the world I could do about it.
I gave my brain a quick scold for thinkin' the worst and kept climbin'.
When I made it to the top, I twisted the knob with my free hand and set Calvin down just inside the door.
She stumbled into me, still gigglin', catchin' herself with both hands flat on my chest. I kicked the door shut behind us.
The apartment was dim—just the lamp I'd left on in the corner throwin' everything gold.
"Hi," she said, tippin' her face up.
"Hi yourself." I walked her backward toward the couch, and she went easy—fingers curlin' into my shirt as her tongue swiped out to wet her bottom lip before she sank her teeth into it.
Goddamn, I needed my mouth on hers like I needed my next breath.
The backs of her knees hit the arm of the couch and she grabbed my collar to keep from goin' over.
I caught her weight, both of us laughin', breathless, and somewhere in the fumblin', her mouth found mine and the laughin' stopped.
It was nothin' like the first time and exactly like it, all at once.
Clothes went fast—hers first, then mine, hands and mouths and the occasional elbow until she was bent over the arm of the couch, her back a long, sexy line in the lamplight.
I was pressed against her from behind, cock hard enough to pound nails, with my hand wrapped around both her wrists at the small of her back.
I nudged her feet wider with mine.
"Brody." A warning and an invitation wearing the same word.
I pressed forward, sinking inside her tight, wet, warm pussy and—
"Oh, fuck." I went still. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
Calvin looked over her shoulder at me. "Problem?"
"Condom. I forgot a—"
"IUD." She held my gaze. "And I'm clean."
Somethin' short-circuited in my brain. "I'm clean, too. I've only ever—" I stopped. She knew. There'd only been Sassy. And her. "I'm clean."
"Then what the hell are you waiting for?"
A fair fucking question.
I tightened my grip on her wrists and pushed further inside her slow, feelin' every inch of it, nothin' between us, and the sound she made had my jaw clenching with the effort of holdin' still long enough for her to adjust.
"Move," she gritted out. "Now."
So I did.
I found a rhythm that was hard and deliberate, each thrust drawing a sharp sound from her that echoed off the walls of the quiet apartment.
My grip on her wrists was tight—probably too tight—and her back arched as her shoulders tipped back with the force of me tuggin' relentlessly on her arms. My free hand found the soft skin of her lower back, her hip, her ass.
Then I pulled it back and brought it down with a crack that rang out clean.
She moaned loud enough to rattle somethin' in my chest.
Bright red bloomed across the milky skin of her perfect, peach-shaped ass, and it stirred somethin' in me I'd sure as fuck never felt before.
I was a goddamn caveman, markin' her like that.
And lovin' it. Chantin' mine, mine, mine over and over and over again in my head as I soothed the sting with my palm.
"Again," she breathed.
I obliged with a grin. Her pretty little cunt was drippin' down the front of my thighs as I kept fuckin' into her like a madman.
Jesus Christ, nothing has ever felt so good.
"You know," I said, landin' another hard smack on her ass and watching her hands flex in my grip as I continued to thrust into her, "last time you had your hands on every lever. Controlled the whole damn thing." I dipped low to speak against her ear. "Look at you now, viper."
She went taut beneath me.
I sighed. I'd gone and fucked right up.
Calvin wrenched her wrists free, planted her hands on the couch cushion, and shoved back hard enough to send me stumblin' a step and my cock slippin' from its favorite place on earth.
Before I could blink, she'd turned and pushed me down onto the loveseat next to the couch, swung a leg over my lap, and gripped my jaw in one hand.
"You were saying?" she said.
I looked up at her.
Swallowed.
"Not a damn thing."
She sank down onto me in one slow, devastating slide and we both stopped breathin'.
Her forehead dropped to mine, eyes closed, both hands braced on my shoulders.
I kept mine on her hips, holdin' still, lettin' her take what she needed.
The lamp in the corner made her flawless skin glow.
She was so goddamn beautiful it was almost hard to look at her straight on. Like starin' into the sun.
Then she started to move and I stopped thinkin' altogether.
She rode me slow at first, hips rollin' in a rhythm that was pure torture, the kind designed to make a man lose his religion and his good sense right along with it.
My grip tightened on her hips. My jaw went tight.
I was tryna hold on, tryna let her have her win, but she felt so like heaven—hot and slick and absolutely nowhere near far enough away for me to think straight.
I slid a hand up her spine, between her shoulder blades, and pulled her chest flush against mine. She gasped a little, not expectin' it, and I took the opportunity to get my feet flat on the floor and drive up into her. Her head tipped back on a moan.
"Thought you were runnin' the show," I said against her throat.
"I am." But her voice had gone rough at the edges.
I thrust up again, harder, and she made a sound that would have my dick twitchin' for days.
"Sure about that?"
She answered by rockin' her hips forward in a way that made my eyes cross. Okay. Fair enough. We were runnin' it together, then.
I wrapped an arm low around her waist and stood, then turned and laid her back on the couch in one move. She blinked up at me, hair spread out beneath her, chest heavin'.
Somethin' flickered across her face. Warm and quick, there and gone.
I hooked her leg over my hip and pushed back inside her and watched her mouth fall open on a silent exhale.
Found a rhythm that was deep and unhurried, nothin' like the frantic pace we'd kept before.
She arched up into me on every stroke, fingers diggin' into my back, and I pressed my forehead against her temple and just felt it—felt her—for a long, stupid, reckless moment.
"Oh, god, Brody." My name from her mouth like that. Low and unguarded. "So good."
"So fuckin' good, baby."
Her arms wrapped around my neck and pulled me closer instead of pushin' me away, and somethin' in my chest cracked open, quiet and clean, like a window lettin' in the first cool air after a long summer.
I slid a hand between us, pinchin' her clit and her hips bucked up sharp.
"Fuck," she screamed.
"That's it, viper," I coaxed, circlin' my thumb against the hard bud. "Come for me."
She shattered underneath me seconds later with her face pressed into my neck, my name bitten off against my skin.
The pulsing warmth of her milked my cock for everything it was worth.
With a few quick, hard thrusts, I followed her into orgasmic oblivion with my arms wrapped around her and my face buried in her hair.
We lay there after, tangled up and breathin' hard, the apartment quiet around us.
After a long moment, she said, "You're really fucking heavy, ya know?"
I chuckled. Hadn't realized I'd been givin' her all my weight. Shoulda, though. Been givin' her my everything since the moment I met her. "Shit, sorry."
Pressin' up on my hands and knees, I slipped my dick out from inside her. What happened next was well and truly outta my control. I watched my cum slowly leak out from her pussy. Stared as it dripped down into the crack of her ass. Mesmerized.
It wasn't the first time I'd gone bare—done it plenty with Sass. But somethin' about my cum between the ass cheeks of this smart-mouthed, vicious vixen that turned sweet and soft for me had me downright fuckin' feral.
"Brody?"
Barely registered her voice as I reached out and used two fingers to swipe through the mess I'd made of her and shoved it all right back in.
"Brody!" Musta shocked the shit outta her because she tensed.
But as I fucked her slow with my fingers, savoring the slickness of our combined releases, her body went limp.
I curled my fingers just right, relentlessly strummin' the sweet spot that had Calvin's back archin' off the couch.
I pumped in and out of her, faster and harder until she was screamin'. "Shit! Fuck!"
"Yeah, that's it, viper. Give it to me."
Her orgasm hit hard, suckin' my fingers deeper inside her but I didn't let up, fucking her through it as she gushed and squirted all over my hand.
Sexiest thing I'd ever witnessed in my thirty-five years.
She squirmed, probably over-sensitive. But I wasn't done.
Needed more. More of this, more of her. Just more, more, more.
I slipped my fingers out and she whimpered, but it quickly morphed into a gasp when I palmed her inner thighs to spread her wide enough that one leg hooked over the back of the couch and the other was planted flat on the floor.
I dipped down and lapped at her pussy, lickin' and suckin', not givin' two fucks that I was likely suckin' up my own cum in the process.
She'd made a mess of herself, of me, of the damn couch.
But she tasted so fuckin' good. I wanted to drown in her.
Her thighs shook under my hands. I peeked up at her from my place of worship between her legs to see her head pressed back into the cushions, dark hair fanned out around her.
Perfectly plush lips parted on a silent scream when I wrapped my lips around her clit and sucked.
Hard. Again and again and again until her whole damn body went rigid and then convulsed, more of her sweetness pourin' out against my lips, my tongue, my chin.
I savored every last drop.