Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I had her first. I'll have her last.
The words looped through my skull like a song I couldn't shake. Over and over and over, scratching the same groove deeper each time. His voice. That easy, confident drawl that hadn't changed in sixteen years and probably wouldn't change in sixteen more.
I ain't goin' nowhere now that I found her.
The ceiling above me was dark. Brody was asleep beside me—on his back, one arm flung above his head, the other resting on his stomach, breathing the slow, steady rhythm of a man who'd spent the drive home vibrating with rage and then come through the door and done nothing with it except hold me.
Fed Cat. Made me a sandwich I didn't eat.
Sat on the couch with his arm around me while I stared at nothing, and when I'd finally said bed, he'd carried me up the stairs without a word and curled himself around me like a wall between me and everything on the other side of it.
He'd been asleep within minutes.
I'd been staring at the ceiling for two hours.
I had her first.
He hadn't had me. He'd taken me. There was a difference—one I hadn't understood at fifteen, barely understood at eighteen, and was only now, at thirty-four, learning to name it for what it was.
But naming it didn't stop his voice from playing on repeat.
I'll have her last.
The math was simple. It always had been with Wyatt. He wasn't complicated—he was relentless. He didn't burn hot and flame out. He settled in. Got comfortable. Made himself a fixture until the walls around you shrank so small you forgot there was ever a world outside them.
He knew where I was now. Knew the ranch, the town, probably already knew about the house. A man like Wyatt didn't need directions twice.
I could run.
My truck was still at Wild Acre, but I could walk there in the dark.
Done harder things for less. Half a tank of gas and the highway fifteen minutes south.
Idaho by morning. Oregon by nightfall. Pick a direction and disappear the way I'd done a dozen times before, back when vanishing was the only skill I had that worked every time.
I turned my head and looked at Brody.
Moonlight through the one unboarded window cut across the bed in a pale stripe, catching the edge of his jaw, the slope of his shoulder.
His lips were parted. His hair was a wreck.
He was, objectively, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and the idea of walking to Wild Acre in the dark and driving away from him made me feel like I'd swallowed something sharp that was working its way through my insides one slow inch at a time.
Somewhere between a plywood floor and a Princess bowl and Colleen Lancaster's apple pie, something had changed.
The girl who ran had stopped running, and the woman who'd taken her place was lying in the dark next to a man she couldn't leave and couldn't lose, and the only thing louder than Wyatt Cole's voice in her head was the sound of Brody Lancaster breathing beside her.
I needed to shut Wyatt up.
I needed to be here. In this room. In this bed. In my body instead of in my head.
I slid down the bed slow enough not to wake him, pushing the sheet off as I went, until my face was level with his hips.
He slept in nothing. Always did when we shared a bed, which was every night now. His cock lay soft against his thigh, and even at rest it was enough to make my mouth water.
I pressed my lips to his hip bone. Feather-light. He didn't stir.
I kissed lower. The crease where hip met thigh. The soft skin just above the base of him. Breathed warm against him and watched his cock twitch—once, then again—already responding before he had any say in the matter.
I wrapped my hand around him, loose and gentle, and felt him thicken in my grip. A slow, involuntary swelling that had heat pooling between my own legs. I stroked once. Twice. Watched him grow hard in my hand, his body waking up before his brain did.
Then I lowered my mouth and took the head of his cock past my lips.
The taste of him—clean skin and salt and something underneath that was just Brody—hit my tongue and I felt the noise in my head go quiet. Just like that. Like someone had turned the volume down with a quick, single twist of a dial.
I took him deeper, letting my mouth adjust around the thickness of him.
I'd had him in my mouth before—that first night, sloppy and drunk and frantic—but I'd never done it like this.
Unhurried. Savoring. Learning the weight of him on my tongue, the way the vein on the underside pulsed when I dragged the flat of my tongue along it.
His hips shifted. A soft sound from above me—somewhere between a sigh and a groan, the kind of sound a man made when pleasure found him before consciousness did.
I hollowed my cheeks and sucked, sliding down until my nose brushed the coarse hair at his base, throat opening around him. My eyes watered. I held there, breathing through it, feeling him throb against the back of my throat.
His hand found my hair. Not guiding—just there, fingers threading through the strands, tightening as his senses came online.
"Calvin." My name was gravel and sleep and the beginning of something wild. "What are you—" He broke off on a groan when I pulled back to the tip and swirled my tongue around the head, dipping into the slit where he was already leaking. "Fuck. Okay."
I pulled off long enough to say, "Go back to sleep."
"Yeah, that ain't happenin'." His hips rolled up, and I took him deep again. The broken sound he made vibrated through my chest.
I set a rhythm. Slow and deliberate, the way I did everything that mattered.
One hand wrapped around the base, working what my mouth couldn't reach.
The other pressed flat against his stomach, feeling the muscles jump and tighten under my palm with every stroke.
I worked him with my tongue on the upstroke, sucked hard on the downstroke, and somewhere in between started moaning around him because the sounds he was making were doing things to me that had no business being this effective.
His hand tightened in my hair. His hips kept moving—shallow, restrained thrusts that told me he was trying not to fuck my face and losing the battle. I grabbed his hip and pulled, giving him permission.
He took it.
His hips snapped up and I took him deep, throat burning, eyes watering, loving every second of it. His cock hitting the back of my throat on every thrust while his hand gripped my hair and his breath came out in ragged bursts.
"Fuck, baby, your mouth—" He was fully awake now. Watching me. I could feel his eyes on me, even in the dark. His hand tightened in my hair and I moaned around him, and that almost did it. "You're gonna make me—"
He pulled me off him. Gentle but firm, his fist wrapped in my hair, tilting my face up. I looked up at him, lips swollen and wet, and he was staring at me with something so raw it made my stomach flip.
"I don't wanna come in your mouth." His voice was wrecked. "I wanna come in that tight little ass."
A shudder ripped through me that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the way his eyes went black when he said it.
He flipped me onto my stomach so fast I gasped.
Then his hands were on me—unhurried now, deliberate, running down my spine, over my hips, dragging my underwear down my legs.
He kissed the base of my spine. The curve of my ass.
Took his time there—his mouth hot and open against my skin, teeth grazing, tongue soothing, his hands spreading me open.
His thumb traced between my cheeks and I pushed up onto my hands and knees.
He worked me up leisurely. Two fingers inside me from behind, curling while his thumb circled my clit.
Not rushing. Building. He knew what he was doing—always did—and I was trembling before he'd even started what he'd promised.
My hands fisted in the sheets, and every time I got close he backed off just enough to keep me on the edge.
"Brody—"
"Not yet."
"I swear to God—"
"Patience, viper." He added a third finger and pressed deep, and my spine arched off the bed. "We ain't even gotten to the main event."
He pulled his fingers out and I whined at the loss. Felt the mattress shift.
"Hang tight, viper." Heard his footsteps padding across the floor. "Gotta go grab my new teammate."
A laugh escaped me—genuine, unexpected, and bright in the dark room. I heard him rummaging in the closet where I'd stashed the box I thought he didn't know about but he'd clearly discovered sometime in the last few days.
I peeked over my shoulder and rolled my eyes at him as he made his way back toward the bed, turquoise vibrator in his hand—ten settings, nine of which I didn't want or need, and the one perfect curve that I did.
"Don't look at me like that." He climbed back onto the bed behind me. Then the low hum of a vibrator coming to life filled the room. "This is a team sport now."
He pressed the toy against my clit first—just held it there, buzzing.
"More," I said, and Brody clicked the intensity up a notch.
"Again." With another press of a button, we'd reached the perfect setting—that strong, incessant thrumming that, combined with the right movement, would have me coming in sixty seconds flat.
He moved the toy in tight circles over my clit until my arms nearly buckled and I dropped to my elbows.
Then he dragged it lower. Teased my entrance with the tip of it until I was pushing back, trying to take it myself.
"Greedy." He sounded delighted.
He slid it inside me, letting me feel every ridge and inch of it as it filled me, the vibration radiating outward through every nerve. My mouth fell open. No sound came out.
"You need this, don'tcha, baby?" His lips were at my ear, one hand working the toy in unhurried strokes while the other smoothed up my spine. "Need me to take you outta that head of yours and off to someplace safe."
I buried my face in the pillow. He wasn't wrong. He was never wrong about what I needed, and I hated it and loved it in equal measure.
He left the toy inside me, buzzing, and I felt his hand come around to my jaw. Tilted my head back.
"Spit."
The word shot straight through me. I turned my head and he held his palm out. I spit into it and watched his hand disappear between us.
The click of a cap and the drizzle of lube sliding between my cheeks came before the blunt nudge of his cock against my ass, which told me the spitting was just Brody living out a fantasy.
He moved the tip up and down, spreading the lube. The sound of him working more of it onto his hard length was obscene in a room gone so quiet I realized I'd stopped breathing.
Then he was still. Not pushing in. Just there. Waiting.
"Breathe, viper."
I breathed.
He pressed forward. Slow. So slow it was almost cruel. The stretch burned and bloomed and I grabbed the headboard, my knuckles going white. He paused. Gave me time. His hand rubbed small circles on my lower back while I adjusted to the thickness of his cock.
"You good?"
I nodded into the pillow.
Another inch. I made a sound I'd deny later—somewhere between a moan and a sob. His hand came around to my clit, circling soft and steady, and the mix of the pressure and the pleasure made my vision swim.
"That's it. Let me in, baby."
He sank deeper. Slow. Impossibly slow. Every inch deliberate.
By the time he bottomed out, we were both breathing hard—the toy still buzzing inside my pussy, his cock buried in my ass, two kinds of fullness occupying every inch of space I had.
My fingers were twisted in the sheets. His grip on my hip was the only thing keeping me on the planet.
He didn't move. Just stayed buried in me, letting me feel all of it—him and the toy and the vibration humming through the thin wall between them. His chest pressed against my back. His lips at my ear.
I couldn't form words. Could barely form thoughts.
He pulled back, then pressed in again, and the sensation—his cock sliding while the toy buzzed against everything from the other side—short-circuited something in my brain. He set a rhythm, deep and measured, and every thrust sent a current through me that lit up nerves I didn't know I had.
"Let me hear you, Cal. Cat can handle it by now—she's been livin' with us long enough."
I would've laughed if he hadn't chosen that exact moment to thrust hard enough to knock the headboard against the wall.
I stopped trying to be quiet. Couldn't have been even if I wanted to by then.
He pulled me up off my elbows, repositioning me on all fours, and started working the toy in counterpoint—when he pulled back, the toy pressed deep, when he thrust forward, the toy slid back—and the alternating rhythm was methodical and devastating and I was going to come apart at the seams.
"That's it." His voice was barely holding together. One hand on my hip, the other working the toy, his pace steady, even as his breathing went ragged. "God, Cal, you should see yourself right now."
I couldn't see anything. Couldn't think anything.
He'd done exactly what he promised—taken me so far out of my own head that nothing could follow me here.
Not Wyatt's voice. Not the highway. Not the math I'd been doing in the dark.
There was just Brody's hands and Brody's voice and Brody's cock and the relentless rhythm of all of them moving with me and the pressure building and building and building—
"Come for me, baby. I've got you."
When I came, it hit like a wall. My whole body locked, every muscle seizing at once, and I heard myself say his name like a prayer I didn't know I had memorized.
He pulled the toy free and gripped my hips with both hands, driving into me hard now—no more patience, no more measured rhythm—chasing his own release.
His hand fisted my hair, pulling me back against his chest as he buried himself deep and let go.
"Oh, fuck, yes, viper." His groan vibrated through my spine as he came with shallow, jerky thrusts that went on and on and on. "Jesus Christ," he muttered, head dropping to my shoulder.
We stayed like that for a long time. Both of us breathless. The toy buzzing somewhere in the sheets until he reached over and clicked it off before getting up to clean us both off.
"C'mere," he said when he returned to bed. He pulled me down, arranged us so my back was against his chest, his arm locked around me. Kissed the top of my head. "You good?"
"Mhm."
"Liar." He squeezed me tighter. "But that's alright, baby. You don't always gotta be good. I'll still be here when things are all kindsa bad."
For the first time in two hours, the ceiling had nothing left to say to me. I closed my eyes, pressed my back into his chest, and slept.