Unstoppable Love: The Kelley Family Series

Prologue

Eight Years Earlier

This had to be a dream. Unlike the others, unlike so many of the incredible and torturous dreams I’d had for the last year, this one felt real.

Because it didn’t feel much like a dream when Ava Decker peeked her head into my bedroom and tiptoed in, glancing down the hallway where my oldest brother’s twenty-first birthday raged on outside. I was drunk. Tired. I forced myself to leave the party before I threw my fist into Jimmy Morton’s face for daring to touch Ava.

Wanting your best friend’s little sister, knowing she was hands-off, too damn young, and you were too damn wild to settle down sucked. I was leaving next month for Notre Dame on a football scholarship. She was going to start her junior year of high school.

Which was why these dreams were a mixture of heaven and hell.

Except as Ava clicked the door shut and tiptoed to my bed, none of this felt like a dream. I was lying on my side, back to the window, eyes to the door. It was dark, yeah, but I’d become a master at recognizing Ava’s presence as soon as she was within one hundred yards of me. I also still felt the haze of alcohol slowing my movements, making Ava’s curvy, sweet, and tempting body more blurry than normal.

Yeah. It had to be a dream.

I lost her from my line of sight as she rounded the bed, and then the bed dipped behind me. I tensed. Never in a dream did she come to me. It was always me. Following her, chasing her down. It was me who touched her first, me who dragged my hand through her silky, golden-blonde strands. It was always me who leaned in, wet my lips to make sure the kiss would be good, and brushed my thumb along her bottom lip and asked, “You sure you want to kiss me?”

Now, though, I was rolling to my back, curious to see where this dream would lead.

Ava was in the bed next to me. My bed. My brothers and I were all big guys, built. So no twin beds for us. Mom and Dad upgraded us all when we were thirteen to queen-size beds, so there was plenty of room for Ava and me to be in it without touching, but then she scooted closer.

I licked my lips.

“Whatcha doin’ here, Ava?”

She nibbled on her bottom lip. Said nothing.

I took a chance this wasn’t a dream and asked, “Thought you and Jimmy were in the barn.”

“I don’t like him,” she whispered.

That was good she didn’t like Jimmy. His dad ended up in the back of a Plum County Sheriff’s cruiser more often than not on Friday nights when he stumbled out of Tom’s Saloon on Main. Mom and Dad said Jimmy was just like his old man, Jimmy Sr.

She was on her side, all that hair all over my pillow, and maybe it made me sick, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever let Ma wash them again. Definitely not before I left for school.

Ava’s eyes, dark now, but normally blue as the Colorado sky in the summer, dipped. And shit.

Yeah, I didn’t think this was any dream at all. It certainly felt real when I reached out and did the one thing I swore to Isaiah I’d never do. I touched her. And as soon as my knuckles brushed against her cheek, she inhaled a quick breath, went still right as my dick went hard. Not hard to do these days, but still, faster and harder than usual.

“You didn’t answer my question, Ava. What are you doin’ here? In my bed? You need a place to sleep?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, but then she turned her head and those lips of hers brushed against my hand. “But I was hoping for something else, too.”

“Not sure that’s smart.” It wasn’t smart. Nothing about this was smart.

I should have jumped out of bed as soon as she stepped into my room and kicked her out. I shouldn’t have stayed lying there, letting her get close. Letting her crawl into my bed. Letting her brush her lips over my knuckles again.

I swallowed. This wasn’t like any torturous dream I’d ever had, this was heaven and hell in the flesh.

This was bad.

“Ava,” I groaned, and I pushed my hand to the back of her head.

Her eyes flared wide with surprise as I spread my fingers, cupped her head, and tugged her toward me at the same time I pushed up to an elbow, so I was hovering over her.

“I’m leaving. This isn’t smart. Isaiah will?—”

She lifted her head, pressed her lips against mine, and every last shred of common sense and decency and gentlemanly behavior my parents instilled in us to ensure we were all of that and more fled.

I’d wanted Ava Decker since I first started knowing what made girls different from boys. We’d grown up together and chased each other around farm fields and my parents’ cattle ranch. We’d gone mudding in our four-wheelers and raced horses.

But the first time I saw fourteen-year-old Ava Decker in a skimpy little string bikini, diving into the creek on our land off the rope swing?

I was a goner. Three years I’d wanted her. Three years where I ached to be right where I was.

Three years where I used my hand to get off to those dreams, where I taught myself control and how much better it was the longer it took me to finish. Three years where I kissed and did other things to other girls because I couldn’t have Ava, where I figured out how to make it good for the girls, too. Doing all of that, wishing they were Ava.

And now she was here, kissing me, beneath me in my bed. Her hips bucked up, and hell. She rubbed herself right against where I was hard beneath my underwear, the only thing I had on, and then her hands were at my cheeks, my neck, my shoulders, tugging me to her.

“Ava,” I groaned into her mouth. She tasted like beer and summertime and innocence, and shit.

I pulled back. Innocent, that was what she was. But according to that kiss, she was also a natural. I hadn’t ever seen her with a boy. Not in her own grade. Isaiah would have told me too. And hell, with the amount of time I spent watching her while acting like I wasn’t, I would have noticed too.

Which meant she was innocent in all the ways. Which meant I shouldn’t have been doing this. I couldn’t take what she was offering when I was leaving. I’d probably never live in New Haven again, and she never wanted to be anywhere but there, on her parents’ small farm. She wanted a husband and babies and wanted to stay home with those babies like her mom had done.

She was so perfect, she deserved everything she wanted.

Ava Decker deserved a guy who’d stay. Who’d be the man she needed and treat her like the princess she was.

I was leaving. I had years of football and college and hopefully the pros ahead of me.

I couldn’t be the man she needed.

“Please,” she whispered. Her fingernails—hot pink like my mom’s favorite roses because, much like everything else about Ava, I noticed those earlier too—dug into my shoulders as I gathered my wits and started to do the right thing, even when all I wanted to do was the wrong thing.

Ma drilled into us and did it often. We wouldn’t be the kind of men who used women. We wouldn’t be the kind of men who took advantage. And we wouldn’t be the kind of men who made empty promises.

So yeah, I started to do the right thing. I swear I did.

But then Ava pressed her hands between us and slid her hand down until I felt those long, slim fingers right on my hard dick.

“Please, Cameron. I want it to be you. I want you to teach me. I know you’re leaving. I know I’ll probably never see you again. Please, Cam…”

Oh hell. She was begging. So cute. Eyes so full of need, fingers feeling so good.

I shook my head, but I was failing at doing the right thing. I was failing at it all.

“Please, Cam. Show me.”

Her lips brushed against mine again. Her hand squeezed hard. Almost too hard. But the pain was good.

This was wrong.

But it’d never felt so right.

Until hours later, when she was sleeping in my bed, dressed in my T-shirt, and there was a knock at my door.

And I might not have regretted what we’d done, what I taught her, and what she’d begged for—repeatedly and then thoroughly enjoyed—but I’d definitely regret it if anyone walked in on us.

I threw on my underwear and opened my door a crack.

And fuck me. Fucking fuck me.

It was Isaiah. Drunk. Glassy-eyed, leaning against the wall outside my door. “Got anyone in there for me?”

My stomach rolled, and it had nothing to do with the alcohol.

I’d just taken my best friend’s little sister’s virginity. A gift she begged me to take, and now I was going to puke.

“No, asshole. Go pass out in Caleb’s room.”

I didn’t sleep.

I left.

I’d fix this. Somehow, someway, I’d find a way to fix this.