17. ashton
seventeen
ashton
. . .
Lose My Cool - Lauren Watkins
Brooks and I drop Emmy home with a bag full of cookies and a whole lot of memories of our adventures. We leave her excitedly telling Harriet and Dean about riding Mayo, after I’ve sent both of them all the pictures we took throughout the day.
Brooks is uncharacteristically quiet as he drives my dad’s truck back in the direction of our cabins.
I pull my tube of lip balm from my pocket, holding it between my fingers and rolling it along each digit like a coin, before eventually squeezing the tube and pressing it against my lips.
The familiar cupcake scent does nothing to calm the nerves that this unexpected silence has built.
Brooks pulls up to a stop along the dirt road that leads through The Village.
“You good from here, Ash?”
I nod. Brooks climbs out and I slide across into the driver’s seat, clicking my seatbelt into place and pulling away with an awkward wave as Brooks slaps a palm against the roof of the cab.
Everett’s package of cookies sits on the passenger seat.
I don’t turn the radio on, instead choosing to drive in silence, rolling the truck through the trees until I ease it to a stop outside my own house.
With my brother’s cookies in hand, I pocket the keys, relieved to find my house key still safe and sound in my pocket.
I have no idea why I’m so averse to carrying it, when I do it as a matter of course in New York.
But I don’t have the energy to unpack that one now.
I cross the bridge over the creek and jog the last few steps to Everett’s house.
Ruth opens the door when I knock, beams, and steps aside to let me in.
“Come in! Are those cookies?”
“Baked ‘em with Emmy Jean. Thought you and Ev might like some… if my brother is around somewhere, that is.”
“Thought I heard your voice.” Everett enters the kitchen behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and hoisting me off the ground. “Hey, sis.”
Ruth carefully unties the ribbon around the top of the bag of cookies.
That’s the starkest, most obvious difference between her and my brother: where Everett would’ve torn through the plastic in his haste to get to the cookies, Ruth is meticulous, tugging gently at the ribbon and untying the knot, wrapping it into a neat ball when it comes free.
Then she turns her attention to the cookies themselves, laying all six of them out on the counter in two neat rows.
“I call dibs,” my brother announces, snatching up the one with his name on it.
It’s in his mouth before I even have time to blink.
He moans in delight. Ruth is taking her time to inspect the rest: one with her name on it, the one with her boots, another with the little kangaroo emoji she always uses.
“You made a cookie with my roo on it,” she says. A slow smile spreads across her face and she grins at me, glassy-eyed. “No one calls me Roo here.”
“You always have a kangaroo next to your name. I just thought—”
“Thank you,” she says tearfully. She pulls out her phone to take a picture before more of them can be eaten.
“I don’t know how you do it, Ashey,” my brother says, reaching for a second cookie. “I don’t know how you make them crunchy and melty and soft all at the same time. It’s like magic.”
“That’s what I told Brooks earlier. Practice. Skill. Little bit of magic.”
“You were with Brooks?” Ruth looks surprised. She takes a delicate bite from the cookie with her name on it and her eyes roll back. “God, this is fucking insane. Best cookie ever.”
“I spent the day with Emmy; thought I’d give Harriet a little break. Brooks found us riding this morning, took us to lunch.”
“And then baked cookies?”
“You let Brooks Hart near an oven?”
“He was supervised,” I insist. “And yes, he baked cookies with us. EJ adores him. We had fun.”
“Good. Glad he’s not moping around now that Mom’s mandated days off for us.”
“Speaking of days off. How was your day in Austin? You’re home early.”
“It was great,” Everett gushes. “Fancy pizza for lunch. Ruth spent a bunch of my money. We thought about staying out for dinner, but decided to come home instead.”
“Ooh, whatcha buy?”
“A new bikini, and some cute underwear. A book. Some stuff you probably don’t wanna know about.” Ruth’s cheeks redden.
“Okay, got it. I’m leaving now.” I kiss both of them on the cheek before making my own way to the door, raising my voice as I go. “Enjoy the cookies… and your… purchases. Have a good night!”
A shriek of laughter follows me out and I leave with a smile on my face. My brother is happy. And no matter what happened in New York, no matter what happens next, that’s more important to me than anything else.
I have a spring in my step as I cross the creek again, returning to my own cabin. Brooks’s cookies are still on the counter. Without a second thought, I swipe them up and leave my house again, this time, hanging the key back on its hook and closing the door behind me.
There. That’s better.
I smile the entire eight minutes to Brooks’s cabin. The sun is beginning to dip lower, elongating the shadows of the trees, and the afternoon’s oppressive heat is finally starting to give way to a gentle breeze.
“Hey, little Tanner.” Big John tips his hat to me as he unlocks the door of a cabin a few spots down from where Brooks lives. “Those hazelnut cookies you made? Exquisite. Your Mom let me have one. Hot damn.”
“I’ll bake some more for you soon, ‘kay?”
“Won’t say no to that. Have a good night.” Big John offers another tip of his hat before he disappears into his cabin, and I knock on Brooks’s door. He opens it almost immediately, like he was standing right on the other side, waiting for me.
I can’t help but hope he might have been waiting for me.
“You left your cookies.”
His gaze burns into me as his chest rises and falls quickly.
He takes the cookies from me wordlessly, placing them on the small shelf beside the door.
He never breaks eye contact, and when it’s almost too much, he finally speaks.
Only three words, but they’re the most charged three words I’ve ever heard.
“Get in here.”
Brooks slams the door behind me and without warning, one large hand cradles my jaw at the same time our mouths meet.
The moment his lips touch mine is like a homecoming.
Everything in the world makes sense and doesn’t, all at once, as his tongue slides lazily against the seam of my mouth.
It’s nothing like I remember, nothing like I expect, and it’s everything I have ever dared to hope for.
Everything and more. It’s gentle and sweet; firm pressure from his mouth on mine and his thick fingers in my hair, tugging ever so slightly.
Finally.
He holds our bodies flush together as he walks us to the sofa, tearing his lips from mine just long enough to look into my eyes again.
“I’ve wanted to do this all day,” he rasps, and then his lips are on mine again, taking and taking and giving just enough.
I give and I give, taking everything he offers and demanding more, sinking my teeth into his lower lip as I fist my hands into the cotton of his T-shirt to hold his body against mine.
“Don’t let me take this too far, Ash,” he mumbles, voice strained. “Tell me to stop.”
“Don’t want you to stop,” I answer. And I don’t.
However scary this is—childhood dreams coming true, finally being in the arms of a playboy who breaks hearts rather than capturing them—it is my childhood dream.
It’s all I wanted when I was younger, and it’s all I’ve wanted since coming home from New York.
And if this one time, one night, is all I get, then I’m damn sure making the most of it.
Everything else will figure itself out later.
And then, he’s sat and I’m in his lap, straddling him. At some point, my shirt comes off, dropped helplessly to the floor by Brooks’s feet, and he looks at me with such reverence I think I might burst.
Look at this, I want to scream. Look at the way he touches me, the way he holds me.
Look at the way he does all the things he shouldn’t.
But I don’t. I continue to kiss him instead, like he has some kind of invisible, all-consuming power over me, nipping at his lower lip and moaning against his mouth when I hear the whimper pull from his throat.
“Look at you, riding my thigh like some wanton little she-devil,” he mumbles. His lips attach to my throat as I toss my head back. His large hands encircle my waist, encouraging my movements. “Can’t wait to feel you ride my cock like this.”
“Brooks.” His name falls from my lips like a prayer as he kisses a line over my shoulder, down between my breasts. He pushes my bra strap down my arm, freeing them. It’s almost giddy, the look of delight in his eyes when my peaked nipples become fully exposed.
“Ride me, Ash.”
“I can’t.” I moan the words even as I try to deny myself the pleasure. “I’m on my period.”
One large hand takes hold of my chin, tilting my head so we’re eye-to-eye.
“I don’t care if you don’t.”
A ragged sigh.
“I care.”
“Your choice,” he says, brushing a lock of hair from my face and moving his hand to my ribs. His thumbs rub my nipples with a mixture of firmness and tenderness I didn’t even know was possible. A devilish grin curls his lips. “Bet I can make you come like this.”
“You think so, huh?”
“Absolutely.” His grin turns cocky and then he dips his head, taking a nipple in his mouth and using that same soft, gentle swirl that he used on my lips earlier.
My hips circle and rock against his thigh, his hands around my waist, helping me move.
And oh, God, but when he presses his thigh upward between my legs, I can’t help but cry out.
“That’s it, little devil,” he murmurs against my skin. “Use me to get yourself off. Fuck, you might just get me off, too.”
Between the strong muscle of his leg and the seam of my shorts over my soaked underwear, the friction is exquisite.
Who needs penetration when you can save a horse and ride a cowboy’s thigh?
I come hard, fingernails squeezing into the flesh of Brooks’s shoulders, and his mouth never leaves my chest until I fall against him, panting and sweaty.
“Shit, Ash.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. My chest is rubbed raw from his beard, and on any other day, I’d be begging to feel that burn between my thighs.
But this is Brooks. My brother’s best friend. Hell, he’s my best friend. But the boy I grew up with has become a man. A man who just made me freefall harder and faster than I think I ever have before.
“Seems like you got yourself into a little pickle there, demon.” I press my hips forward, rocking against the impressive erection straining against his sweats. “Or, uh, a rather large pickle.”
He grins. Winks at me cockily.
“You could help me out of this predicament,” he suggests. “You know. If you want.”
With shaky legs, I slip off of him and down to the floor, settling on my knees between his feet.
I only have to brush my fingertips over his length through his pants before he’s hissing through his teeth.
When I reach inside his waistband and close my fingers around him, his head falls back, eyes scrunched tight, and a guttural moan tears from his chest. He lifts his hips and pushes his sweatpants down just far enough.
I can barely close my fingers around him. He’s thick and hard, head red and already leaking. I don’t think this will take long at all—a depressing thought, because I already know I’m going to enjoy myself. I lean in, and in one single motion, I take him to the back of my throat.
“Holy shitting mother of fucking Christ, Ash.” His words are tangled up in one long moan and barely intelligible. I release him just long enough to catch his eye and smile coquettishly.
“Mmm. Yup. Delicious.”
Unfortunately, gag reflexes are a thing, and Brooks is enormous—far bigger than any man I’ve ever been with before.
What I can’t take in my mouth, I work with my hand, using the other to gently cup and massage his balls.
His breathing quickens and his whole body tightens, feet tapping against the floor with the kind of impatience that suggests an impending explosion.
“Ash, I’m gonna—”
I release him just in time, directing him exactly where I want him. Hot, white ribbons flow from his cock, hitting me in the chest as he growls, clenching and unclenching his fist around my hair.
For a moment, we’re silent.
This is the boy I always crushed on. The man I could never have. The one I shouldn’t want, but the only one who makes the world speed up and slow down all at once. The only one who has my heart racing, even while he calms me.
Gray meets gray as our eyes lock. Years of unspoken sentiments pass between us until I’m the first to look away. When I glance back, Brooks’s gaze is hanging on his cum all over my breasts.
“I’ve made a mess of you, devil.”
“You always have, demon.”
Another beat of quiet follows. The only sound is that of our mingled heavy breaths.
“You could be a good boy and clean up your mess. You know,” I say, mimicking his earlier comment and breaking the silence. “If you want.”
His eyes light up. A tentative finger swipes through the mess on my chest, then taps my lips.
“Open, devil.”
I swirl my tongue around his fingertip, cleaning every drop.
He tastes every bit as good as I imagined he would—better, even.
My thighs clench of their own accord and my breath is ragged as I release his finger with a pop.
Brooks’s eyes are dark, swirling with some kind of storm as I look up to meet his gaze.
“Fuck.”
I swipe two fingers of my own through the mess and hold them out to him. Hesitantly, he leans in.
“Suck, demon.”
The suction of his mouth is almost enough to make me come again.
My vision turns gray at the edges, blurs just a little as his tongue rasps up and down my fingers, swirling around and between them.
Another barely-there whimper bubbles from his throat as he releases me. Never before has an aura felt so good.
“Good, right?” I ask. He nods, a spaced-out look on his face.
I’m shirtless and covered in cum; there’s a wet patch on my shorts, leaking down my thighs, and a matching one on Brooks’s gray sweatpants where I rode his thigh.
It’s indecent as hell, but I can’t help but want more.
I want, and that’s a dangerous place to be.