Chapter 40 #2
The tiny raindrops begin to band together into fat ones as we pull into the sheen-slicked driveway.
Brandon kills the engine, and he stabilizes the bike while I hop off.
I yank off my helmet and stand beside him.
The first drips of rain meet my hairline, but I don’t care.
My indigo silk dress is already slicked to my body, the ends of my hair saturated, but I still don’t care.
I’m bursting with all-consuming gratitude, and I can’t go another second without expressing it.
Brandon’s still perched atop the bike, pulling off his helmet to reveal his quizzical expression. Rain peppers his face.
“Kate, you don’t have to wait for me to get the bike in the garage. Save yourself and go get warm.”
“I am warm,” I protest, and Brandon’s gaze blatantly skirts the lines of goosebumps across my shivering limbs. He tips his head sideways at me.
“Okay?”
“Brandon,” I say, trying to still the hurricane of emotion in my gut, “I want to say thank you. For what you did back there.”
A warm smile curves his full lips. “No thanks needed.”
“But it is needed. Because…I don’t think you know…I mean, what you said was…” I flap my hands. No word is precise enough, no adjective powerful enough to encapsulate what I’m feeling.
Brandon tips his head to the sky, eyelids squinting as he takes in the dark blanket of clouds. His tongue darts out to taste a rogue raindrop that landed on his lips, making my blood heat.
He said he didn’t want to kiss me unless it was real.
And it is so very, incredibly, unbelievably real for me.
I step so close to where he sits on the motorcycle that the wet silk plastered on my hip brushes his thigh.
Slinging my arms around his neck, I pull him around to face me.
His wet hair is the color of midnight, strands slicked to his confused brow.
I smooth them away so I can meet his gaze.
His eyes blow wide as he realizes my intent. I draw even closer.
“Kate, what are you—”
But I silence his mouth with mine before I can chicken out.
I had intended for this kiss to be a question, a soft gauge to check his temperature on what feels like could be a hopeful, healing relationship.
Boy, was I wrong.
In an instant, something snaps between us.
He molds his mouth against mine as torrents of electricity ripple from the epicenter of our lips.
The kiss is sweet as champagne and every bit as bubbly, but sharp desire still begins to pool behind my navel.
We’re soaked to the bone, and I can’t stop shivering, but I think I’d rather die than end this.
I tangle my fingers in the saturated tendrils on the back of his neck, and a delicious sound emanates from the back of his throat.
Our mouths fall into a familiar pattern, and things are just getting good when Brandon yanks away with a curse.
His firm hands untangle me from him, then he gently guides me a step back from the motorcycle. Every muscle in his face remains taut, but I can still see the want blazing behind his hard gaze.
“Go inside, Kate.”
I lift a finger to my kiss-swollen lips in disbelief. “I’m sorry, what?”
He scrapes a hand across his face, sending raindrops flying, and shakes his head as if to clear a punch. “I said, go inside, Kate.”
Indignant hurt rises like an angry swarm inside my chest. “Don’t tell me what to do, Brandon. And what is that supposed to mean?”
Brandon stomps on the kickstand, apparently abandoning any notion of storing the bike in the garage for the night. He unfurls to his full height off the motorcycle, jaw tight as he stares me down a few feet away.
I stare every bit as forcefully back.
“You can’t just…” He curses again, walking away a few strides before circling back.
“You can’t just kiss me, Kate. I had one rule.
One request after agreeing to this whole crazy affair.
” His green eyes look almost black in the darkness, despite the glowing house behind us.
“You knew I wasn’t okay with kissing you unless it was real.
Unless it meant something to you. And last I checked, you were still very much insisting we needed to stay friends—”
“Will you shut up?”
Brandon’s next word stalls on his breath before he says, “What?”
“Will. You,” I repeat, taking a step with each word. “Shut. Up?”
His eyes skim the silk sheath probably still glued to my body, but I don’t tear my eyes from him to check.
“I only shut up,” he says evenly, “when people have something to say.”
“Good,” I breathe, “because I just so happen to have something to say.”
His hard gaze stays trained on mine, but I detect a flash of humor in his expression.
“I kissed you, bunny ears,” I say sternly, and his lips twitch, “because I happen to have realized some very real feelings for you. And for once, they’re not annoyance.”
Brandon’s laugh is rough sandpaper, and it sends a thrill through me. But his muscles remain coiled, tense, as I draw even closer.
I drop the playfulness from my expression, tearing away brick by brick until he can see the raw, vulnerable truth in my next words.
“It was real, Brandon,” I whisper. “It is real. At least for me—”
That’s all it takes.
Brandon’s mouth crashes down on mine—hard.
He grips the backs of my thighs, hauling me up and against his body.
My senses are pulled in every direction as his free hand tangles in my hair.
I wrap my arms and legs around his torso as he begins to navigate the patio in the dark.
Pool lights beside us emanate faintly from its depths, bathing the area in a dim glow.
“Watch out for the pool,” I pant against his rain-drenched lips, and he chuckles between kisses.
“Will you stop being so bossy?” he says.
“Wouldn’t have to be if you could keep up,” I retort.
He nips at my bottom lip, and I laugh.
My mouth has just claimed his again when the world’s gravity suddenly lurches to the side. Before I have even a moment to process, a wave of icy pool water crashes into us. I’m separated from Brandon’s embrace in the chlorine-scented water, and I fight my way to the surface, choking out coughs.
Brandon’s head pops up a few feet from me, and he drags me toward the shallow end where my high heels finally grasp purchase.
“Are you freaking serious?” I sputter, shoving a splash of water toward him.
“I didn’t do that on purpose!” He belly laughs, deep and rich. “I swear, I just fell.”
“I’m soaking!”
“Yeah, like we weren’t drenched before,” he deadpans, and I chuck another handful of water where he stands, his white shirt practically painted onto his pectoral muscles.
The hem of his jacket billows in the water.
The whole scenario is so hilarious, I burst out laughing until tears stream down my face.
I attempt to wipe away my amusement, and I’m startled when my fingers come away streaked black with makeup.
“Oh crap.” I cough another laugh. “I probably look like a raccoon.”
“You are”—he moves toward me in the water with a predatory grin—“the sexiest raccoon I’ve ever seen.”
“You do realize how weird that sounds right? Like you have some woodland creature fetish?”
His laugh fans across my lips as his fingers tangle again in my hair. His lips are swollen, hair mussed, but it’s the look he graces me with that floods my stomach with heat.
There’s such want, such reverence in that gaze. As if it’s a prayer, and I’m the only goddess able to answer. It strips me bare, that gaze. I’m unable to hide, and what’s more, I don’t think I want to anymore.
Because Brandon sees me. All of me. My scars, my fears, my desires.
The look in his eyes isn’t a flash fire in a hot pan. The emotion burning there is a hearth, hot coals full of longevity and lazy Sundays.
“Get down here and kiss me already,” I whisper.
His lips tease kisses from my earlobe to my jaw, bolts of electricity sparking with every press as I melt further into his arms. I’m coming undone for this man at a pace that should terrify me.
Only, it doesn’t.
I find myself craving more speed, more intensity, more everything. A whimper escapes me like a plea, one that Brandon seems to recognize.
His mouth finds mine, hot and urgent, and we spiral into a familiar frenzy.
We eventually make our way into the pool house, and by the time the sun peeks over the watery horizon, Brandon is asleep on my chest with my heart in his hands.