Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I looked at him.
He was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, and he'd said it like a joke—make a man outta me, viper—with the grin already built in, the escape hatch already constructed. That was the thing about Brody Lancaster. He could make anything sound like a punchline.
I gripped his chin and turned his face toward mine. The grin dropped. What was left underneath it was something I hadn't seen from him yet—open, and a little terrified, and trusting in a way that had no business being directed at me.
The silence between us did the rest.
I let go of his chin to get up and gather what we needed.
The harness and dildo were still in my duffel bag, along with some lube, tucked in the bedroom closet.
While I'd unloaded my clothes into the second-hand dresser Brody had picked up for me at a yard sale, I hadn't anticipated needing these particular items anytime soon.
I pulled them out and took my time getting situated while Brody tracked my movements from the bed, trying real hard to look relaxed.
I turned around and his eyes went straight to the dildo in my hand.
He paused for a beat.
"That's—" he started.
I raised a brow.
He closed his mouth.
"I am the professional here," I said pleasantly. "You are the enthusiastic amateur. Govern yourself accordingly."
He opened his mouth again. Closed it again. Then, with what I could tell was significant personal effort, he put both hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.
"Noted," he said.
"Good boy."
He whimpered.
Turning away with a grin on my face, I stepped into the harness and adjusted the straps. When I turned back around he wasn't staring at the ceiling anymore.
He was staring at me.
The grin was gone. He was just… looking. His throat moved when he swallowed.
"Calvin," he said. Just that.
"I know," I said. And climbed back onto the bed.
Brody was propped against the pillows, studying me with a casualness that didn't fool either of us.
I took my time—slicking my fingers with lube, settling between his thighs, letting him feel the patience in it.
His exhale was long and harsh when I dragged my fingers over his entrance, like he'd been holding it since he hit the mattress.
"Good," I murmured.
He chuckled. "I haven't done anything yet."
"You're breathing." I stroked, unhurried, and watched him. "That counts."
He smiled and his shoulders dropped a fraction from where they'd been bunched around his ears. His cock was hard against his stomach—had been since before I'd gotten the harness on—and the sight of it was genuinely inconvenient. I wanted my mouth on him.
Later. Focus.
He reached down and gripped himself, almost absently. I quirked a brow.
"Hands," I said.
He dropped it. "You're bossy," he said with a smirk.
It vanished the moment I used a finger to breach that tight ring of muscle for the first time, slow and deliberate. I could practically see every thought leave his head as his jaw went slack.
"Still with me?"
"Mm." His eyes had gone dark. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm—" He stopped. His head dropped back. "Oh."
"Yeah," I said softly.
"That's—" He laughed, short and wondering. "Okay. That's—okay."
"Just okay?" I said.
He lifted his head and looked at me like he was considering several responses and discarding all of them. I pressed deeper, curling slightly, finding what I was looking for.
The sound he made wasn't a word. It wasn't anything close to a word.
His muscles went taut and then immediately, helplessly loose, and his head dropped back against the pillow.
I witnessed Brody Lancaster—who had an answer for everything, who had never in my presence been at a loss for a single syllable—just. Stop.
His cock jumped and he fisted his hands in the sheets.
"Brody?"
"I—" He stopped. Tried again. "I'm not—I don't—" He choked out a laugh, staring at me with utter bewilderment on his face. "What the fuck, Calvin?"
"I know," I said.
"No, I mean—" His hips shifted, chasing it, and he caught himself and went still and then chased it again anyway because his body had simply stopped consulting him. "I mean, what the fuck."
I kept my eyes on his face. A smile stretched across mine as I remembered our first night together. You'd love every second of it.
"Still just okay?" I asked.
He turned his head and looked at me, wrecked and open and not even trying to hide it.
"No," he said. "So much better than okay. So fucking—holy fuck, Calvin."
I worked him open methodically, adding a second finger and watching his whole body negotiate with the stretch of it—the way he'd tense and then consciously release, tense and release, like he was learning a new language in real time.
His cock was harder still, flushed and neglected and apparently not requiring any attention whatsoever to stay that way.
Then his hips rolled, chasing my fingers, and his breath went ragged, and I looked up at his face and saw exactly where he was headed.
I withdrew.
He made a sound low in his throat—involuntary, barely there—that he almost certainly didn't mean to make. "Calvin—"
I ran my palm up the inside of his thigh. "Not yet."
He granted me another whimper that had me grinning. "You're killing me."
"You're fine." I smoothed my hand over his hip, waiting for his breathing to even out. "I'm not done with you. Not even close."
I gave him a moment. Let him breathe. His hands had gone loose at his sides and his chest was steadily rising and falling. He looked like he'd just had several foundational assumptions about himself gently revised.
"Still good?" I asked.
He lifted his head. His eyes dropped to the harness, then came back to my face. The grin tried to make an appearance and didn't quite land—there was too much of something else underneath it, crowding it out.
"Yeah," he said. "Come here."
I nudged his knees wider, settled between his thighs, and coated the dildo with lube, watching him watch me do it. His hands found my hips, warm and steady, and I wasn't sure which one of us he was anchoring.
I met his eyes.
"Slow," I said.
"Slow," he agreed.
I pressed forward, monitoring his face for every cue—the hitch in his breath, the momentary tightening around his eyes, the deliberate effort to stay open instead of closing against it. I stopped. Waited. His grip on me tightened.
"Keep going," he said quietly.
So I did.
And when he finally exhaled—long and shuddering and completely unguarded—he looked at me with an expression I didn't have a category for. The last of my footing went out from under me completely.
I was in serious trouble.
I had been for a while now. I was only just admitting it.
I found a rhythm. Slow at first, then less slow, and the harness was doing exactly what it was designed to do—pressure and friction building with every movement in a way I had absolutely accounted for but was now discovering I had not accounted for at all.
Not with him.
Not like this.
I rocked forward, and the angle had the breath punching right outta me.
"Fuck," I said, which I hadn't meant to say out loud.
Brody's eyes, which had been glued to where our bodies met, came back to my face immediately. Something shifted in them—surprise, then heat, then something that made my chest ache.
"Yeah?" he said.
"Shut up," I said, and did it again.
He groaned, low and helpless, his hips lifting to meet me, and I felt it everywhere—in my thighs, in my stomach, in that deep building pressure that was tightening fast and had been since before I'd fully admitted it to myself.
I braced a hand on his chest and moved. He made a sound that short-circuited every coherent thought I had left.
"Calvin." Rough. Unsteady. My name like a question he already knew the answer to.
"Uh huh," I managed. My voice came out wrecked and I didn't care. I was past caring. I was past everything except the look on his face and the heat of his hands and the pressure cresting low in my belly and—
"I'm gonna—" he started.
"Me too," I said. "Brody—me too—"
His eyes found mine.
We didn't look away.
"Calvin—" His voice cracked. "Fuck, Calvin, I—"
"Come, Brody," I said. "Now."
He did.
Untouched.
Every muscle in his body locked up beneath me, hands gripping my hips so hard I thought he might leave bruises.
A sound tore out of him that had nothing performed about it—raw and helpless and completely undone.
I took in every second of it. I felt every second of it.
The sight of him, the sound of him, the way he said my name like it was the only word he had left—it hit me like a fist. The pressure that had been coiling tight for so long snapped clean through and took me with it.
I came right along with him, shaking, graceless, my fingers curling into his chest and his name breaking through my lips and absolutely nothing left of the composure I'd started with.
We fell apart together and I couldn't tell anymore where the control I'd had went, only that it was gone and I didn't miss it.
After, the room came back piece by piece. His chest under my cheek. Both of us breathing hard. Sticky cum drying between us.
Then, quietly, a breath of a laugh from him.
"That's twice," he said. "The no touching thing."
I lifted my head and looked at him.
He smiled at me, soft and sweet and sated.
And I smiled back.
The shower was small enough that there was no pretending we weren't in it together. He got behind me without discussion and worked shampoo through my hair with both hands, thumbs pressing in at the base of my skull.
I'd already washed my hair this morning.
But who the fuck cared?
The water ran hot and the bathroom air was thick with steam. Brody's hands were gentle in a way I'd never really experienced before—at least, not since my mama bathed me when I was just a little girl. The tenderness of the moment had my mouth moving before my brain could catch up.
"I was fifteen when Wyatt joined the circuit."
Brody's hands paused, but he quickly continued—like he didn't want me to know he was listening.
"I'd been on the circuit for three years. Learned to read a limp and pack a wound before I learned long division. Figured out pretty quick that useful kept me out of my daddy's trailer."
I kept staring straight at the tile wall, not daring to make eye contact with the man who'd squeezed body wash into my loofah and was just getting started on lathering me up.
"But then I caught the attention of a hot new cowboy and all of a sudden the trailer was the only place we ever were. One day, my daddy walked in on us. And ya know what he said?"
I felt Brody's head shake behind me.
"He laughed and told Wyatt, 'knock her up and she's your problem.' Then he walked away. It was like he'd given Wyatt the permission he needed."
"For what?" Brody finally spoke up.
"To use me however he wanted."