8. Brooks
EIGHT
Brooks
I ndie peruses around the apartment while I plate the pasta I got from the Italian place, a town over, right before picking her up. Popping each plate into the microwave, I warm the food as I pull apart garlic knots and pour some iced tea into a glass for myself.
Once I’m headed to the table, music filters through the room. Smiling, I look up at Indie, who’s turning to face me from where she’s connected her phone to the surround sound system.
“Ambiance.” She shrugs.
“It’s nice.” I nod toward the food, hoping I’m doing just enough to stay in her good graces and avoid acting like a pompous ass.
I’ve done quite enough of that already.
“That smells delicious,” she says, pretending she doesn’t know it’s takeout, and I’m thankful for the gesture.
While I can cook, I hadn’t had the time in the small span of time I had between dropping her off, kissing her senseless in the rain, and then showering off the mud she caked all over me. However, Casa Mia had time to cook me food and have it ready for me to snag before getting her.
“It’s from my favorite Italian place.”
As her teeth sink into her garlic knot, I swallow, trying not to be a creep but wanting to be that buttery bread so badly.
I clear my throat, adjusting in my seat as my pants seem a bit too tight. “So, how’s your time in Abaline been?”
Small talk, really?
Her eyes crinkle as a playful smile curls her lips up her face. “Other than the grumpy proprietor kicking me off his bar and cutting my karaoke show short, great.”
I shake my head. “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”
She laughs. “Nope. Never.”
Unspoken words hang between us, but neither acknowledges them as we carry on our conversation through dinner. We discuss her life in California and mundane things like our favorite colors.
That kiss still has both of us acting a bit out of character. I can’t stop thinking about how her lips felt, but then that thought leads me to obsess about how it felt to have her body grinding over my lap. Then, I head down a dark alley of thoughts, where I’m wading in the sound she made when she did so. I shake away from the thoughts that’ll lead me nowhere good as I re-focus on Indie and what she’s saying.
Her fork is waving back and forth animatedly, and I’m certain I was checked out for half of it.
“Anyhow,” she trails off awkwardly. “Restroom?”
I point. “Down the hall to the right. The only door cracked open.”
I know because I hurriedly cleaned it before picking her up, leaving it cracked so the wax I have melted in there doesn’t overpower her and leave her unconscious on the floor. Aunt Ruth taught me many things, but the one thing that stuck was that company will never forget how clean your bathroom is.
Indie’s phone vibrates across the tabletop a few times before silencing, only to do so again a few times. My fingers itch as I shake my head at the thought of peeking at her screen. A couple of kisses, and I’m ready to break her trust and see who’s texting her. Could it be a boyfriend she hasn’t mentioned?
God, what am I, a lovesick puppy?
The phone continues, and I wonder how I hadn’t noticed it before. Then, I recall her standing and taking it out of her lap before heading to the bathroom. I’m honestly shocked she left the thing behind in the first place. It’s very un-twenty first century of her.
I snatch it up by the fifth set of vibrations before overthinking it. There’s no passcode, which is asinine, and I quickly open the message that had been losing its mind.
It’s between her and Taylor, not shocking. What is shocking, however, is the stream of messages discussing some wager between them—one involving me and an absurd amount of money.
The cogs in my mind spin as I hear the door to the bathroom open. Locking the phone, I place it back where it was before, looking aloof and shoving another mouthful of pasta in my mouth.
We make it through dinner, and I don’t break down and tell her what I’ve done. Guilt doesn’t eat me as much as shame does. Of course, she doesn’t want me; I’m a pawn in a game. The thing is, she could be, too. I can’t stop thinking about blurting my plan out to her, but then I’d have to admit I snuck into her phone.
“I know it’s late,” I tell her as I place the last tray of leftovers into the fridge that I know Nick will devour after closing the bar for me tonight. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
Even if it’s all contrived, I don’t hate her company. Maybe by the third act of whatever movie she chooses, I’ll get up the nerve to proposition her.
That sounds awful.
I’m still scolding myself when she walks over and grabs the remote, plopping down and kicking her shoes off as if she was waiting for me to offer all along.
“What kind of movie do you want to watch?” she asks, casually flicking through my streaming services.
“Lady’s choice,” I tell her, kicking off my boots and dropping beside her.
I hadn’t realized how close I landed until she turned and threw her legs over mine. The ease with which she does it has me reminding myself it’s all bullshit because it made a giddy knot twist in my stomach.
“Oh, a gentleman tonight, hm?” she teases, clicking on Sweet Home Alabama before handing me the remote to put beside me on the unoccupied cushion.
“Always.”
“Hah! So, what do you call what you pulled in the bar?” I meet her hazel eyes and stall there.
Now’s my chance. All I’ve got to do is come clean about the bank loan getting denied, tell her I know about her wager with Taylor, and then offer to split the money down the middle if I play along.
“It was an off day,” I tell her pathetically, chickening out.
“I’ll say.” She snuggles into the arm of the couch, her legs shifting beneath my hands, dragging them higher on her thighs when I don’t adjust to her new position.
At first, it’s fine. I’m managing. Then, I register her change in breathing the longer my hands linger mere inches from her center. She wore a dress that hit just above the knee, leaving only the barest amount of skin between the hemline and the top of her knee-high boots. But now…
I swallow.
Now, that dress is touching mid-thigh and is in danger of going higher if I move. While the movie drones on in the background, muted compared to the buzzing energy between us, I turn and look at her while skimming my hand a bit higher.
Testing. I don’t know if I’m testing to see how far she’ll let this lie go or if I’m testing to see if there’s a speck of reality on her beautiful face. Still, either way, I trickle my fingertips nearly to the panty line separating me from her sex, stopping again as her breathing hitches.
Her perfect breasts rise and fall heavily as she reaches down and lifts her dress further. Licking my lips, I shove her panties to the side, taking a moment to run my eyes over the slit of her. Even before touching her, I know she’s wet, and that’s something I don’t think she can fake.
“Brooks—” she breathes, and my name from her pretty lips is the thing that nearly has me confessing what I know.
I can’t, however. I need to know what she feels like, to feel how slick she is. I part her with two fingers, just the tips, running them through the dampness of her arousal as her grip on her dress tightens and her head falls back. Her legs fall lax, and she arches ever so slightly. The small sounds she makes as I continue to coax my fingers from her entrance to her clit, encircling it to draw out the breathy moans, is something I’ll never be able to erase from my memory.
Even when she’s gone. Even when she’s back home safe in California.
“Please,” she whispers, looking at me from beneath heavy lids through blown pupils.
Forgetting myself and my mission, I let two fingers sink into her heat, reveling in how she grips around them.
The heady moan she lets escape is as beguiling as a sunset turned into music.
“Can’t fake that,” I grumble, rubbing my thumb over her clit.
“What?” she breathes, her body still moving in time with my hand.
I lean over, hovering close to her lips. “I said you can’t fake that.”
Her body stills, her panting breaths wafting over my lips. “What do you mean, fake?”
“I know,” I tell her, and I don’t mean it to come out so snide. Apparently, I have a bit more animosity at being used than I initially thought.
“You know what?”
My fingers tease inside her again, and she moans before I cease. “I know about the deal with Taylor. That you’re using me.”
“I—” she starts, but I pull my fingers out of her and replace her panties.
I should’ve told her earlier, and doing it like this is a dick move, but not knowing if her moans were real did something to me. Even though I saw and felt the evidence, my mind kept reeling at the idea she was doing it for the money.
Tossing her legs off me, I stand, taking my glass off the coffee table to the kitchen as I pace.
“I know what you’re thinking, but that was real…”
I put my hand up. “I don’t care about that.”
Liar!
“Oh, you don’t?” she flicks her eyes downward to my dick, which is painfully hard behind my jeans. I cover it with two hands.
“Leave him out of this!”
She laughs. “What are you, five?”
“No! I can’t help my bodily response to you for some ungodly reason. You’re like a… a witch!”
She crosses her arms over her chest, only pressing her perfect tits higher. I swallow, trying to look anywhere but at them. I swear they get bigger to taunt me.
“And I can?! Look at you!”
“Oh, please.” I scoff.
“Look, this started as a bet. I’ll admit that much. My business could use a cash infusion, and I thought it would pass the week and add some fun, but the things I feel, the kiss, that,” she points to the couch, “they were real, are real… fuck!” She scrubs her hands over her face.
“I want in,” I tell her, and she deadpans at me.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. In the bar, why I was so unruly, I got turned down for help with an extra mortgage I took out on the bar to help Nick, and I’m going to lose it if I don’t get out of this fucking rut. We both need the money, and we clearly have enough of an attraction to fake it, so I want in.”
She straightens, blood rushing out of her face.
“We split the money and go our separate ways afterward. Easy peasy.”
“Easy peasy?!” she repeats.
Even while her lips and her tone say she’s pissed; her eyes are calculating. Even if this goes nowhere, we can help one another get a leg up where we’re struggling.
“If we’re both in on it, what could go wrong?” I shrug.