2021 #2
Her palm moves over me again, and whatever restraint I've built over the last three years snaps.
I reach up her back, bury my hand in her hair and pull her mouth to mine.
Rose meets me halfway.
The first taste of her hits so fucking hard that I groan into her mouth, my other hand coming up to cradle the back of her neck as she opens for me. Our tongues meet and she moans, gripping my shirt tighter while I kiss her harder, trying to get closer even though she's already pressed against me.
Fuck, I've missed this.
I've missed something I only had for one night so badly that it doesn't even make sense, but my body remembers all of her.
The little sound she makes when I tug her hair.
The way her mouth gets softer right before she kisses me harder.
The way she leans into me like she wants to crawl beneath my fucking skin.
Her hand closes over me through my jeans, and this time she's not teasing. She grips me, strokes me root to tip through the denim, and I have to break the kiss just to breathe through it.
"Rose—"
"Shh." Her teeth catch my bottom lip. Her voice drops into that register I've heard exactly once in my life and never stopped hearing since. "Quiet, sweetheart."
My cock jumps against her palm and her mouth curves against mine, smug and slow.
I know she felt it. She rewards me with a firmer stroke, dragging her thumb over the head through the fabric, and I make a sound into her mouth that would embarrass me if I had any pride left where this woman is concerned.
I don't.
I pull the strap of her dress aside and get my mouth on her shoulder, her throat, the spot below her ear that made her grip the headboard three years ago. It still works. Her whole body arches, her fingers tighten around me, and the moan she lets out is low and rough and mine.
My free hand finds the slit of that fucking dress and slides up her thigh, higher, until my fingertips brush the edge of lace and the heat of her, and she rolls her hips into my hand like she's been waiting years for it too.
"You're soaked," I breathe against her throat.
"Shut up." She hisses as her hand works me faster.
I press two fingers against the damp lace, dragging slow circles the way her body taught me once and never let me forget, and she grinds down against them with her teeth sunk into her own lip to keep quiet, and it is, without competition, the hottest thing I have ever fucking seen.
We're two feet from her snoring brother, both fully dressed, dry humping like teenagers on a public beach, and I'm about thirty seconds from coming in my pants for the second time in our history.
I'd do it. Gladly. Zero regrets.
She shifts closer, hooks her leg over mine, and when my fingers slip past the edge of the lace and find her bare — wet, hot, fuck — she gasps into my mouth and clamps her hand around my wrist.
Not stopping me.
Holding me there.
When she finally pulls back, neither of us goes far.
Her forehead nearly touches mine, her cheeks flushed, lips wet and swollen while we both try to catch our breath.
Those gray eyes are hazy in exactly the way I remember, and the sight of her like this does something stupidly tender to me after everything that just happened.
"Hi, baby..."
Her smile comes slowly. "I like that."
Fuck me.
"Then that's what I'll call you from now on."
I barely get my lips back on her before her whole face changes. Her eyes widen and dart over my shoulder, and I have just enough time to see the alarm register before I'm hit from the side like a fucking car wreck.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I hit the sand hard, completely disoriented, and Bennet's fist cracks across my jaw before I can even figure out which direction I'm facing.
“Are you insane, motherfucker? Keep your hands—” Another punch catches me before I can block it. “Off—” Another. “My fucking sister!”
“No!” Rose screams. “Bennet, get off him! Now!”
I finally get my arm up and manage to shove him off me, but barely.
Somewhere over the last three years, the motherfucker has stacked on thirty pounds of muscle and learned to handle himself like a professional boxer, and tonight he's decided to demonstrate every fucking thing he's learned directly on my face.
My jaw is screaming, my head is ringing, and I'm still trying to reconcile the fact that thirty seconds ago Rose's hand was on my dick and now I'm getting my ass beat by her brother.
“Nothing happened; we just kissed.” Rose gets between us before he can come at me again, shoving both hands against his chest. “You don't dictate who I kiss!”
“The fuck I don't when it's him.”
“Back up, Bennet.”
She shoves him again, harder this time, but he barely seems to notice.
His breathing is labored, his skin flushed an angry red, and he's staring straight over her shoulder at me with enough fury in his eyes that I'm pretty sure if she weren't standing between us, round two would already be underway.
“He's a fucking kid, Rose!”
That gets me moving.
“Fuck you! I'm a grown fucking man. Matter of fact, I'll tell you how much of a—”
“Shut up, Jackson.”
Rose doesn't even turn around when she says it.
My mouth snaps shut mostly from surprise.
Fuck. This is getting out of hand.
“We're all drunk,” she says, and I hear her deliberately pull the anger out of her voice.
Both hands stay planted on Bennet's chest while she waits for him to actually look at her instead of trying to murder me over her shoulder.
“Nobody is thinking clearly. I kissed him.
He pushed me away. There's nothing happening here.
Jackson and I are close friends, and that's all it ever was or will be. So, calm down.”
For a second, I forget about my jaw.
He pushed me away?
I stare at the back of her head, waiting for her to turn around, because there is no fucking way she just said that with a straight face.
She doesn't look at me.
I mean, why would she?
Thirty seconds ago, her hand was rubbing my cock through my jeans. Then she kissed me back hard enough that I can still taste her, smiled at me when I called her baby, and told me she liked it. She looked at me like maybe, for once, there actually could be a from now on.
And now I ‘pushed her away.’
Now we're ‘close friends.’
That’s all we ever were and ever will be.
The worst part is that I know exactly what she's doing. She's trying to calm Bennet down. He's drunk and furious and clearly willing to beat my ass into the Pacific Ocean, so she's giving him the version that makes this stop before one of us ends up in the hospital.
I know that.
Doesn't make hearing it hurt any fucking less.
Because I've heard this version of Rose before.
It never happened.
Same fucking trick. Different night.
Something happens between us that she can't pretend she didn't feel, and the second the rest of the world gets close enough to see it, she starts burying the evidence.
I push myself fully to my feet and work my jaw from side to side, tasting blood where my teeth caught the inside of my cheek. Rose is still standing between us, protecting me from Bennet while simultaneously gutting me with every word coming out of her mouth.
Impressive, really.
She might as well kick me while I'm down.
Fucking hell.