Cherry Bomb (Brighton #1)

by Carmel Rhodes

“Because I showed up in time to stop it.” I press forward, smashing her ass against the door. “You need to figure out what the fuck it is you want.” I step back and turn. Having this conversation here is a bad idea, especially when my daughter is right upstairs.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobs, clawing at my arm. “I want you. I want to be yours. I am yours.”

  I grab her around her waist, leaning in so that my forehead meets hers. “Then act like it.” Before I can utter another word, she drops to her knees. Her face is hidden in the shadows of the night, but I feel her long, thin fingers tug at the waistband of my shorts. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m acting like it.” Her voice is small, broken, but her fingers move with a steely determination.

  “Cherry.” I grip her wrist. “Get up.”

  “No, I need this. I need to feel the weight of you in my mouth, in my throat.”

  “It’s late.” My dick twitches in her grasp, invalidating my words. I want this, deep down, in the basest parts of my soul, I want her on her knees for me. Maybe that’s archaic, but it’s true. I need to feel that she’s mine.

  “You said if I wanted to be yours, I need to act like it, so this is me—out here where anyone can see—giving myself to you.”

  “What if your dad or my daughter comes down?”

  Sad gray eyes meet my blue. “I need to know I didn’t fuck this up. I need to know you still want me.” Her voice is almost manic.

  “Look at me,” I command. Her neck tilts, her eyes shine under the glow of the street lamp. “I am madly in lust with you.”

  A smile cracks her desperation. “Madly?”

  I reach inside my gym shorts and fist my dick. I rub the thick head over her pouty mouth, glossing her lips with pre-cum. “I’m about to choke you with my cock while my daughter sleeps upstairs. I don’t think it gets crazier than that.”

  Her hand wraps around mine, and she licks her lips. “It’s kind of hot. Me out here, my bare knees on the hard concrete, knowing a car could ride past or my dad could wake up.”

  “Such a bad girl.” I hiss as her tongue darts out, and she licks the head.

  She kisses her way down my length. “You like me bad.”

  My dick pulses in response. “I like you obedient more.”

  “No, you don’t. You like punishing me too much.”

  I yank her head back slightly, proving her point and she chuckles around my cock. “Keep sucking, smart-ass.”

  She does as she’s told, taking me to the back of her throat, gagging around my length. Her head bobs up and down. My fingers fist in her hair, controlling her movements. First, shallow, then I force her head forward. Her lips kiss my groin as my cock fills her throat. I repeat the pattern, shallow, then deep. Spit seeps from the suction her lips create, making a mess between my thighs. The sight does something to the beast within. My abs tighten and I pull her back, her mouth popping off my dick with a loud smack. “Why’d you stop me?”

  “I don’t want to come in your mouth.”

  “But I want you to.” She pouts.

  “Don’t pout.” I pull her to her feet. “My cum belongs in your pussy, Cherry girl.”

  “God, yes. Let’s do that instead.” She jumps into my arms and wraps her legs around my waist.

  “You gotta be quiet.”

  She bites down on her lip. “I don’t think I can be. Not with how I feel right now.”

  I look up and down the dark street, then my eyes land on my car. “I haven’t had sex in a car since I was seventeen,” I growl lifting her higher and carrying her down the stairs and over to my car. I use my thumbprint to unlock it, then place her on the seat before climbing on top of her.

  As soon as the door shuts, she’s straddling me. I whip her shirt up over her head and palm her naked breasts, using my tongue to trace the ink between them.

  She lifts up, and I can feel her warmth pulsing around my cock as she pushes back and forth. Her greedy little cunt squeezes me. “God, baby, that feels so good.”

  “Car sex has its advantages.”

  “Who would have thought dry humping could be so much fun?”

  “There’s nothing dry about me, Daddy,” she says, biting down on my ear.

  I growl, and lift her ass, spearing her on my cock. She screams out, but I attack her mouth with mine, swallowing the screams. Her body writhes on top of mine.

  I’m not sure how we got here. I was so angry with her this morning, so scared for her this afternoon, but this, me inside her, feels right. As true as any law set by man or by God. Cherry Valentine belongs to me in a way that pre-dates us both. She is made of me, made for me.

  Her chest bounces in my face, and like a starved man, I nip at the soft flesh. She tastes of salt and soap. It’s a recipe I crave. Dragging my nails down her spine, my hands find purchase on her hips. I slow her frantic movements, pushing her back and forth, using her slick cunt to grind on my shaft. “Oh God, yes,” she mewls. “That feels so good.”

  “You don’t deserve this orgasm,” I growl, continuing my steady pace. My dick is soaked to the root with her cream.

  “I know I don’t, but you’re going to give it to me anyway.”

  I wrap my arms around her tiny waist, binding her to me. Our foreheads meet, and I thrust up into her. “What makes you think that?”

  “Be—cause,” she stutters. “You like doing bad things to my body, but you love taking care of me. I need this. You need to give it to me.”

  I exhale. “Don’t ever fucking scare me like that again, Cherry Girl.”

  “I swear, I won’t.” Her soft lips find mine and she seals her promise with a kiss. It’s as desperate as I feel. Sloppy, our teeth and tongues clash as we attempt to fuck the promise into one another.

  My balls tighten, and I can feel my own release building at the base of my spine. “Rub your clit, baby.” She drops a hand between us, her index and middle fingers work on the tiny bundle of nerves as I thrust into her.

  Her back arches and her pussy squeezes my cock. I can’t take it anymore. I push her hand away and pinch her clit. She comes hard, howling into the night sky, like a wolf in heat. “That’s it, baby girl,” I grunt into her ear, my own orgasm shooting from the tip of my cock, coating her insides. Her body convulses, and I hold her tightly as she comes down. “Mine,” I growl.

  “Yours,” she agrees, collapsing on top of me.

  Cherry

  THE FLOORBOARDS CREAK UNDER MY weight, as I tiptoe down the hall the next morning. The upstairs of my father’s house is like a time machine. The walls are the same boring beige. The same framed portraits of me and Sunnie as children hang, slightly crooked, but with the love of a single dad desperate to give his girls a normal life. I stop in front of one with the three of us. We were at a McDonald’s Playland celebrating my dad being one year sober. We were wayyyy too old to be at a McDonald’s Playland, but neither of us had the heart to tell him, so we ate our chicken nuggets and played with the five-year-olds in the ball pit, and it was one of the best days of my life.

  Now, we’re here. He’s sick. Sunnie and I can’t stand each other, and I do shit to my body because I never learned how to cope with heartbreak.

  Inhaling, I run my fingers through my tangled mess of inky hair and knock on the door of my sister’s old room. Sunnie moved out the year I graduated. Last I heard, she lives with her boyfriend in West Hollywood, while not so secretly screwing some overweight movie producer. Her flaw is that she is too much like our mother. And I guess I’m too much like Dad. We’re both fucked.

  I press my ear to the wood, listening for some sign that Arden is awake. When I don’t hear anything, I knock. She doesn’t answer, so I push my way inside. Arden is lying on the bed scrolling down her cell phone.

  “Are you still pissed?” I ask. Her blonde hair is high on her head, and her face is freshly scrubbed. She’s already dressed for the day while I look like I’ve been ridden hard and put away wet, not to mention the uncomfortable hollowness between my thi
ghs from rough car sex with Cash.

  She cuts her eyes to me and looks so much like her father in that moment that my heart swells and deflates at the same time. I’m an awful, no-good, very selfish friend. I can still feel his lips on my throat, and here I am, begging his daughter to forgive me for one sin while blatantly indulging in another behind her back.

  No good.

  Very bad.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  “We aren’t speaking right now,” she mutters, not bothering to look up from her Instagram scroll. A peeling Jonas Brothers poster stares back at me from the far wall. Pale pink paint rests between a heart-shaped collage of pictures of Sunnie and her friends. I search the faces for my own and come up short. Not that I expected to find myself anyway. We were always opposites. She was a social butterfly, I was the weird goth girl who dated the stoner. He was the one thing I had, the one person who looked at me like I was someone special, and she took him too.

  Sighing, I turn my back on the past and stare at my best friend. “Arden,” I try. Her thumb keeps moving down the screen. “Arden,” I say a little more forcefully, and still I’m ignored. With a huff, I storm over to the bed and pluck her phone from her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  Her eyes snap to mine. I can see the conflict there. She wants to forgive and forget, but she also wants me to learn my lesson. She’s unaware that I know just how bad I fucked up, how badly I keep fucking up. I’m just too me to stop.

  “Not good enough.”

  “I know, but I have to start somewhere.” Setting her phone on the bedside table, I scoot into the space next to her, laying my head on her shoulder. “I’m sorry is as good a place as any.”

  Her cheek comes to rest on the top of my hair and I take it as a sign to continue. “I was so fucking scared, Cherry. I’ve never seen you like that. You were incoherent, and what’s worse, you didn’t care, about yourself or me or anything.”

  “I just went a little too hard,” I say brushing off her concern. “I’m not always that bad.”

  “No, not always, but your dad is going through chemo. You can’t live like this for six months. You self-medicate and sweep everything under the rug instead of dealing with shit.”

  “I found out my dad has cancer,” I huff. I can feel the walls rise around my heart, but I’m too stubborn…too selfish to stop them.

  “Yeah, he does. And instead of being there for him, you run.”

  “I’m allowed to be scared for him.” My back straightens. This conversation is going nowhere very quickly, and the last thing I want to do is fight with Arden.

  “I never said you weren’t, I’m just saying maybe you should try doing things differently this time,” Arden says, not backing down. “You haven’t had a boyfriend since high school because you got your heart broken one time. You don’t process things in a healthy way. Your response is simply get high and pretend like nothing can hurt you.” I roll my eyes, but don’t comment. “That right there is exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t shut down because I’m saying things you don’t like.”

  I open my mouth, then close it, and open it again. “I’m not shutting down. I’m processing.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is be nice to your dad.”

  I level my gaze. “Pot meet kettle.”

  Arden scoots off the bed and walks over to Sunnie’s dresser and stares out the window. She has her back to me, so I can’t read her face, but I can hear the lack of conviction in her tone. “Cash isn’t my dad.” She’s been spouting the same bs for so long, it’s easier to recite the company line than it is to process her changing emotions. I’m not judging, because I’m a fucking mess myself, but it’s easier to call out her shortcomings than examine my own.

  “He might not have raised you, but he is your dad, and he came when you called. That should count for something. Dinner, coffee, mini golf?”

  “Whose side are you on?” She flips her middle finger up at me but doesn’t turn around.

  “He kind of saved my ass yesterday, and all you’re doing is bitching at me, so his at the moment.”

  “One good deed doesn’t erase the last nineteen years of my life.”

  Standing, I make my way over to her. My dad and Cash are outside, standing next to his car. Both men look relaxed as they talk about whatever it is that dads talk about. “I’m not asking you to forget your pain.” My hands land on her shoulders and I spin her around, so that we are eye to eye when I say the next part. “I’m just asking you to have a meal with the man.”

  We’re quiet for a beat, just staring at each other in a silent showdown. Then she huffs and mutters, “If you think he’s so great, you have dinner with him.”

  I wiggle my brows. “Your dad is hot, Arden.” It’s meant to be a joke, but considering my secret relationship with Cash, the guilt baby that lives in my belly wakes up from its Xanax-induced coma and dropkicks me in the gut. Tell her, my brain yells.

  “You’re disgusting.” She frowns, stomping back to the bed. I follow her, and we sit cross-legged, facing each other. “Don’t even joke like that. I’d honestly rather you hooked up with Derek than my sperm donor.” She wrinkles her nose.

  Tick

  Tick

  Tick.

  “Me banging your dad is worse than me banging your ex-boyfriend?” I ask. I knew Cash and I would be a sticking point in our relationship, but somewhere deep down, I’d hoped that’s all it would be, a fight. We’d make up and I could be happy.

  “I mean, they are both bad, but I don’t know. Boys are disposable. Cash is…he’s my…” She swallows and looks over her shoulder, toward the window.

  “I get it, which is why you should go talk to him. Maybe see if he wants to have breakfast?”

  Arden groans, but I hold up my hand to silence her. “You want me to talk to Randy, you have to talk to Cash.”

  “Fiiiinnnnnneeeeeeeeee,” she moans, adding five more syllables to the word than necessary. “But you and Randy have to go, too.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, asshole. We are not leaving here with unresolved daddy issues.”

  “I think I’ll need more than pancakes to resolve my daddy issues,” I mutter.

  We make our way downstairs. Cash and my dad turn in unison as we push our way out the front door. They stare up at us, both men with expectant looks on their faces. Two of the strongest men I’ve ever known, brought to their knees by a pair of teenagers. I guess that’s what being a father means, loving your child with everything, even when we’re too blind or too self-destructive to accept it.

  I push Arden forward and she shoots me a look that says, I’ll gut you like a fish, before returning her attention to our dads. “We, umm, we thought we could go to breakfast before we get on the road?”

  Cash’s eyes light up at the prospect and warmth spreads through my chest knowing I helped facilitate this meal, even if that means I have to endure a pancake powwow of my own. “Sure, but…” He gestures to his outfit, a pair of old sweatpants and a t-shirt from the auto shop where Dad works. “I’m not really dressed for anything too swanky.”

  “There’s a diner not too far from here,” Dad chimes in. “The service is shitty, but the coffee is strong, and the food is edible.”

  “Way to sell it, Dad,” I murmur, taking the steps two at a time. The door to Cash’s SUV is open and I can’t help but remember last night, how desperately I clung to him, how I came apart on his cock. The sting of his teeth around my nipple, and the bite of his fingers digging into my thighs. I press my legs together, vaguely registering my dad’s voice. Something about him running inside to grab his wallet. I nod absently, chancing a glance Cash’s way. His blue eyes are hooded as he stares at me, watching as I relive the night before.

  “Should we all take one car?” Arden asks, breaking me from my lust-fueled walk down memory lane.

  Cash clears his throat. “Why not? I’ve got plenty of room.”

  My dad reappears, pulling the do
or shut behind him. “Arden, why don’t you climb up front with your old man. I’ll ride in the back with Cherry.”

  I nod tersely, hoping like hell Cash’s car doesn’t smell like stale sex.

  Ten extremely uncomfortable minutes later, we pull up in front of the restaurant. It’s one of those seat-yourself kind of places, with sticky tabletops and laminated menus. We take a seat at the counter, Dad, me, Arden, then Cash. An older woman named Sue takes our order then leaves us to sit in more silence.

  “So, cancer, huh?” I say breaking the tension. Arden whacks my leg under the counter, but I ignore it. We’re here, and since self-medicating didn’t win me any points, I’m going with the direct approach.

  “Yup.” Dad grimaces. Sue drops our coffees and Cash’s and Arden’s teas, before scurrying to the other end of the counter to wait on the burly-looking dude who just sat down.

  “What kind?” I ask. I know he mentioned it yesterday, but I blocked it out and made sure it stayed gone by burying the information under a mountain of prescription pills and Jose Cuervo.

  “Lung,” he grunts. Randall Valentine has never been a man of many words. Actions were his thing. I knew exactly what my dad was feeling or going through simply by the way he sat, by his gait, and the intensity in his gaze. Off-the-wagon Randy wore his shame like a cloak. He hid from us, averting his eyes when we walked in the room, or by staying out late, leaving notes with cryptic apologies. Sober Randy was the world’s greatest dad. Sick Randy is somewhere in the middle. I can feel his shame, his self-loathing, and I want to kick my own ass for adding to it.

  He has cancer, and I am the spoiled brat who made things worse by running. “Did the surgery help?” I ask, guilt gnawing away at my insides.

  “Mostly.” He takes a sip from his steaming mug. “I gotta do the chemo as a precaution.”

  “Doesn’t that make you really sick?” I ask, even though the answer is obvious to anyone who looks at him.

  “Better than cancer.” He shrugs.

  “Better than cancer,” I agree.

  We are silent for a few beats longer. Arden and Cash make small talk. He tells her about his job at INVIGOR, she tells him about school and about her struggle to find a place to volunteer this summer. “My friend Jax…um, Father Gregory has a parish in Brighton. They’re always looking for more hands to help at the food bank. I could make a call,” Cash tells her.