by Murphy,Misti
“Whatever. I’m just trying to entertain your friend, dickhead,” Mace grumbles before going quiet.
“Do you always call each other such nasty things?” Maxi asks, finally forgetting about her phone. “Is that a brother thing?”
“It’s how our family is.” I shrug.
“We’ve been trash talking each other since we were kids,” Mace says. “Even Little Bit.”
“My sister, Claire,” I respond to her quizzical expression. “And it’s all done with love, most of the time. Isn’t it, asshole?”
“Damn straight.” Mace turns off the main road and takes a couple left turns that bring us to a quiet cul de sac. “I can’t believe you bought this place.”
“Why? Because you don’t like the fact I have more money than you?”
“No,” he says. “Because none of us ever thought we’d see the day your flashy ass would come home.”
“It’s only for a couple months.” I wait for Maxi to climb out, before joining her. “And the occasional visit after that. I’m not staying.”
“Sure.” He doesn’t say it with any cockiness, more a deep down certainty that he knows I’m wrong.
I’m not. There is no point in time where I will ever fit in here. Thumping a hand on the trunk I wait for Mace to unlatch it from inside the car before hauling our bags out and up to the front door where Maxi is waiting for me. “Welcome home, beautiful.”
I wait for her to cross the threshold, and then pop the bags inside. “I’m not sure what time I’ll be back, so I’ll leave you the key.”
“Great.” She’s back to looking at her phone. “I might go for a wander around this town you grew up in. See what it’s like.”
Why does it piss me off when she gets all moody? It seriously irritates me to no end that I can’t keep a smile on her face, or at least keep that worry out of her eyes. It must be because I’m failing at my job as an entertainer. Gripping her elbow, I yank her to me. “You do that. And then you can wander your hands all over my body and feel what it’s like to be me.”
“Rush.” My name comes out on a whoosh as her hands go to my chest. A small, tight smile plays on her mouth while she glides her palms up my pecs to my shoulders.
I have to have her. Mace beeps the horn, and I settle for knotting my hand in her hair and yanking her head back so I can lick up the column of her throat and wrap my lips over that sweet point where her pulse speeds up until she whimpers. She practically tastes like the raspberries her hair smells like, and the subtle aftertaste of soap. I need to have more of her, and soon.
Letting her go, I head out the door. Then I do something against my better judgement. I call out to her, because I’m not as disinterested in who she is as I’d like to be. In fact, I’m damn curious. “Say hi to Sarah for me.”
Chapter Eleven
Maxi
Surrounded by Hadleys, squished into a kitchen where there’s practically no room to move without smacking into one of the eight other people sharing the pancake breakfast Rush’s mother, Mona, and his sister are whipping up, I’m trying to wrap my head around at least one of the multiple conversations going on.
Claire, Mona, and Gem are talking wedding stuff. Chelsea is enjoying giving Rush grief as they banter. The two of them act like they’re siblings, not friends, while Tom hangs over Mace’s shoulder, making faces at Mia who is snuggled securely in her dad’s arms. It makes my heart hurt, seeing a man so devoted to his child. Something little Sarah is never going to experience, because her father, whoever he is, is a selfish prick who wouldn’t even acknowledge her existence.
Rush’s dad wanders in with a massive brindle mutt on his heels and dumps a couple newspapers and a gallon of juice on the counter before he spots me. “Who’s this?” He does a quick head count. “Rush, who’s your girl?”
“I-I’m not—”
“She’s not my girl, dad. She’s a friend. Maxi.” Rush tosses it out in passing. He makes it so obvious he wants my body, but not me. It makes me feel small, but at the same time I appreciate his honesty. At least when I slip, as I can’t seem to help around him, I know I’m not left making the mistake of thinking it means anything.
“Maxi, huh?” He takes my hand between both of his, studying me with blue eyes that are so similar to his sons’, although none of them are as gorgeous as Rush’s. “I’m George.” He pats the top of my hand and smiles. “What do you do, girly? Tell me about yourself.”
“I’m a journalist with Godiva magazine in Australia.”
“She’s doing an article on Rush,” Mona says, flipping a pancake the way I’ve only seen done on TV. “Careful what you say or it might end up in print.”
“Well then, let’s see what stories I’ve got for you.” He chuckles. “Did Rush tell you how he started with magic yet?”
“Mona bought him a book.” I smile.
“Well, it was a little more complicated than that. You see, he couldn’t read, but once he got that book he practically taught himself. He read it constantly, every day for over a year.” He beams at his son, his face full of pride. “Until he got good at reading. Magic helped him overcome a huge obstacle, and he’s never looked back. His magic might be entertainment to you, but for him it’s always been a driving force that helps him overcome any obstacle put in his way.”
“Was there any reason he couldn’t read?” I glance at Rush. He’s so good at everything he does. I can’t imagine him struggling as a child.
“Eat.” Mona slides a plate of pancakes in front of me. “You’re too skinny. It’s probably from all that work you must do, trying to dig up dirt on people like my son.”
“Mona, calm your farm,” George mutters.
“It was my decision,” Rush grumbles at the same time. “I practically had to force her into doing it.”
“That’s not quite true,” I say. “But I’m not here to find out all Rush’s skeletons. Or his family’s, either. Rush will have first eyes on the article before I even send it to my editor.”
“What article?” Another member of this family that I can’t help think of as more of a tribe joins us, pouring himself a juice. He hasn’t got the features I’ve come to associate with the Hadleys. He’s fairer, blond, and green eyed. “I’m Razer.”
“The other brother,” Rush says.
“He’s your brother?” I whisper. I can’t see the resemblance, but if Rush says so he must be. I kind of knew they’d all be good looking, but not so drop dead gorgeous. There must be something in the air around here to grow them like this. I’m hit with a visual of wandering along a row of blackberry bushes.
Picking one, I’m surprised it has a face. Tom grins at me. No, not that one. I toss it aside. Another has Razer’s face. Thanks, but no thanks. I yank another one free. Mace cocks an eyebrow at me. Hmm. Chucking it to a black bird perched at the top of the bush, I pull one more. Turning it over, I’m faced with Rush. “Come on, sweet cheeks, pop me in your mouth. You know you want to taste me.”
Inhaling, I choke on my own saliva.
“Are you all right?” George asks.
Rush taps between my shoulder blades, then starts to rub his palm in a circular motion that does little to ease the coughing that comes with the choking, and instead has me wanting to relax into his touch. Leaning down, his lips caress my ear. “Just once, I’d like to see where you go when you’re all up in that head of yours.”
I shake my head, shakily cutting off a bite of pancake and stuffing it in my mouth so I don’t say something stupid. “Mmm, I have fantasies.”
Why does that sound so wrong around a mouthful of delicious pancakes and syrup? “I mean.” I gulp. “My imagination sometimes gets the better of me.”
“Mine too.” He winks, his gaze eating me up in a way that is not only uncomfortable, but brings a surge of heat that makes me chirp.
Oh God, really? Did he have to go there right now? I cram another mouthful of pancake into my mouth. Anything to keep my mouth full and shut.
“I’m not bl
ood related, obviously. I just grew up with these guys,” Razer informs me. “And Claire’s my fiancée.”
“Mmmhmm.” I chew, my hand over my mouth.
“I just didn’t want you getting any weird ideas. Is any of your article going to be on Rush’s family?”
No, oh no. It’s simply a piece on the man himself. We’ve already agreed that you guys are off limits. God, this pancake is clogging my throat. I shake my head.
“Not very talkative, are you?” Tom says, taking a seat beside me, now holding his niece.
“Uh-huh.” I finally get through the mouthful. Mia is staring at me the way babies do, with their perfect blue eyes, in their perfectly scrunched faces. Her cute pudgy hand curls up to her mouth. I swear babies see more than any of us, somehow cutting through all the posturing and bullshit to what we actually are. What am I then? Neurotic, weird, funny? Come on. Guilty?
Yes, staring at Mia makes me ache with guilt. It hasn’t been quite a week, and I already miss little Sarah like crazy. I don’t know how I’m supposed to spend two months away from her. Knowing she’s fine, that my mother is looking after her, is not the same as dealing with my responsibilities. What the hell am I doing here?
Once I actually aspired to this life. I’d wanted it, studied for three years while working in a full-time traineeship for it. I’d worked my butt off even earlier than that. From the age of sixteen while I was still completing high school, I’d been doing anything and everything at Godiva to get to the point where I was the first one Eliza looked at when it came to big league interviews, despite my age. When most of my university classmates had been looking for their first real job, I’d already been in the industry for years. And now, I’m struggling to deal with the fact that what I wanted might not be realistic anymore.
***
“So what do you think?” Rush asks as we wander back toward his house.
“What?” I snap out of the thoughts I’ve been having all through breakfast, and cleaning up, and leaving the boisterous and loud group of Hadleys so we could head back to Rush’s. Thoughts about work and the way my life is going to go for the next twenty years. Changes I haven’t yet gotten my head completely around. Motherhood came so unexpectedly and so fast.
“Of my family.” He walks in front of me, backwards, so he can see my face.
Honestly, I think he’s lucky. “They’re a lot different from mine.”
“It’s only the three of you, right?”
“Right.” I speed up, trying to come up beside him, so I don’t have to look at him. I don’t particularly want to delve into the why’s and how’s of my life, when we are supposed to be concentrating on his. When he asked me to say hi to Sarah for him, I’d been shocked. I almost swallowed my tongue, and then I’d gotten edgy about how long it would take him to ask who she is. Not that it matters. It’s not a secret, not private information. It’s not wrapped up in duct tape and hidden in a dark closet. It’s simply not relevant to my interviewing him. And I don’t want him thinking I’m as horrible as I feel for leaving her behind. “It’s unusually warm today, don’t you think?”
“All right.” He chuckles. “I get it. How about a swim?”
“Where?”
I’d spotted a lake on my walk around town yesterday, while he was busy with his family. There’d been a few kids swimming and playing on one of the beach areas. But they were obviously crazy, and with little to no sense, because it isn’t that warm here yet.
It’d been a pleasant afternoon, actually, meandering around and taking in the places that must have been a fairly normal part of the life of a kid I’m not ever sure was ordinary.
“You didn’t check out the whole house, did you?” He grins.
“No, I went for a walk and I worked on the article.”
“And did a little fantasizing?”
“That too.”
“I bet you did.” He smirks as though he can read my thoughts. The ones that are flooding my brain with seductive images.
Gripping my hip, he pulls me up against him. “Because you can’t stop thinking about getting me naked. You want me.” He trails a digit down between my boobs. “You want my mouth on your tits.” Moving lower, he only stops when his finger is at the apex of my thighs. “My cock plunging into you.”
Clenching my thighs, I exhale as he grins wickedly. “I mean, no. No fantasizing. None. Don’t you hate it when your neck gets sticky with sweat? I swear there is nothing worse. It confines movement and everything.”
“You’re sticky?” He furrows his brow and then slowly breaks into a grin. Oh great, like he wouldn’t see through that little fib. Even a blind man could tell I was changing the subject. His fingers go to my neck, scraping up both sides. “Here?”
Lower, much, much lower. I swallow. “Yes.”
“And here?” His fingers brush the bottom of my jaw, and along where my pulse pounds at his touch.
Unable to speak, I nod.
“What about this spot?” He takes my chin between his fingers.
“There too.” Darting my tongue over my bottom lip, I wet it. What is it about him that makes me want to forget all common sense?
Then he’s leaning in, his tongue flicking over each spot he mentioned, his mouth sucking on my skin. Good Lord, it does nothing for the problem between my thighs. His lips tickle, sending sensation fluttering through me to pool in my core, making me wetter.
My knees wobble and I cling to him as he palms the small of my back and pushes his hardness against my belly. Then almost as I’d imagined, he trails a finger down over one breast, outlining my nipple that’s stabbing at my top, before moving between my legs. “What about here? I want to wrap my mouth around every sticky inch of you. Plunge my tongue into your sweet pussy.”
Hot damn. Shit. Did I nod? His eyes are so heated I may burst into flames from their laser focus. Crap, I think I must have agreed with him. “I-I...”
“You want it so bad you can practically taste it?” He takes my hand, speeding toward the house. “You’re allowed to want, Maxi. Don’t let your head stop you from enjoying yourself.”
I have to jog to keep up with him. My head is what keeps me safe. It stops me from making the same stupid mistakes with men as the other women in my family have made.
“You get in your head and freak out.” Eliza’s voice pops into my mind.
Mom reiterates, “Get out of your head for a bit.”
“Maybe if you weren’t so frigid and always in your head, you’d have a chance at keeping me,” the last dud I dated says on a laugh.
“Y-you can lick me.” Oh shit. I cringe. Did I say that? ‘You can lick me.’ What am I, a hot fudge sundae? Way to go and advertise how awkward and inexperienced I am. “I mean—”
He practically lifts me off my feet to get to the front door. “Oh, I’m going to lick you, sweet cheeks. I’m going to tongue fuck you until you see stars.”
Stars? Seriously? What’s he going to do, knock me out with that supposedly magic tongue of his? I’m not sure a concussion is what they had in mind when they talked about giving head, was it?
He shoves open the door. I don’t think it was even locked. Do people lock their doors in small towns? I would think someone as famous as he is would have added motivation to keep their shit locked down. Anyone could waltz into their life, their house, and steal something valuable.
“I mean, that’s it. Nothing else.” I squeeze my thighs together. It shouldn’t matter to him that I don’t want to go all the way. He’s had a smorgasbord of women, hasn’t he? I’m just another sampler plate. Like those little morsels on crackers. Oh my God. Tiny little women on crackers dance through my head. Like a Shapes commercial, only these women all have their legs wide open, their vaginas on display. That’s so not me. I’m no hoochy dancing on a cracker to some salsa jingle. Not that he should care that I don’t want to be another vagina smeared on his cracker, but I do.
“Nothing else?” He crowds me against the wall as soon as we step inside. His h
ands graze the outside of my thighs as he ruches my skirt up so he can get his fingers on my panties. A quick yank and they’re down around my knees. Then he’s kneeling in front of me and lifting my feet so he can remove them completely. “You have a real issue with cock, don’t you?”
“No.” I hiss between my teeth as he pushes my legs apart. For some reason I thought we’d be naked while doing this. That he’d want to strip me out of my clothes completely. I let go of the tension that idea had created as he puts his head under my skirt. “I just don’t want yours.”
“Keep saying that,” he murmurs against my pubic bone. “It’s only going to make it that much more fulfilling when you finally accept that you do.” His palm grips the inside of my thigh, heat radiating from his touch. “I’ve been dying to get my mouth on you since you stepped foot in my dressing room.”
He shifts his mouth lower, and the anticipation is killing me. My heart is beating a million miles per hour, my nerves tingling.
“Are you ready for me, beautiful?”
“Uh—” The scrape of his wet tongue over my slit overwhelms me. It’s hot and rough and sensual all at the same time. “Oh.”
He tickles the tip across my clit, his breath warm on my skin. Pleasure shivers through me, every muscle contracting and releasing with the sensation. His fingers dig into my legs, a subtle pressure and pain that add another dimension to the desire coursing through me.
“Fuck, yeah,” he groans. “Your pussy is so responsive. So wet and swollen with how much you want me.”
I’m not even entirely sure I know what he’s talking about as his mouth covers me, licking and sucking in a leisurely, measured way. How is my pussy responding to him? Can he hear it screaming oh yeah, baby, lick me like I’m ice cream? Or perhaps, how many licks until you get to the center… I’m not actually sure what the words to that ditty were, and I sure as hell can’t hear my vagina. But I do see stars.
The back of my head butts against the wall, and I close my eyes and ride the sensation. My hands to my face, I whimper, dragging them down my neck and over my breasts as he laps at me. Who knew? Seriously, who knew a man could be so good with their tongue, and didn’t bother to tell me? Who knew that having a wet rough tongue digging into me would feel this good, and didn’t think it might be worth sharing the news? How the hell have I been missing out on this?
