by Selena Kitt
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MOXIE
By Selena Kitt
High school senior, Moxie, agrees to be moral support for her friend, Patches, who is totally enamored with a college boy, so she says yes to a double date, even though she has to lie to her parents to do it. But Moxie wasn’t counting on lying about her age to get into an x-rated movie, and she definitely wasn’t counting on her date’s Roman hands and Russian fingers, or the fact that the pants she’s borrowed from Patches are several sizes too small. By the end of the night, Moxie finds herself in far more trouble than she bargained for!
Table of Contents
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Little Brats: Eva
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ABOUT SELENA KITT
BONUS EXCERPT
SELENA KITT’S OTHER WORKS
MORE FROM EXCESSICA!
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Eva doesn’t fit in at community college. The kids all say she talks funny and it’s true—her Russian accent makes her a target for a lot teasing. She can’t help it if her mother came to the U.S. as a mail-order bride—with her daughter in tow. Eva’s mother keeps reminding her that they should be grateful her stepfather agreed to accept Eva, too, but her mother doesn’t know everything. The real secret is that Eva’s stepfather agreed to the marriage because he wanted Eva. And worse, the thing Eva really can’t tell her mother—she wants her stepfather too.
Little Brats: Eva
By Selena Kitt
IF YOU LIKE THIS SERIES, CHECK OUT THESE
Little Brats:Anna
Little Brats: Becca
Little Brats: Clara
Little Brats: Christa
Little Brats: Darla
Little Brats: Fiona
Little Brats: Georgia
Little Brats: Hanna
Little Brats: India
Little Brats: Jenna
Little Brats: Kayla
Little Brats: Leila
Little Brats: Maya
Little Brats: Nina
Little Brats: Olivia
Little Brats: Paula
Little Brats: Qesa
Little Brats: Tina
Camping Brats
Heavenly Brats
Traveling Brats
The Preacher and His Naughty Brat
The Cougar and Her Cub
The Nudist and His Princess
The Man of the House
“Moya mat' razrushila moyu zhizn!'” Eva managed to get the words out to her Russian friend on the screen. She didn’t know what she would do without Skype. Probably die of loneliness. But Lily was five thousand miles away—even if it seemed like she was in the same room—along with all of Eva’s old friends, her school, her whole entire life she’d had to leave behind.
The sound of her bedroom door creaking caught her attention and Eva saw a glimpse of Daniel out of the corner of her eye. Her stepfather’s six-foot frame loomed and when he knew he’d been seen, he emerged fully into her room.
“Your mother ruined your life?” He cocked his head, speaking in Russian, even though he knew her mother had forbidden them both. They spoke it when they were alone together anyway, like a secret. Daniel’s Russian wasn’t great—he’d learned it quickly, a loving gesture for his mail-order bride—but he spoke well enough for them to understand each other. Eva appreciated the gesture, the familiar sound of her native tongue, even if her mother didn’t. Tatyana spoke excellent English. She prided herself on it, and her new husband’s efforts to please her with his broken Russian had gone from being initially unappreciated to outright rebuked over time.
“What has she done now?” Daniel raised his brows over those kind, dark eyes of his.
“Hello, Mr. Kingman!” Lily waved from the laptop screen, speaking English.
“Hello, Lily.” He leaned over to smile at Eva’s far-away friend as he reached for the laptop’s power button. “Eva has to go now. Bye, Lily!”
The screen went dark. Eva could see her own reflection in it. Her face was still wet with tears and she swiped at them, angry at herself, at her mother. At everything and everyone. Except for him. She lifted her face to meet his knowing gaze, biting her lip to try to keep her feelings in check, but she wondered how much he saw, how much he knew. Sometimes she thought it was nothing, sometimes she thought it was a great deal.
“What is it, kisa?” he asked, using a term of endearment that made her feel both small and loved—“kisa” meant “kitten” in her native language. “Did you fight again?”
Eva shook her head, turning her cheek toward the hand stroking her dark hair. His fingers were calloused and rough, but it was no wonder. He’d made his money as the third generation of his family to run Kingman Stables where they trained and breed Champion horses. She looked up and met his eyes. He wasn’t huge, but his body had been etched by manual labor, and his heart was twice the size of the man himself.
He often denied himself to the point of frugality, but he was more than generous with her and her mother. The man had been the only father figure she’d ever really known, even though she’d come to his house full grown. Sure, men had paraded in and out of her mother’s life, but most had paid her no more interest than her cool, self-indulged mother.
“Is it so awful?” he asked in Russian, stroking her cheek with those calloused fingertips. He smelled earthy, but clean, a familiar scent—hay and Old Spice. “Am I so awful?”
“No, not you.” She shook her head vehemently. “Never you.”
His patience with her—and her mother—rivaled all she’d ever known of men. She only shook her head, wanting to tell him everything she’d just revealed to her friend, the truth of her life here in America, but she held back, more out of fear that she’d break down completely if she went through it all again.
“You can tell me, solnyshko.” Another Russian term of endearment—little sun—he shared only with her. He probably would have called her mother those things, but her mother didn’t like hearing anyone speak Russian. Her mother had been the one who wanted to come to America, who wanted all things American, from American beer to American Express to an American man of her very own. “I just want to make you happy.”
“You’re the only good thing about this place.” She felt her chin quiver.
“I want this to be your home.” He sat on the bed, patting it beside him.
“It is. Daniel—you are,” she assured him. “I just… I miss things.”
“What things? What do you miss?” He patted the bed again and this time she went.
With the grace of a dancer, she slid onto the bed next to him, leaving perhaps an inch between them, his legs covered in worn jeans, hers half-covered by a tight cotton skirt that stretched over the full curves of her hips and generous thighs. Eva was curvy, breasts filling every inch of her thin shirt, and she couldn’t help comparing herself to her mother, the woman her stepfather slept beside each night.
Where her mother ha
d an hour-glass figure, thin where she needed to be and curves in all the right places, Eva just had curves. While not exactly fat, no one would accuse her of being thin either. Eva’s long dark hair fell in waves over her full chest, strands slipping where the V-neck of her shirt revealed the creamy flesh of the tops of her breasts. The contrast of colors she appreciated, though so far, few others seemed to share her opinion. Her mother’s hair, the same rich color of a dark roast coffee, the woman kept in a sort, sophisticated cut, not a strand ever touching her shoulders.
Where Eva preferred to go more natural, only some lip gloss and eyeliner, maybe a touch of blush, her mother spent hours applying makeup, the thick lines of black eyeliner she wore only accentuating her sharp, Russian features, making her look even more intense, if that was possible. The woman’s gaudy clothes, the ones she thought so high class, in Eva’s mind only made her mother look like one of the over-done Barbie dolls on that Real Wives TV show the woman spent hours watching, like she was studying it for an American citizenship test or something equally as important.
When she caught her stepfather following her own gaze, taking in her body with his mouth slightly open, he moved with a jerk to begin studying the carpet. His hands now gripped his own thighs, the tips of his fingers turning white with the effort.
“What do you miss, little one?” he prompted her again and she saw he was looking at her, drinking in her body with his eyes.
“My friends. My school. My… life.”
“Can’t you make a life here? With me?” He swallowed, an audible click, his next words like a reminder for them both. “And your mother.”
“My mother.” Eva sighed.
“She loves you.”
“She doesn’t even know I’m alive.” She rolled her eyes at the thought. “I’m just an appendage. She takes me along with her wherever she goes.”
“Didn’t you want to come here?”
“No.” It was the truth. She had to say it, even if it hurt him when she did. “I had nowhere else to go. And she wanted… you.”
“She wanted America.” There was a painful knowing in his eyes.
“Yes,” Eva admitted quietly.
“She got stuck with me.”
“She got lucky.”
Daniel’s eyes lit up at her words, but they both knew that Eva’s mother didn’t feel lucky, getting stuck with Daniel. She didn’t feel lucky at all.
“But you’re unhappy.”
“It’s her fault, not yours,” Eva reminded him. “It’s just… if I was home in Russia, I’d be going to open mic night with Lily right now, reading my poetry in the café.”
“I didn’t know you write poetry.” He raised his eyebrows in surprise, a smile fluttering on his lips.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she confessed, swallowing hard.
“I’d like to find out.” His fingers brushed her cheek as he tucked a piece of hair behind her ears.
“You’re sweet, Daniel.” Sometimes she thought he was too sweet—especially for a shark like her mother.
“I love you.”
Those words. They made her heart swell.
“I just…” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I wish I could fit in.”
“You’re a beautiful girl.” His arm went around her, a reassurance. “So bright. You should have a million friends.”
“They make fun of me.”
“Why would they make fun of you?” His lips brushed her hairline.
“My accent. My words. I forget, sometimes, the American words for things.” She cringed at the memory, leaning against him. “They laugh at me.”
“Girls can be mean.” Daniel sighed and she wondered if he was thinking about her mother.
“It’s not just the girls,” Eva insisted. “And the boys! Ugh!”
“The boys?” Daniel’s voice was guarded, but she heard the firmness in it. Like any parental figure, he didn’t like thinking about her in relation to boys.
“They make me wish I was invisible.” She sighed.
“Why?”
“They look at me like they want to undress me.” She turned her face up to meet his eyes and saw something there that both surprised and excited her.
“I can’t say as I blame them,” he breathed.
“Daniel!” Eva’s eyes widened and then she laughed, seeing him smile.
“You’re lovely, my little kisa.” He kissed her forehead with a chuckle.
“But then they talk about me to their friends,” Eva said darkly. “They laugh along with the girls.
“It’s a little community college,” he reminded her. “They’re just small fish. Unimportant. Next year, when you transfer to a bigger university…”
“It will be the same.” She shook her head, knowing it was true. She was never going to fit in here, never.
“You haven’t met a single person who is nice to you?” he asked, rubbing her arm with his palm, up and down.
“Just you.” She leaned against him more, resting her head on his chest. “I only wish I were as invisible to them as I am to my mother. They look at me like I shouldn’t be there.”
She felt his arms tighten and just that sweet gesture made tears threaten, stinging her eyes as she blinked them back. She didn’t want him to see, to hear, but a small, errant sob escaped her chest. That simple sound was all it took for her stepfather to fold her into his arms completely, pulling her into his lap as hot tears spilled over onto her cheeks, soaking his shirt. She clung to him as Daniel held and rocked her, soothing, smoothing her hair away from where it had fallen over her face. One hand rubbed up and down on her arm, his calloused skin making her soft skin tingle.
“Sweet girl,” he murmured as her tears soaked his shirt. “I wish you were happy. Do you want to go back so badly?”
Eva shook her head. That wasn’t it, not exactly.
“I just wish she didn’t force me to come here,” she sobbed, letting the resentment that lodged in her tight chest go, scorch her throat with the force of her words. “Maybe if it had been my choice, my decision…”
“I understand.” He stroked her hair. “You have every right to feel that way, kisa…”
“Ugh. I made a mess of your shirt.” Eva sniffed, rubbing at the moisture on his shirt as if she could wipe it away or dry it with just her touch, her hands moving over the hills and valleys of his chest. Her fingers reached the solid six-pack of his abs, a startling discovery, and she brought her hands to her lap as if she’d been burned. Her own stomach clenched at her body’s reaction and she saw Daniel’s gaze drop to her lap, looking at her manicured fingernails. She’d borrowed a shade of red her mother hadn’t used since they’d arrived in the states, but Eva had gotten yelled at for taking it anyway.
When she finally dared to look up again, their eyes locked, breath mingling, mere inches separating their mouths. She bit at her full bottom lip, the taste of strawberry gloss on her tongue, as he raked a hand down over the rugged stubble on his chin. Her nipples pebbled in a need to feel those calloused hands rub over her tender flesh, and the thought made her flush with both embarrassment and lust. As if he’d read her thoughts, he wiped away her tears. His fingers lingered at the edges of her mouth a second before his visibly trembling thumb traced along her lip, pulling the bottom one free of her teeth.
Pulling back and righting herself to look at him fully, she found his eyes glassy. Her stomach tightened at the depth of his concern for her. For lack of anything better to do with her hands, she fiddled with the hem of her shirt, adjusted it around her waist. A glance down showed how each deep breath they took in sync with each other brought their chests so close to touching. Just the thought of all his hardness pressing against her softness made her wet. The imagined sensation of his lips on hers made her pussy pulse with a need to have his thumb, now just grazing her lip, to be pressed hard against her clit.
And he looked like her as if he could read her mind. As if they were speaking some language only the two of the
m could know. As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, where she wanted him to touch her. She wondered if wishing it could make it so, seeing his hands hovering, so close to touching her, she could feel the heat of him, but then he dropped them to the bed, gripping the bedspread in his fists.
“I want to make you happy, kisa.” His voice was strained, gritty. “I want that more than anything in the world.”
“So do I,” she breathed.
Somewhere, a phone rang. They both glanced up and Eva knew the sound of her father’s cell phone ringtone, a clip of Johnny Cash’s Walk the Line.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed, sliding her off his lap into the bed. Eva nodded, chest falling, shoulders slumped as he stood above her. “I wish I could do more.”
“Me too.” She swallowed as she looked up at him, seeing his gaze rake her body as she rolled her shoulders back to push her ample chest forward. She saw the hunger in his eyes, the way his gaze lingered at the apex of her thighs as she leaned back on her elbows, knees slightly parted, flashing the color of her panties. Red, like her nails. Like the blood pumping through their veins.
“Maybe I will.” Their eyes met and Eva couldn’t breathe. But Johnny Cash kept insisting on walking that line, so Daniel stepped back, turning and leaving her with only one pained, lingering look backward.
Then he was gone.
As the sun set, ending her stepfather’s workday, she faked studying as she listened for him to come home. Shakespeare was beautiful in any language, but she couldn’t concentrate on stories written in Old English, let alone regular English, as she awaited the return of the one person who cared about her, the only warm spot in her day. Her heart raced, hearing his heavy footfalls on the staircase. Her mother intercepted him in the hall, leaving her to wonder which room he would have gone to first—hers or his.
“Daniel?” Her mother sounded happier to see him than usual at the end of the day. “What do you have there?”
Ah, so that was it. She thought Daniel had brought her a gift. And maybe he had. He often gifted them both with trinkets, little things. Daniel loved to see them smile.
