And just like every time she’d contemplated what lay ahead for them, she came to the same conclusion. “I’m willing to take that risk,” she said, eager to follow through on her idea that might shake him out of his funk. “Stay here.”
She went into their walk-in closet and wrapped herself in her calf-length wool coat. Fastening all the buttons, she hurried out of the closet to join him in the bedroom again and was pleased to see he was still here. Snagging his hand as she passed him to head for the door, he followed her out of the bedroom, but his lumbering pace slowed her down.
“Where the fuck are we going?” he asked her and didn’t sound happy that she’d taken them out of his room.
The house was spooky at night, but she didn’t fear the shadows. This building was her nest now and the safest place she had ever known.
Peeking over her shoulder, she let her coquettish smile tempt him and she let go of his hand. “You want to play with me, baby? You’ve got to catch me first.”
Hurrying to the stairway, she ran down the black space without confirmation he was coming after her. But he was curious and horny and he liked to be the one with the secrets, so it was doubtful he’d let her keep any of her own.
She got to the parking garage and used her fingerprint to gain entry through the internal door and to open the main garage door. While the motor was working to raise it, she ran over to the key cupboard and snagged the keys she wanted.
It was when she turned to cross to the car that the sight of him in the center of the space made her stop to catch her breath. His broad body was intimidating in a room filled with night and if it wasn’t for her determination, she would fall to her knees and seduce him right here.
He seemed to have the same idea because when she strutted toward the car, he caught her and tried to pull her into his arms. “Let’s go back upstairs, baby. I’m gonna fuck you so good—“
“No,” she said, trying her best to stay strong. “I want to take you somewhere.”
“I’m gonna take you right here,” he said. Picking her up, he carried her across the room and dropped her to push her backwards over the hood of one of their vehicles. “Just bend over there, nice and easy.”
Wrestling her over onto her front, he used his lower body to pin hers against the grill and rested his weight on his forearm on her back to hold her down. He loosened his belt and the descent of his zip echoed in this vast concrete cavern.
“Baby, you’re gonna love this,” he murmured. “I’m gonna fill you up. You’re gonna take my dick deep in that pussy, you’ll be branded for life.”
“Brodie,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to move. “Baby, I want to take you somewhere. Can we get in the car then—“
“Shut it,” he snapped and yanked her coat up to find she was bare beneath it. “Well, you dirty girl. You were ready for it, weren’t you? You’ve been thinking of my hard cock fucking you fast.”
He was more than horny, he was deep in the throng of blind desire. “Always,” she said, writhing against the hand he was fondling over her ass. Although she was dedicated to fulfilling her idea, she wasn’t ignorant to his persistence and any time that he wanted her this much, she was controlled by her own need to satisfy his body.
With an open hand he smacked her twice, then twice more, and the joy of the burn made her suck in a breath through her teeth.
He bent his body over hers to growl his words into her hair. “You don’t run away from me again. You heel, you kneel, you come. You do what I say.”
The primal tone and meaning of his words sent blood to all the right places in her and she breathed his name. Logic didn’t feature when they were this far into the throng of arousal.
He stopped caressing her ass and spanked her again before the thick lump of his dick pushed its way through until it impelled itself into her. The sting of his mass made her pant, she hadn’t been quite prepared for his entry, but he didn’t notice, he drove his way into her.
The cool metal under her cheek didn’t lower the temperature of her body that was shunted forth every time he drove into her. He grunted and shoved in deeper, his engorged cock stayed in place as he rocked his hips, testing the limits of her capacity. She cried out and he continued to pulsate within her.
Grinding himself further, he forced her to take him to the hilt. Crammed so full, she yelped and gasped in a breath, but when she tried to turn, he pressed a palm onto her cheekbone and held her down, covering her eye.
“You choke my cock with your cramped little pussy,” he said, working himself side to side. “You tense, baby? You’re real tight tonight.”
He smacked her hard and ran his hand up between her cheeks where he pressed the tip of his thumb into her ass. Wriggling up to explore this new sensation, he let it edge a little farther then grumbled an exhale of his own arousal that didn’t quite become words. Dragging his hips back, he slammed into her, keeping hold of her ass as he jolted in and out of her until a minute or so later, he swore, smacked her ass, and then staggered back.
Trying to remember where she was and where she wanted them to go, Zara remained on her face with her eyes closed while she absorbed the tingles of unsated arousal.
“Baby?”
His voice was right behind her. He ran a rough hand up the back of her quivering thigh and pulled her coat down to cover her. Still on the brink of her own climax, she squirmed in the covering of soft fabric. She was tempted to slide her hand down her body to finish the job he started.
“We’re going back upstairs,” he said and seized her wrist, but she pulled back when he tried to tug her toward the stairway.
Even though things had gone further down here than she’d expected, she still wanted to follow through on her plan. “Come with me,” she said, rounding her eyes when he turned back to look at her. The irritation on his face wasn’t mirrored by his grip because when she backed away, her arm fell out of his hand.
“Where the fuck you want to go?” he asked, opening his arms.
But she wasn’t going to tell him, she reversed and kept her eyes on his until she got to the car. She unlocked it and opened the driver’s door and only then did he loosen in concession.
“We’ll take the bike.”
“You’ve been drinking,” she said. “We’re going in the car.”
Ducking down, she got inside and started the engine. Before she even got the headlights on, he climbed in the passenger side door with a gun in his hand.
“What do you need that for?” she asked, aware that there were weapons stashed in the garage and all over the house and probably the grounds too.
“Don’t know yet,” he muttered with a shrug that moved the gun up and down his thigh. “I like to be prepared.”
FOURTEEN
He reclined his seat and stretched out while she navigated the car out of the garage. She drove and he locked his fingers behind his head. When she glanced back, his eyes were closed.
“Don’t go to sleep,” she said, prodding his thigh with a sharp fingernail next to where the gun rested. “It’s dark and I might get lost.”
They used the main gate so rarely that it was a possibility. But she’d spent time walking around, exploring, and was familiar with most of the footpaths in daylight. At night, the environment became much more daunting, and the landmarks were hidden by black shadows and shrouding foliage making them difficult to distinguish. The grounds were vast, driving in them was like driving in the countryside, yet they were on the threshold of the city. Living here, they had the best of both worlds.
He didn’t even flinch. “As long as you don’t drive into the ocean we’re fine. You can swim, right?”
Concerned that she could hit a beast and of what would come of them if she went off the beaten trail, she scrutinized the sinister shapes around them. “Are there wild animals out here?” she asked. Brodie did next to nothing to tend the grounds. The whole place was basically a natural habitat for anything that wanted to live in the woods nestled by the shielding clif
f.
“Other than me?” he asked, cracking one eye open for a brief moment and putting the gun in the door well so he could twist into a comfortable position. Although he was joking, she did relax. Brodie could handle anything that came at them and he was armed, making him virtually invincible.
Zara did manage to find the gate and used the fingerprint pad under the steering wheel to unlock it wirelessly. This was the first time she had ever driven herself out the gate and her heart hammered the whole time. It was odd, but the pressure of ensuring they weren’t seen and that the gate closed behind them made her think of Art.
He watched over his flock and even though he wasn’t here, she didn’t want to let him down. She still missed him, his guiding hand, and his help with Brodie. Art was easy to talk to and he was honest. Without him, it was her responsibility to try to cultivate that kind of openness with Brodie and she had no one to help her.
Since he was drunk and she wanted him to open up, she took advantage of him. “Have you killed anyone for free?” she asked, trying to prove to him that she wanted to be a part of every part of his life, even the parts he’d withheld from her thus far.
“Yeah, your last boyfriend,” he muttered, still snoozing in his reclined seat.
“Vince?” she asked, wondering how and when he’d gotten to her ex.
He sat up and grabbed the back of her neck, drawing her attention to his glare. “I meant the fucker Tim Sutcliffe. Who the hell is Vince? What’s his social security number?”
“Do I know your social security number?” she asked. Her lover was easily riled and she was learning that she didn’t have to mimic that quality in order to be with him, so she remained calm, finding that was the best way to temper his outbursts. Though her actual question was moot because he probably didn’t have a real social security number. Whether he did or not would remain a mystery because he was too busy scowling at her to answer. “It’s not a question I ask before sleeping with a man is my point. It sorta kills the mood.” She didn’t even know Brodie’s real name before sleeping with him.
“I’ll find him,” he grumbled and settled back in his seat.
She exhaled a laugh and focused on the road. “Why do we care where he is? He obviously couldn’t handle me. I’m not still with him. He wasn’t man enough… Are you man enough, Brodie McCormack?”
Peeking over her shoulder, she was drawn in by his tired eyes. “You are too naughty for most men,” he said, reaching over to pull up her jacket so he could massage her bare thigh. “You’re buck naked under that coat. You’re so hot, baby, and I don’t tell you that enough. I’ve got myself a prize.”
He left his hand on her leg, but let his head fall back again so he could close his eyes. “Are you leaving early in the morning?” she asked. He nodded. She second-guessed her decision to bring him out so late because she didn’t want him to be tired when he had to be focused. Except their relationship was important too, it was vital for his well-being and for the Kindred’s work. “Will you let me come?”
“I left you hanging in the garage, huh? Pull over and I’ll fix that right here.” He bent in her direction and tugged open a few buttons on her coat, but she took his hand from the sensitive flesh near her core when his fingers tried to slide home.
With a laugh hiding behind her lips, she interlinked their fingers. “I meant will you let me come to New York with the Kindred?”
He sounded disappointed, either by the request or by his misinterpretation of it, and shook his fingers out of hers. “Thad will only hang with us for a couple of days. He has a real job to get back to.”
“What’s Zave’s story? He’s sort of freaky.”
“He’s punishing himself,” Brodie yawned, and she smiled out the windshield.
She’d asked him once why he didn’t manipulate information out of her when she was tired and sex-sated, and here she was figuring out that it was the best way to inveigle information from her man.
“For what?”
Still sleeping, he looked so relaxed. She glanced from him to the road, wishing she didn’t have to concentrate on driving. “He was a wild kid with a big brain and didn’t take orders from anyone, no one could control him.”
Which married with what Thad had said about days of indulgence. Zave certainly didn’t come across as a partier. “What changed?” she asked, because he was anything but wild.
His expression didn’t move as he inhaled. “The same thing that always happens in my family,” he said, “family tragedy. After that he became a recluse.”
Most families had their share of skeletons. While Brodie and his family had been blessed with natural aptitude, they didn’t have the best of luck in other areas. Having lost her own mother when she was a teenager, she understood how loss could alter a person’s priorities almost overnight.
She kept driving and talking. “Thad is a happy guy, sort of like his mother. Bess is sweet.”
“She’s a treat,” he muttered, probably getting tired of the questions.
Being out on the road gave her mind time to process and sort these new facts. “Do Zave’s parents live in his house too? And I thought your dad built the twin houses for your mother?”
“He did. Zave bought the other one from my father. And his parents are dead. He has no siblings.”
The family history questions were irritating Brodie because he was scowling again, and she’d need him to be in a good mood if she wanted him to open up when they got where they were going. “Just you and Grant left with that fraternal bond,” she said, wondering how he’d react to that relationship while in this intoxicated state.
He sat up straight and seemed to grow alert in an instant. “Is that where we’re going?” he asked, almost elated. “Oh, baby, that’s a gift. Get me into his apartment while he’s asleep. I’ll teach him the consequences of letting my girl get hurt.”
Rolling her eyes, she didn’t want to encourage hostility, so a laugh became a tsk. “We’re not going to punish Grant,” she said.
They weren’t far from their destination. From the way he examined the view with decreasing patience, she’d guess that he knew where they were going.
“White Falls,” he murmured as they began their final ascent to the highest point of the coast near the city.
He said nothing else for the rest of the trip, and when they got to the top, she turned off the car and sat quietly staring out onto the inky ocean.
Brodie broke the silence. “Is there a point to this?” he asked, rubbing his hands on his thighs and lowering his gaze with renewed discomfort in his voice.
Revealing himself or any vulnerability was tough. Having made the decision to be more proactive about encouraging him to share, she wasn’t going to pull back on the throttle now even if it was plain that was what he wanted her to do.
“You and Grant, you were up here the day your parents died.” That much of the story she knew.
He nodded once but wouldn’t focus on the windscreen. “Art brought us. We trekked up from the beach. Grant hated the whole day. He wouldn’t stop bitching. It was arid, it hadn’t rained for days, and… he was teaching us how to make fire and how to control it.”
Treading softly, she was humbled and overjoyed that he was talking to her about such a sensitive topic. But she kept herself passive and sedate. She didn’t want to scare him quiet, by gushing or overreacting to him sharing.
She took off her seatbelt and twisted her body toward his. “Art was?”
“Yeah,” he said. His eyes flicked up to one side to focus on the dark mass on the water that was McCormack land. The peninsula was visible from up here, which was why Brodie had brought her here in the first place.
“The light you saw… right on the end of our peninsula? It’s where the dock is… my mom had it installed to guide my dad home. He and his buddies used to go out fishing… least that’s what they called it. What they liked to do was smoke cigars and talk business.”
“She worried about him,” Zara said, encoura
ged by that. Art had told her that Melinda McCormack had her husband pussy-whipped, now Zara understood that adoration went both ways.
The distance in his eyes became acute. “She was out with him that day on the boat. The light beacon was on at the dock in case they came back after dark. No one was there, at home. We were building a fire up here, but Grant was using the binoculars to try and find them.”
So Art and Brodie were playing caveman, and Grant was seeking his parents, probably desperate to get home. Brodie would have been enraptured with his idol while Grant was seeking salvation.
His attention fell and there was tension in his shoulders. Her intention hadn’t been to upset him. But she was gratified that he had chosen to open up to her with little persuasion. “And he saw the boat explode,” she said, that much was in the papers. The boat went up ten miles from shore. Little wreckage was recovered according to the press she’d read, most of it had washed up on shore at the foot of the cliffs or on the McCormack peninsula.
He shrugged off the melancholy and settled back in his seat. “The night I brought you here was the first night I’d been back since that day. The beacon light hadn’t been on either, we weren’t even sure it was going to work.”
It wasn’t on tonight, she had only seen it on that one time. She’d spent so much time working inland on the McCormack estate that she hadn’t spent any time on the other side of the house, closest to the water. Zara resolved to check out the docks and the beacon the next time she was exploring.
“It’s a beautiful glow,” she said because the light had been brilliant.
“Blue isn’t traditionally used by mariners and lighthouses,” Brodie said, more comfortable relaying facts. “But my dad chose it because it was my mom’s favorite color.”
Breaking the tension of the conversation was the best way to ensure she got more information from him, so she leaned closer and smiled. “Mine’s purple.”
Swallow (Kindred Book 2) Page 16
