And I let her do this. I asked for it. I went willingly, knowingly.
Same as I did every time she asked, I responded with, I'll be home in forty-five minutes. Let yourself in.
Brooke-Ashley Markham was ruining my life, and I didn't want her to stop.
Chapter Twenty
Brooke
Secured Debt: a debt which is covered by specific assets in the event of a default.
JJ grabbed the backs of my thighs, pushed them to my chest. My ankles bounced on his shoulders as he slammed into me again. My body was stuffed and folded like tortellini, and all I could manage was, "What the hell kind of position is this?"
He turned his head, pressed his lips to my calf. He got what he deserved there, as I hadn't shaved my legs in days. "The kind that shuts you up long enough for me to use you the way you like."
I reached for sheets, blankets, anything to keep me anchored. "I'm not sure I requested this."
"The fact you have"—he rocked into me like he was trying to demolish walls—"something to say"—and dislocate my hips—"proves you want me to use you even rougher."
"No, Jed, not rougher," I begged. "No, I can't—"
"No?" He pulled out but kept his hands on my thighs, brushed his thumbs over my backside and the spot where my legs met my center. It was uncomfortable like this, contorted and empty. I wanted to be filled, moved. And yes, used. "You want me to stop? You've changed your mind?"
It hurt, this emptiness. It was an ache, deep and true, and I couldn't go on this way. I couldn't live another minute without him inside me. I clawed at his chest, reaching for as much of him as I could get. Anything I could get. "You owe me," I snapped. "You still haven't made up for the time when you didn't wake me up."
His thumb tapped my clit once, twice—and then he went back to kissing my damn leg. "Do better," he said. "I know you can do better than that."
"No, not when I'm still mad about it," I replied. "If I wasn't enjoying it, I would've woken up and told you as much. I wanted that one, Jed."
Scraping his beard up my leg, he laughed into my skin. "You know this isn't a punch card situation, right? You're not working up to a free fuck, Bam."
Still chuckling, he shifted my leg to kiss my ankle. My damn ankle. "Oh my fucking god, Jed. If you don't put that rolling-pin dick inside me and keep going right now, I'll leave here and set fire to the tavern."
I wasn't finished issuing that threat when he was seated all the way inside me and we were crying out, a chorus of groans, growls, wails. The way he bent me made it feel like his cock was everywhere. It was almost too much, but only almost. It reduced my world down to him, me, us. It emptied my mind and took away the itchy need to control anything.
"There you go, Bam." He grinned down at me as if I'd learned to tie my shoes and rewarded me with a slow, slow slide of him inside me. "That's how I want you."
"You like that?" I asked. "You enjoy the idea of me burning down the tavern?"
"I do," he admitted. "I want you so desperate that arson makes sense and then I want to fuck you so good all you can do is take it." He pressed two fingers to my lips. "No more talking. You're not the boss here. This isn't one of your conference calls."
I raked my nails over the octopus inked into his shoulder. He answered with a rumbly groan and I clenched around him without thought. "I hate you."
"Go ahead and let yourself believe that, sweetheart."
* * *
It'd happened once or twice and I'd written it off each time, never paying it any mind. It wasn't a big deal and there was no reason to create drama where none existed, so I didn't. It didn't mean anything. This didn't mean anything.
But as I lingered in JJ's bed more than thirty minutes after orgasms had been achieved and the condom was discarded, his arms tight around my body and my head tucked under his chin, the word significant pulsed behind my eyes. This was becoming significant, and I didn't know how to find space for more significance in my life. I didn't know whether I wanted to find that space.
He ran his palm down my flank, over my hip. "Are you good, Bam? Are you going to be able to walk all right?"
"Why? Are you tossing me out?" My words came out like the crack of a whip, much harder than I'd intended. "It's fine, I mean, I should go—"
"You really know how to wind yourself up," he murmured. "It's the middle of the night and it's snowing. You're not going anywhere but I want to know if you need a hot bath or something. This time was a little—"
"Savage?"
He shrugged, pressed a kiss to the crown of my head, my temple, the corner of my mouth. "Nothing wrong with savage if it gets you where you need to go."
"Tell me more about that, Jed," I joked, expecting him to say something about turning women into pretzels in order to give them black-out quality orgasms. "Where do I need to go?"
"You need to get out of your head," he replied softly. "So far outta your head, Bam."
Significant.
For the second time in far too recent history, tears filled my eyes. "I have to go," I said, fighting his embrace. "Seriously, this isn't one of those situations where I want you to hold me down and ignore my protests. I have to go."
"It's the middle of the night." He locked his arms around me, pinned my legs with his strong thigh. "It's snowing. It's been twenty minutes since you were semi-conscious and ten since you stopped shaking. You're not going anywhere."
I was prepared to argue, to kick and fight. To do all the things I usually did to keep people away.
But then he said, "And I don't want you to go, Brooke."
Resentful, overwhelmed, significant tears streaked down my cheeks and I turned my face toward his arm. "You don't get to say things like that."
"Why not?" he asked, his lips skating over my neck, my shoulder. "You're allowed to hate me just as much as I'm allowed to want you. It's always been that way."
"That is not how"—my phone's sharp, distinctive peal cut me off—"I have to get that."
Without argument, JJ untangled his limbs from my body. He watched as I scrambled off the bed to locate my device in the heap of clothes discarded on the floor. "Don't you have people who can answer your calls? I know you're important, but aren't you allowed a couple of hours when the world doesn't need your opinion on where to put money to make it grow faster?"
"This isn't work, it's my father," I shouted, snatching the phone from my coat pocket. I pressed it to my ear, still kneeling on the floor with the coat clutched to my chest. "What happened? What's wrong?"
The first thing I heard was crying in the background. High pitched sobs and wails that I would've recognized anywhere. Then, I heard the words. Accident, inconsolable, bleeding. I was certain the home health aide was speaking in full, thoughtful sentences, but I couldn't comprehend any of it.
"I'll be there in five minutes. Please try to keep him from injuring himself any further," I said, pushing to my feet. I ended the call and flattened the phone against my breastbone, my eyes shut as I searched for a calming breath.
"I'll drive you." Even with my eyes closed, I knew the sound of JJ stepping into his jeans and fastening his belt. The rustling that followed was the black thermal I'd ripped off him hours ago, the one he'd added back into the rotation after I'd complained about its absence. "You're not hoofing it through a spring snowstorm."
Unable to find that calm breath, I opened my eyes. I slipped into my clothes, stuffed my underwear and socks in a pocket. "That won't be necessary."
JJ held out my boots to me. "It wasn't a question."
"Neither was my refusal." Wobbling, I gripped his forearm as I jammed my bare feet into the rubber wellies. Gross, but necessary. "Stay out of it."
"Please put your outrageous arrogance aside for a minute and acknowledge when it makes sense to accept help," he said, following me to the front door. "The roads haven't been plowed and the sidewalks are buried under six inches of snow and ice. You can be right about everything else, Brooke, but you can't—"
I didn't wait for him to finish that thought. I walked straight into the storm.
Chapter Twenty-One
JJ
Net Operating Loss: excess of business expenses over revenues.
Once again, Brooke was going to do what she wanted, how she wanted. It was up to me to decide whether I'd chase after her this time.
By the time I rolled up beside her, she'd waded all the way to the end of my street. Lowering the window, I called, "You're being ridiculous. Get in."
"Go home, Jed."
I wanted to let myself believe I wouldn't have followed her if it wasn't an emergency, but I didn't know about that. At this point, there wasn't much I wouldn't do for her, even when she insisted she didn't want it. And this was the tricky truth about Brooke: she did want it.
I pulled ahead of her, stopped the car, and stepped out into the snow. I pressed a hand to my heart and watched as she slipped and bobbled on the slick road, a fine layer of snowflakes crowning her head. Fickle, headstrong, and too fucking breathtaking for me to stand. And then I darted toward her, grabbing her around the waist and tossing her over my shoulder while she screeched and flailed. I dropped her into the back seat like a beautiful bag of potting soil.
When I settled behind the steering wheel, Brooke shouted, "That was unnecessary."
"I asked you nicely," I replied. "Several times."
"I know how to handle myself in a snowstorm," she argued.
I glanced at her in the rearview mirror as I drove through the village. "It's a good skill to have."
"I don't need anyone coming to my rescue."
I could hear her pouting. "Never crossed my mind that you would." I pulled into her driveway, turned off the car. Shifting to face her, I said, "I told you I wasn't letting you walk home alone in this storm and I didn't. I'm not letting you deal with this"—I hooked a thumb over my shoulder, toward the sprawling estate—"by yourself. Understood?"
Instead of agreeing outright, she climbed out of the car and said, "This is Vegas. What happens here, stays here."
I pocketed my keys and followed her to the door. "Everyone knows that mandate to be false."
She glanced at me, shrugged. "It's not false when I'm in charge."
I matched that shrug. "Whatever you want, Bam. I'm not going to fight you on the validity of tourism slogans."
Gripping the door handle, her expression tightened. Her lips parted as if she was ready to drop a counterstrike on me, but then she narrowed her eyes and said, "Promise me I can trust you."
"There's never been a time when you couldn't trust me," I replied. That wasn't good enough. The unyielding shine of her eyes told me so. She wanted me kneeling before her, pledging sword and skin. "Yes, I promise you can trust me, Brooke."
She pushed open the front door and we stepped into chaos. Every light in the house seemed to be lit. Competing televisions blared. The scent of fryer grease was thick in the air. People dressed in a rainbow of scrubs were everywhere, streaming in and out of rooms, moving up and down the front staircase, and they were all talking at once. A snowstorm raged outside, and it was the dead of night, but the Markham estate was hopping like Times Square.
Brooke jogged up the stairs, ignoring everything around her. I followed her into a room at the end of the hall where we found Judge Markham sitting up in bed, sobbing, with a gash on his forehead and blood running down his face and chest, smeared on his arms and hands. His shirt was soaked red, the bed linens much the same. Three health aides were positioned around the bed, their hands gloved and ready to block and tackle.
"Oh my god," Brooke whispered before quickly recovering. I ran my hand down her back, but she shook me off. To the aide closest to her father, the one with Sherry embroidered on her orange sherbet scrubs, she asked, "What the hell happened?"
"We think he fell out of bed and nailed his head right here," Sherry said, gesturing to the corner of the bedside table. "That, or he was sleepwalking. If that's the case, we're not sure where the injury came from. He won't let us get a good look at it. He was aggressive with Windy and Kayla when they tried to apply pressure and clean him up, which is why we called you."
"You should've called me regardless," Brooke said, not looking at the woman.
Before Brooke moved home, Judge Markham would come into the tavern almost every night. He'd sit at the same small table near the bar and order the catch of the day with a side of seasonal veggies. He drank one scotch on the rocks and requested the dessert menu on Fridays. He'd kept to himself, but the people of Talbott's Cove believed he belonged to them the way the sea and the sky belonged to them. The Markham family was a Talbott's Cove institution stretching all the way back to Talbott himself, and the Judge embraced that legacy. He weighed in on every local matter brought to his attention, recited town history, and lobbied for the region's development.
I'd watched him do this nearly every night, and I'd watched it slip away from him. It'd started with him forgetting his wallet four days in a row. Then, he yelled at one of my servers to turn off baseball reruns and switch to the football game—in July. Not long after that, he came into the tavern wearing slippers with his trousers, dress shirt, and tie.
Two months later, he crashed his car into a tree. Two months after that, Brooke moved back home. I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was this bad.
Brooke grabbed a wad of gauze from the table and approached her father. "But how did this happen? Why weren't his bedrails up? There's no reason this should—"
She yelped when he slapped her hand away and kept slapping until I looped my arm around her waist and moved her back. The gauze fluttered down as he cried, settling on the sheets. She wrapped her hand around my arm and she kept it there.
"As you can see," Sherry started, "he's not receptive to touch right now."
"Maybe not, but we can't let him bleed until he cycles out of this," Brooke replied. "What are we supposed to do? I don't want to subject him to an ambulance and medics because it will end with sedation and we know how miserable he is when he's coming down from that."
"Can't be sure," I started, "but it looks like he needs a few stitches. At the minimum, a butterfly closure. I bet Yara Gwynn is"—I paused, not wanting to explain my knowledge of Yara's insomnia to Brooke at this moment—"able to come over if you need her."
Brooke glanced back at me, her brow wrinkled. "Who?"
"Yara Gwynn," I repeated. "She's the doctor who visits all the islands in the Bay. She lives down the street from the sheriff. Doesn't Annette know her? I assumed you all knew each other. She's strange. You'd like her."
"Annette and I don't socialize with other people." She shifted out of my arms, turning to face me. It was a wonder she'd let me hold her that long. "What kind of vampire is she that she wouldn't mind you calling at this hour?"
"The kind who makes house calls on remote islands for a living." I reached into my pocket and retrieved my phone. "I'll text her, if you want."
"Yeah. All right. That would be good." Glancing back to Sherry and the other aides, she said, "Let's see if we can't move him to a chair and get this bed stripped. Someone get an episode of Matlock going. He'll move for Matlock. Or Murder, She Wrote. He likes that Jessica Fletcher. He thinks she's a tough broad."
I stepped back from the action to message Yara. True to form, she replied instantly. The woman did not sleep unless she was on a boat. I glanced up from my phone as Brooke shepherded her father from the bed to a chair by the television.
"It might seem like a small matter, but it's dividing the town," he said, wagging a fist as he shuffled across the carpet. "There's nothing small about running a pipeline through someone's backyard."
"Not at all," Brooke murmured. "Did the people sue the town to bar the pipeline?"
It took me a minute to make sense of that question, but then I realized they were talking about an issue from years—maybe decades—ago. She was asking questions to which she knew the answer, leading him into the well-worn territory of Talbott's Cove political and
legal history. It made sense there was a nostalgic comfort associated with those old stories, but nostalgia had to be bittersweet when losing your mind.
"Fifteen minutes," I mouthed, pointing to my phone.
"You better believe they did," he replied. "And I'll tell you something else, young lady, they won." He brushed the back of his hand over his forehead and wiped the blood on his pajama pants. "What's your name?"
I saw the split second where she wilted under that question. Her eyes were cool and distant and lines formed between her brows. "Brooke," she replied evenly.
"That's a lovely name," he said. "Do I know your family?"
She stared at me as she shook her head. "No, you don't know them. They're not from around here."
I arched my brows up, silently telling her, We both know this isn't okay. We know you can't handle this on your own.
She shook her head again. Instead of arguing with her, I waited by the front door for Yara. It was easier than watching small pieces of Brooke wither and die.
I saw headlights flashing through the first floor windows, and I held the door open for Yara. She bounded out of a souped-up Jeep, doctor's bag in hand, and climbed through the accumulated snow.
"Hey, JJ, hi!" she called, waving as she stomped her boots on the doormat to dislodge the snow. "Wild night, huh? You just can't predict the last snow of the season, can you? I always think it's over, I put the snow pants away, take the chains off my tires, and then poof! More snow. Can't even believe it."
I crossed my arms over my chest as I watched her shake off her coat. "How much coffee have you had tonight?"
"Oh, I don't know! Maybe a quart or two? Not much." She plucked her hat from her head, freeing her long black ponytail. "Why haven't I seen you around recently? Where are you hiding, sir?" She gave my chest a playful whack. "I don't even know what's happening in your life anymore. I've missed you."
Far Cry: A Talbott’s Cove Novel Page 14
