Crushed

by Pamela Ann

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Waking up the next morning was pure bliss and pure nightmare, all balled up into one. I was more confused than I had been before having sex with Brody last night. Had it been normal sex—the kind I was used to with him, the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am and the drunk dialing for some quick tumble in the sack—I would’ve woken up without any of these second thoughts lingering in the forefront of my mind. However, last night, it had become more than sex.

  For the very first time, I had felt in tune with him as he took me to a different dimension. Each breath, each stroke, every kiss, he was with me all the way—in me, penetrating my body and soul all in one combustible energy, rousing something profound within me, something much bigger than I could comprehend. And I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  The questioned remained, where did I go from here?

  “I can hear you thinking one hundred miles a minute,” Brody grumbled as he pulled me against his body, tightening his arm around me as his naked body spooned against mine. “Breathe. It’s okay. It’s just me, the love of your life,” his teasing didn’t do anything to lighten my mood. In fact, it had the opposite effect. “By the way, I’m taking you out on a date today, so you’re stuck with me.”

  Well, he sure didn’t waste time with this date. I mean, it was just a date, right? What was the harm in dinner and making googly eyes across the table as I secretly dreamed of ways to punish him for making me say yes to the damn date in the first place?

  “Fine. Fine. Fine. Whatever you say. But once this shit is done, there’ll be no more dates.”

  He playfully nudged his hips against my buttocks, provoking his ever-hardening member while I felt his hand gradually seek my breast, fondling it as his breath played against my ear.

  “Did I ever tell you I like the smell of your skin? It reminds me of the sun and honey. Your name really is you.”

  Oh, geez. My skin reminded him of sun and honey? Could he be any more obvious?

  “Brody, if this is your idea of seduction just so you can fuck me again, you can think again.”

  “Well, are you saying no?” he mused, pushing his dick a little farther this time, sliding past my ass all the way to the damn entrance of my pussy. The bulbous tip of his cock applied a great deal of pressure against my opening, ready at any given notice. “If your wetness is anything to go by, I shouldn’t be even asking you for permission. It’s obvious you can never say no to me fucking you, but I’m being a gentleman here.”

  Seriously, this was being a gentleman?

  “Please, you’re insulting those men by associating yourself as such.”

  He gave a hearty laugh then placed my earlobe between his teeth and nibbled.

  “Are you on the pill?”

  Yes. “No. Why?”

  He bit my neck before sucking on it, hard. I was thrashing and shrieking from the pain and pleasure it brought.

  “You fucking bit me!” No one had ever bitten me, not like that, and I was confused at the amazing response my body made, making me more wanton than I had been seconds before.

  “I’m going to leave a hickey every time you lie to me.”

  My body instantly froze. “A hickey? You better not, or I’ll leave one on you, too!” Of course he knew. He had known all along. It was his thing each and every time he had hollered at me for some casual sex, always asking if I was on the pill. So, if he already knew, why ask?

  “I don’t care.” He chuckled.

  His response baffled me because the old Brody would have probably made me go take a long fucking hike.

  “Yeah, right. You’re full of it. We both know you’d flip if I gave you one.”

  His arms tightened around me before his cock reminded my pussy that it was waiting for my permission to be ravaged by his hungry member, and only then did he decide to answer my threat. “If anyone asks, I’ll just say it’s from you. Easy.”

  “Now you’re just being crazy.”

  “Don’t care. Maybe I am, but so fucking what? Maybe it’s time people know what you and I have been up to for years.” Though he delivered the words in his typical lazy tone, I knew he meant them.

  I was about to argue all the points of why he was wrong, and I was ready to go down to fucked up memory lane before he decided to beat me to it by asking another question.

  “I asked about the pill because I don’t want to keep pulling out. I want to nut inside of you. Is that okay?”

  I should have been appalled, yet the idea of him expanding and exploding inside of me made me a little heady and faint. Fuck. Yeah, fuck. Of course, I really should stop thinking about fuck, fucking, or anything fuck related at this point since it was messing with my judgment and common sense. Brody was the past, not to mention in love with the newly minted bride Lindsey.

  Sigh. The very thought of my friend and how in love he was with her dampened my mood and everything else that came with it. It also revitalized my mind, sealing my purpose once more that I needed to move on from him.

  “No. Last night’s sex was the last. After the date, I’m done with you. That’s it.”

  He stilled, taking time to respond to my words, and when he did, it saddened me. “I won’t back off, not until I know you’re with someone.”

  Brody was pushing himself and the idea of us to a point where I felt as if he was suffocating me. After all, the incident with Rob and me coming to terms with the rape and how I had somehow liked it was still fresh in my mind. How could I grasp something like that, something so vile that it made me vomit, yet I would get flashes of myself moaning as Rob fucked me hard? Rob was right; I had been begging for it. In my messed up mind, how could I fathom dealing with that on top of what Brody was offering me?

  “What if I tell you that I like Carter?” I threw the gauntlet, bracing for the imminent backlash. There was no doubt there would be hell to pay for my insensitive comment, but I had to resort to something, or Brody would bulldoze his way into my life.

  It wasn’t necessarily lying, I thought. Come to think of it, I did like Carter in every sense of the word. He had an amiable personality, and after getting to know him more in Athens, I was glad our friendship had blossomed into something more meaningful. So, in some ways, it wasn’t a white lie; it depended on how the counterpart perceived it, which wasn’t difficult to decipher given how strongly he had reacted to me staying in Carter’s bedroom.

  Therefore, his doom and gloom didn’t come as a surprise. Also just as I expected, Brody released me as if he had just discovered I had cholera.

  I still had my back against him, so I wasn’t sure what was going on with him, but from the sounds he was making, he felt like a ticking time bomb, ready to explode.

  “Brody?” I croaked out meekly, knowing I had crossed the line with him, but it couldn’t be helped. He was asking for something I couldn’t give him.

  Instead of responding to me, I felt his body shift before I heard the shuffle of the sheets and him sliding off the bed. Only then did I choose to turn my body to look at him, and the moment I did, I felt my heart break from the stone-like expression that greeted my eyes.

  “Where do you think you’re going? We’re in the middle of a discussion,” I huffed out, perplexed at his harshness towards me by choosing to ignore me. Then, if I wasn’t shocked enough, he immediately got dressed with him barely buttoning his pants before he walked out of the room.

  Maybe it was low blow to throw Carter’s name in the midst of this, given that the man had been kind enough to let me use his place while he was in training in Brazil, and there I was, stretching my welcome by using his name to make his best friend think I had my sights set on the well-known stud.

  In a most tiresome manner, I slid out of bed, pondering what I should do. Should I seek him out and apologize or get on with my life just as I had planned, with Brody hating me from a distance? I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him. Apart from wanting to have a meaningful life instead of pining for this unrequited love, I knew I didn’t want
a distorted relationship with him.

  Plucking his abandoned shirt from the floor, I hastily dressed myself in it, deeply inhaling his amazing, familiar scent while doing so.

  “If this was any other man…” I muttered to myself, knowing full well that I wasn’t going to intentionally hurt him and not apologize about it. I might not admit to the falseness of my insinuations, but I could at least say I was in the wrong for ever uttering some shitty stuff to him.

  I left Carter’s room and paved my way across the hall to Brody’s bedroom. If he wasn’t in his room, he would most likely be in the kitchen, making coffee, and if he wasn’t there … Well, I supposed my apology could wait until whenever I encountered him next, which I was almost sure wasn’t far away.

  Upon reaching his bedroom, I didn’t even give the courtesy of knocking. I simply had the balls to barge inside in an aggressive manner, ready to continue our argument. However, as I charged in his room, I found him sitting on his bed with his soles planted on the floor, elbows sitting on each of his thighs, and still bearing the sour, asshole face he had left me with minutes ago, and it took some of the wind out of my sails, dissipating my anger a bit. Much to my dismay, he only stared at me, waiting for me to say something, as if I was the last person he wanted to see.

  “Listen…” I started, licking my lips while I pondered the next word to say as I took in his blatant dislike of me. “About what I said earlier about Carter, I’m sorry for that.”

  He threw me a blank face. “It’s already forgotten. Anything else? ‘Cause I have somewhere to go.”

  Well, that was quick.

  “I thought—I thought you were taking me out on a date.” It wasn’t as though I was fishing for another invitation; it was merely out of curiosity because his swift actions were boggling my mind. Though I didn’t want it to bother me, it was hard not to. I cared too much.

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Where are you going? Are you taking someone else out now because I pissed you off about Carter; is that it?” It was a common theme to people who didn’t take rejection or competition lightly. They went out there again in the blink of an eye to catch someone who would supply some nourishment to their depleted ego. Heck, it was my strategy time and time again after he would cast me aside once he didn’t need me. I had to admit that it was bizarre to see the situation reversed for a change. In a fucked up way, it was kind of refreshing. Again, in the most fucked up of ways.

  The mere mention of Carter’s name was a dead giveaway on how he hated me saying his best friend’s name. It was twisted, I knew, but the dark side of me liked seeing him react in a jealous way to Carter, because it was a first coming from him. It was satisfying to serve him the same dish he had served me all these years.

  “I’m done talking, Amber,” he said in a dismissive manner, insinuating I leave his room.

  Anyone who knew Brody knew him to be a well-liked person. He always had a great smile on hand, and he had a way of making someone feel instantly comfortable in his presence, even if you had just met, so this reaction—the jerk attitude and all that entailed—was a different part to him, one I had never gotten the chance to see, since it was reserved for people he was passionate for. Apparently, I had finally managed to score a spot on his romantic agenda after years of waiting.

  This entire situation was as maddening as it was sad. I was sad for him, for me, for the both of us wanting the same thing at different times. Regardless, my love for him had brought me here, and there was no going back.

  Although I couldn’t deny seeing him torn because of me made me feel all sorts of emotions, one emotion stood out—the weird thing they called attachment. Yes, whatever emotions he had, I was attached to them. Whatever he was going through, as much as it pained me to admit it, I was feeling it, as well. It was a dreadful position to be in, but that was how it was with him, and it seemed like it would remain that way.

  Taking a few steps towards him, I made a quivering smile, quite unsure about everything. “Please don’t be mad. I said I was sorry—”

  “I’m not mad.” He barely glanced in my direction. Instead, he perused the floor with rapt attention.

  A great liar, he definitely wasn’t.

  “You are. You know you are,” I insisted, standing my ground as I slowly approached his side before finally having the will to sit next to him on the bed. “You look at me differently when you are,” I finished saying, my heart thudding madly against my chest.

  “I said I’m not, so can you please drop the subject now?” His eyes remained glued to the floor, uncaring about my efforts in trying to reach out to him.

  Well, I would on one condition. “Am I forgiven?”

  “If you move your things from Carter’s room to mine, I just might.”

  Did he just say that without even looking at me? Was he totally serious? Because if he was … well, what the fuck? He was playing a whole different game here. If he wasn’t rattling my cage before, he was after this new development. This was a game changer.

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to him as my hand rubbed my chest to try to calm myself down. This was a new Brody, and he was freaking me the fuck out.

  “I want you here until Trista gets back.” His eyes finally found mine, searing me whole. “You’ve been very vocal about not wanting to be with me … Maybe we can use this time to come to terms with our past and move on from each other once time’s up.”

  Well, fuck. Was that an invitation to have one last fling before we sorted ourselves out and parted ways as amicably as possible? A side of me thought it logical, but another deemed it tragic. However, the hopelessly in love part of me considered it to be one last rendezvous before severing our bond—though a fucked up one, it was a bond all the same.

  “All right…” I nervously said. “I just hope this doesn’t end in a disaster.”

  “I hardly think you’d see it that way, but either way, it will be for me.”

  I wasn’t sure how to take his words, so I didn’t find it necessary to comment. Instead, I veered towards a different subject, one he had chosen to ignore before.

  “You said you were going somewhere. Where is that, exactly?

  His beautiful smile took me aback, all the while momentarily blinding me from thinking and breathing before he daringly placed a light kiss on my lips.

  “This is where I want to be … kissing you.”

  I was screwed, and I damn well knew it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  After that sweat-inducing line he had thrown me … Well, it took him less than sixty seconds to have my body underneath him and another second to have me scream his name in pleasure.

  I remembered thinking that, whatever happened from there until the end, I knew I had done it with my eyes open. Whatever decisions I made that day, I shouldn’t regret them, because I knew what I had signed up for.

  Therefore, after our quick hump session, I strolled into the bathroom to tidy myself up—the man had a way of making my hair atrociously messy while leaving such appalling red marks on my neck from his bites and heavy sucking. From the outside, it might look like I was an abuse victim, yet I wasn’t. In fact, I never had such satisfying sex, so much so that I didn’t want to think about how it made me feel complete in every sense of the word. It was a troubling thought since this would all be gone in less than a week.

  I supposed his random proposition made sense because Carter wasn’t here, and since he and I had already done the dirty last night, not to mention with our palpable chemistry, it wasn’t a hard decision to make.

  After sprucing myself up into a glam-less state with my less shambled state of a hair, I left the bathroom to be greeted with Brody rolling in my luggage.

  Stopping in my tracks, I raised my brow at him. “Well, look at you. Already hard at work, I see.”

  He sure wasn’t one to waste a precious second. Who knew the laid back guy had it in him? I sure as hell hadn’t. But, heck, like I had thought before, this wasn’t a transformed
version of him. No, this was a side of him that I wasn’t accustomed to, because it had always been granted to another person. Now that the person in question was happily married to the man she loved, the spot was open, and it seemed he didn’t want to waste any time in replacing Lindsey. I supposed, in his mind, I was the best candidate. It was cruel to consider such thoughts; however, it was how I felt, so there would be no point in even denying it to myself, even if the truth stung.

  Squashing my depressing thoughts, I turned back to bed, hoping my mind would be too distracted to continue thinking that way.

  After situating my stuff, Brody then proceeded to seek my side of the bed, almost wedging himself on the edge of the mattress just so he could place his warm body against mine.

  “Wanna go grab something to eat?” he asked, murmuring against my ear.

  His magic worked. Of course it did. As usual. The only problem I had was wondering if he was referencing food or something else entirely. If his tone was anything to go by, I could swear he was offering me something else that was not remotely food related.

  “We’re talking about food here, right?” I had to double-check, hiding back a smile.

  He gave a hearty laugh before kissing the side of my neck. “Yes, but I could eat you, too, if you like. Food can wait; food can definitely wait.”

  How convincing he was, but if we kept going at this speed, we would be sick of each other in no time; thus, opting for the latter wasn’t a viable feat.

  “Well, I can certainly do with some coffee and buttered toast right about now,” I finally said, full of longing, despite knowing it was for a greater good, mentally and sexually speaking.

  “You sure?” he asked, and all the while, his tongue teased my earlobe. “ ‘Cause I’d rather have you for my first meal of the day.”

  Oh, geez. Did he have any idea how hard it was to resist him when he was being so amorous? Alas, I had made up my mind about the subject.