by Beth Ehemann
“Wrap your legs around me,” I growled as I pushed inside of her.
She locked her thighs around my hips, her hands clutching my shoulders as she called out from the force of my thrust.
“You okay?” I paused.
“Yeah, a little sore from earlier, but don’t stop,” she uttered breathlessly, pulling me tighter. “You feel too good.”
I sunk my cock in her as deep as I could, slowly pulled it almost all the way out before plunging back in. Continuing this slow dance was torture on both of us, but it would be worth it in the end. My balls felt heavy, tightening as I grew close, but I knew she wasn’t quite there yet.
Fuck…
Kitchen towel. Ceiling fan. Dog food. Pumpkins.
Kacie started rolling her hips, grinding on me as she dug her nails into my shoulder blades. “Stop playing around and fuck me.” She moaned and I couldn’t help but smile at what a filthy little mouth she could have when she wanted, but I’d tease her about that later. My girl had needs. I put my hands on her ass, holding tight so she wouldn’t slip backwards as drove myself hard into her, faster and faster.
“Oh God.” She hissed, biting down gently on my shoulder as her pussy tightened around my cock, the pressure of her contractions pushing me over my own edge. I squeezed her ass so tight I hoped I wasn’t hurting her as I thrust through my own climax, grunting and gulping in air as fast as possible.
In no rush to move, she sat curled around me with her head resting on my shoulder, my arms wrapped around her.
“Is that your heart pounding so hard, or mine?” she asked against my skin, sounding winded.
I grinned, taking a deep breath of her scent. “I think it’s yours. My heart can’t pump right now. All the blood in my body is pooled in a different area.”
A couple hours and a hundred kisses later, I waved bye to Kacie as she pulled out of my parking garage and disappeared around the corner. Diesel and I went for a quick walk and I headed back upstairs to face my mom.
“Brody Michael … what am I gonna do with you?” she said as she answered the phone.
“Now, Mom, is that any way to answer your phone?” I joked.
“It is when your son is in big trouble. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing, Mom. I’m good. I’m so good.”
My mind started replaying the last day and a half I’d spent with Kacie like a film reel for my soul. Kacie grinning at me over Viper’s shoulder as he tackle-hugged her, that blue dress, walking hand in hand as I showed her my favorite places around town, that blue dress, the way she finally opened up this morning and told me a little about her past, that blue dress, making love to her … twice.
That. Blue. Dress.
A million different emotions in such a short period of time, but it was one of the best weekends I’d ever had in my whole life.
“So, what’s the deal? Who is this girl?” She sounded concerned.
“Remember a couple weeks ago when the storm parked me at that inn for a couple days? Well, she was there. She lives there actually, with her mom … and her daughters.” I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for my mom’s reaction.
I wanted everything about Kacie out on the table, nothing held back.
“Her daughters?” She sounded calmer than I was expecting.
“Yep, she’s got twin girls. They’re five.”
“Wow.” She sighed, processing the heavy load I’d just handed her. “Well … tell me about her, and the kids.”
Lying back on my bed, I snapped for Diesel, who gladly hopped up and tucked himself into my side.
“She’s beautiful, Mom. Tiny, way shorter than me with wavy auburn hair and the most hypnotic green eyes I’ve ever seen. Sometimes when she looks at me, I forget to listen to her words because I’m so lost in those eyes. She does this thing when she smiles where she scrunches her nose just a little and I lose my mind every single time. Lucy and Piper are her girls and they’re hilarious. The world is so big and new to them, every day is an adventure—it’s the most incredible thing to watch them explore and navigate their way through the world. Everything is just bigger and better and simpler to them.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“Mom? Did I lose you?”
She sniffed. “Nope, I’m here.”
“Are you crying?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve never heard you like this, Brody. Because your dad and I figured you’d be a crazy bachelor forever. Because you sound so happy. Because I’ve never even met this girl … and I already love her.”
Yeah, Mom, you’re not the only one.
Lauren’s wedding was only six weeks away and the list of things that still had to be done was nothing short of a mile long. Add to that my school work, which I was falling miserably behind on, trying to keep the girls from complaining that it was the “most boring summer ever” and watering my budding relationship with Brody, and I was one exhausted mama. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day for everything I needed to accomplish, so when Lauren knocked on my door one morning with tears streaming down her face, I knew things were about to get even more hectic.
“What’s wrong?” I reached out and grabbed her sleeve, pulling her in out of the rain.
Thick black streaks of watery mascara ran down her cheeks and she kept wiping her swollen, red nose with a wadded up tear-stained tissue.
“I’m freaking out, Kacie, like totally losing my mind.” She sniffed.
“Oh God, you guys didn’t break up, did you?” I asked, completely panicked. “Invitations just went out yesterday … I’m sorry, but you guys have to make up.”
She reached out and smacked my arm. “We didn’t break up, you brat, but he just called and told me that the University he’s getting this hot shot scholarship through needs us to come and go to some fancy dinner with elite board members or some shit. He tried like hell to get us out of it, but they were insistent. Apparently, it’s a huge deal for his program. They’re paying to fly us there and everything.”
“That’s great! A paid for trip to Italy? Sounds like good news to me,” I exclaimed. “I don’t get why you’re upset.”
“It’s next week!” She wailed into her snotty tissue again.
Oh, shit.
“If it were anywhere in the U.S. it wouldn’t be such a big deal. I could work on my planning through phone calls and e-mail or whatever, but being all the way across the Atlantic Ocean makes everything a little more difficult,” she rambled.
I sighed, looking for a silver lining. “Okay, relax. We can do this. You’ll be gone—what, like three days or so?”
“Try nine!” Her words were swallowed up by more sobs.
She laid her head in my lap and howled some more while I stroked her hair, desperately thinking of a solution to her problem. My time was swallowed up whole as it is, but she couldn’t afford to put the planning on hold for nine days. She was already trying to do everything in fast motion as it was.
“Sit up,” I ordered her.
“No.” She refused stubbornly, hugging my legs tighter.
“Okay, you big baby, lay there, just cry quieter for a minute so you can hear me. You are going to have the most amazing wedding ever. Do you understand me? You’ll be the most breathtaking bride ever and everything will be absolutely perfect that day. Does this cramp things? Yes, a little, but lucky for you, Alexa and I can multitask really well.” She sat up, a glimmer of hope in her eyes. “We’ll hurry and get what we can done before you leave, and while you’re gone, that cranky bitch and I will step in and be your surrogate bride. Anything you need us to do, consider it done. We got this.”
She threw her arms around my shoulders and started crying again. This time, thankfully, they were happy tears.
“Thank you, Kacie. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“You’re so welcome, but please don’t snot on my shirt,” I teased lovingly, squeezing her back.
After she
hugged me for a solid two minutes, she jumped back.
“Oh my God, didn’t you go to Brody’s last weekend?”
I couldn’t help but grin at the memory of being at his house, and in his bed, and on his counter. “Yeah.”
Tears flooded her eyes again. “I’m such a bad friend.” She wept. “I’ve been so wrapped up in my life, I haven’t even asked about yours.”
She hurled her arms around me again and I laughed. “Lauren, when is your period due?”
“I got it today, why?” She sniffed.
“No reason.” I giggled. “Come in the kitchen. We’ll call Alexa over and fill her in on the wedding stuff then I’ll tell you guys all about Brody’s. It was … the best kind of good there is.”
“He fucked you right there on the kitchen counter!” Alexa opened her heavily lined blue eyes so wide they just about fell out of her head.
Lauren leaned forward in her chair, silently hanging on my every word.
“Shhhh!” I hissed, looking around to make sure no one heard her.
My mom was in our apartment, occupying the girls so we could do some planning, but this week’s guests were roaming all over.
“Yes.”
“Whoa,” Lauren uttered.
“Yep, intense. The whole weekend was intense. Brody certainly doesn’t do anything half-assed, that’s for sure.” I sighed happily.
“First of all, I can’t believe you’ve been home for three days and didn’t tell me that part.” Alexa rolled her eyes. “But I really want to get back to this Blaire thing for a minute. Why didn’t you knock her out?”
“Um, maybe because that’s totally not me. I surprised myself though.” I looked back and forth between the two of them. “I’ve never had a problem sticking up for myself before, but with her, I couldn’t. I just stood there, frozen, and it only egged her on more. When she went on about Brody and her friend Kendall, it made me sick to my stomach.”
“You believe him though, right?” Lauren asked curiously.
I thought back to the things Brody told me when we were sitting on that bench. They made sense. He had no reason to lie to me and I couldn’t be mad at him for his actions before we even met. If anything, I brought more baggage into this relationship than he did.
“I do believe him, he was very honest about all of it.” I told them.
Alexa’s gaze slid to Lauren and then back to me. “You know we have to stalk this girl, right?”
“What? No. No way,” I argued. “I just want to be blissfully unaware about the whole thing. I don’t want to know a thing about her, or her and Brody.”
“Oh yeah, blissfully unaware got you real far last time, didn’t it?”
Alexa’s words stung, but she was right. My relationship with Zach was filled with all shapes and sizes of red flags, but I put my blinders on and pushed through, determined to mold him into the family man I wanted and the dad the girls deserved.
“We just won’t tell you what we find, okay?” Lauren smiled at me, pulling her iPad out of her bag as Alexa scooted around to her side of the table with a wicked grin on her face.
“You’re probably not going to be able to find anything. I know nothing about her but her first name.” I folded my arms on the kitchen table and cradled my head in them. “I’m just going to nap here while you guys waste your time.”
“Found her!” Alexa exclaimed.
My head snapped up, and my pulse took off. “You did??”
She peered at me from the corner of her narrowed eye and smirked. “Nope, but nice to know you’re really interested.”
“Okay, what is Brody’s agent’s name?” Lauren had her game face on.
“Andy … Andy Shaw.”
“Let’s see if we can find his bitchy wife’s Facebook page and go from there.” Her eyes lit up as she typed away.
“Boom!” Alexa threw her hands up in the air in celebration. “There she is—at least I think that’s her. Fake boobs, fake hair and a picture of herself in a bikini as her profile pic. Shocker.”
“Is this her, Kacie?” Lauren turned the screen just enough for me to see Blaire’s obnoxious sneer looking back at me, taunting me. I really wish I had that night to do over again. I would’ve reacted so differently.
“Yep, that’s her.”
“Score!” Alexa said proudly, high-fiving Lauren. I just rolled my eyes. “Now let’s hope her friend’s list isn’t private … crap! It is.”
“Wait,” Lauren said, “she’s too vain to have her profile pics private. Let’s see if anyone named Kendall has commented on any of them.”
“You two need help, you know that?” I teased, secretly excited that they were on the trail of something. I didn’t want to know anything about them being together, but the morbid, overly obsessed girl side of me was dying to know what she looked like. Then I would hate myself for looking and wish that I could unsee it. That’s how my world worked.
“Look, look!” Alexa pointed at the screen and jumped up and down happily. “A Kendall liked that pic of her and … Andy, I’m assuming. He’s cute too! Why is he with her?”
“Gawk at Andy later, let’s check this chick out.” Lauren’s tongue ran along her lips as she concentrated, diving deep into her investigation.
“What are you looking up now?” I tried to sound nonchalant.
“I clicked on her page, but it’s private. I’m gonna Google her name and see what I come up with,” Lauren said. “Kendall Bauer … okay, Google, come to Mama.”
“Whoa.” They both said in unison, their eyes fixated on whatever came up.
“What?” Tension rose in my chest.
Please let her have three eyes … and green teeth … and huge, hairy moles all over her face.
“Nothing, she’s um … okay looking,” Alexa stuttered while Lauren sat wide-eyed, staring at their find.
We had been best friends for almost a decade. I could tell the very second Alexa was lying about something, and if that wasn’t enough, Lauren’s face was a dead giveaway. I jumped up from my chair and scrambled up behind them.
“That’s her?”
On the screen was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen in my whole, entire life. She was crawling on the sand, her ultra-dark brown hair falling down around her face, strands of it plastered to her perfect cheekbones. Her wild eyes were an exotic shade of blue with a purple hue to them, while her pouty lips seduced the camera. A blue bikini swirled around her amazing body, accentuating every asset.
“What is this site?” I asked, scanning the screen for answers. “Oh my God, she’s a swimsuit model?”
“Wait, just hold on a sec. This is the first link that came up,” Lauren said, hitting the back button. “This might not be the Kendall that he was seeing. We need to look more.”
Right under her modeling website was a link to a news article. Lauren clicked on it and within seconds, the caption screamed at me.
AMERICA’S NEWEST COUPLE? SUPERMODEL AND HOCKEY SENSATION SEEN OUT FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A MONTH.
My heart sank when I saw the picture under the caption. Kendall and Brody were sitting together at a baseball game, a month ago, exactly two weeks before we met. A hunter green baseball cap that I’d become very familiar with the last couple weeks was perched comfortably on top of her head. They were laughing, sharing a soft pretzel. They weren’t overly affectionate to each other, but now I would never get the image of her wearing his hat and them having fun together out of my head. This was exactly why I didn’t want to look her up in the first place.
“Okay, I’m done. Can we please be done now?” I blurted out in frustration, spinning on my heels and marching down the hall to my room. I may have been a twenty-four-year-old mother of two, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t entitled to a hissy fit every now and then, and now was that time.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hey man, I’ve been meaning to call you,” I said into the phone.
Andy and I hadn’t talked in over a week since I told his
wife off and walked out of their house. I definitely didn’t want to have this conversation while I walked up and down the aisles of the grocery store, but I didn’t want to put it off any longer either.
“I know, I should’ve called you too. This week is kicking my ass.” Andy sighed on the other end of the line. “Listen, Brody, I’m so sorry for Blaire. She clearly had way too much to drink and acted like a total bitch—not that the alcohol was all to blame.”
“It’s over, no big deal,” I said, wanting to put this behind us.
Listening to my best friend apologize and make up lame excuses for his wife’s ridiculous behavior made me uncomfortable, but he had to know I was serious about what I said.
“I meant that last part though about our relationship. I’m hoping to keep Kacie around for a long time, and if Blaire ever treats her like that again, our contract will take the hit.”
Froot Loops or Cap’n Crunch? Fuck it, I’ll get both.
“I know. I reamed her ass when you guys left, not about the contract though, more about being a decent human being. I hope it worked, I don’t know.”
He sounded defeated and for a moment, I pitied him, but he made the choice to marry her. She acted the same way in college, better than everyone, no filter, didn’t care how she treated people … if I were Andy, I would have transferred schools and gotten as far away from her as possible.
“I hope so too.”
“Listen, the other reason I’m calling … I have to make our reservations for that dinner in two weeks.” His tone instantly switched to all business; he was good at that. “You’re in for sure, right? You better be.”
“What dinner?” I was clueless as to what he was talking about.
“The 12th Annual Wild Kids Charity Dinner.”
That’s right.
“Uh, I forgot about it, to be honest.”
“Well, good thing I reminded you then. You have to be there, Brody, you’re the captain of the team.” Andy sounded irritated, but he usually was when I blew off things I needed to go to, or forgot to sign important papers, or got arrested for swimming naked in fountains.
