by Eve R. Hart
A knock at the door jolted me out of my thoughts.
As I made my way to the front of the apartment, I tried to figure out who it might be. Laurel had a key so I knew it wasn’t her. My biggest fear was that it was my parents but I had not the first clue if it was them.
“Open the door Cami, I know you’re in there and, fuck, this isn’t over. I’m not letting you go. I don’t give a shit what—”
His words halted as I yanked open the door and threw myself into his arms. He caught me with a tiny oomph as he rapped me up as tight as possible.
“I’m a mess,” I admitted as I attempted to climb him like a tree. He palmed my butt and I wrapped my legs around him without a second of hesitation.
He carried me just inside the apartment and somehow managed to hold me up and shut the door softly at the same time.
“Me too, beautiful, me too.” His admission caused the tears to spill from my eyes. He didn’t seem to care that I was soaking his neck and shirt with my mix of elation and sadness.
Happy that he was here, that I was touching him, that with one little statement he showed me how much he cared.
But sad, because I knew this couldn’t last. That I had to let him go in order to keep him safe.
For a second I decided that I was going to say ‘fuck it all’ to the universe and get lost in this moment.
If I was going to let him go, then I was going to get fireworks and let the world burn around us and all that stuff that you would expect to see in movies.
“I need you,” I said clawing at his clothes and then realized that I was plastered to his body, preventing me from ridding him of them.
“Cami, look at me,” Brand said, lowering me to my feet and framing my face with his warm hands. “We have all the time in the world. We need to set this straight first. You need to know that you’re mine and I’m not the kind of man that loves easily. And I sure as fuck am not ready to let you go. Honestly, I don't think I will ever be.”
And out came the boyish charm that I loved about him. His heart was open to me and I so badly wanted to crawl inside. But what kind of life would that give us—give him? One where he and his club constantly had to look over their shoulders, wondering when my parents would choose to take a moment to strike.
I couldn’t do that to him. He was such an amazing person and he deserved more than that.
“Tell me how you feel about me?” he asked and as my glassy eyes looked up to him, I fought really hard to hold the words back. “Fine, then I’ll tell you how I feel. This isn’t something that is fleeting. I love you, Cami, I won’t even try to deny it. Hell, I want to tell the world exactly that. And the only reason I would turn my ass around and walk out that door, is if you tell me—right here, right now—that you don’t feel the same. That you don’t feel this thing that is between us. That when you told me you understood me, you were lying to my face.”
I couldn’t. I absolutely could not lie to this man. I knew that it would crush him and for the life of me, I just couldn’t be the one to do that to him.
“I love you. Yes. And I don’t know when it happened or how, but all I know is that I feel so lost without you. Everything is dull and I hate it,” I admitted and suddenly the boulder that had been sitting on my chest the last few days lifted. I felt lighter. Free.
Everything was right.
His chocolate brown eyes.
His mauve-pink lips.
His sun-kissed tan skin against my pale flesh tone.
The moment I was in his arms, the world came alive with color again and I knew I’d never be able to let that go. I couldn’t let him go.
His lips met mine and as my eyes drifted shut, I saw them all. Poppy red. Canary yellow. Tangerine orange.
Prussian blue.
Orchid purple.
All of them bursting in my head like paintballs being fired at clean, white paper.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he breathed out as he broke away from my lips. I whimpered at the loss, but then he was kissing and nibbling my neck and I was lost in the haze of lust. “Trust in me. Tell me everything and believe that I will do everything to take care of you. Nothing gets between us as long as we don’t allow it to.”
Well, dagnabit, this man had all the perfect words. Why couldn’t I have made it that simple days ago?
“Bedroom,” I panted out. “Last one on the left. Now.”
Then he was lifting me up again and following my demands without any hesitation. How he managed to get into the room I’d been staying in and kiss me was beyond my comprehension right then. But as my back hit the mattress, I found that I didn’t care.
We tore at each other’s clothes until we were both naked. His body covered mine, this silver chain he wore around his neck ghosting over my breasts and causing a shiver to wrack my body.
His lips trailed down my body, pausing briefly to lavish each nipple. Before I could process what was going on, his velvet tongue was doing a slow pass over my pussy and making circles around my clit.
“Oh, God!” I cried out as my hand clamped down on his hair.
He did nothing short of devour me. Sucking, licking, nibbling. It was all too much and not enough at the same time. I was soaked and I only imagined that his face had to be dripping with my juices. That thought alone pushed me closer to the edge. Then he slipped two long, thick fingers inside of me and as he curled them, I flew off the cliff.
“Brand, don’t…please, don’t stop. Yes.” My words came out a panted, jumbled mess as I lost all control of my body. My hips rocked and my grip tightened in his hair like I was trapping him right where he was.
His name ripped from my throat as I came. I should have felt embarrassed but after an orgasm like that from a man like him, there simply was no thinking at all.
His lips worked their way up my body and when he was close enough, I grabbed his face and kissed the hell out of his lips. Tasting myself on him was both exhilarating and erotic. I wanted to have that experience every single day.
“Inside me now,” I demanded as my hand tried to force itself between our bodies to put him right where I needed him.
“Cami, wait, shit, fuck.” He pushed his hips tighter into mine, making sure that there was no way for me to touch him. His hard cock slipped over my already sensitive clit, making a whimper escape past my lips. “Condom, beautiful, I need one. And, shit, I don’t have one on me.”
No!
I screamed in my head.
“Clean. Pill. You?” My words came out choppy and I hoped they made sense. I trusted him and so I would take his word whatever his answer was.
“Yes. Are you sure?”
“Yes. God, yes!” I answered looking into his eyes as my body rocked against his hardness.
That was all we needed to say about it. I kissed him and with all my might, jerked my body in an attempt to get him to roll over. I was no match for his strength, but luckily he got the hint and his arms wrapped around me, taking me with him as his back hit the mattress.
My hands planted firmly on his hard chest as I pushed up so I was straddling his amazing body. I wasted no time wrapping my hand around the base of this thick cock, lining him up just where we both needed, and sinking down onto him.
My back arched and I bounced and rocked, letting my body take over and just feel. His hands gripped my hips, helping me keep a steady rhythm.
“Fuck, Cami, you feel so good. I’m not going to last feeling you bare wrapped around me.”
His words spurred me on and I moved faster and harder. His cock hit the right spot and every time I sunk down I felt so full as he bottomed out. I tried my hardest to keep my eyes on his as my head fell back.
“So. Fucking. Beautiful.” He punctuated every word with an upthrust of his hips. I was close and I clenched around him without even knowing it. “Come with me.”
And so I did. I had a feeling that my body would always follow his command.
“I love you,” he breathed out as he knifed up, wra
pped his arms around me, kissed me passionately, and spilled his release deep inside of me.
I had to admit, I loved the feeling of him inside of me with nothing between us.
“I love you, too. So flipping much,” I told him, my hands in his hair and my body pressed against his so there wasn’t so much as a whisper of air between us.
Minutes passed, maybe hours. I didn’t know or care right then. Even as his cock softened inside of me, I wasn’t ready to break our connection. And it seemed he felt the same way.
“Shower, beautiful, then bed. I’m spent,” he said with a light swat on my butt.
I couldn’t move. But lucky for me, he was able to carry me into the bathroom, start the water, and place me into the shower without me having to muster up an ounce of strength. He washed me, dried me, and tucked me into bed. My brain was complete mush at this point. I couldn’t have so much as protested even if I wanted to as he climbed into the bed and intertwined every limb with mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Brand
We spent the next day in bed. I let Blade and Sketch hold down the shop and prayed that they wouldn’t burn the place down.
Right here, with Cami in my arms, was the only place I wanted to be. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hit pause on life for too long, but for just one day, I wanted to focus on nothing but us.
And by focus, I meant learn every inch of her.
That was what I did, too, for hours, until we both were so spent we couldn’t even move.
“What happened here?” she asked, her voice soft as her fingers danced along my skin.
“I, uh, had an accident with my bike,” I answered not wanting to elaborate on said accident. The skin on the outside of my shoulder and across the top of my back was lightly scarred. It was more noticeable the more time I spent in the sun, the scar tissue not taking on any of the tan that the rest of my skin did.
“Bad?” she asked, her sad eyes looking into mine.
“I mean, it could have been worse. I was more pissed off that my bike got fucked up.”
“Oh? The one you have now? It looks fine to me.”
I let out a little chuckle.
“No. My baby’s tucked away in the garage out front of the compound. I’ve been trying to get her good as new, but I haven’t had a whole lot of time lately.”
Then, without her even having to ask, I started in on how much that bike meant to me and why.
“It had always been me and my dad since before I can remember. My mom took off before I was three, having a toddler was too much for her to handle. But it didn’t matter, because my dad was so awesome.”
Growing up, we weren’t rich by any means, but that didn’t mean that my childhood sucked in any way. My dad loved me and never let me forget it, not even for a second. He was great. He often had to travel for work and he would take me along with him when he could. When I was in school, I stayed with my grandparents while he was on location. I knew his job could be dangerous, some of the things the cars and such would have to do while he was in them were insane, but he always made me feel like he would come home to me. Not always as whole as he’d left though. There were times he’d come back sporting a cast or a few new burns, but he always made it home.
We spent weekends in my grandpop’s garage, working on whatever new project they’d found. It was awesome.
Then grandpop passed away. I was almost seventeen. Dad decided right then it was a good time for him to retire, and so he stopped being a stuntman and became a full-time mechanic and business owner, taking over grandpop’s garage. I’d work there afternoons after school, then full-time once I graduated.
“He sounds great,” she said, looking at me with intense eyes.
“He was,” I said as I blew out a harsh breath and rubbed my chest.
“Was?”
“Yeah.” I took in a deep breath before I continued. “When I was twenty, he came to me one night after we’d shut down the shop. He pulled off the tarp that had been covering something in the corner. I had noticed the tarp right when I got to work and had been curious, but I’d also been so busy I hadn’t had a chance to ask him about it. There sat a nineteen sixty-eight BMW R50 and a nineteen eighty Triumph Bonneville T140E.”
I smiled thinking about that night. The first time I laid eyes on my baby.
“So, I take it by the sappy look on your face that one of those bikes is the one that got messed up,” she said.
“Yep. I’m getting there,” I said with a laugh. “He told me that this was our new project and that when they were done, we were taking them on a cross-country tour of the states. We spent the next year trying to get those things into shape and planning our trip. We talked about all the stupid things that we had to stop and see. The world’s largest corncob. The Roadkill Cook-off in West Virginia. Yes, that is a real thing.”
“Oh, God. Please tell me you are joking. Wow.”
“Yes, but we never made it there. See, the whole time we were spending every free second fixing up those bikes, he was dying.” I tried to bite back the sadness that still to this day clenched my heart tightly. But it was no use, I felt the tears moisten my eyes and I didn’t wipe them away as a few escaped and trickled down the side of my face. “He didn’t even tell me. There I was, spending time with him, taking it for granted and not even realizing that they were the final moments I’d get to have.”
Her arm pulled me tighter into her body as her legs further tangled with mine. Just the simple thing like feeling her head against my chest made everything alright. No, it didn’t bring back my dad. And it didn’t change the past. But it made me feel like the future might not be so bad. Fuck that. With her, the future wouldn’t be anything short of amazing. I knew that for a fact.
“After that, I spent a couple of years fixing up the Triumph and saving money. A couple of nights a week, I worked at a tattoo shop that was owned by one of my friends’ brother. When I was ready, I sold my dad’s house, turned the shop over to my best friend at the time with the confidence that he wouldn’t run it into the ground, then took that trip my dad and I had mapped out. Well, that was the plan. I only got a few states away before…”
Shit! I didn’t think about this before I started to tell it. This part I was going to have to go about as gingerly as possible. I was sure Cami didn’t want to know about my past…entanglements…but there was no way to tell this without it.
“What?” she asked, eyes lit up like she had to know the rest.
“Well, I don’t know if you want to hear this part.”
“Just tell me,” she said teasingly. “Does it have to do with a strip club or something. No, wait…a prostitute? Oh please don’t tell me it was a prostitute.” A little giggle slipped past her lips.
If that was what she was thinking then what I had to say wasn’t going to be bad in comparison.
“No, there was no strip club or prostitute. But the woman I took back to my motel did take all of my money. Like all of it. I was shit out of luck when I woke up in the morning.”
Then I waited. Because I couldn’t imagine that was a lovely image I’d put in her head.
“She took your money?!”
And there she went again, surprising me in the most fantastic way possible.
“Yep,” I said as I popped the p. “First, and only one-night stand and it only proved to me that I knew better. I was in a weird place and maybe a bit desperate for some kind of connection. That is the best explanation I can come up with. Oh, and I might have been a bit drunk. I tend to do some crazy things when I’m three sheets to the wind.”
I let out a short laugh thinking about some of those things.
“Anyway,” I went on not elaborating about anything else I happened to be thinking. “My plan was to drive until I ran out of gas, try to find a job, and figure it out then. Only, I didn’t make it that far. My bike broke down in this small ass town called Moon Hill, and that was where I found the Steel Paragons. They took me in and I felt like I’d found my
place. That was also where I met Chris.”
Her chin rested on my chest as she smiled at me.
All out of words, I pulled her up and kissed the hell out of her.
I liked sharing my past with her. It wasn’t like it was some big secret full of heartache and sadness at every turn, but it was still what had shaped me into the man I was. Most days I rather liked that man. And by the way Cami looked at me all the time, I think she liked that man too.
“I need to feed you,” I said right after her stomach let out a loud grumble. “So far I’m failing at this boyfriend thing,” I joked.
At the magic “B” word, she did a sharp inhale. I chuckled at how cute she was. She pinched my side and her face scrunched up in the most adorable way.
“Um, and what if I don’t want a boyfriend? I mean, you didn’t even ask me,” she said and because she had a huge smile on her face, I knew she was playing with me.
I leaned up on my arm and stared down at her, my eyes soft as I looked into hers.
“Camille Elizabeth Benson, will you go steady with me?” I asked, and yes I remembered her full name from when I’d looked at her license when I ended up hiring her. Then I flashed her my biggest smile, showing those dimples that always seemed to catch her attention every time they made their presence known.
“You and those…fucking dimples. Every time. You could ask me to do anything and as long as you gave me those, I would be powerless to say no.”
Her finger came up and she poked one. Strange as it was, I had been waiting a long time for her to do that because I could see it every time I smiled, that was what she was envisioning doing in her head. And it wasn’t just her. Apparently, the dimples did it for just about every girl I’d run into. I wasn’t all for using them to my advantage usually, but now that I knew they were her weakness, you could bet your sweet ass that she’d be seeing them all the damn time.
“Alright, we need to get up and showered. Then you need to tell me what you want to eat. Do you think your sister is home or can we streak-it to the bathroom?”
