“We have to find somewhere to stop,” I told her.
Though I slowed to a crawl on the new road, the storm continued to barrage the car. Beside me, she grew more and more nervous with each crash of thunder. The tension rolled off her, making me sorry for dragging her into the storm—sort of. I’d never be sorry for getting her away from Chad.
“I know lightning won’t hit the car,” she muttered. “But I don’t believe for a moment that this is the safest place to be.”
I wasn’t so sure of that either as the gale intensified, the screaming wind rocking the BMW with its force. The clouds had thickened, completely blotting out the setting sun and making it dark as night. The vehicle’s headlights did little to cut the gloom, and as trees canopied the road, civilization seemed a distant memory. As we crossed a small, rustic bridge, the road turned to dirt—or more accurately, gelatinous muck.
“Where are we?” she asked over the sound of the mud sucking at the tires.
My stomach flip-flopped as we inched forward into the nothingness. Some hero I was turning out to be.
“Officially?” I asked, my voice strained with tension. “I’d say the middle of nowhere.”
“Quit joking around!”
“Really, I have no idea where we are. Off-hand I’d say we’re on some unnamed, podunk road.”
“Fantastic,” she muttered.
The car slid sideways on the slick mud, and Briony stifled a scream behind her hand. My heart beat wildly in my throat as we skidded toward the ditch beside the road. I tried to hide it as I fought to maneuver us to safety. I’d keep her safe, and I wouldn’t freak out. Apparently, I sucked at this hero stuff.
“I think we ought to go back to the highway,” she suggested tentatively, as if I wouldn’t put much credence to her opinion. Chad wouldn’t have—he would have told her to shut up. I wasn’t that man, and I thought the highway was a damned good idea.
“At least,” she ventured on, “you’d have some idea where we’re at. And it’s paved.”
“Right,” I agreed. I executed a sloppy three point turn—impressive, considering the road condition—then headed back toward the interstate.
Neither of us spoke as the car crawled back the direction we’d come, and the only sound was that of the storm battering the car’s flimsy roof.
“Fuck!” I slammed on the brake. Though I’d been traveling at snail-pace, the car skidded to a halt.
“What is it?” she asked peering ahead. “Oh, hell…”
Up ahead, the rickety bridge had washed out, a deluge gushing over the banks, and we were trapped on the wrong side of the gully.
“What now?” she murmured.
“We turn again. This can’t be the only way to the highway.”
Turning proved to be more difficult this time, but five minutes later, the car again crawled down the slick road.
“You’re so different from Chad,” she murmured. “You’re so calm. He would have been freaking out and probably screaming.”
She didn’t need to say that Chad would have been screaming at her. “Uh, thank you,” I replied. I was glad to be different. “I drive in the rain a lot through crappy conditions. You know…hospital over an hour away, blah blah blah. Being a doctor, I don’t have much of a choice whether or not I brave the roads. Though, I do stay there if it’s really bad.”
Yes, talking would calm her. She seemed less tense as I spoke. Her breathing had slowed from frantic, near-hyperventilation to an even flow.
“Did you know it was going to storm?” she asked suddenly.
“I saw the storm rolling in over the lake. I didn’t think it would be this bad. Shit—!”
Briony stifled a shriek as I swerved to avoid a tree limb that had fallen across the road. The car slid toward the gully on the opposite side of the route, skidding out of control as if we’d hit a sheet of ice. The engine roared as we caught traction and shot forward, narrowly missing the pit as I manhandled the car back the right direction.
“We’ve got to find someplace to stop,” I said. “This isn’t slowing down and this road is a deathtrap.”
“There’s nothing here.”
“I’ll find something.” Though I had to admit, being alone with her in a secluded location was at both the top and bottom of my list of things to do. It would be torture—but hell, I wanted to touch her, to fuck her, and if she said yes, there would be no stopping me. I didn’t give a rat’s ass if she was Chad’s. He didn’t deserve her; he’d proved that the first time he’d struck her.
“So what did you plan to do after you kidnapped me?” Briony asked out of the blue. I suspected she chattered to divert her attention from our peril. Unfortunately, with these roads, I couldn’t afford distraction.
“Can we save this for later?” I asked through gritted teeth. I leaned forward in an attempt to better see where I was going. Again, I considered what a horrible hero I was turning out to be. I’d had a loose plan—apparently, not a very good one by any means. Within ten minutes of leaving the house, I’d put our lives in jeopardy, gotten lost in the middle of nowhere and stranded us on the far side of ravine opposite the highway.
Each blinding flash of lightning caused Bree to jump. Too bad it hadn’t taken her mind off my botched “rescue”.
“Does that mean you actually had a plan, and this isn’t spur of the moment?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you been thinking of this?”
“What?” I flipped on the defroster, unable to carry on with keeping us alive on the slick roads and process her questions.
“Did you plan this?”
“Yes,” I repeated.
“How long?”
I sighed. “This can’t wait? Fine. Formally?” I swiped my hand across the fogged windshield. “Since this morning.”
“This morning? That’s rather fly by night. Have you ever been institutionalized?”
I swung my head toward her. “What?”
Fuck this hero stuff. Maybe I should pull over and dump her ass on the side of the road. And then the thought of her slipping in the mud led me to ideas of leaping after her and tackling her into the muck and rolling around until we were all coated and slippery—
Damn it! Driving with a hard-on in this crap wasn’t what I wanted to do.
“For instability? Insanity? Dementia? Do you have medication you’re supposed to be taking and haven’t been?”
“No,” I snapped.
“So you’re an undiagnosed crackpot. They’ll think I ran away—No, Chad will, maybe not everyone else. He’s gonna hurt me when he finds me.”
Though I focused on the road, I could see her bowed head as she fought the trembling that had come over her. This wasn’t about me and what I’d done. It was her fear.
I turned on the hazard lights and pulled to the edge if the flooded street.
“Hey,” I murmured, pulling her into my arms. I rubbed small circles on her back, comforting her as if she were a small child. But she didn’t feel like a child. She felt like a full-grown, fantasy-inducing woman. My teeth gritted. Bus. We were going to the bus.
My hand cupped the back of her head while I pressed it against my chest. “It’s okay,” I soothed, trying to convince myself of that too. “Everything will be okay.”
“You don’t understand!” she moaned. “Do you have any idea what he’s done to me since we married?” she whispered. “I’ve been in the hospital twice. Once for falling down the stairs. Once for falling while I was rock climbing. That’s what we told the ER staff—and they believed it! They believed my broken fingers were from closing my hand in the electric car window. Three times! And most of the other times I didn’t even go to the ER.”
Disbelief and stark rage thundered through me louder than the storm outside. Bree shrank away at the sight of my face, probably thinking I’d strike her. Horrified that she’d be scared of me, I pulled her back against my chest. My face pressed into her hair as my muscular arms locked her to me.
; “He’s not gonna hurt you anymore,” I vowed. My hand continued stroking her back as she shook like a terrified bird. “I swear I won’t let him touch you again.”
In any way. Chad would never hit her or sleep with her or—if I got my wish—even look at her again. I’d make sure he was erased from her life.
“You can’t stop him,” she told me. “He’s my husband. He threatened to kill me if I ever tried to leave him. I don’t know that he’d actually kill me, but I know he’d hurt me. Badly.”
“Do you want to be with him?”
She bit her lip, and I saw indecision racing over her features. “No,” she finally said.
“Then you don’t belong to him anymore.” If only you could be mine.
Tentative hopefulness filled her eyes. “You’ll really help me get away from him?”
“Really.” The car rocked as the wind reminded us of the storm’s presence. “If this damned squall doesn’t screw things up.”
“He’ll know you helped me.”
I shrugged and put the car back in gear. The trees swayed ominously in the wind, and I wondered if the weather was more severe than I’d thought. After a half hour driving, I finally spotted a sign for a motel and pulled into the gravel drive. There wasn’t a light to be seen. Was it deserted? Please. It couldn’t be.
The two of us were so strung out from tension, we just sat there and stared, neither attempting to get out of the car.
“Are you ready to go in?” I finally said.
She looked around at the group of small buildings. “Where are we?”
“Some motel, I guess. Looks like a bunch of cabins—”
“Looks like Bates Motel,” she interrupted.
“Beggars can’t be choosers. Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe in the shower.”
“Channing…”
Oops. I gave her a lopsided what-the-hell smile as she stared at me, and fire started in my balls, crawling up my spine. For the first time, I saw need in her eyes—need for me. She wanted me.
“We should go in,” I blurted. “The sign’s off, but maybe that’s because they lost power. I see cars so I don’t think it’s closed.”
“It’s kind of out of the way for a motel,” she murmured.
“All the better. Maybe it’s supposed to be a rustic getaway. With all the untouched nature around, I bet they get a lot of people just looking for a retreat.”
Biting her lip, she looked at me again. If someone could caress a man’s cock with a gaze, she did.
“Let’s go in,” she said suddenly. Without waiting, she opened the door and dashed for the largest building with “Office” painted on a small sign near the entrance.
Quickly, I followed her while another surge of anger stoked within me. This was a fire I’d never seen, because Chad had nearly crushed her spirit. She still had it in her—that was evident in her willingness to go nose to nose with me. I couldn’t help considering her nose to nose in another way.
The front door opened easily, with a chiming of an overhead bell. A young dark-haired man, wearing a nametag that said “Peter”, glanced up from the textbook he read by candlelight.
“Hi,” he greeted us in surprise and pushed aside his book to look at the log in front of him. “Do you have reservations? Sorry, our computer’s down. Well, actually, obviously, everything’s down.”
“No,” I told him. “We’re looking for a place to wait out the storm and wondered if you have a room available.”
The boy flipped through the paper log. “Unless my dad rented it out…yeah, room eleven. It’s all the way in back. Just to warn you, there’s no electric or heat right now with the power out. They think it will be fixed by morning.”
“Is there a phone?” Briony asked.
“We’ll take anything,” I cut in, pulling her close to my side.
“Nope. No phone,” the youth supplied. “It’s part of the rustic getaway thing. No phone, no TV.” He reached beneath the counter and retrieved a key with a florescent-green, leaf-shaped key ring attached to it. An eleven was scrawled on the plastic with black Sharpie. “Here you go. Like I said, it’s all the way in the back. Hang on a sec, while I grab some paperwork for y’all to fill out and you can be on your way. Oh and could ya sign the log for me?”
I complied, keeping hold of Briony while I filled out forms. When I signed the log, I shot her a look, daring her to contradict the “Mr. And Mrs. O’Connell.” Other than stiffening and a slight intake of breath, she didn’t react, but I figured I hear about her thoughts later.
I let the kid ker-chunk my credit card, and he gave me an industrial-sized, lantern-style flashlight then we were on our way. The rain soaked us as we ran back to the car.
Cabin eleven was all the way in the back of the motel’s property with a wall of thick trees behind it and tall trees canopying over the walkway to the door. Again we dashed through the rain. I couldn’t believe this storm. I’d have thought it would have run its course by now, but it still raged with no sign of stopping.
She hadn’t said a word since she’d asked about a phone, but I figured she was regrouping. Likely, she’d have plenty to say.
The key stuck in the lock. Of course. Nothing about this “kidnapping” had gone as planned. Even getting Briony out of the house. Now, we huddled close to the door to take advantage of the minimal protection offered by a tiny overhang. I tried to hunch over her as I jiggled the doorknob while manhandling the key. The back of my shirt clung to me as the cold rain soaked the fabric. The heat of Bree’s body warmed my front.
To my surprise, she turned toward me. Her hair was plastered to her face, as rivulets of water streamed over it. Her blue eyes shone up at me.
“Channing,” she whispered.
The key turned with a loud clunk, and we fell into the room.
Chapter Three
I caught her before she hit the floor then I covered her with my body. Half inside the room, half outside, I tore at her shirt. All the while Your brother’s wife screamed in my head. I ignored it. She wasn’t his anymore. She was mine.
She arched beneath me as I ripped her shirt. I yanked down her lacy, black bra and descended on the first pink nipple I revealed. I sucked the hard peak into my mouth as she writhed.
“Channing,” she cried, and I wasn’t sure if she was protesting or urging me on. Her hands clutched at my shoulders.
I ground into her pussy, the heat calling me.
“How did you know?” she moaned. “I hated him and I wanted you.”
“I’m gonna fuck you hard,” I growled.
“Yes!”
Her hips jerked under mine.
My tongue lashed over her crinkled areola, sucking hard and loving her keening cry as I drew. I palmed the mound. God, her tits were so good in my hands.
I was gonna fuck her right here on the stoop with the rain pelting down on us. Fisting my fingers in her hair, I kissed her hard, dominating her mouth and claiming every bit of the warm recess. I pushed my other hand down her belly to her thigh, then under her skirt.
Her panties were damp, but that could have been the rain. I shoved aside the undergarment and thrust my fingers into her slick folds. That wasn’t the rain. That was hot want—for me. The molten heat closed around my fingers as I drove them into her convulsing passage. It sucked at my skin, and I growled at the thought of that same flesh clamping around my cock. She ground into my hand as I finger-fucked her, searching for that swollen spot inside her that would send her over the edge. My thumb circled her rigid clit.
“Chan,” she screamed, and though everyone called me that, it was too close to Chad for my comfort.
“Channing,” I demanded. “Call me Channing.”
She pressed her mouth to my neck, and I felt her hot breath on my skin. Her lips dragged to my ear. “Channing,” she groaned. “Fuck me hard, Channing. Make me yours.”
But both of us knew the fucking wouldn’t claim her. She was still his, even if my cum filled her. She was still married to my damn b
rother.
That didn’t stop me. Either of us.
She ripped at my jeans, roughly pulling them open. I tugged my hand from her cunt and wrapped my fingers around my rock-hard shaft. The juice from her pussy slicked me as I jerked the flesh. I didn’t pause, but lined the head of my cock with her tight opening.
The searing heat burned into me as I drove into her, never stopping until our pelvic bones slammed together, never stopping even when I felt slight resistance. I didn’t give her time to adjust—and damn, I’m sure she didn’t want that either. Her legs wrapped like ropes around my hips, but I didn’t want that.
I pulled them away and pressed them open as I rose over her and slammed into her slippery cunt. There was nothing but her pussy around me, nothing but her tits under my mouth as I pushed to them, biting and tugging on them. Her thighs were trapped between us, opening her further to me—she couldn’t have stopped my pummeling drives if she’d wanted to. She could only receive the wild fucking of a man who wanted her to be his, who was stealing her and taking a cunt that didn’t belong to him.
I pulled as much of her breast into my mouth as I could and growled as her body tightened around me in reaction. Pulling back and letting go with a pop, I repeated the action on the other side. I never let up, I never paused, even as she screamed, her fingers clawing into my arms as she orgasmed. Her juice flooded around me but didn’t help the passage of my cock through her tight tunnel.
I wouldn’t stop. I would not stop. Not until my cum flooded her sweet pussy and dripped from her. The thought of claiming her that way, of branding her, pulled it from me. My balls drew up then the heat exploded through me, tearing up my back as my semen shot from my tip and into the warm reservoir awaiting me.
We collapsed to the ground, half on cement, half on shag carpet now wet with rain and our sweat.
And I knew this was only the beginning. There was no way I was putting her on the bus until we were both so spent she could barely climb the steps.
Setting my jaw, I stood, not bothering to cover myself when I reached my full height. My cock still jutted straight from my groin, ready for more. The hell with recovery time. I’d wanted her too much and for too long.
His Brothers Wife Page 2
