Something New

by Cameron Dane

  In actuality, Braden turned right then, and Rodrigo snatched his gaze down to the floor before he got a second full-monty vision of Braden in two days.

  Good God. Rodrigo swallowed a groan. I wake up with a hard-on, with my face buried in Abby’s hair, smelling her like a chef does his most prized meal, and now this? He was beginning to think he’d lost all the years of experience where he’d gained any sense of sexual control.

  Abby fell onto the couch next to Rodrigo and nudged his shoulder with hers. Her spirit was amazingly high this morning, and she gave Rodrigo a huge smile that lit her whole face with glints of natural light.

  “Hard not to take a peek. Right?” Abby asked. She looked into her bedroom, and Rodrigo let his gaze follow hers to Braden, who now had his lower half fully clad. “He has a pretty spectacular body.”

  Rodrigo gritted his teeth. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “It’s a shame, then.” Abby kept watching Braden as he finished dressing, his body turned at an angle to them. “You missed his incredible, tight ass, and then he has this scar on the back of his right thigh—”

  “Left one,” Rodrigo said, his mind still picturing his tongue following that three-inch line of scarred flesh.

  With a sharp clap of her hands, Abby jumped up to her knees and pointed twin fingers in Rodrigo’s direction. “Gotcha. I knew it was his left.”

  Shit.

  “Okay, so I looked.” Rodrigo felt like a cornered dog, and his hackles rose in an imposing line down his back. “Go ahead and try to make something out of it.”

  Abby’s face went full-on rosy flush. “You have no idea how much I already have.”

  With one look into her eyes, Rodrigo read the scenarios Abby had put him and Braden into together in her mind.

  Double shit.

  Braden joined them in the living room while still buckling his belt. “It’s actually not a scar; it’s a weird raised birthmark I’ve had since I was a baby.”

  A good night’s sleep and a plan of attack to seek out her parents’ murderer had seemed to do wonders for Abby. She flopped back on the couch and turned that million-watt smile up at Braden. “Thanks for giving us such a fantastic view of it.”

  Braden braced himself on the arm of the couch and leaned down to get close to Abby. “Thank you for looking.” He brushed his lips across hers, and she did him back, teasing flicks between them that as a bystander made Rodrigo’s mouth tingle. Each hint of their kiss seemed to push a deeper connection, to a point where Braden slid his knee onto the couch beside Abby, tilted her head over the back cushions, and turned the mating into something that charged the air with primal energy. Braden slipped his hands around Abby’s waist and pulled her up to meet the slow thrust of his hips, doing a dry hump that Rodrigo knew from experience was pleasing on Braden’s end. Yet as he stared, Rodrigo also wanted to experience the play as Abby. He wanted to be on the receiving side of Braden’s hard bulge grinding against him.

  The easy flirting and flare to quick passion between Abby and Braden roused insecurities, jealousy, raw attraction, and confusion in Rodrigo. The longer he watched, the more he wanted to tear them apart, yet at the same time, join in their coupling. Itching to take them both down to the ground, Rodrigo wanted to deliver rough, punishing kisses that would show them who was in charge. He wasn’t violent with women; he didn’t think he would be with a man either, but the desire to put marks on them both, as well as leave them thoroughly sated and panting for recovery, pushed hard against the civilized person inside Rodrigo who understood he couldn’t always get what he wanted when it came to his deepest sexual needs.

  With a low growl, Braden broke the kiss and reared up to his knees, straddling an out-of-breath Abby. “Jesus, honey.” He dipped down and licked at her open mouth. “You have no idea how much I want to spread you open across this couch and fuck you blind right now.”

  Rodrigo made a contemptuous noise to cover his immediate physical reaction to visualizing Abby with her long legs wide across the edge of the couch, moaning as Braden fucked her raw.

  “Shit, man,” Rodrigo muttered. They shouldn’t be thinking of Abby in this way, not right now. “Show some restraint. Get some class.”

  With a backward slide, Braden got to his feet and stalked Rodrigo, crowding his space. “You’re not exempt, Santiago.” Braden’s voice melted over Rodrigo and slipped into his pores, invading Rodrigo’s very being. “I want you bent over the cushions, your ass in the air, and you shouting for me to take you until you beg for mercy.”

  “Sh—” Rodrigo snapped his mouth shut. He saw the grin already forming on Braden’s face, and Rodrigo bared his teeth in return. “Get that satisfied smirk off your face, Crenshaw. I’m not going to say it this time.”

  Braden moved in even closer, brushed their fronts up against each other, and for the life of him, Rodrigo could not—would not—retreat. As Braden spoke, his mouth suddenly became the most fascinating thing in the world to Rodrigo.

  “I promised myself I would wait,” Braden began, “but now I have to hear you say that word again.” He dipped down that little bit, letting the breath he expelled wash against Rodrigo’s lips as he ran his hand down Rodrigo’s side to his hip in one long caress. “You’ve presented me with a challenge and I don’t like to lose any more than you do.”

  Rodrigo opened his mouth to protest—or maybe to plead, he didn’t know for sure—and Braden captured whatever Rodrigo was going to say with a clinging of their lips; a kiss, not exactly soft but not hard either. Rodrigo had known it was coming, yet he went completely still for a moment anyway, trying to process another man’s mouth on his. Braden teased whispers of contact at first, giving Rodrigo just enough to hint at deeper pleasure, and then switched to flicking Rodrigo’s seam with the tip of his tongue, nudging Rodrigo to give him something more.

  The contact stirred and mixed with the embers already stoked within Rodrigo, and pushed at his restraint. Without a direct command from his brain, Rodrigo parted his lips and took the kiss to a different place. With a stroke of his tongue against Braden’s, Rodrigo coaxed Braden inside his mouth. At the first hot slide of their tongues, Braden sank his body into Rodrigo’s. He moaned and pulled Rodrigo even tighter to him with arms around his waist. Falling fast, Rodrigo grabbed on to Braden’s shirt, twisted his fingers into the material, and held on as best he could through the onslaught of Braden’s brand of ownership. This kiss was different from anything Rodrigo knew. Braden possessed the taste of someone used to being in the lead and expecting his partner to follow. And while Rodrigo’s head swam with new desire—and his lips and mouth swelled with Braden’s complete plundering—Rodrigo was nobody’s submissive, and he never took a backseat in foreplay or fucking.

  The need to own in return spurred Rodrigo forward. It had him clamping on to Braden’s head and angling it for a thrusting, scraping, complete kiss. Braden battled right back, and their moans mingled, getting muffled between them and their fight for supremacy. Rodrigo wanted to bite Braden to force him to surrender. At the same time, he wanted Braden to bite back, to demand Rodrigo fold to his knees and comply with his every wish. Something buried deep inside Rodrigo wanted Braden to push him and bodily command Rodrigo to accept his will.

  I want him to bend me over that couch and take my ass for as long as he wants it.

  Disturbed, Rodrigo ripped his mouth away from Braden’s, panting as he struggled with his body’s responses to everything that had happened in the last few minutes. Completely foreign to him, his ass throbbed for Braden to fill it, yet his cock still pushed against his jeans from wanting his turn at fucking Abby, where he could still picture her wide open on the couch, begging for him to make her scream.

  His heart suddenly racing double from what it had just ten seconds ago, Rodrigo looked to Abby, needing her to be okay with what she’d witnessed. Hinting that she’d fantasized about him and Braden together was one thing; being two feet away as a kiss like the one that had just happened was another.

&nb
sp; Abby sat with her legs folded, her gaze fully on him. “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice soft.

  “Yeah.” Rodrigo had no fucking idea if he told the truth or outright lied. He wiped at his mouth, the urge to still feel where Braden had branded him overwhelming. “I’m fine.”

  Braden slid his hand across Rodrigo’s back and then circled to stand in front of him. “I have to go.” Braden’s lips thinned to a hard, pale line, and his eyes flashed with flecks of emeralds. “Tell me you liked it.” No longer smooth—instead, ragged edges cut Braden’s voice.

  Damn. I’ve never seen him without all the answers before.

  “Shit.” Without moving a muscle, Rodrigo still somehow felt like he stroked Braden’s cock with that one word. “Fucking shit.”

  “Christ.” Rodrigo actually felt Braden tremble. “You turn me on.” Braden then leaned down and pecked a fast kiss to Abby’s cheek without missing a beat. “Get your cell-phone battery replaced. I will coordinate with you both later.” With a quick wave, he left Rodrigo and Abby alone.

  For once, Rodrigo kept quiet, moving only to sit down on the couch next to Abby.

  She pulled her attention off the pass-way Braden had just left through, but it took her a moment to look at Rodrigo. When she did, she asked, almost tentatively, “Is it okay if I ask you something personal?”

  “I shot my load on your stomach yesterday.” The thought popped into Rodrigo’s head and slipped out of his mouth without censure. “I think you can ask me pretty much whatever you want.”

  That got a smile out of her. “What goes on in your head when you watch Braden kissing me?” She held up a finger. “Only tell me if you want to.”

  Oh hell.

  Rodrigo slumped down into the cushions, exhaling as he tunneled his hands through his hair. How to say this? He rolled his head and found Abby watching him closely. Here it goes. “I want to get in the middle of it, but I also want to break it up. I want you to turn that passion on me, and I think I want Braden to do the same. I’m jealous you like him that much and envious he is having you in a way I want for myself.” He scratched at his jaw and the stubble he had not shaved this morning. “But seeing you two go at each other excites the hell out of me too,” he admitted. “There’s a part of me that just wants to sit back and jerk off to these two people who I like and admire making out so close to me that I can hear it and smell it and even taste it if I wanted to.” Rodrigo wished he would shut the fuck up, but the way Abby held on to his every word pushed complete honesty past his lips. “I’m feeling all kinds of shit I didn’t expect, Bit, and I don’t know what the hell to make of most of it as it’s happening.”

  Abby didn’t laugh. She didn’t say anything for the longest fucking minute in eternity, until out came, “Yeah. Me too.” Her focus drifted to the bedroom as if she saw something more than an empty bed. “Do you think Braden is as all over the map as we are?”

  That sexy bastard. Rodrigo grinned even though he didn’t want to give the man—who wasn’t even in the room anymore—the satisfaction. “I think Braden has as much experience kissing a man as he does woman and that at least that part isn’t new to him. Beyond that”—new tension replaced Rodrigo’s brief smile—“Braden has a good poker face. I don’t have a clue.”

  Abby glanced at him, brow raised. “Which you don’t like.”

  “No more than you.”

  “Touché.” After a prolonged second, Abby moved her attention from him to the hallway. “I have to get to work too.” She declared it but didn’t move.

  “I do too.” Rodrigo didn’t so much as blink either.

  Without words, rather than getting up, Rodrigo opened his arms, and Abby immediately leaned into him, snuggling against his side. She wrapped her arms around his middle and pressed the side of her head to his chest, where she could surely hear the elevated beat of his heart. It told her how she affected him, but for the moment Rodrigo didn’t care about putting on a tough facade. He somehow knew Abby needed to feel another body close to hers right now, just a comforting presence and nothing more. If he could finally be that for her, he reveled in it, and he didn’t let himself think too hard about how this moment put a clamp on his chest even tighter than when he’d buried his fingers inside her yesterday and laid claim to her with his spilled seed.

  Didn’t mean his dick wasn’t appreciating a lithe female form wrapped around half his body, though. A pleasant state of partial wood put a nice buzz in his blood.

  Particularly when Abby stirred against him and her breasts brushed his ribs and arm.

  “I don’t want to get up,” she murmured, sounding drowsy. “Will you carry me downstairs to the store?”

  Rodrigo craned his neck at an awkward angle to meet her luminous gaze. “Make sure you really want me to do that, because I will.”

  A flush crept up Abby’s neck to fill her cheeks. “Maybe not.” She untangled herself and got to her feet. Her gaze still on his, she added, “Yet.”

  Shit. With that single word Rodrigo went from the sensation of fingers feathering over his shaft to a rubbing tug that shot lines of pleasure all the way into his belly and up his spine.

  He stood, challenged by the sparks deepening her eyes to the colors of a midnight ocean. “How about I walk you downstairs with my arm around your waist and then give you a respectful kiss good-bye that leaves your panties damp and you humming for me the rest of the morning?”

  Her neck tilted back, she planted her hands on her hips. “You think you can? With one little kiss?”

  He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Oh, I know I can.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Rodrigo slipped his arm around her waist and guided her down to her store’s back room.

  Ten minutes later, she wouldn’t admit that he’d soaked her through and through using nothing but his mouth on hers. She had to put her hand on the wall before getting steady enough to walk into the body of her store, though, so Rodrigo took that as a resounding success.

  He ignored the fact that he bumped into a pile of boxes on his way out the back door.

  * * *

  Captain Thomas Zanger steepled his hands against his lips, tapping the tips of his pointer fingers against each other in a steady rhythm that Braden knew meant the man was taking his time thinking his answer through. The beefy, muscular lawman didn’t only intimidate with his size and buzzed head; he could also crush any officer in his precinct under the scrutiny of his ice blue stare. Braden had seen men and women cower, but Braden had never feared an evaluation or judgment of his performance, so he didn’t slouch or develop a nervous tic when facing his boss. At least not an outward one that would show he cared.

  Give the man time. Braden refused to even let his boot tap against the tile floor as he waited out Zanger’s silence. He’ll come to the right conclusion.

  As Braden internally sweat out the captain’s decision, he focused his attention on a series of photos on the bookshelf behind the man’s desk, each one depicting Zanger’s love of fishing. From a sandy-haired teen to the hard-ass he was today, Zanger proudly held up his various catches for the camera. Braden stared while trying to appear as if he weren’t and attempted to identify each species of fish so that he didn’t let his overwhelming need for a yes from this man show on his face or in his body language.

  “Go for it,” Zanger finally said, breaking the silence. The gruff scratch of the captain’s voice made each word sound like it came out over shards of jagged rocks. “But be discreet about it, for fuck’s sake.”

  Braden didn’t show so much as a dip in his shoulders, but on the inside, he let out a big sigh. “Yes, sir.”

  Zanger’s glacier stare belied the explosive fire of the man’s personality. “I don’t want this town getting a whiff of a new investigation and flipping out all over again. I don’t want people camping out on our station steps demanding some new suspect’s head for no good reason.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “And while you’re
at this, find a fucking concrete way to assure me Cormack didn’t do it. We liked him for a reason. I don’t want a mile-long list of people who could have done these murders. I need something solid if we’re going to end up discrediting the good work a lot of men and women did on this case.” The captain grimaced, and if Braden hadn’t seen it before, he might have flinched. “Myself included. I might have been the lowest man on the totem pole back then, but I don’t like to be wrong.”

  Braden flipped through the notes he’d made before requesting a conversation with the boss. “I have Lorene Jones’s address, and I’ve already set up an appointment to speak to her later on today. I plan to assure myself she truly believes the claims she made to Abigail Gaines before this goes any further.”

  “Good.” Glancing down at the original case file—Braden’s copy was now at Abby’s place—Zanger leafed through the clipped pages. “How is the girl?” His voice softened as much as Braden figured it probably could. “Woman now, I guess. She could not speak a word to any cop or child psychologist we brought in to help her recover her memory. I never talked to her personally, but half of us thought the mental block might be a blessing.” His mouth twisted as he shut the file and looked up again. “Because I have to tell you, after seeing the bloodbath at that crime scene and knowing she’d likely been sitting there for hours at her dead parents’ sides, I wouldn’t want a child being burdened with the memory of something that horrific.”