by Stacey Keith
Brandon flipped the power on in the garage and then came toward her, silhouetted by the lights behind him, his face in shadow. “That was a lot harder than it should have been.”
April hesitated, confused.
He stood in front of her, clenching and unclenching his hands. Maybe she should have been repelled by his dark intensity, but it fascinated her.
“I didn’t like sharing you tonight,” he confessed. “And I don’t know if I can stop myself from feeling that way.”
There was something fascinating about his voice, what it did to her. She heard hints of his southern-boy roots, the overlay of motorcycle patter, even prison. But it was the roughness and deepness of his voice that worked their way deep inside her and pulled tight. And now he was saying things that she wanted to hear—and feared hearing—because they might prompt her to make a confession of her own.
His eyes caught hers and then dropped lazily to her lips. Standing that close to him in the near dark gave her goose bumps. Her nipples bunched against the flimsy material of her bra. She felt as though she were floating, there and not there at the same time. Yet her bones and muscles had gone molten. Why was it that she—who usually had so much to say—could think of nothing to say right now?
She smelled the heat of his skin and the leather of his boots. The combination of masculine scents made her weak-kneed. Desire was a dark, hot torment, one she couldn’t trust at this moment not to make her do something really foolish.
Brandon was watching her steadily. Her heart pounded as she swayed toward him. The restraint he had shown vanished, and he pulled her toward him, slanting his mouth against hers. The movement brought the tips of her breasts into contact with his wide muscular chest. She was ready for what came next. Whatever came next.
She was on the verge of losing what was left of her mind and they hadn’t even done anything yet.
Lowering his head, he kissed her hungrily. His tongue danced with her tongue and his teeth scraped and nibbled at her lips. There was a roaring in her ears that must have been the blood singing in her veins. Every time he kissed her now the roaring grew louder as though her ears had turned inward and all they could hear was the sound of her heart pounding wildly against her chest.
She felt hot where the humid night air brushed her skin, hotter still where her body touched his. His hands curved over her bottom and brought her more forcefully against him. His erection didn’t frighten her now, but this was as far as her experience went. Something life-changing must lie beyond, maybe even terrifying.
For all she knew, Matthew and Long Jon could see them from the kitchen window, but she couldn’t let go of Brandon, not now, not with that wicked, knowing tongue. She filled her hands with his hard muscles, his soft hair. She let herself drown.
“Let’s go inside,” he said hoarsely, his eyes burning from the shadows.
April didn’t want to go inside. Not where he’d been with other women. Not where she would keenly feel a sense of her own inexperience. She couldn’t bear the thought of walking past everyone on her way to the bedroom.
Instead, she took Brandon to her car and fell into the backseat with him. He didn’t even protest. Instead, he shut the door, tore his shirt off, and then gazed down at her possessively. The muscles in his jaw tightened, giving him a savage look.
“Do you have a…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word condom.
“Not here, April,” he said. “Not in a car. You deserve better.”
“But I want—”
“You’re not even ready yet. You might think you are, but you aren’t.”
He said it so firmly, she didn’t have the nerve to argue. She bit down hard on her bottom lip. Disappointment stirred, but so did awareness.
She’d offered herself to him but he wanted to wait. Brandon McBride, who had so many notches on his bedpost it might have been in danger of falling off, was doing something he’d probably never done before.
He’d unselfishly put her needs, a woman’s needs, ahead of his own.
A wave of profound desire crashed over her. If there had been anything holding her back, she realized, it was this. It was trusting him to think of her needs first.
With a moan, she pulled him against her. She couldn’t get him close enough. The hot, sweet burn of knowing he cared…a floodgate lifted and now the emotions came rushing out, everything she’d been too afraid to show, too afraid to feel.
What a fool she’d been to worry. Brandon wasn’t trying to use her and toss her aside. He wanted this to be special. Memorable. Not some undignified, hormone-driven scramble in the backseat of her car.
The fact that he would do that for her, say no to temptation, refuse what she so shamelessly offered, brought tears to her eyes.
Half naked in the moonlight that glinted through the rear window, Brandon was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Her hands roamed over his smooth muscles, learning him. Loving him. On instinct, she wrapped her legs around his waist, pressing him closer.
“When I make love to you, you’re going to know it’s the right time,” he said, his voice rough against her throat. “There won’t be anything you can hold back from me.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “God, yes.”
“You won’t be afraid.” He kissed the line of her jaw, the side of her neck down to her collarbone. “You’ll want it so bad, nothing else will matter. Just this.”
He pulled back and the look he gave her stole her breath. His sweetness. She’d never expected it. He moved his hand across her ribcage, lighting a slow, hot fire before cupping her breast. He brushed his thumb across the tip, over her shirt, and pleasure rippled from nipple to womb.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he told her. “And to be honest, it scares the crap out of me.”
So this was what she’d been missing all these years when her friends were making out in parked cars and she was at home with her books and her unicorns. This was what crooners sang about in songs. No wonder people made such horrible mistakes and threw aside everything that had previously been important. It was because of this feeling, this passion, this sense of finally, finally being alive.
When your brain turned off and your body turned on, you were as close to heaven as you were ever going to get.
She cradled his face between her hands and kissed him, deep, drugging kisses that sent electric sparks cascading through her belly. He might have thought she wasn’t ready, but he was wrong. Her skin was on fire, her blood was on fire, and her heart burned the brightest of all. She wanted him with the kind of sweaty desperation that made it impossible to think of anything but feeling him inside her.
Yet with dawning awareness, she realized that she had the power to set fires, too. Brandon, who was always smooth, always in control, groaned against her mouth. Unconsciously, perhaps, he pushed against her, between her legs. She felt his determined hardness on her softest, most sensitive place, crazy to know what happened next, but scared to think what something that big might do. And he was big. Even through his jeans she could tell, although she’d never actually touched one before. Was this the reason women were so wild for him?
She let her fingers drift downward, toward his zipper, terrified in the way that public speaking terrified her, but too curious not to see. When she found him, he throbbed against her hand, big enough to feel menacing. April’s heart pounded so frantically, she could practically taste it in her throat. Everything she’d ever wanted was there, right there, in her hand. She knew that at once. It would hurt. But maybe that turned her on a little, too.
What is happening to me?
The tip of him had thrust over the waistband of his jeans. It was satiny in a way that made her breathlessly curious, yet it was hard as a rock. She had no idea how to please him or what to do with her hands, but touching him sent a fireball of heat scorching through her veins.
He
made a strangled noise and buried his face in her neck. His beard stubble raked over the sensitive skin there and made her shiver. “You’re killing me,” he murmured.
“But I want it,” she whispered. “I want you.”
The muscles in his jaw pulsed wildly and his eyes glittered in the dim light. “Those are dangerous words,” he said.
April cupped her hand and slid it down his thick length over the denim. Now that she’d dared herself to touch him, she couldn’t stop. It obsessed her, this idea that the answer to all her yearning was throbbing in her fingers. So close, so close.
She felt him shudder and then in response, everything between her legs contracted, too, in one long erotic clench. What she had in her hand could give her more than what a shower massager gave her, and a thousand times more intense.
“I wish we weren’t in the back of my car,” she said.
“And I wish you were naked,” he admitted.
He breathed featherlight kisses along her collarbone and she arched against him, love-drunk on the tickling sensation, on the exotic male smell of him. Another blast of pure drugging heat exploded inside her when he lifted her skirt and touched her through her panties.
“You’re so wet,” he muttered thickly. “Christ…”
April was speechless. She was dying a little more with every circle of his finger. How did he do that? He knew exactly where to focus, just the right speed, just the right pressure.
Brandon brought her up higher than she had ever been before. She was helpless to stop it, helpless to do anything but submit. Little whimpering moans filled the car. And still he slid his finger expertly across her sweet spot, watching her face intently as though he was navigating by her expression alone.
He was every smoldering bad boy fantasy she’d ever had. Her eyes grew heavy-lidded as she looked up at him, heart fluttering in an uneven rhythm. His darkly handsome face was right above hers, so sexy that it drove her recklessly to the edge, and still he avidly held her gaze. Her heart swelled.
A long hot erotic wave started between her thighs and radiated out, taking her up, spinning her faster and faster. Ecstasy had teeth and it bit down hard as her body turned to liquid and the wave exploded.
He was barely moving his hand now, but let her ride it out, never taking his eyes off her face. “That’s it, baby. Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah.”
Her orgasm peaked, crested and then slowly ebbed.
Even though her eyes had been open the whole time, she felt like for the first time she could finally see. The windows were fogged and the leather car seat squeaked when Brandon shifted his weight.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” she whispered, stunned.
“That’s only the beginning,” he said. “You can’t imagine what I’ll do to you. When I’m finally inside you, I’ll get you so high, you won’t know your own name.”
“Promise?” Oh, how good that sounded. She felt so lazy now, so…spent. But he wasn’t. He’d been so selfless. And now she wanted to see if she could do for him what he’d done for her.
She reached for him but he blocked her hand. “It’s too cramped in here for me to show you what I like.”
Disappointed, he let her hand settle on his flat, hard abs instead. “But you will, won’t you? You’ll show me everything?”
He kissed her softly on the lips. “When you’re ready, I’ll give you everything I’ve got.”
Chapter 16
Matthew pounded on the bathroom door. “Get out of the shower! Other people live here, too, you know.”
Brandon yelled, “Fuck off. If you have to take a leak, go outside.”
“We all have to go outside because you won’t get out of the fucking shower. I know what you’re doing in there. Why can’t you jerk off in the bedroom like everyone else?”
That little shit. He heard Matthew stomp off and then the kitchen door slam, meaning he’d gone out to the yard. If Matthew knew what was good for him, he’d just let people do what they needed to do. People got irate when they weren’t allowed to take care of business in peace. And since all Brandon thought about was April, erections were a constant problem. That meant jerking off was a public service he did to keep from killing everyone around him.
Right now he was in the middle of a fantasy that was half oral sex—him on her—and half screwing her brains out on the back of his motorcycle. It was a favorite of his, and at this point, he had become a connoisseur of April fantasies.
Whenever he looked at her, he forgot everything he was going to say. Even when he was outside working on motorcycles, he counted the hours until he saw her again.
It worried him, but not enough to do anything about it. Not right now.
He finished in the shower. These days, it didn’t even take the edge off. Nothing did. She’d come over damn near every night this week, and after her motorcycle lesson, they always ended up in her car or the backyard hammock. When Brandon dragged himself back inside the house hours later, Long Jon just laughed at him.
Speaking of Long Jon…Brandon wrapped a towel around his waist and set out to find him. The house seemed suspiciously quiet. Long Jon’s room was empty, the bed unmade, clothes scattered across the floor. Brandon went to the living room and cracked open the blinds. He saw Matthew out in the yard fixing his skateboard with a screwdriver that he’d been told repeatedly never to take out of the garage. Ten-to-one Matthew would just leave it lying there in the dirt when he was done. That kid. Jesus.
Brandon got dressed and then went outside. He felt uneasiness about Long Jon that he just couldn’t shake. Matthew looked up when he saw him coming and then hid the screwdriver behind his back.
“Where’s Long Jon?” Brandon asked.
Matthew got that bland look he had when he was preparing to lie about something. “I dunno.”
“Bullshit. Tell me where Long Jon is and I won’t bust your ass for taking my screwdriver.”
He could tell Matthew was weighing loyalty to Long Jon against not being yelled at. “Did you see him leave here with anybody?” Brandon asked. “You won’t get in trouble if you just tell me where he went.”
Matthew brought his legs up and then hung his forearms off his knees, dangling them in front of him. He squinted into the distance. “He took off about an hour ago with Doc and Cutty and those guys.”
“Did he say where?”
Matthew shrugged. “Seriously, I don’t know, but those dudes are assholes. Not like you when you’re an asshole. I mean real assholes.”
Fuck. An hour ago, Brandon had been on the phone about a possible sponsorship for Matthew. Since the landline phone was in the back hall, it was hard to hear bikes coming up the road. No point in trying to call Long Jon either. Long Jon hated cell phones as much as he did and refused to carry one.
“Stay here,” Brandon said. “If Long Jon shows up, tell him I’m looking for him.”
“Do you think he’s in trouble?”
“Don’t know yet. But I also need you to text April for me and let her know not to come over tonight.” Which was all Long Jon’s fault. As soon as he found that sonofabitch, he was going to wring his fucking neck.
Matthew dug his cell phone out of his front pocket. “Just like that, huh? No explanation?”
Brandon frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean girls always think you’re up to something if you don’t spell it out for them. Jesus Christ, don’t you know anything?”
Dating a girl meant you had to tell her where you were? Who made those rules? Matthew was probably right, which sucked. There was no way in hell Brandon was explaining what was going on to April. Especially the part where Long Jon might be robbing a bank.
On a flare of irritation, he said, “Fine. Tell her I have shit to do over in Banderas. I drove there looking for a part or something.”
Matthew gave him a scowl of disapproval,
but his thumbs flashed over the keyboard. “I’m not your fucking secretary, you know. You need to get your own phone so you can do your own lying.”
Brandon hated it when Matthew got judge-y, but he didn’t have time to argue or explain. “There’s leftovers in the fridge. If I’m not back, heat them up for dinner. Oh, and do your fucking homework.”
He hot-footed it over to where his Harley waited, fired it up and took off with no idea where to look first. Cuervo had one bank that didn’t keep late hours, which should have narrowed it down, but didn’t. Banderas might be the best place to go.
What could he do even if he did find them? You didn’t stop an armed robbery from going down. The best he could hope for was getting Long Jon out of there before the cops arrived.
But a sense of grinding worry made his stomach clench. Long Jon was a friend. And Brandon knew he hadn’t always been deserving of that friendship. When they were doing time together, Long Jon shared his commissary card with him, which meant that Brandon, as the new guy, hadn’t starved. He and Long Jon worked out together in the prison yard. Long Jon taught him everything he knew about surviving in lockup, from making a shiv out of a melted toothbrush to creating a bludgeon out of unopened soda cans in a pillowcase.
He owed it to Long Jon to try to save his sorry ass. As Brandon sped along in the direction of the setting sun, he knew time was short. He’d been stupid to think Long Jon wouldn’t do this job with Doc. If he had to admit it, Brandon thought grimly, maybe he’d been too distracted lately to keep close enough tabs on him.
At the crossroads where four pastures intersected, Brandon turned right toward Banderas. He wanted Long Jon back where he could keep an eye on him. He wanted April soft and warm in his arms. He wanted that feeling of peace that she alone gave him. Instead, he was speeding toward the only place he knew where there might be a bank worth robbing, because life didn’t give a shit what he wanted.
