“You coming for me, baby? You like that?” She nods her head as the climax starts to wash away from her body, the pulses coming slower now, like she’s cooling down. I watch as she begins to snap back to her senses, her gaze growing sharper, more skeptical. I draw my hands away, and try to stretch out my arm like Nat has shown me. It aches from twisting my body, from bending it out of the position it should be in, but it was worth it to see her face when she came for me.
“I have a shift tomorrow, pretty early,” she says and pulls her shirt down. The shirt barely covers her ass, and my dick throbs. She pauses for a moment.
“You need rest,” I say. “I know.”
“I don’t know what this is,” she says, raising a hand to my cheek and then letting her finger trail down to my torso, sending shivers through my body. “But you can sleep in my bed. If you want to. I don’t have a condom...” She looks down, and runs her fingers through her hair. When she looks back up at me, the shirt pulls up again, and I can see the sweet, soft lines of her body. I’ve never taken anything slow—if this could be considered slow, anyway. I don’t want to take anything slow, and I don’t want to wait. But I nod, and she holds my hand, walking me into the bedroom.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I’m nervous when I take Josh into my bedroom. My body and mind are still buzzing with what we just did—with what he did to me. Josh has been the fantasy—the one that got away, or well, the one that ran away—for three years. There were missed chances a hundred times, crossed wires, and the quiet violence of living with our parents. We were always drawn together, from the time we were fifteen, the children of addicts. For so long, we were just surviving, and now, we’re together again, finally living out the chance we never took.
I pull my bra off and toss it to the floor, and I wonder if I should bother putting on panties. Josh stares at me, watches me as I grab a pair from my dresser, pulling them on under my shirt. I blush and slide onto the bed.
“It’s okay,” he says. “We can just sleep.” His eyes are still on me, and from what I could feel when he had me in his hands, his cock was pretty damn hard. My body pulses, screams out for him. But my mind hesitates. When I look at Josh, I don’t see what other women see. They see how cut and hard his body is, how graceful and fluid he is when he fights. But I see the man who missed my college graduation because he was hungover, and I see the man who walked away from me when I asked him to stay. I see other parts of his history too—the kindness underneath his arrogant exterior, the hurt he suffered when he was kicked out of this very house. After tonight, after getting to know Josh again, after starting to understand that he’s changing, my feelings are mixed up, confused.
He climbs into bed beside me and gathers me in his arms, then puts his lips to mine. I melt into him and try to clear my mind of the past, banish all the pain. It’s easy when his arms around me, when he’s here with me. I nearly drift into sleep several times, but his presence seems to demand my attention. The electricity buzzes in my veins, and soon, I’m wide awake, heat pulsing through me. Josh is nearly asleep when I start trailing my finger over the ridges of his abs, following the trail down to the waistband of his shorts. I gulp when I think about how he commanded me to come, and the heat comes crashing into me in waves. Gently, slowly, I tug at the waistband of his shorts, pulling them down over his hips. He groans and shifts so that he’s on his back, and his eyes pop open.
“Nat, what are you up to?” He grins, and I keep pulling down his shorts until he’s able to kick them to the side. Josh’s cock is still hard as a rock, and shit, it’s fucking big.
I wrap my hand around the base of it and then move my hand higher until I brush my thumb over the head. “Repaying the favor.”
“It wasn’t a favor. It was—”
I hold up one hand to stop him and stroke him with the other. “We can talk about what it was in the morning.” Josh groans and nods. I run my fingers up and down his length, exploring the map of his skin, its smoothness, its heat. I push aside the whole of our history as my hand moves over his cock, and soon enough, I’m not thinking about anything at all besides the man in front of me. Kneeling beside him, I kiss him hard as I stroke him and then move my mouth over his neck, and down lower, to the head of his cock.
“Natalie,” he moans, grabbing a fistful of my hair. My spine tingles as I run my tongue over his hard length, coming back up to the head and taking it into my mouth again. I run my tongue over it, its taste salty and alkaline all at once, and I bend over, taking as much of him as I can all at once, all the way back to my throat. It’s been a while—a long while—since I’ve been this intimate with anyone, but it feels right, natural with Josh, like it’s what we both needed all along. He groans as I take him in, and he tugs my hair gently, controlling the rhythm, showing what he wants from my mouth.
“Nat, I’m going to come, baby, just like that.” His words come low and soft, and I feel his body tighten, begging for relief from deep inside. “Fuck, that’s good, baby,” he says, tightening his hold on my hair. I take him in all the way, listening to his groans as he comes.
Before we both fall asleep, I wonder if Josh is the force of nature that drew me back here—because, a week ago, I never would have expected anything like this.
***
I wake hours later, sometime near dawn. But dawn is a fuzzy thing in the late summer, and I wonder what the hell time it is, and exactly how long I have before my shift at ten. They shouldn’t do this to me—schedule me for back-to-backs, but the hospital is understaffed, and the administration is all about taking advantage of the residents desperate enough to come here.
“Josh,” I mumble and roll over, expecting his body to be in the space next to mine. But it’s not. The bed is empty, save for Beatrice, who purrs steadily behind the crook in my legs. My pulse quickens.
Is he gone? Was this too much? No, it couldn’t have been. He was the one who—
I lay still in the darkness and listen for movement in the house.
“Yeah, okay, Katy, I get it,” I hear Josh say. Footsteps follow. It sounds like he’s walking on the hardwood floors, his movements quick and rhythmic. Then he stops, and I hear him talking again. Slowly, I get out of bed and walk over to the door, careful to be silent. The door is open a crack, and I listen. His voice sounds agitated, and his words are so quick and low that I can barely make out what he’s saying.
“Of course he wants me to train, okay. But Ash—” I catch that much and then Josh’s voice goes low again. “Katy, I told you not to call me. I’m at—”
Who the fuck is Katy? I swallow hard. Something that feels like jealousy curdles inside my chest, and I want to growl, stomp across the room and grab the phone from his hand. But I have no more claim on him than any other woman he’s messed with, even if I’ve taken him in, even if I stitched his cuts closed. And even if I worry about him more and want him more, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I think of his first fight. I went, of course, because we were both dumb and seventeen, and he was my best friend. He’d begged me to come for weeks after Daddy kicked him out and Josh decided to run to the peninsula and make his own way in life. When I got there, he was talking to some other girl, brushing her dark red—probably dyed—hair behind her ear. She was taller than me, and prettier, and her tits were bigger than mine. I stayed and watched the fight anyway, and I cheered for Josh the whole time, whooping along with the crowd when he won. But afterwards, he didn’t acknowledge me, didn’t come find me. He walked off backstage with that girl, and I was pretty damn sure he wasn’t just showing her the locker room.
It would have hurt less if I hadn’t thought that I would be that girl, that the night of Josh’s fight would be the night he finally kissed me. I didn’t want to lay claim to him—I just wanted him to kiss me, to make me feel that fluttery feeling I’d always felt when I was close to him, but more.
It seems like you got what you wanted last night, Nat, I think. I watch
Josh as he moves. The movements of his left arm are almost normal, even though he’s been refusing to wear his sling. It leaves me wondering if he was faking his balance the other morning, if he was trying to get me to stay around, trying to get that kiss out of me. Fuck if I know. This is a man I do not understand.
I’m still trying to figure out what the hell is going on when I realize that I smell pancakes—and coffee. I see a smear of batter on the shirt I picked up for Josh, which is cute, I must admit. Or it would be, but I don’t have a damn bit of food in this house. He must have left and—
Before I can finish my thought, he scowls and clicks the cell phone off, placing it back in his pocket. His eyes move over to the door, and I back away, but he’s seen me. I sit back on the bed, but I can’t find an especially appropriate way to sit since I’m still only wearing my t-shirt. When the door opens, Josh cocks his head and grins.
“There are pancakes! I made them,” he announces. Then he comes to the bed and sweeps me up with his right arm, kissing me tenderly and bringing his left hand to my breast. “Oh fuck,” he moans, his lips barely touching mine. “I love it when you don’t wear a bra, Natty. Always have actually. You didn’t at prom, remember? You had that dress with the tiny straps, and—”
“How do you remember that? You came with that cheerleader—”
“Monica. But I kept finding you so I could look at your tits.” He brushes his thumb over my nipple, and a searing heat rips through my body. And God help me, the undeniable throbbing has returned to my core. He keeps circling my nipple, kissing my lips and then moving his lips to the sensitive hollow of my neck.
Josh. Who was that girl on the phone? I open my mouth to ask him, but instead I say something else entirely. “Josh…” I start, “I’m so wet.” I blush as soon as I say it, but Josh laughs.
“Fuck, Natty.” He brings his mouth close to my ear, then pulls my earlobe in his mouth. “You tell me that and I’ll be getting you to sit on my face. Why you gotta get me all worked up like this when I just wanted to cook you breakfast before your shift?”
“Josh—last night—” I try to get my thoughts together, try to say that we should take things slower, that we should stop and think about what we both want. The reasonable, rational Natalie wants that conversation, but the woman part of Natalie is stronger. And that part of me just wants Josh—it doesn’t matter how.
“I know I should let you decide, give you time—and I meant to.” He bends down and puts his mouth to my breast, pulling my nipple between his lips and sucking it gently, slowly, until it stands stiff in his mouth. He flicks his tongue across the surface and bites down gently before pulling away. I’ve never come from a man simply touching my breasts, but it feels like I might as Josh cups my tits with both hands and circles his thumbs over my nipples. The fire sears through me, threatening to crest and burn hot, high, not relent until I’m satisfied. I melt into his hands, and he pulls me in and keeps circling around my nipple rhythmically, as he covers my mouth with his. Another flood of wetness rushes between my legs, telling me that my body wants him, needs him, bows to him like it did last night.
My body, my mind, they both remember what it felt like when Josh left me standing right here, in this very house, on a day not unlike this one. But that pain seems worthless now, if I can have something like this.
“I’m so hard for you, Nat,” he says, his lips brushing against my ear. “I thought I could be a good boy around you, but I can’t. Not after I felt you on my fingers, after you sucked my cock and made me come harder than I ever had in my life.” He presses his cock into me, and I sway, dizzy with the arousal that consumes me, threatens to swallow me whole.
“What do you want, Josh?” The rational part of me wants to win out, but I’m not drawing away from him, and I’m pressing into his fingers as he brings them between my legs. I look up at him, meeting those hazel green eyes, and I can see the perfect flecks of gold buried within.
“I want you, Nat. Haven’t you gotten that?”
“I do, uh, get that, Josh. But I don’t know if you want a one-night stand or—oh Jesus—” He finds my clit with his fingers, pushing against it insistently.
“I want you, Nat. I want it all. I want you bent over, serving yourself up to me whenever you want it. I want you to wake up when I’m buried between your legs, licking you, tasting you—and with every moment, I want to show you how much I regret leaving you that day.” The fire threatens to take me over, and the desire is crashing through me like an unstoppable force. “I want you, now.”
“We still don’t have a—” I can barely get the words out, I’m so lost in wanting him—needing him inside of me. All the pain of the past has evaporated into the charged air around us, and I’m at his mercy.
“I went out and got some condoms this morning,” he says. His voice is gravely, raw with desire. I can’t process what he’s just told me—it doesn’t fit within the framework of what the last ten days have been, his need for recovery, his not leaving the sofa.
“With what? How? What?” I pull away from him slightly, my brain still confused, thoughts still hazy from being so close to him.
“Walked over to the lot where I’m keeping my Camaro and—” Something starts buzzing against my thigh, and I absently wonder if Josh has figured out a way to get his dick to vibrate. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t surprise me a damn bit.
“I need to take this, Nat.”
“What? No, no, no. You don’t need to take this, Josh. I want you to fuck me. Every other girl in town has had the chance.” He snorts and then laughs, but still he pulls the phone from his shorts and answers it, stepping away from me. My mouth drops open. He can’t do this.
“Yeah?” he says into the phone. I lean back against the wall, watching him, dumbfounded. His eyes dart over to me. “This isn’t a great time—I get it. I don’t want the police involved either... No I can’t fight tomorrow. Hell no. My stepsister—my doctor—she says—Okay, I get it. Maybe next week, yeah. I can train some, I think.”
Stepsister, doctor. Not Nat, not Natty, not the sexy, raspy way he says my name. Where do I fit? Who the fuck knows? I’d take fucktoy right about now, no bones about it. Well, lots of boning about it. I look down. My nipples still stand stiff. I pull my shirt down to hide them, to go back to normal. His eyes meet mine again, but the glimmer has vanished.
“Fine, yes, I can come today,” he says, clicking the phone off.
“What the fuck, Josh?” I say, heat pricking at the backs of my eyes. I want to cry—I want to scream, but I’m not that kind of woman. I’ve kept my cool for so long with Josh. That’s the role I fit into in this situation. Still, I’m fucking angry, and I probably couldn’t articulate why if someone asked me. Because he called me his doctor? Because he’s leaving? Because I’m horny?
What’s worse, the arousal still courses like fire through my body. I’m unsatisfied. I need to be filled.
“Nat, I’m sorry to do this, but they need me at the gym—”
“They who?”
“Ash. My trainer, my sponsor. He says Frank is breathing down his neck, wants me to fight. And if I don’t show up, Frank will get suspicious. And if Frank gets suspicious, then—”
“Okay, I get it. Then he might do something to wreck the big fight, or he might find out about it or whatever.” Josh nods, his face solemn. I flip my hair to the side, pretending I didn’t think he was talking about Katy. Thank God he wasn’t. Oh God, am I becoming that girl? I can’t. I’m fucking twenty-four.
“I hope you understand—”
“Sure, you can make your own decisions, Josh.” My voice comes out a little too casual, and he raises an eyebrow. “But you do need your sling, even if you’re healing remarkably fast.” He doesn’t catch the undertone in that last comment, but Josh has never been one for catching undertones.
“I didn’t mean to leave you like this, Nat. It’s not what I want.”
“It’s what you’re doing, so go,” I say. Just like that, my rea
l fantasy come to life is over. I watch Josh as he hurries out of the house, keys jangling in his pocket. I realize I didn’t even know he had keys—I didn’t even know he still had his car. And here I was, about to dive into his world without a second thought.
Long Shot: An MMA Stepbrother Romance Page 10
