“You don’t know Alex. You tell him about this and he’d give you the time off, probably with pay.”
Okay, so maybe that excuse wouldn’t work anymore. That’s what she got for landing the coolest boss in the world.
“It’s more complicated than that,” she said. She wasn’t about to go into the issue with her dad’s health problems. She shook her head. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it right now. It will mess up my good mood and I don’t want anything to ruin what I’m feeling. I want to celebrate!”
A slick grin broke out across Reid’s face. He held his hands out. “When it comes to having a good time, you got the right man for the job.”
* * *
“Oh, my God.” Brooklyn stumbled into her room and pulled Reid in behind her. “I don’t know the last time I had that much fun. Wait. I do. Never. I have never had that much freaking fun.” She released a satisfied sigh as she smiled up at the ceiling. “That club was amazing.”
“It was. Although I don’t know the last time I had that much fun without drinking,” Reid remarked. He followed that with a deep chuckle that reverberated along her hypersensitive skin. It had been that way throughout the night, her body responding to every word, every look, from Reid.
She tipped her nose in the air. “I got drunk one time. That was enough for me.”
“Let me rephrase that,” he said. “I didn’t know I could have that much fun without drinking. You’re teaching me things I didn’t know were possible.”
An impudent smile curved up one corner of her mouth. “There’s a lot more I can teach you.”
Wait. Had those brazen words come out of her mouth?
“Is that right?” Reid asked, his humor-laced drawl sluicing down her back.
She nodded. Brooklyn had no idea from where this bold, audacious person had emerged, but she was going with it.
He took a step forward. “Why don’t you tell me some of the things you can teach me?”
“Tell you?” She arched a brow. “Where’s the fun in that?” Her eyes dropped to his lips, and in a raspy voice, she whispered, “I’d rather show you.”
Intense heat flared in his eyes. He back her up against the door, capturing her wrists and pinning her arms on either side of her as he swooped down and imprisoned her mouth in a fierce kiss. His tongue plunged inside, demanding full capitulation with every insistent thrust. Brooklyn willingly surrendered as he undulated against her, his hips nudging forward, mimicking the rhythm of his tongue.
Reid drew his hands down her sides, running his palms along her hips, squeezing the same curves she so often tried to hide. He trailed his lips along her jawline, then down her neck to the hollow of her throat. Against her stomach she felt him swell, his thickening length growing harder with each second that ticked by.
“God, Brooklyn, do you have any idea how sexy you are?” he murmured against her skin. His grip moved to her backside. He incased her in his strong hands and squeezed, the action sending a shot of sensation spiraling through her. With amazingly little effort, Reid hefted her up and walked over to the dresser. He set her on top, knocking the empty plastic ice bucket to the floor in the process.
She locked her legs around his waist and clasped her arms around his neck, drawing his face back to hers. Brooklyn devoured his mouth, losing herself in his delicious kiss. Her breasts grew heavy with need, her nipples tightening to the point of pain.
Her skin-tight leotard now felt like a prison. She needed to free herself from the confines of the costume, but there was a voice in the back of her mind warning her not to move too fast.
She mentally shoved that voice in the closet as sensations bombarded her. The feel of his hands and lips and tongue making a playground of her body sent her careening toward the edge of her control. She thrust her hips forward, fireworks exploding within her at the feel of his heavy length colliding with her rapidly warming middle.
The warning came roaring back, imploring her to put a stop to this before they passed the point of no return.
Questions began to assail her, annoying thoughts she didn’t want to entertain, but that wouldn’t leave her alone. Like how many other women had been privy to his knowledgeable hands, lips, and tongue. Had he treated those women from his party to these same kisses? How many times had they felt his muscular chest abrading their breasts?
She didn’t want to know the answers to any of those questions. They meant nothing. Reid was here now. He wanted her. That’s all that mattered.
Until he slipped his hand between her legs and cupped her. Brooklyn fought the natural urge to thrust herself against his fingers. Instead, she reached down and wrapped her hand around his wrist, halting his movements.
“Reid, wait.”
He stopped immediately. “What’s wrong?”
Don’t say it! Don’t!
“I don’t think we should do this,” Brooklyn said.
God, why did she say that?
Reid’s shoulders sank with disappointment. “Are you sure?” he asked, the words coming out in heavy pants.
“No.” She shook her head. “But I still think we should stop.”
He braced his hands on either side of her hips and dropped his head against her shoulder. Brooklyn felt his breath against the curve of her neck.
After heaving a defeated sigh, he raised his head and stared at her, his face blanketed in frustrated confusion. “You mind telling me why you changed your mind all of a sudden?”
“I’m not even sure myself,” Brooklyn admitted. “This is just…it’s going too fast. Seven days ago I thought I would have to witness you walk out of your party with some other girl on your arm.”
“That never would have happened. You should know that by now.”
“Should I? You haven’t come right out and said that your casual sex days are over. How do I know that’s not what’s happening right now?”
Hurt slashed across his face and Brooklyn immediately felt like the most horrible person east of the Mississippi.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Forget I said that.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
“I didn’t mean for it to sound as if I was questioning your motives or anything.”
“But that’s exactly what you did.” He leaned forward, forcing her to lean her head back against mirror. “I know it’s asking a lot when I ask you to trust me with your heart, but I’m hoping you’ll do it anyway. Just give me a chance, Brooklyn. Are you willing to do that?”
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Stop thinking so hard,” he said. “This doesn’t have to be hard.”
“But do you understand why this is hard for me, Reid? Do you have any idea? It’s because guys like you usually ignore girls like me.”
“I—”
She shook her head. “No. Let me finish.” She let out a shaky breath. “You know all those silly teen movies where the shy, quiet girl has a crush on the star quarterback, and he magically falls in love with her? Those things don’t happen in real life. Opposites don’t attract. The hot jock doesn’t fall for the nerd.”
“Is that what you really think?”
“It’s what I know, Reid. I’m just being realistic here.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “You’re what I want, Brooklyn. You’re all I want. You want me to prove I’m serious about this? About us?”
“This isn’t about you proving anything. Honestly, it’s more about me.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You’re not giving me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ treatment. I’m the king of that line, and I call bullshit every single time I use it. You need me to show you that I’m serious. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”
The determination in his eyes both excited her and sort of frightened her.
Reid closed the short distance between them and placed a swift, but deep kiss on her lips. “Prepare for me to show you just what it means to be Reid Holmes’s girl.”
Chapter Ten
As he watched her playing horseshoes with his nephew, Reid fought like hell to ignore the wayward thoughts that had been encamped in his mind for much of the day. One would think if anything could stop the reel of dirty, nasty, filthy images from clicking in his head like a View-Master, it would be the fact that he was surrounded by his entire family. But apparently enjoying barbecue and joking around with his brothers was no match for a libido that was still riding high from what he and Brooklyn had almost done in a Biloxi hotel room last weekend.
Reid stifled a groan. The last thing he needed right now was to have one of his nosy ass family members notice him getting aroused in the middle of a picnic on the New Orleans lakefront.
He counted to ten and thought about Catholic nuns, his shoulders sagging with relief as he finally got his body under control. He tore his attention away from Brooklyn before that thing behind his zipper could get happy again. Instead, he looked over to the patch of browning grass where Griffin and his cousin Eli took practice swings with the new set of golf clubs Eli had carted in from his SUV. He’d been practicing swings at the adjacent golf course when he noticed the familiar cars parked in the shared parking lot. His cousin was such a freaking cliché when it came to the golf-playing physician.
Mackenna Arnold, his soon-to-be sister-in-law, and the soon-to-be next mayor of New Orleans if the early polls were any indication, had suggested they all come down to the lakefront to put the speedboat she’d won in her divorce to good use. His dad and Ezra had taken the boat out on Lake Pontchartrain. Accompanying them were a couple of his dad’s old navy buddies who had surprised him by coming into town to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their graduation from navy boot camp.
Reid thought he was being an adult by staying behind and offering to help at the grill, but Harrison was acting like a territorial ass, not allowing anyone within ten feet of the barbecue. Instead, Reid had joined the Frisbee match his niece and a few of her friends were engaged in. He faked an injury after one of the teens “accidentally” bumped into him for the third time. He didn’t want to cause an embarrassing scene by telling homegirl to back up off him, but he also wasn’t interested in encouraging seventeen-year-old jail bait either. The only woman he was interested in was the one wearing a My Little Pony T-shirt with a hot pink streak in her hair to match.
For the past half hour, he’d sat with his back against the picnic table, his arms spread out on either side of him, his eyes trained on Brooklyn. He loved watching her with his nephew. One would think a ten-year-old and a twenty-six-year-old wouldn’t have much in common. But an obsession with superheroes brought people together, no matter the age difference. Reid couldn’t hear anything they said, but their animated faces conveyed the bulk of their conversation. He suspected Athens was developing the same crush on Reid’s girl that Reid had developed on Athens’s mom back when he was around the kid’s age.
Wait. Had he just called Brooklyn his girl?
He had.
And he wasn’t hyperventilating.
He liked the thought of her being his girl. He loved it. If this was what it felt like to have an actual girlfriend, and not just someone he wanted in his bed for a night, Reid was ready to sign up for life. He never knew he could be this content.
He’d spent the past week at the Westbank job site, but as soon as he clocked off, he hauled ass to Brooklyn’s place. They had yet to make it past her living room, and the most outerwear he’d taken off were his work boots, but Reid didn’t feel the least bit deprived. They would eventually get fully naked. To be honest, a part of him was enjoying the anticipation. He’d never been made to wait for anything when it came to women. It made the promise of what lay ahead that much more enticing.
For now, satisfaction came in the form of seeing how far Brooklyn would let him go. Last night, his hand made it inside her bra. He’d nearly come in his pants the second his fingers closed around her hard nipple.
And why in the fuck was he thinking about this right now?
Reid flung his head back and lifted his hips slightly off the bench. He concentrated on the warm sun hitting his face and, once again, fought for control over his own damn body. The battle grew more punishing by the hour.
“Hey, open up the ice chest!”
Popping up at the sound of Indina’s voice, Reid hustled over to where she and Willow were making their way back from the car. They’d had to make a convenience store run after it was discovered that no one had thought to bring ice or plates.
Reid lifted the bag of ice from his sister’s hand and teased, “Took y’all long enough. What’d you have to do, make the ice?”
He swiftly dodged the slap he knew would be coming his way and emptied the ice over the bottles of water and cans of soda he’d stacked into the ice chest earlier.
“How much longer on that barbecue?” Indina called out to Harrison as she and Willow began taking the tops off the storage containers filled with dishes that had been made beforehand.
Harrison held up five fingers.
“That means it’ll be more like fifteen minutes,” Willow said. “Athens will need to eat something soon, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to tear him away from his new friend.”
“Speaking of this new friend, how long are we going to pretend it isn’t a big deal Reid showed up with a girl?” Indina asked, casting a droll look his way.
He was surprised it had taken this long for one of them to bring up the unconventionality of Brooklyn’s presence here. Before today, the closest Reid had ever come to bringing a date to a family function was when he would drop by for a plate to take back to his apartment. He’d always asked the woman to stay in the truck.
He should feel like a world-class shit for that, but the truth was, there had never been another girl he’d felt strongly enough about to introduce to his family. It felt right that Brooklyn was the first to hold that honor.
“Yeah, I know it’s a big deal,” he said now.
“A humongous deal,” Indina replied. “So, what’s the scoop? Harrison told Ezra that she works for Alex.”
His damn brothers gossiped like school girls.
“She’s the new site coordinator,” Reid confirmed. “She started at HCC about six weeks ago.”
“She’s cute,” Willow said. “Though, I have to admit she doesn’t look like your type.”
“I don’t have a type,” he said. Willow and Indina looked at each other and then burst out laughing. “Hey.” Reid frowned. “What’s up with that?”
“You so have a type,” his sister replied. “You always have.”
“How can I have a ‘type’ when I’ve never had an actual girlfriend?”
“Exactly,” Indina and Willow said at the same time.
“But one just has to look at some of the shit your friends tag you in on Facebook to know that you’ve had plenty of girls.” Indina’s shoulders shook in an exaggerated shiver. “I’m still trying to scrub the pictures I saw from last year’s Bayou Classic weekend out of my mind. There are some things I just don’t need to know about my baby brother.”
Reid rolled his eyes.
“Brooklyn is definitely an improvement,” Willow said. “She blew Athens away when she was able to name all the X-Men. Lily doesn’t want anything to do with his comics, so he’s impressed that a girl would know anything about them.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Reid said.
He realized now was as good a time as any for the big reveal. He’d finally convinced Brooklyn it was time to share her drawings of Dynamo Diane with his family. With the foundation’s kickoff party drawing near, they would need to get started on having the programs printed.
He stood and called for Brooklyn. She said something to Athens, then the two of them jogged over to the table. “Hey,” she said, breathless.
“Sorry to stop your fun, but this one here needs to eat a little something,” Willow said, setting a plate of carrots and celery sticks in front of Athens. His nephew grimaced, but started ea
ting.
“That’s okay. He was kicking my butt anyway,” Brooklyn said. She pointed at his nephew. “But I’m challenging you to a rematch after lunch.” She turned to Reid. “What’s up?”
He gestured with his chin toward Willow and Indina. “Are you ready to let them in on the secret?”
“Oh my God, you’re not pregnant are you?” Indina asked.
“No!” Brooklyn and Reid both shouted.
“Seriously, Deenie?” Reid said. He grabbed the oversized backpack he’d brought, unzipped it, and then handed it to Brooklyn. She looked over at him, her lips pressed together in doubt. “Show them,” Reid encouraged.
Reid couldn’t deny the nerves twisting around in his own belly. The pressure to get this right was overwhelming. He wanted to show his family he could rise to the occasion when they called upon him. He’d left the irresponsible slacker in his twenties.
Brooklyn unzipped the portfolio, but Reid caught her wrist before she could open it.
“Before she shows you what’s inside, I should explain that the superhero idea I came up with for the party was inspired by Brooklyn.”
She tucked her head down, a flush creeping across her cheeks. “I just wore a shirt. Reid is the one who came up with the idea.”
“It was a collaboration,” he said. “Anyway, what you’re about to see right now is one hundred percent her. It’s probably not even necessary for me to point that out. You’ll understand once you see it.”
“Well, can we finally see it?” Indina said. “Whatever it is?”
Brooklyn opened the portfolio and pulled out a plastic-sheathed drawing.
“Meet Dynamo Diane,” Reid said.
Willow gasped. She and Indina both stared at the drawing with their mouths agape. Anxiety surged through Reid’s bloodstream as he waited for one of them to say something. It was as if time was suspended as everyone just continued to stare.
Indina looked between Brooklyn and the drawing several times, her eyes wide. She reached for the drawing, then snatched her hand back, as if she was afraid to touch.
Awaken Me Page 20
