Dirty Little Secret

by Laramie Briscoe

  “What?” he asked, not sure that he had heard her correctly.

  “I need more,” she breathed out, the frustration causing her to disentangle her hands from his hair and tangle them in her own, holding it back from her face. She was hot, so hot, and she needed him to make her even hotter. That was the only way she would cool off. “Don’t treat me like I’m gonna break.”

  There was an internal war with himself, how much did she mean of the words that she said and how much of it was desire talking? He hesitated.

  “I’m serious. I want this to be with you, I want to feel it with you.” She steeled herself against the words she was about to say, they were so unlike her. “Give me the first orgasm I haven’t had at my own fingers.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Their deep breathing was the only sound in the room as the gravity of what she said struck him in the chest. He was startled for a moment, and then he realized what she had actually said to him. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Christine sucked in a deep breath as he attacked her with an aggression that she hadn’t thought him capable of. Instead of the easy petting, the light tongue against her skin, this time he went after her hard. The stubble on his cheeks rubbed harshly against her skin, and she knew that she would wear that burn like a badge of honor, even if nobody but her could see it. His teeth worried the soft skin around her nipple. She gasped as his tongue soothed it, the slippery warmth of his mouth was a feeling she’d never felt before, and she strained against him.

  From where he worked, he tilted his eyes up, watching the look on her face. He noticed that she gripped her hair tightly, almost like she was afraid to touch him. He wondered if she thought she would break the spell if she did. Travis was trying to man up; he knew that once he went this far with her, he wouldn’t ever be able to come back from the precipice. He would go over and he would be done for. When he loved, he loved hard, and he knew that this woman—she could kill him and he’d go easily.

  He let go of her skin and slid up her body so that they were on eye level. “You’re gonna kill me, you know this, right?” he asked, a soft grin on his face.

  “No, I don’t.” She shook her head, not sure what he meant.

  Travis never broke her gaze as he let his hand trail down her stomach and over the only barrier that kept him from touching the part of her he wanted the most.

  Her eyes dilated as she got what he meant, and she spread her legs to accommodate him. She felt the tips of his fingers brush against the side of her underwear, and then bare skin, and she sucked in a breath. Without warning, his finger brushed against her clit, and she bucked against him, her eyes closing.

  “Nope, Christy, stay with me,” he told her. “Open those eyes.”

  This was a lot for her, way more intimate than anything she’d ever participated in before. It was hard for her to open up her emotions like this, but she knew that she needed to. She knew that it wasn’t fair to him to keep herself closed off because that’s what she always did. Opening her eyes was one of the hardest things she had ever done.

  “There ya go,” he praised her, gritting his teeth against the feelings coursing through his own body. Her core was hot and wet and it was inviting, and he wanted so badly to shove himself there and put both of them out of their misery, but he kept going back to WWTD? Tyler would make sure that his woman was taken care of and worry about himself later.

  “Travis,” she whined as he worked against her, not letting up. The feelings were overwhelming as she tried to process them. She had never allowed anyone else to make her feel this way before, never given herself over to anyone else. It was scary, sexy, and amazing, all at the same time.

  He watched her face, not able to look away as he manipulated her pleasure for himself. This wasn’t the kind of relationship where he took just what he wanted. He had been in those, more often than he cared to admit to anyone, but he wanted this more for her. The willingness to make sure she was pleasured in spite of his own needs was something new for him. It was those feelings that kept him here, in this limbo with her. But that wasn’t something to think about now; all he wanted to think about now was getting her there, pushing her over that edge, so that he could be the one who owned her pleasure. Nobody had ever given her this before, and he was going to be the one to own this part of her.

  She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down hard. “Feel good?” he asked, although he knew the answer. Her body was now pliant. When he’d first entered her, it had been tighter.

  “Yes!” She strained against him and her brows furrowed. She was reaching, reaching for the spot that was just out of her grasp.

  “What do you need?” he asked, his voice hot against her ear.

  “Can you talk to me?” Her face burned with embarrassment even asking the question, but she found with him she wanted the experience to be good. She no longer wanted to wonder why everyone else loved this so much.

  He stopped for a nanosecond, presumably to catch his breath and process her request. “Do you know how fucking hot you are to me? I’ve wanted to do this since the first moment I saw you on the stage at Wet Wanda’s. There hasn’t been one day that I have been around you that I haven’t wondered what this would be like.”

  “Did I live up to it?” she asked as she ground her body against his hand.

  He smirked, biting the edge of her earlobe. “Fucking crushed it.”

  It was that little bite of pain that pushed her over. She gasped loudly and went to put her hand over her mouth, the way she had before, but he grabbed it, forcing her to put sounds and words to her pleasure. Neither one of them was sure what she said, what she did, but it was enough to know that they shared the experience.

  He turned them so that they faced one another, and they were quiet for a long time until she opened her mouth.

  “I have to ask, this has been bothering me for a while, I’m not sure why, but I gotta know.”

  He gave her an indulgent smile. “What?”

  “This hipster glasses that you sometimes wear…” He laughed before she could even finish. “Do you have to wear them or are they a fashion statement?”

  “I’m one of those lucky fuckers that has 20/20 vision. I just wear them to piss Tyler off. He calls me a hipster too.”

  She wished she knew all these people in his life and, in turn, in Jagger’s life. That was the one she missed, the closeness that she had once had with her brother. She wanted that back, but it would mean being honest with him and telling him the hell that she had been through. She hadn’t even been able to tell Travis everything that had gone on.

  “You okay?”

  Christy nodded. “I just know that I’m going to have to see Jagger, face him, and tell him everything, and I know it’s going to have to be soon. Probably tomorrow.”

  He knew that too. With Rooster breathing down their backs, there was no way they could keep this quiet much longer. It wasn’t fair to continue to keep this to themselves, not when she was going to be staying at the dorm, and especially not when they were going to be right under Jagger’s nose for the most part. It wasn’t fair to any of them involved. “You’re right. We should tell them tomorrow. The quicker we do it, the quicker we can figure out what these sheriffs want with you, and we can defuse the situation with Roni, Rooster, and Liam.”

  “This is going to cause major problems, isn’t it?”

  Travis wanted to lie and tell her that it wouldn’t, that they were all adults and they should be able to behave that way, but he couldn’t. Jagger could be a hot head, and truth be told, so could he. He wasn’t sure how this was going to play out, but he couldn’t lie to her. “I don’t know. I hope not, but I can’t promise anything. None of us are known for our level-headedness. Except for maybe Tyler. He can be level-headed unless it deals with Mer. If it deals with her, then all bets are off.”

  “I don’t want to make this difficult for you.” She reached up and put her hand on his cheek, running it along the stubble that grew there. “
That was never my intention.”

  “Believe it or not, I know that. I’m the one who chased after you. If it hadn’t been for your car breaking down on the side of the road that day, then I would never have found you.”

  She remembered that day and then the subsequent days after that, when she had been scared of her own shadow but still stripping because she had needed money. She’d worried every time she saw him at Wet Wanda’s that he had told Jagger. Then weeks later, he’d come to her with another job, one where she wouldn’t have to take her clothes off, and she’d questioned everything about him again. No one had ever been that nice to her. Every time someone gave her something, it was because they wanted something in return. Even when he had put her up in the house to get her out of the CRISIS center, she still hadn’t believed he was doing it because he cared for her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she always wondered when the shoe was going to drop, when he was going to tell her that he was done playing games and they were adults, and that he wanted payment for his services. Those days and words, though, they never came. He never once asked for anything.

  “I’m glad you did find me, but I feel like I’ve been taking advantage of you.” She took a deep breath. “Which is why I want to be the one to tell Jagger.”

  He knew immediately that wasn’t a good idea—at all. “No, we need to do it together.”

  She knew her brother, but it occurred to her that she knew the brother that he had been then and not the man that he was now. It had been a very long time. “I think I’ll be fine, and I feel like I owe it to all of us to be the one to do this. I keep putting you out, and I don’t want to be that girl.”

  “You aren’t that girl,” he argued. “Anything I’ve done, I’ve done because I wanted to.”

  “But at the same time, I’ve let you. Now it’s time for me to stand on my own two feet.”

  “If this is what you want to do, then that’s fine, but I want to be there. I need to be there. If he gets out of hand, then I will handle him. I’m not throwing you to the wolves on your first day.” He shook his head at her. “I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy, and I like you way more than I’ve ever liked anyone else.”

  Those words warmed a spot in her heart that had long been cold, and she held them close. “Then it’s agreed? You let me tell him, but you can be there.”

  “I’ll let you tell him, but I promise you, when he starts swingin’—which he will do—it will be at me.”

  Christine didn’t want any more violence, and she hoped against it all that Travis was wrong about that.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Every grand plan the two of them had about how to tell Jagger was destroyed the very next morning. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the clubhouse, Travis had been absolutely sure of that. He was supposed to be at the shop, fixing Cash’s car. Travis had verified that with more than one person. So to say he was surprised when Jagger walked in, his arm around B, as Travis was telling Christine where they kept breakfast stuff was an understatement.

  The silence in the room was deafening. Travis had never understood the meaning of that phrase before, but as Jagger’s eyes went back and forth between him and Christine, the silence thundered in his ears. He could see the minute that Jagger put two and two together—it clicked in his eyes. The girls always talking about Travis having a woman, her being there this morning. He didn’t say one word as Jagger growled and came at him. He side-stepped him, and grabbed Jagger by the wrist.

  “How long have you known?” Jagger didn’t even recognize his own voice coming out of his mouth. The words were garbled, the pain was fresh. He swung with his other arm.

  “C’mon man,” Travis told him, pulling him by the arm out the back door. “Let’s not do this here, let’s take it outside.”

  Jagger, however, was a solid guy and he was not budging. He stood his ground, yanking against the hold that Travis had on him. He got loose, and Tyler grabbed him by the shirt. “I asked you how long you’ve known,” he yelled, pointing his finger at Travis.

  He didn’t want to do this in front of the rest of the group, the ladies, the children that had gathered around. This was private, this was between them, and he didn’t want the rest of them to see it—especially Christine. Especially after what they had shared the night before. This was too much for all of them. He had known this was the way it would go down, there was no other way it could. Jagger had no time to ease into this, he had no time to gauge his pain, it spewed forth now.

  “A while, and I’m not discussing it any further with you until we take it outside.”

  Jagger’s face twisted. He fought against Tyler’s hold. Tyler struggled to hang onto him, planting his feet on the floor and pulling back against gravity. “No, asshole, you don’t get to tell me what to do. I can’t believe you would hide this from me. That’s my sister!”

  Bianca reached for him as he broke free of Tyler’s hands, but they all missed him, and it was then that Travis knew he was in trouble. He wouldn’t defend himself because he knew he deserved it. Jagger hit him around the middle like a ton of bricks, knocking him into the table that stood in the middle of the room. They went down hard, and Travis struggled to catch his breath as they crashed into the floor, his head hitting the table, and he screamed bloody murder.

  “Jagger!” He could hear the women yelling at him, both Bianca and Christine, telling him to stop, but he couldn’t. He wanted Travis to know exactly how he felt. He had searched for his sister for years, had even gone back to their home and faced down his piece-of-shit father to find out what had happened to her. To find out she had been under his nose for months and he’d had no idea? That sucked, that hurt, and that was liable to make him rip Travis’ head clear off his shoulders.

  Travis could feel the blows as they came, one by one, with each crack of Jagger’s knuckles, some of his guilt went away. All along he had known it was wrong, he knew that it would backfire and probably fizzle out, but he’d wanted this so badly. He refused to defend himself—he deserved every bit of this.

  “Stop!” Bianca and Christine both yelled at Jagger.

  Travis had snapped out of it and was now trying to defend himself because his head hurt and his vision was blurry. “Dude,” he was telling Jagger. “Calm down, let’s go talk about this.”

  “Talk? You fucking want me to talk to you? That’s my sister!” The words seemed to enrage him even further.

  Christine watched as Jagger beat the ever-loving shit out of Travis. She had given up trying to make him stop. Every time he heard her voice, he seemed to hit harder, and she didn’t want that for Travis. This was all because of her, but she didn’t know how to put an end to it.

  Looking over at the man they called Rooster, she touched his arm. “Please, make him stop.”

  It was the way she looked at him, the way she made the appeal, that forced him to take a step forward and wrap his arms around Jagger’s waist, pulling the two of them apart. “I think he’s had enough.”

  Rooster was worried that Jagger wasn’t done, so he stood behind him for a few more minutes, waiting for the other man to get his breath.

  “He’s had enough,” Liam told Jagger. He had come running at the sound of screams, and he hadn’t been sure what he would see once he got there. It surprised him. He had figured they would have told Jagger by now. “He’s bleeding, you got his head good.”

  They helped Travis to sit up, but he slumped to the side when the room spun. “Fuck, man, he did get you good,” Layne said as he lifted the hair on the back of Travis’ head to get a good look at where the blood was coming from.

  Christine ran up to her brother, pulling him around by the arm. “You could have killed him!”

  They two of them came face to face for the first time in years, and the entire room was quiet. The tension was thick as the two of them looked at each other. Finally Jagger spoke, his voice harder than she had ever heard. He seemed like an entirely different person when the words left his mouth. “He’s fuc
kin’ lucky I didn’t. I hoped you had gotten out, but in reality, I thought you were dead. Now I found out he’s known where you’ve been, and he still won’t tell me? For how long?” That was the one thing he needed to know. How long had this been going on?

  “You left!” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she clamped her hand over her mouth, like she shouldn’t have spoken the truth.

  “No.” Jagger shook his head, his eyes flashing. “Do not cover your mouth from speaking the truth. I might be a bastard, but I am nothing like him.”

  Only they knew who Jagger spoke of—their father. If they said anything that showed him in an unsavory light, even if it was the truth, they both knew they would be paying for it for days. Both of them had learned to keep their mouths shut, to bury their true feelings down deep, so that no one would know what they really were.

  “Then can I speak freely?” she asked, her voice soft against the harshness of Travis’ breath. Tyler and Layne were attending to him as she and Jagger were having their face-off.

  “Please do.” He never wanted her to be scared of him the way she had their father—the same way he had been, and the feeling that he had just done more damage than good weighed heavily on him.

  “Let’s go out here.” She pointed to the sliding glass door that led to the back porch.

  “Don’t go out there with him by yourself,” Travis told her from where he sat, but his words were slurred, and she worried that Jagger had hurt him badly.

  She glanced behind her at Jagger and held up one finger before walking over to Travis. “I need to do this,” she whispered when she had crouched down to his level.

  “I don’t feel comfortable with it,” he argued, sounding more like himself.

  She shook her head before she placed her hand on his shoulder. “All you’ve done since I met you is protect me and take care of me. This is something I want to do on my own, something I have to do on my own. This is between us and no one else.”