by Witt, L. A.
I smiled despite the lump rising in my throat. “I want to jump. Do you?”
Her smile made me shiver and nearly brought me to tears in the same instant. “If you will, I will.”
I scooted closer to her on the couch. “I definitely do.” Cautiously, I reached for her, and when she didn’t recoil, I slid my hands into her hair. We were a breath apart now, lips almost touching, and we hovered there for what seemed like years.
“Even though I was angry,” she whispered, running her fingers down my cheek, “I missed you.”
“I missed you too. I’m sorry I pushed you away.”
“Maybe we needed a few bumps like this. To figure things out.”
“Maybe. But I’m sorry I hurt you along the way.”
Natalya smiled again, and without a word, drew me in and pressed her lips to mine.
Holy. Shit. Relief had never been so sweet. Though I’d fucked things up with her twice, we’d once again come back to this. The woman I loved had forgiven me. She was holding me, kissing me, and didn’t think I was the scum of the earth. Because by the grace of God, I’d figured things out and wasn’t the scum of the earth anymore.
Thank you, Levi . . .
Natalya drew back and met my gaze. “I don’t have to be on set until eight tomorrow.”
“I have to be there at five in the morning.” I rose, taking her hand. “But tonight, I’m all yours. Let’s go upstairs.”
Chapter 23
The first time we’d fallen into my bed together, I’d been drunk and disbelieving. Was Natalya really there? Were we really all over each other, panting and groping and well on our way to some long overdue orgasms?
This time I was sober, but the disbelief was stronger than ever. We’d made it back to this. For a second time. I’d be an idiot to let her go again, so I held on tight—to her, to clothes, to hair.
She did the same. We struggled out of clothes in between kissing, groping, grabbing. My shirt ripped. I didn’t care. A button popped off something and flew over the side of the bed. Didn’t know whose button. Didn’t care about that either.
I unclasped her bra. With that quiet release—elastic going slack around her ribs and the slender straps loosening over her shoulders—I may as well have pulled a thread that unraveled every stitch of clothing we wore. In a matter of seconds, we were naked, surrounded by discarded clothes that had somehow fallen away.
Naked, we tumbled onto the mattress. I rolled onto my back, pulling her with me, and grabbed a handful of hair as I kissed her.
She broke the kiss and moved downward. She kissed my neck so hard, I expected teeth, and yet when her teeth really did graze my skin, I jumped like she’d slapped me.
“You okay?” she asked, grinning against my throat.
“Uh-huh.” I tilted my head, arching into her. “Just . . . really . . .”
She nipped again, and the sting reduced my vocabulary to nil.
I wanted so badly to make her come, but right now, I could do nothing but touch her all over. Trace her smooth skin, the contours of her muscles, the swell of her hips the curve of her spine. Every time my fingers ran through her long hair or over her sharp features, I was a little closer to believing she was really here. That we’d had that conversation, come out on the other side, and found ourselves together and touching in my bed.
She lifted herself up onto her arms.
For a moment, we just stared at each other. The room was silent except for our fast, heavy breathing and the pounding of my heart, and when I touched her face, the faint hiss of fingertips across skin made my toes curl.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too.”
And with that, she sank into my kiss, and I rolled her onto her back. Her flesh warmed mine. My nipples grazed hers. The taste of her kiss nearly made me come undone, as did the softness of her skin when I started down her jaw to her neck. I continued along her throat, over her collarbone, onto her chest. I thought I felt her heart thumping beneath my lips, but with the way my own pulse was pounding in my ears, it was impossible to say where one ended and the other began.
I closed my lips around her nipple, and she sighed, stroking my hair and squirming beneath me. I pressed my teeth in until she yelped, and then I held her nipple there, teasing it with my tongue while she came unglued. Oh God, I’d missed this. Everything about it. Her shudders and gasps, her nails in my scalp, and her bilingual cursing. If I was dreaming—and I was pretty sure I was—then fine. As long as I never, ever woke up.
Kiss by kiss, I continued downward. I pushed her thighs apart, wrapped one arm around each, and went down on her. The second my tongue met her clit, she nearly jumped off the bed. I still couldn’t believe she was back in my bed, and though seeing was supposed to be believing, in this case, tasting was believing. That was the instant I stopped wondering if this was a dream. A delusion. A hallucination born of wishful thinking.
As I explored her with my tongue and teased her clit, a mix of arousal and relief washed over me. Her fingers raked through my hair, her nails scraping my scalp, and her soft moans filled the otherwise-silent room, and what kind of idiot had I been to push this woman away?
No time like the present to make up for stupidly lost time.
I closed my lips around her clit. Resting on one arm, I eased a finger inside her, and when I added the second, she whimpered. She was murmuring in Russian now, and I had no idea what she was saying, but the hand in my hair and the way she tightened around my fingers and pressed against my face filled in the blanks.
“Fuck, Anna,” she murmured. “Fuck, you’re so . . . good at . . .” She trailed off into a helpless moan. Her pussy clenched around my fingers so tightly I could barely move them, but I managed to beckon gently against her G-spot. And all the while, I worked at her clit relentlessly. No way in hell was I stopping until she came, and God, she felt like she was getting close. Trembling. Tensing. Gasping. Cursing. Much more of this, and I was going to come too just from the taste and sound and feel of her.
“Oh fuck!” She nearly levitated off the bed and cried out again, the sound echoing along my nerve endings. Her nails dug painfully into my scalp, and I kept circling and swirling my tongue around her clit until her fingers loosened in my hair. Then she nudged my forehead, so I backed off and finally stopped.
She sank back onto the bed, panting so hard her breasts were bouncing in time with her heavy breaths. “Fuck . . .”
I licked my lips, savoring the sweetness still lingering. Then I pushed myself onto my shaky arms and moved up over her, but I was so unsteady, I wasn’t sure I could keep from collapsing.
Just when I was sure my elbows would buckle, Natalya came up off the pillow, kissed me, and dragged me back down with her. We were kissing again, breathing each other, clawing at each other. The taste of her kiss and her pussy mingled between our lips. Hands drifted all over skin, and legs tangled beneath the thin sheet.
Then she rolled me onto my back and lifted herself up on her arms. As she rocked her hips against mine, rubbing her thigh against my clit and her own pussy on my thigh, she tilted her head back and whispered something in Russian. She was grinding against me now, both of us panting and cursing and whimpering, and then she shuddered so hard it reverberated right through me. She gasped for breath, shivering and trembling, our bodies rubbing together, and all I could do was stare up at her through tear-blurred eyes as her breasts bounced and skin flushed and she cried out in . . . Hell, it didn’t matter what language anymore.
Then she slumped over, exhaling hard. She whispered in Russian and collapsed on top of me.
I wrapped my arms around her, letting her bury her face against my neck as she panted against my skin.
“You haven’t come,” she slurred in sharply accented English.
“I will.” I kissed the top of her head. “We have all night.”
Natalya slowly released a breath and relaxed completely over me.
I couldn’t believe we were here. T
hat her taste was on my tongue. That we’d bounced back from my stupidity.
But we were. It was. We had.
And I just closed my eyes and held on.
Chapter 24
Eventually, she dropped onto her side so we could both breathe, but we didn’t let each other go. It was too hot for the sheets, especially when we held each other this close, so we kicked them into a rumpled heap at the foot of the bed.
For the longest time, we didn’t move, and we didn’t speak. My heart rate slowly came down, as did hers, but as the minutes went by, the nervous fluttering in my stomach intensified.
Finally, I whispered, “I’m sorry. For everything. Hurting you.”
“It’s done.” She kissed my forehead. “Forgiven.”
Still, I couldn’t relax. We’d landed here together again, but why didn’t this feel quite settled yet?
“Can I confess something?” she asked after a while.
“Okay.”
Smiling, she tucked my hair behind my ear. “I’ve wanted you since I started working on Wolf’s Landing.”
“Really?” Maybe it was a good thing it took us this long, though. I slipped my hand into hers. “And here I thought I’d be mortified if you ever caught me checking you out.”
“I caught you a few times.” She winked. “Why do you think I took you up on the drinks that first night? I had a feeling you were . . .”
“A sure thing?”
“Something like that.” She actually blushed a bit. “I was pissed off, and I was horny. And you’re hot.” She shrugged. “So . . .”
“It worked out. And now, here we are.”
“Mm-hmm.”
We locked eyes. Yeah. Here we were.
Now what?
I swallowed. “For the record, I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Neither do I.” She kissed me softly. “All we can do is take it a day at a time and see where things go.”
Except I know where these things go. They always do.
I resisted the urge to visibly cringe.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
So much for hiding it.
I sighed. “Look, this is a new thing for me—trying not to be so in control of a relationship. To say it’s terrifying is . . .” I swallowed. “Just . . . be patient with me. Let me know if I’m keeping too tight a grip on you.”
Natalya laughed. “Oh, I’ll let you know.”
After a second, I laughed too, then cuddled closer to her. “Guess I don’t have to worry about that, do I?”
“No.” She pressed her lips to my forehead again. “Definitely not.” She paused. “And, um, I’ll be more considerate. About how I talk to people.”
“No.” I drew back and met her gaze. “I trust you.”
“Still.” She kissed me softly, running her fingers through my hair. “I understand why it bothered you. As long as you can trust me to talk to men and to women, I’ll keep how I talk to them in check.”
This whole thing still terrified the hell out of me—insecurities were evil little bastards—but for a shot at making this work with Natalya? I took a deep breath and smiled. “Deal.”
She returned the smile and pressed another kiss to my lips.
I exhaled. “You know, I think I owe Levi a drink or two.”
“Do you?”
I nodded. “He’s the one who sat me down and got my head out of my ass.”
She laughed softly, taking my hand. “Guess I’ll have to thank him too, won’t I?”
“Probably, yes.” I paused. “Course, he owed me, considering I’ve had to do the same for him.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He’s a great guy, but he can really trip over his own feet in a relationship. Carter has the patience of a saint, let me tell you.” I met her gaze, and my humor faded a bit. “Which I guess . . . Well, apparently I can trip over my own feet too.”
“Anyone can.” She brushed a strand of hair out of my face. “We’ll be all right. You know I’m bisexual. I know you like control.” She shrugged. “If those things become problems, we’ll talk about it.”
“Before they become problems.”
Natalya nodded. “Yes.”
Finally, that uneasy feeling in my stomach started to settle. No, this wouldn’t be perfect or easy. All my insecurities and type A, control freak weirdness wouldn’t go away overnight. But maybe now that it was all out in the open, it wouldn’t be such a disaster when a problem reared its ugly head again.
Slowly but surely, as we lay here in each other’s arms, my heartbeat slowed and the knots in my stomach unwound. After spending so much time in a relationship that was hanging by a thread, it was such a relief to feel this way. Satisfied. Comfortable. Stable.
Maybe we’d fallen on our faces a few times at first, and maybe it had taken some time and work to find our footing, but we’d made it here. And none of the stumbling and flailing seemed to matter now.
Because Natalya was here. I was here.
And she was right—we didn’t have to stick the landing. We’d fallen on our faces, but then picked ourselves up and dusted each other off. If we crashed again, we’d fix it again.
It was terrifying, but exhilarating. Uncertain, but promising.
And I couldn’t wait to see where it went.
The End.
All The Wrong Places
About All The Wrong Places
Three cheating girlfriends in a row have given skateboarder Brennan Cross the same excuse: he wasn’t meeting their needs. Desperate and humiliated, he goes to the professionals at the local sex shop for advice.
Zafir Hamady, a sales clerk at Red Hot Bluewater, has an unusual theory: he doesn’t think Brennan is a bad lover. In fact, he doesn’t think Brennan is heterosexual. Or sexual at all, for that matter. He also can’t stop thinking about Brennan. But even if he’s right and Brennan really is asexual, that doesn’t mean Zafir has a chance. Brennan’s never dated a man, and Zafir’s never met anyone who’s game for a Muslim single father with a smart mouth and a GED.
Brennan’s always thought of himself as straight. But when sex is explicitly out of the mix, he finds himself drawn to Zafir for the qualities and interests they share. And Zafir can’t help enjoying Brennan’s company and the growing bond between Brennan and his son. They work well together, but with so many issues between them, doubts creep in, and Brennan’s struggle with his identity could push away the one person he didn’t know he could love.
This book was previously published.
Chapter 1
Brennan
Once was chance. Twice was coincidence. Three times was a goddamn pattern.
I’d heard that expression before, and thought I understood it, but this morning it made a lot more sense than I cared to admit. Especially since I wasn’t crazy about the pattern that I couldn’t deny anymore.
Half-sprawled on my sofa, I stared at the dark TV screen. The ceiling. The window. The blank wall that probably needed some artwork or something. Maybe one of those pastel paintings my mom had all over her house. Or a photo. There was a shop down on Main Street that carried some cool prints of landscapes and animals and—
And she’s gone.
No matter how many times I mentally changed the subject, the truth remained. Aimee was gone.
Question was, whose fault was it?
Technically, she’d initiated the breakup, but I would’ve dumped her had she given me a second to get a word in edgewise, because she’d fucked him how many times over the last few weeks?
Groaning, I leaned forward and scrubbed my hands over my face. I should’ve been crying or drinking or something. I was devastated, after all. A year and a half down the shitter. The woman I loved—gone. The heartbreak would probably show up soon, but right now I was a little preoccupied by the reason she’d given me for sleeping around.
“A woman has needs, Bren,” she’d said with a sort of apologetic shrug. “He does things that you don’t.”
Over and over,
those words ricocheted around in my head. Needs? Things I didn’t do for her? God, was I really that bad at sex?
Maybe I could’ve written it off and told myself she was just making excuses for cheating on me, but there was a small problem with that—she wasn’t the first. She was the third. I’d confronted the first after some rumors had made their way back to me. The second had thrown it in my face while we were arguing about something. And Aimee, I’d caught red-handed.
All three had given me more or less the same excuse.
And now . . .
Now I just wanted to curl up and die. More than twelve hours had passed since I’d caught her, and I was pretty sure everyone in our social circle had already heard. My phone was blowing up. Or, well, it had been until I’d turned the little bastard off. And like Aimee, Billy Fallbrook—the guy who’d been balls-deep in her when I’d walked through the door last night—was part of the local skateboarding scene. Knowing her, she was doing damage control. Knowing him, he was bragging to everyone that he’d nailed her.
Which meant everyone and their mother probably knew by now what a lame idiot I was in bed.
I gritted my teeth, wondering if I really was about to throw up. I swallowed hard to keep my breakfast down, but that was getting tougher every time my brain helpfully replayed that image of Aimee riding a spread-eagled Billy Fallbrook on our bed.
Fuck. Maybe I should’ve watched for a minute or two. Learned from his techniques. Figured out where the hell I kept falling short with the women in my life.
You’re pathetic, Brennan. Fucking pathetic.
Maybe, but I was getting desperate. Whatever I’d done for all three girlfriends, it obviously wasn’t enough. I needed some kind of help. Or advice. Or . . . or some goddamn CliffsNotes.
What the fuck was I supposed to do? Hire a sex therapist?
“So, I suck in bed. Help?”
Was there a documentary out there?
