by Lexi Ryan
I drop my gaze to my shoes. The glossy black finish is covered in sawdust from the shed floor.
“And you and Brittany probably share friends too, am I right? I hear them bombarding you with questions about her. I bet you don’t mind either, but I never hear them ask how you are.”
“I don’t mind,” I object softly. I feel like he’s seeing right through me, like he’s found all the ugly, rotten, spoiled parts I keep hidden. The parts that resent my sister for her cancer, even when I know it’s not her fault. The parts that resent my parents for all the times they seem to forget about their healthy daughter. It’s like he can see even the parts I don’t want to see myself, and I can’t decide if it’s terrifying or . . . a relief.
This is why I’ve felt sick all day. Not because I’m worried Marston will judge me for dating Roman and not because I think Marston’s right and Roman might hurt me again. My stomach has been in knots because where everyone else sees Brinley Knox, good girl and perfect daughter, Marston sees me. I’ve never felt so vulnerable. “How do you know all that?”
His lip twitches. “I’m bored. I’ve had some time to think about what makes you tick.”
My eyes widen. “You’ve been thinking about me?”
“A little.”
“Enough to psychoanalyze me.” Now I’m smiling. Smiling because he knows I’m screwed up and selfish—what the heck is happening here? “You’ve been thinking about me a lot.”
“Not in a creepy way.”
I chew on my bottom lip. “Maybe I wouldn’t be so lonely if I had a friend who thought about me in a not-creepy way. Then maybe I wouldn’t need to go to the drive-in with Roman.”
He grunts, but it sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. “You’re bribing me to be your friend?”
“Only if it’ll work.”
“Friends.” He shakes his head. “Your parents would freak out on both of us.”
“I think I need something in my life that my parents don’t control . . . and the only parts of my life they don’t control are the ones they don’t know about.”
Chapter Nine
Marston
Present day
Having a limo drive me around Vegas is all about swagger. I’m much more comfortable driving my own damn self or grabbing a Lyft if I’m drinking. But I’ve made my business successful by always appearing to be and have the best. The limo makes the right kind of statement, even if I find it obnoxious.
Tonight, as I cruise down the Strip next to Brinley for the third time tonight—her in my lap, my hands on her thighs as she makes a mess of my hair and kisses my neck—I realize it’s growing on me.
Her phone buzzes in her purse beside me. Groaning, she digs for it then grins when she looks at the screen.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Savvy and Alec ended up in some club that has pole dancing.”
I cough out a laugh. “Pretty sure that’s called a strip club where I come from.”
She shakes her head. “Not for strippers but for the customers.” She grins, eyes bright. “Savvy teaches a pole fitness class at The Orchid, and she wants me to go try out some moves with her in the club.”
I slide my hands to her ass and squeeze. “That’s something I wouldn’t miss. Want me to give the driver the address?”
“Not just yet,” she says, sliding off my lap and to her knees in front of me. The smile on her face as she unhooks my belt is devious, and I want to imprint it on my memories.
“Or we could go to the room first,” I say. But I’m already shifting in my seat, making it easier for her to free my cock from my pants.
I’m hard as hell, and Christ, her hand. Her grip is firm as she slides up and over the wet tip of my cock—her lips parted and her eyes wide. She watches her hand move over me, and my cock grows even harder. So fucking hot.
“I don’t want to wait.” Her gaze returns to mine for a split second before she resumes watching her hand. So hot.
She lowers her head and drags a slow, wet path along the underside of my cock. It’s all I can do not to thrust up into that heat, that perfect mouth, but I somehow manage to keep my hips still.
She slowly lowers her mouth over the head of my cock, and I don’t dare blink, don’t dare look away.
We never did this before. I thought about it. Christ, did I think about it—then and since. But until that last night together, we took things slow. She was so innocent and eager to hand me all her firsts. But we’re not the same people we were then, for better or worse, and tonight I’m no longer the delinquent kid who needs to worry that Brinley’s life will fall apart around her just because she’s associating with me. And she’s no longer the girl who jumps at her father’s shadow.
She works her way down my shaft slowly—torturously—but I love every fucking second. She squeezes the base with one hand and works her mouth over me.
I was already so turned on from touching her in the club, and now I’m on that edge too fast.
I slide a hand into her hair, and she lifts her gaze to meet mine. This, this is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen: Brinley Knox on her knees before me, eyes on mine as she sucks my cock.
I don’t guide her with my hand. I don’t want to know what she’s doing next or lead her into the next touch. I just want to feel exactly what she wants to give.
She works me over, again and again, until I think I can’t hold on anymore. Then she pulls her mouth off me and teases me with her tongue before doing it all over again. It’s bliss and torture and something between dream and fantasy.
When she finally takes me there, she ignores my warning and moans around my cock. I come with her name on my lips.
She crawls back onto my lap, straddling me and looping her hands behind my neck. She leans her head against my shoulder and releases a contented sigh. “I don’t want tonight to end.”
“Me neither.” And sitting here with her, it’s easy to forget we needed that decade apart. I needed to get where I am, but part of me will always see it as a stolen chunk of our lives. Time we could’ve been together. “I still can’t believe you tracked me down,” I finally say. My voice is a little shaky. I have a lot of questions about that. Why now? What does this mean? Do you still let your parents rule your life?
But those are landmines, and I can’t risk destroying this night for answers that can wait until tomorrow. Not when I have to fly to L.A. in less than twenty-four hours. Not when I still need to convince her that this—tonight, us—needs to be more than a blip in the timeline of our lives. We need to hold on and make it more.
She presses a kiss to the spot just below my ear. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner.”
“Maybe I’m glad you didn’t,” I say. “Maybe I needed a chance to become a better man.” How do I explain that everything I did, I did to be good enough? I didn’t want to be the person everyone looked to first the moment something went missing. I needed to prove myself—to her, to her parents, to the world. I needed to believe I wasn’t that kid who had to be saved by his widowed aunt, the charity case and the thief.
“When I look at you, I still see the boy I fell in love with,” she says, and my gut twists tight. Her eyes skim over every inch of my face, and her gaze is so intense that I feel like she alone can see past this façade of money and luxury and all the way to the broken man beneath.
“I’m not, though.” I grab her by the hips, pulling her tight against me.
She frames my face in her hands. “Still tough on the outside and gooey sweet on the inside.” She grins. “Still irresistible.”
“With one important difference,” I say, voice gruff. “I don’t need a damn thing from anyone anymore.”
She squeezes her eyes shut for a beat before looking at me again. “I don’t think that’s true, either. You’ve always needed someone to see you. I bet you still do. You’ve always needed more—deserved more—and all this money doesn’t change that.”
I don’t know if I deserve shit, but I want her. Fuck, righ
t now, I need her.
I knot a hand into her hair and guide her mouth to mine. Her kiss is open and hungry and . . . giving. It’s simple and complicated. Just like us.
“I bought you one more present,” I say, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the small velvet box. “Happy birthday, Brinley.”
“Marston.” She shakes her head as I place it in her palm. “You’ve already spoiled me too much. I can’t.”
My fingers brush hers as I open the box. “You can.”
The box holds a pair of pearl-and-diamond earrings and a matching necklace. The diamonds sparkle in the low light coming in through the windows, and the pearls seem to glow.
She keeps her eyes glued to the jewelry when she asks, “Why don’t you hate me?”
“I don’t have it in me.” I lift her chin until she’s looking in my eyes. “Never have. Never could.”
Her gaze dips then lifts. Back down. Back up. “Marston . . .”
I run a finger down her bare shoulder. “What is it?”
She shakes her head and gives me a sultry grin. “I want to cram everything we can into tonight. Starting with that club with Savvy.”
“Anything you want.”
Chapter Ten
Marston
October 27th, before
Nothing feels better after a day of working in the Knoxes’ endless gardens than diving into the cool waters of Lake Blackledge. The sun is low in the sky, and the warm late-day light makes the water’s surface sparkle. Everyone thinks it’s too cold to swim, but I don’t mind it. In fact, I prefer the lake without all the people from school crowding the beach. I like the quiet. The solitude.
“What are you doing out there?” someone calls from the shore, and it’s the only voice I want to hear right now.
Treading water, I squint in Brinley’s direction.
I swallow hard at the sight of her. She’s in a dress that comes down to her knees with a little sweater on top. Even from a distance, I can tell she looks beautiful. But she always looks like that. In the shed at school last week, we decided to be friends, but I haven’t seen her since. Friends, we decided. But I have no idea how to be friends with her.
“Hey,” I call, heading to shore. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw your car,” she says. She kicks off her shoes and tiptoes into the water until it laps at her shins. She shudders. “Are you trying to freeze to death?”
I grin, still moving closer. “It’s not that cold.”
“It’s not warm, either.” She wraps her arms around her waist.
Once my feet hit the bottom of the lake, I walk toward her until the water’s barely up to my waist. “It feels warmer if you get all the way in.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Her gaze dips to my chest then farther down before snapping back up. “You’re not even wearing swim trunks.”
I laugh. Under the water, my cotton boxer briefs cling to me. “I didn’t have any with me.”
“So why did you get in?”
I shrug. “I wanted to.”
She looks over her shoulder toward the beach and the small parking lot beyond.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “No one’s out here to see you talking to me.”
She licks her lips then turns back to shore.
That ended quickly.
But when she reaches her shoes, she doesn’t put them back on. Instead, she takes off her sweater, then unzips her dress and lets it fall to the sand.
I can’t speak. Can’t breathe.
She shivers, but when she faces me again, she has a big smile on her face.
Her underwear isn’t any more revealing than a bikini—hell, I came to the more popular part of this lake when I first came to town, and there were girls in bikinis that exposed way more than Brinley’s lacey white bra and cotton panties—but there’s something about this that’s so much sexier. Maybe it’s knowing I’m not supposed to know her like this. It’s like she’s letting me in on a secret—showing me more of herself than I’m supposed to see.
“If I get hypothermia, I’m counting on you to bring me to shore and warm me up.”
My eyebrows shoot into my hairline. “Oh, really?”
She seems to realize how that sounded, and her cheeks glow pink. “Oh my God, I didn’t mean it like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
I hold up my hands. “I didn’t say a thing.”
“Okay. I’m coming in.”
I grin. “Sure you are.”
She takes a deep breath and takes off in a run into the lake, splashing water everywhere. She stops beside me, the water lapping just below her bra, and squeaks. “So. Cold.”
I take both of her hands and back us into deeper waters. “It’s better if you get your whole body in.”
She lifts onto her tiptoes then dunks down to her neck in the water. “Still cold!”
I laugh and bend my knees to sink deeper with her. “Give it a minute.”
Little by little, she relaxes until she lets out a long breath and lifts her face toward the sky. “Okay, this actually is really nice.”
“See?”
She turns in a slow circle. Following her gaze, I take in the view of the trees and the water, the way the setting sun peeks between the trees and sends dappled light dancing on the water.
“Do you like it?” I want her to. I like Brinley, but I have no idea how to impress a girl who has everything, and somehow, that makes it that much more important that she likes what I like.
“It’s gorgeous.” She swims in circles, and I follow, enjoying the way the water moves over my sore muscles. I spent my whole weekend trimming shrubs and shoveling mulch, and while I don’t mind working with my hands, I’m not used to doing manual labor for eight hours at a time.
When she stops swimming, I can touch bottom, but Brinley has to tread water. She keeps her gaze cast on the opposite shore. I wait, giving her the time she seems to need to process her thoughts, but when she finally turns to me, her face is sad. “We’re friends, right?”
I don’t let my gaze dip beneath the surface of the water as I contemplate this. I’ve had friends, but never one I’ve so desperately wanted to see in wet underwear. I swallow. “Sure.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
A surge of protectiveness washes over me. “Why? What’s going on?”
She shakes her head. “Brittany’s in the hospital again. I just went to visit her, and she was . . .” She drags her bottom lip between her teeth and seems to search for the word. “She didn’t want me there.”
“I’m sorry, Brinley.”
She shakes her head. “No. It’s fine. She’s struggling to stay optimistic, and she’s sick of being sick all the time. She hates the hospital. But . . .”
I can’t pretend to know what that’s like. I used to wish I had a brother—someone to get through the hard times with—but to have that and then feel like you might lose it any day? I can’t imagine how lonely that would be, and Brinley’s loneliness makes my heart ache. I’ve felt it in her since that first night. Maybe that’s what’s always drawn us together. “Why don’t you want to go home?”
She looks to where the sun is disappearing into the trees. “Because she asked me to do her a favor, and I don’t know if I can.”
Only after a long silence do I ask, “Do you want to talk about it—the favor—or . . .”
She shifts in the water and floats toward me.
She loops her arms behind my neck, and my breath catches in my throat, but then her legs come around my waist, and I’m done for. “What are you doing?”
She licks the water off her bottom lip. “Throwing myself at the boy I like.”
“Why?”
She shakes her head, her eyes fixed on my mouth. “Why what?”
“Why—” Fuck it. I don’t need to know. I slide a hand into her wet hair and bring my mouth down to hers. I kiss her gently, and she answers my tenderness with intensity. I can practically taste the need to escape on her l
ips. She clings tighter and tighter to me, her breasts pressed against my chest, her hands tangling in my hair.
I tear my mouth off hers and kiss my way down her neck, licking and sucking lightly until she’s arching into me and moaning softly in my ear. I kiss across her collarbone up to her ear.
I think about this constantly. Brinley in my arms, kissing her, touching her. I think about it in bed at night. In the shower every morning. In the middle of fucking calculus. I’ve never been so gone for a girl. I keep telling myself it’s because she’s off-limits, but I know it’s more than that. I am so fucking done trying to talk her out of this, trying to pretend I don’t want her with everything I am.
When I lift my head, I draw in a ragged breath. Her eyes are closed and her head’s thrown back, as if to give my mouth access to every inch of her neck. She slowly opens her eyes, and the hunger I see there makes me want her even more. “I don’t want you to be with anyone else,” I say. “Not with Roman or Liam or even some guy who’s actually good enough for you. I want you to be with me.” I swallow. “And I know your parents would lose their minds, so I’m not asking you to tell them, but I’m saying friends isn’t going to be enough for how I feel about you.”
Her lips part. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Same.” I look around. It’s gotten dark, and the only lights come from the rising moon and the houses along the lake. “We should go.”
“I don’t want to go home,” she tells me again.
I shake my head. “We’ll go get dressed and then talk. You go home when you want. I’m not here to boss you around.”
“Good,” she says, but she doesn’t pull back or unhook her legs from my waist, and I don’t try to push her away.
“Are you really mine?” I ask.
She cocks her head to the side. “Depends. Are you mine?”
“Fuck yes.”
Her smile is so big and bright and just for me that I feel like I’ve won the lottery and gotten superpowers all in one fell swoop.
