The moment the tips of his fingers brushed over the tight oversensitive nerves, I cried out, throwing my head back. I didn’t care if this wasn’t a dream. I didn’t care what tomorrow would bring. “Please,” I begged, moving my hips against his hand. “Please, Brock . . .”
“Fuck,” he grunted, his mouth hot against my neck as I felt his finger sink deep into my wetness. “Fuck, you’re tight.”
My body was out of control. I gripped his arm, holding his hand to me as he pumped his finger in and out. My hips were moving faster and he did something with his hand, twisting his palm and it was everything—his mouth against my neck, his hand in my panties, between my thighs, his finger inside me—I clenched and then broke apart, crying out as sharp pleasure shattered my senses.
My body went lax as I slumped down, half on him and half against him. In my chest, my heart slowed and I was barely aware of his finger easing out of me. Sweat dotted my brow as I closed my eyes.
“Fuck,” I heard Brock say, and it was the last thing I heard.
* * *
I woke to my head throbbing and my left arm dead. I was also hot, like I’d been sleeping under a ton of blankets during the dead of summer.
Something furry brushed along the bottom of my foot, tickling me and causing me to jerk my leg. Confused, I pried open my eyes and immediately winced at the bright sunlight streaming into the living room. My head felt like a drummer had set up camp inside and my mouth felt like a desert and I . . .
I was not alone.
The first thing I saw was Rhage sitting on the arm of the couch, staring at me with his tail swishing back and forth. Slowly my gaze traveled up my leg and then got hung up on the very large hand resting on my hip. For several seconds I couldn’t process it, then I turned my head and saw Brock. His profile was relaxed, hair messy and lips slightly parted. The white button-down was wrinkled and half un-tucked, revealing an impossibly flat and ripped lower stomach. My gaze flew back to his face, and it all came crashing back—dinner last night, the two or three shots of whiskey on top of three glasses of wine, coming home and passing out next to Brock.
Waking up in the middle of the night and—oh my God.
Oh God.
Oh God, what had I done?
I flushed hot and then cold, and immediately I knew I needed to move. Carefully, with more grace than I knew I had, I slipped out of his loose embrace, sprang from the couch like I was made of coils, and then darted down the hall. I reached the hallway bathroom and flew inside it, closing the door behind me. I backed up until I hit the low rim of the tub and then I sat down.
Oh my God.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I let out a pitiful moan. I’d dry humped Brock’s leg. I totally did that—I dry humped his leg in the middle of the night, half-drunk and half-asleep.
And I’d done more than that. He’d done more than that. Glancing down at myself, I saw that my pants were still unbuttoned, unzipped. The hot-pink cotton panties peeking through.
Oh no, no, no.
I could still feel his finger inside me, pumping and sliding. I could hear my own breathy cries. Jumping up, I quickly buttoned up my pants and then turned, stopping halfway between the toilet and door.
“Holy shit,” I gasped. “Holy shit.”
I was never drinking again.
Ever.
Like fucking for real, I could not be trusted with alcohol.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself. “Okay. Focus, Jillian.”
He was still out there. I was going to have to face him. I had no idea how, because I had no idea how to look someone in the eye after practically molesting them while they slept.
I mean, when he woke up he seemed to be a willing partner, but still, this was going to be awkward, so awkward.
Turning on the faucet, I cupped the water and splashed it over my face. When I lifted my head, my face was still hot. What was I going to do? I slicked my hair back with wet hands, fighting the urge to sit down and have a really good cry.
Heavy footsteps sounded out in the hall, and I pushed away from the sink, quickly locking the door. Then I stared at it, holding my breath.
“Jillian?” Brock’s voice was rough with sleep, and I turned my head so my left ear was to the door. “Are you in there?”
Clasping my hands together, I mulled over what to do.
“I hope so,” he continued. “Because your cat is staring at me like he wants to be fed, and I feel like if I feed your cat, I’m crossing some kind of line,” he added with a laugh.
That was crossing a line? Pretty sure riding his leg and then his hand in a drunken stupor was crossing a line.
“Jilly,” he called again.
I had to answer. “I’m . . . I’m in here.”
There was a stretch of silence. “Are you okay?”
No. No I was not. “Sure.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No.” Then hope sprung alive, because maybe, just maybe, I could get him to leave. “I’ll be fine. You can go ahead and leave.”
“What?”
Sliding my hands over my hair, I tugged on the ends. “Thank you for driving me home last night and making sure I got in okay. I really appreciate it. I’ll—I’ll see you on Monday.”
There was another patch of silence, and I strained to hear what he was doing out in the hall. I thought I heard Rhage meow pitifully somewhere.
“Jillian,” he said my name, and this time there was no lightness or teasing to his tone. “Come out here.”
I scrunched up my nose. “No, thanks.”
“Jillian.”
“Seriously, I’ll see you on Monday—”
“You are not going to hide in the damn bathroom,” he cut in. “You’re going to open this door and come out here and talk to me.”
Yeah, that was not going to happen, and when I didn’t respond, I saw the knob turn.
Brock cursed. “Jillian, come on.”
Nope.
“Okay,” he said. “If you don’t want to come out, then we can talk through the door. I’m not stupid. I know why you’re hiding in the bathroom.”
My eyes narrowed at the closed door.
“There’s no reason to be embarrassed over what happened last night,” he started and I lost it.
“Really? I think there’s plenty of reasons to be embarrassed,” I said, dropping my hands. “I got drunk and I—”
“Used me to get off?” he supplied.
“Oh my God, seriously? Thanks for putting it bluntly.”
“I didn’t mind.”
My mouth dropped open and I just stared forward. I had no words. None. Zip. Nada. Then I shook my head. “How could you not mind? I practically molested you.”
Brock’s deep laugh made its way into the bathroom. “First off, if I didn’t want you doing any of that last night, I would’ve stopped you. I wouldn’t have made you come.”
I slapped my hands on my hips and nearly doubled over. Made you come. Oh God, he had so done that. I couldn’t deal with this. My head was still clouded from the devil’s nectar known as whiskey and wine, and I needed coffee, and I needed him gone.
“Okay,” I said after a moment. “Can we just pretend like that didn’t happen last night?”
“Are you serious?” he asked, and shock colored his tone.
“Yes. I am serious. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to acknowledge it,” I said in a rush. “And I want to go on like that never happened. We can do that. It’s better that way. So you don’t have to be okay with it or worry that it’ll happen again or that I think anything stupid.” I drew in a ragged breath. “Things will be normal.”
“Open the door,” Brock said calmly, way too calmly.
I shook my head. “You can leave.”
“Jillian.”
“I think you need to leave,” I said this time.
“Open the goddamn door or I will fucking break it down.”
Well then.
Casting my gaze to the ceiling, I let
out a ripe curse and then unlocked the bathroom door, because I didn’t put it past him to do it. “Better?” I shot back.
Brock stared at me, his jaw working, and damn it all to hell, he looked so rumpled and sexy with his hair nearly standing up and one tail of his shirt hanging loose. “Were you completely unaware of what you were doing last night? I need you to be honest with me, Jillian. Did you have no idea what you were doing?”
Part of me wanted to say that I was, but that wasn’t completely true. I’d been aware. I woke up from a dream and I’d wanted him, and he was there and . . .
“I knew you were buzzed, but I had no idea you were that—”
“I wasn’t that drunk,” I whispered, knowing I could never let him believe he somehow took advantage of the situation when he hadn’t, just to save face. “I knew what was happening, but I . . . I just wasn’t thinking. I knew. Honest.”
His eyes searched mine as some of the tension eased out of his shoulders. “Now I want you to listen me and I want you to listen real good. If you think for a second I can go around and pretend that I didn’t have my fingers in you and you didn’t come all around them, you have another thing coming.”
“Oh my God!” Horrified, I pressed my hands to my cheeks. “Can you not be any cruder?”
“Crude?” He smirked as he leaned against the door jamb, effectively trapping me in the bathroom. He crossed his arms. “You sure as hell didn’t have a problem fucking my hand last night—”
“I was drunk. Like, I thought I was still sleeping,” I argued.
“So do you normally dream of me then?”
My nostrils flared as I inhaled deeply and counted to five. “I do not dream about you.”
A smug half-grin appeared on his face, and I wanted to smack it off. “Yeah, I’m going to have to call bullshit on that.”
“You can call bullshit on your face for all I care,” I fired back, and his brows flew up. That sounded lame to my own ears. “The point is, I didn’t mean for that to happen last night and it shouldn’t have.”
A muscle flexed along Brock’s jaw as he eyed me. “I know you didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did. And maybe it shouldn’t have happened like that, but it did.”
I inhaled sharply as I blinked. Tears threatened to erupt, and with this headache, without coffee, and considering what had happened last night, it was going to be an epic meltdown. “Please,” I asked, begged really. “Please, can we just forget this? Can you just leave?”
For a moment, I didn’t think Brock was going to leave. I thought he was going to stay there, standing in the doorway of the hallway bathroom forever, but then something crossed his features. His jaw softened, as did those dark eyes of his. “Okay,” he said, pushing off the door and unfolding his arms.
“For now, I’ll let this go, but I don’t want you acting fucking weird over this. What happened out there, on the couch, isn’t something I’m ashamed about. You shouldn’t be either.” He stopped, drawing in a breath. “Don’t let this screw up what we’ve got happening here. Okay?”
I wanted to ask what exactly he thought was happening here, but all I could force out was a weak, “Okay.”
Chapter 18
Somewhere between the weekend and Monday morning, I realized that something I’d fantasied and dreamt about since I was old enough to know what those sex scenes in the books I read were really describing had actually happened.
Brock had kissed me.
Well, I had kissed him and he’d kissed me back. It wasn’t a long and passionate kiss. When I was younger, I’d dreamt of the kind of kisses that curled the toes and stole your breath. This kiss had been brutal and fast, and not only that, but he’d touched me—a part of him had actually been in me.
I couldn’t even wrap my head around it, because it didn’t . . . it didn’t count. It wasn’t real. I’d been out of it and he’d been half-asleep when he woke up, discovering me rubbing all over him like a cat in heat, and Brock . . . Brock responded like most men would’ve. And he hadn’t even gotten anything out of it. I’d fallen back asleep almost immediately.
What happened had meant nothing.
It couldn’t have, because we ending up being a disaster once before and we’d be a total catastrophe now. I had to guard my heart and I had to listen to my head. There was too much at risk for me to travel down that path again with Brock—my job, what I was hoping to accomplish for Avery and Teresa, and most importantly, my happiness.
I needed to keep my distance, so when my phone rang Sunday night, and it was Grady, not only was I surprised he was calling, I was almost eager to answer.
“You busy?” he asked when I answered.
“No. I was just reading,” I told him, glancing at the Kindle on the couch next to me. The screen had long since faded out and Rhage currently had one paw resting on the black edge as if he were daring me to try to pick it up.
“So, I’m going to be home this Saturday,” he said, and I couldn’t help think that even Brock would’ve asked what I was reading. The moment that thought popped into my head, I wanted to smack myself with the Kindle. “And I was hoping you’d be free and we could finally catch that dinner.”
“Really?” Surprised, I winced.
Grady laughed. “Yeah. You sound shocked. Did you think I wasn’t going to keep my promise?”
Yeah, I really hadn’t thought he would. He hadn’t texted since last Wednesday, and that had just been a generic “hey, how you doing” kind of thing. “I just thought that maybe you were just really busy.”
“I am, but I’ll be free Saturday night. So what do you think?”
An acidic taste coated the inside of my mouth—the same mouth that had been locked on Brock’s a little over twenty-four hours ago. Going out with Grady afterward seemed gross and wrong, like I should—
Wait.
Wait a freaking second.
I was not dating Brock. There was nothing between us, and it wasn’t like he had professed any sort of feelings for me. What had happened between us was . . . was a mistake. He’d known how I felt about him back when we were younger and that hadn’t stopped him from being the Academy bicycle.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with going out with Grady. Nothing at all, and actually, it was probably the best thing I could do.
So, I took a deep breath and said, “I would love to go out with you on Saturday.”
* * *
Come Monday morning, I did my best to act as normal as humanly possible when I saw Brock, having decided I wouldn’t think about it for one more second. We were grown adults—two sexually active, grown adults. Okay. I wasn’t really sexually active, but I was sure he was. Either way, we were adults. These things sometimes happened, and it had nothing to do with our past or even our present.
Brock was my friend and he was also my boss.
I could handle this and not make a big deal out of it.
When he strode in, bringing my pumpkin spice latte, all I could think about was how his hand had felt against me, and I could feel my face burn like the seven circles of hell.
His lips twitched as he placed the cup on my desk. “Good morning, Jillian.”
“Good morning.” I focused on his chest and then thought about how I’d slept on it. I averted my gaze to his hands, and that was the wrong move, because then I was thinking about him using that finger of his. Good God, there was no safe place to look.
He lingered, because of course. “How was your weekend?”
“Good. I just hung out at home.” I stared at his collarbone. That seemed like a safe place. “You?”
“Mostly boring,” he said. “Except for Friday night and Saturday morning. That was far from boring.”
Oh dear, he was going to go there? Sucking in air, I looked up at him. I was going to gloss right over that. “Well, that’s good to hear. I have some phone calls to make, so . . .”
Brock folded his arms, stretching the dress shirt until I feared it would rip right off and slip from his body. “
Make sure your schedule is cleared around noon. We’re going to lunch.”
My stomach twisted. The idea of going to lunch with him filled me with a mixture of dread and excitement, but I remembered that I was going to distance myself. I was going to be smart, for once, about this. Spending one-on-one time with him right now wasn’t a smart move. “I have too much to do today.”
One eyebrow rose. “You have time for lunch.”
“I packed it.”
Leaning forward, he unfolded his arms and placed his hands on my desk. “You can eat your packed lunch tomorrow.”
“I can’t,” I said. “It’s a salad. It will go bad.”
His eyes narrowed. “Since when do you eat salads?”
“Since forever.”
He was quiet for a moment. “And if I go back into the break room, what’s the likelihood of me finding this salad?”
Oh hell, he wouldn’t, would he? Yes, he would. But there had to be a salad back there. I worked with a ton of fitness nuts. Someone must have packed a salad. “You’ll find a salad.”
“That actually belongs to you?”
I clamped my mouth shut.
Brock smirked. “What if I said, as your boss, you’re going to lunch?”
My hand curled around the pen I held, clenching it so tightly I feared it would snap. “Then I would say that’s kind of an abuse of your position over me?”
He laughed. “That’s a reach.”
I forced a casual shrug. “I don’t think it would be right.”
“And why is that?”
My heart thumped against my ribs. “I just have a lot of work to do—”
“It’s because of this weekend,” he interrupted. “Even though I told you not to let this shit get in the way of what is happening?”
My gaze flew to the door. It was open, but no one was nearby. Still, I kept my voice low. “There isn’t anything happening, and it has nothing to do with this weekend,” I said, and that was a lie, but then I went with a bit of the truth, telling him something that I hoped he’d take as a hint. “Anyway, I’m going out with Grady on Saturday, so . . .”
Fire In You: Volume Six (Wait for You Series) Page 16
