I deserved none of that.
But she could count on me to give her this.
I spread my hands wide and slipped them up the insides of her thighs, spreading her wide. Hands going back to her bottom, I lifted her from the couch when I leaned down and licked.
She yelped, and those needy little hands flew into my hair.
I turned, kissed the inside of her thigh, whispering against the flesh. “Is this okay, sweet girl?”
Sweet, fucking, delicious girl.
“If you stop, I will stab you, Oliver Preston.”
There she was. My smart-mouthed Nikki.
A smile pulled free, one I hid against her skin before I buried my face back in her heat.
Kissing her cunt like I had kissed her mouth.
Laps and licks against her lips, tongue driving between. I licked back to the tight pucker of her ass before I moved to lave at her clit.
Swollen and red.
I rolled my tongue around it.
Sucked.
Licked.
I pressed my hand to her belly, pushing down as I pressed two fingers into her pussy.
Her walls clenched around me, and she gasped, arching and begging and rubbing herself on my face.
Going a little wild the way I knew she would.
My dick pressed painfully at my jeans, so goddamned hard I was pretty sure I was gonna lose my mind if I didn’t get inside her. That was all right because this girl had always driven me insane.
After tonight, I feared I would never come back down.
Feared I was never going to be the same.
Guessed I hadn’t been since the first time I’d kissed her.
It was Nikki who’d marked me. Written herself on me. Hers when I could never belong.
I fucked her with my fingers, slow and hard while I ate her frantically.
Matching the frenzied beat that hammered my heart.
Driving her mad the way I knew I could. Wishing I could say screw it all and fuck her right.
“Ollie . . .”
She started chanting my name. Lifting her hips and begging me for more.
I could feel it coming.
Pleasure winding her tight.
So tight she was gonna take me with her.
I sucked and licked and drove my fingers into her tight body.
Everything lifted.
Her body.
My spirit.
She cried out as her entire body arched and bowed. Her stomach flexed, rippled with her sexy little six-pack, and her head rocked back, pressing into the pillow.
Bliss streaked through her and slammed into me.
Swells of pleasure.
A full-body glow.
So fucking gorgeous.
I wanted to sink inside her so bad I couldn’t see.
Wanted to disappear in her.
Get lost.
Or maybe find my way back.
Because I didn’t think I’d ever felt so close to home than I did while I was holding her like this.
As I led her through her orgasm, I climbed back over her and swallowed every one of her pants like they might be able to sustain me. The girl my breath.
“Ollie,” she whimpered as she came down, her hands going back to my bare chest, sliding down my quivering stomach.
She went for my fly.
Quickly, I reached between us and snatched her by the wrists. I pinned both of them over her head. “Told you I was gonna take care of you, Nikki. I meant it.”
Hurt washed across her face, and I leaned down and kissed it away.
She sighed into my mouth.
I eased back, grabbed her underwear from the floor, and helped her back into them before I resituated her dress.
Something about it felt so damned intimate.
Like I hadn’t been closer to her than right then.
Her eyes tenderly watched me.
“Now, you rest,” I told her.
I scooped her up the same way as I’d carried her inside.
Though this time, I carried her to my bed.
I laid her in the middle of it and stood at the side staring at her through the faint light that filtered in from the hall.
It left her nothing but a silhouette.
Still, laid out across my bed, that spellbinding girl was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.
Magic.
Doing something crazy in me.
“So beautiful,” I murmured, my damned hand shaking when I reached out and ran my knuckle from her temple to her chin.
She lifted to it, relishing in the touch, her voice a whisper in the night. “You, Ollie. It’s you who’s beautiful. You just don’t see yourself the same way as I do.”
I didn’t say anything, I just moved to my dresser and pulled out a tee, helped her from her dress, and tugged my shirt over her head.
It swallowed her, and I couldn’t help but grin.
I shrugged out of my jeans, leaving myself just in my underwear.
Could feel the fever in her gaze.
A smirk pulled to my mouth. “Told you, one look and you wouldn’t be able to think straight.”
“I can’t see you that well . . . why don’t you turn on the light?” The tease spun through the air, and I chuckled, climbed into my bed, and tucked her back against my chest.
So maybe it was stupid, but I pressed my hard cock to her ass. “Then we’d really be in trouble.”
She snuggled deeper into my hold. “Don’t pretend like we haven’t always been.”
Somberness moved between us, that awareness that had always been ours.
Magnetic.
I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer, all distance erased, my mouth at her ear. “I’ve resisted you for so long.”
She danced her fingertips over the mourning blazing stars on my forearm. “Until last year.”
My eyes closed, and I pulled in a deep breath.
It was like inhaling life.
“I can’t tell you how fucking sorry I am that I did that, Nikki. I . . . lost myself that night. Instead of getting easier, it seems to get more difficult every year. I needed you.”
Even though my mind didn’t process it, remember it, my soul had sought her out.
“And tonight?” she quietly asked, a million questions in the two tiny words.
What did we just do?
What does this mean?
How long until you hurt me again?
I nuzzled my nose into the locks of her honeyed hair, comfort gliding through me like a balm. “And tonight, you needed me.”
I paused for a second, gathering my thoughts, my words. They trembled with the quiet truth. “Stayin’ away from you is getting harder to do.”
She weaved her fingers through mine and pulled our entwined hands to the thunder of her heart, so loud it ricocheted through my room. “Things are changing, Ollie. I can feel it.”
What terrified me most was that I felt them changing, too.
18
Ollie
Sixteen Years Old
The sound of water crashing below them filled their ears, the spray of the falls cooling their skin as they stood at the edge of the cliffs with the sun beating down above them.
“Hey, pussies, are you coming, or what?” Rex hollered from the lake below, his head bobbing as he treaded water, moving out of the way so the three of them could jump.
Kale was already swimming back toward the beach so he could climb back up to jump again.
“Don’t be an asshole, Rex,” Sydney shouted.
He laughed, swiping his hand across the top of the water to make a wave. Like it could possibly fly all the way up to splash her.
Ollie chuckled under his breath. Sydney was right. Rex was an asshole. Constantly throwing jabs and gibes, Kale and Ollie throwing them right back.
Didn’t mean Ollie liked him any less.
They’d just gotten back from football camp. Third year they’d gone. All of them would be starters on the varsity tea
m this year. It’d been . . . exhilarating. Pushing himself, testing his limits.
But fuck.
He’d missed home.
He’d missed this.
He glanced to the girl, to her trembling hand wound in his.
He’d missed her.
Nikki Walters.
The girl who was supposed to be his best friend.
His second sister.
In that second, it slammed him.
The admission no longer something he could deny.
He’d missed her.
More than that, he wanted her.
Wanted her in a way he wasn’t supposed to, but with the way he’d been feeling at night in the dark—hell . . . with the way he’d been feeling in the light of day—it was getting harder and harder to ignore.
She’d had a boyfriend all last year, even though he’d told her he didn’t like it.
Not liking it was a damned disrespect to the way he actually felt.
He hated it. Abhorred it. It made his insides feel like they were shriveling up and disintegrating.
Not that he could say a whole lot since he’d gone through at least ten different girls in that time. But not one of them made him feel like Nikki.
Sweet, timid Nikki who was shaking in her floral bikini that showed off her rail-thin body, the girl nothing but skin and bone.
Didn’t matter. His body reacted no matter how fucking bad he begged it not to. There was just . . . something about her that twisted him all up inside.
“Come on,” Sydney urged, angling her head. “You can do it.”
He could feel his sister squeezing Nikki’s opposite hand.
There they were. Teenagers. Close to grown. Three of them holding hands the same way as they’d done since they were little kids.
Best friends never leaving the others’ sides.
Call it lame.
Hell, Rex constantly razzed him about it, giving him shit that he liked the girls better than him.
He did.
His crew was cool. His friends the type of guys he could count on for anything. Guys who would always have his back and he’d have theirs. No matter the circumstances.
But not like this. He didn’t care that the rest of them didn’t understand. Ollie’s entire world was watching over these two. Protecting them.
Problem was, that protectiveness for Nikki had grown into something new.
Nikki nervously peeked over the edge. She sucked in a staggered breath and started backing away, shaking her head as she tugged her hands from theirs. “You guys go ahead. I’ll take the trail back down.”
Sydney turned to face her, wearing her own bikini. That made him angry, too.
He’d kill whoever looked at her the wrong way.
The last year, he’d gotten into trouble twice for fighting some dipshit who thought he could mess with his sister.
One he’d overheard talking about her in the locker room, saying how easily he could get in her pants. The other had the audacity to think Ollie would actually turn a blind eye when he’d found them making out in the back of the senior’s car at a party.
Fuck no.
“No way, Nik Nik,” Sydney said. “We aren’t going without you.”
“Really. It’s fine.”
Sydney perched a hand on her hip. “No, it’s not fine. It’s fun. I promise. You don’t want to miss this.”
Nikki shook her head, timid the way she’d always been. “I’ve never done it before.”
A giggle lifted from Sydney, and she bounced forward, taking Nikki by the hand. “That’s the whole point. It’s the experience. About living. You know this. Every day counts, every moment matters. Don’t ever forget it.”
Ollie reached out and gathered back up Nikki’s hand. “Yeah.”
Every moment mattered.
“Come on, you can do it,” Sydney reassured again. “You don’t have anything to be scared of. Ollie and I are right here. We’ll be with you the whole time.”
All three of them squeezed hands and inched up to the edge of the cliff.
The roar of the waterfalls pouring into the lake a few yards away filled their ears, loud and stirring. Nikki drew in a deep breath, and Sydney peeked around her, his sister’s gaze bouncing between the two of them in her soft kind of encouragement.
Then she whispered it, the words no longer a shout but just as loud. “Fly, fly, dragonfly.”
They jumped.
Hand in hand.
Nikki screamed, and Sydney shrieked through her laughter.
Joy.
Always joy.
Ollie shouted as they plunged downward.
Loving it.
The feel of just . . . falling.
Falling.
He was falling.
He knew it then.
They hit the water. It split, swallowing them whole, sucking them down deep.
The three of them floated beneath the surface, surrounded by gushing bubbles and the streaks of light that penetrated the cool blue waters. Sound was distorted against his ears, and his heart beat harder in his chest as he used up all his air.
Or maybe it was Nikki who was doing it.
Stealing his breath.
She started to kick her legs through the water, and her foot scraped his upper leg as she propelled herself upward.
Just that graze rushed through him as if she’d raked her nails down his back.
The three of them broke the surface, laughing and gasping for air.
Nikki giggled the way she always did when she overcame a fear. After she’d tried something new that she wouldn’t have done without the two of them.
The roar of the waterfall was almost deafening as he looked across at Nikki with her head kicked back toward the sun.
Everything was so loud and silent at the same time as he stared.
Freckles and olive skin and honey hair.
He wanted to put his mouth on her so badly it hurt.
Sydney was already swimming for the shore, splashing with Rex as they drifted off in the distance, the two of them throwing barbs the way they did.
Ollie ducked under the water. He came up right in front of Nikki.
She gasped in surprise, then her mouth dropped open with more when he wrapped an arm around her waist and started to paddle them toward a cove in the cliffs.
“What are you doing, Ollie, you brute?” she asked, but it was a whisper.
All breathy from exertion.
Or maybe she felt the same way touching him as he did when touching her.
Like it meant something.
Like it meant everything.
Because she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. Her scent was all around him, his thoughts going haywire with having her like this.
“If you dunk me under that waterfall, you’re gonna pay for it,” she warned, trying to put lightness in her tone.
But there was no missing the way it came raspy from her throat.
Ollie tugged her into one of the secluded recesses carved out in the cliffs. A small vein of the waterfall dumped water into the lake from the rock protruding above their heads, making the cove completely secluded from the shore.
His feet barely touched, and she floated where he still held her around the waist.
“Ollie, what’s going on?” she whispered again, so low it was swallowed by the thunder of the waterfall.
He only wavered for a second before he threaded his fingers through her hair and murmured, “This.”
He dipped in and brushed his lips against hers.
Softly.
Barely there.
It didn’t matter. It was the most powerful thing he’d ever felt.
Intense and overwhelming.
Nikki gasped, but her hands went to the back of his head to pull him closer.
His tongue swept across her lips, prodding, praying she’d want to kiss him back.
Thank God. She did.
Her lips parted, and she plastered her body against his, h
er tiny boobs pressed against his bare chest.
Ollie grunted, overcome.
Was this really happening?
Their tongues danced.
Carefully.
Cautiously.
Her breaths soft, and his pants hard.
She pulled back, something like awe and confusion in her features. Exactly what he felt.
Confused.
Awed.
He ran the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip. “I’ve been wanting to do that for the longest time.”
A shy smile pulled across her mouth. “I’ve been wanting you to do that for the longest time, too.”
“Yeah?”
She bit at her lip. “Yeah.”
Her gaze traveled over his shoulder. Worry climbed to her face. He knew where her mind had gone.
“This is just between us, Nikki. You and me. It’s not anyone else’s business.”
“What about Sydney?” Guilt and more of that worry filled her words.
“Don’t think we should tell her.” He brushed back her hair, needing to touch her. He didn’t ever want to stop. “Not yet. One day . . . just . . . not yet. I don’t want her to get upset.”
We are three. Forever and ever, you and me.
Their pact swam through his mind. He shoved it down. For right then, he didn’t want to contemplate they might be doing something wrong. Leaving his sister when she’d been the one who’d brought them together in the first place.
Warily, Nikki looked back at him like she’d just thought all the same thoughts. “Okay. You and me.”
Then Ollie . . . he kissed her again.
And he knew he didn’t ever want to stop.
19
Nikki
I snuggled deeper into the massive arms locked around me, and contentment left me on a sigh as I relished in the steady thrum of his heart at my back.
I couldn’t believe I was lying there with Ollie wrapped around me like a blanket.
A big, gorgeous, burly blanket.
Heaven.
That’s what it was. Even when so much felt unstable and wrong, this felt . . . right.
In the dark recesses of the night, I let my eyes drift back closed, only for them to fly open again when I heard what must have pulled me from sleep in the first place.
Ringing.
Ringing from down the hall.
Shit.
Fight for Me: The Complete Collection Page 86
