Slow Burn

by K. Bromberg

  I’m running through details in my mind as I unbuckle my seat belt. I need my phone like I need to breathe right now. It has everything in it—my to-dos, names of the VIPs to commit to memory, the schedule of events—everything. And I need everything to make sure I pull off this first of three events for a huge potential client without any glitches.

  I blow out a breath in exasperation, check the clock again to make sure time’s not standing still as I sit here waiting in the parking lot where Becks’s text indicated to meet him. But who am I kidding? It’s not that I’m pissed at the timing but more unsure what it’s going to be like between us. Awkward? Normal?

  It’s a bitch when you can’t see the strings, but they’re still tying you up in their invisible web. But the bigger question is, what is wrong with me? Why do I care so much?

  I’m trying to ignore the questions that are whirling in my mind on an endless reel when I look up just in time to see his SUV pull into the parking lot. “Well, hal-e-fucking-lu-jah,” I mutter, annoyed at myself for the thrill racing through me because I get to see Becks again.

  And that in itself is a huge problem. But it’s a problem I don’t have time to delve into any deeper if I plan on being ready for the event and the setup on time.

  He pulls up beside me and my stomach flip-flops when I look over at him through our car windows. His head is angled down, looking at something in his lap, wraparound sunglasses covering his eyes, and I study the line of his profile as I wait for him to look over at me. Finally, he finishes whatever he’s concentrating on in his lap and glances my way before getting out.

  My heart quickens as I exit my car, and fuck me sideways because I don’t want it to quicken. And I don’t want that sudden ache between my thighs.

  I walk to the back of our cars just as he does. And of course his presence—the sight of him, the scent of his cologne, that easy way he moves—has every one of my senses on high alert. He leans his shoulder against the back of his car, arms folded across his chest and my cell phone fisted in his hand. His eyes are hidden behind his tinted lenses, but I can feel them scrape their way over my body, despite his impassive expression.

  He purses his lips as we stand in a silent standoff, each of us trying to figure out how the other is going to react. And the problem is, I’m supposed to be unaffected by him, but hell if my eyes don’t keep wandering to that mouth of his, thinking of the incredible things it is capable of doing.

  Suck it up, Had. It was a one-off thing. Time to be a big girl and lock and load the chastity belt.

  “Hey, there.”

  “Haddie.” He nods his head at me and says nothing further. This behavior is so unlike the Becks I know that I’m at a loss trying to figure out how to play this. I’m sure he has questions about Dante answering the phone, but in all reality, it’s none of his damn business. If it makes anyone look bad, then it’s me, and frankly that might be for the best in order for him to knock this shit off.

  Whatever.

  I hold his phone out to him, and he takes it, his fingers grazing over mine—that cataclysmic current shocking up my arm at his touch. I pull back immediately and curse myself for it because it’s impossible for him not to notice my reaction. And my curse is also for being affected once again by the one person I don’t want to be affected by. More than that, though, is the fact that Becks has refolded his arms across his chest and has still not given me back my phone. Or shown the slightest reaction to our connection. What the hell?

  “Are you pissed at me?”

  He looks at me a moment longer, head angled to the side. “Nope,” he says as he pushes off the car and stands to full height. “I just have to keep repeating them in my head.”

  What? I’m lost here. “Repeating what in your head?”

  “My rules.” One side of his lips curl up, a smarmy smirk playing over his mouth. I want to tell him to take his sunglasses off so I can look in his eyes, so I can see that easy-go-lucky Becks I know, not this arrogant, closed-off guy standing in front of me. I shake my head because I’ve never seen this side of him, and, well, it’s kind of hot.

  Damn it! Just what I don’t need to be thinking right now. Don’t need to be seeing right now: Becks in this light.

  “Your rules?”

  “Yep,” he reaffirms with a measured nod, and just keeps looking at me. I’m about to ask him what exactly those rules are when he continues. “Rule number one: Don’t sleep with friends…. It just seems to complicate things.”

  I can see him fighting the full-blown smirk on his face, and the quip is off my tongue before I can stop it. “Well, it seems you already broke that rule, Country.” I fight the urge to step into him. Hating the potent mixture of need, attraction, irritation, and irrefutable lust that’s vibrating within me.

  And then he gives me that flippant, smart-ass quirk of his brows above his hidden eyes. “Yep, and look where that got me.”

  “Well, it’s not like we’re exactly friends.” What the hell is that supposed to mean, Haddie? My God, I’m losing it. Fricking losing it.

  “We’re not friends?” The mocking tone in how he makes the statement pisses me off, pushes my buttons as I glance down to my phone still in his hand. He takes a step closer to me. I retreat one step, but my back bumps against the back of his vehicle. He takes another, the space between us receding. With the angle of the sun, I can just barely make out his eyes through his lenses, and they meet mine with an amused curiosity.

  I swallow down the sudden lump in my throat from his nearness, my pulse erratic and the words that are always on a constant flow from my brain to my mouth a faltered jumble on my tongue. What the hell does Becks have on me? It’s like some stupid hold I can’t crawl out from under.

  He raises his eyebrows again in a gesture denoting he’s waiting, and in a move that is so unlike the sure-footed woman I am, I force words out that don’t make any sense. “No, not friends … we’re kind of like family.”

  Becks throws his head back and laughs loud and free, an almost palpable release of tension, before he lowers his head back down to look at me. He shakes his head back and forth, bemusement on his face. “City … that’s a whole lot of fucked-up after what we did the other night, but strangely, I follow your logic.”

  And for the first time, I see the Becks I know come through. The boyish smirk that tells me I got to him. That my comment knocked the attitude back and relaxed him some. “So, rules, huh?”

  Now that Becks is back in slow-and-easy mode, I feel a little bit more stability beneath my feet. He throws me when he shifts gears and goes all alpha on me. Definitely hot but at the same time confusing as fuck.

  He just gives me a measured nod again and glances down at my hand held out for my cell phone before disregarding it and looking back at me with his lips pursed in a lopsided smirk. He’s not giving in until I keep talking. And that’s fine. I can talk until the fricking cows come home, but he’s making it difficult the way he keeps getting closer and closer, the space between us dwindling, the air around us feeling as if it’s becoming scarce.

  Fuck a duck. Get a grip, Had. Chastity belt, chastity belt, I repeat to myself, trying to infuse some of my own humor into the situation to calm the nerves I never get but that are suddenly running rampant.

  “It’s okay. I get it,” I say with a nod, and I’m not quite sure if I’m talking to myself about why I’m suddenly on edge or to Becks about the need for rules. I breathe out a sigh, readjusting my thought process off of him. Onto him. And damn if my dirty mind doesn’t conjure up images of me on him. Riding him. Jesus, I need to get my head back into this thing—out of the gutter. I try to shake those thoughts. My head clears, but my thighs clench as his tongue darts out to wet his lower lip, completely oblivious to my thoughts.

  “Mm-hmm,” he murmurs, letting me struggle with my response. He reaches out, and I think he’s going to give me my phone and put me out of the unfamiliar tongue-tied misery I’m in, but no such luck.

  His finger grazes my
cheek as he pulls a strand of hair off my face. My breath hitches and my pulse races, but I bat his hand away, his touch on my skin giving me just the wake-up call I need. “I have rules of my own, you know….” I mean to sound like a petulant child, but the words come out in a breathy exhale.

  That knowing smirk of his grows even wider. Irks me more than it should, because I shouldn’t care. I don’t care. But my libido sure as hell does.

  “You do, do you?”

  Mr. I-always-talk-a-lot is now being stingy with words? I can beat him at this game, no problem. “Yep.”

  “Yep? That’s all you’re going to give me?” He chuckles as he takes the final step to close the distance, reaching up to raise his sunglasses to the top of his head. His aqua eyes blink from the sun for a moment before finding mine at the same time my breasts brush against the firmness of his chest.

  And damn. What was I going to say? I can’t remember because I feel his breath feather over my lips, and a chill breaks out over my skin despite the warm weather. “Yep?” he taunts again, drawing the word out in a long breath, and for a minute, I’m relieved to know that he is just as affected as I am.

  “Mm-hmm.” It’s all I can manage, desire increasing with each passing second.

  “And they are?” he prompts as he leans in closer, our connection even stronger now.

  “Lots of them,” I say in a whoosh of air, my mind not comprehending my lack of wit because everything I am concentrating on seems to be centered around the apex of my thighs. Ache. Need. Desire.

  He does that closemouthed laugh again. “I dare you to name one right now.” His breath feathers over my lips, the warmth of it a tantalizing taunt to my unsated need. I know he asked me a question, but hell if my synapses are firing efficiently right now. Thoughts of that mouth of his on me, tasting me, obliterate all coherent thoughts. He leans in closer, my breath unsteady now and my eyes drifting closed in anticipation of his kiss.

  A kiss I don’t want.

  Do want.

  Just give it to me, Becks.

  “Do you want something, Had?” he murmurs, his lips so close, I can feel their movement as he talks.

  Every nerve in my body is attuned to him: his body pressed against mine, his scent, his energy. I give my second “Mm-hmm” in a matter of minutes and mentally chastise myself, tell myself to quit being so pathetic. Guys have always been a dime a dozen to me … so why does Becks seem like that million-dollar check I can’t wait to cash?

  “Gonna have to do better than that in order to get what you want.” His taunting tone calls to me, breaks through my mental haze, and ignites the desire that’s already smoldering.

  “No strings,” I whisper, hoping that now that I’ve said it, I can get a taste of him—get what I want—but the minute I say it, the heat of his body is gone. My eyes flash open, lips fall apart. What the …?

  “Nice try, City, but I’m already well aware of that rule,” Becks says as he lowers his sunglasses back down over his eyes with one hand while the other places my phone in my hand. He takes a few steps away from me, smirk still owning his mouth, but I can see his arousal as crystal clear as the sky above me. And hell if he hasn’t flipped me on like a fucking switch and is leaving me high and dry without giving me the electricity needed to light me up.

  I go to say his name, mouth opening and closing a few times before I just give up and shut it.

  We stare at each other a moment longer, my sexual frustration obvious and his point made with a victorious grin before he nods at me. “Good luck with your client tonight,” he says, and then disappears around the driver’s side of the car. I step over to the back of my car as I hear his engine rev before he pulls forward through the open spot in front of him and leaves.

  And I stand there for a moment longer, my body amped up on adrenaline and my desire for him a mixture of necessity and damnation.

  Well played, Daniels. Well played.

  Hell, if strings aren’t looking pretty damn appealing right now. I want to tie him up, get my fill of him, and then leave him bound up with need like he just did to me.

  Chapter 9

  BECKETT

  I let the hot water sluice down my back as I soap up and clean the ocean’s salt from my skin. The wave sets were pretty damn impressive this morning. Nothing like the ones I learned from at the beaches up in Santa Cruz, but decent nonetheless. Add to that the forty minutes I put into running on the beach’s waterline after surfing, and I’m a happy man.

  Well, I’d be helluva lot happier if I were standing here with Haddie, soaping up that ridiculous body of hers. Sliding sudsy hands over her smooth skin and perfect curves, and then sliding something else inside her until we’re both panting, spent, and needing to soap back up again.

  Goddamn.

  The onslaught of thoughts and desires that the memory of that body invokes has me hard as a rock with no relief in sight.

  Not if I can have anything to do about it.

  Her body might be the holy frickin’ grail of perfection but something in her eyes said what’s inside doesn’t jibe. The confidence she exudes—that she used to own like her golden tanned skin—is tinged with something now. Whether it’s sadness or grief … who the fuck knows? But the glimpses are there when that wall she lives behind slips every once in a while. And when it slips, so do the connections she’s made to everyone around her.

  Well, everyone but Rylee, and that’s to be expected, them being best friends and all. Just like Colton and me.

  And hell if I don’t miss that asshole. Happy for him that he found happiness with Ry after all of the shit that’s happened to him, but damn if I don’t miss his sarcastic mouth and annoying micromanagement at work.

  I pull myself from my thoughts when I realize my dick is still flying full staff in my hand from thinking about Haddie. Then why in the hell has my mind veered to Colton?

  Dude, that’s fucked-up. I laugh out loud into the shower stall, knowing I must be stressed over all the preparations at work for the upcoming race season if I’m about to ease the ache from Haddie and my mind shifts gears halfway through to Colton.

  Thoughts back to where they should be, on sweet, sweet Haddie, I roll my head back as my hand begins to stroke, adding only a small measure of the pleasure that Haddie gave me that night—when I resisted, tried to do the right thing to prevent what could be a fiasco of catastrophic proportions if our one night together went sideways.

  Sideways. Hm, now that’s an option when it comes to bending that sweet-ass body of hers.

  I close my eyes and recall the purr from deep in her throat that she emitted right before she came, how her fingers tightened on my body, fingernails digging in when she let go.

  I can feel my body tensing, my orgasm gearing up to release some of the rampant need that seeing Haddie the other day made resurface. It’s lingered persistently, like a ghost, always reminding me of every damn thing about her.

  And then Rex starts barking like a damn maniac.

  At first I force myself to block him out, focus on the task at hand, but then realize that someone is at the door. Are you fucking serious? I stand there midstroke as I try to decide whether I should finish or should just chalk it up as a sign that I need to wait because I’ll have the real thing soon enough.

  Optimistic thinking at its finest. Even though the woman I’m after has proven more complex than a goddamn Rubik’s Cube.

  Fuck. Waiting it is, then. I turn off the shower just as the doorbell rings again. I can barely hear it above Rex’s howling and tail thumping against the wall by the front door. It’s wagging, so it must be someone he knows at least.

  “Just a minute!” I yell as I rub the towel over my head momentarily before wrapping it around my waist. I make my way to the door, mentally telling my dick to downgrade its status, although all thoughts of Haddie and the boner I just had completely vanish when I see the smile on the other end of the peephole.

  “Shit,” I sigh as I reach out to grab the door handle. I
make a quick check that I’m not pitching a tent beneath my towel, and my own smile widens without preamble. The door swings open, and she gives me a once-over, up and down with a smart shake of her head. Before I can even say hello, she’s barreling into the house right past me.

  “It’s ten a.m., and your lazy butt is just getting in the shower? Is that how I raised you, Beckett Dixon?” She breezes in, and I know she’s serious because she’s using my middle name. I hold back a laugh because I can see her bloodhound nose trying to scent if I’m here alone or have had any females in the house as of late.

  “Hi, Mom.” I roll my eyes, one hand holding my towel up at my side, and my smile growing wider as I watch her set the bags in her hand on the counter before meandering around the family room. Her seemingly aimless stroll to the couch is actually a fishing expedition to see if there is an errant Cosmopolitan magazine on the table or a pair of pink flip-flops randomly left about—a surefire sign in her eyes that I’m settling down, ready to marry and give her grandbabies.

  Ha. That’s about as likely as me giving up racing.

  “You can tell your lady friend who was in the shower with you to come on out now,” she says loudly as she walks past the hallway to my bedroom, her hand down at her side, petting an exuberant Rex all the while. “I won’t judge, I promise.”

  “Mom,” I laugh with a shake of my head and exasperation in my voice, “there is no one in my bedroom.”

  “What about your shower? You were in the shower, right?” The expectancy in her voice makes me sad I’ve disappointed her because at heart who wants to let his parents down, but seriously, marriage and a baby? At this juncture in my life, it’s something I most definitely want, but it’s a blip on my radar for the near future.

  I run a hand through my still soaked hair. The woman is relentless in her pursuit for a grandchild. Early retirement from her teaching job has been good to her but has also left her bored and pining for someone to coddle and rock and sing the ABCs with.

  She walks past me and now that I know my towel is secure, I grab her and wrap my arms around her. “Hi, Momma. Good to see you.”