The noises she makes . . . the way her body goes slack against mine . . .
My chest feels heavy with tenderness as I brush her hair back and look down at her flushed face and glazed eyes. “Did that feel even half as good as it looked?” I ask, trailing my finger along her cheek.
She pulls the towel around her and angrily avoids looking at me. “I assure you that’s not happening again,” she whispers.
God, I love her. I love her sass and her spunk, and I love how she gets shy with me. Amused by her shyness when she just came for me in a way no other woman has ever come before, I bend closer to kiss her ear, my voice husky. “I’m going to make sure that it does.”
“Don’t count on it. If I wanted to have an orgasm all alone, I could have taken care of myself without giving anyone a show.” She keeps the towel to her chest as she sits up and asks, “Can I borrow a damn shirt?”
She’s so cute angry, I smile as I head over to the closet and grab one of my usual black T’s.
Her dark scowl is still in place when I come back. “This okay?” I ask, feeling possessive as fuck when she takes it and slips it on.
She still looks shy and embarrassed about it all, which I don’t want her to be.
“Come eat something with me,” I say, and I’m happy when she slides off the bed and follows me to the kitchen.
“Let’s see what Diane left you,” she mumbles as she pulls out the contents from a hot drawer and uncovers a plate, her smile mischievous. “Eggs. They must’ve been on sale tonight.”
My smile flashes, and I look at her lips, and I want them more than the eggs and more than anything in this kitchen. Watching her so she doesn’t leave, I pull out two forks from a drawer and approach her. “Come share.” Because I want to fucking feed her.
“Oh, no,” she quickly says, palms up in the air. “No more eggs for me tonight. You enjoy.”
I set the fork down and follow her to the door, catching her wrist before she leaves and telling her, “Stay.”
She holds her breath and her eyes fly up to mine.
“I’ll stay,” she firmly whispers, “when you make love to me.”
She stares at me and I stare back, battling within myself. I want her. Fuck, I want her more than anything. She has to know that. I can’t fuck it up because I’m hornier than a goddamned devil.
I won’t fuck it up because of my cock.
Sighing drearily, I hold the door open for her and place myself so that she has to brush past me to leave. Every muscle in my body contracts as she brushes past . . . and I watch her as she heads down the hall, a vision in my fucking T-shirt, giving me the bluest balls of my life.
After dinner I have to take another shower, this one cold, and when I set up our clothes to dry, I find myself sniffing her wet dress, her wet bra, and her wet, fucking, cute white panties.
For hours, I imagine charging into her room and forcing her back here with me.
I imagine stripping her, fucking her, then kissing and petting her all night until the sun appears.
And then I imagine the look on her face when I tell her I’m bipolar.
PAST
AUSTIN
I feel like murdering something today.
Something curly haired and brown eyed. In a black fucking suit I paid for. In a tie I paid for. Wearing a fucking smile he is going to pay for.
Pete and Riley are my brothers.
I’d kill for them.
But Brooke is holding back from me, and I can’t stand watching her smile at them the way I want her to smile at me.
I hear them joke around. Laugh during breakfast, lunch. Dinner.
Now I slam the speedball, straight in the belly, while my gut hardens with anger as Pete walks with Brooke out of the house—out of my house—and they come toward me. Austin is a test to my stability. I can feel every moment of my life here choking around me, setting the wheels in my head spinning with memories that are too vague to recall clearly, but too painful to forget. This house I bought to get close to the same parents who abandoned me as a youngster. They wanted nothing of me, but like some hungry dog, it took me a while to get it in my head that they weren’t going to throw me a bone. And I kept coming and coming, somehow expecting I was going to get it.
I feel just as starved for a bone as I see Brooke coming my way with Pete.
No. I feel more starved. I feel rabid with pent-up longing for her, and my temper is in shreds. So when Pete grabs her elbows and whispers something to her, and she whispers something back, my gut roils as my jealousy corrodes me.
Oh, yeah, I feel like murdering something.
“Hey, B, you might try stretching him, his form’s not ideal. Coach thinks it’s a lower-back knot,” Riley calls out from the door of the barn.