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“What do you want, Brod? We didn’t really…talk much.” Uncharacteristic vulnerability laced her tone, gutting me. Because there was fear in her voice. And with good reason. I’d given her nothing beyond admitting I wanted her.
“You, Pix.” I answered simply, pausing that featherlight caress and allowing my palm to slide up and settle in the well between her breasts. “It’s always been you.”
“What would that even look like?” She breathed before her jaw tightened, like she was bracing for disappointment. I hated myself for planting that in her. Hated that I’d retreated inside my skull for years, that I hid behind my loyalty to her brothers for so long she was blatantly preparing for me to fuck this up. I deserved the trepidation in her eyes. Even if it shredded me. It might take a lifetime to make it up to her, but I decided right then that I would.
Fighting to swallow, I shrugged a shoulder, opting to answer truthfully. “I don’t know, baby. But I know I’m sick and tired of trying to not want you. Sick and tired of not holding you, of not coming home to see your smile or hear your voice. Your laugh. Of lying to the people that matter the most to me about how much you mean to me.”
Nodding, she rolled her lower lip between her teeth, and I raised a hand to her face, thumb freeing it before I leaned over to brush my lips over hers. We weren’t feral this time. The touch gentle and…almost aching.
“What about my brothers?” she breathed shakily when I freed her mouth, leaning our foreheads together.
“Fuck it, baby. I can’t keep this from them anymore. I just…I can’t. Not now.”
A relieved puff of air hit my lips, and then she tilted her chin, stealing sweet kisses. Leisurely kisses. Not the kiss you share with someone you love who’s getting on a plane in twelve hours.
“You know,” she finally breathed, “I’ve waited my entire adult life to hear you say something like that.” The way the end of her sentence went quiet had my gut nose diving.
“Why do I hear a ‘but’?”
“But…what are we doing? What do you want from me—from us?” She lifted onto her elbows, and I ran my palm down her torso to her hip, turning her into me. Needing her closer. Needing to stay tangled up in her toned legs. “How would this even work? I travel full-time. Hell, I can’t even remember the last time I stayed in my apartment for more than three consecutive nights. Getting home to Alaska happens less every year, especially since my parents retired in Florida. And you…you are Mistyvale.” Her gentle stroke against my stubble did nothing to ease the ache of the truth in those words.
The bridge of my nose stung, so I took a minute to tighten my grip on her hip, to admire the blooming hickey I’d inflicted at some point on her neck, down to the faint pink tinge of stubble burn on her thigh, where she had it draped over my leg. I loved seeing her disheveled like this. Evidence of my touch everywhere.
That didn’t stop the dread pooling in my stomach. I pulled my eyes back to her face, stroking a lazy line up her side. “What are you saying, Pix? This is just a one-night thing?”
“I don’t know.”
My chest went tight, so I cleared my throat. “What do you know?” I prompted gently, trailing my fingers down her bicep.
“That you don’t enjoy rocking the boat. That telling my brothers about this—about us, whatever that means—would seriously rock the boat. And that I don’t want you to risk losing them over whatever this is unless we know it’s gonna stick.” She shrugged like that suggestion wasn’t just a new form of torture.
“You asking me to lie to them, Pix?”
“I’m just… you guys made that dumb rule so that you weren’t alienated if things didn’t go right. We’re both mature adults—certainly too old to make drama. I’m never home to intrude on your space, anyway. So, let’s make sure it’s going right and then worry about telling them about our private lives.”
“A lie of omission is still a lie, El.”
“We’ve both been bullshitting them for years as it is. Why is this different?”
“Because that was out of loyalty,” I dipped to press kisses to her sternum, and each side of her collar bones before leaning back and finishing the thought. “And this feels… like a betrayal.”
“So, don’t then.” She shrugged. But in the next breath, she brought her fingers to trace my ribs as she added, “I just don’t want to be why you three fall out if this isn’t a forever thing.”
“And if it is a forever thing?” I countered, not missing the tiny twitch at the corner of her lips. I rolled my body over hers, and she laid down, smiling when I cradled her face in my palms, pressing kisses to her forehead, the tip of her nose.
Breathily, she said, “Then we cross that bridge when we get to it. Tell them together. I just want to take our time figuring all the answers out as just us first. Does that make sense?”
It did. And didn’t. My stomach did that uncomfortable flip flop that meant I was toeing the line of wrong and right. But when El tilted her chin to press her lips to mine, she silenced that unease. Silenced the world. Because the woman of my dreams wanted me back, and that had to be enough. “For now, just… let me worship you.”
Her concerns seemed to vanish as I slid down her body, hands roaming, dropping kisses along the way until I could bury my face between her legs again.
NINETEEN
ELORA
Once we’d rung ourselves dry, Broderick used one deft finger to scoop his cum back inside me in some primal unspoken laying of claim. Perverse, filthy, and toe-curlingly delicious. I loved it. Loved knowing our bodies had melded entirely. Loved his sly smile as his insatiable eyes followed the lines of my body to my face. My bones went liquid. I was lying in a pool of my own sweat, acutely aware of the skin his fingers had just set alight before he eased off the bed to the bathroom. It was there that my spinning mind came to a very important conclusion: I’d never really lived until my lifelong flame had orgasmed fifteen years of pent-up angst and desire out of my body in one sitting. Like we were a bomb that needed to be defused before it detonated, and we’d watched that ticker count down to the last possible second. The most adoring praise always followed his filthy words. That approbation, combined with his skilled, oh-so-responsive fingers and a cock the gods would envy, reduced me to an incoherent puddle of languid limbs draped across sheets that smelled like us.
That smelled like him.
