Page 10 of His Forbidden Kiss

CHAPTER7

Three Months Later

Kim’s heels clicked on the concrete floor of the parking garage as she rushed to her car. She tugged her coat tighter around her as the cold air sent a shiver down her spine. The sun had set over St. Louis and the temperature had dropped. It was New Year’s Eve and while there was no snow in sight, the wind had picked up, leaving a bite in the air.

She hurried the final steps to her vehicle and slid behind the wheel. No sooner had she started the car than the sound of her phone ringing filled the small space. Her best friend’s name popped up on the screen in big letters.

“Hey, Ali.”

“Hey, yourself. Are you on your way to your parents’ house?”

“Yeah. I’m just leaving work. Got stuck on a call. You already there?”

Silence met her question.

Every second that passed where her friend didn’t answer had Kim’s heart rate kicking up a notch. “Ali?”

“Don’t kill me, okay, but I won’t be able to make it.”

“What? Why?” Kim’s voice vibrated in the small confines of the car.

“I’m sorry. You know I was planning to be there, but my mom called about an hour ago. She and her current boyfriend had a huge fight, so I told her she could stay with me for the night. She’s curled up on my couch with a huge glass of wine and a box of tissues. I’m sorry.”

Kim’s anxiety ratcheted up another notch. She’d been counting on Ali being there...being her buffer. But it wasn’t as if she could fault her friend. Ali was supporting her mom. How could she be mad about that?

“It’s okay,” Kim said. “I forgive you.” Ali and her mom didn’t have the best relationship. It was kind of messed up, actually. Ali tended to act like the parent while her mom hopped from boyfriend to boyfriend, looking for someone to fix all that was wrong in her life.

“Thanks.” Ali paused. “I am sorry, though. I hate leaving you hanging like this.”

“I’m a big girl. I’ll be okay.” Maybe if Kim said it enough times, she’d believe it.

The long pause on the other end of the line told Kim that Ali wasn’t convinced. “Call me later if you need me. And give your mom and dad a hug for me.”

“I will.”

Kim released a loud breath as she disconnected the call and headed out of the city toward her parents’ home in the suburbs. It was already after six, which meant she would most likely be the last to arrive. Not that her parents’ New Year’s Eve party was a major social event. It wasn’t. But it was a big deal for them.

Every year, her mom and dad opened up their home to their nearest neighbors and to a few close friends. Her mom would bake dozens of cookies, make her famous punch, enough food to feed an army, and decorate her house from top to bottom. It was a big affair. As far as her family was concerned, anyway.

Normally, it was something Kim looked forward to. Her brother’s best friend—the man Kim had spent the last seventeen years fantasizing about—Justin McKay, would be there. Unfortunately, he was also the reason she was dreading tonight.

Maybe dreading was too strong a word. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to see him. She did. The man still starred in her fantasies. The problem was that now she didn’t have to dream about what it would be like to have him touch her, kiss her. Kim knew what it was like and she got to relive their one night together in vivid detail every time she closed her eyes.

It had been three months and she’d been avoiding him since. Well, sort of. If avoiding him meant that she’d joined the private BDSM club, Serpent’s Kiss, where he was a member and watched from afar as he flirted with various submissives every night.

It was torture, but she’d brought it on herself. She’d thought she could handle it. Thought she could find a connection with one of the other Doms like the one she’d felt with Justin when he’d draped her over his lap and spanked her. But so far, all being at the club had done was make her ache even more to have Justin’s hands on her again.

At the club, they kept their distance. She hung out with Ali and her friends, while Justin mingled or sat at the bar talking to Brandon, one of the bartenders.

Tonight, however, avoiding him wouldn’t be so easy. Her family would notice if she gave him the cold shoulder or left the room every time he entered. No, she was going to have to suck it up and face him. They were both adults. They could do this. Adults had one-night stands all the time. Right?

As she pulled up in front of her parents’ house, she was still trying to convince herself. Maybe she should call and say she was stuck at work or that Ali needed her to help with her mother’s latest boyfriend disaster. While Kim didn’t want to put her friend in that position, she knew Ali would back her up.

The decision was made for her, however, when the door opened, and her brother peeked his head outside. He was looking straight at her. So much for ducking out before being noticed.

Turning off the engine, Kim scooped her purse from the seat and stepped out of the vehicle. As she neared the house, her brother crossed his arms to ward off the chill. “Hurry up, Sis. It’s cold out here.”

“No one told you to stand there with the door open. I’m an adult, you know. I can walk from my car to the door by myself.”

He moved to the side to let her pass. “Gotta do my chivalrous duty to protect the womenfolk.”

Kim turned and stuck her tongue out at her big brother before hanging her coat up in the hall closet. She’d barely got her coat on the hanger when she was lifted a foot off the floor. “Mark! Put me down.”

Her brother laughed.

“Mark Jacob Langley, put your sister down.” Belinda Langley’s voice boomed from the kitchen.

“Yes, ma’am.” Her brother was still chuckling when he set her feet back on the floor. “Saved by Mom.”

Kim rolled her eyes and straightened her clothes. “Don’t you have someone else to annoy?”

“Of course,” Mark said. “But picking on you is so much fun.”

“I thought you said you were looking to protect me,” she said as she headed toward the kitchen, leaving him behind.

“I can do both,” he called from behind her.

Ignoring him, she stepped into the kitchen to find her mother stirring a pot on the stove. Kim walked over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Happy New Year.”

Her mom smiled and wrapped one arm around her daughter’s waist, pulling Kim against her side. “How’s my baby girl? Work going okay?”

“Work’s good. Busy as always. Sorry, I’m late.”

With a peck on the cheek, her mom released her. “I know you work hard. I’m just glad you made it.” Her mom removed the sauce she’d been stirring from the stove and poured it into a bowl. “Is Ali coming?”

Kim snatched an olive from a nearby tray and popped it into her mouth. “Something came up with her mom, so she can’t make it.”

“That’s too bad. Her mom needs to find a nice man to settle down with instead of chasing these bad boys.”

Kim didn’t say anything because she knew what was coming next.

Sure enough, with barely a pause, her mother continued. “Speaking of men, do you have a new fella in your life these days?”

To give herself a minute, she ate another olive, taking time to suck the pimiento out of the center before devouring the rest of the olive. She was about to answer her mother when her brother and Justin strolled into the room. They were both smiling from ear to ear, laughing at some joke, no doubt.

Justin’s gaze zeroed in on her and her heart rate kicked up. The juicy olive lost all its flavor as she stared into Justin’s vivid green eyes. He only held her gaze for a few seconds, but it was enough to raise her body temperature and have her clenching her thighs together. The memory of those eyes staring back at her in a much more intimate moment had her wishing for things that would never be.

Completely oblivious of the tension in the room, her brother removed two beers from the refrigerator, handing one to Justin, and before she knew it, they were gone.

“Are you okay, honey?” her mom asked, reaching up to check her forehead to see if she had a temperature. “You look flushed.”

Kim gave her mom what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. Did you need me to carry anything into the dining room?”

Her mom frowned but let it go. “If you could carry these two trays in, that would be wonderful.”

Without giving her mom a chance to say anything else, Kim picked up the trays and headed into the formal dining room where all the food would be arranged buffet style for their guests. She breathed a sigh of relief when there was no sign of Justin or her brother. Kim knew she wouldn’t be able to avoid him forever, but she was going to try and delay the inevitable.

Justin stood in the Langley’s den with Mark, Mark’s dad, Davis, and two of their neighbors. Music played in the background as they chatted about who they thought would make it to the Super Bowl this year. Justin liked sports, but it wasn’t something he obsessed about. He’d much rather talk about cars.

Unfortunately, not even that would have been able to keep his attention tonight. His mind was still upstairs in the kitchen with Kim. She’d been sucking on an olive when he’d walked into the room and the only thing he could think of was what it would feel like to have those lips wrapped around his cock.

He stifled a groan and tried to pay more attention to the conversation happening right in front of him. Kim was thirty-two years old. Hardly a child. And sexy as hell. But that didn’t change the fact that the man standing beside him, his best friend of seventeen years, was her older brother. Her very protective older brother.

The group laughed and Justin realized he’d missed something. He smiled and chuckled, trying not to draw attention to himself. He’d thought it worked until Davis excused himself to go check on his wife and their little group broke up, leaving him and Mark by themselves.

“Car or woman?” Mark asked before taking a swig of his beer.

It took a moment for it to register what his friend was asking. Justin’s brain was too muddled with thoughts of Kim. Thoughts he shouldn’t be thinking with her brother standing right in front of him.

“Car,” Justin said, forcing his mind away from the woman he’d spent way too much time thinking about lately. “A 1970 Road Runner to be exact.”

Mark released a slow whistle. “Nice.”

“It needs a lot of work, but it’s gonna be sweet once I get finished with it.” All that was true, but he hadn’t thought about the car all day. He’d known Kim would be at the party and, as much as he shouldn’t, he wanted to see her.

“Man, I envy you. I wish I had your talent for cars.”

“Hey, I tried to get you to take shop with me in high school, but you wanted to go the college route.” Justin took a sip of his beer and waited for what he knew was coming.

“And pass up the college girls? Nah.”

Justin laughed and shook his head. Mark had gone to college for a traditional four-year degree, while Justin spent that same time at a local garage doing tune-ups and oil changes. His best friend liked to think going to college somehow granted him some magic with females, especially now that he had a good job and made a decent living. In reality, Justin’s sex life saw a lot more action than Mark’s, but it wasn’t something Justin discussed often with his friend. At least, not in recent years. Their sexual tastes had veered off in very different directions. Mark tended to stick to what people in the lifestyle liked to call vanilla sex, whereas Justin preferred a little more...variety.

Before the two could continue that line of conversation, Davis bounded down the stairs and announced that the food was ready. Everyone stopped what they were doing and made a beeline for the stairs as if none of them had eaten for days. Justin included. Belinda Langley was an amazing cook and she went all out for her annual New Year’s Eve party. Justin could hold his own in the kitchen, but on his best day, he didn’t hold a candle to Belinda.

There wasn’t a horizontal surface in the formal dining room that didn’t have some type of food or drink on it. She had everything from typical party meats and cheeses to more elaborate options like roast with the most delicious sauce known to man. His mouth watered thinking about it.

As he filled his plate, he was keenly aware of where Kim was in the room. Justin told himself it was so he could make sure he was keeping his distance, but that wasn’t entirely true. He was honest enough with himself to admit that. Not that it mattered. She was off-limits and always would be. No matter how difficult it was, he was going to have to forget about their night together. It wasn’t going to happen again. Hell, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

To remove the temptation, he headed back downstairs once he’d gotten his food. Most people remained in the dining room, keeping close to the food, talking while they ate. Normally, he’d be right there with them, but he couldn’t this year. He should have known he’d want more after he’d gotten a taste of her.

It was bad enough that she’d joined Serpent’s Kiss. The one place where he could relax and indulge. With her there, it was becoming a place of torment.

The thing was, he couldn’t even be upset about it. She was a submissive...at least in the bedroom...and she deserved the opportunity to explore her newfound sexuality. She deserved to find a Dom who could give her what she needed. It wasn’t her fault that every time a Dom looked her way, Justin wanted to land a solid punch to the guy’s face.

Justin was sitting near the fireplace, his plate almost empty, when Mark found him. “There you are. I was wondering where you’d disappeared to.” He plopped down on the chair beside Justin. “I thought maybe you’d sweet-talked Jackie into giving you a pre-New Year’s blow job and snuck off to my old bedroom.”

Mark thought he was being funny. Jackie had been trying to get Justin’s attention since she and her family moved into the neighborhood ten years ago. Justin was twenty-four at the time. She was seventeen. He hadn’t been interested then and he wasn’t now. That didn’t stop her from flirting with him every chance she got. “Nope,” Justin said. “She’s all yours.”

His friend chuckled and took another drink of his beer. Justin had no idea how many that was for Mark, but Justin could already tell his friend was getting tipsy.

To keep the subject from continuing down the path of women and sex, Justin changed the topic. “You should swing by sometime and see the Road Runner. I should have it down to barebones in a few weeks. Maybe you could get your hands dirty for once.”

“I don’t know,” Mark said. “Women seem to like my baby soft hands. Don’t want to mar their skin with any rough calluses.”

Justin snorted. “I’ve never had any complaints.”

“Well, of course you don’t. The women you’re with like that sort of thing.”

A retort was on the tip of Justin’s tongue, but he bit it back. He’d been trying to avoid talking about women and sex. How did they end up right back on the same subject again?

Oh yeah. Mark. When he was drinking, it was hard to get him to talk about anything else.

Justin stood. “I’m gonna grab a cold one from the fridge. You want another?” It wasn’t like his friend was driving tonight.

Mark drained his current bottle and handed it to Justin. “Sure.”

At the top of the stairs, Justin tossed his and Mark’s beer bottles into the trash can. Instead of heading straight for the kitchen, Justin changed direction and walked down the hall toward the bathroom. Sounds of laughter and talking filled the house, and it was almost a relief to duck into the bathroom and shut the door.

Normally, he was a social person. He enjoyed hanging out with friends. But he was swiftly learning that anything that involved Kim became a struggle in restraint. As a Dom, he was used to drawing things out...delaying gratification...but this was more than that. There wouldn’t be a reward at the end for his patience. He wouldn’t be able to lose himself in the release of all that built-up tension.

Closing his eyes, Justin willed his feelings away—the ones that had him longing for more with the one woman on the planet he couldn’t have.

It didn’t work.

The image of Kim tucked into him as he drove into her from behind had his cock hardening despite his need to piss. A low moan left his throat as he forced his eyes open and focused on the one thing that would kill his erection faster than anything. Mark. And the betrayal his friend would feel if he ever found out that Justin fucked his sister.

It worked. At least, enough that he could relieve himself.

Zipping up his jeans, Justin flushed the toilet and washed his hands before reaching for the doorknob. He pulled the door open and took a step forward without looking where he was going...and came face-to-face with the one woman he’d been trying to avoid.

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