My call goes to voicemail, and I start talking two seconds before Ellie does. “Dude, it’s Wyatt. Call me. It’s about Frogger.”
“Davis, it’s Ellie. Beck’s on my shit list and you owe me one for you know what, so get your ass up here to Shipwreck yesterday.”
She hangs up and pulls the banana pudding out of my reach. “Don’t even think about it.”
“What does Davis owe you for?”
“Sexual favors.”
My blood pressure goes past red to black. “The hell he does.”
“Why did you kiss me?”
Of course she won’t shy away from asking. “So Beck knows there’s something worse than losing his high score in Frogger. Why did you kiss me?”
“Because you’re a good kisser.”
Of everything she could’ve said, that’s the last thing I expected.
But it shouldn’t be.
It’s Ellie. She charges in like a bull, fucks up, adjusts, and then hits it out of the park.
She’s unstoppable.
“That’s not all I’m good at,” I tell her, and I think that damn frog from the game is sitting on my vocal cords, because that came out way huskier than it was supposed to.
Like a promise instead of a threat.
“I’m aware,” she says, equally throaty, but also equally tentative.
If that was all she said, I could walk away. But she adds, “I don’t hate you, you know,” in a soft whisper, and I sink to the bed next to her, because I’m pretty sure that was an invitation.
“And if you were suffering from a real heart condition, I would help you,” she continues, softer still.
It’s like Christmas all over again, hiding out in her parents’ basement after finding out I lost the battle to keep Tucker in Georgia with me while I waited for orders to Copper Valley.
“You’d make a terrible nursemaid,” I say hoarsely, because someone has to stop us from doing what I’m thinking of doing every time she lets her gaze drift to my lips like that.
“You’d make a terrible patient.”
“I should leave.”
“Why did you tell Beck you were going to make a terrible husband and father?”
How did she know that? “Listening in on people’s private conversations, nosy-ass?”
“Don’t get high and mighty with me. I know you too well.”
“Ellie—”
“Was I that much of a mistake? At Christmas?”
“No. Yes. Fuck.” I rub a hand over my eyes. “The guys—your family—they’re all the family I have left. Them and Tucker. I don’t want to mess that up.”
“Do you honestly believe any of my family would put up with you if you weren’t good enough for all of us?”
“Don’t be nice to me.”
“What if we were nice to each other?” she whispers.
“Ellie—”
“Shut up, Wyatt. I’m not asking for a relationship. I’m asking for a friend. I don’t want to go to Monica’s wedding by myself. I don’t want to feel broken. I want to dream again. I want to know I can be normal again. I want to believe in the future. I can’t—I haven’t—I don’t know if I can—”
She stops with a growl of frustration. “Never mind. Forget it. I—”
I have my hands in her hair again before I can think, kissing her hard and ruthless and unapologetically.
The last thing she did before her accident was, well, me.
If she needs help getting back in the saddle, then I guess the least I can do is, well, her.
Whatever she wants. As far as she wants to go.
That’s what you do for a friend, especially a friend you didn’t realize you needed until it was almost too late.
Right?
Chapter Twelve
Ellie
Something this stupid should not feel this right, but dammit, when Beck told me Wyatt had heart problems—even when I didn’t believe him—my own nearly stopped beating.
Until Christmas, Wyatt was the annoyance from my childhood. But he grew up.
I grew up.
And then I stumbled into my parents’ basement with a carton of ice cream, and now I’m back with the last person who saw me before I wasn’t me anymore.
And he knows it, or he wouldn’t be here.
He wouldn’t stay, pretending to be my boyfriend with history hovering at the edges of the tension between us.
He tastes like banana pudding and feels like forgiveness, and if I think about this too long, I’m going to chicken out, so instead, I toss the pudding on the other side of the bed and give in to the sensations of his mouth, his lips, his breath, his grip on my hair, the hard plane of his chest against the extra fluffiness mine’s acquired this year.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs when he pulls out of the kiss to lick a path along my jaw.
“I’ll kill you if you stop.”
“Sweet talker.”
“My nipples are hard.”
“Dammit, Ellie. I can’t—I’m not—you deserve—”
“Shut. Up.” I’m drenched between my legs, and I can feel my pulse in my clit. “I know who you are.”
He nips at the tendon between my neck and shoulder, and I grip his solid shoulders to hold him where it feels good. “More there,” I beg.
He nips again, then licks at my sensitive skin, and I shift on the bed to carefully part my legs while he gently swipes my hair to the side, his fingers brushing the back of my neck and making me whimper in pleasure.
“There too?” he asks, rubbing his thumb at my nape.
“Mm-hmm,” I manage.
“Relax, Ellie.”
“I don’t know how to relax. I was born this way. Take your shirt off.”
“You first.”
If he thinks I’m going to balk, he can think again. I whip my tank top over my head and let him see all of me. The fuller breasts. My tight nipples. The scars that are barely noticeable on the side of my left breast now.
He traces them anyway, because of course he notices, watching my chest with dark, hooded eyes. “Where else?” he asks hoarsely.
“Lose the shirt,” I rasp out.
His eyes lift to mine, and there’s raw hunger that I’ve never seen there before. Instead of ripping off the cotton shirt, he lifts it slowly, inch by inch, revealing the chiseled abs, the flat pecs, copper nipples pebbled hard, his arms flexing when he finally pulls it over his head.
“Show-off,” I whisper.
“Look who’s talking,” he replies, bending to suck one of my nipples into his mouth.
Pleasure rockets from my chest to my core, starting that long-forgotten spiral of need deep inside me.
I forgot how big his hands are until he cups my other breast, fully covering it despite the two cup sizes I’ve gained. While he suckles harder on one nipple, he circles the other with his thumb. I arch into his touch. “Oh, god, yes,” I moan.
I’m so damn glad he doesn’t have a heart problem.
“Lie down,” he says gruffly, pushing me with his body until I’m on my back, head on the pillow, the covers low on my belly. He starts to pull them off, but I grip them tight.
“Not yet.”
He replies by moving to suck on my neck again while his hand slips under the covers and over my panties.
I part my legs more, and he dips his fingers between them over the thin cotton barrier. “Fuck, Ellie, you’re soaked,” he moans.
“Touch me, Wyatt.”
He covers my mouth with his again, his tongue gliding against mine, his hard body pinning me down, one hand stroking my hair while his fingers slip under my panties to trace my seam.
We both groan into the kiss, and I suck hard on his tongue when he slides one digit inside me.
He moves slowly, carefully, while I test arching my hips into his touch. “More,” I whimper.
“You are so damn hot.”
We dive back into the kiss while he adds another finger. I reach between us and fumble with the button on his shorts. When I finally
reach inside and wrap my hand around his solid cock, he jerks his fingers hard inside me, reaching that desperate, aching, needy spot deep inside. “There,” I gasp, squeezing him harder.
“Christ, Ellie, that feels good.”
“Deeper, Wyatt, right—oh, god, right there.”
I pump him faster while he drives his fingers deeper. I lift my right knee to give him a better angle, jerking on his cock and tightening my grip until—
Until the tickle.
The tickle behind my left eyelid.
“Oh—ah—no—ahh—”
“Come for me, Ellie,” he pants. “I can’t—you need to—you can do it—”
“Wya—ah—ahh—”
“That’s it, baby. That’s—”
“Ah-CHOO!”
My orgasm explodes, and pain explodes in my nose as the sneeze rockets through me and my head collides with Wyatt’s. Something hot and wet squirts up my breast and into my armpit, and Wyatt grunts out a fucking hell before leaping back, covering his cock with one hand and his eye with another while he dashes to the bathroom, his shorts falling to his knees.
My eyes are stinging, my nose throbbing like someone’s hammering a nail into it, and my pussy is still having orgasm aftershocks like it’s no big deal that I just sneezed all over Wyatt and head-butted him in the middle of a heavy petting session.
I sneeze again, pain shoots through my entire face, and I stifle a whimper.
“I’m sorry,” I call weakly.
Wyatt reappears in the doorway with his shorts back on and a fuzzy gray dog in his hand. I think. My vision’s a little blurry with all the heat in my eyes, and I don’t know where a fuzzy gray dog would’ve come from.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m sorry,” I babble again. “Did I hurt you? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I didn’t realize—that’s only happened one time before—”
“Didn’t need to know that,” he mutters.
He rubs a towel—not a fuzzy gray dog—over my chest and side, and I realize he was in the middle of his own orgasm when I gave us both broken faces.
“Am I bleeding?” I whisper.
“No.”
“Is your eyeball okay?”
“Yep.”
“Um…thank you for the orgasm. It was very nice.” Oh, shit. I’m going to have a swollen nose for Monica’s wedding. I’m going to ruin her wedding pictures.
Then I remember this is Monica, and she’ll spend the rest of her entire life telling people I helped beat off the pirate vagabonds who tried to kidnap her from Jason at the wedding, and I even have the bruised nose to prove it, and I snort out a laugh.
And then I whimper in pain, because snorting and broken noses don’t mix.
“Holy hell, Ellie,” Wyatt mutters. “We have issues. Can you walk? How’s your leg? Get up. You can sleep in the guest room. I’ll clean this up tomorrow.”
He’s still holding his eye while he finishes wiping me off.
“Are you sure your eye’s okay?”
“Yes. Go on. You can’t keep going on no sleep.”
“I can clean this—”
He stands, plants his fists on his hips, spreading those shoulders even wider and holy banana pudding, the man could probably crack a walnut with those ab muscles.
He clears his throat. Oh, right.
He’s glaring at me. “I’m aware you’re perfectly capable. And I’m going to clean this, including the banana pudding, and you’re going to go to sleep anyway. Say thank you, Wyatt.”
I glance over and realize there is, in fact, banana pudding spilled all over the comforter.
“Thank you, Wyatt,” I mutter with a sigh as I silently mourn the lost dessert.
“Are we done arguing now?”
“Are we ever?”
His lips twitch again, and dammit, now I’m on the verge of smiling too, despite the pain still radiating out of my nose.
“Make you a trade,” he says suddenly.
“Why do I not trust you?”
“I’ll let you clean this up tomorrow if you show me that notebook you took away from Tucker this morning.”
I scurry out of the bed as fast as my leg will let me go. “Fine. I’m going. But if this swells up and bruises, I’m telling people I tripped while saving Tucker from a rabid coyote.”
“And I’ll tell them you threw a log at me when I tried to help.”
“Perfect.”
Before I can limp out of the room, he snags one of my hands. I glance up at him, suddenly aware that I’m standing here in nothing but my bare breasts, soaked panties, and the mangled scar on my left leg.
But he doesn’t look down.
Nope, not Wyatt.
He simply presses a kiss to my forehead. “Friends?”
“Can I still tell you not to tell me how to do things?”
“And definitely give me your wrong opinions when I’m doing something not your way.”
I ignore the sarcasm. “Only if you agree to do the same.”
He snorts softly, and I’m pretty sure it’s a snort of laughter and not utter and complete frustration. “You’re one of a kind.”
“And thank god for that. Beck would never keep up if there were two of me.”
I swear he’s smiling when I leave the room.
Mostly because I’m not sure my ego could take the hit if he was vehemently agreeing with my awful attempt at a joke.
Chapter Thirteen
Wyatt
The sound of the house alarm buttons being pushed wakes me from a dead sleep at 4:30.
Someone’s breaking in.
I fly out of the bed and land on soft feet, and I don’t bother pulling on a shirt, because it’s not going to be any protection against an intruder. I hit the bottom of the stairs when the lights flicker on, blinding me.
“Freeze, asshole!” Ellie barks. Something whizzes past me and thuds against the door.
The dark figure next to the alarm panel sighs. “A guy drives all night to answer a distress call, and what does he get? He gets a dildo launched at his face. Nice, Ellie. Real nice.”
“Davis?” she shrieks.
The slender, man-bun-wearing, bearded intruder bends over and grabs the massive purple thing from the floor. It’s longer than his tatted-up arm. “Does that even fit? Put your fists down, Wyatt, it’s not about her honor. You see the size of this thing?”
Ellie snatches it back, but once she has it, she grabs it by the base with her other hand and wipes the first one on her shirt.
“Go put pants on,” I hiss at her.
“It’s like a swimsuit, Morgan,” she snaps back. “And this isn’t mine. It was in the drawer in the guest bedroom.”
All three of us momentarily stare at the two-foot-long, six-inch-thick dildo dangling from her fingers. I try not to look at the mangled, leathery scar on her thigh, but my stomach still dips thinking about what she’s been through.
“You should mount it,” Davis says, nodding to the dildo.
Ellie goes stiff like she’s going to beat him with it, and I’m about to slug him when his lips twist in a familiar smirk.
“On Beck’s bedroom wall,” he finishes.
His dark eyes flit between us. “And you two should be more careful when you’re having sex. Looks like you had a threesome with a boxer.”
Ellie’s eyes bug out.
“We weren’t—” I start, yanking my hand away from where it instinctively went to test the tender skin around my eye, but Davis pops a rare full grin and turns to the door to the basement.
“What’d you do to fuck up Frogger? And where’s the coffee? If I’m gonna fix this, I need fuel.”
“Screen went out, so we pulled the plug to reboot.” I jerk my head back at Ellie. “Please go put pants on before Tucker comes down here and sees you walking around like that, because he’ll tell his mother and I’ll never hear the end of it.”
I can deal with the guilt of seeing her scars.
But I really don’t want
Tucker thinking about women in underwear any younger than hormones finally make him.
“And don’t forget my coffee, wench,” Davis calls.
“Oh, go cut your hair,” she replies good-naturedly with a smile.
She heads to the kitchen, swinging the dildo of indeterminate source, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to at least wrap it in a garbage bag, if not take it all the way out to the trash herself.
I follow Davis into the basement. He was the youngest in our group growing up—of the guys, so excluding Ellie—the slowest to warm up to people, and he was the first to want to call it quits on the boy band thing. I don’t know exactly what he does for a job now, but I know it involves computers, coding, and the nuclear reactor a couple hours south of here.
“Should’ve told us you were coming. We would’ve left the light on.”
“Three calls in an hour, and you thought I wouldn’t come?”
“Three?”
He smirks again. “I don’t know what you told Beck, but he wanted photographic proof that his score’s still the highest.”
“I kissed Ellie. On video call with him.”
“About damn time, dude.”
“Shove it, Remington. Not going there.”
He flips on Frogger and whistles low. “You wiped it.”
“Can you write a new high score on it?”
He gives me a don’t be a dumbass, of course I can look. “Gonna take donuts and coffee. Wouldn’t mind pretty company.”
I spread my arms. “I’m free until my kid’s up.”
“How’d Ellie break it?”
“Maybe I did it.”
“Dude. If it was your kid, you would’ve just told Beck. If it was you, you would’ve just told Beck. If you’re calling me to fix it, it was Ellie. Man up and do something about it already.”
Easy for him to say.
He has a career—and a bank account—that mean he doesn’t move every one to four years unless he wants to. He doesn’t have an ex-wife and a son to take care of, and no idea what he’s going to do to support them if he has to leave the military next summer because of orders anywhere but Copper Valley. And he doesn’t have a clue how ill-prepared I feel to be a good partner to anyone, let alone my best friend’s sister.
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