Happily Ever After: A Romance Collection

by Amelia Wilde

  “Well, Tommy Leibowitz ain’t got nothin’ on me, baby,” Brandon growled. “Not when it comes to you.”

  His fingers gripped my hair while his other hand cupped my ass and pressed me into his erection, causing a low moan in the back of my throat. My breath caught in my chest, and suddenly I forgot that my grandmother was only a few flights of stairs away from my unlocked door. In fact, the idea made the whole thing that much hotter. I couldn’t get him naked fast enough.

  “Off,” I mumbled into his mouth, tearing at the buttons of his jeans under me.

  Brandon growled and lifted his legs—with me on them—just enough to scoot off his jeans and boxers. My underwear soon followed. One arm encircled my waist in an unforgiving grip, the other around my neck as he yanked me down to meet his hungry mouth. My hair fell around us in a thick, reddish canopy.

  “Fuck, Skylar,” he growled in between kisses. “Fuck!”

  I could feel him rubbing against me, and the friction made me needier by the second. I rolled my hips, helping the movement along. It was a dangerous game we were playing, but he felt so, so good there. I absolutely ached for him.

  I rolled my hips again, catching us by surprise when I lost my balance and took him completely and unexpectedly. I gasped at the sudden, immediate penetration. Brandon’s big body arched at the contact, and he cursed again: “Fuck!”

  We stared at each other, both of us shocked and undeniably turned on, if the involuntary movements of both of our hips were any indication. I swallowed, and before I could lose myself in the movements, I pushed off him and hopped down to the floor.

  “Ah!” he yelped, almost as if in pain.

  “Condom,” I muttered as I tried to remember if I had any here.

  “My jeans pocket. Goddamn it, hurry.”

  Frantically I rifled through his pants until I found a strip of condoms. I tore one off and practically jumped back onto him before sliding it on as quickly as I could. Brandon grabbed my hips and shoved me down again, forcing me to take him fully. He took my hand and pressed it just above where our flesh met.

  “Touch yourself,” he ordered.

  His hips began to move. Barely able to think because my mind was so clouded with desire, I did as he said, massaging the tender spot while I reveled in the fullness of him. This was exactly what I needed. He was what I needed.

  “Did you like that, baby?” he growled as he thrust, his hands locked on my hipbones. “Did you like how I felt, with nothing on?”

  I couldn’t answer, only able to feel the length of him spearing me while I worked my fingers.

  “Ummm,” I moaned, just as he tugged me down to his eager mouth.

  His hands were steel while we rocked mercilessly, again and again and again. My fingers, trapped between our bodies, moved ferociously in time to his harsh rhythm.

  “That’s how it’s meant to be, baby,” he said. “Just you and me, Skylar. Nothing between us.”

  Brandon slowed his movements, causing me to sit back up and whimper. Both hands released my legs, and his deft fingers found my nipples, pinching them in a way that sent pulses of need straight through me, down to that place where his body met mine. His hips rolled slowly, forcing me to feel every single inch of him as he created that delicious friction. God, the shape of him was made for it—there was no other explanation as to how he was somehow able to make me come better than I could ever do for myself. My fingers pressed harder, doubling up on pleasure as I closed my eyes.

  “One day you’re going to feel me all the way, baby,” Brandon said in between shattered breaths. “Just me, deep inside you, until you just. Can’t. Take. Any. More.”

  He matched his thrusts to his words, each one stronger than the last as he finally forced me to come undone.

  “Fuck!” I cried as I began to shake uncontrollably. “Ah!”

  His hands released my aching breasts, and one grasped me around the neck, pulling me back down into his vibrating body. We shook desperately together, stricken with pleasure until we both lay limp and lifeless, our only movement the rise and fall of Brandon’s chest as he fought to catch his breath.

  Finally, Brandon tilted my head up and laid a soft kiss on my lips.

  “That was…” I started.

  “Intense,” he finished. One hand stroked the top of my head, then fell lifelessly to the mattress. “I’ve…fuck. I’ve never wanted to do that so badly. Shit, Skylar, we almost—”

  “I know,” I murmured into his chest. “I know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  We lay silently, recovering as the reality of what had just happened gradually dawned on us both.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t come. Wasn’t even close.”

  “I’m on the pill,” I said. The thump of his heartbeat rose clearly against my cheek. It pounded loudly, as sturdy as he was. “That’s not what I was thinking about.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m clean, I promise. I was tested not too long ago. I’ll show you if you want—”

  “That’s fine,” I interrupted, not yet ready to lose the hazy, post-coital warmth. “I’m clean too. I had a physical last month, and I was tested then.”

  “So, we’re good,” Brandon said.

  I sighed with pure contentment. “Yeah. We’re good.”

  The contrast of his warm skin against the cool air was welcoming, and my body melted further into his.

  “This room feels like you,” Brandon commented a few moments later.

  “What, like in me?” My crude joke earned me a mild smack on the backside.

  “No, perv,” he said. “Just in general. I didn’t see you as a madwoman in the attic, but other than the creepy rafters, it’s pretty much like I expected. The dollhouse furniture and the posters. It’s such a damn girl’s room.”

  I returned his light-hearted smack, but I ended up hitting more mattress than man. In my sex-haze, though, I didn’t really care if he thought if my teenage bedroom was so typical.

  “What did yours look like?” I grumbled.

  “At the Petersens’, the group home, or Dorchester?”

  His body stiffened slightly, and the arms that had drifted down my back tightened to prevent me from sitting up to look at him. Shit.

  “Um…”

  “I don’t really remember the room at my mom’s place,” Brandon said quietly.

  I lay perfectly still, silently urging him on.

  “I usually shared a room with two, even three other kids at the other place. Ray and Susan have a house in Somerville. Nothing special, just a little colonial. My room was on the second floor and overlooked the barbecue in the backyard. They gave me a bunch of Ray’s old furniture from his grad school days. Susan took me down to Newbury Comics to pick out posters.”

  I wanted so badly to sit up to see Brandon’s face while he was talking, but his arms held me still.

  “She made me choose three,” he continued, “and when she realized I’d never listened to anything other than Kieran’s radio, she ended up buying me a cassette player and about twenty of her favorite albums.” His chest shook slightly with laughter under my cheek. “I thought, this lady is crazy, but I didn’t stop her. No one had ever done anything like that for me before.”

  “Did you like her picks?” I asked. I hadn’t met Susan yet, but now I really wanted to. Her kindness was touching.

  “Some of them. I wasn’t really into Carly Simon, but I did like Springsteen. I used to listen to The River over and over again. Ray hated it, but Susan made him let me keep it on. Everyone else I knew back then was crazy about, I don’t know, Marky Mark or some shit like that, but I just wanted to listen to the Boss.”

  I didn’t say anything, just imagined a twelve-year-old Brandon in his room, working hard at his new old desk, trying to impress his foster parents even while he was at odds with them. I wondered if he was tall at that age too, or if he was still small enough that only his toes touched the floor.

  “That explains the Springsteen preference,” I sa
id. “You sound like a model ward. I can’t imagine why Ray would have had such a problem.”

  Brandon’s chest rumbled with a low chuckle beneath me. “Well, I wasn’t a bookworm most of the time. I liked school, but I also liked sneaking out to meet my friends. I got into more than enough trouble to earn Ray’s disappointment.”

  “Well, you don’t now,” I said grumpily, recalling Ray’s attitude. I didn’t care how many things he had done for Brandon in the past—I hated the cold manner with which he treated a man who clearly thought the world of him.

  “Maybe.” Before I could pursue the cryptic response, Brandon swiftly turned the conversation back to me. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Smiths fan—that’s more for old people like me. I was thinking more like Dashboard Confessional.”

  I shrugged. “He ripped off Morrissey anyway. Besides, what The Smiths lack in composition, they make up with ironic lyrics. So, is that all you like about my house? My old concert posters and flea market furniture? It’s basically a garage sale compared to your house.”

  Brandon’s fingers drifted over my shoulders until they clasped together over my back. I could feel the soft rhythm of his breath in my hair. Eventually, I started to wonder if he had fallen asleep.

  “No,” he answered at last. His voice was low and distant, a contrast to the immediacy of his body. “I like it because it feels like you.” Brandon took several more breaths, and then said so low I could barely hear it: “It feels like home.”

  32

  Bubbe’s feet on the stairs woke us less than an hour later. Brandon and I jumped out of my bed like guilty teenagers and stumbled around, pinching at each other in between bouts of laughter. I quickly dressed in jeans, a thin black sweater, and my worn, black motorcycle boots before we left to see Dad.

  Brandon stayed in the hospital lobby to work while I took the elevator up to where Dad was. He’d been moved out of the ICU, thankfully. I found him lying in bed, flipping through the TV channels. A curtain was pulled around the bed of the other patient in the room.

  I knocked lightly on the open door, and Dad looked up. His face still had a gray pallor with purple circles under his eyes and a bandage over his nose, but it brightened when he caught sight of me.

  “Pips!” he croaked with a hoarse, strained voice.

  I winced as I sat down in the seat next to him. “Hey, Dad.”

  He turned off the television and allowed me to set the remote on his side table. Then I squeezed his good hand. The bruises on his face were already turning a mottled mix of purple, yellow, and blue, and it looked like the swelling around his cut eye was going down. He gave me a sheepish grin and grimaced when the movement jogged the mask over his nose.

  “Careful, old man,” I said, though I couldn’t stop my voice from wavering. Before I could stop them, tears welled up and started to fall down my cheeks. I buried my face in his leg. “Oh, Dad.”

  He didn’t say anything, but I felt his good hand stroke my hair. My sobs came, hard and heavy.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over again. “So sorry, sweetheart.”

  His words only made me cry harder, and I didn’t stop until a nurse bustled in, announcing with some awkwardness that she needed to take his vitals.

  “Of course,” I sniffled, pushing my chair back to give her room.

  I grabbed a tissue from the nightstand and dabbed at my eyes, where no doubt streaks of mascara tracked down my cheeks.

  “Everything looks good, right, Gina?” Dad asked with a sly smile. “Good enough to steal you away from that husband of yours, right?”

  Gina, who was probably in her early sixties, just rapped him lightly on the head and made a few marks on his chart.

  “We have to watch this one,” she told me with a grin. “He’s up to no good. I’ll be back in an hour, so behave, Danny, you hear?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Dad said with a weak grin as Gina walked out. I did my best to smile back, but Dad’s face fell at my expression. The tears rose again.

  “Pips, please don’t cry,” he begged.

  I took a deep breath and sucked the tears down. “I’m okay. Sorry.”

  Dad watched me carefully and lay back on his pillow, clearly worn out already. “I’m so sorry,” he said again quietly. “I’m so sorry you have to deal with this.”

  “You’re sorry,” I repeated numbly. “Yeah.”

  I stared at my hands, which gripped the cool, metal arms of my chair. My knuckles turned white before I released them. Another tear fell; I sniffed it back.

  “Dad,” I said softly. “Daddy.”

  “Pip, I—”

  “You could have died.”

  We stared at each other, the gravity of the words falling between us like a gavel. He was lucky his injuries weren’t worse. He was lucky he wasn’t at the bottom of the East River. He knew it, and I knew it.

  I stared at his maimed hand, which was resting in a suspended sling hanging from the bed, presumably to help with the swelling.

  “What did the hand doctor say?” I asked.

  Dad shrugged, then winced at the movement. “He hasn’t come yet. They said he’d be here this morning.”

  I nodded. I reached out as if to touch his hand, but he shirked at even the idea of it. Dad stared out the window next to him. A pair of pigeons tapped lightly at the pane, but beyond them, there was only the red brick siding of another hospital wing.

  “Dad,” I said gently. “Dad?”

  He looked back at me, his tired eyes full of pain and fear and glossed slightly. “Shit, Pips. I’m just so damn ashamed, you know? I never wanted you or Ma to get wrapped up in all of this, and now I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  It was obvious he wasn’t just talking about his hand.

  “It’ll be all right,” I told him, wishing I could say it with more conviction. “I promise, it will be all right.”

  Dr. Bennett, the hand doctor, arrived a few minutes later, moving quickly and hanging some of the X-rays that had been taken the night before. He rattled off the Latin names of at least five different breaks. Dr. Carraway hadn’t been lying last night—the hand really had been effectively crushed.

  “I see a lot of construction workers with this kind of injury,” Dr. Bennett said as we all gazed at the X-ray. “Usually when some kind of beam falls on their hand.”

  “It was a hammer,” Dad corrected him quietly.

  My stomach dropped, but I stayed quiet.

  The doctor cleared his throat before informing us that Dad would need at least one extensive surgery to repair the damage, and at least six to nine months of physical therapy to regain use of his hand, although full use could take up to two years, maybe longer.

  When I asked about the piano, Dad turned white and shook his head. Dr. Bennett, an abrupt, middle-aged man with a scant sense of bedside manner, had taken one look at Dad and said he’d make that assessment after the surgery. Dad would be able to finish recuperating from the liver surgery at home after all, but he’d need to come back early next week for the first, and hopefully the only, surgery on his hand.

  I waited until Dad fell asleep with his next round of Percocet before leaving to find Brandon and run some errands. I wanted the house to have everything Dad loved when he came home. Brandon, feeling helpless, insisted that I allow David to drive us from place to place while Brandon worked.

  So, we zig-zagged around Brooklyn, picking up random things I thought Dad would like—a cheesecake from Junior’s, whiskey from the liquor store, knishes from a deli just off Ocean Avenue. Brandon had the brilliant idea of stopping at a mall to purchase an iPod and a music streaming service. Dad, of course, wouldn’t be able to listen to his records downstairs while he was on bedrest.

  When we stopped for some of Dad’s favorite challah from a bakery on Ditmas Avenue, David ended up parking the car across the street from Nick’s bar.

  I knew it was a bad idea, but I had too much angry energy built up after the hospital visit. I decided
to pop in to see if Nick had delivered my message. Maybe I wouldn’t have to wait until Monday to talk to the guy who had beaten my father senseless.

  “I’ll be right back,” I called through the backseat window to Brandon, who was on another phone call.

  “What?” he mouthed, but I just tossed the bread on the seat and took off across the street.

  Considering it was only a few hours into the afternoon, Nick’s wasn’t technically open, but I guessed he would get there early to prepare for sound check and do inventory or whatever else was needed to open a bar. I was right.

  The narrow space seemed even darker than usual in contrast with the bright sunshine.

  “Nick?” I called as my eyes adjusted enough to make out his lumbering form behind the bar, where he was refilling bowls of nuts.

  Nick looked up with surprise. “Hey, kid. What are you doing here?”

  “I just came to drop off that message,” I said as I approached.

  “Ah, well, actually, funny you should say that…”

  Nick nodded his square-shaped head in the direction of the stage, where a small card table had been set up and was surrounded by four men in cheap slacks and button-down shirts. I recognized the one closest to us immediately: Victor Messina.

  “What’s he doing here?” I whispered.

  Was this where Dad had run up his debts? I doubted his trouble was only stirred up at a horse track.

  Nick shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. “It’s a free country, baby girl, and the bar’s open. But I don’t know about this, kid...”

  I looked suspiciously back at the table, which was littered with glasses of liquor and lit cigars. Normally it was illegal to smoke inside public establishments in New York, but these guys didn’t seem to think there was any problem.

  “I heard my name. What can I help you with, honey?”

  Messina strode up and gave me a head-to-toe look that made me want to jump into a shower. He looked exactly as I remembered. His stumpy form was a walking cliché for a small-time gangster: short and stocky with slicked black hair, meaty hands, and a paunch that tested the buttons of his thin blue shirt. He grinned lasciviously, revealing a mouth of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth.