I went up on my knees and crawled closer to him. “And the pants.”
His hands shook as he unbuttoned them and pushed them down. Before I could ask, he pushed the briefs down, too. Under were more scars, but also an impossibly large shaft that begged for attention. He stared straight ahead, not meeting my gaze or watching me.
I took his hand and pulled him closer. I ran my hand down his chest and then pressed my lips to the soft skin under his ribs. I wanted to show him so much in so little time. He was beautiful.
I kissed the top of one of the larger scars across his chest and followed it down with my tongue. My chin bumped against his erection and it jumped. He was swollen and ready, a bead of pre-cum on the tip. I took him in my hand and gently squeezed.
Branson growled. “Elizabeth.”
I looked up at him and licked my lips. “Branson.”
He met my eyes and there was pain in them. I didn’t understand it fully, but I could tell that he didn’t undress in front of people very often. He was struggling and I wanted to take his mind off of it.
With my heart lodged a lot closer to the surface than it normally was during sex, I rested my palm over an especially angry patch of scars and took him into my mouth while holding his gaze.
Chapter 20
Branson
Emotions warred in my head as my body tensed. Elizabeth took me into her mouth and ran her tongue along the bottom of my shaft while sucking me deep. Her crystal-clear green eyes didn’t waver, even when a pump of my hips filled even more of her hot mouth. Her hand moved over the scars and it was like a tornado set off in me.
Pleasure and pain swirled. The urge to run faded slowly as her fingers traced lines and dips. Her mouth worked miracles as she moved up and down me. The pleasure was too good to ignore for the shame. I couldn’t fight it.
Staring down at the sexiest little hellcat I’d ever known, I was lost. I took her wild hair in my hands, as much as I could grab, and held it as she worked me. Never once did her hands jerk back, no matter where they touched. They were sure and firm as they stroked over my chest and sides. Eventually, she settled them on my hips and held on as I pumped in and out of her.
I knew my limits and when she swallowed and created a suction that almost did me in, I pulled out and lifted her against my body. I kissed her deep, tasting both of us in the kiss. I needed to be in her, though.
I lowered her to the bed and followed. I caught her leg in my hand and pulled it up as I lined up our bodies. She was wet and ready for me. The little sounds she made as I rubbed myself over her were enough to almost make me forget the condom. When I got it on, I pressed into her and watched as her head fell back and her eyes rolled.
“Oh, fuck.” Elizabeth’s voice broke as she cried out.
I gave her time to adjust before pushing the rest of the way into her. When my hips bumped against hers, I had to stop again to get control. She was tight and felt like heaven around me. Her body under me was soft and hot, her skin flushed and dewy. I leaned down and took her nipple in my mouth again. I sucked as I pulled out and thrust back in.
She looked up at me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Fuck me, Branson. I need you.”
I kissed her as I started thrusting. Slowly at first then building up speed. I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer. It just felt too good and had been too long. When I was thrusting harder, she wrapped her legs around me and held on tight. Her cries were music to my ears. She was vocal, telling me how much she loved what I was doing. If I’d lacked self-assuredness when I walked into her bedroom, I wouldn’t be leaving it that way.
Elizabeth rolled her hips and her core pulsed around me. When I reached between us and circled my thumb over her clit, she sank her teeth into my shoulder and let out a muffled scream. Her body tightened under me, tightened around me.
I thrust through it, getting closer to coming with every stroke. When she cried out my name in a broken voice, I was a goner. I thrust into her again and stayed in her as my orgasm pulsed through me, strong and intense. Her body milked my shaft as she came with me.
I buried my head in the nook of her neck, breathing in her scent. I knew I was resting all of my body weight on her and that I needed to move, but her legs were still tight around me and she was still shivering in my arms. Her body still pulsed, squeezing me with aftershocks from her own orgasm. Little moans and sighs brushed against my neck as she came down.
I felt completely relaxed for the first time in longer than I could remember. My body was relaxed. My mind was quiet. I felt like staying there forever.
After a few minutes, Elizabeth cupped the back of my neck and pressed her lips to my ear. “You’re squishing me.”
I rolled to the side, taking her with me. Facing her, I felt different. I felt lighter. She bit her lip and slowly smiled. She was feeling something, too. Her eyes practically sparkled as she looked at me.
“What?”
She laughed. “I was just thinking about praying mantises. That was so good. I would never bite your head off.”
I laughed a deep belly laugh, shocked by the insanity of the comment, but also just having fun. “I think you might’ve tried to.”
She looked at the bite mark she’d left on me and her cheeks flushed. “I’m so sorry. Just take it as a testament. That’s never happened before.”
“That could be because you’ve been sleeping with sixty-year-olds.”
“Hey!” She smacked my shoulder. “I told you, he was forty-five.”
I lay flat on my back and stared up at her ceiling. I felt strange. Good, but strange. Different. I’d accepted that no one would want to get close to me. Elizabeth had come in and blasted through years of negative thoughts in weeks. They weren’t gone. It’d been hard to let her touch me at first. She made me feel different, though. It was fucking scary. She was hard to read and I didn’t know how long she’d be interested in looking past the scars. There could be some other man in her life, even. I didn’t know enough about her.
Elizabeth pressed her mouth against a rough patch of skin and ran her hand over my chest. “I like these tattoos. I have one on my lower back. A tramp stamp from when I was eighteen.”
“Are you seeing anyone else?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them and I felt like kicking myself as soon as they were.
She sat up and looked down at me with her eyebrows furrowed. “Seriously? Did you miss what we just did?”
I frowned. “You didn’t answer the question.”
“I told you earlier there are no other men in my life. I wouldn’t sleep with you if there were.” She pulled the sheet up around her chest. “What are you doing?”
I’d hit my own turbulence and I could feel myself spiraling. I stood up and yanked on my clothes as fast as I could. The longer I could feel her eyes on my naked body, the more I felt like screaming at her.
“Hey. Branson! Where are you going?”
“Why’d you sleep with me?” I pulled on my shoes and made sure I had everything.
She looked bewildered. “Because I wanted to. I don’t know what’s going on, but this is going to a weird place.”
“Did you think I’d help you with the case if you did?” Way out of line. I was stuck inside the whirlwind, screaming at myself to shut the fuck up, but it was too late. I could see it in the way her eyes narrowed. Worse than the anger I was expecting, though, was the pain that flashed in them first.
“I’m realizing that I made a mistake. Get the fuck out, Branson.” She wrapped the sheet around her, kicking the blanket to the floor, and stood up. “I know that you implying that I’m a whore is probably some kind of safety mechanism for you, but that’s not going to work. You demand better from me the other day and then you say something like that to me? Well, this is me demanding better from you. Get out and don’t come back until you figure it out.”
I stared down at her, her red hair curling in every direction and her cheeks flushed from sex. She was fucking beautiful. It didn�
��t make sense that she’d want me. I turned and strolled out of her bedroom and out of her apartment. Even though I knew I was making a mistake, it was like there was no stopping it.
Every part of me ached as I made my way down to the ground level and out to my truck. I wanted to go back and apologize to her. She deserved an apology. At least that.
Instead, I got in my truck and drove away. Once again, my brain had gotten the better of me. I thought of the therapy I’d received right after the explosion, when I was still in the hospital recovering. I couldn’t remember any of it, though. I’d been convinced it was all horse shit. As I drove away from Elizabeth, I wished I could remember what they’d told me. Maybe it would’ve helped me not to make such a mess of things.
I drove to my house and groaned when I saw the cars in the driveway. Lauren was there. Mercer was there. There were two more people than I wanted in my house at that moment. I just wanted to go in and take a long, hot shower.
I walked in and immediately knew that wasn’t going to happen, though. Lauren and Mercer were sitting at the kitchen counter, staring at me with curious expressions.
Lauren was the first to crack. “Where were you? You didn’t come home all night.”
I rolled my neck and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. I found myself wanting to grab a beer, but I had a full day of work ahead of me. “I didn’t.”
“Were you with someone?”
Mercer raised his eyebrow. “If you needed your bachelor pad, all you had to do was say so, brother.”
I shook my head. It figured that the first shit Mercer said to me after being silent for so many days was something like that. “No. No need for the bachelor pad. No need for anything. I was just out.”
“He definitely slept with someone.”
Mercer nodded. “Yep.”
“It wasn’t my friend. He didn’t even remember her name.”
“Maybe he already had his eye on someone. And maybe we should mind our own business.”
“Fuck that. I want to know what’s going on.”
I shook my head. “Nothing. I have to get ready for work. I have another day of standing around Charlotte Crier’s house.”
Lauren frowned. “Come on, Branson. What are you up to?”
I stopped and looked back at them. “What did y’all do last night?”
Mercer stood up and dropped his plate in the sink. “I’m going into the office early.”
Lauren waited until he left the room to cross over to me and punch me in the arm. “That’s the first time he’s been anything but stony since we got him out and you had to go and ruin it! You know he gets weird about me.”
He got more than weird about her, but I wasn’t going to point it out. “Sorry, Lauren. I’m just out of it.”
She hugged me and then slapped the back of my head. “I know you’re seeing someone. She’s a lucky woman to get a catch like you. Bring her around.”
I laughed out a scoff. “The chances of that happening are ridiculously small.”
“Well, make them bigger.” She rolled her eyes like it was the simplest thing and walked out of the kitchen, leaving her plate and glass on the counter.
I shrugged off the need to clean up after her and went to my room. I did need to shower before heading to Charlotte’s house. I didn’t want to clean Elizabeth off of my skin. I climbed into the stream of hot water anyway, and groaned as it stung my body.
Frustration and anxiousness filled me. I wanted to fix things with Elizabeth, but I didn’t even know what I’d be fixing. What would a woman like her want with a man like me? I was fucked-up. Damaged goods didn’t even begin to cover it.
Something about what she was doing didn’t sit well with me, either. She was going to get herself in trouble. I knew it. I could feel it in my bones. I couldn’t do anything to stop her from doing it, though. She wasn’t someone who could be easily persuaded away from something she’d set her mind on. Then there was the fact that she definitely wasn’t in the mood to listen to my warnings. Not after the way I’d left her.
Chapter 21
Elizabeth
It was raining harder than what I liked to drive in, especially in the city. I had a job to do, though. Well, a second job to do. I’d left my first job an hour earlier. Following Helena Stelton through the streets, like some old-school private eye, I was chancing life and limb to see where she was going because the roads were terrible.
She’d skipped Red that night, instead going to a hotel in the center of the city for a little bit before coming back out to her car. So far, they’d driven slowly through rush-hour traffic, towards the richer area of town.
I sat forward in my seat, trying my hardest to watch where I was going. My windshield wipers weren’t the best. My car wasn’t the best. I didn’t drive it often, so I didn’t think I needed to spend money on repairing it. That mentality was proving wrong, though.
My radio had been playing static the whole ride, but it chose that moment to pick up a signal. Heavy metal starting blaring through my speakers and almost gave me a heart attack. I slammed my hand on it, trying to shut it off, and when I looked back up, I had to slam on the brakes to avoid running over Helena’s town car.
“Oh, fuck.” I sank down in my seat, hoping to hide. I wasn’t being a very good detective. I’d practically just screamed my presence.
Miraculously, though, the car kept going. I followed from a safer distance and did my best to not draw attention to myself.
My phone rang and I reached down and answered it without looking away from the road. “Hello?”
“Hey! It’s Brenda. I was wondering if you want to catch dinner with me later.”
I glanced at the clock and did the math in my head. “I’m running some errands right now, but if it’s a late dinner, I’d love to.”
“That’s perfect. Invite Sammie and Devon if you want. There’s this new place downtown that I want to try.”
I snorted. “It’s not Red, is it?”
Brenda giggled. “I think I’ll stick with my romance novels for now. Who knows, though. Maybe I’ll get into it later.”
Helena’s car was pulling over, so I pulled over a few car lengths behind it. “I’ll call Sammie and Devon and ask them. Just text me and let me know what time, okay?”
I didn’t hear what else she said because just then, Helena’s driver got out and held open an umbrella for her. She stepped out of the car and turned to me. Her eyes met mine and she gave me a look that chilled me to the bone.
I sucked in a huge breath and dropped the phone. It was too late to hide. She’d seen me. She knew. There was no way she didn’t know I was following her. That look had said it all.
I pulled away from the curb, completely panicked, and nearly hit another car. They honked at me, drawing even more attention my way. I swore wildly and hurried away from the scene. I knew what Helena was capable of. I needed to be away from her, as soon as possible.
I sped back towards my apartment and couldn’t get inside fast enough. I locked myself in and sat at my kitchen table, watching the door.
I believed, without much of a doubt, that Helena had killed Paul. She was a cold-blooded killer and she’d just caught me watching her. My heart raced painfully in my chest and I found myself waiting for the moment she’d kick down my door and charge inside.
Even through the fear, I managed to send a quick text to Sammie and Devon, inviting them out for later. I also managed to glance towards my bedroom a time or two, my mind going to Branson and wishing he was there. He’d keep me safe. I could keep myself safe, too, though.
I’d been sitting there, calming down for almost an hour, when a loud knock sounded at my door. I jumped and grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter. “Who is it?”
“Police, Ms. Shore. Open the door.”
I put the knife back in the drawer and hurried to the door. I looked through the peephole and saw it was indeed an officer. My heart kicked into even higher gear and I contemplated not opening the d
oor for a second. That wouldn’t end well, I was sure, so I opened it.
“What can I do for you, officer?”
The uniformed officer looked to be around my age. He was buff and should’ve been handsome, but there was something about him that made me want to crawl away.
“Someone filed a complaint about you, Ms. Shore.” He opened his notepad and tapped it with his pen. “Helena Stelton. She said she saw you harassing her. Were you following her around the city?”
My ears burned. “Helena Stelton? My boss?”
Some of the assuredness faltered in the officer’s expression. “Yes, ma’am. Where were you earlier? Around six?”
I called on every ounce of acting skills I had and made my face look confused. “I was trying to get home. Traffic was bad and it was raining so hard. My car’s a piece of junk and it’s so hard to drive in the rain with it. Wait. You’re saying my boss filed a complaint against me? Saying I harassed her?”
“She said you were following her town car around the city. You almost hit her at one point, according to her.”
I was freaking out, but doing everything I could to play innocent. “Oh, my gosh. I did almost hit someone. I looked down for one second to turn the radio off and when I looked back up, the car in front of me was stopped. Was that her? I didn’t hit them, officer. I swear. You can check my car.”
He sighed. “Look, I don’t know what this is about, but she doesn’t seem to like you. I’ll write it up that you don’t know what she’s talking about. She seemed irate, though. I’d look for another job if I was you.”
My stomach flipped. I hadn’t even thought about work. “I don’t know why she’d think I was following her. I have nothing against her.”
“I don’t know. Just stay away from her. She really doesn’t like you.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry if I upset her when I almost hit her car. I promise you, officer, I didn’t know it was her. I was so embarrassed that I hadn’t been paying close enough attention.”
Black Dog Security- Complete 5-Part Series Page 27