by Shayne Ford
WILD NIGHTS
A Wild Heart Novel
Shayne Ford
Copyright © 2016 by Shayne Ford
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, organizations and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Any trademarks, service marks, product names or named features mentioned in this book are the property of their respective owners and have been used without permission and in an editorial fashion only, with no implied endorsement.
The publication/use of these trademarks is not associated with, approved of or sponsored by the trademarks owners.
This book is for entertainment purposes only. The author and publisher disclaim any and all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly in relation to this book.
This book is intended for mature audiences only.
Written by Shayne Ford
www.shayneford.com
Twitter:@ShayneFordBooks
Cover design by Shayne Ford
The image on the cover is a licensed stock photo, and it is used for illustrative purposes, any person who may be depicted on, is a model.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Also by Shayne Ford
About the Author
1
BRAXTON
“Are we talking about the Violet Brown?” my mom asks, her face washed with disbelief.
“Where were you?” Jagger tosses at me.
I shoot my hands up.
“One at a time, please.”
Arms crossed over his chest, my dad studies me in silence, smiling behind my mom’s back.
She catches the direction of my gaze and glances over her shoulder.
My dad’s grin drops from his face.
“It’s not a laughing matter, Doug.”
“I didn’t say it was, honey. Let him tell us,” he says, having a hard time withholding his smile.
“So what exactly happened?” my mom asks, searing me with scrutinizing eyes.
I shrug.
“Nothing.”
Jagger’s stare burns my face.
“Not according to Sonia,” my mom mutters.
“She got riled up for nothing,” Jagger says and pauses.
Intrigued, my mom pauses and swings her gaze back and forth between the two of us.
Fucking great.
“Who is this woman with?” she asks.
She looks at me first.
“No one,” I blurt out.
“Me,” Jagger says at the same time.
We lock eyes briefly, anger flashing in his gaze.
“So which one is it?” my mom insists.
Smirking in the background, my dad slowly rubs his chin.
I motion to Jagger.
“She’s with me,” he says.
“It’s nothing serious,” I add, trying to downplay the whole thing.
Clasping her hands on her hips, my mom pivots to me.
“Then why did Sonia find her in bed with you?”
Jagger looks at me intently, his eyebrows slowly lifting. They all wait for my answer, my father included.
“No particular reason. We swam and had dinner, and then she spent the night at the cottage. Why is it such a fucking big deal?” I throw at her, exasperated.
“Sonia told me she was with you in Miami.”
“Well, she flew down there, and we ran into each other, and that’s how she ended up with us at Jessica’s wedding. Big fucking deal. She’s not the first woman we went to a party with.”
Letting out a sigh, she looks at me baffled.
“Isn’t she older?”
I shrug again.
“So fucking what. She’s a fucking friend. Nothing more than that. She doesn’t mean anything. And just because Sonia found her in Jagger’s bed doesn’t mean a fucking thing.”
Jagger drills me with his eyes, his face dark with frustration.
“Well, according to Sonia, this whole thing looks like it’s way more than that and needless to say she doesn’t think highly about Violet. And the fact that she’s older brings up a lot of questions.”
She turns to Jagger.
“Where did you meet her?”
“She’s my neighbor. We’re also co-workers.”
“What does she do for a living?”
“She’s an editor at an online lifestyle magazine.”
“She seems like a very nice woman. Educated, well-read,” she says, sounding a bit confused.
She glances at my dad as if she’s interested in his opinion. He nods softly in agreement.
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” I say.
“Other than the fact that she likes younger men,” my mom mutters.
“It’s not men. She likes Jagger.” Out of the corner of my eyes, I notice him running his hand over his face. “He recently hooked up with her, and just because she slept with him, doesn’t mean a thing. She’s not the first woman he’s ever fucked.”
“Braxton?!”
“What? It’s the fucking truth. How can you pay attention to Sonia’s bullshit? She found a woman in Jagger’s bed. Big fucking deal.”
“Well. She probably wouldn’t have called me, had she not found you in his bed too.”
Jagger’s eyes shoot at me, a wave of heat erupting on my face. This is not the moment to fucking lose it.
“You mean, with her,” I say, cold as ice.
“Yes, with her.”
“Nothing happened. She was in his bed, and I was there too, and she was waiting for Jagger. That’s all there was.”
“Okay, honey. I think that’s it,” my dad says, cutting off the interrogation. “Sonia is entitled to her opinion. You’ve heard Braxton. It’s really not that important after all. She’ll get over it. Where is the woman?” he asks, glancing at me.
“Home,” I say, my eyes slipping to Jagger.
My dad loops his arm through my mom’s and gently pulls her out of the living room.
Without a word, I spin around and stride across the hallway, heading to my room.
“So where were you?” Jagger barks, bursting in.
The door slams behind him.
I walk into the closet.
“It’s seven o’clock,” he growls behind my back.
“So?”
I peel my clothes off and slip into a different pair of boxer shorts.
His eyes go down on me, his fingers threading nervously through his hair, the revelation quickly setting in.
“Oh, fuck. I can’t believe this. You fucked her...” he says, his voice trailing off, laced with disappointment and disbelief.
I shoot him a glare and push him to the side. He gives me a shove, and my back hits the wall. I jolt him away, and he looks at me confused.
“How could you fucking do that? How could she let you fuck her? She couldn’t even look at me when she left.”
His eyes glisten with anger a
nd pain, and my heart hurts for him as I realize that she was right.
This is the end.
No matter which way we spin it or how much I lied to her, things can’t go the way we want.
I cuff his neck and pull him close to me.
He looks at me, numb.
“What did I tell you, Jagger?” I say softly. “A while ago. When you brought her to my house.” His eyes soften as I slide my fingers to his face, and slowly run my thumb over his lips. “I told you I wouldn’t cross you, didn’t I?”
He nods, and my eyes dip to his arched lips. I stall for a few moments, aware of his stare on me, distracted by the soft tremble of his lips beneath my touch.
“I took her home...” I say, and raise my gaze, and I can see the tears pooling in his eyes. “She cried most of the trip back. And you know why? Because she knows this is the end for her, and us.”
He jerks back, his head swaying side to side, his hands shooting up in the air.
I grab his neck again and pull him to me. His breath tickles my lips–– he is that close.
“It’s not––”
“Yes, it is, and you know it too. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s looking for another place to live and perhaps another job. No woman can take this kind of slut shaming. No matter how much she wants you or us, she can’t deal with this thing out in the open. It poisons her heart. And I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t like my mom’s questioning every day either. Let alone yours.”
He grips my arm.
“What happened, Braxton?”
“I lied to her. I told her it’s nothing, the same way I told my mom it’s nothing. And I’d suggest you do the same when you talk to Sonia.”
I pause.
He searches my eyes.
“What else do you want to know, Jagger?”
His eyes narrow, his heart crying in them.
“What happened at her home?” he asks softly.
A bittersweet smile slowly curves my lips.
“We fucked... And it was hot and dirty, the way you and I used to fuck women together. She didn’t complain a bit. In fact, she asked for it. She wanted me to fuck her hard, and I did, and she wanted to suck me off, and I let her suck my dick, and then I finger fucked her ass while I was pounding her, bent over the sink, and she groaned and squealed… and I think I made my point. This might not be the squeaky clean story she wants it to be, and it might not be something that we can share with family and friends over the Thanksgiving dinner, but it’s still a damn good story, one that’s worth fighting for.”
His eyes glisten with pain and anger.
“I’ve warned you so many times, Jagger. This was a crazy thing to do, and you said it was the only way. And maybe you were right, but if that’s the truth, you can’t lose your cool right now. She was ready to walk on both of us. Maybe she still is, and not because she doesn’t love you, or she doesn’t like to fuck me, but because there is no other way for her. We can’t pretend it’s all peachy because it’s not. Why do you think she wanted me to fuck her brains out? She wanted to forget. Did she love it? Yeah, she fucking did.”
“Did you?” he asks with a hoarse voice.
I smile and look deep into his eyes, my fingers stroking his neck.
Slowly, I take his hand, bring it to my groin, and press his palm on my hard-on.
“Take a guess,” I say, and his skin flushes, a short breath escaping his lips.
He’s still palming my erection when I lean close to his ear, cup his balls, and slowly run my hand up, sweeping his hard cock through his jeans.
“And you like it too... Even if you weren’t there...” I murmur, my lips trailing his cheek. “So don’t let your heart mess things up. We both fucking know this is the woman that we want.”
His lips part slightly, his head tilting back, and his eyelids sliding down as I slowly stroke him.
He gives me a gentle squeeze that spreads a tide of pleasure through my groin.
The sensation is so delicious I bite my lip to stifle my impulse that’s been lurking inside me for so long.
His eyes drop to my mouth, and as much as I want to indulge on this, I need to pull away from him before things get out of control and we do something we both might regret later on.
JAGGER
He looks at me with lustful eyes, his lips curled into a crooked smile, the silky cushions barely parted.
The slow motion of his tongue across his bottom lip throws a shiver down my back. He looks at me as if he denies himself a taste… of me.
His gaze dips to my mouth, spurring hunger in my blood.
“So, what exactly are you saying?” I murmur, my cock twitching in his hand, his shaft almost bursting in mine.
He leans to me again, his warm breath rolling on my lips, his chest pressing against mine, his blue eyes a waterfall of light.
“What I’m saying is, instead of losing it, and fighting each other you need to fucking trust me, and fight for her. We can’t afford to lose her, Jagger,” he murmurs in my ear and my blood throbs in his hand.
His breath trails down my neck, and a shudder breaks through me.
Sensing my rising tension, he pulls away, his hand peeling off my dick while my fingers slide off his. Needles of pain set in my groin. Holding his eyes, I run my hand over my cock, smoothly adjusting it.
My flesh could melt off my bones as I read the things he’d like to do to me in his eyes.
Teasingly slow, he brushes his shaft before he tears his gaze away from me, and my lungs empty in a long exhale.
He grabs a pair of jeans and pulls them on, a wince flitting across his face as he tucks his erection in.
He swaggers to me and grabs the back of my neck, his expression quickly shifting.
A smile lights up his eyes.
“We need to talk about this. Let’s go riding,” he says.
He has two horses saddled for us within minutes, and moments later, we gallop all the way to the end of the vines. We jump over the creek and veer to a meadow tucked behind a cluster of trees.
We dismount the horses, let them graze nearby, and sit on the ground, our backs propped against a tree.
The sun has already set, the light slowly fading away.
“You were right about her,” he says after a few moments of silence. “She is going back and forth, but you can’t blame her… And you were right about everything else. It can’t go on here, not now, and not with people knowing, so things are pretty much done.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He looks at me, the twilight sparkling in his eyes.
“You have to pull her out of here,” he says as if he’s given the idea some thought.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Things will get quickly uninteresting if we fall off the radar. If we’re no longer under people’s noses.”
“You mean moving overseas.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t I fucking know? But I’m not gonna be able to convince her.”
He smiles.
“I know. She’s too rational, and you’re never gonna win that argument, so you have to make her fight herself, and bet everything on her emotions.” I swing my gaze to the horizon. “It’s not going to be easy,” he says as if he senses my hesitation, “but it’s the only way. The way I see it, you’ve already lost her and not because of a fault of your own. Letting the things follow their course will bring nothing good for you or me. You can’t just sit around and wait for her. She’ll pull away from you... and us. She’ll need time to think it over. She’ll be torn. Even if she keeps seeing you or us, she’ll loathe the secrecy and the scrutiny of other people. I’ll be gone in a month or so, and you’ll end up trying to convince her to give you another chance. You’ll have nothing to offer her other than a secret affair, and she’s gonna hate it. She’s not gonna sway your way.”
“I know all this, Braxton,” I say, frustrated, glancing back at him.
“I know you do. That’s w
hy I think this is the only way to make her grow a pair and do for you what she should do if she really cares for you,” he says, tearing his gaze away from mine. He pauses for a moment, then raises his eyes. “Have you found more gigs?”
I nod.
“I can start in a few weeks, and work through to the end of the season.
“Good, then we can spend some time in California.”
“You’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”
He nods softly, a smile glinting across his lips.
“There’s no other way. You have to do it. You have to throw something at her and put her feelings to the test. If she’s not yours by now, she’ll never be. I know it’s not going to be easy for you, but if this thing works out, six months from now we could be in a completely different situation.
“So what exactly is your plan?”
“First off, we have to make people forget about the beach house incident. Make it look trivial, way less important than they think it is. That’s what I tried to convey to my mom. They have to buy into the idea that it was nothing more than a random hook up. Actions speak louder than words, so we have to show them she’s no longer relevant to us. The sooner we leave the better. We can get on a plane tomorrow. You and me. No women. No Violet.” My smile vanishes from my face. “And then comes the hardest part. She can’t know what’s going on. To her, this thing will feel real. You’re not gonna call her or answer her calls. She’ll imagine the worst, and that’s what will tip the scale. She’ll do something or not, but this way you’ll know what she’s made of.”
“She’s gonna hate my guts.”
“Yeah, she probably will, but the more she hates you the more she’ll love you later on.”
“And she may say, fine, let him go fuck himself.”
“She might, but then what’s the point of spending all this time thinking about making a life with her?”
He has a point, but if the pain I feel in my heart is any indication, this whole thing might break me in the end.