Unexpected Family

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Someone could come out here,” he said, arching himself, bit by bit, against her. Hips, chest, lips. They were a combination lock, and he knew how it worked.

  “They could.”

  “They could see us.” Both of his hands pushed up against the bricks by her head, blocking her in. Securing her. It was just them and the heat and the lust and the fire between them. A delight of their own making.

  “I suppose.”

  His tempting grin was back. “Why, Ms. Alatore, I had no idea you were so naughty.”

  I’m not, she thought. It’s you. It’s us. I’ve never done anything like this. I’ve never felt even a tenth of what you’re making me feel and we still have our clothes on.

  He brushed his face against her neck, the rough scrape of his stubble sending sensation racing over and under her skin. His breath kissed her skin, her cheeks, the points of her ears.

  Oh, she was melting inside, melting against him. He pushed a knee between her legs as if to keep her up and she thanked him by pressing her hot core against the hard muscle of his leg. Riding it, her own thigh pressed high against his erection, and he leaned his head against the wall beside hers. Groaning low in his throat.

  Reckless, wild with adrenaline and lust, she put her hand against the hard muscles of his stomach and slipped her palm down the waist of his pants until her fingers touched the top of his erection. The soft spongy head, the little drops of liquid he couldn’t control.

  His hand helped hers unbutton his jeans and she sighed with delight as she had full access to Jeremiah. She cupped him, reached beneath his erection to find all of him, and he growled, clenching her hair in his hands as he kissed her.

  Wild, he kissed her with none of the finesse she’d expected from a man like Jeremiah. No teasing. No seduction. It was rabid need and barely controlled. It was Jeremiah as she never, ever thought she’d experience him. Utterly undone and at her mercy. His hips arched into her hands and she stroked him, harder, faster, not sure of where this was going, but not wanting to stop.

  “Lucy,” he breathed, biting her lips, sucking on the skin of her neck. “Oh, God, baby, it’s so good. So. Good.”

  She didn’t realize but she was bucking her hips against his knee, pushing herself toward her own orgasm even as she pushed him toward his. She felt powerful and feminine and desired in the extreme.

  “Baby.” He put his hands over hers, stopping her, though he couldn’t seem to stop himself from pushing himself through their fingers. He hissed, arching his head back and she licked his throat.

  His laughter was dark and pained and he stepped back, and she followed but he put a hand at her hip. Between her legs fire raged and she felt as if she’d had a thousand too many drinks.

  “I don’t have any condoms.”

  It took a second for the words to make sense.

  “Do you?” he asked. She would have laughed at his hopeful expression if she’d been able to; instead, she shook her head.

  He swore, resting his forehead against hers. “Probably for the better. I don’t want the first time I have sex with you to be outside a bar.”

  “That’s very sweet, Jeremiah, but I’m dying.”

  His lip quirked. “Dying?”

  “You have no idea.”

  He glanced down at the shadows between his legs where she knew his erection was probably pounding in time with his heartbeat. Much like what was happening between her legs.

  Slowly, one by one, her fingers found him, curled over the hard muscle and skin, until he was back in her palm, stepping toward her willingly.

  “There are other things we can do,” she whispered. She took his hand and put it against her breast.

  Jeremiah was a smart man and she didn’t have to give him any more hints. His big broad hand, those long calloused fingers, cupped her breast, found the hard point of her nipple and rolled it slowly until the tension hurt. Deliciously.

  “Is this what you want?” he breathed.

  “More.”

  Both hands slipped up under her shirt. Rough, his hands yanked at the lace and silk of her bra; something tore and she loved it. Yes. Yes, and yes. A barely in control cowboy, this was what she wanted. What she’d needed and never known.

  His fingers pulled at her nipples; his eyes watched her face, gauging just how much pain she liked with her pleasure until he found the combination that made her wild.

  She used her thumb to gather what moisture leaked from the top of his erection and spread it down the shaft. And then again. Again. Faster.

  “That’s what you want?” he asked through clenched teeth, his hands fumbling at the button at the top of her jeans. In a heartbeat, his hand was down her pants, twisting, shifting until…

  “Oh, God. Yes!” she cried as his finger, one and then another, speared into the slick heat of her. His thumb found the hard ridge that made her see stars. Her hand squeezed his erection until he laughed, pained.

  “You,” he said, lifting her hand away from his body. “You first.”

  He worked her. Owned her.

  She cried out, her head tilted back. “You have to be quiet,” he breathed in her ear, even that sensation sending her someplace new.

  “I can’t… Oh, Jeremiah.” She put her hands against his shoulders, using him as leverage as she arched herself against his hands, her hips a piston in the night.

  He slapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Someone will hear.”

  She cried out against his fingers, used her teeth against his palm, and in the darkness she found the light of his eyes. Blue fire that burned away everything but what he made her feel.

  She didn’t look away. Couldn’t. His hand over her mouth, his fingers inside her, and she came, eyes wide open.

  * * *

  WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? Jeremiah wondered, feeling as if he’d been given a million dollars. The key to the city, a king’s crown. Lucy Alatore was the most passionate, most exciting woman he’d ever had the privilege of touching. Ever.

  And he was oddly humbled in the back alley behind this bar.

  Oddly reverent.

  He lifted his hand from her mouth and kissed her lips in apology. Kissed the red marks on her cheeks his fingers had left. Reluctant to leave the hot, wet pocket he’d found, he slowly slipped his fingers from her. Cataloging every silken inch of her. She shook and trembled, her body jerking in wild aftershocks as his fingers slipped over sensitive skin and then, just because he wanted to, he went back one more time.

  “No. Jeremiah,” she breathed. “No more.”

  “Sorry.” He buttoned her pants and reached for his, but her hands got there first and at the first touch of her fingers he jerked.

  “Baby, I’m…” He felt like a teenager. Young and untried and so close to losing control it was embarrassing. If he just had a second, a minute even, he’d get himself under control so at the first touch of her hand he wouldn’t come all over her like a fifteen-year-old.

  But she wasn’t going to give him a minute. Her hands, busy and hot, slipped into the open V of his pants.

  “Hard,” she breathed, licking his neck. “So hard.”

  Yes. Yes. He resisted, easing away, but she stopped him.

  “Let me,” she breathed, stroking him hard and then harder. Slow and then faster.

  His grip on her shoulder was too hard, he knew that, and he was biting his tongue so hard he could taste blood. He was going to embarrass himself, but there was no walking away from this.

  He jerked, putting his hand over hers to push her away, but she linked her hand with his, and the sensation was too much. He jerked. And again, spilling himself over their fingers.

  All he could hear for several long moments was the pounding of his heart in his ears. His brain was short-circuiting, his wires crossed.

  Did I just…all over her…behind a bar?

  She shifted, her hands leaving his body, and all sorts of reason and sense rushed in with the cool air.

  “Um…” Her fingers
were a mess, so was he and he felt like such a child. Such a green boy. Eight months since he’d touched a woman and this is what comes of him. For a man who used to pride himself on being able to say no when the moment required, he certainly had been unable tonight.

  He blamed Lucy. Irresistible Lucy.

  “Here.” He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket; something was stuck in there with it and it fell to the ground. He ignored it and wiped her hands. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry?”

  He didn’t look up at her, unsure of what he would see. Diligently he just kept cleaning them both up.

  “That was—”

  “A mistake?” He felt thin. Like all of the cracks in his foundation were creeping up and over his body, revealing all his weakness.

  “Do you think it was a mistake?” She touched his face, lifting his chin so he had to meet her eyes. Her liquid, slightly wounded eyes.

  It would be easy to say yes, to bundle all of this up as a one-off, a mistake never to be repeated, but he wanted a repeat. From what was happening in his pants he wanted a repeat immediately.

  “No.” He tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket. “But we could have been caught. Who does that, Lucy?”

  “We do!” she erupted with light, a glee she’d clearly been suppressing. Her smile was womanly. Her black hair wild around her face, her eyes wide in the half-light.

  Beautiful, he thought. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

  “I’ve never done anything like that before. Ever.” She made it sound like they’d egged a house, broke into the high school: something innocent and naughty at the same time.

  The bark of his laughter startled a bird in the bushes past the stone wall they leaned against.

  “Honestly, Jeremiah Stone.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek, a spark against his skin. “That was perfect.”

  “Perfect? Perfect would have been a king-size bed. A couple of condoms—”

  “Oh, I have no doubt but that you would rock a king-size bed. And I hope to find out all your tricks. But this…” She sighed, her head falling back.

  “Just what you needed?” he joked, still uncomfortable, still shaken.

  She stood up from against the wall, putting her hands on his cheeks, looking deep into his eyes in a way he found utterly intrusive but was unable to stop.

  “Don’t pretend like you didn’t need that, too. Something wild. Something a little dirty? Fun?”

  I just need to be touched. The thought came out of nowhere, and shook him down to his boots. He kissed her lips, and stepped away, needing a little distance from the satiated woman in his arms. The thing that had fallen from his pocket crunched under his boot heel. A half-eaten bag of crackers.

  Casey’s after-school snack.

  Reality hammered down around him like a cold driving rain.

  This is not for you, Stone, he told himself. Do not get attached to the fun this woman brings to your life. Those boys, that’s your life now.

  “It’s getting late,” he said, “the boys—”

  She blinked, the radiance fading as he forced real life upon their wickedness.

  “Sure. I, ah… Have you seen my purse?”

  He picked it up from the ground behind them and handed it to her. “You’re not…you’re not going back in there, are you?”

  “No.” She took a deep breath and swung the purse up over her shoulder. “I know the taxi idea is ridiculous, Jeremiah. I know it’s not me, or what I do, but I don’t do the thing that made me me anymore and I…well…I guess I’m floundering.”

  “You’re allowed to flounder, Lucy.”

  She smiled into his face, cupping his cheek in her soft hand. “So are you, Jeremiah.”

  “Well—” he took a deep breath “—I’d like to flounder with you again sometime.”

  She laughed and the bird in the bushes finally gave up his roost, flying up into the night. “Me, too, Jeremiah, me, too.”

  They walked, not quite hand in hand, but with their arms touching as if their skin was magnetized, and maybe it was, he thought.

  “I’ll pick up Aaron on Tuesday,” she said.

  “I thought you weren’t doing the taxi thing.”

  Her fingers touched his face, glanced off his cheek, his lips. “It’s a favor,” she said. “For a friend.”

  She got in the car and drove away and he watched until the red of her taillights disappeared into the distance.

  Friend. He tasted the word, rolled it around on his tongue. It’s why he’d come to the bar tonight, why Dr. Gilman had sent him out of her office.

  But she didn’t feel like any friend he’d ever had before. And it wasn’t because of what they’d done behind this bar. It was because in this new landscape he lived in now, he’d never had a friend. Maybe when life was hard, friendships came with some extra complexities. All his drinking buddies from the old life, they had faded away after the accident and he barely mourned them.

  What could they possibly have in common?

  Reese, the most stubborn of them, was still calling, but not with the same frequency after his visit up here.

  Friend.

  He didn’t know how to feel about it, so in the end he just left it alone, watching her car vanish until the heat she’d called to his skin, to his heart, turned cool, and then finally when he was numb again he got in his car and headed home.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON, THE SECOND the car door closed behind Aaron he talked. He talked nonstop. About hockey. About school. Kids she’d never heard of. It was as if the boy’s cork had been stuck and she managed to get it free, just by putting him in her car.

  The only word in edgewise she managed to get in was when she noticed a sign for McDonald’s and asked him if he wanted something to eat.

  “I’ve got a sandwich,” he said. He pulled out a smooshed peanut-butter-and-jelly from his school bag and offered her some of it.

  So charming, these Stone boys. She smiled and waved it off. “I’m fine.”

  It took him a few minutes to eat and the silence that filled the car was slightly awkward. A little too aware.

  “Is Ben actually working at your house?” he asked, scrunching up the sandwich’s plastic bag and shoving it in his book bag.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I don’t think he is.”

  “He’s not exactly cooperative.”

  Aaron laughed through his nose. “He’s making Uncle J. crazy.”

  She put her elbow out her opened window, holding back the hair that wanted to fly in her face. “That is true.”

  “Do you think he’ll leave?”

  “Who? Ben?”

  Aaron shook his head. “Uncle Jeremiah.”

  She gaped at him for a moment. “Why…why would you say that?”

  Aaron shrugged and looked away and Lucy felt her stomach bottom out. These boys and their pain was so endlessly surprising. So shocking.

  “He doesn’t like it with us. He misses the rodeo. He…he misses his old life.”

  She could say no, he doesn’t, but they both knew it was a lie. “Just because he misses his old life doesn’t mean he doesn’t like it with you guys.”

  Aaron shot her a look that was far too old. “Ben is going to make him leave. I know it.”

  “He’s your uncle—”

  “So?”

  “So, you’re family.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’ll stay.”

  “He loves you.”

  Aaron’s lips twisted as if he were chewing on the inside of his cheek, and she knew, she could see it, that he didn’t believe that for a moment. Not one moment did this boy believe his uncle loved him.

  Oh, Jeremiah, what are you doing with these boys?

  “So tell me about this team you’re playing today. Are they good?”

  “Best team in the league.”

  “So, you’re gonna kill ’em, right?”

  He grinned sideways at her and launched into h
is team’s entire defensive strategy. Twenty minutes went by. A half hour. She thought about planting a salsa garden like she’d read about, all the ingredients needed to make the dip. So practical.

  She realized he was silent. Blinking at her as if he expected a response.

  “You really like hockey, huh?” she asked.

  He looked down at his thumb, rubbing at a worn spot on the shoulder strap of his backpack. “My dad taught me.”

  His voice was gruff and he turned and looked out the window, hiding his face and grief.

  She took the next exit off the highway and the community center was just to their left. She pulled into the parking lot and turned off the car.

  “Here we are,” she said, and checked her watch. “Right on time.”

  “Thanks,” Aaron said, his earnestness making her blush, making her painfully aware that she was doing for money what other women would do for free.

  “I’ll be done in two hours,” he said. “If you…you know where to meet me?”

  “Are you kidding me?” she asked. She grabbed her purse. “This is my first hockey game, mister. I didn’t drive all this way not to see it.”

  “You’re going to watch?”

  “Duh.”

  He beamed at her. Radiant in his pleasure.

  “Awesome,” he crowed, and barreled out of the car, into the sunlight.

  Why was Aaron so much easier than Ben? she wondered. Maybe instead of trying to get Ben to work all she needed to do was lock him in a car and drive around until he broke.

  She smiled as she climbed out of the car, walking across cracked pavement to a tiny, slightly run-down ice arena that she’d never even heard of before.

  The ground dipped beneath her and she had one of those moments—slightly out of body—of not recognizing herself in this landscape. Dressed in her own clothes, her own skin, she felt like a stranger to herself.

  Dropping a boy off at a hockey game, making him happy by going in to watch, talking about his grief. She was miles, literally hundreds of them, away from the life she thought she’d have. The life she thought she’d wanted more than anything.

  And she wasn’t entirely sure that was a bad thing.

  * * *