by Brandy Ayers
Bryan stumbled back two steps until he was leaning against the porch railing, allowing it to hold him up while he took in the rest of her. Sky-high red heels. Blond hair in soft waves falling over her shoulders. Plump lips the color of strawberries. And eyes made impossibly bigger by that black pencil stuff women put on, with a little swoop at the corners. From head to toe, she was his greatest fantasies come true. And he wasn’t sure he could take it.
“You okay there, big guy?” Lexis turned to close the door and lock it.
With her back to him, Bryan saw the slit up the back of her skirt. It showed a tiny sliver of skin to mid-thigh. All the blood ran straight to his hardening cock, and he had to bend over and brace himself on his knees to keep from passing out.
“Woman, you are trying to kill me? First I’ve had images of all those sex toys and what we could do with them.” Bryan sucked in two breaths, trying to force some oxygen back into his brain. “Now you look like that for our date? I’m going to be walking around with a raging hard-on the entire time.”
The click of her heels preceded their appearance below his face. Unable to keep his eyes away from her, Bryan gazed up at her amused face.
“Poor baby. I’ll just have to walk in front of you the whole time.”
As Bryan stood to his full height, Lexis slid her eyes down to the giant tent in his pants. One of her eyebrows quirked up as her eyes widened in surprise. “You weren’t joking. It is going to be hard hiding that thing.” Her hand reached out, patting his straining dick gently. Bryan let out a hiss, desperately willing his hips not to surge forward seeking friction.
Withdrawing her hand, Lexis smiled up at him with mischief in her eyes. “So, should we take your car or mine?”
***
Despite his inability to tame the wild beast in his pants, the date actually went off without a hitch. Lexis’ face lit up when she saw their destination. It was a moonlit dinner cruise around the three rivers of Pittsburgh. The furthest thing from bars, bounce houses and fast food Bryan had been able to think of.
They sat at a table by a window in the dining room, candle light flickering between them as they were served a meal of steak and roasted veggies, red wine, and for dessert, a chocolate cake so divine it made Lexis moan several times. Which did not help the situation in Bryan’s pants.
After dinner they strolled out to the deck where a dance floor had been set up, and a band played classic pop standards. Bryan’s whole body felt at peace as he took Lexis into his arms, and they swayed back and forth under the stars, talking and gazing at each other. Thankfully, she was polite enough not to say anything about the bulge in his pants.
He’d learned a lot about her over the course of their date. And each new tidbit of information came together to form a picture that he desperately wanted to be a part of. How she worked strange hours at her three jobs. The fact that she had been raised by deaf parents, serving as both their child and interpreter to this day. Her love for her work as a telephone nurse. Her passion for tattoos, classic cars, and all things sweet. But one subject she had carefully avoided was her son.
“Tell me more about Ashton. You haven’t talked about him much.” Bryan tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as they swayed back and forth to the music.
“I wasn’t sure if I should on our first date. This is the first time I’ve been on a date since becoming a single mom. I don’t want to freak you out with all my mommy talk.” She winced, obviously nervous with the topic.
“You won’t freak me out. He‘s a big part of your life. I’d like to know more.” He hadn’t let go of her hair, instead weaving it back and forth between his fingers, enjoying the silkiness. “Can I ask where his father is?”
“You can ask, but I really don’t know.” Lexis sighed, and looked at her hand resting on his shoulder, where she fidgeted with his shirt collar. “I went through a bit of a bad-boy phase in my early twenties. He was a regular over at that dive bar, Shady’s. Fought in some underground rings. I knew he cheated on me regularly, but I tried not to think about it too much. Then I told him I was pregnant, and he disappeared. Tried to ask around once about where he might have gone, but his buddies weren’t giving anything up. I was never actually all that upset about it. His not being around is the best thing for Ashton. And me.”
“And me.” Bryan gave her a soft smile. “Can I ask a question about Ashton that I’m not sure is very PC?”
Lexis gave him the side eye but reluctantly nodded her head.
“Why does he speak sometimes, but only signs other times? Can he hear a little bit?” Bryan had been wondering for a while. He didn’t get to interact with the boy much, because he only saw them in the mornings when they were running around getting ready for school. But he wanted to get to know Lexis’ son. Ash seemed like a cool kid, and Bryan hoped if things worked out with Lex, he and the kid could be buds.
“Don’t worry, that is a perfectly fair question.” Lex sighed, a gentle smile pulling her lips up as she talked about her son. “Ash got a cochlear implant when he was just under three. It was a sore point with my parents. They didn’t think he should get the implant. I thought he should be able to live in both the hearing and Deaf communities. He usually doesn’t wear the sound processor at night. He sleeps better without it, and it saves on batteries. So when we are running around in the morning, we sign. He also exclusively signs when he is with my parents. But once he turns the sound processor back on, he usually prefers to speak.”
Bryan started to regret asking the question, as he saw a little sadness enter her eyes, and her voice go quieter.
“My parents love him, but some of the truly hardcore people in the Deaf community will never accept him. They think I didn’t accept him as he was, and that I was trying to fix him.” Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “But to fix him, there would’ve had to have been something broken about him. Being born deaf didn’t make him broken. He was perfect. Is perfect. But I couldn’t ignore a technology that would make his life a little easier.”
Her gaze landed on Bryan again, and her eyes seemed to plead with him to understand. As if she had had this argument several times with both herself and the people in her life. “Isn’t that what all parents want? To make things a little easier for their children? Give them the best possible start in life?”
Bryan wrapped his hand around the side of her neck, rubbing his thumb along her jawline. “I’m not a parent, so I don’t know. But I’m starting to get to know you, and I think understand you. I have a feeling you would never do anything that didn’t have his best interests at heart.”
She leaned into his touch, taking the comfort he offered her, and the gesture of trust made an affection he had never experienced before well up in his chest. “Want to hear something crazy that I’ve never told anyone before?”
“Always.”
“The night before his surgery, I sat and rocked him to sleep, like I did every night. But I stayed awake all night and just held him, staring at this freckle behind his ear. It was right in the crease where his ear met his head. And I cried, knowing that freckle would be gone the next time I rocked him to sleep. That freckle almost made me change my mind.” A tear escaped the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. “Then, after the surgery, when they showed me the incision site and how to care for it, the freckle was still there. It was like a sign or something. That I’d made the right decision. Ash doesn’t need me to rock him to bed anymore, but I kiss that freckle every night before bed.”
The lone tear that had rolled down her face turned into steady streams, as the emotion of her confession spilled from her lips. In that moment, Bryan knew. He knew he would look back for the rest of his life and pinpoint that moment as the moment he fell in love with Lexis Johannes.
He cupped her head in his hands, kissing the trail left behind by her tears. “You are amazing.”
Lexis laughed this embarrassed little chuckle and wiped her tears. “Okay, I’ve talked enough. You need to take some of the getti
ng-to-know-you burden here, buddy.”
“Okay, I can do that. What do you want to know?” He slid his hands down her back to rest on her hips again, as they continued their soft swaying to the music.
Lexis bit her bottom lip between her teeth, then released it with a slight pop. “What were you like as a little boy? I bet you were trouble.”
Bryan laughed, because she had no idea how true her words were. “You could say that. You could also say I was a delinquent.” He didn’t usually talk with people about his youth. It wasn’t something he looked back on fondly. But he wanted Lexis to know all of him. “I entered the foster system when I was five. I was the eighth of ten kids born to my mom; all but two of us had different dads. She was a nice lady, but fell in love easily and with the wrong men. The last guy cleaned out her bank account, and she started doing what she had to do to make ends meet. Prostitution led to drugs, which led to an overdose and all ten of us in foster care. When I turned thirteen, I got sent to a foster home that was not the greatest.”
He refused to say the names of the monsters he had lived with for that dark year. They put on a great face for the authorities, but once they were alone, they beat and starved the kids in their care.
“I took to stealing and acting out. Vandalizing buildings, getting in fights. Then I made the mistake of spray painting a giant pink pig on the side of Officer Jon Gallo’s house.” The laugh that always came when he thought of the most fortunate crime he committed bubbled out from his mouth. “Jon came out and tore me a new one when he caught me and my buddy. Made us scrub and repaint the siding on his whole house. Then he took us under his wing. Eventually got us to tell him what was going on in the foster home, and got the assholes shut down. I idolized him. Now he’s the Chief, and I’m the officer, and I still do.”
Blinking, Bryan felt like he was coming out of a trance. The lights of the city, the scent of Lexis’ sweet perfume, the heat of her under his hands, it all reminded him that he wasn’t that damaged little kid anymore. He had made it out.
He looked back at Lexis, her beautiful face, hypnotic eyes, pouty mouth. He’d made it out of the hell that was his childhood, and all so he could find her. Sadness and joy were twin emotions in her eyes. No words were needed for him to know she felt bad for his pain, but proud of how far he had come.
The words he so desperately wanted to say bubbled on the tip of his tongue, but instead of letting them take voice, he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. One swipe of his tongue along the seam of her mouth, and she opened, letting him in.
The taste of her mouth, the confident caress of her tongue on his. Goddamn. It was why whatever higher power that controlled these things had put him on the earth. To consume Lexis. To possess her completely.
Instead of speaking those three little words, he breathed them into her, trying to tell her with his kiss how much she meant to him. Bryan knew it was too early in their relationship to voice such things as love and forever, so he showed her instead.
Chapter Six
Lexis
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Lexis fumed.
After that time-stopping kiss on the boat, the rest of their date had gone amazingly well. They talked more than she ever had with a man she dated. They laughed, smiled, got each other. Then he held her hand the entire forty-five minute ride back to her house.
As he walked her to the door, blood pounded through her body, stampeding straight for her pussy. She turned in front of her door, craving another one of those world-shattering kisses and much more; instead, he grazed her cheek with his lips and said he’d call her the next day.
Her cheek!
What the ever loving fuck? He was not just going to leave her high and very fucking wet on her porch. Not if she could do anything about it.
“So help me god, Bryan Coy, if you do not get in this house right now and fuck me senseless, I will make you wait another six months for a second date, and I’ll torture you with the skimpiest outfits every day until you are walking around twenty-four-seven with a hard-on the size of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Capiche?” There was no doubt in her mind that he felt the same level of connection as she did. So why in the hell wasn’t he attacking her?
Bryan’s eyes sparkled with humor, but thankfully he held back the laughter. Which was probably for his own good, if he wanted to walk away from this date with his balls still intact.
“Lex, trust me, there is nothing more I want than to carry you into your house and make you scream in languages you didn’t even realize you knew. But I swore to myself I would prove to you this is more than just a quick fuck for me. I’m doing this right. I’m not coming into your house tonight, because I’m pretty sure I would truly like to make love to you every night for the rest of my life. And I don’t want to ruin this by sleeping with you too soon.” His eyes pleaded with her, silently begging to let him go. “So, please, don’t make me harder than I already am.”
Lexis crossed the five feet separating them on the porch, punching as much sex and sass into the sway of her hips as she could in those few steps. “Bryan, I know you aren’t just looking for a quick lay.” She captured his eyes with her own, making sure he didn’t look away, and that he saw the truth in her words. “You’ve been sitting outside my house damn near every morning for six months. Flirting and asking me out every single day I saw you.” She ran her hands up the soft cotton of his shirt, loving the warmth of his hard muscles beneath the fabric. “It is a small town. People talk. I know you haven’t so much as touched another woman since we met. Not even to help an old lady across the street. I’ve seen you in your car watching YouTube tutorials and practicing sign language.”
She slid her hands up to his face, cupping his cheeks and resting her thumbs in those damn dimples that never went away. Just deepened when he smiled. “And I see the way you look at me. Even when I’m in my crappy sleep clothes, hair all crazy from sleep, and lines creasing my face from my pillow. You look at me like I’m the reason you get up in the morning. If I thought you were looking for a quick fuck, you wouldn’t be here right now. I haven’t let a man touch me since I found out I was pregnant with Ash. I’ve been waiting until a man came along that made me feel safe. Made me want to trust again. You’re that man.” His hands came up to grip her hips. “And if you don’t cut the shit and take me to bed, so help me, your partners at work are going to be investigating me for murder tomorrow.”
Their lips crashed together with enough force it almost hurt. But in a good way. In an essential way. Bryan backed her up until she was pressed between his hard body and the door. She desperately wanted to spread her legs and wrap them around his waist, but her skirt was too damn tight, and they were standing on her porch.
Bryan ripped his lips from hers, spun her around to face the door, only to nip and suck along her shoulder and neck, making her writhe against him. “Open the fucking door, Lexis, or I’ll fuck you right here.”
God, why did that sound so hot? Her hands shook with the desire and adrenaline shooting through her body. Thank god she had decided to take the tiny clutch she saved for special occasions, no rooting around in search of her keys.
She grabbed them and tried to concentrate on something other than the roll of his lips against her heated skin. It took three tries, but finally she got the key into the deadbolt and threw open the door.
The next two minutes were a blur of stumbling feet, shedding clothes, and frantic groping as they tripped back to her bedroom. Everything in her body pulsed with the need to be covered with his. It had been such a very long time since she felt the weight of a man covering her, pounding into her pussy, whispering dirty promises in her ear.
One minute Bryan’s hands were cupping her ass, the next they were on her shoulders, pushing her away. “Wait. Wait.” He huffed, winded from their hot exploits.
“No. No waiting. Screwing. Now.” She gripped the sides of his half-unbuttoned shirt and pulled them apart, popping the buttons off and pulling it down his
arms.
“Hey, that’s the only nice shirt—” His words cut off with a groan as Lexis took his left nipple into her mouth and sucked. “Fuck woman. I wasn’t going to stop. I just want to take my time. This is our first time together.” He sucked in a breath, his six pack tensing as she fell to her knees, kissing down the bumps and valleys. “I want to savor you, make this special.”
Her fingers worked at his pants, getting them open and pushing them to the floor along with his boxer briefs.
Holy. Shit.
Lexis knew it had been a long time since she’d seen a real, live penis, but there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that she had never seen one this beautiful. Long. Thick. Veins popping out in stark relief.
“Special for you.” Bryan grunted as she sucked his length into her mouth, swirling her tongue over the taunt skin, then flicking the tip of her tongue on the little bump just under the head of his cock.
His taste was unbelievable. Salty. Fucking fantastic. She popped off his cock to take another look at it while running her fingers lightly over the smooth skin. “So, so special.” She moaned and sank down on him again until the head pressed against the back of her tongue. Then she swallowed, and Bryan roared, gripping her beneath her armpits and pulling her to her feet.
“I am not coming down your throat the first time we’re together.” He gripped her skirt and yanked it down her hips, and she stepped out of it.
“Later, then.” She panted, going to kick off her heels.
Bryan stopped her by pushing her down onto the bed. “Leave the shoes on. I want them to leave imprints on my back as I fuck you.”
“Please.” The desperation in her voice oozed out before she could stop herself.