by Lia Lee
It was nothing but a dream. A seriously hot dream that left me covered in a fine layer of sweat and with an intense ache between my legs. Groaning into my purple comforter, I took a few deep breaths, willing my body to calm down and my mind to release me from the last vestiges of the dream that it still clung to.
The single stuffed animal that I’d brought with me when I moved out of my parents’ house, a pink elephant named Rosie, silently judged me from the built-in reading nook in my bay window. Brett had won her for me at a fair when we were kids, and I couldn’t bear leaving her behind.
But now I wished that I had.
“Butt out,” I whispered to her, then covered my head with a sheet, hiding away from the inanimate object that was witnessing my moment of weakness.
Weakness or not, however, the dream kept replaying in my mind, and my body begged me for some kind of relief. It wouldn’t be anything near what “dream Brett” had been building and tending to with such care, but I still needed it. Badly.
My hand skated down my side, pushing underneath the elastic waistband of my panties. I must’ve lost my pajama bottoms somewhere during my dream, but I’d find them later. I had much more pressing business to attend to.
With that hand, my fingers slipped between my moist folds, already eliciting a soft moan. My other went to cup my breast, teasing my hardened nipple and squeezing down on it with just the right amount of pressure.
The little squeeze shot like a lightning bolt to my clit, ramping up the throbbing right back to where it’d been when I woke up. The fingers between my folds moved with sure strokes through the velvety wetness, dipping into my pussy on the downstroke and lightly hitting my sensitive button on the way up.
Teasing myself for a while, I pinched my nipples and started to draw lazy circles around my clit, only to stop when the need to tighten them took hold. When I finally couldn’t stand it anymore, my hand started moving faster, stroking myself with purpose as I imagined that it was Brett’s hand between my legs.
And it was Brett’s fingers moving in a frenzy and winding the pressure in my core tighter and tighter. When I closed my eyes, it was Brett that I saw. The way he’d looked at me in that dream, like he wanted to devour and cherish me, all at the same time.
It was that look, the imaginary one where I was driving him insane with need, that finally did me in. Pleasure spread from my center to my extremities as my orgasm ripped through me in waves of bliss so consuming that I had to stifle my moans into my pillow as I rode out the storm. My hips bucked against my hand, and I pressed down harder, my body awash with pleasure like I couldn’t remember it feeling before.
Afterward, I lay there for a few minutes, my body tingling from one of the best self-induced orgasms I’d ever had. Who was I kidding? They’d all been self-induced. The couple of guys that I had fooled around with didn’t know the first thing about pleasuring a woman, not in the way that I knew Brett did.
Even back in high school, his prowess had been the stuff of legends.
Despite the hurt it caused, I couldn’t help but listen when the girls started talking about him in whispered conversations in starkly lit bathrooms. I also hadn’t missed the heated looks his ex-girlfriends shot him while we were out at a bar or having a barbecue in his backyard. Neither had I missed how flushed and starry eyed they were after disappearing with him for a while.
I knew that it annoyed Mark that Brett still invited me to hang out with them from time to time, just like it had annoyed him when we were kids, but Brett had always been kind to me. He often invited me to play with them, though as adults, I regrettably didn’t see enough of him.
Mark and I weren’t that close. Not then, and certainly not now. We were only two years and nine months apart, so we butted heads often. But I loved my brother, and I knew that he loved me, too.
The minute I’d decided to move out of our parents’ house, Mark had insisted that I should move into his apartment with him. He’d always been overprotective and apparently felt that I would safer living with him for the time being.
It had been four years since I’d moved in with him, and whenever I made a squeak about getting my own place, he’d shut me down. Often, he looked to Brett for backup, citing that the city was filled with men that were always looking for a good time and that he didn’t want to see me get hurt.
Whenever I tried to point out that neither Brett nor Mark seemed to have a problem with having a good time when they were on the receiving end of said good time, I got glowered at and told that was exactly why he knew it was better for me to stay safe and away from guys like them.
The chauvinism of his stance pissed me off, but I knew that it came from a good place. Besides, I actually kind of liked living with my brother. For one thing, he cooked a mean breakfast, like the pancakes I was starting to smell wafting in from underneath my bedroom door.
Hopping out of bed, I adjusted my pajama top so that it covered me completely again and found my bottoms hidden in the sheets. I brushed my hair and my teeth in my en suite bathroom and went to face the day.
And Brett, apparently.
As soon as I cracked my bedroom door open, there was a loud knock at the front door, followed by Mark padding down the hall and the sound of their voices making small talk as they headed back to the kitchen.
I stood rooted in my spot, mortified at the memory of what I’d been doing while imagining the owner of that voice only minutes earlier. I was about to duck back into my room, and I briefly considered the viability of hiding out in it for the rest of my life when Mark stuck his head around the corner.
“Oh good, you’re up. I was just coming to wake you. Pancakes are nearly done, so come on. Chop chop.”
My stomach sank as my plan to become a hermit in my own bedroom disappeared like mist under the sun. Dang it.
But I had to suck it up. If I didn’t go to the kitchen, they’d both know that something was up with me. I loved Mark’s pancakes, and it wasn’t exactly a secret. The last thing I needed was either of them prying into why I was skipping out on one of my favorite breakfasts. They’d see straight through me. So, with a deep breath, I womaned up and tried to get over my embarrassment.
When I entered the kitchen, Brett was leaning against the island, looking positively mouthwatering in a light blue henley that accentuated the undertone of his eyes and dark blue jeans that hung off his hips just so.
His head turned when he heard me, and his smoky eyes lit up with amusement as his lips twitched into a smile. “There you are, party girl. How’s the head this morning?”
“Fine,” I said, not quite able to meet his eyes. The same ones that had been staring at me, all hot and bothered, in my dream and had pushed me over the edge soon after.
“Hey.” A small frown marred his perfect features. “You sure you’re okay? I was just joking about the party girl thing.”
I nodded and tried my best to paste a smile onto my face. When in truth, I was cringing on the inside. I was beyond embarrassed by what I’d just done and, more specifically, by who I’d been thinking about while I’d been doing it.
Chapter Three
Brett
Okay, Sophia was acting really weird. It started with the one-word answers and not being able to look me in the eye. Then it was like she was purposefully avoiding coming anywhere near me, to the extent that she ate her pancakes while standing near the door instead of sitting at the kitchen island with us.
“Bet you feel like someone is tapdancing in your stomach,” Mark teased, clearly chalking up Soph’s weirdness to an epic hangover. It might have been the cause, but I had a feeling it wasn’t.
Sophia made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat and kept her eyes on the floor.
Mark shoveled pancakes like it was nobody’s business, and Sophia studiously examined the checkered flooring. I took the opportunity to give her a long onceover. It wasn’t like the answer was tattooed on her golden skin, of course. But I still searched her like it was.
> At least, that was my story and I was sticking to it. I was looking for any clue about why she was acting the way that she was. That was all.
Her wavy hair shone in the morning light poring through their wide kitchen windows, and her narrow shoulders slightly slumped like she was trying to make herself ever smaller than she already was. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear absently, the tip of it a bright pink color.
She was wearing tiny pajamas that made my blood rush south, despite my very best efforts. The bottoms barely hid her pert ass, and the top clung to her round breasts just enough to make my cock twitch with appreciation.
There was cursive lettering on her shirt that read, “It’s a messy hair and pajamas kind of day,” in a deeper shade of blue than the material was. It was just so perfectly her.
Jesus Christ, Brett. What’s gotten into you? I silently admonished myself. Since when did I have these kinds of thoughts about sweet little Sophia Love?
Scrubbing my hands over the stubble on my chin, I forced myself to focus on the crispy saltiness of the bacon and the sweet, syrup-covered pancakes on my plate.
Mark’s fork clamored to his plate, and his stool scraped on the floor as he pushed back on it. “Okay, I’m done. I gotta go shower quick. Then we’ll head out?”
“Sure thing,” I told him, wolfing down the last of my breakfast.
When Mark moved to the sink, Sophia stopped him in a small voice. “That’s okay. You cooked. I’ll clean up. Go shower. I’m sure you two have plans.”
“That we do.” Mark grinned. “Thanks, sis.”
Sophia shot him a thumbs up and moved silently toward the sink and dishwasher that sat slightly to the left below it. Mark was out of the room a second later, padding to his room at the far end of the hall.
Once again, Sophia and I were alone, and once again, I felt a tension between us that hadn’t been there before.
Crack a joke or something. Lighten this fucking mood.
“So, are you being weird because you accidentally told me I was hot last night?” I asked.
What the fuck? That wasn’t going to lighten the damn mood.
I smirked anyway. At least, my tone was light.
“No,” Sophia said, moving to the stove to collect the pan Mark had used for the pancakes. She still didn’t look at me. “And it wasn’t accidental.”
I nearly fell off the stool. “What?”
Sophia shrugged, placing the pan along with their plates in the dishwater. “What? You know that you are. What difference does it make that I said it?”
What difference? Well, fuck. “I am a handsome son of gun, aren’t I?”
I never had and never would call myself a son of bitch. Not under any circumstances. I respected my mother way too much to even use the figure of speech. My father, on the other hand, could’ve actually been a gun for all that I knew. If it were humanly possible to conceive like that.
I thought of him more like a sperm donor. I’d never met the man that I could remember, since he’d cut and run when I was all of two months old.
Mom never talked about him, and she raised me by herself, completely alone with no one to take care of us but her. And she did a hell of a job at it.
While I was growing up, she worked as a waitress, a receptionist, and a bookkeeper in her nonexistent free time. It turned out that I had her knack for numbers, possibly because I’d always been on the lookout for where possible pitfalls might lie as a kid. It was like risk assessment.
Those two things combined, along with a healthy cash investment from my first boss when I’d pitched him the idea, had now made me a billionaire. It was more than hard to believe sometimes.
I founded BKR when I was twenty-four, rented a shitty office with my previous employer as my only client, and took the biggest leap faith known to man. It paid off.
Five years later, Brett Kelly Risk Management Services was a powerhouse in the industry, even if I did say so myself. I was no longer alone in a dingy building that had paint cracking on the walls, but had hundreds of people working underneath me and clients from all over the country.
None of which would have happened if it hadn’t been for my drive to provide for Mom. Something I was now able to do in spectacular style and was damn proud of being able to do.
Sophia, of course, knew all of this, and her soft voice pulled me back to reality.
“You’re not the son of a gun,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’re the son of a wonderful, hardworking woman who loves you more than life itself. Speaking of whom, how is Mary these days?”
That. That was why I loved the Loves. Aside from Mark and Sophia, no one ever asked about Mom. Shit, apart from Sophia, no woman ever did. Not even the ones I kept around for months and actually introduced to the main woman in my life had ever bothered asking.
Sophia, however, made a point of it. Better yet, she always listened to my answer with rapturous attention and then told me to send her love.
“She’s okay. Good, I think. She’s still staying with me at the house.” I’d bought her one, but she refused to live in it, insisting that I rent it out instead. “She claims that I’ll get into too much trouble without her there.”
Sophia laughed, whatever weirdness momentarily disappearing as she glanced at me over her shoulder, still packing away an inordinate amount of dishes to have only been used to make one meal.
“Smart woman.”
“That she is,” I agreed. Besides, her health was fading fast. It was better that she was with me, where I could take care of her. Too many years of stress about where our next meal was coming from and working almost around the clock was finally catching up to her.
“How’s her arthritis?” Sophia asked.
I swore that she could read my mind sometimes. “It’s not great. It’s been acting up again recently.”
The corners of Sophia’s mouth turned down. “I’m sorry to hear that. I read the other day that there’s a new drug on the market that’s showing some promise.”
“I’ve heard about it, too, but it’s still experimental.”
Sophia turned away from me again, after a moment of silence stretched between us, and she shifted awkwardly. Whatever was eating at her, I didn’t fucking like it. It was clearly hurting my friend.
“Seriously, what’s up with you today?”
“Nothing,” she replied, shoving detergent into the dishwasher and finally shutting its door. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“Uh-uh. I’ve seen you walking around like a zombie during exams, and you’ve never been like this.”
She spun around to face me, eyes flashing with some unnamed emotion. “I said I was fine. Stop pushing me.”
“I’m not pushing. I just want to know what’s wrong.”
“It’s nothing,” she grumbled, adding below her breath. “That you need to know about.”
“I need to know about everything. Information is my life. I would be nothing without it.”
Sophia crossed her arms and lifted her gaze to mine. “Well this information would mean exactly that to you. Nothing.”
Interesting.
“So, let me get this straight. You’re being weird with me, yet the reason why wouldn’t mean anything to me? That makes no sense, Soph.”
“Does to me,” she muttered darkly, busying herself with soaking items in the sink that hadn’t fit in the dishwasher.
“So, help a poor guy out here. Last night, I’m fucking hot, and today, I’m what? Not? So ‘not’ that you can’t even look at me?”
Sophia sighed. “That has nothing to do with this. All I need is a day in bed. Just let it go, will you?”
“No. What do you need a day in bed for, Soph? Experimenting for some column you’re writing?” It was meant to be a tease, but Sophia’s cheeks heated.
What the what?
“Maybe,” she said. Turning those bright blue eyes on me, I felt their heat in my dick. “What’s it to you?”
“It’s something to every res
ponsible male out there. Pray tell, young journalist, what is this column about?”
Sophia didn’t write columns, and we both knew it. She was a hard-hitting, up-and-coming woman who had exposed a drug trafficking ring a few months before, but she was playing into the ruse for some reason.
“It’s about pleasure,” she said, looking me right in eyes.
Well, I’ll be damned. The tension in the air arced between us, igniting the need caused by months of abstinence in my veins. Instantly, my cock was hard and was begging me to explore this pleasure column thing that both of us knew was bullshit.
“Okay, tell me more. What kind of pleasure?” What the fuck was I doing asking her that? I was digging my own goddamn grave at this rate.
Death by horniness. What a slogan for a gravestone. I needed to find a wet, willing pussy to bury myself in. As soon as fucking possible. One that didn’t belong to Sophia Love.
“Every kind,” Sophia said vaguely, spotting my plate still on the counter. “Crap, I guess I didn’t see that one.”
“You wouldn’t have, since you haven’t really been looking at me,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes and reached for the plate at the same time I did. I didn’t need her waiting on me. I was perfectly capable of washing my own plate. The fork clattered to the floor from both of us tugging on the plate.
Jumping from the stool, I bent to retrieve it, but so did Sophia. Our fingers brushed when they touched the fork, and her eyes snapped to mine. Our gazes met and locked.
Her breath caught, and her lips parted, drawing my attention to them. They looked soft, inviting. She inched forward, her pupils dilating and breaths quickening.
I was thrown into some kind of trance. Drawn in by those red lips, enslaved by the sound of her heavy breaths.
Before I could stop myself or even think about what I was doing, I closed the distance between our mouths, claiming her lips with mine, kissing her for one insanely idiotic moment of time.
I pulled away almost immediately, muttering softly as I came to my senses. “What the hell?”