Eternal Brand

by Sami Lee

  She met his gaze in the dressing-table mirror and fluttered her lashes coquettishly. “Seen enough?”

  “Never.” The word sounded choked, raw with honesty. “You’re so beautiful, Em.”

  Emily’s flesh tingled. He looked serious, almost tortured as he stood there gazing at her from all the way across the room. Suddenly she felt terrible for making a joke out of the desire he had for her, that she had for him. Heat filled her cheeks. “Thank you.”

  Jet pushed off the doorjamb with his shoulder and came to stand behind her. He held his hand out for the brush. “May I?”

  Emily nodded and gave it to him. Her heart cantered in her chest as Jet drew the brush through her hair. She wouldn’t have thought having him perform such a mundane task would set her every nerve ending on fire, but it did. It was so intimate, so ordinary and yet not ordinary at all.

  Done with her hair, Jet brought the brush down and held it in front of her. He moved it so the bristles skimmed over the flesh that had puckered inside her bra. Emily gasped at the unfamiliar but arousing sensation.

  “Brand went to the lumberyard,” Jet said. “Something about getting some wood to replace that rotten stuff in the back shed.”

  “Oh.” Emily could think of nothing else to say. The implications of she and Jet being alone in the house crowded her skill for dialogue right out of her brain.

  “He’s always here when I am. Have you ever noticed that? We haven’t spent any time alone since that night at my holiday flat in Leyton’s Headland.”

  Emily hadn’t noticed, exactly, but now that she was standing here, she was very much aware of it being the first time she’d ever been alone in her bedroom with Jet. “Have you wanted me to yourself?”

  Jet bent his head to brush his lips over the shell of her ear. At the same time he gently swiped the brush across the distended tip of her breast. “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  He smiled at her in the mirror and moved the brush down until it tickled her stomach. Emily giggled. “Not everything in my life is about Brand, hon. I think about you a lot, about how it would be if it were just the two of us.”

  Jet snaked the brush down her stomach, until it scraped over the growing dampness at the front of her underwear. A sharp jolt of desire arrowed through her. “Jet… Oh, God.”

  The brush clattered against the dressing table as Jet dropped it. An instant later his hand had replaced it at the juncture of her thighs. He tested the wetness of her undies and groaned. “I love how easily you get wet. This time it’s all for me.”

  Emily nodded, shocked at how swiftly she’d grown ready for him. Just him, not Brand or the erotic promise of he and Brand. She watched in the mirror as Jet grabbed his shirt and hauled it over his head. The smooth planes of his muscled chest made her mouth dry out. No doubt about it, he was gorgeous.

  He was gorgeous and he wanted her. The ravenous hunger in his dark eyes told the story, and it made Emily dripping wet for him. How many times had she fucked him already? She’d lost count in the past few weeks. Yet somehow Emily was experiencing the kind of nerve-wrenching excitement usually reserved for a first time.

  “You’ll need to take those panties back off. Nice and slow, like you did when you put them on, you tease.”

  Emily eased the panties down her thighs. Jet walked backwards so he could watch her while he retrieved a condom from his stash in the bedside drawer. She did a sexy shimmy, sending the panties down her legs until they pooled on the floor.

  In the mirror she saw Jet remove his jeans. Then he stood back there, too many meters away, as he rolled the latex over his erection. “Spread your legs and show me that pretty pussy.”

  Emily bit her lip, but couldn’t quite stop it from curving as she did as instructed. Jet’s gaze moved from her ass to her face as he started walking back toward her. “What’s funny?”

  “Not funny, but…I suppose I didn’t realize you were the bossy type too.”

  “I can be if the situation calls for it.”

  “Oh and I call for it?”

  Jet smirked knowingly. “You’re definitely a woman who needs to be taken firmly in hand.”

  It was the smirk that piqued her annoyance more than the words. “Of all the presumptuous things—oh!”

  Her complaint died a quick death when Jet grasped her hips and pulled her back until she was half-impaled on his cock. She rotated her hips, encouraging a deeper entry. When he denied her Emily let out a litany of curse words.

  Jet merely chuckled. “See what I mean? You’re a spitfire under all the deceptive sweetness, Em.”

  “I’ll spit roast you in a minute,” Emily muttered, aware she was making little sense. “I want you.”

  “I can tell, hon, and I’d like to enjoy knowing it for just a minute, okay?”

  Emily met Jet’s gaze in the mirror. His smile didn’t look so arrogant anymore, not with that touch of vulnerability in it. Her chest constricted. Had he thought that she only wanted him as part of a package deal with Brand?

  Maybe she had, in the beginning. But she’d gotten to know him pretty well over the past few weeks, and the more she learned, the more she liked. Emily reached behind her so she could curl her fingers into Jet’s hair. She turned her face so she was looking at him and not merely his reflection. “I thought you were hellishly sexy that first day. So much so I felt guilty about ogling Brand’s friend.”

  “Ogling me, were you?” The confidence returned to his grin. “You naughty wench.”

  Holding her hips securely, Jet pushed forward until he was fully embedded inside her tight channel. They both let out a long moan of relief, then laughed together at the matching sounds. Jet wrapped one arm around her midsection, holding her close while he worked the back hooks of her bra with his other hand.

  When she was nude once more he held her against him and studied her reflection in the mirror. He cupped her breasts in his hands and lifted them. “So lovely.”

  Emily wasn’t looking at herself, but at Jet. His were filled with the fire of his passion, and the heat of it took her breath away. His olive skin was a dark contrast to her paler complexion, his hair black while hers was blonde. It was a study in light and shade and pure, beautiful eroticism.

  Emily couldn’t take her eyes off him. She watched as his fingers traced circles around her areola, causing her nipples to pucker in delight. Her gaze followed the progress of his hand as it moved down over her ribs and stomach, her lower abdomen. She held her breath as he slipped his fingers into the golden triangle of curls between her legs.

  All the while, Emily’s inner walls throbbed around the intrusion of Jet’s cock. She was sandwiched between him and the dressing table, making movement difficult. When Jet found her clit and stroked it, Emily bucked in response, causing the crystal ornaments on the dressing table to rattle.

  “Jet…Jet please.” She writhed against him. “I need you to move.”

  Jet rotated his hips, moving within her. It wasn’t enough. Emily whimpered and tried to thrust her hips back. Jet kept her secured in his embrace and continued to work her clit with one hand while caressing her breasts with the other. Each touch notched her arousal and her frustration higher.

  “I want you to come like this,” he rasped. “While I can see your face.”

  Emily locked eyes with him in the mirror. She saw the determination in his and knew he wouldn’t fuck her properly until he’d taken what he wanted. It was as arousing as it was exasperating. Jet, whom she’d begun to think of as the beta to Brand’s alpha, was mastering her body with more iron resolve than Brand ever had. Jet, whom she’d thought of as her equal in so many ways, was controlling her pleasure, dominating it.

  She was so turned on she could barely see her own reflection through her blurred vision. Jet pinched her clit and Emily shuddered. “Oh, God.”

  “Tell me when it’s happening,
honey. Talk to me.”

  “So good. Oh, Jet.”

  Emily stopped fighting it. She forcibly relaxed her body and allowed Jet to control her orgasm. The second she let go the sensations intensified. When she released her vexation, all that was left was pleasure. She felt it in every stroke of Jet’s hand over her breasts, every swipe of his finger on her sensitive nerve center. Her cunt pulsed around his embedded erection, but now she reveled in the joining.

  “Yes…” Her fingers twisted in Jet’s hair as her body surged toward the peak. She arched, dropping her head back onto Jet’s shoulder. “I’m coming. Baby, I’m coming.”

  Jet held her to his solid frame as she thrashed with the force of her climax. He kissed a trail over her temple, her cheek. “Christ, yes. Emily…Emily.”

  Emily lifted her head to find Jet’s eyes trained on her face. He must have watched her the whole time she’d lost her grip on sanity. She was too blissed out to be disconcerted. Besides, she decided now it was her turn to make him lose his mind.

  Emily figured he’d been weakened by the pleasure he’d taken from watching her, because she managed to unwind his arms from around her and lean forward. Jet studied her with avid eyes as she lay her hands flat on the dressing table’s surface. She pushed back with her hips, a demand as bold as any Jet had made of her. “Fuck me now. I want to watch your face while you come.”

  He muttered a curse and dug his fingers into her hips. Then he at last began to move the way she’d wanted him to from the second he’d plunged to the hilt inside her. Emily watched his face in the mirror as he stared at the way his cock disappeared, over and over again, into the tight recesses of her body.

  “God, Em.”

  His gaze lifted until it once more met hers. She saw how close to the edge he was and thrust her hips back with more vigor, beckoning to his approaching release. The dressing table shook with the force of Jet’s thrusts, a crystal vase and a photo frame toppling over. Emily paid them no heed. She had eyes only for Jet.

  When he threw his head back and came with a primal roar, Emily’s own pleasure surged once more. A mini-orgasm timed perfectly with Jet’s. She luxuriated in the sensation, in the feeling of Jet’s cock moving inside her in a pace that slowed with each thrust.

  She felt so…complete. As gloriously satisfied as she’d been these last three weeks with two men to pander to her every desire. Jet had taken her to the edge so many times already, but with Brand there to intensify the feelings. Brand hadn’t been here today. Everything she experienced now was because of Jet.

  And she couldn’t deny that she was moved by a deep emotional connection. The feeling only increased in magnitude when Jet leaned over the table so he could place a trail of kisses along her spine. Each brush of his lips seemed to snag on emotions that had abruptly shifted from her subconscious to the forefront of her mind.

  You more than like him, Emily. You’ve come to feel something much more than mere like for Jet Durante.

  “Shit.” Jet picked up the crystal vase that had fallen in the midst of their enthusiastic coupling. “I think we broke something.”

  Emily saw the small chip in the rim of the vase. “It’s okay. It’s not an heirloom or anything.”

  Jet laughed ruefully. “You pretty much blew my mind just now, Emily Irving.”

  “Ditto.”

  They looked at each other in the mirror. In Jet’s eyes she saw the same thing that she was sure he would see in hers. An awareness that something in their relationship had shifted into a new phase. They’d been friendly acquaintances, then very briefly enemies, then confidants, friends and lovers. Now somehow they were so much more.

  Was she falling in love with Jet? And if she was, what did that mean for her relationship with Brand? The way things were right now with the three of them was like a fantasy come to life, a fantasy she’d never thought to even have. Emily couldn’t imagine wanting more, and she was thrilled Jet was staying on.

  But he wouldn’t stay forever. Would he?

  Could he, even if he wanted to?

  Having mind-melting sex in secret was one thing. Emily didn’t know if she had it in her to go public with the fact she was being shared by two men. How would that work at family parties?

  Like Penny’s upcoming birthday.

  Her mind careered away from the concept of telling her parents what she’d been up to, and she focused on the practical. The fact she needed a new outfit hadn’t changed. “We ought to get going.”

  “You’re right.”

  It took a few moments for them to get cleaned up and dressed, especially as Emily’s limbs felt like jelly. She couldn’t resist sneaking a few glances at Jet as he donned his clothes. When he caught her ogling he gave her a saucy wink and her heart went pitty-pat.

  No, pitty-pat didn’t quite cover it. It fluttered and raced and flip-flopped about pathetically. Oh, Lord, what a mess she was in.

  “How about we take the bike today? I reckon you’d love riding.”

  Emily screwed up her nose. “I like my nice safe four-wheel drive, thanks very much.”

  “Come on. Where’s the fun in playing it safe? Besides, I like the idea of feeling your body plastered to the back of mine as we cruise the country roads.”

  There it went again. Flutter. Race. Flip-flop. “Tell you what. I’ll cling to the back of your Harley today if you promise to have a go at riding Duke.”

  “Ha! No thanks.”

  “Come on. Where’s the fun in playing it safe?” she challenged with a grin. “I know Brand’s been trying to talk you into it. I have a woman booked for a beach ride this Saturday. If nobody else books before then we should all go out together.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Irving.” He looked at her steadily. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll do it for a kiss. You don’t even have to ride the Harley.”

  “After what we just did, all you want is a kiss?”

  “I’d walk over hot coals for one of your kisses, Em.”

  Flutter. Race. Flip-flop. He strolled toward her, his steps measured. Emily’s heart wouldn’t stop having its crazy seizure. When he cupped her jaw, her throat closed over. He dipped his head and she couldn’t breathe.

  His lips were an inch away from hers. His husky murmur sent tingles over her flesh. “Kiss me.”

  Helpless against his appeal, Emily lifted her face. She brushed her lips over his, sighing at the electric delight of first contact. Then she sent her tongue out to trace over his lower lip. Jet groaned and gathered her against him, deepening the kiss by degrees, taking over her mouth, her mind.

  Her heart.

  Oh dear, Emily. What are you going to do?

  When at last he pulled back, they were both panting. Emily clung to his shoulders, set adrift by the way her desire for him had turned into need—helpless, uncontrollable need. How their friendship had somehow morphed into…

  What felt very much like an inexorable fall into crazy stupid love.

  “Are you scared, Em?”

  His question could have been about riding the Harley. Emily knew it wasn’t. “A little.” A lot. A freaking bundle.

  “It’s all right.” Jet stroked a hand over her hair. “I’ve got you.”

  And isn’t that just the problem?

  Shopping with Emily was more fun than Jet had had in a long time. Billings was a lot bigger than Leyton’s Headland and had several department stores and fashion boutiques. The selection of possible outfits was vast, and Emily had trouble deciding what she liked. She dragged him from store to store while she vacillated between one style and another.

  Jet should have been aggravated, but he loved every minute of the time he spent with her.

  “What about this one?” Emily asked as she pulled out possibly the hundredth dress of the day to show him. She held it up against her body. “Too slutty?”

  Jet cast his
eye over the midnight-blue halter-neck dress. Picturing Emily in it was enough to make his blood heat. “Is there such a thing as too slutty?”

  “From the way you’re looking at me, I’d say yes.”

  Jet grabbed the dress out of her hands before she could shove it back on the rack. “Don’t be so hasty. The least you could do is try it on.”

  “It looks too tight.”

  “And backless.” Jet let out a low whistle as he turned the garment around. “You couldn’t possibly wear a bra with this.”

  “Plus it will be far too cold for winter, so it’s settled.”

  “Sure is. You’re trying this on. Call it payment for the hours I’ve spent listening to you waffle about what to wear.”

  “Waffle? That’s just mean.”

  “What would you call it?”

  Emily tilted her chin haughtily. “Considering all my options.”

  Jet laughed. He watched while Emily pulled several more dresses from the rack before putting them back with a frown.

  “Seriously, Em. You’re usually pretty clear on what you want.” Especially in bed. Jet steered his mind away from the mental picture of Emily straddling him and sinking onto his body with lusty purpose, because he’d wind up with an erection if he didn’t. “Why are you having trouble with this?”

  “I hardly ever go shopping. And I don’t feel comfortable in anything other than jeans.”

  “So wear jeans to the party. Surely your sister won’t care.”

  “Maybe not. But Penny will be wearing something floaty and feminine, and Hope will probably wear something like that.” Emily pointed to the blue halter dress Jet held. “I’m always the one wearing pants, and I end up looking like…I don’t know. The plain sister, I guess.”

  Jet blinked at her. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “It’s true. Penny has this amazingly smooth hair and a delicate face and Hope, well, she really stands out in a crowd. Even my mother looks pretty damn fine for a woman in her 50s. By contrast I’m always wearing muddy boots that may or may not also be covered in horseshit. Usually I don’t care that I’m the boring one, but when I’m standing next to the rest of the Irving women I can feel pretty average.”