She let go and braced her palms behind her, head falling back into the shadowy corner of the shelf. Bran shifted, rolling his hips side to side, connecting her swollen clit to the circuit with a satisfying click. He leveraged himself up and pushed deeper still inside of her, hitting her clit again and again. The pressure above her center crested for a glorious heart-stopping moment and then broke, scattering pleasure through her body as her heart pounded forcefully.
Bran’s mouth dropped open as she closed around him. “Nella—Jesus!” He shuddered and she leaned forward, grasping her hands together behind his sweaty back, holding him close as he came inside her. His shoulders sagged and he hung over her, one hand against the wall behind her head. “Fuck.”
“Jesus fuck?” she repeated back, her amusement apparent even through her breathless words. “More creative than three wows, I guess.”
“It’s hard to be eloquent with your tight-as-hell pussy wringing my cock out.”
Her aforementioned pussy clenched around him and he gripped her hip.
“You don’t want eloquence anyway. You like the dirty stuff.” He skimmed up her side to brush the loose hair off her forehead. His blue irises were electric in the dark cabinet.
“You don’t know that,” she said against his mouth.
He cupped her cheek as he kissed her. “Yes, I do.” He grazed his nose against hers. “I should...untangle us.” His eyes dropped between them, where his dark curls were still flush against her.
She frowned when they separated, feeling empty where she had been full. While Bran disposed of the condom, she brought her knees back together, her hips aching from the width they’d achieved.
That was...exactly what she came for. She’d missed the way it felt to be with him, how it shut out the rest of the world. Like a snow globe, the two of them at its glitter-storm center. The cocooning power of a hot kiss on a cold night.
Bran understood her. Knew what she needed before she did. Like this secret. When Nelle burned with fury at the unexpected violation of her family holiday, her mother’s anxious disbelief, her father’s quiet anger, it was knowing she had something else tucked safely away that eased the pressure of rage. That distracted from the guilt. When the value of privacy skyrocketed, the secret she kept grew more worthwhile by the minute.
She hadn’t been able to save that moment with her family, but she had a whole night of dark, scandalous moments—an entire chapter of her life that no one knew about, that no one could touch. She fixated on Bran until he was the only thing she could think about. The balm to a bad burn. And then she’d told everyone she wanted a relaxing break with Benj before rehearsals started Tuesday, imagined the relief her absence would bring her parents, and carved a day out of her life where no one would look for her.
It wasn’t running away if she had somewhere to go.
“What if he doesn’t want me to stay?” she’d asked Benj, filling the cup holder with scraps of orange peel.
“It does concern me that he doesn’t know you are coming,” Benj had said practically, idling in Bran’s drive. “But you’re showing up to demand sex. And you’re you. He’d be a fucking idiot to turn you away. And if he does—”
“Then you and I spend the night in Ojai.”
“I don’t see any lights on.”
Benj had grabbed for the gearshift and Nelle reached out to cover her hand. “Is this stupid? This is stupid.”
Her friend had let go of the stick to hold Nelle’s palm. “No. It is not stupid to want something and it is not stupid to try to get it. And you’re not the kind of person who has to get real and move on. You’re the kind of person who wills her dreams into reality. Who deserves them. So get out of my car and do it.”
She’d certainly done it.
Nelle lowered her feet back to the ground, but her legs were unsteady. She leaned against the cabinet.
Bran reappeared from the bedroom as she was buttoning her dress. He stooped on his way over to her to grab the lace hip huggers she’d discarded. The graceful recovery of her underwear activated a dark heat under her cheeks. Still, Nelle lifted her chin to meet Bran’s smirk.
He dangled the lace from his finger, setting it swaying side to side. “Prisoner exchange.”
“I don’t have anything of yours.”
She followed his gaze to her left hand. His thumb brushed over the angled ring at the base of her second finger. He wanted it back?
“My watch,” he clarified and she exhaled. With her underwear hanging from his wrist, he unfastened the band at hers.
Nelle held her hand out to complete the trade and Bran unlooped the lace from his arm. And scrunched it into his pocket. “You’re not gonna need those for a while.”
Nelle’s heart, which had struggled to find a rhythm, beat steadily in her veins. Bran was smiling, she was smiling—they understood each other so easily sometimes.
“I like this one,” Bran said, turning the watch between his fingers, “because if you flip it over, you can see what’s going on inside.” He handed her the watch so she could see the gears through the little glass window underneath the face. She didn’t see his face when he asked, “What’s going on here, Nelle?”
Nelle offered the watch back to him, lifting her eyes and her brows. “Why don’t you flip me over and find out?”
“Give me a minute. I’m still recovering from your arrival.” Bran stepped away to replace the watch in the safe, setting it spinning. Keeping it wound—she knew the feeling.
“You’re not the only one who likes to make a surprise entrance,” she said to his back.
“About that. The press said I embarrassed you—”
She crossed the closet, her dress soft against her skin, her thighs sticking slightly—reminders with each step that her underwear was in his pocket. “The press said what I told them to say. I thought you knew that was me. I planted that one. Nudged the story away from us being friends.”
“Because we can’t be friends.” He slotted two fingers between the buttons of her dress, his knuckles brushing the soft pillow of her breast.
“They’d say it was more.”
“They’d be right.” His breath raised her scalp. “I’m sorry. I should have texted to tell you. I messed up in Chicago. I wasn’t thinking. You were singing and—”
“And I called to you like a siren?” Nelle boosted herself onto her tiptoes to kiss his neck.
Bran rounded a palm over her butt. “We can’t really do this, if we don’t want them to know,” he whispered, his voice like gravel in her ear, his grip tightening.
“I won’t let them take this from me.” Her lids grew heavy as she inhaled the sweat on his skin, her nose at that lovely dip of bone at his clavicle. And something else too—citrus, from her own fingers, transferred to him.
“We’re playing with fire.” He found his way beneath her dress, unclasping her bra and snaking the straps out from under her short sleeves.
“You don’t think it’s hot?” The dress felt like little more than a silk slip with nothing underneath it and Bran’s hands prodding her out of the closet, towards his bed.
He stopped in the doorway, leaving her untethered, spinning to find him. He’d gone back in to ransack the other jackets, a drawer of pants, tossing each condom he discovered onto a messy pile on the island, with a few guitar picks scattered in for good measure.
He left a cabinet open and moved to the next but her gaze snagged on the familiar jean jacket that hung from its fleece collar on the back of the door. The image of Bran scribbling on that coaster at the bar, capturing a spark, filled her mind.
Was it still there?
Nelle sank her hand into the pocket to find out—she would say she was helping, if he asked. Her fingers closed around the contents. She frowned at what she’d found.
“Bran.”
He had lowered himself out of s
ight behind the island.
“Bran.”
“Yeah, what?” Hands braced on the wood, his gaze landed on the plastic baggie of three white pills that sat in her outstretched palm.
“What’s this?”
She expected the question to still him, but he dropped down again, focused on his search. “Vitamins.”
“Vitamins?”
“I can show you the bottle if you want.”
Bran stood, counting the loot he’d uncovered, like a kid sorting Halloween candy. “Eight,” he told her, a promise that had her insides clenching and her knees weakening. He leveled his gaze on hers, blue eyes glacial in color and just as bracing. Nelle felt the air leave her body in a rush.
She walked backwards as Bran collected the condoms and stalked after her. The bed surprised her and she fell into the down. He loomed over her, catching her face in his hands.
“You’re mine for the next thirty-six hours?”
Nelle could only nod. Then Bran lowered his mouth to hers and she knew they were done talking.
Chapter Thirteen
Bran liked any sex. He did. He really did. And he’d done it all—every variety of position, partner(s), and place. But there was something to be said for the basics, a woman flat on her back beneath him, her hips cradling his. Dark hair loose and wild between his forearms. Her mouth and neck there to kiss and taste as he ground into her again and again. Or maybe it was Nelle, her curved body cushioning his, willing to be had for as long as he could have her. Heavy lids slanting over amber irises, watching him with such intensity. Consuming him.
The way she looked at him. He was addicted to how it made him feel—like an actual rock god. Even though it was her, making him that hard, giving him that power. It was her he needed to worship, for as long as she’d let him.
Torn foil shrapnel poked uncomfortably at his side and his stomach rumbled. Stretching a sleepy arm out, Bran groped through the empty sheets. No Nelle. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The bathroom door was open, the light off. Dusty yellow sunlight filtered in through the long rectangular transom windows that lined the wall of his bedroom.
They’d fucked all of yesterday, into the afternoon. He hadn’t even noticed the sun fading until he’d rolled off her, blinking in the shadowy room. And he’d only had a few minutes to breathe deep and wonder about the lack of light before she had climbed on top of him and his world became the black of her pupils, growing darker and darker as she rocked above him.
He counted his condom supply. Down to three. That would last another few hours. What time was she leaving again? 8 p.m.? He made a mental note to get more.
If she was still here.
She had to be still here.
He needed her to still be here.
But Nelle’s dress wasn’t crumpled on the floor. He tugged his sweatpants on, tripping as he rushed to walk before his second ankle was through the fabric.
Standing on the glass-walled landing he stopped to listen, breathing a sigh of relief when a metallic clang sounded from the kitchen. He took the stairs to his right, arriving in time to see Nelle click the gas range on, lowering the heat to melt butter in a pan. One of his favorite shirts—a baseball tee from high school with his name on the back—grazed the top of her thighs. His dick lifted, sensitive skin rubbing against the inside of his sweats.
It was effortless, the way she affected him.
Nelle noticed him standing on the last step. “Hi.” She looked down to whisk eggs in a bowl. “You slept hard.”
Everything was hard around her. “I was worn out.”
“I figured. Are you hungry?”
“Famished. But I don’t—I don’t have food?” He opened the fridge, taking in red, yellow, green in the vegetable drawer, his beer pushed to the side to make room for a pack of tortillas, a container of hummus, pico de gallo, some Greek yogurt, two pints of raspberries, and a giant bag of tiny oranges.
“I know. You didn’t even have olive oil.”
She nodded to the center of the concrete island where a bottle gleamed like an emerald in the morning light. It had friends too: a pepper grinder and a green-and-white box of sea salt.
“Don’t tell my mother I forgot the cinnamon. Absolute sacrilege.”
Cinnamon, that was the spicy scent he’d caught on her yesterday. So she’d smelled like home.
“You went out?”
The pan sizzled as she added the eggs. “I used your Postmates account. On your phone. You have like a million messages, by the way.”
“I need a new passcode.”
“You really do.”
She pushed the cooked folds into the center of the pan and tilted it so the raw egg covered the ceramic coating again. The oven pinged. “Can you get that?”
“Do I have oven mitts?”
Nelle laughed, taking the eggs off the heat. “In the drawer under the knife block. I’m surprised you have such nice knives. And pans. The only thing in your fridge is beer.”
“There’s vodka in the freezer.”
“A veritable pyramid of health. No wonder you rely on vitamins.”
Bran slid a baking sheet of toasted tortillas onto the counter. Cheese bubbled from the center of each, spilling over some edges. He loved the way she danced around him, grabbing the salsa from the fridge, a spoon from the drawer. His hands found the cement ledge, gripping it to keep from interrupting her. He backed into the counter as she piled scrambled eggs on the tortillas and topped each with a spoonful of saucy tomatoes. He wanted to touch her just a hair less than he wanted to watch her make him breakfast. Of course, part of it was how sexy she looked in his shirt. But there was something else, something he hadn’t realized he’d wanted, in the way she took care, ensuring each taco was dotted equally with diced avocado. Something in her kindness.
He felt light-headed, and attributed the sensation to exertion combined with deep sleep and hunger.
“You can turn off the oven,” she told him.
“I don’t think I can.”
Her eyebrows raised in pointed disbelief and mild annoyance.
He lifted a shoulder. “I’ve never used any of this stuff.” He wanted to now. Suddenly he envisioned a lot of uses for this island, versions of bending her over it being the most prevalent and distracting.
Nelle pressed a thumb against the spotless oven controls, leaving a greasy print. Then she sidestepped, stretching up on her toes to reach two plates. His shirt pulled up to reveal the peachy curves of her ass and Bran released the counter, wrapping his arm around her waist to pull her tight against him. He nuzzled into her neck and she pushed back, determined to stay focused on the food.
“After breakfast.”
Reluctantly he let her pass, and was rewarded with the plate of scrambled egg tacos she pressed into his hands. He leaned against the island as she hoisted herself onto the counter next to the stove. She crossed her legs and he crossed his ankles. They didn’t talk as they ate. Just stared across the yard that separated them.
“I’m done with breakfast,” he said, setting his empty plate to the side. “It was delicious.”
She finished chewing and held out her dish. “Then you can clean up. Basic marriage rules. We’re doing things traditionally, after all.”
Bran exhaled, holding her gaze. He brought the plates to the sink. A little bowl was sitting next to the soap, filled with Nelle’s rings. He sifted a finger through it and smiled to himself that she had kept the wedding band on despite removing the others. Maybe because it was less expensive, and she didn’t worry about it getting damaged. But still. Something about it completed the domestic fantasy he was forming around them.
Mrs. Kelly piled the dirty dishes on one side of the sink and laid a clean cloth on the other for the dishes to dry on. Mrs. Kelly removed some vegetables from the fridge. Mrs. Kelly pressed her mouth to his shoulder blade as she p
assed them under the flow of water, her hands running suggestively up and down the green length of the cucumber.
Bran stiffened, sudsy water squeezing out of the sponge and through his gripped fist.
But she was already gone, back to the island. She was as efficient at scrambling eggs as she was at scrambling his senses. He tracked her as she stationed herself in front of the chopping block on the counter.
“I found two more condoms when I was looking for a dish towel. Wasn’t sure you had any more jackets to pillage.”
“What time do you leave?”
“Benj is coming to get me at eight.”
“Five condoms, twelve hours. We’ll make it work.” He grinned. He liked making Mrs. Kelly flush.
“Why don’t you just keep a box in your bedside table like a normal person?”
“Because I don’t need them here, I need them when I am out.”
She stood a little straighter, biting in the smile that pulled her cheeks. “Because you don’t bring women home?”
“That’s right.” He cocked his head to the side, considering her. “You’re looking a bit smug.”
She shrugged and looked down. “One of them had a note with a phone number. So we should be sure to thank Jane for that round.”
“Where’d you put it?”
She used the knife to motion across the counter to a stack of slate hand towels. With water dripping down his wrists, Bran found the condoms nestled on the top of the stack. His phone was next to it. He pocketed that with the foil pack that was his normal brand and tossed the one he didn’t recognize into the trash under the sink.
“Bran. I’m not mad. I don’t mind.”
“You mind getting pregnant? You didn’t feel the pinpricks? I only use condoms I buy.”
Nelle didn’t have anything to say to that. Nelle. Not Mrs. Kelly. They could play house while the clock ticked—they weren’t getting any more serious than that.
He turned back to the dishes. Behind him the knife sounded steadily on the wooden chopping block.
All the Best Nights Page 12