by Zoe Dawson
“Now who’s being a smart-ass?” he growled playfully, the sparkle in his eyes getting real serious when he looked at my mouth.
I took a breath to say something even more sarcastic, but he stopped me with his thumb pad, brushing against my lips slowly. “River…”
He pushed his thumb into my mouth. My thighs trembled at the slight penetration in contrast to the rock-hard length of him currently pressing between my thighs. He watched my eyes while he slid his thumb along my tongue.
I watched him back, and he liked it, my direct gaze. I closed my mouth around his thumb, pulled it in, and sucked on it, reveling in the brief surprise, followed by the punch of increased desire I saw in his already heated eyes. It was heady, powerful stuff, knowing I moved him this way.
“The last time you had one of my fingers in your mouth, I had to jerk off,” he whispered roughly in my ear.
I sucked harder, then groaned deep in my throat when he added a finger inside my mouth. I pushed up on my toes, inviting him to tuck himself further between my legs, wanting nothing more than to ride him. He groaned now, too, and bucked against me.
I slipped his fingers free of my mouth and simultaneously opened the glass door and stepped into my expansive shower. I turned on the taps and let the water warm before I pulled his lips down to mine. I wanted something more intimate than his fingers inside me. I kissed down his torso, but he quickly pulled me up. Again. Breathing hard, he frowned and shook his head. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but let it go.
I kissed him deeply, and he returned it with equal intensity. He sidestepped, pulling me with him into the wraparound spray from the jets in the walls and the shower head. He tugged my hands from their grip on his hair and pinned them on the tile wall on either side of my head, then slowly slid them upward, until I was bowed away from the wall, pressing my breasts up against the hard planes of his water-slicked chest.
He crossed my wrists, told me with a look to keep them there, then slid his hands up my arms. I thought I’d go crazy with my craving for him. Even with his mouth on me I needed more.
My throat closed with a fierce longing as I allowed my eyes to roam over his face, never letting myself stare at him too long, because he was always so aware of me. That was it. Every time he moved into proximity, I knew he was there. It was like a constant pressure.
“Oh God, Braxton…Brax…” I whispered, not caring if my uncle was waiting for me and might come up here any minute to find out what was taking so long.
The heat in my voice brought his head up. He met my eyes and my breath hitched. “I’ve wanted to touch you for so long.”
I shivered when I fell into those hot blue pools, knowing Brax was changing me. Safe paths were being realigned, moving in different, perilous directions, winding into complicated, forbidden, barely-there trails.
More shivers, as if Fate whispered over my burning skin, bringing with it threat and danger. By this time my chest was heaving. I pulled my arms down to run my fingertips over his sensuous lips, sliding over dark stubble, my hands cupping his face gently. It was as if my skin couldn’t get enough.
This was something more than passion, more than lust. More than needing him between my legs.
He made a sound like I had touched something raw and painful, his features contorting before he pressed his face into my neck.
And I held him, knowing I was in trouble. Trouble because the reckless part of me, kept so long under strict control, was breaking free. I panicked, thinking my perfect bubble would break, and everyone would know I was a fake, my crown only tin, and my jewels nothing but paste.
I had told myself this risk was normal. It wasn’t. It was…profound. I wanted nothing more than time with him, hours, days, weeks, months to learn everything about him. But I didn’t have months.
My tension escalated. I felt it shift as the strange feeling, stronger than any desire I had ever felt, took hold, coiling low and deep in me. I heard him inhale deeply, filling his lungs before releasing it in a long slow exhale and murmuring in my ear, “Fuck, sugar. You’re killing me here. You know that, don’t you?”
The moment was incredibly sensual, sweetly intimate in a way I never would have expected from Brax. I had assumed he was more about getting inside a woman, taking his pleasure, and then getting up to go home.
I had been prepared for that, not this teasing, witty, charming guy sharing my shower.
I didn’t think my skin had ever felt this sensitized or my heart so vulnerable. In my business, armor was a good thing. But I couldn’t keep it up, hold onto it. It had simply melted away.
“Darlin’,” he whispered, stroking his mouth along my jaw, his breathing rapid, intensifying my own panting breaths. He dragged me further under the hot spray, the water cascading down and jetting evocatively hard against our bodies, dripping off his jaw, sheeting across our torsos. It soaked his dark hair into wet silk I reached up to touch and drag my fingers through, pushing it off his heartbreaking face.
His tantalizing mouth covered mine, and this time his kiss was hard, fierce, filled with the more I craved. I felt his drive to control, to dominate, to possess me completely. It was exactly what I wanted—to be consumed by him, to stand in the scorching flame and be burned alive.
He continued to plunder my mouth with the hot, needy sweep of his tongue, losing his finesse in the gripping moment, making me melt, inside and out.
Wrenching his mouth from mine with a low growl, he bent his head to my breast and latched on to a nipple, biting me gently. He suckled me hard and strong, creating a tugging, rippling sensation that spiraled down to where his fingers were stroking and gliding within me. Then his thumb came into play and I gasped at the intense pleasure.
Reaching for something to anchor me, I clutched at his strong shoulders, gliding my palms over his thick muscles just when delicious detonation burst through me. My head fell back against the wall, and I cried out as my release crested and a liquid warmth shimmied through me in waves.
My legs went weak, but when I was certain I was about to collapse to the floor, Brax smoothed his hands over my naked bottom and dragged my aching, super-sensitized core against him.
He dipped his head, his body folding down. As he descended, his tongue flicked over my tight nipples, and I cried out as the aftershocks intensified.
Dropping to his knees in front of me, he spread my legs open with his palms. I tried so hard not to tremble, but failed.
“I wanted you too much last night for this,” he said looking up at me, those wicked Outlaw eyes full of bad, bad boy. So laser blue.
He leaned forward and I closed my eyes, feeling a gust of hot breath, then the velvet glide of his tongue along my core.
He closed his mouth over me, kissing me intimately, deeply, using his tongue in wonderfully wicked ways I could barely even imagine when I was sixteen without wanting to touch myself. Shockingly, erotically, he took me, using his clever thumbs again, pressing, rubbing, stroking, the dual assault quickly more than I could bear.
Those familiar tremors undulated through me, his seductive effect on me inescapable. With a muffled cry, I gave myself over to the unrelenting suction of his mouth and his swirling, thrusting tongue.
Even before the sweet aftershocks of my release subsided, he was up against me, slipping his hand behind my knee and bending it, opening me up. My breath seized as the finely honed muscles across his well-defined chest and along his arms bunched and flexed with his deliberate movement.
The broad head of his erection glided through my slippery wetness, unerringly found my entrance and pressed in an excruciating inch.
His face was drawn with raw, sexual need, and I braced my hands on his bulging biceps, as smooth and hard as the part of his body joining with mine. I knew I was going to need to hold on, knew the first driving thrust would be searing and earth-shattering.
But nothing could have prepared me for the way he came over me more fully and braced his hands against the slick tiles on either side o
f my shoulders, keeping my one leg hooked up over the crook of his elbow, trapping me against his muscled weight, the solid strength of his chest. It also made for a tighter fit as he drove forward and sank into me, stealing my breath at the same time.
He dropped his head against my neck and growled while he forced his way deeper, if it was possible. I shuddered at the sensation of being filled so completely and closed my eyes, my back bowing as he began to move in earnest, his strokes faster, harder, stronger.
“Look at me,” he demanded in a harsh whisper.
Dazed, I opened my eyes. His face was inches from mine as he continued to thrust into me, his blue eyes so intense they burned straight to my soul.
He reached up and tangled his fingers in my hair, tugging my head back until my neck was arched. He lowered his head, the wet silk of his hair brushing the underside of my jaw while he tasted my skin with another drawn-out groan, his lips brushing my neck while he moved his head back and forth against my throat. He fastened his mouth on a patch of my skin and sucked hard. I gasped as the sensation built to a stinging hot burn, all too aware he was marking me as his in an elemental way, a purely masculine way, and there was nothing I could do but surrender to his sensual branding.
When he was done he grazed his lips up to my ear and whispered rough, demanding, and oh-so-explicit words.
“Yeah, fuck me, River. Move those sweet hips. Geezus,” His head dropped back, “yes, sugar, just like…fuck...like that.”
I wrapped my arms around him and another release slammed into me with the same level of force he was using to hammer into my core. I burrowed my face into his throat to muffle my voice while I cried out his name as my entire being convulsed around him. The staccato sound of his grunts as he came thrummed against my mouth.
I tightened around him to give him every last breath of pleasure. He was shaking when he slid out and released my leg. He rolled us both along the wall so his back was against the tile, and he held me tightly against him while we fought for breath.
It was long moments before I came back to myself. The water had gone cool and it felt good against my overheated skin. By feel I shut the water off. Braxton made no move to leave, or to let me go. And I made no move either. The steam slowly dissipated while our hearts eased to a normal rhythm. It felt good to be in his arms. So good.
He asked quietly, “Where do you keep the towels in this stadium?”
I smiled and slipped away, going to a cabinet to pull out fluffy terry. He hadn’t moved from the shower, but he watched me, his hair dripping. He turned again, to press one hand and his forehead against the tile, and I rubbed a towel against his back. He turned and pushed the towel against me and dried me gently.
“So, you’re going fishing,” he rasped, then cleared his throat. “What kind of fishing?” Still rubbing me, he tucked his face in my neck with a kiss.
“Mudbugs. We have a barbeque coming up and we need a lot of them.”
“You fish for your own crawdads. I’m surprised. I had no idea you got down and dirty in the swamp.”
“Yes, you did. You saw me one night with Aubree and Verity when we were being very bad girls.”
“Yeah, that lack-of bathing suit was the centerpiece of many of my dreams and fantasies.”
“Was it?”
He dragged me against him, the towel between us. “Yes. It was. You drove me crazy then. You drive me crazy now.”
“I have to admit I believed, sincerely believed you might not be interested. After you’re half naked with a boy who looked at me the way you did, a girl gets ideas, but you never followed through. You were very good at resisting me.”
“I had my reasons.”
“Your reputation.”
“You’d better get dressed. Your hour is winding down.”
“Are you avoiding the subject?”
“I’m really good at not discussing things I don’t want to talk about. Let it be, River.”
“All right. I won’t waste time.”
“Good. I’ve learned to make the best of whatever situation I’m in.”
“You make me sound like a chore,” I said, my eyes narrowing.
He slapped me on the ass as he passed me, disappearing into the bedroom. I followed and leaned against the doorjamb to watch him rummage under the bed for his clothes. Dragging on sinfully tight boxer briefs, he followed immediately with his jeans, zipping and buckling.
Bare-chested, he eyed me. “Tell me something,” he said, holding my gaze with a direct look. “What do you think Jake would do if he knew you were in here with me? That I climbed up your trellis last night and into your window to have you.” His voice went husky, his eyes direct. “I had to have you.”
I blinked. I hadn’t expected him to ask about Jake. “He would blow a gasket and probably try to beat you senseless. Even though I’ve told him to mind his own business.”
Brax held my gaze for what felt like an eternity, and I thought he was going to wisecrack or call Jake a name. Instead he walked to my dresser and picked up a bottle of my perfume, sniffing, closing his eyes and breathing deep. The bottle looked so delicate in his big hand. He carefully set it down. He moved on, flipping up the top of my jewelry box. “I told you before. He’s got a lot of pressure on him.” He glanced at me. “Being the golden boy is ten times more stressful then being a no-account bad boy. Everyone already expects us no-accounts to fail.”
His face pensive, he reached in and picked up my tiara and snorted. “You actually are a Princess.”
“Yes, I have a tiara,” I said feeling completely ridiculous about it. He turned it over in his big hands, the diamonds winking in the sunlight streaming through my window.
My stomach jumped. “Is there something you’re not telling me about Jake?” He winced slightly, as if my words had touched something bruised.
He set the tiara back into the box and closed the lid. Running his hands through his wet, shaggy hair, he exhaled, those blue eyes shuttered, and sauntered over to my closet. My ugly debutante ball gown was hanging on the outside, to remind me to keep trying to think of a way to tell my momma how much I detested it. He studied the dress, running his hands over the overblown taffeta, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. “Jake and I were…ah…friends at one time in our lives,” he said gruffly.
I was floored. So floored I just stared, speechless.
I got jittery as he continued talking, getting this faraway look in his eyes, as if he revived fond memories. He peered into my walk-in closet and shook his head. There was a wistful twist to his voice, something I had never heard before, because up to now Brax had always been full of bravado, always fighting me. “We hung out, mostly in the bayou. Chase, too, and my brothers. We never said anything, because it wasn’t anyone’s business.”
“What happened?”
Folding his arms, he braced his hips against the doorjamb. He smiled, but it was bitter and didn’t reach his eyes. “We grew up.” He gazed at me for a moment, then looked away, his expression suddenly strained and unreadable.
A peculiar hesitancy hung between us, and a muscle in his jaw tensed. A funny feeling unfolded in my chest. There was a brief silence; then he lifted his head and looked at me, something stark and disquieting in his expression. “We were just Outlaws after all. It was inevitable. I don’t hold it against him. High school was intense. Especially for the three of us. You lived in your perfect bubble.”
I cringed. How close he came to the truth made me want to tell him all about my perfect bubble. “That’s the trouble with a bubble. It’s so fragile.” But I was nonplussed again. “How can you say such a thing, Brax? How can you be so gracious when he tortured you all the time during those summers you worked at the country club?”
“Because, River, nothing is ever black and white. There isn’t anyone in this town who knows and accepts it more than my brothers and I do. Look at Booker and Aubree. They killed a guy and covered it up. If you had told me, I would have out and out said it would never happen. My b
rother would never do such a thing. But he did it for Aubree.
“And she is completely not the person I thought she was,” he added. “Stuck up and too good for anybody. She was also under a lot of pressure. And, Verity? I thought she was a weak-willed little fool, and come to find out she has a backbone of steel. She was courageous in the face of tremendous adversity. And my brother Boone totally turned his life around.”
He paced to my bed and stood looking down at it. “So, I was judgmental about your friends, because I didn’t know them, not really. I’m not going to judge Jake. His aggressiveness stems from something he has to deal with. Am I going to mess him up if he’s serious about kicking my ass? I will defend myself, but I have no interest in fighting Jake.”
It was the most he’d ever said to me. And I was intrigued by his capacity to recognize his own faults and admit he’d been wrong about my friends. To tell the truth, it would have been easier if he was nothing but an a-hole. At least it would have been easy to screw him and walk away. But there wasn’t one damn thing easy about Braxton Outlaw. In fact, I had the feeling even now I had only scratched the surface. I must be crazy, but I wanted to go…deeper. The layers of his personality were so…intriguing.
“And, me? What did you think about me?” The words popped out of my mouth before I could stop them. Part of me wanted to know and part of me was afraid to find out. How much harder could he make it?
He gave me a dark look and dropped his head, a slow smile spreading across his face. And every nerve responded to what he projected. Pure, unadulterated male. “When I wasn’t thinking about getting as close to you as I could or driving deep into you?”
We’d just shared a bunch of mind-blowing orgasms, my muscles were limp as noodles, but the way he looked at me then, I wanted him all over again. “Yes, besides the hormone-induced adolescent needs.”
“Privileged little Princess. I didn’t just judge your friends. I was a complete jerk back then.” He tipped his chin toward the taffeta bomb. “What is this white dress for?” He said, flicking his finger at the hem, fluffing up the material. I watched as it floated back into place.