Wilde About Carson: The Brothers Wilde Series — Book Three

by Faircloth, Cate

  Until everything stops. It’s like silence. I can hear carts running, footsteps, voices, Carson saying stuff to me, and the beeping from my father’s room. I look up wiping my eyes to see clearly. The cart gets pulled away from his door, nurses come out, and one woman follows behind them in darker scrubs that I assume means she is the doctor.

  “Miss Rhey?” She looks at me. I stand quickly almost falling, but Carson is right there to catch me.

  “Just Emily. Is my dad okay? What happened?”

  “Let me explain everything to you. Is this your husband?” She glances at Carson. I almost shake my head before Carson answers yes. I didn’t think fast enough that they wouldn’t disclose family information to someone who wasn’t family. But he did.

  “What happened?” I ask again.

  She softens her face. She has a very relaxed feel about her that makes my breathing calm down only slightly. It must be her dark brown hair in a braid or her soft eyes. Her dark skin bounces off her white coat, her stethoscope catching the light. She smiles softly and sits down across from me prompting me to follow.

  “Your father suffered a minor stroke this morning. When he arrived, there was a bleed in his brain that I operated on immediately.” She starts to explain things I have trouble wrapping my head around, but I try to. I know I might understand it later when my head is clearer.

  “I believe he coded due to the stress on his body and nervous system. I was able to stabilize him quickly which is good, and it’s a good sign. The best thing we can do now is observe him carefully. I have scans scheduled for every hour on the hour to watch that bleed. But I do doubt it will resurface. He is in recovery, but it can be a tough recovery.” She sighs letting out a soft breath as she watches me to gauge my expression.

  “Okay… so he might die?” I whisper. Carson holds my hand tighter—it might be numb now, but I can’t tell.

  “I want to say he is more better than worse, but, of course, I cannot guarantee anything. I will do everything in my power, though, to make sure he comes out of this.”

  I nod slowly. I’m hearing her words and absorbing them somewhat. He may or may not make it—but that’s just how life is when it comes down to it. I know I have to compose myself and get my head to stop spinning and my eyes to stop leaking.

  “Thank you,” I whisper trying to smile at her, but I don’t think it works.

  “Of course. Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Dr. Megan Thomas, attending neurosurgeon. Most people like to know I am double board certified, so if that helps…” She smiles, and I think I laugh once.

  “I trust you, don’t worry. I’m trying not to. Can I see him?” I stand up, Carson follows, and Dr. Thomas does too.

  “I had to sedate him, but you can have a few minutes before we have to close the ICU to visitors.”

  “Thank you.”

  She leads us inside, and I try to keep my cool once I see him up close. Dad has always looked on the younger side, but now he looks so sunken down and exhausted. His head bandage covers his forehead. I know they had to shave him, and he will be sad because he loves his hair. None of his colleagues around his age still have hair. It’s one of the things we talk about in our weekly phone calls.

  “Can I touch him?” I ask her, walking around the bed carefully. There are wires in his head, on his chest, and so many IVs. I curl my lips inward trying to stop more tears. Besides all that, he looks like he is just asleep.

  “Yes, you can.” She stands in the corner. Carson nods to me and stands next to her.

  I go over to my dad, carefully as if I will wake him or something. I take his hand. It’s still warm, and he still wears his wedding band. I hold it in both of my hands and lean down to kiss his cheek which is still warm too.

  “Hi, Dad, I’m here,” I whisper. I lick my lips and take in my salty tears. So much for keeping them at bay.

  I stay and hold his hand as long as I can, as long as the doctor will let me.

  “You can come back tomorrow morning, and I will let him know you came if you haven’t come back already.” We walk out of the room, and she shuts the door behind us.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” She doesn’t move away when I hug her. In fact, she hugs me back. Carson shakes her hand when we finish, and then we walk back to the entrance.

  My steps are lighter. They hurt less, I hurt less. All I needed to do was see and feel him, to know he is okay. And hope that he stays that way.

  “I have reservations down the street, close enough to walk. We can eat if you want.” Carson holds his hand around my shoulders. I still lean on him for support.

  It’s like all the adrenaline and worry left my body, and now it is just us, and me needing him more than I have ever needed him.

  We stop at a late-night bar for a few drinks and greasy fries and a hamburger. I’m surprised I eat everything, but I do. I hadn’t realized what my body was going through all day since I got that call. I feel like dead weight once we get to the hotel but…

  “Uh, I could only get a single room on such short notice. I knew you would want to be close to the hotel.”

  “It’s fine, I don’t think I want to be alone tonight anyway.”

  I turn to him. The dim light of the room makes it so I can barely see him. He nods at me and smiles.

  “Okay. Well, why don’t you go ahead and shower. I’ll grab some clothes from the gift shop or something.”

  I nod, not really wanting him to leave but not wanting to say anything. “Okay,” I whisper.

  He tilts his head at me and comes forward. “I’ll be right back.” He hugs me and kisses my forehead, then he leaves.

  In the time he is gone, I shower for a really long time, head to toe. I wrap myself in the plush white towel and sit on the edge of the bed aimlessly flipping channels until Carson comes back quicker than I thought.

  “There was a tourist shop down the street, all I could find.” He tosses a huge shirt at me knowing I would like to sleep in one.

  “Thanks.”

  He nods to the shower, and he is in there for about ten minutes before he comes out wet and steaming. At least I am noticing something other than how sad or worried I am. Carson is more than a distraction, though. He’s…

  After, he gets dressed in the bathroom in some sweats he bought.

  “I hope these don’t give me rashes.” He lays in bed next to me smiling at his own joke.

  “Because you only wear expensive fabrics.” I smile a bit.

  He chuckles and puts the lights out. I sink further into the covers, and after a while he does too. I assume he was checking emails on his phone. We lay together in the middle of the bed. He is warm and smells like hotel soap and himself. I press my cold toes on his calf, and he jerks dramatically.

  “I’m cold,” I murmur. I feel him smile in the dark, but I can see him with the emergency light and moonlight.

  “Come here.” He wraps me in his arms. I lay my head on his chest and feel his beating heart.

  It means more to me than anything right now. Worried about my dad, still not knowing—it all fades almost to black with Carson here making everything else bright.

  “Thank you.” I look up at him.

  He comes closer to me. I feel his breath on my lips, his hair tickling my forehead.

  “Anytime. Always… all the corny things.” He chuckles, it makes me smile too.

  “Yeah…”

  “Before this, you were acting weird,” he says. I sigh, hoping that would be forgotten.

  I was weird. I didn’t know what to do. Confusion got the better of me. Now I am just confused again, but not in a bad way but in a too-many-choices way. It has always just been Carson, my friend. Not Carson the strong, amazing, and kind man who is always there for me.

  “It’s fine. Um, PMS.”

  “You aren’t wearing panties, I don’t buy that.” He couldn’t get undergarments from a tourist shop. I feel like my legs are sown together.

  “Yeah, me neither.”

 
He stays silent and eventually starts stroking my arm, and I think he is falling asleep, but his breathing is still too shallow.

  “Carson, sometimes I think…”

  “What?” His warm breath covers my lips, and I lean in closer to him without thinking.

  “Nothing. Everything.”

  “I know. We can talk tomorrow, Emily. Get some sleep, okay?” I can tell he sounds tired, I’m tired too. But I have this—something is just welling up inside of me, and I don’t even know what it is. Just doubtful unknown… unknown.

  “Carson.” I inhale sharply. I see his gray eyes in the low lighting bore into mine. The intensity, the truth, the constant comfort.

  Reliability and care.

  It’s all I can see.

  It’s the last thing I see before I close my eyes, lean in, and hope for the best. Turns out the best is his lips touching mine. His soft, warm lips on mine. His smooth, sweet lips on mine. Just a whisper of a kiss, just our skin meeting, and then his mouth prying mine open to suck my lips as his hand cups my face. He kisses me just like that—soft, intimate, heartening—for I don’t know how long.

  All I remember is feeling like I’m whole and not realizing that I wasn’t.

  15

  Carson

  I don’t like bragging about myself or even recognizing my successes or faults. Maybe that’s why I can’t tell what this is. I can’t even begin to place it, not in any categories I have in my head. I think the only reason I keep kissing her is because it feels like the last time this happened when we were both grieving and consumed by our feelings.

  At least that’s what I tell myself when I kiss her, and when I deepen the kiss.

  Emily holds my arm so tightly I feel her bones clench. On instinct, I move her closer for more of her warmth. My other arm slides under her, balancing at the small of her back to hold her closer to me. Her shirt is thin, and I don’t have one on so it’s easy for me to feel the warm mounds of her breasts pillowing on my chest, and the pulse of her heartbeat.

  The blush of her cheek heats my thumb, and I rub over her cheekbone, and her lips tighten around mine. I barely let myself taste her as my tongue sweeps over her bottom lip. I go back to kissing her. I can’t remember the last time I just kissed someone, no groping, no dry humping. I’m just holding her, kissing her. My best friend. Emily.

  “Carson…” Her lips mash over mine. As she sighs, I cut her off and kiss her once more, then I pull back and try to get a good look at her, but the room is barely lit.

  She leans over me and turns on the lamp next to me, my eyes adjust, and I find the glow in her eyes, her rosy cheeks, and peachy lips, all red and cute. Her hand is by my waist. I run my hand up her forearm and grip her upper arm under her shirt. I lean to sit up a little more, and she leans back on her heels, her shirt riding up on her thighs. Slowly, my eyes make their way up her bare, smooth legs—I never understood why she got tans until I see how she looks now—and up her chest where her nipples peek through in the small swells of her breasts. Then finally to her face.

  She is biting on her bottom lip which means she might want to say something but won’t. Her eyes are wide and bright—without her contacts, they are fully hazel and shining. I wish she wouldn’t wear the contacts anyway. I wish a lot of things. But I never wished for this kind of thing, so I don’t know why I’m wishing to keep kissing her. She is probably the only female on the planet I have never thought romantically about. Sensually, of course, since she is so damned sexy. But not in any other way.

  “Emily, are you okay?” I finally say something because the silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but just worrying.

  She releases her lips, and they stay parted as she breathes deeply. She blinks at me once or twice like she had to think twice about what I asked.

  “I don’t… I want to be.” She shakes her head almost to herself.

  I nod, rubbing her arm more. With my other hand I hold her waist, my fingers pressing into her back and brushing the edge of her spine.

  “I know…” I lick my lips and taste her coconut Chapstick on them. My lips twitch with a smile, and she tries to return it too.

  I just want to know what I can do to make her feel okay, to make her not look so dejected. She didn’t feel like this while we were kissing, her lips didn’t feel dejected or sad, they felt right, and even I felt something. Usually when I kiss women, it’s out of obligation or something to do while… but it isn’t even like that with Emily. It really doesn’t make sense to me, but I can’t think of much else right now because still without touching her, I got a hell of a rise. Lucky for me the covers are over me right now.

  “Emily. You have this look…” I chuckle once, my voice is lower from the evident arousal inside my body.

  “I just…” Her breath hitches. Her eyes lower to me, my lips, I think—her cheeks flush, more so than I’ve ever seen, and when I do see her eyes again, I don’t know what I’m looking at. And I don’t know why. For a minute, I let it trouble me because I know all her faces, and the reason I don’t know this one is because I have never seen it. Emily is… turned on. Aroused. By me. I’m…

  Emily leans back on the bed even more. The seconds tick by until my head nearly hurts from what I know is coming, from what I hope is coming. I hear her breath rise, fall quicker and closer together. Her scent floods so close to me, the sweetness of her body I never noticed before. Her body falls down onto the bed, her knees splaying open. Her arm twitches in my hand as she moves farther back but not that much, and not enough that I have a clear breath or even thoughts, or that I can process the thoughts brewing before they cloud my brain.

  Emily basically offers herself to me when her knees part fully, and I get a look at her swollen, slick flesh. I’m not sure how long I look at her, how long I let my breath go erratic, and how my heart acts like it’s never seen a naked woman before. Or my cock act like it’s never been hard before—painfully hard. It’s enough to drive me crazy. The debate between right and wrong go out the window. It isn’t that cut and dry. It isn’t that simple. I want her, I feel like I can’t have her because it has never been an option, and I can’t decide whether I should go down this road. Emily doesn’t get attached, and that wouldn’t really apply to me since we’ve been attached at the hip for fifteen years. I’m going crazy in my head wondering what to do.

  Until Emily takes her arm from mine and reaches for the hem of her shirt.

  “Stop.” I sit up quickly reaching for her waist, and before I can even let her thoughts run amuck, I kiss her hard. I kiss her like I’ve never kissed anyone, like I could never stop kissing her even if I was being pried away by the universe. Because that’s what it feels like. It feels like we have been tugged away from each other our whole lives and this kiss makes us strong enough to withstand anything keeping us from each other.

  I pull back from her. She sighs softly before she shrieks in surprise when I bend her back and climb on top of her settling between her legs like I’m home. In one swoop, I tug her shirt off and toss it aside.

  “I get to undress you,” I explain to her.

  She smiles, her wide smile bright with wonder. I smile back and go in for the kiss. She latches her arms around my neck holding me close to her. My chest slides over hers, the warmth of our bodies become sweltering.

  Her thighs tighten around my waist, the heat of her sex seeps through my pants. I move to get them off, and she meets me halfway. I tug them off and kick out of them the same time her tongue slides into my mouth, and I taste her. I groan in my chest, the feel of our tongues slipping against each other and our intensity matching each other.

  There is something going on, on a deeper level. My cock is sliding over her throbbing clit, and I’m not just thinking about fucking her as hard or as long as I want to. I’m just thinking about her, holding her slender waist in my hands and exploring her body, kissing her, being with her… in a way that I never have before. It’s almost unbelievable. That we’re here, that we’re doing this, but I don’t
want to stop. I could never stop.

  “Emily, what are we doing?” I break the kiss staring down at her swollen lips and tingling eyes.

  “I don’t know… I just… don’t want to stop. If you want to…”

  “No, that’s not it. That’s not it at all.” I smile.

  My eyes glaze over her. I move my hand up her smooth belly to the valley of her breasts, though there isn’t really one, just the softness of them. My hand closes around her breast, my palm scraping the hardening of her nipple underneath. Her moan is soft, sweet. I do the same with the other as I break our gaze to press my lips to her skin again. Starting at her neck just below her ear, I suckle her skin, the true scent of her and her taste lies there.

  “No hickeys.” She giggles once. I chuckle into her skin and move on as much as I want to mark her.

  Her clavicle juts out, and when I kiss her there, I feel her pulse quickening. Her hips writhe under me, and I know exactly where she wants me to touch her, but I don’t, not yet. She has no idea what I’m like, no idea how crazy I can make any woman, anywhere. But I don’t want that with her, I mean I don’t want it that way. I want more than what sex used to mean to me, what sex always is to me because it isn’t just that with her. It doesn’t feel like it even right now.

  When I move farther down kissing over the swells of her breasts where I can leave hickeys and down the center of her stomach, her hands latch onto my hair and guide me down to where she is dying for me to be. I look up at her body—I’ve seen most of it, honestly, but not like this. She is at my mercy, trusting me with it. I kiss the curve of her thigh on each side where her hair tapers in—she keeps it trimmed but not completely gone—dark and matches her hair before she dyed it.

  “Carson, would you please…” Her breath hitches. I kiss her belly right above the break of her skin, and she twitches.

  “Emily, we’re doing this my way.” I move and kiss her hip, and she widens her legs and drags down.