This was what it was all about. Man and woman coming together to make a more perfect whole. He worked her, stroked her, kept the pleasure and the friction going in an attempt to hang on to that perfection for as long as possible even though it caused his own orgasm to threaten deep in his groin.
With everything he was, he fought off completion. Gritted his teeth. Ran through the roster of the 2009 New York Yankees—as a Newark New Jerseyan that was his team, and they’d been particularly great that year. But it wasn’t enough. Her body milked him, seeming to draw his orgasm closer, closer, ever closer.
No, damnit! Not yet!
He’d fantasized about this moment, dreamed of it for so long. And in all his fantasies, in all his dreams, he was taking her from behind. Again that pop song came to mind. All the right junk in all the right places. That description fit Maddy to a T. And as a bona fide, self-titled ass man, he was determined to watch the round globes of her butt bounce while he slammed his passion into her over and over again. Until he couldn’t stand it. Until the whole world condensed down to the point where their two bodies connected. Until he spilled all his lust, all his love inside her.
So when her body went from gripping and sucking to merely trembling, he sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he was able to stave off climax and wasted no time plucking her from the desk—she squealed her surprise—and spinning her around. He bent her forward over the surface and used his feet to spread her legs wide.
Just as he’d known, her bare ass was a wonder to behold. He smacked it just to hear her yelp, just to see the sweet flesh jiggle seductively. She turned to glare at him, still panting.
“Gorgeous,” he told her, rubbing a hand over her plump bottom to sooth the sting of his smack.
Her skin was hot and dewed with sweat, smooth and creamy. Her sex was smoother and creamier still. He could see it open to him below the curves of her butt, teasing him, tormenting him. A siren’s call of woman to man.
With gritted teeth, he fisted the base of his dick and angled himself down, stroking slowly into the hot welcome of her body, watching his length disappear inside her, feeling every nuance of her channel, memorizing each detail of their joining.
“Sweet Jesus!” she moaned as he filled her, stretched her tight.
He set a rhythm sure to build her release even as it tantalized his own. The sound of their bodies slapping together was the sweetest music he’d ever heard. The smell of hot skin and sex the headiest of perfumes. And all the while he loved her, he kneaded her luscious ass. Watching her skin grow flush with renewed desire. Tightening his jaw at the sight of his shaft turning shiny with her juices.
It was heaven.
It was hell.
It was better, hotter, more glorious than all his fantasies, all his dreams had ever been.
Then he heard the telltale catch at the back of her throat. She was there, once more teetering on the brink. He quickened his thrusts and reached around to play with the hard points of her breasts. Gently biting her shoulder, he closed his eyes and let the sensations roll over him, through him. So that this time, when she threw herself off the erotic cliffs, he gladly let her take him with her.
Chapter 23
12:35 a.m.…
“So why did you become a movie buff?” Bran asked curiously, wondering why he’d never thought to ask before.
They were stretched out on the little twin bed, his arm under her head, her leg thrown over his unwounded thigh. And even though his fingers were going numb, he couldn’t make himself move. Lying with Maddy was the closest thing to nirvana he’d ever known.
“Hmm,” she murmured. “I guess I’ve never thought about it before.” She absently played with his nipple. Every time she feathered her fingers across the hardened tip, blood surged to his cock.
He glanced at his watch.
Damn. Just two more hours.
Long enough for him to make love to her two, maybe three more times.
But two or three more times wasn’t going to be enough. Just as he’d feared, a thousand times wasn’t going to be enough.
“But I guess it probably has somethin’ to do with me bein’ the only girl in the family,” she mused. “And the youngest to boot. Watchin’ movies was the only way I could get my brothers to hang out with me. I didn’t hunt or play football, but I could do a pretty mean Footloose dance. I’ve got the moves,” she assured him, pinching his nipple and making his toes curl.
“Don’t I know it.” He slapped her ass.
She squealed, her eyes threatening murder. He smacked a kiss on her mouth and soothed the sting of his hand with a gentle caress. Soft. She was so unspeakably soft. He couldn’t get over it. Couldn’t stop touching her. Couldn’t stop wanting her.
Twisting her lips, she tucked her head beneath his chin and lifted her thigh higher. It brushed the base of his semi-hard shaft. Of course, his erection withered a bit when she asked, “So why did you become a movie buff?”
He could have evaded the question, he supposed, kept the tone light and flirty. But he didn’t. “Desperation,” he told her.
She pushed up on one elbow to stare at him. Her eyes were soft and warm, like summer storm clouds swirling in a hot sky. “What does that mean?”
“It means I started sneaking into my local movie theater ’cause it was a warm place to sleep in the winter and a cool place to sleep in the summer. After my parents died, and after I ran away from my third foster home because the middle-aged, chain-smoking woman there kept trying to come into my bedroom at night, I took to the streets.”
“Good Lord, Bran.” She searched his face.
“It wasn’t as bad as you think,” he assured her. “I couch-surfed in the homes of friends. I worked odd jobs and spent time in the library studying for my GED. Sleeping at the movie theater was always a last resort. And I found I actually liked watching all those movies. At night, after closing, I’d go into the storage room and shuffle through the old reels. I think I watched every one they had from Doctor Zhivago to The Matrix.”
She smoothed the hair back from his forehead. He closed his eyes and leaned into her hand, loving the feel of her. Loving her.
When he opened his eyes, it was to find a question burning in hers. He knew what it was before she asked it.
“Murder-suicide,” he told her and watched her throat work over a hard swallow. They were just two words. Alone they were awful. Put together they were reprehensible. “After a month in the shelter, Dad convinced Mom to come and talk things over.”
And why did you go, Mom? Why? It was a question he continued to ask himself even though he already knew the agonizing answer. She’d gone because she couldn’t stay away. As sick as it was, as perverse as it was, she’d loved his father. Loved all of him. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
But she hadn’t known just how bad and ugly Dad could be.
Bran had known. Even then, he’d known because the same badness, the same ugliness lived in him.
“Remember that shotgun I told you I borrowed from Joey Santorini’s father?” He watched Maddy nod jerkily. “Well, my father used one barrel on my mother and the other on himself. And you wanna know the crazy thing?”
She swallowed, a lone tear sliding down her delicate cheek.
“She was happy. Before she hopped on the bus, she was wearing her Little House on the Prairie smile.”
Maddy blinked, not understanding. And as he explained, the memory of that day, the last time he ever saw his mother, washed over him…
“Don’t go, Mom,” he pleaded, grabbing her hand.
Spring had arrived early, and even though the leaves hadn’t bloomed on the trees, the sun was warm and bright. It reflected in his mother’s dark eyes when she smiled at him.
He grimaced because it was her real smile. Not her fake one. And it wasn’t for him. It was for his rat bastard of a father. To make matter
s worse, she’d put on her best dress and had splurged on new lipstick for the occasion.
“Bran, baby.” She pulled him into a hug. He was taller than she was now. Bigger too. But he still felt like a child in her arms. “I hafta go.”
“Why?” he demanded, bitterly pushing out of her embrace. “Why do you have to go?”
She shook her head. “I know you don’t understand, but the bad parts of him don’t outweigh the good. I love him, Bran. And if there’s a chance…” She drifted off, not finishing the sentence.
Frustration and fury were twin fires in Bran’s chest. They licked flames into his face. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded hoarsely. “How can you still love him after…after…” He didn’t finish. He was too busy angrily wiping away tears that made his eyes feel like they were filled with fine-grained sand.
His mother placed gentle hands on his cheeks. “Because that’s how love works,” she whispered. “No matter what, it doesn’t go away. It remains part of you. Forever. Someday you’ll understand.”
“No, I won’t,” he swore, disgusted when his voice broke and more impotent tears filled his eyes. “Because if love is what you say it is, if it makes a man beat his wife—”
“Brando Pallidino,” she tsked, glancing around the bus stop. “Keep your voice down.” But they were alone on the sidewalk, the garbage truck across the way and the lonely sparrow chirping on a nearby limb their only audience.
“If it makes a woman stay with a husband who calls her names,” he went on like she hadn’t spoken, “and is so eaten up with jealousy that he can’t help but hurt her, then I want no part of it.”
“Don’t blame that on love, baby.” Her expression was sad. “That doesn’t have anything to do with love. It has to do with…” She paused to drag in a deep breath. “Your daddy didn’t have it easy growing up. There were things that…” She didn’t finish, just shook her head again.
“And that makes it okay?” He blinked at her, realizing just how…crazy she was, how deluded. And blind. She didn’t see. She’d never see.
“It doesn’t make it okay,” she told him. “But it should give you comfort to know that when you fall in love, it’ll be different for you because you’re different from him. Different from me too.”
Bran stumbled away from her. “You’re wrong about a lotta things, but you’re really wrong about that,” he told her as the crosstown bus turned the corner and rumbled in their direction. “What’s in him is in me too.” He beat a closed fist against his chest. “All that fury. All that rage. I got it too, Momma.” Some of it was flaming inside him even now, shouting for his father’s head on a pike.
“No.” She let her gaze run over his flaring nostrils and bloodshot eyes. “You’re all our good parts, Bran, and none of our bad. You’re all our loyalty and none of our jealousy. All our courage and none of our cowardice. I thank God every day for that.”
She was deranged. Completely, utterly deranged. He had all of their bad parts in him, and he opened his mouth to tell her as much, tell her she didn’t have the first fucking clue, but with a squeal of air brakes, the bus stopped beside them and the door popped wide with a squeak and a shhhh of sound.
Panic set in. His heart skipped a beat. “Let me come with you,” he begged, a dark sense of foreboding wrapping cold fingers around his throat until he could barely breathe. “Let me—”
“Your father and I need some time alone,” she said, cutting him off.
“But—”
“Bran.” She grabbed his hands, giving them a squeeze. “Please stay. I’ll be—”
“In or out, lady?” the bus driver called, chewing noisily on a monster-sized piece of pink gum. He blew a bubble bigger than his face as he waited on Bran’s mother’s reply.
“In!” she yelled, hopping onto the bus’s first step. Before she turned away to pay for her ticket, she smiled down at Bran, the hem of her new dress tangling around her slim ankles as the wind suddenly blew up with serious intent. But it wasn’t the breeze that made Bran nervous. It was whatever he sensed was following close on its heels. “Don’t worry, baby.” She smiled so sweetly, with so much…hope in her eyes. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“And that was the last time I saw her,” he said, coming out of the memory slowly, like a person wading to shore.
Maddy lovingly stroked his hair. “I’m so sorry.”
When it came to his past, Bran had formed a psychological callus—at least that’s what the Navy headshrinker had called it. But Maddy had no such protection. Tears rolled freely down her soft cheeks to drip from her chin and land on his chest, right above his heart. Each hot, salty drop felt like a benediction. Was he fanciful to think maybe they’d be enough to wash all the blackness inside him clean?
He pulled her down so he could kiss her tears, sip their saltiness between his lips. “I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me,” he whispered. “I told you ’cause you’re my friend. My true friend. And I want you to…know. To know…me.”
She pushed away and opened her mouth to say something, but the cutter abruptly changed course, nearly toppling them from the bed.
“What in blue blazes?” she huffed, dragging the backs of her hands over her wet cheeks before wincing and looking down at his bandage. “Did I bump into—”
“No,” he cut her off, glancing toward the door. Everything in him wanted to stay here in this warm room, in this warm bed, talking, making love. Unfortunately, his operator’s sixth sense told him something was up. A familiar sensation prickled over his skin like an icy kiss of cold wind.
A hard knock sounded on the metal door. “I hate to disturb you guys,” Mason said from the opposite side, “but we’ve got a fuckin’ situation up here. I think you should both come to the bridge.”
Bran exchanged a look with Maddy. She didn’t have to say anything. Her thoughts were written all over her face: Not again.
“What’s up?” he called to Mason, his body nearly crying out at the loss of contact with Maddy’s warm skin when he slid from the bed to grab his boxers and shorts.
“Picked up a Mayday from a nearby motor yacht,” Mason said through the door. “Apparently two guys in a dinghy boarded it about an hour ago, roughed up a couple of the folks onboard, and took off again after they stole some fuel cans.”
Bran and Maddy exchanged another look. This one said: Two men in a dinghy? That’s no coincidence. Apparently after the fishing boat ran out of gas, they’d used the skiff to go in search of more. He hadn’t banked on that. Regretted not putting bullets in their brains when he had the chance.
“They’re requesting emergency medical help and Webber has to oblige,” Mason continued.
When Maddy bent to grab her clothes, Bran got an eyeful of her plump ass. It didn’t matter what was happening, who was talking, or where they were. He zeroed in on the round hemispheres like a heat-seeking missile.
She turned and caught him staring—his tongue hanging down around his knees—and shook her head. Her eyes were still red and puffy, but there was a grin twitching her lips. “Stop givin’ me the Big Bad Wolf, all-the-better-to-eat-you-with-my-dear stare right now, or we’ll never leave this room.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?” Bran whispered, buttoning his shorts over his burgeoning erection. One look at Maddy’s bare butt and he was raring to go. Bad guys in dinghies and teammates standing outside the door be damned!
She got a pained look on her face. “We’ll be right there!” she called to Mason. Then she stepped into her panties and fastened her bra, covering up all her beautiful, feminine flesh.
And now he was the one who felt the need to cry.
* * *
1:08 a.m.…
“I got a bad feeling about this,” Maddy heard Bran whisper to Mason.
Mason grunted his agreement.
“What did he say?” Alex ask
ed Maddy from the side of her mouth.
They were standing shoulder to shoulder on the bridge, watching as four of the six crew members on the Coast Guard boat scrambled around the deck, throwing over bumpers in preparation for tying up next to the motor yacht, which was the kind of ship owned by the one-percenters of the world but not the one percent of the one-percenters. With a main deck for seating, dining, and a small galley, and a lower level that was likely separated into a couple of cramped cabins, the vessel was nice without being ostentatious like her father’s yacht, the Black Gold.
Running lights on both ships cast a cool, dim glow over the dark water surrounding them. And Maddy noticed two of the people on the motor yacht were standing on the narrow front deck, watching the activity aboard the cutter. They were both men, both dressed in what she’d come to recognize as standard yachting wear—Polo shirts and blindingly white shorts—and neither of them seemed to be injured. For that, she breathed a sigh of relief and hoped whoever was injured wasn’t hurt terribly bad.
“He said he’s got a bad feelin’ about this,” she whispered to Alex, watching how the two yachters caught the ropes the Coast Guard crew tossed them, quickly and efficiently tethering the vessels together.
Alex frowned. “Looks legit to me,” she said.
“Me too,” Maddy agreed. “But if something is wigglin’ their antennas…” She hooked a thumb toward Mason and Bran and let the sentence dangle.
“Captain,” Bran turned to Webber, a man whose leather face and sun-bleached hair spoke of a lifetime at sea. “I’m gonna take the women belowdecks, and then Mason and I will assume a defensive position, if you don’t mind.”
Webber, behind the controls in the captain’s chair, narrowed his eyes. “You see something that makes you think this isn’t a real Mayday call?” he asked.
“Nope.” Bran shook his head. “But not too long ago I was in a situation where a Mayday ended up in a shitload of bloodshed, and there was nothing to make me think it wasn’t on the up-and-up until the moment guns were blazing.” Sure enough. Maddy had been there too. And in this case she fully supported the History…don’t make me repeat myself slogan on Alex’s shirt. “Let’s just say that since then I’d rather err on the side of caution. Have you…uh…have you checked the radar?”
Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) Page 25