by Pippa Grant
Brooks
Mackenzie keeps giving me weird looks as I drive us to Reynolds Park. It’s not far, though finding parking isn’t easy. I end up backing into a questionable spot at the end of a row beneath some kind of blooming tree.
We find a picnic table not far away, and I make her tell me everything she does at her job while we eat tacos and while I text pictures to Parker to make her jealous.
Wouldn’t be doing my job as her baby brother if I didn’t.
I also wouldn’t be doing my job as a good puppy daddy if I didn’t snap pictures of Coco Puff playing with a squeaky taco.
Mackenzie balls her wrapper and makes a face at it like she’s realized we’ve spent the last thirty minutes discussing how there’s too much trash in the world, and here we are, making more.
Mental note: Take my own to-go containers next time.
“Why all the questions?” she asks.
“You know about my job, but I don’t know about yours.”
“But your job is awesome.”
“Yours is saving the planet. You win.”
She goes pink in the cheeks again, and I pretend I don’t know she’s thrilled when Coco Puff jumps at her knees, squeaking the toy and making his collar go off. “There’s no such thing as too much love!”
“You’re such a smart boy.” She ruffles his ears, then tosses the taco a few feet. Not too far, or he won’t be able to reach. He’s on a pretty short leash.
He leaps on it, and it squeaks so loud he startles himself and dashes back under the table to bark at the toy.
“You’re my best friend! I want to love you forever! You can do anything you set your mind to!”
I reach down and rescue him. “You’re my best friend too, Coco Puff. And I promise to love you forever.”
He licks my nose.
I nod. “Agreed. Time for Mackenzie’s surprise.”
She blinks at us both. “Good surprise, or bad surprise?”
“Still don’t trust me, hm?”
I stand and offer her my hand, and she only hesitates long enough to give me the flirty kind of suspicious glare.
It’s impossible to not smile at that, because if there’s one thing I love more than making her blush, it’s teasing a reaction out of her.
One day.
One day, she’s going to join me in this belief that I can will myself to be bigger than any superstition, and the day she does, I’m going to rock her whole fucking world.
Or possibly she’ll rock mine, and give me another few chances to figure out how to rock hers.
It’s not like I haven’t read up on how to be a good lover. But book smarts and practical application aren’t always the same.
For now, I’ll take her holding my hand and giving me that weird look again. “You really haven’t been back to your apartment?”
I stretch my neck, which, yes, is an excuse to avoid eye contact. “Luca got me the number of his real estate agent. I’m gonna start looking for a new place soon. Stupid to get paid what I get paid and live in an apartment where I have to jiggle the key to get in.”
I risk a glance at her and am rewarded with the sight of her eye twitching.
And by rewarded, I mean I get to feel like an idiot.
“Yeah, I know.” I shrug. “My bad for asking Rhett and Eloise to do my house-hunting for me. I should’ve known. It’s somewhere they’d actually like.”
“That’s…unexpectedly believable.”
“Eloise has other issues too.”
Mackenzie sucks her lips into her mouth like she doesn’t want to say anything bad. Her cheeks are flushing again.
I want to make her whole body flush again.
I clear my throat while we approach my SUV. “She pissed off this internet troll a few months back, realized he could hack her electronic toilet, and she’s been on this back to simple times kick.”
“Electronic toilet?”
“Yeah, it had this control panel and sensors, and it was Wi-Fi-enabled, so like, you could tell it when you got home, and it would heat the seat. The lid lifts automatically when you—”
I’m talking to a woman I’d like to sleep with about toilets.
This really does explain so much about my virginity.
“It’s cool for a toilet,” I finish in a mutter. “And she has trust issues now.”
Mackenzie’s hand is shaking in mine. I glance at her again, and her whole face is contorted in suppressed laughter.
She coughs twice, giggles once, and coughs once more. “You love your family.”
“Well, yeah. They make me look normal, plus, growing up wasn’t dull. Neither are holidays. And it gets better every year.” I click the fob to unlock my SUV. “And speaking of better, I have a surprise for you.”
“If it’s a big black plastic bag that you’re going to use to stuff my body in because you’re finally done with me, can you at least give me a head start on running away?”
I momentarily freeze, because there is a big black plastic bag in my back end.
And it does look big enough to hold a body.
She freezes too.
We both look at the back of my Land Rover.
She reaches for the handle.
I block her.
“Brooks…”
“It’s not what it looks like.”
Coco Puff barks. “Never apologize for cutting toxic people out of your life!”
Mackenzie’s eyes dart between me and my dog like she’s trying to decide if she should run, or if she should grab Coco Puff and save him too.
“It’s Meaty,” I blurt. “But it looks…like a body in a bag.”
“You went to see my dads?”
“No. Tripp and Lila had a new version made. I…stole it for you.”
Her eyes go wide and her mouth flaps like a dying fish, which is pretty much my favorite expression on her face ever, because it’s so fucking real.
“You didn’t,” she whispers.
I pop the rear hatch, wince as I realize anyone walking past might think I’m showing her a dead body in my back end, and gesture for her to lean in.
Coco Puff starts barking, so I lift him up and put him in the back too.
“Shh,” I tell him.
“If you’re happy and you know it, shake that sweet ass!” his collar replies.
Mackenzie pries open the trash bag like she’s done this a time or two, and considering she has her own Meaty costume stashed apparently at her dads’ house, she makes quick work of confirming what’s in the body bag.
“Oh my god, you did,” she breathes.
I cross a finger over my chest. “I would never lie to you about Meatball theft.”
“I love you.”
The words barely register before she leaps on me, wrapping her legs around my waist and sealing her lips over mine.
I stumble—not because I’m a weakling, but because I’m startled—but I recover faster than it takes me to knock a fastball out of the ballpark.
Mostly.
I trip on the curb trying to get my footing, and Mackenzie slides off me.
But then she grabs me by the strings on my hoodie, yanks, and we both tumble into the back end.
I lift Coco Puff over the seat to deposit him in the middle of the SUV.
Mackenzie hefts the bag of Meaty to one side.
And as soon as I hit the button to lower the tailgate and shut us in here, cramped as it is, she attacks me again.
The good kind of attack, I mean.
The kind that involves hot kisses and shoving me against a costume in a plastic bag and straddling my hips while I try to figure out how to bend my legs to fit in here.
“You are so hot to me right now,” she gasps against my mouth.
Fuck, yeah. “Steal a mascot…every day…for you.”
She grips my shirt harder and kisses me like I’m oxygen until she needs actual oxygen, and she breaks away with a groan. “I’m so tired of fighting this, Brooks.”
“So stop.”<
br />
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Mackenzie, angel, I swear to you, short of actually killing me, there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop me from smacking the shit out of that baseball tomorrow night, and the next night, and the night after that, because I’m damn well gonna have my cake and eat it too. And in case you’re wondering, you’re my cake. You will always be my cake.”
She makes a throaty whimper, and then she’s mauling me again.
I would happily die being mauled by this woman.
Especially since she’s rubbing the flat of her hand against the bulge of my dick and making me go cross-eyed.
I’m gonna need some more of that. Preferably skin-on-skin.
“Want…you…so…bad,” she moans.
Coco Puff barks. “If you can dream it, you can do it!”
Fuck right.
I slide my hands under her simple white satiny blouse, find her nipples poking at her lace bra, and I brush my thumbs over them.
She moans again, pulls her hand away from my hard-on, and rocks her pelvis against it instead. “I can’t wear these pants back to the office this afternoon.”
The scent of her arousal hits my nose, and fuck. Just fuck. “Take them off.”
Those pretty baby blues flare wide as she meets my gaze again. There’s a clear debate going on in her head, and I don’t think it’s a battle of good versus evil.
Pretty sure it’s a battle of loyalty versus belief.
I know without a fraction of a doubt what she’s thinking.
If she does this, and I don’t hit another ball for the rest of my life, she’ll blame herself.
But if she does this, and I do hit the ever-loving fuck out of the ball the rest of the week, then what do we both gain?
Sex.
All the time.
With each other.
That’s what we gain.
“I’m gonna fucking kill that ball,” I growl. “And not a single damn thing that we do right here, right now, will change it. Except for the part where when I send it flying to the moon, you’ll know exactly who I’m hitting it for.”
She fans her cheeks. Blows out a short breath.
And then she does the last thing I expect, and she reaches for the button on her work pants.
Halle-fucking-lujah.
My dick’s so hard, it’s turned into petrified lava.
And that’s before she shimmies out of her pants, panties and all, giving me an unobstructed view of her sweet, wet pussy.
I swallow hard.
Possibly gulp.
Say a prayer to the baseball gods that my dick and I can nail this on the first try, because I am not blowing my load early.
I have too much to prove right now.
“Touch me,” she breathes.
It’s my moment of truth.
Can I touch a woman today and still hit a ball tomorrow?
Fuck, yes, I can.
All I need to do is believe.
And I believe I’m scrunched in the back of a car like a sixteen-year-old, instead of a thirty-year-old, sliding my fingers into a woman’s slick folds for the first time in my life, watching those bright blue eyes watch me, and then cross as my thumb connects with a tight little nub at the top of her slit.
“Oh, god, Brooks, more.”
My dick whimpers.
It wants to be my fingers.
It can slow down and learn a thing or two, because I’m not gonna be some two-thrust Chuck who doesn’t give the lady her own orgasm first while I get the joy of touching that warm, wet skin that I’ve dreamed about touching for decades.
Not that there’s anything smooth about me trying to shift in the back end here, half-lying on a meatball costume in a black plastic bag that squeaks like a fart every time I move wrong while my dog and his collar cheer me on with enthusiastic phrases like Get ’em, Tiger! and You’re everything that’s right in the world!
I swallow again, because the sight of her watching as I slide a finger inside her slick, hot channel is making me lose my mind. “You feel so damn good.”
Translation: I’m gonna die a happy man right here.
She grabs my hand, presses my thumb to her clit, and rides my fingers as her eyes slide shut. “You’re going to hit the ball out of the park tomorrow.”
“All the way out of the city and up to the moon.”
“You talk so dirty.”
“You’re fucking gorgeous when you’re turned on. I pictured you naked and touching yourself every time I stepped up to bat the last week.”
“Aaaahhhh!”
Her tight inner muscles clench around my finger, and fuck me, that feels so good.
So. Fucking. Good.
And with her head thrown back, all that hair tumbling down around her bare shoulders, her chest heaving inside that bra, I am not going to last another second before I lose all control.
Think about Knox’s nana. Think about Knox’s nana.
I start breathing again as my dick softens a millimeter, moving away from imminent eruption danger as I force myself to picture the elderly woman who terrorizes all of us with tales about her really bad erotic alien romances.
Mackenzie strokes my chest, down to my waistband, and teases my hips right above the fabric. “Your turn.”
And with two simple words, she puts me back in the danger zone.
Her eyes waver. “Unless you don’t want—”
I don’t let her finish before I’m kissing her again. “I want,” I gasp against her lips. “I’ve wanted you from the minute I first saw you, and I want you more and more every single day.”
The windows are steaming up. My shocks are getting a different kind of workout. And all I care about is helping Mackenzie strip me out of my shorts in this confined space without either of us getting a concussion.
We manage, and she sits back on my thighs and grips my hard-on with both hands, licking her lips and making me wish I was a real superhero, because god almighty, those hot palms squeezing my bare cock are the closest thing to heaven I’ve ever experienced, and I don’t want this to end.
Not badly. Or prematurely. Or basically ever.
“Are you sure?” She glances around like it’s suddenly occurred to her that we’re in the back end of a car, and swear on my overenthusiastic puppy whose collar is still barking out encouragement, I’ve gone and fallen in love.
I grip her hips and tug while I start grinning, because why the hell shouldn’t I do this like I would’ve as a kid? “Ride me, Kenz. I want you. And I want you now.”
She blows out a short breath and fans herself again. “Oh, god, I think I just came again.”
Yeah.
In. Love.
And because I’ve been waiting for this forever, I know exactly where I have a condom stashed in my car, and because apparently we both like it when Mackenzie’s stroking me, she does the honors of suiting me up.
“You know you’re big?” she whispers.
“Fuck, yeah. And it’s all for you.”
She giggles. “Brooks. We’re in the back of your car.”
“You’re making my first dreams come true.”
I grab her hips and pull her over me, watching my over-eager cock straining for her pussy. Her body brushes my tip, and yeah, we’re doing this.
“You really could’ve picked someone more normal than me,” she whispers while she leans in to kiss me.
“I wouldn’t want anymore more normal than you.”
If you’d told me fifteen years ago that I’d be sliding my cock into a woman for the first time while we were both laughing about what weirdos we are, after I basically hated her the first time I realized who she really was, I probably would’ve said a few things that would’ve gotten my mouth washed out. But thrusting up to meet Mackenzie, burying myself deep inside her tight sleeve while we both chuckle at the unexptectedness of life throwing the two of us together—both of us definitely oddballs in our own way—is so damn perfect.
Better than
perfect.
My laugh dies in my throat as the sensation of her body wrapped around my entire dick takes hold. She squeezes me with her inner muscles, and my head drops back against the plastic Meaty bag while the sensation of heaven expands from my hard-on to my stomach and legs and spreads everywhere. “Fuck, Kenz…”
She lifts her hips, pulling off me, stroking me with her body, and instinct takes over.
I angle back, then thrust as she lowers herself again, igniting nerve endings in the end of my cock and my tight balls and everywhere from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and fuck baseball.
Making love to Mackenzie is what I was born to do.
Once won’t be enough.
She rolls her hips while I pump into her, everything tightening in the pit of my stomach in a familiar, but brand new feeling. This feeling goes with locking eyes with those gorgeous, glittering baby blues, watching her panting out of her parted pink lips while her fingers skim my pecs and I make love to her.
Not screw. Not bang. Not have sex with.
Make love.
I thread my fingers through her hair while my dick warns me we’re about done. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.”
“You’re everything.”
And I’m done.
Again.
“Mackenzie—”
“God, so good,” she cries, tightening hard around me. “Love…you feel…inside me.”
My hips buck uncontrollably, and then I’m coming too, there, inside her, with her body clenching around my cock and coaxing my release harder than I’ve ever felt it.
I can’t catch my breath.
I’ve gone cross-eyed.
All I know is that I’m hanging on to Mackenzie with everything I have, and she’s crying out even as she’s peppering my mouth with kisses again.
Mind.
Blown.
Life.
Changed.
And I don’t want this to end.
Ever.
She collapses on top of me while I’m still straining with the last bits of my release, and I wrap her tight in my arms.
“I’m gonna hit a fucking grand slam,” I say as soon as I can talk again.
She kisses my shoulder. “I know.”
My legs are bent weird. My neck’s twisted funny on this costume bag. Coco Puff’s staring at us from over the seat like he’s traumatized for life.
And I could still fall asleep. Right here. Wrapped in Mackenzie.