by Devney Perry
I dove on her, not letting my insecurities win out. I slammed my mouth onto hers—fuck the stamina. Today we’d scratch the itch. Tonight, the next night and the night after that, I’d worship her body until she came apart, over and over again.
Gripping my cock, I rubbed the tip through her folds. The shudder that ran through her vibrated against my skin and she arched, her hips circling as she searched for more. I positioned myself at the entrance, pausing and taking a long breath to get myself in check. Then I rocked inside an inch, Londyn’s body so tight and hot I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Oh, God,” she moaned. Her hands came up to my chest and her nails dug into my pecs.
My hips drove me deeper, the pulse of her inner muscles clamping down tight. I let her adjust around me and pressed forward. I inched inside, slowly and deliberately, until the base of my cock was rooted against her flesh.
“Fuck, you feel so good.” I dropped my forehead to hers, giving myself another moment.
“I’m—” Her breath fluttered as her hips rolled. “More.”
I obeyed, working myself in and out. The pace started slow but picked up quickly until each time I thrust inside, our bodies smacked together and her breasts shook. I held myself above her, my stomach taut as I used every ounce of strength to keep the explosion coming at bay.
My hand drifted between us, my finger finding her clit. The minute I grazed it, she about came off the floor.
“Brooks,” she gasped. One more brush was all it took and her whole body shuddered, coming apart. She writhed, riding out the orgasm with a series of moans and breaths that was heaven in my ears.
She clenched around me, and the pressure at the base of my spine was too much to shove away. I came on the heels of her climax, her name on my lips.
When I recovered and the white spots in my vision cleared, I slid out and disposed of the condom in a sack I’d brought for trash. My body was damp with sweat and the water from the lake.
There was barely enough room to collapse beside her, but we both shifted onto our sides as she let me thread my arm behind her head.
I kissed her temple and wet hair. “Damn, honey.”
“That was . . .” She gulped. “Wow.”
“You comfortable?”
She snuggled into my bare chest and nodded.
We lay there, hot and sweaty and naked, shielded from the sun, as we looked into the open blue sky above. The boat rocked us back and forth. The water lapped against its sides.
A week. I had a week with this woman, maybe nine or ten days, to soak her in. Then I’d let her go, already knowing that watching her drive away was going to hurt like a son of a bitch.
Chapter Ten
Londyn
The moment the knock sounded, I leapt off the bed and rushed for the knob. I didn’t bother checking the peephole—Brooks knocked with the same three short taps each night.
“Hey.” Brooks grinned as I yanked the door open.
“Hi.” I grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt and dragged him inside.
His mouth descended on mine as he kicked the door shut. We were a mess of hands and lips as he walked me backward to the bed, lifting me up by the ribs to lay me on the mattress.
“What took you so long?” I breathed as he kissed his way down my neck.
He broke away to glance at the clock on the nightstand, his forehead furrowing. “I’m two minutes late.”
“Exactly.” I pulled at the hem of his shirt, tugging it up his back. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
He rolled his eyes as he yanked off the shirt the rest of the way. “You could have saved us some time and answered the door naked.”
I giggled. “Tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
I nodded, reaching between us for the button on his jeans.
This was the third night of our motel-room rendezvouses, and the dance to rid one another of clothing took less and less time each night. Practice makes progress.
I hadn’t spent the day with Brooks since our boat ride on Friday. He’d been busy all weekend and unable to spend time with me during the day.
I’d done my best not to spy. The window in my room overlooked the backside of the motel, out toward the lake and not his yard. But I’d gone out of my room and wandered some. Each time, his truck had been missing from the driveway in his house. Okay, I’d spied.
But he’d come to my room each night and stayed for five or six hours, long enough that I was boneless by the time he left to walk home in the dark. Eating dinner and making out on the rock had been replaced with hot, wild and sweaty sex. A fair trade.
I worked the zipper on Brooks’s jeans free, diving in to wrap my hand around his shaft.
He bit my lip as I squeezed. “Naughty woman.”
That bite was just the beginning. We teased and tormented one another until I was a writhing, screaming mess, pinned to the bed with my hands above my head and his body driving me to the edge.
After we came apart, he flopped beside me, that glorious, broad chest heaving. I slid my fingers into the dusting of dark hair across it, resting my palm over his hard nipple.
“I shouldn’t have worked out today,” he breathed.
I turned sideways, propping my head on an elbow. “You worked out?”
He nodded. “I went for a run this morning before going to the garage.”
“In this heat?” Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me on a run in this humidity. He should have come here instead; I would have worked him out. “Do you normally run?”
“Hold that question.” He bent and stood from the bed, giving me a moment to appreciate his firm ass and the strength in his back as he walked to the bathroom. It didn’t take him long to dispose of the condom and return to the bed, the view of the front just as gorgeous as the back.
He mirrored my position, lying on a side to face me, and flicked the sheet over our legs and hips. “I need to tell you something.”
My body tensed. The last time I’d heard those words, Gemma had informed me that Secretary was pregnant.
“It’s not bad.” He grinned, using his free hand to rub away the crease between my eyebrows.
“Okay.” I relaxed a bit.
“The reason I ran this morning was because my son asked me to go with him.”
“Your son?” I blinked, replaying the word. “You have a son?”
Brooks nodded. “I have a son. He’s sixteen. He shares time between my house and Moira’s. Last week, he was with her. This week, he’s with me.”
“Ah.” That explained why he’d been absent all weekend. It stung that in all our conversations, I hadn’t learned about his son. “Why didn’t you tell me about him?”
“It wasn’t because I was trying to hide him from you.” Brooks took my hand and laced our fingers together. “I didn’t want you to know about him and him not know about you, if that makes sense.”
“It does. You put him first.” A foreign concept to my own parents. Had anyone in my life ever put me first? I couldn’t think of a single person, not even Thomas. Only if it served him had he made me a priority.
That Brooks put his son above anyone else endeared him to me even more.
A single dad. A good, single dad. This man kept getting better.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Wyatt.”
“The Thai delivery boy?”
Brooks chuckled. “Yeah. He actually does deliveries for a few restaurants in town, not just the Thai place.”
“Oh. Is that where he is tonight?”
“No, he’s home. We have a standing dinner date with my parents on Monday nights. Last week, I begged out of it to meet you at the diner for pie. But Wyatt and I both went tonight. Then we came home. He’s at the house, texting some girl.”
“And you came to me.”
He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “I came to you.”
I saw it now, the resemblance between father and son. When Wyatt had been in the motel lobby, I hadn’t put
it together because, well . . . why would I? But now that I could pair them together, I saw how Wyatt had Brooks’s nose and the promise of the same strong build.
“Does he know about me?”
Brooks nodded. “He does.”
I didn’t need to ask how Wyatt felt about Brooks seeing a woman living at the motel. If his son had a problem with me, Brooks would have already said goodbye.
“When did you tell him?” I asked.
“This weekend. I told him I was enamored with one of my customers.”
“Enamored?”
“Completely.” He rolled across the distance between us, his bare chest pressing mine into the bed. “I’m sorry for not telling you about him sooner.”
Time seemed to have slowed in Summers. It seemed like Brooks and I had been together for a long time, when in reality, it had been less than two weeks. Standing in his shoes, I wouldn’t have brought Wyatt into the conversation early either. Brooks the protector had waited until it was the right time to share.
A jolt of pride hit my heart. Brooks had deemed me worth sharing. He could have kept us quiet. I’d be gone soon. But he’d shared me with his son.
“I understand.”
“You do?”
I nodded, studying the smooth skin on his cheek. He must have shaved before dinner with his parents. I ran my knuckles up his jaw toward his temple. There were no grays threaded through his dark blond hair. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
My eyes widened. “And you have a sixteen-year-old son?”
“Yeah. Wyatt was born when I was seventeen.”
“Wow.”
I’d become a parent to myself when I was sixteen. He’d become an actual parent at seventeen. There was no question that his youth had been harder. It also made sense why we connected so well when other men close to my age often seemed so immature.
Circumstances had forced us both to grow up fast.
“You had a short childhood too.”
He studied my face, his eyes softening. “Yeah. But I don’t regret it for a minute. Things were hard for a few years, but I had help. I had more support than you did, that’s for sure. My parents. Moira’s too.”
Moira was Wyatt’s mother. Was that why she’d acted out against my car? Because she saw me as a threat to not only her ex-husband, but her son’s father too? “When did you get married?”
“As soon as we turned eighteen.” Brooks dropped his head to the bed, lying close so we could look at one another. Between us, he kept his grip on my hand. “Moira and I tried, for Wyatt. But it got too hard, and I didn’t want my son growing up thinking that was what a marriage should be. We didn’t laugh. We didn’t talk to one another. We just . . . existed.”
That sounded familiar. “How long ago did you get divorced?”
“Ten years. You?”
I hesitated. It felt like longer, but in reality, it had been only six months since I’d caught Thomas with Secretary. “Officially, three weeks.”
“Oh.” Brooks’s gaze dropped to the pillow, his grip on my hand loosening. “Three weeks. That’s, uh . . . three weeks.”
No time at all, unless you knew my heart. Then you’d know that those three weeks were more than enough to say goodbye to my marriage. The moment I’d found Thomas with his dick inside a moaning Secretary, I’d fallen out of love with him. I’d had months during the divorce proceedings and settlement to make peace with the end.
I’d changed my last name. I’d arranged to leave the home we’d shared. Running away hadn’t been hard at all.
Brooks ran his free hand over his jaw. “This is probably a week too late, but is this a rebound thing? Or some step you have to take to get over your ex?”
“Never.” I shifted up to meet his eyes. “You’re not a rebound.”
“You sure about that?”
I cupped his cheek. “I’m not spending time with you, having sex with you, because I’m here to prove to my ex-husband that I’ve moved on. I’m not having sex with you because I need to prove to myself that I’ve moved on. I’m having sex with you because you’re an amazing kisser, your hands feel like a dream on my body and, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m enamored with you too.”
Brooks grinned, relief washing over us both. “Tell me something else about you.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything.”
I dropped to his side, stretching a leg across his as I curled into his chest. His arm wrapped around my shoulders to trap me close.
If tonight was anything like last night and the night before that, we’d lie here talking for a while before one of us would make a move. It didn’t take much to ignite the simmering heat—a touch on my breast, a graze along his thigh, a whisper in my ear. But first, we’d talk.
The question game we’d started on the rock had been intended as a two-way street. Except each night, I found myself talking more about me than Brooks did about himself. Was that because he’d been trying to keep Wyatt from entering the mix? Or had I taken over our conversations, unintentionally keeping the focus on myself?
I was leaving so many stories behind but only taking a few of his with me on my journey.
“Why do we always talk about me?” I asked.
“Because I want to learn it all, and I’m running out of time.”
We were running out of time. “Is my car still on track to be done Friday?”
“Far as I know.”
Even if I stayed through the weekend, by this time next week, I’d be gone.
Maybe it was easier to keep talking about me. The more I learned about Brooks, the harder it was to imagine leaving him behind. I’d known everything there was to know about Thomas, and I hadn’t thought twice about running from Boston.
My stomach tightened, the anxiety of that day growing. Driving away from Summers would be a hundred times more difficult than leaving Boston. Necessary, but agonizing.
“You said the car was going to a friend in California. Who?” he asked.
“His name is Karson.”
“He?”
I liked the hint of jealousy in his voice, not that there was any reason to be jealous. Karson was only a fond memory. “Karson was a runaway too. He lived in the junkyard—actually, he was the one who discovered it in the first place.”
Karson had been wandering around Temecula, searching for a bench or some place to sleep one night. When he hadn’t found anything to his liking, he’d kept walking until he’d spotted a fire.
The old man who managed the junkyard had been burning some wood scraps in a barrel. The light had caught Karson’s attention and he’d snuck in, sleeping under the stars on a foam bench seat that had once been in a truck.
“He’d been living there for a month before the owner of the yard finally came out one night with a blanket. Lou Miley was his name, the junkyard owner.”
Speaking his name brought a smile to my lips. The last time I’d spoken to Lou had been when I’d called to buy the Cadillac. He’d sounded the same as ever. Gruff and grumpy. He spoke in grunts whenever possible. Lou was a naturally unhappy soul, annoyed by the mainstream world. But for us kids, he’d opened his heart. He’d been our hero.
Lou was gone now. Three months after I’d bought the Cadillac, Gemma had gotten word that he’d died in his sleep. Lou hadn’t socialized much, but I knew of six people who would have mourned his passing, me included.
“So how’d you meet Karson?”
“Gemma,” I said. “They lived in the same trailer park. When he stopped coming home after school, she knew he was gone. Then when she ran, she asked around until she found him. He set her up at the junkyard too. Then she found me a month later and two became three.”
I’d been digging through the trash behind a restaurant for food. She’d slapped a sandwich out of my hand, rolled her eyes and ordered me to follow her. She’d taken me to the junkyard, shared some of her food stash and introduced me to Karson.
“Three.”
Brooks drummed the number on my lower back. “I thought you said there were six of you kids.”
“It was only the three of us for about two months. Then Katherine came along. She met Karson at the car wash where he worked. Then came Aria and Clara. Those two were my recruits.”
It sounded strange to say recruits. Most parents would frown at the idea of one kid talking another into running away from home. But home wasn’t always a loving term. Sometimes home meant pain and fear. Home was what we’d been seeking to escape.
“Where’d you find them?” Brooks asked. There was no judgment in his voice. The shock of my life’s history had faded since our first night together. He’d become more curious instead. He’d accepted that running away had been the best of a long list of shitty options.
It had been for Aria and Clara too.
“They found me. They lived two trailers down from my parents with their uncle. When they were ten, their parents died in a car accident. The uncle, he was . . . not right. You know how you can see someone from a distance and you get that shiver up your spine? That was him. Aria and Clara didn’t tell me much about why they left, but they didn’t need to. They walked into the junkyard one day and never looked back.”
I could still picture the twins walking hand in hand into the junkyard like they owned the place. They’d heard from some kids at the pizza parlor where I’d worked that it was where I’d been hanging out.
We didn’t tell people, even other kids, we actually lived there for fear the police would show up and take us home.
“So Karson is in California—”
“Maybe,” I said. “I actually don’t know if Karson is still there. Gemma got word a couple years back that he still lived in Temecula—he was at Lou’s funeral—but he might have moved since.”
“That’s why you’re going there first. To see if he’s there.”
“Yes. Maybe the others are too, I don’t know. Katherine could be in Montana where Gemma and I left her. Aria and Clara were a year younger than me and they stayed in the junkyard when we left. As far as I know, Karson stayed with them.”
“If he’s not there?”
I shrugged. “I’ll find him. California is just my starting point.”