by Kim Karr
Another groan, and this time I see his mouth open and his face contort in pleasure.
I think he’s coming.
And I think I might be too.
Suddenly my clit starts to throb and I’m aware of how very wet I am.
He stills.
My legs are wobbly.
And then there is nothing but silence.
I want more, so I strain my eyes to see if he’ll do it again.
Oh my God, I’m a peeping Tom. A perverted peeping Tom. This is bad. Really bad. And yet for some reason, that makes me smile.
I’m so going to hell.
Turned on in a way I never knew I could be, I find myself squeezing my thighs together, and then I feel another slight tremor in my sex.
I look down.
Had I come twice?
No.
No way.
Not like this.
Not standing up and watching a boy I hardly know jerk off and thinking of touching myself.
Refocusing my attention through his door, I catch a glimpse of his very fine naked ass as he strides into his bathroom.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Time for me to leave. Yet my brain is still focused on those tremors that have left my nerve endings feeling tingly.
Staring into the empty room, I know I should go. I make myself take a step back, then another. I flick the flashlight back on when I reach the dark staircase and try to decide if I want to turn around or go down the steps backward to avoid making any noise.
His footsteps on the hardwood floor send me staring wide-eyed into the darkness, and then the squeak of his door hinges makes my heart stop.
Immediately, I turn the flashlight off.
A square of sunlight appears, and it’s right then that the door swings open.
Closing my eyes tight, I stifle and slow my breathing.
“Amelia?” Brooklyn asks.
I freeze like a deer in headlights. Busted. I’m so busted. Wonder if I still have time to run back to my room? No, I absolutely do not. Perhaps I should pretend I’m sleepwalking? Maybe. No, that will never work.
“Amelia?” he asks again.
I look across the small space toward him and turn the flashlight back on, accidently shining it right in his face. “Hey,” I try to say calmly. Acting as if I’m just reaching the top step. Acting as if the whisper of a thrill in my voice is not from the fact that I caught him masturbating, but rather excitement from reaching the top after my climb up the narrow steps.
Thank God, he’s dressed. Somehow, some way, in the midst of my insanity, he pulled on a pair of track pants. He raises his hand to shield his eyes from the bright light. “What are you doing up here?”
I deflect the flashlight to the side wall. “I…I…I ummm…I thought I heard someone trying to open Maggie’s door. But now that I’m up here telling you about it, it sounds absurd.”
Much to my surprise, he strides toward me as if to act on my ludicrous concern. “Stay up here.”
Panic grips me. “Wait!”
Brooklyn stares me directly in the eyes. “I’ll be fine,” he says with that sinful bad-boy thing he has going on. His total I don’t give a fuck attitude resonating with each step he takes.
“You can’t go there alone.”
Turning, he goes back in his room and comes out with a baseball bat. There is a raw edge in his gaze that sends shivers up my spine.
I stare at the bat.
The wood slaps against his palm. “A present from Maggie to Keen, some kind of inside joke, but hey, a Louisville Slugger nonetheless. I confiscated it when they moved out.”
“Maybe we should call the police?”
He’s shirtless, and all I can see is the silhouette of his rock-hard abs as he threads the bat through one arm, across his back, and under the other arm. “No phones, remember, but seriously, don’t worry; it’s probably one of Maggie’s old boyfriends. I’ll go tell the guy Maggie’s married now, and her husband will gladly cut his balls off if he finds him anywhere near her.”
I give him a questioning look.
His sexy bare feet take a step toward me. “She has a few stray former boyfriends who come calling once in a while. It’s nothing new. I think I’ve had to get rid of at least three since she moved out.”
“Oh.” My hand flies to my fast-beating heart. “So someone is really out there?”
Brooklyn is beside me now with the bat in a new position at his side, and suddenly everything about him gets serious. “Possibly. Good thing he didn’t get in.”
All I can do is stare, wordless, maybe looking a little scared, although I try not to.
Perhaps sensing my anxiety, he seems to let whatever issues go that are troubling him, and the corners of his mouth quirks upward. “He would have had a real surprise when you scratched his eyes out.”
I suppose he has a right to make that comment. Self-defense classes were something I’d attended regularly while going to college. My father had insisted on them when I insisted on living in Greenwich Village. Although I hated them, I went, always the dutiful daughter. To help ease the tension of those classes, I attended yoga sessions even more frequently. I guess you could say I kept fit for my own sanity.
The stairs creak as he takes them two at a time, and I watch the muscles of his back bunch.
Even though he told me to stay put, I follow him slowly through the house and to the door that leads to Maggie’s room. And then even slower still inside the bedroom, where I find him standing in the open doorway overlooking the beach with no one in sight.
“It looks like I was wrong and no one was there?” I say.
Brooklyn whirls around, and it’s in the brighter light of the bedroom that I feel his stare like a fire burning out of control. “I told you to stay upstairs.”
Very aware that I am wearing only a T-shirt, I find myself uncomfortably tugging at its hem. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
His nostrils flare. “Jesus Christ, Amelia, do you ever listen to anything anyone tells you to do?”
My breath stutters raggedly over my lips as I try to find equal ground. “I’m a grown woman who is capable of making my own decisions, Brooklyn, so I’d appreciate it if you stopped treating me like a child.”
Stop treating me like Cam’s little sister is what I want to say. Yet I don’t. I don’t want to bring my brother’s name into the conversation. This is between Brooklyn and me, and it is a matter of wills.
Slamming the door closed, he locks it with a jerk and struts toward me. “I’m going for a run and then I have a few errands to take care of. The keys to Maggie’s car are on the kitchen table and there’s a spare key to the house hidden under the pot on the patio. Do you think you can handle the rest of the morning without supervision?”
Annoyed, I find my brows furrowing and my lips pursing just like that child I told him I wasn’t, and if that doesn’t make my blood boil. “Fuck you, Brooklyn James.”
The way he strides past me without a second glance tells me what I should have already known…in his eyes I will always be Cam’s pain-in-the-ass little sister.
And nothing more.
So much for getting the bad boy.
11
Edward Scissorhands
Brooklyn
Riding a motorcycle is like dancing sitting down.
Squeeze. Tap. Release. Twist. Left hand. Right hand. Feet in place.
Blazing along the road, everything unfolds in perfect sequence and rhythm. Like always when I ride, I let my mind go free.
And as soon as I do, it goes right where I know it shouldn’t.
To her and her sexy little body, to those feline eyes, and to that pouty little mouth. Thrashing the throttle, I try to erase the image of her. No matter how hard I try, every time I twist the hot rubber of the handle, I imagine her soft skin under my palms, the taste of her pussy on my tongue, the feel of her fingers pulling my hair.
Yes, fuck me. I am so fucked right
now.
Squeezing my knees tighter against the sleek black gas tank, I tuck my head so low out of the wind that it’s almost between my legs. And that’s when I picture her between my legs, her mouth wrapped around my cock, her tongue licking at my balls, her moans hot and heavy for where I can take her.
“Fuckkkkk!” I mutter low under my breath. I shouldn’t have lashed out at her, but I had no choice. The way she was looking at me with those sultry gray eyes, I had to get the hell away from her.
I had to, before I took her and fucked her hard and fast amid the sea of sexual tension that surrounded us right there in my brother’s bedroom. And I know she would have let me; I could see it in her gaze. She was craving that bad.
My bad.
And I wanted to give it.
I really fucking wanted to give it.
Toeing it to fourth gear, I yank the throttle and fly down the road as a rush of guilt rattles me. I left her alone all morning and afternoon, and I really need to get the hell home.
The day flew by.
After getting a new phone, I called Cam, left him a message, and spent the rest of the day riding up to LA and back in the fucking rain. Just me and my head. And you see where that got me.
Now I find myself slaloming through traffic at ninety miles an hour, until at five o’clock I’m pulling off US 1 and onto my street and then finally up my driveway.
As soon as I open the front door, the house smells of microwave popcorn and I can’t hide my smirk. I swear she eats junk food as often as I do.
“Amelia,” I call.
Nothing.
I glance around, but she is nowhere in sight. I stride down the hallway. Maggie’s door is open, but Amelia is not in there.
I search the rest of the house and nothing.
When I head up to my room, that’s when I see the light on at the top of the stairs. Taking the steps two at a time, I hustle up only to come to a dead stop in my doorway.
Amelia is on her stomach on my bed in some kind of hot little number. Her knees are bent and her feet moving back and forth. Her hand casually reached into the popcorn bowl beside her, reading my manuscript.
My manuscript.
The one I threw away!
Unable to control myself, I stalk over to the bed and snatch the bound pages. “What the hell are you doing?”
She casts me a look of utter annoyance. “Hey, hi to you, too. And give that back right now. I want to finish reading it.”
The words Fangirl by Brooklyn James are across the front, so there is no chance she doesn’t know what she is reading. “No, it’s shit. I threw it in the trash, and that’s exactly where it is going back.”
She pops off the bed and in her bare feet, starts chasing me across my room. “It’s not shit,” she says, or something like that.
Christ, I can’t even think. I have a hard-on immediately. She’s wearing a very short green dress, and I mean very short. Her hair and makeup are all done up. She is the spitting image of Ann-Margret when she starred alongside Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas.
And trust me, I’ve seen that movie plenty of times.
My brother Keen has a thing for Elvis. Hell, his kid is named after him. Presley, not Elvis, but if Keen had his choice, I think it might just have been Elvis instead.
Anyway, Amelia is a fucking knockout.
Plucking the manuscript from my hands, she resumes her position on my bed, but this time picks up the pen beside her and goes back to making notes as if I’d never taken the manuscript away.
I’m speechless. “What…Why…Why are you dressed like that?”
She looks up with the pen in her hand. “The engagement party, remember? I went out and bought something to wear this afternoon. I assume that is okay with you?”
Totally and completely forgot about that little ditty. Blinking, I have nothing on my tongue but a “Yeah, sure,” even though I am completely aware she’s being a smart-ass.
With a stroke of the pen, she draws a line on the page and glances up. “Don’t you have to get ready?”
A frown mars my face. “Yeah, sure,” slips out of my mouth again, but this time I’m able to add, “What are you doing up here anyway?”
Writing something in the margin, she answers without looking up. “Your neighbor, Ryan Gerhardt, came by with my camera and phone. His wife had rescued them when it started to rain, and he hadn’t realized it. He said he came by yesterday afternoon, but we weren’t here. Turns out he was the one at the door this morning.” Now she looks up with those pouty lips and my mind instantly goes to wanting my lips right on them. “Anyway,” she says, waving the pen in the air, “my phone was dead and I didn’t have a charger, so I came up to look for one.” She redirects her attention back to the page. “I didn’t think you’d mind, and that’s when I found your manuscript.”
Well, that answered that question.
Slowly, I walk toward her, trying to dispel my dirty thoughts of what I want to do with her on my bed right this minute. How I want to flip her over and run my hands under the hem of her dress and then slip my fingers into her panties and make her scream my name.
“Brooklyn?”
The pen is now between her teeth and she’s looking up at me with those sultry movie-star eyes.
With my chin, I indicate the page she has marked up. “What is all that?”
She pats the bed, and then takes the pen from between those lips of hers to point to a line on the page. “This is my suggestion on how Kate should react when Kellan doesn’t show up to pick her up from work like he promised because he was out surfing and lost track of time.”
Curious, I pick up the manuscript. “You don’t want her to call him and leave him a message asking him where he is?”
Her head moves back and forth. “No! That’s not what a girl would do. Not right away, anyway.”
I tap my chin in thought. “Why not? I would.”
There’s a click of her tongue and then the pen is pointing at me. “Exactly, that’s what a guy would do, not a girl. Kate would wait, and wait, and wait, and get angrier and angrier with Kellan by the minute, no matter how nice she is. Then she’d leave, go home, maybe text a girlfriend, and think about him until he finally calls her. And if he doesn’t call her after another hour or two, then she’d call him.”
I scratch my head. “Why wait to call him like it’s an afterthought?”
“Because he was an asshole who blew her off for something more fun, and he doesn’t deserve to know that she’s been waiting for him.”
“No, that’s not why he was late. He just got caught up in the moment.”
“Well, Kate doesn’t know that.”
“But he tells her that later.”
Amelia shrugs. “It was still wrong. Kate has been thinking about him for hours while he hasn’t given her a second thought until he’s off that board. Now he has to prove that he wants to get caught up in her.”
“Really?”
She nods. “Absolutely. However, their relationship is new at this point, so both will be cautious. He can’t overdo his apology or he’ll lose that bad-boy edge of his, but he still has to be sincere.”
I smirk at that. Do women even get that we don’t go out there and try to be this version or that version of bad?
“And,” she goes on, “Kate can’t be too bitchy or too mad or she’ll lose him. It’s a fine line.”
All I can do is shake my head. “Women are complex.”
“We are. It’s the whole I said no, but I really mean yes, and you should know that syndrome.”
Perhaps that is what my mother meant when she told me Fangirl lacked real emotion. Maybe she wanted to tell me that I don’t understand women. Then again, that would have evoked the fail flag on her part, and although she has made more of an effort to be part of my life over the past couple of years, it doesn’t make up for the years we lived in the same house and she was never around. Not even close.
Everyone thought being Hollywood royalty was so glam
orous. Well, it wasn’t. The Queen was never home, and the King was normally drinking himself into a stupor in some bar. That left me, the Prince, to fend for myself.
I hate thinking about those days.
I blink it all away and focus on Amelia.
More than intrigued, I sit beside her and flip through the manuscript. If I could think of her as a friend, then surely I wouldn’t have issues with my cock going to full attention every time I see her.
Yes, friends.
Cam’s little sister and I can be friends.
Now that is doable.
I hope, anyway, but fuck, she smells so good.
I have to remember that she is Cam’s little sister, and he would fucking kill me if I touched her.
Clapping my hands together, I’m determined to try my hardest to stay on the friend train. “What else did you make notes on?”
She glances over her shoulder to my nightstand and at the clock. “Do we have enough time?”
I nod. “I can get ready fast and we don’t have to be there until seven thirty.”
“Okay.” She takes in a deep breath. “You won’t get mad?”
“I won’t get mad.”
“Well then, I’m not done, but so far I think Kellan’s character is far superior to Kate’s.”
“And you don’t like that?”
She shakes her head. “Not at all. I think the viewer should struggle more with which one of them is in the right or wrong. Bottom line, Kate needs to be more endearing.”
I jerk my chin toward the manuscript that I spent the last two years writing and haphazardly tossed away because of negative feedback. “In what way?”
Amelia sits up and crosses her legs, tucking the fabric of her dress over her thighs so that her panties won’t show. “Can I be honest?”
“Are you ever anything but?”
She shrugs, and the way her shoulders lift I can’t help but stare at her breasts. They look like a nice handful. “You make her out to be kind of stalker-like, and I don’t think Kellan is looking for that. He wants real love, a real girl, and I think you need to turn Kate into that girl. She needs to be Cinderella and he’s her Prince Charming. It will add to the heartfelt feeling you are going for if you do that.”