And I'd see the dark potential consequences, too. Landon winding up in prison, or worse. Ruining his life, or losing it in the process.
My smile strengthens, and I shake my head. “Sorry. You’re gonna have to try harder than that to scare me.”
“I don’t want to,” he spits. “That’s just the thing. I don’t want to scare you away anymore.” He makes a frustrated sound. “I want you to come back, Reb. With me.”
That’s when it hits me.
He didn’t just come here to clear the air so we didn’t part with bad blood.
What is he here for then? When it hits, I'm gone.
No apology can clear years of self-doubt. I can’t let myself hope or assume too much.
Can’t let myself do anything.
Because even if I understand him better now it doesn’t change the stone cold fact that the two of us together are a volatile mess. More pain than pleasure, guaranteed.
“Landon, I can’t,” I say. “God. I’ve wanted to hear you say you forgive me for years, but I...we don’t work. We’re a fucking mess, all claws and teeth and misunderstandings. It took five years to talk out one conflict. What happens when I leave the milk out on the counter and it goes sour? We don’t talk for five more years while we build up more tension? More hate?”
“Wouldn’t happen,” he says firmly.
I want so bad to believe it.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because Velvet and Mews would chew the carton open and drink the milk way before it went sour.”
It knocks me for a loop so fast I can’t help the sharp burst of laughter, easing some of the tension between us, even if that tight prickling is still behind my eyes.
“You know what I mean, jerk.”
“I know.” He’s smiling, though, and I haven’t seen that in forever. One-sided, easy, confident, with just a touch of arrogance. Softness, too. The heart-stopping kind. “But are you so sure we don’t work? Because I’m not. There’s something between us, Reb. And I’m done running from it. I just need you to stop running from me.”
My heart remembers to beat hard enough to punch me. I hesitate, then ask, “What are you asking?”
He falters, then glances away, looking out across the deepening twilight of the yard.
Then he looks up, at the trees full of string lights overhead. For a moment, with them shining down on his swarthy skin in little dots of gold, he’s that boy again, looking up at the sky and counting stars.
“I could still use your help with Milah,” he says, reluctance catching in his throat. “I could use a fake girlfriend.”
I bark out a hurt laugh. It feels like swallowing glass. “Seriously? She already overheard us. What good will pretending to be your girlfriend do, Landon?”
“By telling her it’s real now, and not only am I off limits, but she can keep her shitty little comments about you to herself.”
“But it’s not real now.” I smile weakly. “And to be fair, I looked like crap this morning.”
His modesty fades, leaving only a thoughtful, stripping sidelong look that flicks over me. He's assessing me, taking me in, consuming until there’s nothing in my world but brilliant blue and the frantic rush of my heart.
“No, you didn’t,” he murmurs. “You always look damn good, Reb.”
Those words are arrows, but they don’t strike my heart until he touches me.
Not until he reaches out, traces his fingertips along my cheek, their bluntness and coarseness so hot against my skin.
A shiver flutters over every inch of me as he tucks my hair back, his gaze riveted on his fingers as they trace backward, then curl against the back of my neck, his hand so heavy. So possessive.
I swear, I can’t help licking my lips, outlining my tingling mouth. It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull. His gaze snaps to my mouth, locks there, lingers with a touch I can feel.
Before he leans in and kisses me.
There’s a scratch of beard and a burst of fire. Then I’m spinning and lost and seeing the fire's red, drunk on the passion, lost in my heart's deafening throb.
Landon kisses like he’s intent on conquest, and I’m already claimed in one sweeping blow.
He takes control of my mouth, surges into me, teasing with such bold and hungry strokes. Every time his tongue slides hotly, obscenely deep, I feel it clenching and wet deep inside me.
His kiss makes me full to bursting with a tingling need. Achingly, painfully empty with a desire to be filled, hyper-aware of every inch of my body. Every part of me he isn’t touching.
Until he is.
Until his hands are on me, dragging me across the bench as if I weigh nothing, pulling me into his lap.
Until my ass is against his thighs and there’s something hard and hungry and oh-so-thick pressing up against me, hot even through the denim of his jeans, burning against the naked backs of my thighs.
Until his arm is hard around my waist, caging me against the steel of his body, giving me everything I need with the pleasure of his touch crushing against me.
Until everywhere he touches me, pressed chest to chest, stomach to stomach, makes me aware of my senses in the way no Cabernet-swigging douchebag ever could.
It’s like when Landon touches me, when he kisses me, I come alive.
I’m all bright lights, and he’s the yawning darkness that makes them glow so sweetly.
He bites at my mouth, stinging and bruising and all delicious heat.
I bite right back. Fighting him, giving back need for need, kiss for kiss, lick for lick, nip for nip until we’re a tangled mess of rushed breaths and grasping hands.
Tangling my fingers in his hair, I stroke back through his thick black nest. He lets out a thrumming, feral growl against my lips before burying his face against my throat.
He sensitizes my skin with the rasp of his beard, then ignites me again with kisses and gentle, slow bites trailing at my throat, following my pulse.
My gasps come low, at first, turning into startled cries as he lifts me, shifts me, his possessive, rough hands on my thighs.
Making them shake as he pulls them apart, repositions me, settles me down on his lap again until I’m straddling him.
Suddenly, this is so much more intimate.
I’m wide open, my panties drenched and pushing up against sensitive, needy, wet-slicked flesh. His hands dig into my ass, making that empty clutch in me, that need to be filled, pulse ten times harder.
He grabs at my shorts, handfuls of my flesh, and brings me down against him.
The pressure of his cock against his jeans is almost fucking me, sliding and rubbing between my thighs, scorching my own wetness into me with heat and friction, and there’s no escaping it when his body is so large between my legs that my inner thighs ache. It's the effort to span him, to straddle him, bared in all but name.
The thin fabric between us can't keep him from ripping my senses to shreds.
I’m spinning, struggling to breathe, clutching at him, struggling to keep the sounds rising in the back of my throat from leaving the back of my throat. It’s too much, too intimate, too dirty, and everything in me craves it with the addiction of a heady drug with a high more intense than any other.
And we’re out in the open, in my brother’s backyard. Steve might wake up from the exhausted nap he and Melanie both crashed into after their evening yoga class after work.
Perish the thought. All I need right now is my brother walking out here and finding me straddling his best friend with those dark heavy hands all over me, and my body so tight-strung and wet I’m probably soaked through my shorts.
Please. Just give us time.
I just got Landon back, after all.
I can’t let him lose Steve over something like this, too.
“Landon,” I protest weakly, digging at his hair, tugging gently. “Landon, we can’t. Not here. S-steve....Steve will never forgive you – mnh!”
His answer cuts off my startled cry, burying his face against the low neckline of my tank top, dragging the delicious friction of his stubble over the upper curves of my breasts. He only pauses to dip his head, captures my nipple in his mouth, sucking and nibbling and teasing through my top and bra.