“Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’m sick of being safe. Aren’t you tired of protecting me?”
“Yes!” he bellowed. “I’m fucking exhausted! Are you happy? I’m tired of keeping you out of trouble and keeping my damn hands off you.”
Her hands shot up triumphantly. “Finally!” The transformation was already beginning. He could see her as something more than his little brother’s annoying friend. He would let her be more.
“Remi. You’re leaving for school in a couple of weeks,” he said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” To her, a summer fling was the epitome of adulthood. Being grown-up to enjoy a temporary relationship that they both could look back on fondly? Share secret winks across the Thanksgiving table. Maybe pick back up where they left off once she was done with college. Yes, please. Sign her up.
“You’re leaving,” he said stubbornly.
“And?”
His jaw clenched in that adorably annoyed way of his. “And I don’t want to ruin you.”
“Ruin me? Good lord, man, have you had your ears cleaned? I’m not a virgin.”
“Jesus, Remi!” He threw a glance over his shoulder and towed her into the alleyway between buildings away from the spring foot traffic. He kicked the decorative gate shut behind them and deposited her against the cool stone of the building. “If I let myself touch you? If I let myself go? Neither of us would survive.”
“Well, somebody ate a bowl of Humble Flakes for breakfast this morning. Your chivalry is so admirable,” she snapped.
“You and your goddamn smart mouth.”
“Go ahead. Teach me a lesson,” she taunted.
He leaned in until their foreheads touched. She wished she could bottle the smell of him. She’d call it First Crush and make a billion dollars.
“Remi, baby, if you knew one-tenth of the things I’ve thought about doing, you’d run away and never look back.”
Her heart was hammering in her chest as adrenaline and lust released into her bloodstream. “I don’t run, Brick.” No one had ever made her feel like he did. And deep down in some secret part, she was worried no one ever would.
“You better fucking start now.” His voice was barely a rasp.
“If I reached under that belt right now, what would I find?” To drive her point home, she curled her fingertips into the waistband of his jeans.
He squeezed his eyes shut and hissed. “Jesus.”
“No use praying for help. Jesus isn’t worried about your dick, Brick.”
“I’m not touching you.” He gritted out the words like a rusty mantra.
“What if I touch you?” she whispered. She’d lost the thread of the fight. Lost the point she was trying to make. She skated her fingers over the buckle and listened to the intake of his breath. “Do you want me to? If you do, you have to say it. You can’t just hope it’ll happen. You need to say the words.”
She watched his face change as he looked down at her, something like pain in his eyes. Oh, God. He was going to walk away. He was going to stroll down the sidewalk and leave her with wet panties and a broken heart. And she was going to have to make it her life’s mission to torture the man for the rest of his earthly years.
Cool, rough stone at her back. Hot, hard Brick at her front. It was her new favorite place to be.
His gaze dipped to her chest where the material gaped, and he clenched his jaw so hard his cheeks hollowed.
Very deliberately, he placed a hand on either side of her head. She could see the war waging behind his eyes. Want and need with right and wrong. He wanted her. The extra-large bulge behind that soft denim told her that. But he was fighting it like she was poison.
“Do you want me to touch you, Brick?” she asked again in a silky whisper.
He was crowding her with that big, wonderful body of his. Looming into her space and still not touching her. As much as it pissed her off, his willpower, his desire to do the right thing, was a goddamn work of art.
His eyes were squeezed shut. His entire body was rigid, like a trap set to spring.
And then he nodded.
She sucked in a breath, not daring to blink. “Say it,” she said softly.
Life went on outside the little alley. Tourists window-shopped. Baristas brewed coffees. Birds dipped into the water, hunting silvery flashes of fish. But none of it mattered. None of it existed. The only thing she cared about was the hum of Brick’s body mere inches from her own. The scent of him burrowing its way into her brain.
“Yes.”
It was a broken rasp.
And it set them both free.
She didn’t give him a chance to rethink, to change his mind or regroup. To rebuild the walls she’d managed to knock down.
Remi slid her palm over his belt buckle and lower. When she cupped his erection in her palm, he shuddered against her like a man destroyed. Again, he dropped his forehead to hers. His hands fisted on the wall on either side of her head.
She felt strong, powerful. And when she pressed her palm against his rigid shaft, when he trembled against her, she felt like a goddamn goddess.
“Fuck,” he groaned, thrusting into her hand.
One tight fist struck the wall in slow motion.
It wasn’t enough. She needed to feel him in her hand. Needed to grip him, hard.
But when she reached for his belt, he stopped her. “No.”
“Huh?”
“Remi, baby. If you take my dick out, I’m going to fuck you in a dirty alley.”
A fantasy. Not being seen as some fragile little thing in need of coddling. To be taken. To be needed. To push him so far he could no longer take care.
“I see no problem with that,” she said. Her breath was coming in little, short heaves.
“I do. Breathe,” he reminded her.
“You breathe.”
“We’re not doing this here,” he said firmly.
“Then where?”
“Not here.”
“But somewhere? Soon?”
He dipped his head until his mouth hovered just above hers. “Yes.”
She was dizzy with it. One word, and he’d made her feel like she was exploding into a thousand pieces. “Will you kiss me?”
His lips parted, and she breathed in his exhale, wanting every piece of him she could have.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“Promise me?”
“I promise.”
She woke in a mood brighter than the morning sun. An hour before she usually dragged herself out of bed, Remi bopped into the kitchen.
“Ooh! Bear claws,” she said, pouncing on the box of baked goods. “What’s the occasion?”
It was only after her first bite of sugary goodness that she started to read the room. Her parents looked…sad.
“What? What’s going on?”
“Brick left,” her father said.
“Left what?” The house? He’d been here? Had he asked her parents for permission to date her? The old-fashioned notion was both adorable and appalling.
“The island,” her mother announced. “He got a job at one of the horse farms on the mainland.”
The pastry turned to dust in her mouth.