Feel the Rush: A Hard Feelings Novel (InterMix) (20 page)

“She’s mine, just thought I should let you know,” he barked, all the while a satisfied tilt to his head and a cheese-eatin’ grin on his face worked its way into his expression.

Adam’s drunken lids were starting to drop over his eyes. He threw his hands in the air at the same time as he tried to balance a Styrofoam noodle that he had just shoved in between his legs.

“I’m yours, huh?” he heard Meagan say behind him, the sweet, amused hum in her voice rattling him.

He turned around and pulled his upper body onto the tube like Adam had, and Meagan laid back down against the black nylon. Water dripped from his chin onto her tanned shoulder, his face hovering over hers. “I thought we had already established that, sugar.”

“We had, but it was nice to see you go all knight-in-shining-armor.”

“Yeah? You want me to do it again?”

She leaned up on her elbows, her damp hair matting together and tumbling down her back. “Nah, not this time. But you can say it again.”

She wanted him to say it again, and he loved that. Fuck, it wasn’t like him to want to shout it from the rooftops, but he was about ready to climb those damn rocks again and scream it out for the whole party cove to hear. She was his and his alone.

He deliberately lifted the corners of his mouth, slowly, just the way he knew would get a little rise out of her, and then he laid it on thick, accent and all. “You’re mine.”

She leaned over, wrapped her hand around his neck, and kissed him. He loved the way she kissed him when she was a little buzzed. She was eager, and nothing else was there—not her confidence that usually knocked him on his ass, not her shyness that made him want to pull her in his arms and do nothing but kiss her all night, and not her intensity that threatened his self-control. No, she was just eager and sexy—wanting nothing but him.

The kiss continued, and he almost forgot that they were surrounded by a shit-ton of his drunken friends, none of whom were used to seeing him like that with a woman, but they made their presence known when the whoops and hollers and perverted catcalls started streaming their way.

But Reed didn’t give a shit, not when Meagan was kissing him like that. He just wished like hell they were alone.

Chapter Eighteen

“You tell that little friend of yours I missed her today,” Luke said through the window as Meagan and Reed stepped up onto the sidewalk.

“I will.”

Reed grabbed onto her hand and led her up the walk that led to their apartment building. She was completely exhausted. The beer, the sun, the wakeboarding—she was sure she was gonna be all kinds of hurting tomorrow. Her arms already felt the familiar pull as her muscles tightened and began to ache. Her good beer buzz was long gone and it left a nice, sleepy residue in her veins. She leaned her head down on Reed’s shoulder and he instantly wrapped his arm around her.

Meagan continued to walk past Reed’s apartment, but he gave her a gentle tug as he halted his steps. “Sleep in my bed tonight.”

It wasn’t a question and he didn’t wait for her to respond, he just scooped her up in his arms and kissed her. She would have said yes anyway, but he was quite convincing.

Somehow he managed to unlock the door with her still cradled against his chest. He headed straight for the bathroom.

He set her down in front of the sink. “Arms up,” he ordered, and she gladly obeyed.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day.” he murmured as he lifted her tank top over her head.

She cocked her eyebrow. “About what?”

Yes, she wanted him to spell it out for her. She had never been a big bedroom talker. She didn’t particularly go for the vocal man between the sheets—or at least none of the men she had been with in the past liked to give a play-by-play. But there was something about hearing Reed tell her—something about hearing word for word every delicious thing he planned to do to her body, every soft touch, every teasing kiss—that made her heart beat fast.

His accent wasn’t bad either.

She liked knowing that he thought about it too. She loved the fact that he knew exactly what he wanted to do to her, exactly what little reaction he wanted to get from her, and she loved it when he told her his plans. It was hot.

His eyes seemed to take on more gold tonight, like they had melted, and he locked those seductive eyes on hers. A knowing glance filled them and she blushed. “I’ve been wanting to reach around your neck and pull these damn strings loose.”

And he did.

His fingers skimmed across her stomach and wrapped around to her back, then they toyed with the strings that dangled down her spine. “I’ve wanted to untie this from your body so I could see you. . . .”

And he did.

Her breath hitched as his eyes drank in the sight of her bare breasts, but he didn’t touch her. His hands hung loose at his sides and he just looked at her. His stare was torture—in the best possible way. It was causing an anticipation to pound against her chest, an anxious pressure smothering her as she waited and waited, wondering when he was going to reach out and relieve her from the torture his eyes were giving her. But he didn’t.

She moved her fingers to the buttons of her jean shorts and clumsily made work of undoing them. She unzipped and dropped them, along with her bikini bottoms, to the cold tile floor.

His mouth parted, and his eyes journeyed over her. Her body heated up and her nerve endings seemed to stir and tingle as her body craved his touch. She took a step toward him and he smiled. Damn him. He was playing her.

“Reed,” she admonished.

His lips pulled up tighter. “Yeah, baby?”

“I believe I’ve mentioned to you before that it’s more fun to touch than to look.”

“At this very moment, I might have to argue against that.” His eyes left her body and met hers. They were glassed over with need. “You’re beautiful.”

This time she smiled.

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to touch you now,” he warned, and her pulse spiked.

His large hands reached out and grabbed onto her hips, pulling her flush against him. The soft cotton of his cutoff T-shirt brushed across her breasts and her nipples hardened from the sensation.

His lips tasted the thin skin at the dip in her throat, licking a path over her collarbone and up the side of her neck, dotting featherlight kisses along the way. His mouth lingered next to her ear, his warm breath pricking her sensitive skin. “Let’s take that shower now.”

She nodded.

Reed pulled his shirt over his head and stepped out of his board shorts as Meagan turned on the water. She felt his body close in behind her. She melted against his chest and he wrapped his strong arms around her stomach, pinning her arms to her side. She loved the feel of him surrounding her like that, like a protective blanket.

He stepped forward, moving her along with him until they were both standing under the spray of the water.

He washed her. Carefully lathering her skin, running his soapy hands over her arms, down her stomach, between her legs—then he turned her around, the water rinsing the front of her body as he repeated his work on her back.

“Lean forward, sugar,” he whispered against her neck as he pressed his body in tight to her back.

She leaned forward, the spray of the water pattering against the small of her back as she braced her hands against the wall. Reed’s hands reached around and massaged her between her legs.

“Baby,” he said, then the next thing she felt was his cock sliding between her legs from behind. He slid into her, smooth and easy, and she felt his heavy sigh expand against her back. Her body tightened around him, and she dropped her head, hanging it between her shoulders.

He stayed slow, circling his hips, then slowly pulling out and slowly sliding back in. It was almost agony. A part of her wanted to tell him to move harder, faster, to alleviate the ache that was threatening to take her over. But a stronger part of her wanted to savor the feeling. She was powerless against him as he gripped her hips from behind, as he leaned his hard chest against her, and as he moved of his own accord inside her. It was sexy to be under his control. To be subject to his pleasure as he watched their bodies connect from behind. But what was sexier, what she loved even more, was that he was savoring it too.

***

Reed’s hands bit into her soft curves, then he snaked one down her stomach, holding her tight against him, giving her an anchor to hold her down. His other hand lifted to her breast, the full flesh spilling over his palm.

He pressed his lips to the back of her shoulder, using his teeth to brush over the water that was spattering over her skin. She moaned—so he did it again.

He was struggling—hard. Every little shudder, every soft moan or airy breath, sent a jolt straight to his hips, giving him the green light to pound into her—to fill her body so completely that she wouldn’t remember anything but the way his dick felt against her slick pussy, how the friction caused a tingling, pricking, almost numbing pleasure to undulate inside her. He wanted it. He wanted to lift her body to the edge, then make her free-fall all the way back down.

But not tonight.

Tonight he focused on the lines of her back, the dip of her curves. He watched as her hair absorbed the water, the sodden strands sticking to her neck. He memorized her ticks—what caused her to tighten around him, what made her sigh, and what made her writhe against him. He memorized them, then utilized them—making her tighten and sigh and writhe again and again.

“Reed,” she whimpered.

“Not yet, baby.”

Her back arched and her ass pressed into him. “I can’t—”

“You can.”

His hands splayed across her stomach and he pulled her back until she was standing straight, her back molding to him. He withdrew from her, then turned her around and pinned her to the wall.

Her wet, naked body made a sweet little smacking noise as it collided against the warm shower tile—and she gasped, an openmouthed smile pulling a sharp breath into her lungs, and goddamn, it was sexy.

His weight crushed against her as he lifted her legs around him. Then he was back inside her. He held her in his arms as she arched against the wall and tilted her head up to the ceiling. Fuck, her sweet little responses to him were almost too damn much.

He slowed again, making sure to ride it out—to claim her pleasure as his own. He wanted her body worn and strung out—raw from delectation.

Her nails dug into his shoulders, so hard he was sure she pierced his skin. She pushed against him, her shoulder blades the only part of her body in contact with the wall behind her as she forced her body to take all of him.

She was moaning. Every thrust received its own appreciative little noise, and each one got louder and louder. Reed’s restraint was paper thin, he was barely hanging on, but every delicious cry that seeped into the steam of the shower clung to his body like dew—forcing him to keep up the slow, torturous rhythm.

“Reed.” It was a plea. She needed to let go.

His mouth latched on to the side of her neck, her erratic pulse vibrating against his lips as he kissed the wet skin below her ear. Then he slowly pulled out of her tender pussy, the very tip of his cock lingering inside—then in one quick, hard thrust, he filled her completely.

Her head rolled against the wall as every muscle in her body tightened around him and she filled the room with the sound of her melodic voice crying out his name.

***

The smell of Reed’s T-shirt was the most comforting scent her lungs has ever breathed in. It was clean and crisp and nothing but Reed.

She slipped the worn, gray cotton over her naked body, the spicy aroma encasing her. “I don’t think a bed has ever looked this good.” She could hear the exhaustion in her own voice as she crawled into the bed next to Reed.

“My bed
hasn’t
ever looked this good, not until you were laying in it.” He folded the covers down and opened up his arms. Meagan didn’t waste a moment before she was covered—by the blankets and by Reed.

“That was pretty smooth there, sweet talker.”

He lowered his chin to his chest, his brows tightening, causing little creases to form between his eyes. “I’m not sweet-talking.” He lifted her chin with his fingers so she was forced to meet his riveting stare. “I’m not. Seeing you curled up in my bed is a sight I never thought I would be so damn happy to see, sugar.”

His words honestly melted her. She snuggled into the crook of his arm and let him hold her tight. She was falling—hard. And it was scaring the shit out of her.

His hand stroked her hair and the repetitious touch was tingling her scalp, relaxing her body even more than it already was.

His lips brushed against her forehead. “Come somewhere with me next weekend?”

Her fingers raked over his bare chest, mimicking the movement of his fingers through her hair. “Where?”

“Panama City.”

Her fingers stalled and fell against his chest. “Florida?”

“My parents own a condo there, I thought you might like it.”

“Do you ever just stay home on the weekends and do absolutely nothing?”

“No.”

She sighed, although it sounded more like a laugh. “I would love to go.”

She would. She loved the Gulf and the beach. And the idea of having Reed all to herself for an entire weekend was more than appealing.

He stretched his arms behind her, his legs straightening toward the foot of the bed as he yawned his response. “Why do I feel a ‘but’ coming on?” After his chest exhaled his tired breath, he locked his arms back around her and pulled her in tight.

“No ‘but,’ just some terms.”

“What kind of terms?”

She laughed quickly at his worried tone. “I will go to Panama City with you
if
you promise to relax. No crazy sports, no terrifying stunts, no adrenaline-rush activities—unless they are in the bedroom”—she felt him smile against her cheek—“just a nice,, relaxed weekend filled with lazy days on the beach and cozy nights on the couch. Think you can do it?”

“For you? Absolutely.”

She laughed. “Yeah, we’ll see.

Chapter Nineteen

It was almost dark when Reed pulled his motorcycle in the garage of the beachfront condo. Four hours on his bike with Meagan wrapped around him was the best ride he’d ever taken. Meagan, on the other hand, didn’t feel completely the same.

He helped her climb off, her legs stiff as she straightened them. “My ass hurts and it’s never felt so good to close my legs in my whole life. Words I never thought I’d say.”

Reed pulled on her waist so she was closer to him. “Here.” Gripping her ass, he started rubbing deep circles with the heel of his palm.

“Oh god, that feels so good.”

He laughed and pulled away his hands, lifting them in the air in surrender. “All right, I can’t be doing that, sugar. I’ll end up fucking you right here on my bike.”

“As fun as that might be, this ass is not getting back on that bike the rest of the night.”

Reed pulled the keys out of the ignition, twirling them around his finger. “Here.” He held the keys out for Meagan to catch and she cupped her hands so he could toss them to her. “Go on in, I’ll bring our bags,” he said, climbing off the bike to unhook the duffel bags he strapped to the back.

“Okay.”

***

“Reed?” He heard her holler from the living room as he stepped into the condo. He dropped their bags in the hallway and followed her voice. She was standing in front of the mantel, and Reed’s heart sank into the pit of his stomach.

She turned around, her beautiful blue eyes shining with excitement. “Would you like to explain to me why I’m seeing double?” she teased, lifting a picture frame from the mantel and holding it out for him to see.

It was a picture of his family, taken on the beach a few years back. Gosh, Beck seemed so young as she stood between her brothers. Reed on one side and Mackly on the other. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

“That’s Mackly,” he said, walking farther into the living room. “My twin brother.”

Meagan’s smile split across her face. Her smiles always had a way of sparking this unseen ignition inside of him, roaring him to life—but this time, it just turned over.

“Oh my god. Two Reed Porters. If he is anything like you, I can only imagine the headache your poor mom had raising you.” Her words were sweet and they were right. They had given his momma hell.

“A twin brother! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. He’s not a topic that I tend to bring up much anymore.” Which was the truth. He didn’t talk about Mackly much. It was a topic that lingered like the white elephant in the room. Occasionally Beck would bring him up, but Reed would just cut the conversation short.

He’d known bringing Meagan here would open up doors and windows and fucking black holes that led to his past—to his family. He knew he would have to tell her, and a part of him wanted to tell her. She had quickly become the most important person in his life—a title that, up until now, only his brother had held, and up until now, his brother was the only person he would spill his guts to.

She frowned and her face flashed with a guilt that she couldn’t possibly understand and a guilt that she had no reason to feel.

“He’s dead.” The words seemed like acid coming out of his mouth. Although he’d said them many times before, although he’d finally absorbed the idea that his brother was gone, it still left a grainy coating in his throat.

Meagan placed the frame back on the mantel and paused, gauging his actions—more like his reaction. He kept his breathing even, and he held her eyes, not wanting to give her a reason to feel any worse than he knew she already was.

She didn’t walk toward him. She didn’t come to him to wrap her arms around him and tell him how sorry she was. She didn’t dote over the fact that he had lost someone close to him. He guessed she was a pro at this kind of thing by now. Growing up around soldiers, working in the ER at a military hospital, he supposed she learned a thing or two about comforting a loss.

He could see the pain on her face, pain for him, but she didn’t smother him or ask a single question—and he respected that about her.

He walked to the couch and sat down, throwing his head down into his hands. When he looked back up, Meagan was sitting on the arm of the couch just watching him.

“It was three years ago.”

“Reed—”

His named rolled from her lips in a desperation that forced him to meet her eyes. She pressed her lips together.

“You would have loved him. He was just as sexy and handsome as me.” He lifted his mouth into a forced smile and she scooted off the arm of the couch and took the spot next to him.

“Yeah, I would assume so considering you shared the same face,” she teased softly.

“Yeah, but he was a hell of a better man than me.”

“Reed—” She tried interrupting again.

“I’m good, baby.” He reached over and squeezed her bare knee, trying to reassure her.

“We were inseparable growing up, we basically did everything together. We played all the same sports in high school—he could kick my ass in football, but I hands down had his ass beat in wrestling—we had all the same friends, fuck, I think the only time we were apart growing up was when we were out with a chick, other than that, we were together.” He smiled as the memory flickered through his mind.

“We were in our first year of college when 9/11 happened. We were both chomping at the bit to join the army so we got into the ROTC program together. Fuck, we both even went to OBC at Leonard Wood.” He winked.

She smiled.

“He was supposed to meet me at the bar that night, ya know. If he had, I might not have brought you back to my hotel room because he would have been working his tricks on you the second he saw you.”

“Well, lucky for me then.” She nudged him with her shoulder and allowed herself to lean into him for a moment. The contact was soothing, even when he didn’t realize it.

“After that we were assigned to different companies, different posts, but we tried to get together as much as possible.

“We were deployed at the same time once, which was hell for our momma, but it was nice having him there in that sandpit with me. Even if we weren’t stationed at the same FOB, he was still there. It was like having a bit of home in hell. The army arranged for us to visit each other once—for our birthday.”

He shifted his eyes over to Meagan, who was still listening to him patiently. For maybe the second time since he had known this woman, she let the blinders down that shielded her eyes—and he saw her sympathy. He saw the sorrow that ringed her big blue irises, and in the middle of feeling his past rising above his head, threatening to drown him when he was finally reaching the surface, he also felt her. Her eyes absorbed him, held him, and calmed him—and he could breathe.

“We got through everything together. Women, college, deployments—between the two of us we had been through more shit than two people should be allowed to go through.

“Every year, no matter where we all were, the whole family would meet up for the Fourth of July.” He swallowed hard. “It was my first year stationed at Benning, Mac and I had just gotten home from our deployment in Afghanistan not even a month before, and it was my turn for everyone to come to me. So I rented the cabin.”

Her eyes widened.

“Mac had this new woman that he started dating shortly before he deployed. She was it for him. He had bought the ring, asked her parents, the whole nine yards. He was going to marry her.”

“What was her name?” she asked.

“Karrie. She was good for him.”

Meagan’s mouth lifted slightly, but she stayed still next to him, not fidgeting—just listening.

“Every year Mac and I would meet up and ride our bikes to wherever it was that we were staying for the Fourth and make a road trip out of it. But that year he brought Karrie. She had a son. A three-year-old little terror.” He laughed as he remembered that little guy taking over his family’s complete attention that weekend. That kid broke more stuff and peed on everything, but it was fun having a kid around. And Mac loved him.

“So, they drove her car instead. I still rode my bike, though. It was tradition, and I kinda have a thing for traditions.” He winked.

“It was a good weekend until my sorry ass got piss-ass drunk and fell down the back deck stairs that led down to the lake.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my god,” she muttered.

Yeah, they were steep and narrow and they were made from the stone, built into the cliff. It hurt like a motherfucker.

He smiled when he saw fear cross her face while he assumed she was picturing his clumsy-ass fall. “I broke my wrist and got a pretty impressive gash on my head.” His head dropped between his shoulders. “Needless to say, I couldn’t drive my bike home.”

Meagan sucked in a sharp breath as realization struck her, but he continued his story anyway. He wanted her to hear it.

“Karrie was driving me home, following behind Mac, who was driving my bike.” He paused for a moment as the memory flooded his mind. He had had a headache from the recent temper tantrum Karrie’s son had let loose. The little guy finally wore himself out and fell asleep and they had switched from listening to some cartoon on the DVD player to some girly song that was on the radio. His head was throbbing, but Karrie loved that song, and she was his brother’s girl—family trumped headache. He remembered laughing at her as she spilled her Diet Coke down the front of her shirt. He reached into the backseat, grabbing around on the floorboard for something for her to wipe up with. Her foot lightened on the accelerator as she dabbed at her shirt with a T-shirt. Reed took her moment of distraction to change the station, laughing as she flung the wet, wadded-up shirt in his face. It wasn’t but a heartbeat later that he looked up and saw a white SUV pull out onto the road. There was no time. Mac didn’t have time to stop. He didn’t know who or what divine intervention decided to play a part in creating distance between Karrie’s car and Mac, but he knew if Karrie wouldn’t have absentmindedly slowed down, she wouldn’t have had time to stop either.

The sound of Karrie’s scream mixed with the sound of the rubber skidding across the asphalt as she hit the brakes haunted him still, but the sound of his brother crashing at sixty miles per hour straight into the side of the SUV would stay with him for the rest of his life.

“Mackly collided with some ass that wasn’t paying the fuck attention and pulled out in front of him.” Pure hatred and anger dripped from his words. Forgiveness was something he was working on, but it wasn’t something he thought he would ever be able to give. His brother was gone.

“You saw it?” Her voice was quiet and shaky.

“I saw every second of it.”

Her eyes welled with the tears that Reed could no longer produce. “He died instantly.”

“Reed, I’m so sorry.” His head dropped between his sagging shoulders. “After all the shit we had gone through, after surviving IED attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan on more than one occasion and after being under enemy fire and watching our buddies die before our eyes, he came home and, three weeks later, was killed in a car crash.”

He shook his head, trying to rattle the memory that was flashing the image of his brother, broken and bloodied—dead—on the hot asphalt, from the forefront of his mind. He had spent a lot of nights seeing that image sweep through his dreams. But the image that burned into his memory, branding it with a guilt he didn’t think he could ever come away from was the image of Karrie as she fell to her knees in a shattered heap of heartbreak as she cried over his brother’s lifeless body. His brother’s life was gone—his future, his chance at a family with the woman who was clinging to his broken body, would never be. It should have been Reed. He should have been on that bike that day—that moment.

***

Meagan reached over and grabbed his hand, lacing her fingers through his. That was his corrosion. That was what ate away a layer of him—it’s what left the rough patch, the harshness that hung in his shoulders, that subtle difference that she could see. It was his brother, his twin, a piece of him that eroded away.

His eyes looked down at their entwined hands, and he twisted the ruby ring Meagan had gotten from her mother on her twenty-first birthday with his thumb. His spine bowed and his head hung heavy on his neck. When he lifted his eyes to hers, they were broken, lost, ringed with a guilt that broke her heart—and it was terrifying. He wasn’t putting up his in-control demeanor for her, he was letting her see the hurt that lingered behind it all, and she needed to make it go away, but she couldn’t. She knew there was absolutely nothing that would mend the break in his heart that the death of his brother created. Nothing ever would.

“My parents barely talk to me now,” he said out of the blue, breaking through the silence that had ticked away the countless minutes she just sat there next to him, holding his hand.

Meagan’s heart found its way into her throat, clogging her words as she spoke. “They don’t blame you?” Surely they didn’t. It wasn’t his fault.

“No, they don’t blame me. But it’s kind of hard to look into a face that reminds them of their dead son.” His voice was broken and the small wave of detriment that stung his words burned the back of her throat. “They should blame me, though. I should’ve been the one on that bike.”

She wanted to give him his space, she didn’t want to wrap her arms around him in the hopes of easing his hurt, because she knew it wouldn’t. But now, seeing the depth of his anguish etched in the pull of his brow, the set of his jaw, the catch in his breaths—she couldn’t help it. She linked her arms around his neck and sunk her body into him. He sighed deeply against her as his palms pressed her tightly to him and buried his face in the curve of her shoulder.

“Life is just too short, Meg. Too unpredictable,” he mumbled against her neck. “It can be gone in the blink of an eye.”

“That’s why you do it, isn’t it?”

He lifted his head. “Do what, baby?”

“Everything. Your rush.” Meagan pulled her feet up on the couch and faced him.

He grabbed her ankles and pulled her legs onto his lap, rubbing his hands up and down her smooth skin.