PRIDE: A Bad Boy and Amish Girl Romance (The Brody Bunch#1) (34 page)

Will maneuvered through LeBeau, the streets buzzing with Friday night life, until he hit the highway and lay on the throttle. The wind in his face felt freeing, relaxing. He chased the sunlight around the curvy mountain pass until he hit the first exit for Howlett, and then pulled his bike off the highway and into town. He could make this trip to his grandmother’s bakery with his eyes closed, he’d been doing it for so long. It had been almost seven years since his grandfather died, and since then, he had helped his grandmother open her bakery in Howlett to keep her happy and healthy without her husband around. And every Friday night, he made the trip from LeBeau to sit at her table and eat her delicious homemade food, and talk to her about books and old films while she played a Sarah Vaughan or Robert Johnson album on the record player.

Will’s mother had been a troubled woman, he was told. Smart, but her mind weighed on her happiness. She was too lost to be a mother. His grandmother’s voice echoed in his mind:
One foot in this world, one foot in the other.
She left Will with her parents when he was an infant and never came back. They raised him as their own, and Will had never wanted for anything. Sophia was as much his mother as anyone would ever be, and he looked forward to their dinners all week.

As Will waited at a stoplight on Main and Temple, he was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of sirens nearby. He turned around on his bike to spot where they were coming from, ready to get out of the way if he had to. A fire engine and two police cruisers came roaring up Main, swerving around the line of cars and into the lanes of oncoming traffic, stopping only long enough to clear the intersection before they rushed on. Will followed as the light turned and traffic coasted on down the street. When he turned onto Rowan Avenue and up the slight hilly incline toward Delphi Lane, he could still see the flashing lights of the first responders up ahead, and tried to hang back so as not to catch up with them.

His heart missed a beat when they didn’t keep going up the hill, but made a fast right onto Delphi. Will twisted his throttle and followed faster, watching as they passed a salvage yard, a few bars and store fronts, houses just lighting up for the night. He looked up in the dying light of the day and saw a huge pillar of black smoke soaring into the sky. Every mile brought it closer and closer.

No. No. It’s not her.

Will lay on the throttle, mere car-lengths behind the police cruiser now. They passed the John Deere dealer. Miss Locusta’s music school. The historic Armstrong Manor, left over from the 18
^th
century.

It’s not her. It’s not.

The firetruck led the cruisers and Will around the last wide bend his muscle memory knew so well. Brake lights lit up as the first responders came to a halt, joining a cadre of emergency vehicles already on the scene. Blue and red lights danced in the air, but they were nothing compared to the hellish inferno blazing against the backdrop of the mountains and the coming night. The entirety of the two-story building where Sophia both worked and lived was consumed by the raging fire.

Will roared his bike around the EMS buses and fire engines without pause. Men rushed in all directions, shouting orders over the bellow of the four-alarm blaze. He could only stare at the fire like a dumbstruck moth as he brought the bike to a sudden stop and stepped off, letting it drop carelessly to the gravel as he stumbled away.

“No…
No!”
The sound of Will’s scream carried, loud and long in its despair, as he fell hard to his knees in the gravel.

Will screamed at the fire for what seemed like an entire lifetime. He was still screaming when he felt alien hands pulling at his chest and arms, trying to drag him away while he clawed instead toward the fire, lost in delirium. He remembered feeling the intense, unbearable heat on his face and chest before something sharp and small stabbed into the muscle in his thigh, and the world went black around him.

T
he second bonus
book is
Outrageous Proposal
. It is a stand-alone British bad boy romance with an HEA and no cliffhanger!

“
U
gh
… Bloody Christ.”

The words dropped out of Harrison’s mouth before he was aware of anything else except the pain. A cloudy hangover headache tumbled around his skull, pulsing, making his brain feel three times too big and about ten degrees too hot. He groaned and rolled over. The soothing cool of satin sheets beneath his bare, hot skin was a welcome sensation.

He kept his eyes clenched shut and tried to trick himself back to sleep, but it was no use; once he was awake, it was over, especially after he had drank as hard as he had the night before. Harrison sighed and opened his eyes. On the ceiling, reflections from the ocean water outside danced lightly, dim ribbons that would get brighter with the morning sun.

He heard a gentle moan next to him and turned to see his bed companion, still hard asleep against the white smooth pillow. She was gorgeous, thin, her skin a flawless golden tan. As shiny as her hair was, she probably never did it herself, she was too rich and dainty for that. As he watched the gentle rise and fall of her bare back and bony shoulders, Harrison thought with a half-smile:
What was she called again? Tiffany? Theresa? Ah, well.
She had been fun enough the night before, eager and willing to suck his cock and spend the whole night fucking and drinking.

Not that it was hard for him to find those qualities, of course. That was the whole reason he even stayed on this island.

A tide of pain rushed through his head and Harrison groaned again, finally in too much pain to ignore it. He stumbled naked out of bed and into the penthouse suite bathroom. The woman’s toiletries and extensive make-up supplies were scattered like chaotic stars across the black marble countertop, and among it all Harrison found a white bottle of ibuprofen. He quickly downed as many as he safely could, then closed the bathroom door to trap in the steam for the piping hot shower he was about to take.

He hadn’t been under the steaming stream a few minutes before he saw a flesh-colored silhouette moving behind the frosted glass of the shower doors. One popped open, and the sleepy head of what’s-her-name popped in. Her eyes were still tired and droopy, ringed black from the makeup she hadn’t bothered to take off the night before. There was a lazy, lustful smile on her full lips as she looked Harrison’s naked body up and down.

His cock wasted no time springing to life. “Morning, love. See something you like?” He stroked himself twice as he smiled meaningfully at her.

The young woman licked her lips, needing no more invitation than that. “Mmm, something I like a lot.”

“The water’s just right,” said Harrison, reaching out a wet hand to brush along her breast and erect nipple.

The headache very quickly became a secondary priority. Besides, didn’t orgasms help them? He was sure he had read that somewhere, and used it on a woman once or twice before as well. That at least made him a charitable sod, if a sod regardless.

The woman slipped into the shower with him, pressing her naked flesh up against Harrison’s. Her skin was still warm from the bedsheets, and Harrison slipped his hands all along it as she breathed heavily against his neck. He attacked her mouth with a ravenous kiss just as his hands reached up to squeeze both of her big, beautiful breasts. Her responding touch felt like magic as they skimmed over the lines of his muscular chest and arms. His cock, rubbing up against her wet, tight belly, was so hard it hurt.

But she knew exactly what he wanted. She pulled away from his mouth and kissed her way down his neck, chest, and abs, slowly dropping to her knees on the shower floor. Without any ceremony, she wrapped her hot lips around the pulsing head of his nine-inch cock and swallowed half of it down her throat. Harrison exhaled audibly and tangled both his hands in her hair.

“Fuck yes, baby,” he rasped. She hummed around his shaft in response.

When Harrison looked down, he saw the delicious view of her beautiful mouth stuffed with his cock, as well as her own delicate hand flitting between her legs, getting herself off at the same time. It was almost too much. She was far, far dirtier than he remembered from the night before, but he wasn’t about to complain. Instead, he figured he would find out just how dirty she was.

Tightening the grasp he had on her hair, Harrison began to fuck her face, holding her head tightly in his hands as he pushed his hips towards her. She only seemed to get more turned on by this, whimpering against the skin of his cock, sucking harder against it with every back-stroke.

He wasn’t going to last long at this rate. She was just too damn good at what she was doing.

“I never want to take my cock out of your throat,” he told her in a breathy groan.

She sounded like she was getting close to her own orgasm, and his dirty talk only seemed to make it worse. One hand on her clit, the other wrapped around his legs and ass to hold herself steady, she took him as deep as she could before starting to gag. Only then did she pull back slightly, her saliva lubricating everything as it spilled over the head of his cock and around the edge of her lips.

That was it. Her talented mouth pushed him to the brink, and he came with a hard growl. Yanking his rigid cock out of her mouth at the last second, he watched in orgasmic bliss as it spurted all over her face and tits. The woman’s orgasm followed his immediately, manicured nails gripping painfully into his leg as she shuddered. Harrison put his cock head back into her moaning mouth just a bit as she did, and smiled when she greedily sucked at it, waves of ecstasy still shaking her beautiful body.

“You’re something else, you know that?” he said to her. “Better clean yourself up.”

She sighed with a contented smile, and took his offered hand to stand up in the shower stream and rinse his cum off of her skin. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply, pressing her body into his. “How about we don’t leave the room today?” she said in a throaty voice. “I can make you cum as many times as you can get there.”

Harrison did his best not to sigh and roll his eyes. They always wanted him to stay, no matter how many times he told them the night before that he wouldn’t. He really
did
try to be the least-douchiest version of himself possible, up front and honest about his expectations. But even at this resort, a place set aside for uninhibited and unattached hedonism, he still found the same trappings of the regular world: people who didn’t want to listen when they didn’t like what they heard.

“Afraid that’s not going to work for me, love,” he said. “I’ve told you, today isn’t my day off.”

She gave him an exaggerated, pouty frown that some bloke at some point had found attractive, he was sure, but one that did nothing to change his own feelings about her. The little girl act got old quickly. He didn’t have time for it. “Are you sure you can’t stay?” She nuzzled her face into the side of his.

“I’m sure,” he said with a gentle smile. “Maybe I’ll catch up with you later tonight.” He was lying, but he was good at it, so she only grinned happily and kissed him in response.

He made quick work of the shower after that, getting the smell of sweat and her pussy off his skin. After he stepped out, he carefully picked through the maelstrom of fabric and bedding that was the penthouse suite to find the clothing he had come in with the night before: board shorts, undershirt, button-up, boxer-briefs, sandals.

Through the haze of his memory, he did recall that the night had been wild, but apparently it had been wilder than he remembered, judging by the state of the room. He tried to recall exactly what bar he had met the woman in, and whether it had been he or she who decided they should start hitting the Sambuca. There seemed to be too many bras floating around the room, and in different sizes. Harrison hoped he remembered what
that
was all about later, because there certainly wasn’t another set of un-bound tits in the room. At least one partner had snuck off before the morning.

She stood in the bathroom doorway in a silk kimono, the robe half-open to tease her luscious body, watching him get dressed. “Maybe dinner?” she tried, as he pulled the second of his sandals on.

Harrison looked over and gave her a half-smile. “We’ll see about that. I’ve got quite a bit on my plate today with work, but thank you again for the smashing evening.” He stood and gave her a peck on the cheek, laying one hand gently on her hip. Before she could turn it into a real embrace, he pulled away and left the penthouse. It wasn’t until the door closed behind him that he finally let out the sigh he’d been holding back.

She was probably going to be trouble, whatever her name was. He should have known better than to drink Sambuca. He always did stupid shit whenever he drank Sambuca. For starters, his finely-tuned ability to detect crazy pussy flew right out the window, and he wound up in the suite of women who would crush his whole vibe for however many days they were supposed to be at the resort.

He decided he would bribe the rest of the staff to make sure he never went for the Sambuca again, no matter what. It would be worth the small fortune it would cost him.

Truthfully, though, he was sure some of them would probably do it simply for the pleasure of denying him something and potentially watching him beg for it. All without the fear of later reprisal for holding it back.

Harrison made his way down the hotel hallway towards the north bank of lifts. It was early enough that most of the guests were still sleeping off their own wild nights and creeping hangovers. In fact, this time of day was probably the quietest the resort ever got. All he could hear was the gentle roar of the ocean tide coming from the open windows at the end of the hallway, and the soft voiceless Muzak playing from hidden speakers overhead. The curtains fluttered in the sea breeze, and suddenly all he could think about was grabbing coffee and getting out in to the fresh ocean air, a certain cure for what was left of his headache.

The lift chimed and he stepped inside the empty car to head down to the first floor lobby. Leaning against the gold bannister, he pulled his phone from his pocket. The battery was nearly dead, but he pulled up his emails anyway, to make sure there were no second-tier emergency alerts from maintenance. After a few spam messages, and more than a few messages from women, he spotted one that made his heart stop.

F
rom
: George Moore

Re: the Future

Harrison,

Your mother and I are very pleased to hear your news, though I do wish this had been done over a more personal mode of communication. I’ve decided to put off the acquisition meetings and stop by the resort instead to have a sit down about your new plans. We will see you in a few days.

H
arrison blinked
, and read the email again. He waited patiently for something to wake him up from his nightmare, but nothing did.

“Um, terribly sorry, can you repeat that?” he said to his phone, as if it would reply. What was his father talking about? What plans, what news? His father hadn’t visited Bali in five years, and that was exactly the way Harrison liked it.

Panicking he pulled up the “sent” emails from his folder. Waiting there at the top of the feed was the original email his father had been replying to, titled “the Future”. A black dread filled Harrison’s gut as he opened it up and slowly recognized his own stupid Sambuca-poisoned words:

F
ather
, I’ve decided you were right, and I want to run the family business in the proper manner you desire. Tell mother I have found my future wife, and she has shown me the kind of future I want. After the wedding, you and I can sit down and talk about the future of the resort.

Harrison