Wild Aces (20 page)

I shook my head. “He was off duty, so he wasn’t with his partner. I was at work.”

I’d spoken to his partner the day after the accident. He had no idea why Cody had been in that neighborhood or where he was going, and I believed him then. I still did.

“So, there’s no way to find out if he knew about me?” He ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back. “Shit.”

“I’m going to see Cody’s parents next weekend and find out what they know, and when my hacker friend gets back to me, he should have something for us. If it exists online, I promise you, he’ll find it.”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “If he hadn’t died, I would have met you.” He finally looked up and held my eyes. “And you would have been my brother’s girl.”

Trapper

Brea clasped her fingers together and twisted them, like she was trying to release some tension. I could have used some of that myself, only I would have lifted her off the couch, wrapped her legs around my waist, and plunged my dick so hard inside her that we’d forget about everything but us.

But I couldn’t forget that she had been with my brother. Even though I hadn’t known him, I knew how wrong these thoughts were. I didn’t fuck my friends’ girls. I didn’t fuck married women. And I didn’t fuck anyone who mattered to the people in my inner circle. Those were the rules I had about sex. Cody’s position in that circle was complicated. My feelings for him were unclear, and that made everything else unclear, too. No matter how badly I wanted to be with her, I wasn’t sure it could ever happen now.

“Why did you come here, Brea? To show me a piece of paper that linked me to my brother before I knew he existed?”

She didn’t move. I knew she was trying to get control of her feelings. It showed all over her face—the lust, the need, the want…the fear. I felt the same. Maybe deeper.

“No. It wasn’t that,” she said. “I wanted to see you.”

“Why?” I stayed on my side of the couch. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep my hands off her if there was less space between us. “Did you want to see me, or did you want to see Cody?” It was a bold question but a necessary one.

Even though our faces looked alike, she had to keep us separate.

“You.” She didn’t hesitate.

“Now, you’ve seen me. And I’ve seen you.” Reading her body made it even harder to hold back. “What are we going to do about this?”

She shook her head, but I saw the answer in her eyes.

“I know what I should do, but it’s not what I want to do. This is wrong.” She sighed and turned her gaze away from me. When she looked back, I could see she’d changed her mind. “I don’t think I care that it’s wrong. I know if I don’t give in to my feelings, I’ll be making a huge mistake. I don’t know if it will work, Trapper, or what it would look like. What
we
would look like. I only know how I feel.”

“And that is?”

“Come here.” She turned toward me, tucking one leg against the back of the couch, the other spread across the bottom cushion with her heel on the floor. “Let me show you…”

She had used my own line on me. It was fucking perfect.

The decision was made. I could go back and forth, fighting with myself over what was right and wrong, but there were no rules when it came to Brea. I couldn’t change who she was and who she’d been with. I didn’t want to. I wanted her just as she was.

I pushed myself closer and kept my hands in my lap. She reached up and touched my face. It wasn’t the same as when she’d touched me in the alley, trying to learn my features. She was touching me to feel the differences between Cody and me, the differences she saw when she closed her eyes.

“This is one of the strangest yet most intense feelings I’ve ever had,” she said.

“I’m sure it is.”

“You even feel different than him.” Her thumb skimmed my mouth. “And you smell different.”

My fingers ached to be on her skin, to show her the differences in our touch. But I didn’t want to push her. She had to take this slow to know she was doing the right thing. There was something I could show her.

I pointed at the left side of my chest. “Put your hand right here.” I waited for her fingers to fall flat. “Do you feel that?”

She stared at her hand, eventually meeting my eyes again. “Yes.”

“Do you know what that is?”

She broke eye contact again. “Tell me.”

“It’s how I feel when I’m around you. My heart pounds out of my goddamn chest. I have to use every bit of strength I have to keep my hands off you. I want to touch you. I want to feel you. I want to be inside you.” I paused while I let her think about that. “How do you feel about me, Brea?”

“I have a hard time breathing.”

“Why?”

“That feeling I get when I’m around you, it wraps around my lungs and presses against my heart and tingles in my chest. It happens every time I take a breath.”

Her eyes turned glossy, the rawness of her words starting to come through. She reached out with her other hand, but I caught it in the air before she could touch me with it.

“Do you want me?” I asked her.

“Yes…”

I squeezed tighter. “Really think about my question, Brea. I see the answer inside you, but I need to know it’s really what you want. Because I’m warning you right now, if you touch me again, I’m going to fuck you.”

She flushed. “Before I’d even seen your face, I’d started developing feelings for you. No one has ever made me forget where I am or what I’m supposed to be doing. But that’s what you did at the party. It didn’t feel like your mouth was kissing mine; it felt like you were showing me a piece of yourself. I want more of that. At first, I wasn’t sure I could be with you without thinking of him.”

“And now?”

She chewed the corner of her lip. “I know I can.”

She needed a second warning.

“You haven’t seen all of me, Brea. It gets much darker than this.”

“I like dark. And I like cold.”

“Is that what I am to you? Cold?”

She moved a little closer and lifted my shirt, so she could grip my belt buckle. “You’re ice.” She moved higher until she was touching my stomach. “You’re a shadowy frosty night. You’re freezing rain.” She continued up until she touched the spot on my chest where her fingers had rested before. “You’re nothing like him. Not even a little…not even your eyes.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

She turned her hand around and fisted the inside of my shirt, pulling me toward her, until our lips were almost touching. “Trapper…I want you. YOU. I want…you.”

There was too much space between us. I gripped her hips and pulled her onto my lap until she was straddling me. Then I rested against the back cushions of the couch as she cupped my cheeks in her hands.

“Show me how much,” I said.

Brea

I held his face, the bristles of his scruff rubbing against my skin. His deep charcoal eyes penetrated me, his lips urging me forward. The last time they had touched mine was in the alley. I hungered for them now more than I had then.

He didn’t move closer. He wasn’t touching me. He was allowing me to take things at a pace I was comfortable with, leaving it all on me. I respected him for that. We each had our own struggles when it came to this decision. He was looking at his brother’s ex-girlfriend, and I was practically looking at my ex-boyfriend.

It was unbelievable how all this had worked out.

And now that I had moved so close to him and he was tempting me with those delicious lips, I couldn’t wait a second more. I closed my eyes and the distance between us, pressing my mouth gently against his. He surrounded my lips, slowly, our tastes mixing.

“No mask,” he said.

I opened my eyes and took my hands off his face, so I could wrap my arms around his neck. “No. No mask.”

He leaned in and kissed my neck, staring at me the whole time while I watched him in return. He then grazed my chin, moved across my cheek, and then went down to the middle of my chest. With each kiss, his eyes dilated a bit more. His mouth turned hungrier. He was testing me, and I was going to call him out on it.

“You said, if I touched you again, you’d fuck me.”

His hands clenched my waist. The power in his fingers made my clit tingle. “I did…and I intend to. But I’m giving you one last chance to make sure this is what you want.”

I looked at the scar above his eyebrow, the one under his chin, and the long hair gelled back over the top of his head. I inhaled his citrus-and-sandalwood cologne. I felt the icy glare of his eyes.

“It’s what I want, Trapper.”

He leaned into my neck, his lips pressing to the side of my throat. “The way you say my name is so fucking sexy.”

“Trapper…” I moaned, finding myself suddenly in the air, wrapped so effortlessly around his waist.

His tongue slid into my mouth as he walked, and he lifted my top over my head. Once the sweater dropped to the floor, he pulled me closer to his chest. I gave him my tongue. At some point, we stopped moving, and I felt something hard under my ass. When I opened my eyes again, I was on the island in his kitchen, surrounded by his arms. He deepened our kiss before he pulled away.

“Mmm…” he breathed, pushing his forehead against mine.

The stone underneath me was freezing, but it did nothing to cool me down. I reached for his collar and held him close. “Do you want to hear something else that’s sexy?”

He moaned against my mouth. “Always.”

I released him and leaned back, so he could get a really good look at my red lace bra. His tongue licked over his bottom lip as his gaze dropped down.

Then I grabbed his shirt again and whispered into his ear, “I want you inside me, Trapper, and I don’t think I can wait a second more.”

“Fuck.”

He unclasped my bra with one hand. As quickly as he pulled it off me, his mouth was on my nipple, sucking and teasing the hardened tip. That was when I finally felt his warmth. His tongue was like fire, spreading heat through my breasts, making the wetness start to drip from my pussy.

“So soft,” he said. “And you taste so good.”

With his tongue licking up my neck, I unbuttoned his shirt. His right shoulder was completely covered in ink—dark lines and shadowy filler, thick shapes I wasn’t able to make out in the dim light.

“Demanding my cock…I like that.” His hands were on my hips, stilling them.

I hadn’t realized they’d been grinding against the stone, silently begging for his dick to fill me.

“I just want you,” I told him.

“You’re going to get me. Right now.”

A breeze of his cologne rushed past my face as he carried me through another room and up a staircase. His hands were all over me; his mouth was on mine. I couldn’t get enough of him, couldn’t touch enough of his skin, couldn’t get as close to him as I wanted. When he placed me on his bed, I leaned back and pressed my boots over the end of the mattress. He stood at the foot, my skin heating under his stare.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“No. Everything is just right.”

“You’ve already seen my body. I sent you pictures of it.”

“Those pictures”—he laughed—“were sexy, and they made me want to get on a plane and come home to you. But those pictures were nothing like what I’m looking at right now.”

I let him admire me for a moment more before I reached for his heavy belt buckle and pulled at his fly. “It’s my turn.”

He slid out of his boots and let his jeans and boxer briefs drop to the floor. The leather bracelets and long silver chain were the only things left. Corded thick muscles ran across his shoulders and his chest. The tattoos spread down his right arm and stopped at his wrist. A defined set of abs was etched into his stomach, meeting his waist at the V.

The V…he had a fucking V.

My eyes dropped a little further, and I felt myself sigh into the air. So hard, so thick…so long. Trapper and Cody didn’t have twin cocks at all. Trapper had him beat. Big time.

“Brea?”

I slowly looked up. “Yeah?”

“Where did you go?”

“I got a little lost in your body…and then I completely vanished when I saw your dick.”

He laughed again—this time, a little deeper. And then he reached for my boots, yanking them off, and my jeans next until I was spread over the bottom of his bed in just my red lace panties.