“Oh, God. It’s my brother,” she said, lunging for the phone. “Josh? I’m here.”
“Good!” Josh harrumphed. “It’s about time. Carrie told me you were a wreck. Not going to work? What the hell is that about?”
That was irritating. “I’m hardly a wreck,” she snapped. “Can’t I be depressed sometimes, too? Can’t I have a bad day now and then?”
Josh was silent for a moment. “No,” he said. “You can’t.”
Chills of guilt shuddered up her spine at her own thoughtless self-absorption. Josh had been only eight when their mom had given in to her despair and eaten that lethal handful of pain pills.
No wonder he couldn’t handle her being depressed.
That was one of the reasons she’d always tried so desperately hard to keep her spirits up, or at least the appearance of them. She wanted to give them at least that much security. An illusion they could count on.
And they still counted on it. For all their vaunted independence, for all their irritating juvenile attitudes, when she wavered, they freaked.
“What the hell is this I hear about you picking up a guy?” Josh’s voice was as huffy as a disapproving grandpa. “Some tattooed thug, Carrie said? Gross, Becca. I mean, I understand about you being pissed off at that prick Justin, but for God’s sake, you could get, like, a disease! You have to be more careful!”
Becca stifled her laughter with her hands, to hear her own desperate, bleating, sisterly lectures playing back to her out of her little brother’s mouth. “I don’t want to discuss that right now, OK?”
Josh was instantly suspicious. “Why not? And are you laughing? What’s so funny? You don’t sound depressed at all! What’s up?”
“I’m not laughing, you idiot. I just—”
“Is that guy with you? Right now?” His voice rose to a squeak.
“Damn it, Josh, I—”
“You were having sex with him! Right? That’s why you didn’t answer your phone. Holy shit, Becca. Are you, like, nuts?”
“Calm down,” she snapped. “Can’t I have a private life?”
“Put him on,” Josh said ominously.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I will do nothing of the kind.”
“Put him on!” Josh’s voice was obstinate. “I want to talk to him.”
Becca put her hand over the receiver, and gave Nick a pained look. “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I don’t know how this happened. It’s my little brother. He wants to talk to you.”
“How much does he know?” Nick asked.
“Nothing about the rest of it,” she whispered. “Just about you.”
Nick hesitated for a moment, and took the proffered phone as if it were a live bomb. “Yeah?”
The kid lit into him like a fighting pit bull. “Who the hell are you? And what do you think you’re doing with my sister?” His youthful voice cracked with the force of his emotions.
Nick coughed. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m Becca’s brother, Josh Cattrell. And if you mess with my sister, I’m going to kick your ass.”
“Oh-kay. I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “But just for the record, what exactly constitutes ‘messing with her?’”
“You know exactly what I mean,” the younger guy hissed. “So you’re this foul-mouthed, tattooed lowlife we’ve been hearing about?”
An involuntary grin wrapped around his face. He slanted a look at Becca and put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Foul-mouthed, tattooed lowlife?” he repeated softly.
“Oh, no,” Becca moaned, clapping her hands over her cheeks. “This isn’t happening. I did not say that!”
Nick shifted back onto his knees, still grinning like a fool, and realized, startled, that he was enjoying himself. It had been so long, he’d forgotten the sensation. “As you can see, your sister and I have this really great mutual respect thing happening,” he said, eyeing her.
“Are you seducing my sister?” the kid bellowed.
He wished. “None of your damn business,” he said mildly. “Butt out.”
“Fuck, no! No way am I butting out! If I don’t butt in, who will?”
Nick had nothing to say to that, having never had siblings, or any family at all who gave a fuck about him after Mom died. The concept of family butting into his business was foreign to him. Still, he liked the feisty kid, even if he was getting reamed out. Josh was protective of his sister. He put his heart into it. He got points for that.
“Bad enough what that slimy buttface of an ex-fiancé did to her,” Josh fumed on. “Now she’s picking up punks off the street? Jesus!”
Punk? Nick stomped on the laughter before it escaped. It wouldn’t endear him to the guy. “She didn’t exactly find me on the street.”
“I don’t care what gutter she scraped you out of. Like, what the fuck are your intentions?” the kid bellowed.
“Intentions?” he repeated, at a loss. Christ, he lived from second to second, just trying not to get killed. He never intended anything.
“Are you just going to dip your wick and then fuck off?”
He had the odd sensation of something or someone speaking through him. “No,” he said slowly. “That is definitely not my intention.”
“Uh, good.” Josh sounded nonplussed. “Because if it was, I’d, like, have to kick your ass.”
“Gotcha,” Nick soothed. “I get the ass-kicking part. Loud and clear.”
“Do not hurt her.” Josh’s voice wobbled with intensity. “She’s taken enough shit from worthless bastards. She deserves better.”
“Yeah, she does,” he said. “And, uh, I won’t.”
He felt like a lying prick. Christ, with his track record? He’d never gotten close to a woman without eventually hurting her.
Josh hung up. Nick let the receiver drop from his ear, dazed. Another surreal vignette. Fending off the furious brother while his dick waved wild and free outside his jeans, like a flag in the wind. Wow.
“Your brother’s very protective of you,” he observed.
Her hands were still clamped over her cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “He’s really excitable. I shouldn’t have given you the phone.”
“It’s OK,” Nick said. “I kind of liked him, actually.”
She dropped her hands into her lap, incredulous. “You what?”
“He gives a shit,” Nick said. “I like that quality in a person. My only problem is, I’m not sure whether I promised to marry you, or keep my hands off you. And if I get it wrong, he’ll kick my ass.”
She dissolved into giggles, tears squinching out of her eyes. “Don’t worry,” she said breathlessly. “I won’t hold you to either one.”
“Have you got any more family that I should be looking over my shoulder for?” he asked. “Dad with a shotgun? Mom with an Uzi?”
“Just a sister. Carrie’s nineteen. Josh is twenty,” she confessed. “Our parents died a long time ago. I raised the two of them myself.”
He blew out a long breath. “Wow. That’s heavy.”
“Yeah, it was, pretty much.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “Well. I guess that kind of killed the moment, huh?”
Shit, shit, shit. Mayday. Going down. “Depends,” he said, trying to maintain a deadpan expression in the face of his own lust. He grabbed her small hand, pulled it down and wrapped those soft, smooth fingers around his turgid cock. “Personally, I think the moment’s alive and well. In fact, this part of me never even noticed the interruption.”
She stared down at him, stroking and exploring with those light, feathery fingers till he thought he would scream. “I see,” she whispered.
“If I’m going to get my ass kicked, I might as well make it count, right?” He retrieved the condom from where it had fallen on the rug, and put it into her other hand. Crossing his fingers. Please. Please.
She shook with a burst of silent giggles, and finished ripping the condom open and pulling it out one-handed. It took her for-fuckingever to pry the thing out and fumble it over his dick. He was just about to end the ticklish torture, yank it out of her hands and get it on himself when she finally rolled the lubricated latex slowly up the length of his shaft, with one long, tight, fantastic squeezing stroke.
“It looks awfully snug,” she commented, sounding worried.
“It’s great,” he said, his voice strangled. “Please. Do that again.”
She made that soft little laughing sound, and obliged him, petting and pulling and milking his cock until he was gasping for air and clutching her, his arms shaking.
God, he loved that sound, that breathy happy gurgle. He wanted to hear more of it. It made him feel…he didn’t even have a word for it. He didn’t even have a place for the feeling, but it spurred him to grab her and kiss her again.
That awkward hand job was the most erotic sensation he’d ever felt. He’d got lucky, damn lucky. A soft, fragrant, laughing woman filling his arms, her soft lips opening, her shy tongue retreating before his, and then slowly responding. Becca was sweet beyond belief.
He cupped her head and deepened the kiss till he was practically drowning in her—and knocked those weird black glasses askew. Oops.
She straightened them, giggling helplessly. “I can’t believe I forgot I still had these on.”
“Leave them,” he suggested, starting on the buttons at her neck.
“But they’re hideous,” she protested.
He stopped her hand as she was about to pry them off. “It’s a look,” he explained. “It’s a classic porn motif. The formerly frigid sex bomb secretary, right after her sexual awakening, but before she thinks to ditch the specs and lose the tight bun. Add virginal lingerie and you have yourself a fantasy.”
“Oh, please. Spare me.” She yanked the glasses off and flung them onto the coffee table. “Men are such pigs.”
“Oh, absolutely,” he agreed, lifting the huge, tentlike flannel thing off her. Finally naked. As stunning as ever. No. More, even.
He held out the nightgown. “Get up,” he said hoarsely. “Let me put this on the couch, under you.”
She blinked at him, looking dazed and confused. “Huh?”
“For the wet spot.” He tugged her to her feet and spread the thing out deftly beneath her. He tossed her back down on top of it so that she bounced, her beautiful, pink-tipped tits jiggling seductively.
He gripped her hips and slid her ass back down to the edge of the couch. “You’re dripping pussy juice like a ripe peach,” he muttered. “I can’t get enough of it. Except that if I don’t fuck you now, I think I’m going to die.”
She smiled at him, biting her lip with that uncertain look, but she opened for him like a flower as he folded her legs high and wide, that wet pink pussy open to him. Offered to him.
It hit him like a blow to the chest, as he positioned himself, jeans half-down. He breached her tight opening and started pushing inside her. How sensual she was, how generous. The look in her eyes. She clutched his upper arms as he forged his way deep inside. When he started to thrust, she made husky, surprised sounds with each slow, deliberate stroke.
They found their rhythm together, him listening, her gripping his ass and wiggling, and settled into a deep, wonderful plunge-twist, swivel-glide that made her gasp with pleasure, lifting herself to him.
Oh, God. So good. He’d lived without anything so good for so long, he’d forgotten feelings like this existed, or else he’d put the memory aside, persuaded himself that they were a luxury. Something you could do without and probably should, like sugar or booze.
But no. This feeling wasn’t like that at all. It was more like water, oxygen. A flat-out necessity. You went without it for a while, and you choked, and then you croaked, and you blew away like a dried leaf.
He’d been drying up and dying inside for years. And hadn’t known it. Hey, dying felt so damn normal after a while.
The pace quickened without him noticing, because Becca was grinding herself against him, gasping and whimpering as she worked up to one of her awesome, call-the-cops orgasms. He concentrated on bringing her off, massaging her clit with his thumb as he stirred her around with his cock, finding where those sweet spots hid, and ah…there she went. Arching and jerking, her strong cunt muscles squeezing his cock, milking, begging him to join her. Fill her.
Not yet. Not fucking yet. No way. He wanted this to last forever.
As soon as she had more or less settled down, panting and gleaming with sweat, he resumed thrusting. It went easier now, slicker and smoother. A deep plunge in, a tight, aching slide out. First the quivering resistance of her plushy pussy on the driving instroke, and her jealous hug-and-grab on the outstroke. Outrageous.
Thank God for the latex. It kept him honest, or he’d have lost it in an instant. It damped the sensations down just enough for self-control. He managed to bring her off a couple more times, but every time she came, it got hotter, harder, wilder. Just a small part of his brain watched from a distance as he went at her, moving her, spreading her. Pumping and ramming against her. The slap of his balls against her wet, slick ass, the sawing of breath, those pleading moans, his, hers, hoarse and dry and desperate. The thundering rumble in his head, of a gathering orgasm that drove him along before it like an oncoming storm.
Sobs, shouts, as something inside him shattered and gave way.
Layer after layer in his mind was smashed through like a wrecking ball, crashing through brick and mortar and concrete, dust and rubble. Each rhythmic explosive charge knocked him deeper into nowhere.