“I don’t need you to try to pull us out of this awkward moment by making up a bunch of stupid lies about how much you care for me like a friend.” My voice hikes to the ceiling. “I get it. We’re friends. We’re family. That’s all we’re destined to ever be.” I run back to my bedroom and begin tossing my clothes onto the floor in a pile. “I’ll be out of here in anhour!”
“Raven, dammit—” He stalks in and pulls me to him, his face just inches from mine. “You have never been a good listener.” His features are stone-cold, and I have no idea where he’s going with this. This would be a lousy time to discover the fact that Brody has a dark side. His breathing grows erratic, and his gaze is locked tight to mine. “I don’t want to be friends with you,” he grits the words out like spitting a sour taste from his mouth, and it crushes me. I feel smaller than a parasite. His features soften, and that sad smile he wears so well takes over. “I want everything with you.” His eyes flush red as they grow glassy with tears. “But I don’t know how to do this with you. You’re not just some girl, Raven.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls my body tohis.
A mountain of relief fills me, and I tip my head back and groan just drinking down the beautiful words he justspoke.
“Look at me,” he says it low and demanding, and I snap right back to attention. His eyes are wild. The light pouring in from behind him makes his hair glow like a halo. “I love you, Raven Masterson. I love you like I’ve never loved any other person before. You stole my heart a long time ago. You’re the very reason I never gave it away to anybody else. I couldn’t. It was already taken. When you came back to Hollow Brook, it was like I could breathe again. You lift me to places I didn’t know I could go. You make me feel things that for a long time didn’t feel right.” His lips pull into a tight smile. “But I don’t care about right or wrong anymore. All I care about is you—and me, together.” His brows furrow. “You’re too quiet. You don’t think we canwork.”
“No!” I bounce on my tiptoes. “Iknowwe can work. In fact, I know this because we do work.” I wrap my arms around the back of his neck and pull him closer to me. The ache to have his lips over mine is building, and I can’t wait another moment. “You really love me?” I can’t help but lift my shoulders to my ears. Just the thought of holding Brody’s heart in such a sacred way makes me melt into a giant puddle of Valentinehearts.
A naughty grin rises on his lips. “Yes.” He dots my lips with a kiss. “Hell yes. I love you, Raven. I don’t see you as a sister. I don’t think I ever have.” His gaze steadies over mine once again. “I haven’t had a chaste thought about you in years.” He wraps his hand around the length of my hair as if it were a leash, and every cell in my body erupts with heat of its own. Brody Wolf has always had the power to arouse me, and this one quick motion, his declaration of love for me has set my titillation factor on high alert. He tilts his head to the side, his lids hooded low. “I’m going to kiss younow.”
I shake my head, teasing him just a little bit longer. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you get away with a simple kiss, Animal. Tonight, you’re having your way with me, and I fully expect you to live up to that dirty, dirtynickname.”
A slow grin digs into his cheeks. “I’m not going easy onyou.”
My eyes flash wide. “I’d be disappointed if you did. I expect equal amounts of pleasure with my pain. Rumor has it, you leave the girls with a smile that lasts forweeks.”
“On you it’ll last years.” His hand slides up the back of my sweater, skin on skin, and I suck in a quick breath with the feel of his heated flesh overmine.
“I guess I’ll believe it when I see it. Right now, it sounds like you’re all talk and no action, Wolf.” I press my lips together at the dig. It’s always thrilled me to be a little bit mean to him. I guess I have a touch of Lex in me afterall.
“Raven.” He touches his forehead to mine. “We’re not doing anything you’re not ready todo.”
“Well, then I’m in luck. I want to do everything.” My chest bucks when I say it for no reason. “I’m excited.” My words come out hoarse, lower than a whisper as if maybe I’m not. “I’m frightened. And as scary as this might seem, I’m here with you, Brody. You have never let anything awful happen to me. Remember when the Stephensons’ demon-possessed dog got out and it went for me, but you blocked it and ended up withstitches?”
“Twenty-seven.” He holds up his hand where the damage occurred, and I can still see the ghost of thescar.
“It took you months to recover. And that time I went out on my first date and hated the guy? I called you and you came to the movie theater pretending that I needed to leave for a familyemergency.”
He gives a solemn nod. “You said if you asked your brothers they would have made you suffer to teach you a lesson—scare you off fromdating.”
“Well, that part worked.” My hand slips up the front of his shirt, and we both sigh at the very same time. “I know that you care about me, Brody. I know that you always have.” I suck in my bottom lip to keep my emotions from getting away from me once again, but the world warbles through my blurred vision, and it’s too late for that. “And now I know that you love me. And I know that I love you.” A warmth explodes in my chest, radiating out to each of my limbs as a fire burns in me, bright and new. Desire like a tidal wave pushes through me, and my mouth covers his. My fingers work off his dress shirt button by button, working feverishly to evict his clothing. Brody tastes like mints, like beer, like something I’ve been craving to have for a very long time. He lifts my sweater right off my body and pulls back to get a better look atme.
“You’re beautiful.” There’s an innate sadness in his eyes as he drinks me in, and I watch as his Adam’s apple rises and falls. “You know they’re going to kill me.” His gaze meets up with mine once again, and he offers a dirty grin. “Just know I diedhappy.”
A robust laugh tumbles from my lips as I yank him close to me by the belt loops. “Off with your clothes, Animal, and that is an order. Tonight, you either live up to your name or I want you out of my bed bysunrise.”
His eyes sharpen over mine as he offers a dark smile. “Listen up, Tater Tot, and listen good.” He flicks my chin with his finger, forcing my head to tip up a notch. “The only thing you’re going to beg me to do at sunrise is give you more—harder, faster, longer.” He sweeps his thumb across my cheek. “And I’m going to give it to you because I’m a niceguy.”
A dark laugh rumbles through my chest. “That’s too bad, Wolf, because I’m not really looking for nice right now.” I slip out of my clothes in less than three svelte moves and stand before him, naked and exposed, just watching him watching me. His eyes rake over me, searing and hot, and I can feel his gaze as tangible as his touch as he rides up and down over every exposed inch of me. My fingers fumble with the zipper on his jeans. “I always knew you were aslacker.”
Brody helps evict himself from every stitch of cotton, and my gaze rides slowly down his body. Brody Wolf is trim and cut in all the right places. His six-pack is easily an eight, and my eyes follow that hard V down farther. A breath escapes me, rendering me speechless. Wow and oh my God. I’m no math whiz, but I’m pretty sure width plus girth and length equals a no go in our presentsituation.
“Come here.” He tucks a kiss under my ear, pulling me over him as we land on the bed. “You feel so good.” He presses me in by the small of my back, his hardness teasing my thigh. In all honesty, I would be terrified to be doing this with anyone but Brody. He’s my safe place. He’s always been that. And while I was busy globetrotting, I felt anything but safe—but in Hollow Brook, in Brody Wolf’s arms, not a thing could possibly harmme.
Brody lavishes me with kisses, the hot strike of his tongue lashes even the most intimate of spaces. And as much as I cringe, I want that much more. I watch as his head moves up and down my body, deliberately loving each and every square inch as if the inside of my elbow were just as important as the inside of my thighs. He parts my knees with his own as he lands over me, his eyes glowing like marbles that someone put a flashlightto.
“You going to make it hurt like you promised?” I meant to tease him, to add some levity to the situation, but it comes out more like a frightenedchild.
That greedy grin glides off his face, and he bows down and lands a heated kiss over my lips. “I’m going to make it memorable. For the both ofus.”
Brody Wolf loves me carefully, slowly at first, then greedily and feverishly in the exact same rhythm of his kisses. Brody is on me, in me, filling up all the empty spaces that craved him for solong.
It’s been a bumpy road to get here, but every cell in my body agrees Brody Wolf was worth thewait.
Brody
That nightI dream of Raven and me, the two of us standing in front of the house with our arms wrapped around one another, the ground layered with snow, and a car drives by, slow and deliberate, as the driver’s side window rolls down and Levi points a shotgun at my dick and I wake with a startlingjolt.
