He shifted and tweaked my nipple, pulling a gasped laugh from me. “About your van, smartass.”
“Hmm? Oh, no. I talked to my mom this morning before I knew about it.”
“Are you going to tell them?”
“Why would I?”
He grunted, and there must’ve been some crazy voodoo magic working between us, because I could tell just from that single non-syllable that he wasn’t happy about that.
I ran my fingers over his forearm that was locked across my chest, holding me to him. “I’ve been looking after myself for a long time, Brady.”
He grumbled something under his breath, and when I asked him to speak up, he said, “You shouldn’t always have to look after yourself. Someone else should be looking out for you too.”
“And who should that someone else be?”
He tightened his arms around me and brushed his lips across the length of my neck, his unspokenmeas loud as if he’d screamed it.
“I might be on board with something like that. What does this looking out for me entail? Are we talking about, like, morning smoothies? Or just orgasms?”
He slid his hand under my shirt and cupped one of my breasts, brushing his thumb over the already hardened peak. “Why not both?”
“I don’t want to be greedy.”
He breathed out a laugh and snaked his hand down my stomach to cup my bare pussy, his finger sliding between my lips and teasing my clit. “We both know that’s a lie. Your pussy’s greedy as hell, isn’t it?”
“Only for you, apparently.” I gasped and rocked into his hand, stroking myself faster over his questing finger. “I guess it likes whensomeonelooks out for me.”
He groaned into my neck even as he dipped a finger inside me before dragging the wetness up and circling my clit again. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“No?” I asked, breathless and arching into him already. “That why you took my panties?”
“I just wanted to hold you tonight,” he said against my skin, his voice so low, I barely heard him. But I did. I heard every word—what he was saying aloud as well as everything unspoken between us. Brady needed a reminder that I was okay. That whatever irrational fears he’d harbored following his mother’s death hadn’t been relived with me. While he hadn’t been able to save either of his parents from their demises, he’d saved me.
“Why can’t we do both?” I reached back and slipped my hand into his boxers, finding him ready for me. His cock was long and thick and so deliciously hard, I needed him inside me. I pulled him out of his boxer briefs as I arched against him, lifting my leg and hooking it back over his, opening myself up to him and whatever he wanted to do to me.
He slid into me then, filling me in slow, deep thrusts. It was unhurried and languid, a soft, sleepy fuck that I didn’t know I’d needed after the day I’d had but melted into anyway. But somehow, he’d known. He read me so well, studied every cue I’d ever given, and stored all that information away, just so he’d know what I needed. Just so he could pull it out at any time and give it to me.
My orgasm grew slowly, a steady climb that built with each gentle thrust of him inside me, with each circle of his fingers against my clit, with each soft brush of his lips against my neck, my ear, my jaw.
“Brady…” I breathed, reaching up to slide my fingers into his hair, needing his mouth on mine. Needing to be as connected to him as I possibly could when he made me fall apart.
“I’ve got you, pretty girl,” he said before he pressed his lips to mine, his tongue sweeping into my mouth as the world exploded around me.
And he did have me. In everything, not just this. Not just my body, but my heart, too. My soul. I didn’t know how it’d happened, but somewhere along the way, between our bickering and banter, our fighting and fucking, I’d fallen for the grumpy sheriff of a town where I’d never intended to stay.
CHAPTERNINETEEN
BRADY
For the past four days,I’d woken up with Luna in my arms, and each morning had only gotten better. It was hard to believe after the way we’d started that this was the routine we’d fallen into. But we had. Somehow, against all odds, this was where we’d found ourselves.
And it was as easy as breathing.
I’d leave Luna in the mornings, sometimes with a kiss and sometimes without the ability to make her rouse at all, and then come home after my shift to an absolute disaster. While Luna had been spending more time at the resort, leading at least one yoga class every day, thanks to the interest piqued from Mabel’s Live during goat yoga, as well as massages as requested, she’d also taken advantage of the new workspace—read: my house—available to her. Word had spread about homemade ointments, and now Mabel and her entire gang of misfits had commissioned a buttload of creams from Luna, and she was all too willing to comply.
That was all fine and good, except that it meant my kitchen was no longer the tidy and uncluttered space it’d always been. But it wasn’t just my kitchen. Not an inch of my home had been untouched by what Addison had deemed the Luna sparkle. There was incense and jars filled with something called moon water that just looked like plain old water to me and rocks every-fucking-where, and I…didn’t hate it.
Had, in fact, brought her all the shit in the first place, so I only had myself to blame.
