“Touch yourself,” I whisper as I guide one of her hands down between us. She starts to circle her clit and I lean back enough to watch, memorizing the pressure and motion she uses. I want to know what she likes the most, committing it to my memory. With every swirling, spiraling touch, I push closer to oblivion. My muscles already shudder with the need to spill into her. Something about Bria in the morning light touching herself in this ridiculously sexy lingerie just throws me right to the edge. She locks her eyes to mine and bites her lip with a whimpering moan. “Close?”
Bria nods.
“Thank fuck. Come, baby.”
The crease between Bria’s brows deepens. Her fingers press harder into her flesh, the movement losing its fluidity as her muscles start to spasm. Her eyes glaze, but they still hold on to mine. Her back arches beneath me as veins and tendons thrum and strain in her neck. I fight to hold back as every fluttering contraction of Bria’s orgasm grips my cock and begs me to release. When I’m sure she’s had every second of pleasure that she can take, I pull out and haul her up to a sitting position, straddling her on my knees so my glistening erection is close to her lips.
“You’re not going to make some terrible joke about giving me my breakfast, are you?” Bria asks as her palms coast up my thighs. I hold the base of my cock with one hand and slide my other into her hair.
“Not anymore.”
Bria laughs and I swear I almost spill across her face from the sound. She grips her hand over mine and runs the tip of my cock across her lips. “I’ll let you know if it’s too much,” she says, then sucks her bottom lip into her mouth with a moan. “But it won’t be.”
You fucking lucky sonofabitch, Kaplan.
I plunge my dick into Bria’s mouth and bottom out at the back of her throat. She gags and I feel her swallow, adjusting to the intrusion before I pick up a rhythm. Saliva and tears spill down her face and I grasp the back of the couch with the hand that had been gripping my cock, my head bent so I can watch as I fuck her mouth, every thrust a little wilder until I’m stripped to the core of my darkness, just like she wanted. She hums with approval, sending a shockwave of vibration through my dick that goes straight to my balls. They tighten and I thrust my cock as far as she can take me, spilling into the hot, wet heat of Bria’s throat. She swallows it all with a moan, as though it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted, and when I’m finished and empty I pull out against the sensation of her sucking hard, a devilish gleam peering up at me through her wet lashes.
“Better than pancakes,” Bria says as her bottom lip folds beneath her teeth.
God, I want to tell her how I feel. I lean back and look at her, all swollen lips and streaked skin and wild hair still gripped in my fist. My heart pounds with the aching need to confess, like I’ve committed a damnable sin that I can’t keep buried any longer. I just can’t bear the thought of scaring her away.
“You’re mine, Bria Brooks,” I say instead, leaning closer until my lips are just the width of a thread from hers. “Tell me you’re mine.”
But she doesn’t. She lets go of her lower lip and her eyes break from my gaze, down to my mouth, up the slope of my cheek, and back again. “Why?”
She doesn’t know what this is, I remind myself, throwing a life raft to my drowning heart. “Because I don’t share. I want you to myself.” My words only scratch the surface of what I really feel. You’re everywhere, in everything. I don’t want anyone else. I can’t bear the thought of another man touching you. I want to know if you feel anything close to what I do.
I’m falling in love with you.
“You don’t know me well enough to want that, Eli,” she whispers, as though she can read my thoughts through my eyes. “You only see what you want to see.”
Her pragmatism isn’t meant to sting, but it does, even though I know she’s right. We barely know each other. Anything I feel is swept up in a tsunami of lust. And yet, I know I can’t stop how I’ve already started to feel. The awareness that Bria is unique and incomparable is instinctual. I know I’ll never meet another woman like Bria Brooks and I’m already burning with the need to hold on to her.
Bria’s fingers graze my cheek with a tentative softness, as though she’s never touched me before and isn’t sure if she should. “But I can promise you there’s no one else. I’m here.”
I nod and kiss her deeply, tasting us both on her tongue. It’s a long moment before I can let her go, and not before leaving a kiss to the faint freckles that span her nose. “Come on, Pancake. Let’s find something you’ll eat.”
Bria snorts a horrified laugh. “Pancake? Dear God, no.”
“You heard me.”
I hold a hand out for her and she takes it. When I’ve hauled her up on her feet I wrap her in my arms, breathing in the subtle scent of her hair as I hold her in my embrace. Her muscles are stiff at first, like she’s not quite sure what to do. And fuck if it doesn’t burn like a blade of fire in my heart. What happened in her life that a hug is foreign to her after everything we’ve shared? Why is gentle intimacy too much to bear?
I squeeze and she relaxes a fraction, and then I let her go enough to take her hand. “Have a seat in the kitchen. I’ll get you a fresh coffee and find you a shirt. What about eggs?”
Bria’s hand grips mine just a little tighter. “I’d like eggs. Thank you.”
Bria pulls on her jeans as I head to my bedroom to retrieve a white dress shirt that I know will look incredibly sexy on her, even though she’ll swim in it. She slips it on as I dump her lukewarm coffee and pour a new cup, and she sits at the island to watch as I place slices of bread in the toaster and start the eggs.
“Non es ad astra mollis e terris via,” Bria says, reading the script tattooed on my back in scrolling black ink. “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”
I glance at her over my shoulder with a bittersweet smile. “Why am I not surprised you know Latin.”
“Like I said. My education with Samuel was nothing if not thorough,” she replies with a shrug. “What’s the meaning for you?”
I turn back to the pan as I crack an egg on the edge. “My older brother, Gabriel. I got it for him.” I crack another egg and spill the contents into the pan, the smell filling the room with the aroma of home, and bringing with it memories of my early childhood with Gabe. Times when we’d cook together with my parents. Times when we’d laugh at the table. All memories of a distant, submerged past. “Gabe was a brilliant kid. Truly brilliant. But he was unruly. He questioned everything. Questions became challenges. Challenges became arguments. When your parents are big into their Evangelical megachurch and cultivating the perfect family image, it’s not a great mix. The more they pressured him to conform, the less he wanted to. Eventually, he found other kids who shared his views. It just so happened, they also shared a love of partying and drugs, and that lifestyle swept him away.”
Bria is silent behind me for a long moment. The only sound between us is the sizzling of eggs in the pan. “He died?”
I nod, a familiar tension creeping into my chest. “My father caught him stealing Mom’s jewelry when he was sixteen. It had already been years of broken curfews and terrible arguments. Gabe had come home drunk and high more than a few times. But that was the last straw. Dad kicked him out. Gabe couch surfed for a little while and we managed to stay in touch for a few months before he disappeared onto the streets. By the time I caught up with some of his old friends, they told me he’d fallen in with rougher groups. He’d gotten into increasingly dangerous situations. He owed people money. He’d disappear for weeks at a time. Then he overdosed. I'd spent two years looking for him, and all the while I’d been chasing a ghost.”
