“Or they feel like that all the time because it’s not a fantasy, but reality. So you can’t tell me I don’t know how Landon will feel a few years down the road, because I have a pretty good idea. Better than you do.”
“Protecting yourself at all costs?” he asked.
“Yes, maybe for the first time in my life. And even you can’t fault me for that.”
The pointlessness of the conversation prompted her to retreat. Brandt didn’t attempt to stop her.
In her bedroom, she stripped, slipped on her long johns and crawled in bed, burrowing under the covers because she couldn’t seem to get warm.
A while later, Brandt entered the bedroom. She heard his clothes hitting the floor and felt the mattress dip. Then his warm body connected with hers. He wrapped one arm around her waist, one arm stretched under her pillow, tangling their legs together so they were touching from head to toe.
As Brandt toyed with her hair, so sweetly, so soothingly, Jessie released some of her tension.
“We will figure this out, Jessie,” he said softly.
She had figured it out. He just needed to accept it.
Later, when he thought she’d fallen asleep, and he whispered, “Don’t make me choose, Jessie, please don’t make me choose,” she feared he already had.
They both had.
“It’s only for a few hours. I promise.”
Jessie scowled at him. “Why do I have to go?”
Brandt couldn’t resist kissing her scowling mouth. “Because I don’t wanna leave you alone on Christmas Day. In and out quickly, I promise. Landon will open his gifts from my mom, we’ll eat dinner and then we’re gone.”
“Will your dad be there?”
Brandt rolled his eyes. “What do you think?”
“I think you’ve already broken two of my original stipulations,” she muttered.
And the morning had been going so well.
Jessie sighed. “Fine. Am I supposed to buy a gift for your mom?”
“No. Why?”
“Don’t you guys open presents on Christmas Day?”
“Yeah, but we don’t give each other gifts.”
“Why not?”
“To be honest, we never really did.”
She frowned. “But the year I was there, you guys exchanged gifts.”
“With you,” he pointed out. “Not with each other. Luke told us we’d better get you something since you intended to give each of us a gift. Luke wanted to pretend, for your sake, that we had the same type of normal Christmas everyone else did.”
“You didn’t celebrate Christmas at all? Ever?”
“We must’ve for a while when we were kids. I think Luke broke the news to Dalton that Santa wasn’t real when Dalton was around five. Dalton asked Dad if it was true and that was the end of presents on Christmas morning.”
Jessie turned back toward the sink. “That’s sad. Now I really don’t want to go.”
“But my mom loved it the year you were there. Gave her an excuse to put up a tree and do the holiday stuff she hadn’t done in years.”
“And gave your father another reason to resent me. Which is all the more reason to be thankful, I guess.” She sighed and sank her hands all the way into the dishwater.
“Thankful for what?”
“Thankful I didn’t end up like your mom, because God knows I was headed that direction. Luke McKay’s mouse-like wife who wouldn’t rock the boat even if it was about to go sail a waterfall.”
“I never saw you that way, Jess.”
“You’re the only one.”
Brandt curled his hands around her hips and bent his head to taste that sweet section of skin below her ear. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m the only one who matters.”
She murmured, “Brandt,” but she didn’t attempt to pull away.
“So…” His lips moved up to nibble on her earlobe, “Landon is napping. Wanna get nekkid and wild?”
“Maybe when I finish the dishes.”
He growled, “That’s it,” and yanked her hands out of the water, spinning her to face him. “I haven’t been paying enough attention to you if you’d rather do the dishes than do me.”
Jessie laughed. “I am feeling neglected. We only had sex once yesterday.”
“Couch.” He kissed her hard. “Now.”
A trail of clothes littered the floor from the kitchen to where they were naked on the couch.
Brandt was ready to be inside her the instant his bare ass hit the cushion and he had a naked, wiggling Jessie on his lap. But he forced himself to slow down. To take the time to marvel that this gorgeous, sexy, spontaneous woman wanted him. That she was his.
But for how long?
Forever, if he had his way, but he knew Jessie wasn’t ready to hear that from him yet. He didn’t believe if it came right down to it she’d walk away from him and Landon, no matter what she said.
Focus on the nekkid woman in front of you, man.
He kissed down the delectable arch of her neck. Once his mouth reached the upper swell of her br**sts, he urged, “Lean back.”
Jessie placed her hands on his thighs above his knees, and let her head fall back, giving her body the most beautiful curve, from the tip of her chin down to the angle of her hips.
Sometimes the woman took his breath away.
Brandt cupped her br**sts in his hand, using his thumb and index finger to tug the right nipple into a tight point. He latched onto the left nipple and sucked. As he switched sides, he rubbed his face on her chest. He loved the sensation of her soft, warm skin against his cheeks. Loved leaving tiny red marks from his razor stubble on her tender flesh.
She moaned, pressing her chest against his mouth.
He suckled, nipped and caressed every inch of her pretty tits until he felt her short nails biting into his thighs. Until he caught a whiff of her sweet cream.
Brandt took her hand and put it on his cock, murmuring, “Take me in, Jess.”
She drew the tip across her wet folds, catching the rim of his cockhead on her clit, stopping to rub it over and over. When he growled, she splayed her knees, lowered her pelvis and sheathed him completely.
“That’s good. Goddamn that’s good.”
“Better than dishes.”
“Definitely.”
His greedy hands were all over her skin. Down the softly rounded globes of her ass. The outside contour of her thighs. He reached between them, letting his finger trace the pliant skin stretching to accommodate his dick. Then his finger moved back a fraction of an inch, brushing over the pucker of her ass.