Best Friend's Brother #2 (Best Friend's Brother Romance Series - Book #2) (6 page)

Ian had his eyes closed and his head thrown back.
He’d spread his legs wide open and our hands were moving faster now, urgently.
I had my lips on one of his nipples when I felt his body start to tense. I
moved my head down and laid it against his hard abs and I watched as our hands
moved up and down together underneath the water. I felt him grow and swell
again and when he started grunting and I knew that he was
cumming
again, I lowered my head and took him back into my mouth. He cried out then,
loudly, and called out my name. I rode him through the orgasm and then I pulled
my head back up to look at him. He was shaking hard now and he started kissing
my face. He kissed my forehead and my cheeks and my lips and my chin…then he
cupped my face in his hands, looked me in the eyes and said, “Oh My God!”

Over the next couple of weeks, we spent time
together every day, mostly at my Dad’s house. He would come by after he went to
the gym and hang out, sometimes have breakfast with me, or bring lunch and we’d
eat on the patio if it
was
a nice day. We watched a
lot of movies together and ate a lot of pizza and we talked a lot. We didn’t
have sex when we were at Dad’s, but that was okay because it gave me time to
realize that there was more to us than that. We also didn’t talk much about
Emma until one afternoon when he came over and I was cleaning out the garage.
He saw my old bike hanging on a nail on the wall. It was my first two-wheeler,
pink and white with whitewall tires and a white basket on the front with pink
flowers.

“Emma had that same bike,” he said.

I looked up at it and smiled. “Yeah, I know. That’s
why I had it. I got mine when I turned eight. Emma got hers seven months before
that for her seventh birthday…I was so jealous.”

“I remember when she got it. I was ten at the time
and she wanted me to take her out and teach her how to ride it.”

“Did you?”

He laughed and I could see in his eyes that he
was far away, back twelve years ago, teaching
his little
sister how to ride a bike. “Yeah, I did. It was like torture.”

“Why?”

“Because she would say, “Let go of me, I can do it
myself,” and I would let go and she would fall. Then she would cry and I would
say, “That’s it, I’m done,” so then she would cry some more and say she was
going to tell Mom that I was being mean.”

Laughing, I said, “You poor thing. At least you didn’t
have to teach her to drive.”

“I was already out of the house by then…but I
remember how excited she was when she got her permit.”

“She wanted to drive everywhere. I don’t know how
much trouble we got into because she just wouldn’t leave your parent’s cars
alone.”

“And she forced you to go along?” he said,
teasingly.

“I was a good friend. I couldn’t let her go alone….”
Suddenly I got that feeling in my chest again. I hadn’t had it in a couple of
weeks. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was
like
someone had removed one of my lungs and I just couldn’t get enough air. I was a
good friend, I said. I couldn’t let her go alone, I said. But the facts were
that I did let her go alone and she died.

“Alexa?
Baby, are you okay?” I nodded, but I didn’t look up at Ian. If I did, I would
see her face and I would lose it. I felt him next to me and he didn’t say a
word. He just understood all of a sudden and he wrapped me up in a big hug and
held me there until I stopped shaking and I was able to breathe again. After a bit
I stepped back and said, “I’m okay now. Thank you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, gently brushing my hair
back out of my face and kissing my forehead. “It comes and goes in waves. I
understand.”

“I need some water,” I told him. He followed me in and
I got us both a bottle of water. We sat down at the table and I said, “Do you
ever worry that we’ll forget her?”

He reached over and touched my hand. “No, we could
never forget her.”

“Sometimes we go days without mentioning her at all.
Is that bad? If she’s up there looking down on us, does she understand that
even if we don’t say her name out loud, that we think about her every day?”

“I think so,” he said. “Life has to go on and that
sucks, but that’s just the way it is. I think it’s what she would want. She
loved life. She was full of energy and hope and all that good stuff. She
wouldn’t want us sitting around talking about death all the time, or living in
the past. You and I found a common bond with Emma…but now, we’re finding it
with each other. That’s a good thing…I think.”

I don’t know if he was right or not, but I know that
it felt right. I loved being with him and I’m not sure I could get through the
bad days without him. I also loved that he said things like that and he made me
believe that this “relationship” we had was about more than grieving for
someone we both loved and it was more than sex…It was real and things that are
real, last. I glanced up at the clock then and realized that it was getting
late in the day. My dad would be home soon and although I loved him, today I
wasn’t in a mood to share Ian. I wanted to be intimate with him. I wanted to
spend the night with him and I was hoping that he would suggest it.

“So what do you want to do tonight?” I asked him.

His eyes followed mine and he looked at the clock.
With his lips quirked in a half-smile, he said, “I don’t know, why? Do you have
to be somewhere?”

“No, I was just trying to plan my evening.”

He smiled outright then and said, “If you don’t have
somewhere to be, then why do you need a plan? Is your other boyfriend coming
over tonight?”

I laughed, “Maybe, if you’ll tell me what your plans
are so I can make plans with him.”

He reached for me and pulled me up and into his lap.
“You tell that son of a bitch…” I stopped him with a kiss. I let my tongue roam
through his mouth
like
I was searching for something
and then I licked and sucked on his bottom lip. When I pulled my head up, his
eyes were practically glazed over and he said, “What we’re we talking about?”

I giggled, “We were deciding what to do tonight, but
I just decided that it didn’t matter what we do, as long as we’re together. I
didn’t even like joking about spending time with someone else.”

He grinned, “That’s good. I feel the same way. Maybe
we could go meet my friends for a drink. Brock called me earlier. I’ve turned
him down a couple of times already.”

“You want me to meet your friends? Isn’t it a little
soon?”

He looked worried for a second and said, “You think
so?”

I laughed and said, “No, I’d love to meet your
friends.” He kissed me again and if we hadn’t heard Dad come through the front
door just then, it may well have led to something else. As it was, he stood up
and stood me upright on my feet next to him. When Dad came in the kitchen, it
was more than obvious that we hadn’t just been standing there. Dad was cool
about it. He and Ian said hello to each other and then Ian said, “I should go
home and shower if we’re going to go out.”

“Okay, I’ll walk you out.” I walked him to the door
and he kissed me again. Before he left he said, “Maybe we’ll just have one
drink.”

“Why only one?”

“Because I already can’t wait to
get you back home.”

I closed the door and stood there with my back
pressed up against it for a second. I’d never felt this way before about
anyone, and Ian seemed to feel the same way. I knew that he was right; Emma
would want us to go on and be happy. I was so glad I had Ian to go on and be
happy
with
.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

IAN

I went back to my apartment when I left Alexa with a
smile on my face. I had one of those a lot lately. Being with her made me happy
no matter what we were doing. I felt like I could talk to her about
anything…well…almost. There were some things in my past that I wasn’t proud of
and I hadn’t been ready to tell her about just yet. But, everyone had those,
right?

I took a quick shower and then dressed in jeans and
a long-sleeved blue t-shirt. Then before I left, I straightened up the
apartment and changed the sheets on my bed. I hadn’t spent much time in the
apartment between checking on my parents and being at Alexa’s dad’s house, so I
hadn’t had a lot of time to really clean up. I hated for her to think I was a
pig though and I hadn’t changed the sheets for over a week.

When the apartment was clean I left so that I could
stop by and see how my parents were doing on my way. When I got to their house,
they were both in the kitchen, cooking dinner together. I think the fact that
they are still legitimately crazy about each other will be one of the things
that will ultimately save them from this tragedy.

“Hi guys, how are you?”

“Hello son,” My father said. He was chopping up
vegetables for stir-fry.

“Hi sweetheart,” my mother said, kissing me on the
cheek. “Have you eaten?”

“Not yet, but Alexa and I are going out tonight so
we’ll probably just pick something up.” I noticed the exchange of looks between
my parents and said, “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“
That look
.”

“We don’t have a look sweetie.”

“Yes you do…you did. Do you not like Alexa?”

“Oh honey we love Alexa,” my mom said.

“Okay, then what was the look?”

“Nothing, really.
Nothing bad.
Your father and I were just talking
earlier about how much more content you seem lately. We were wondering if it
had anything to do with how much time you’ve been spending with Alexa.”

“It does, actually,” I told them.

My mother looked happy enough to bust as she said,
“I couldn’t have hand-picked a better one for you.”

“Me neither,” I told her, honestly.

I only had a short visit with my parents, but since
I go over every day, I guess that was okay. I left there and headed over to
pick Alexa up. I was a little nervous about introducing her to Brock and the
rest of the guys. It wasn’t Alexa I was worried
about
.
I knew they would love her. Any man would be a fool not to. I was a little
worried about
mine and Brock’s friend, Jeff
. He could
be a lot of fun or he could be the biggest asshole you ever met. He was someone
I’d known for a long time, so I was used to him. I always wondered how other
people took him though. Like Brock, he knew all my dirty little secrets. I was
pretty confident that Brock knew better than to blurt them all out to my new
girlfriend. I wasn’t so sure about Jeff.

When I knocked and Alexa opened the door, I wanted
to forget the whole going out for a drink thing and just jump straight to the
part where we mess up my new clean sheets. She was wearing a jean skirt that
stopped mid-thigh with a pair of ankle high cowboy boots and a thin,
see-through blouse with one of those camisole things women wore. She looked hot
and I wanted to eat her up right there.

“Wow, you look…” Her dad walked by just then. “So
pretty,” I said. Pretty didn’t cover it, but I wasn’t going to say “hot” or
“edible” in front of her dad.

“Thank you,” she said, “So do you.”

“I look pretty?”

She laughed, “Beautiful,” she said.

“Oh well, that’s better. Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” she grabbed her purse and yelled good-bye to
her dad. When we got to the car I stopped and looked around to make sure he
wasn’t lurking and then I said, “You don’t look pretty.” She looked surprised
that I would say that and a little hurt. “You look so incredibly hot that I can
hardly stand to keep my hands off of you.”

She blushed. “Thank you,” she said.

“I just didn’t want to say that in front of your
dad.”

With a giggle she said, “Yeah, maybe not such a good
idea, but I liked hearing it.”

We were meeting the guys at a club that was eighteen
and over. Alexa had to get a red wrist band and I got a green one on the way
in. That way they knew
who
they could serve alcohol
to. The place was crowded and I had to let my eyes adjust to the light before I
finally spotted my friends at a booth over in the corner. There was a small
dance floor and the music was kind of loud. As we made our way over I asked
her, “Are you sure that you want to stay here? It’s kind of loud and crowded.”

“Are you trying to get out of introducing me to your
friends now?” she asked, jokingly.

“Of course not,” I told her. “You make me look so
good that I’d have to be crazy to not want people to know you’re with me.”

She grabbed my hand and when we walked up to the
table all eyes were on her. “Hey! You made it!” Brock said, “I thought you were
going to flake again.”

“I tried,” I said, “Alexa wouldn’t let me.”

Jeff, the asshole that he is reached his hand out to
Alexa and said, “Well hello there, beautiful. Where have you been all my life?”