Dirty Sexy Secret (Green County Book 1) (17 page)

But then she left. Said she wanted more than the County. I was invited, which I guess was some kind consolation prize. Maddie knew I wasn’t leaving the County. She knew I wouldn’t leave my family.

She said we were codependent and dysfunctional and had a few unappealing theories about me and Eli.

And she was right. Of course she was. Not about me and Eli—that’s just fucked up right there, the kid is my
brother
but about our dysfunction and dependence?

Yeah.

That was us all day.

Maddie reminded me that I can’t have this. Not when I have them. And since I know Eli and Hazel and Nora will never leave me, I don’t mind too much, giving up the idea of stability with some girl who won’t ever really get me.

Fuck a girl here and there.

But my family is
here.
Always will be.

Except.

Hazel.

Hazel was both. She was the girl I could be
me
with, and she was home. And when I came home and she let me know just how pissed she was that I’d left—it clicked.

I knew she was in this weird place of want and distance. Like she was arguing with herself about what she should want, what she should let herself want.

And I knew all the reasons we shouldn’t be together.

Nora.

Eli.

She was my best friend, and I ruined every relationship—I didn’t want to ruin us.

But then.

She kisses me, and she looks so nervous. Body tense and ready for me to push her away.

“Hazel,” I murmur, and crawl up the bed, until I’m leaning into her space. Her eyes are wide and watching me, confused. Until I close that space between us, and her eyes drift closed, a noise like a sigh slipping free.

Like.
Yes.
And
this is right.
And Finally.

So I lift her, and she makes this happy noise against my mouth, and I swallow it down, lick it from her lips, tease a whimper from her when I nip at her lip and slide along her tongue, and it’s not enough.

It’s not enough.

I shift, my knees coming up on either side of her, and she arches into me, all pliant soft heat pushing against my hard dick and—

“Fuck,” I snarl, ripping away from her mouth, and she laughs.

Throaty and low and fucking hell, I love that noise in her mouth. I
love
that I am the one who pulls it from her, and I’m the one who kisses it from her lips.

She’s staring at me, her eyes hooded and glittering with hunger and this breathless excitement that I remember. Her pinky nail is caught in the silver hoop on my nipple, a relic from my years in the Corp and stupid fucking decisions made under the influence of too much alcohol.

She tugs and I gasp, arching against her and she laughs.

That noise hasn’t changed, not even a little bit, over the years. She still laughs when she’s turned on and desperate, and it still rubs against me like an electric wire of want.

I want to take my time with her. Want to stretch it out until it lasts forever.

I can’t go another four years, without feeling her tight and warm around me, her skin silky against mine, her lips sucking bruises against my collar bone.

I don’t think I can go four days.

She’s begging, and I almost come, when I thrust into her. When her body shudders around me, so close to the edge, that she’s almost coming just from that. I freeze, when I’m inside her, fighting the orgasm that’s crawling up my throat. Kiss her, slow and soft, and whisper her name like a fucking prayer, until she’s smiling, her lips lazy against mine.

She drags a hiss from me when she rolls her hips, this filthy fucking motion that makes me see stars. Breathe a curse against her lips that she licks away and kisses until she breaks off with a low moan, arching into me as I fuck her.

No.

No.

Not fuck.

I fuck girls who don’t matter. The endless parade of them who will
never
matter.

But this. As I thrust into her and she rolls up to meet me, her hand on my chest, tugging that fucking ring, her body a wave of motion that keeps tugging me toward climax, her eyes lazy and hungry and so fucking full—this isn’t fucking.

I’m not ready to name this.

But I know what it isn’t.

She moans, suddenly, and her body freezes, even as she yanks hard on my nipple ring, and rears up, biting me, muffling her cry against my skin as she comes.

Even torn up by orgasm, she’s fierce. She’s fighting, and demanding my own pleasure.

She’s
Hazel.
My fierce, stubborn, beautiful ghost.

I thrust into her again, and she whimpers, as I come. As I drop down on her, forgetting for a moment to keep my weight off her, and kiss her, pleasure blanking out everything but the
need
for her.

I come, and she shudders, and if it feels like we’re holding each other together. If the way she clings to me, and the way I kiss her, is a little desperate—well.

We both keep that to ourselves.

The room is quiet, and she’s breathing, slow and even, against my chest. She’s pliant, so soft against me. For a long time, we lay there, in silence.

But I know her. And I feel it, the moment she starts to pull away. The moment something trips in her pretty little head, and says,
no. Dangerous.

She doesn’t pull away from me.

It’s worse than that.

She gets closer. Snuggles into me, her grip turning impossibly tight, and her lips brushing against my skin once, as she sighs.

Then.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I mutter, tightening my grip and yanking her back to me. She huffs a breath, like she can’t believe I did that, and shoves a hand between us, onto the bruises she sucked into my skin, and no.

She’s not pushing me away, not after this.

“Why?” I ask simply, giving her the room she’s asking for—enough of it, anyway, that I can look into those big blue eyes.

I see the flicker of hesitation; the way she bites her lip.

She used to do that, when Nora was demanding something, some piece of information that Hazel thought wasn’t good for her.

She’s weighing the consequences of telling me the truth and protecting me.

“C’mon, Hazel,” I murmur, sliding my fingers up her bare back and into her hair. I get a grip and use it to pull her head back, gently, so she’s looking at me. “You don’t protect me, Hazy-eyes. Never did. We protect
them
, but we’re
honest
with each other.”

“Leaving four years ago was to protect you,” she says back, her voice breathy and fuck, I love hearing her like that. All turned on and hating it.

“Leaving was to protect you. Don’t lie to yourself.” I shake her head a little and her eyes roll up, pleasure chasing across her face.

“I can’t be with you,” she whispers, eyes closed.

Shit.

I knew that. Knew that we couldn’t be more than
this
and what we already were.

But fuck it hurts, hearing her say it out loud.

“I can’t be with you because it would kill Nora and infuriate Eli and because you need someone—“

“I swear to fuck, if you say better than you,” I say, casually, “I will turn you over my knee and spank your ass.”

She smirks, a slow thing and I add, “And it won’t be the good kind of spanking, Hazy girl. “

She laughs, and rolls away from me. I sit up with her, trace my fingers over her back.

But the levity falls just as quickly as it rises, and she curls inward, slightly.

She’s naked and sweat slick, her hair rumpled from my fingers, and her lips red from my kisses.

And she looks, impossibly, like the ghost of a girl I pulled from her shy shell, so many years ago.

“Archer we don’t work, like this.”

“Why not?” I ask, against her skin.

Her head tilts to the side and she pins me with that sharp blue gaze that sees right through me. “I can think of two damn good reasons.”

Eli. Nora.

Because this—fuck, this would devastate them. Nora would never understand, even if I could get Eli to. She raised us together.

Hazel had never, not once in the sixteen years since we all ended up on Nora’s couch with a few ratty bags and a shit load of grief—she has never called me brother.

I’ve never been her brother.

I’ve been her partner, and her friend, and her ally.

But I’ve never been her brother.

I don’t want to be.

That doesn’t mean Nora and Eli would agree, if I were to show up at the diner and announce that I was in love with the girl I grew up with.

Fuck. I freeze, going tense. And because I’m pressed against her, she feels it. She twists a little, her gaze finding mine, curious and worried.

“I don’t care,” I whisper and her mouth falls open, a little. I smile, a little bit of tension easing in my chest and I sit up. Pull her against me and whisper the words against her skin. “We spent our whole life taking care of other people, Hazel. We spent our whole life taking care of
them.
When is it our turn?”

She gives me a tiny smile and kisses me, gentle. “We don’t get one.”

I growl against her lips, and she huffs a laugh, a small, startled noise. “That’s not good enough for me, Hazel.”

She stands, shifting away from me. Slips into a pair of shorts that are barely there and pulls a loose tank top on.

Covering herself up and hiding from me.

“I don’t want to do this,” I say clearly, and she goes very still. Her eyes wide and watching me. “I don’t want to fuck you in secret or get you off while Eli is asleep in the next room, muffling your screams because he can’t know. I don’t want to sit across from you at Mama’s and pretend we’re nothing more than we always have been.” I shake my head and stand up, dressing. “I love you too much to do that shit anymore, Hazel.”

I
follow him out of my into my bedroom, and he cleans up while I get dressed, my body still buzzing with remembered pleasure, and reeling from the quietly spoken confession.

I don’t know what to do with an Archer who is in love with me. I’ve spent too many years telling myself that some things aren’t possible. Too many years knowing that it didn’t matter how I felt or how he felt—there was too much between us to ever be an
us.
Too much from Eli and Nora to let us be more than the other half of the family.

But now he’s saying the things I’ve wanted to hear, and told myself could never happen and it’s so damn tempting.

I want it so damn bad, I’m ready to take his hand and drag him to Mama’s. To go to the station and kiss him hard and dirty against the wall behind his desk and traumatize Eli in the process.

I can’t.

But I want to.

So fucking bad.

He’s in the kitchen, pouring tea in glasses, and tossing the stuff to make sandwiches on the table. I slide in beside him and it’s easy.

The fact is that being with Archer. Working with him has always been effortless. We never talked about what we did—we never needed to. We understood each other without talking about it.

So it’s like breathing, slipping back into that. Handing him cheese while I slather mayo and mustard on the bread, tearing off lettuce while he scoffs and piles both sandwiches high with ham and roast beef. Cutting both sandwiches neatly in half and placing them on plate while he adds a pickle to mine and a bag of chips to the table and pulls his open to salt and pepper it.

It’s easy and it stings and it makes everything we could be—a whole future and a life—almost reachable.

“Archer,” I say, and my phone buzzes.

His eyebrows climb but I swallow hard and shove the words down and look at the message.

Unknown: Stop playing house. Get to work. She’ll see you at the lake.

I swallow my nerves and tuck the phone away before taking a bite of my sandwich. “What was that?” Archer asks.

I shrug and offer up a thin smile. “Story I’m working on. What’s going on with your triple homicide?”

He blows out a breath. “I don’t know. I need to talk to Eli, but every time I do and Scarlett comes up, I lose it.”

Typical Archer.

“What happened, there?” I ask, gently. Ignoring the fury I’m feeling that my brother was being dicked over by some bitch and Archer didn’t think to tell me.

That doesn’t matter, and doesn’t have a place, not right now.

“She was someone he met at work, if you’d believe that. From a precinct in Topeka. We had a kidnapping—domestic shit, custody didn’t shake out the way the dad wanted so he scooped the kids and beat tracks to here. It was Scarlett’s case and she met Eli and that was it. You know how he can be with the initial fall.”

I do know. My brother has always fallen too hard and too fast.

But after Amy and then Lisa, I don’t know. I thought he’d back down. “Was there anyone else, after Scarlett?” I ask.