Long Shot: An MMA Stepbrother Romance (12 page)

“Then stand up, Nat. Take your pants off.”

“Wha—what? What am I doing?” She shakes her head like she’s out of it, like she didn’t hear me right.

“Take off your pants, Nat. I’m going to make you come.” She gulps and stands up slowly, then puts her thumbs in her waistband like I did. There’s a flush rising over her neck and into her fair cheeks, and I try not to smirk, try not to let on any of my usual self. I run my fingers through her hair and place my hand firmly on the back of her neck. “Take off your pants for me, Natalie. All the way. Then kick them aside.” I kiss her again. Her lips are soft, yielding, not hesitant like they were before.
 

“But I—” She bites her lip, as if she’s suddenly shy about her body. I think for a second that she’s going to stop, but then she pulls down her leggings right to the top of her hips, and it’s a fucking perfect sight. She pulls them all the way down and kicks them to the side, just like I asked her to do.
 

“Good girl,” I say, and I lead her over to the wall by her bedroom, my hand never leaving her neck.
 

“What are you doing, Josh?” She looks at me, and the flush has grown deeper, redder.
 

“You’ll need the wall for support, or you’ll fall the fuck over.” I move my hand to the front of her neck and gently push her against the wall. She doesn’t resist, and I feel her throat move in a swallow under the flesh of my palm. “I’d keep my hand here, sweetheart, if I had a hand to spare, but I don’t.”
 

“Josh,” she whimpers, and I smile. She’s pretty much naked, except for the shirt and bra on top of her perfect tits, and I like that just where it is. It frames her tits—and that works, because they’re a fucking masterpiece. I move my hand down to her hip, squeezing hard before sliding my palm between her thighs and feeling the sopping wetness along her slit. She melts into me, pushing against my hand.
 

“I’m in charge,” I growl, my voice rough. The beast inside me—the one that was in control of me for so long—comes out when I feel her. I let it out as I move my fingers over her pussy, carefully avoiding her clit.
 

“Jesus,” she says, and I know she’s probably not calling on the lord. I chuckle and keep running my fingers over her pussy, nearly touching her clit on every second stroke. But I’m still avoiding it. I know that the flesh there is sensitive, that she feels vibrations of need every time I near that sensitive bundle of nerves. “Please, Josh, oh fuck, stop doing this...”

“Please what? Should I take my hand away—or am I not understanding you?”
 

“Please, please, make me come. I can’t handle it anymore.”
 

I gently press my thumb against her clit when she says please in that breathy little voice, and I lean in close, kissing her again and listening to her breath grow short. Her skin is flushed bright pink, and her lips are pliant and willing against mine. Goosebumps rise on her flesh as I begin to circle her clit, and I savor each moment of this sweet memory because I know it might not happen again. She’s likely to come to her senses by tomorrow, to kick me out when she realizes I’ve healed enough to take care of myself on my own. Now, though, she’s mine.
 

“Natalie, look at me,” I say. Her eyes flutter closed as I circle my thumb faster, harder, more insistent. Then she looks at me, her eyes faraway, lost in her secret world of desire. “I want to see your face, baby.”
 

I shift position and slip two fingers inside of her, then press my palm against her clit and rock it back and forth. All the while, I watch her face, listen to her breath as it catches in her throat. She lets out an exquisite, soft moan, the kind I’ve imagined she might make when I enter her for the first time. The very thought of taking her like that for the first time sends sparks through my body, and I feel wired, my body and brain buzzing with electricity. I want her now, but tonight’s about her. Slowly, I begin to move my fingers back and forth, tapping her g-spot softly with every thrust inside. Her embarrassment is gone now, and in its place there’s only desire, slickness, readiness. Her pussy throbs against my fingers, and she’s moaning, crying out, saying my name low and soft and quick.
 

“Come for me, Natalie.” The words come out like a command.

“Fuck, Josh, oh God,” she says. She moans longer, louder, and I cover her mouth with mine as her pussy tightens and pulses against my fingers. She pushes down, bucking hard against my hand, her back arching away from the wall.
 

“You coming for me, baby? You like that?” She nods her head as the climax starts to wash away from her body, the pulses coming slower now, like she’s cooling down. I watch as she begins to snap back to her senses, her gaze growing sharper, more skeptical. I draw my hands away, and try to stretch out my arm like Nat has shown me. It aches from twisting my body, from bending it out of the position it should be in, but it was worth it to see her face when she came for me.
 

“I have a shift tomorrow, pretty early,” she says and pulls her shirt down. The shirt barely covers her ass, and my dick throbs. She pauses for a moment.
 

“You need rest,” I say. “I know.”
 

“I don’t know what this is,” she says, raising a hand to my cheek and then letting her finger trail down to my torso, sending shivers through my body. “But you can sleep in my bed. If you want to. I don’t have a condom...” She looks down, and runs her fingers through her hair. When she looks back up at me, the shirt pulls up again, and I can see the sweet, soft lines of her body. I’ve never taken anything slow—if this could be considered slow, anyway. I don’t want to take anything slow, and I don’t want to wait. But I nod, and she holds my hand, walking me into the bedroom.

I’m nervous when I take Josh into my bedroom. My body and mind are still buzzing with what we just did—with what he did to me. Josh has been the fantasy—the one that got away, or well, the one that ran away—for three years. There were missed chances a hundred times, crossed wires, and the quiet violence of living with our parents. We were always drawn together, from the time we were fifteen, the children of addicts. For so long, we were just surviving, and now, we’re together again, finally living out the chance we never took.
 

I pull my bra off and toss it to the floor, and I wonder if I should bother putting on panties. Josh stares at me, watches me as I grab a pair from my dresser, pulling them on under my shirt. I blush and slide onto the bed.

“It’s okay,” he says. “We can just sleep.” His eyes are still on me, and from what I could feel when he had me in his hands, his cock was pretty damn hard. My body pulses, screams out for him. But my mind hesitates. When I look at Josh, I don’t see what other women see. They see how cut and hard his body is, how graceful and fluid he is when he fights. But I see the man who missed my college graduation because he was hungover, and I see the man who walked away from me when I asked him to stay. I see other parts of his history too—the kindness underneath his arrogant exterior, the hurt he suffered when he was kicked out of this very house. After tonight, after getting to know Josh again, after starting to understand that he’s changing, my feelings are mixed up, confused.
 

He climbs into bed beside me and gathers me in his arms, then puts his lips to mine. I melt into him and try to clear my mind of the past, banish all the pain. It’s easy when his arms around me, when he’s here with me. I nearly drift into sleep several times, but his presence seems to demand my attention. The electricity buzzes in my veins, and soon, I’m wide awake, heat pulsing through me. Josh is nearly asleep when I start trailing my finger over the ridges of his abs, following the trail down to the waistband of his shorts. I gulp when I think about how he commanded me to come, and the heat comes crashing into me in waves. Gently, slowly, I tug at the waistband of his shorts, pulling them down over his hips. He groans and shifts so that he’s on his back, and his eyes pop open.
 

“Nat, what are you up to?” He grins, and I keep pulling down his shorts until he’s able to kick them to the side. Josh’s cock is still hard as a rock, and shit, it’s fucking
big
.
 

I wrap my hand around the base of it and then move my hand higher until I brush my thumb over the head. “Repaying the favor.”

“It wasn’t a favor. It was—”

I hold up one hand to stop him and stroke him with the other. “We can talk about what it was in the morning.” Josh groans and nods. I run my fingers up and down his length, exploring the map of his skin, its smoothness, its heat. I push aside the whole of our history as my hand moves over his cock, and soon enough, I’m not thinking about anything at all besides the man in front of me. Kneeling beside him, I kiss him hard as I stroke him and then move my mouth over his neck, and down lower, to the head of his cock.
 

“Natalie,” he moans, grabbing a fistful of my hair. My spine tingles as I run my tongue over his hard length, coming back up to the head and taking it into my mouth again. I run my tongue over it, its taste salty and alkaline all at once, and I bend over, taking as much of him as I can all at once, all the way back to my throat. It’s been a while—a long while—since I’ve been this intimate with anyone, but it feels right, natural with Josh, like it’s what we both needed all along. He groans as I take him in, and he tugs my hair gently, controlling the rhythm, showing what he wants from my mouth.
 

“Nat, I’m going to come, baby, just like that.” His words come low and soft, and I feel his body tighten, begging for relief from deep inside. “Fuck, that’s good, baby,” he says, tightening his hold on my hair. I take him in all the way, listening to his groans as he comes.
 

Before we both fall asleep, I wonder if Josh is the force of nature that drew me back here—because, a week ago, I never would have expected anything like this.

***

I wake hours later, sometime near dawn. But dawn is a fuzzy thing in the late summer, and I wonder what the hell time it is, and exactly how long I have before my shift at ten. They shouldn’t do this to me—schedule me for back-to-backs, but the hospital is understaffed, and the administration is all about taking advantage of the residents desperate enough to come here.
 

“Josh,” I mumble and roll over, expecting his body to be in the space next to mine. But it’s not. The bed is empty, save for Beatrice, who purrs steadily behind the crook in my legs. My pulse quickens.
 

Is he gone? Was this too much? No, it couldn’t have been. He was the one who—

I lay still in the darkness and listen for movement in the house.
 

“Yeah, okay, Katy, I get it,” I hear Josh say. Footsteps follow. It sounds like he’s walking on the hardwood floors, his movements quick and rhythmic. Then he stops, and I hear him talking again. Slowly, I get out of bed and walk over to the door, careful to be silent. The door is open a crack, and I listen. His voice sounds agitated, and his words are so quick and low that I can barely make out what he’s saying.
 

“Of course he wants me to train, okay. But Ash—” I catch that much and then Josh’s voice goes low again. “Katy, I told you not to call me. I’m at—”

Who the fuck is Katy?
I swallow hard. Something that feels like jealousy curdles inside my chest, and I want to growl, stomp across the room and grab the phone from his hand. But I have no more claim on him than any other woman he’s messed with, even if I’ve taken him in, even if I stitched his cuts closed. And even if I worry about him more and want him more, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.
 

Closing my eyes for a moment, I think of his first fight. I went, of course, because we were both dumb and seventeen, and he was my best friend. He’d begged me to come for weeks after Daddy kicked him out and Josh decided to run to the peninsula and make his own way in life. When I got there, he was talking to some other girl, brushing her dark red—probably dyed—hair behind her ear. She was taller than me, and prettier, and her tits were bigger than mine. I stayed and watched the fight anyway, and I cheered for Josh the whole time, whooping along with the crowd when he won. But afterwards, he didn’t acknowledge me, didn’t come find me. He walked off backstage with that girl, and I was pretty damn sure he wasn’t just showing her the locker room.
 

It would have hurt less if I hadn’t thought that
I
would be that girl, that the night of Josh’s fight would be the night he finally kissed me. I didn’t want to lay claim to him—I just wanted him to kiss me, to make me feel that fluttery feeling I’d always felt when I was close to him, but more.

It seems like you got what you wanted last night, Nat,
I think. I watch Josh as he moves. The movements of his left arm are almost normal, even though he’s been refusing to wear his sling. It leaves me wondering if he was faking his balance the other morning, if he was trying to get me to stay around, trying to get that kiss out of me.
Fuck if I know. This is a man I do not understand.