Sympathy for the Devil (International Bad Boys Book 4) (2 page)

Whatever she wanted, he’d give it to her. His lips at her neck? Yes. On the curve of her breast, pushing fabric aside to find her nipple and tease it to hardness? Yes. An element of punishment in his touch, for making him want her enough to betray his brother?

Yes.

No thought but the slaking of hunger as he leaned back against the cushions, drawing her with him, his hands beneath her dress. More kisses then, so much more skin as she straddled him and gasped when he settled her right where he wanted her to be, tucked up tight against the solid line of his dick, his hands riding low on her hips and his thumbs circling over her skin, skating over the fabric of her bikini at first, feathery circles until he could no longer stand it and slipped his thumb beneath.

She was slick and warm and perfect, so perfectly responsive but he needed that verbal yes. He needed her to know what she was doing. “Is this what you want from me?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

“You planning on comparing me to my brother?”

“There’s no comparison.”

He’d never in his life been so blindingly hard, his body no longer his to command. Her swimwear headed south. His board-shorts came undone, and there were things to consider like protection, and betrayal, but his brain wasn’t working. “Bree,” he began as she crawled into his lap and took him in hand and showed him where she wanted him to be. “We need—

This.

She sank down onto him and every good intention he’d ever harbored got lost beneath the onslaught of tight-hot-slick and above all,
virginal
, and the heat running rampant through his blood. “Was that . . . ?”

“Shut up.”

“But—”

“Heaven help me, Caleb. Don’t start.”

“But you’ve never—”

“No. Not before now. Not with anyone. Only you.” She kissed him slow and sweet and he kind of lost track of his objection. Little slides, slow and restrained as he worked her open, he knew that much about how these things should proceed, he’d done this before. Never with a virgin. Dear heaven, Bree was a virgin.

Or had been.

“Does it hurt?” he muttered, because he wasn’t small and Bree was pretty slight.

“No.” Her mouth told him one thing while her eyes told him another.

“You should have said. We could have gone slow.”

“I don’t want slow.”

“Yeah, but what you want and what you need might not be the same thing,” he offered raggedly, and tried his damnedest to bring his body under control and make it good for her. Open kisses, slick and breathy. Tiny movements of his hips against hers, an incremental grind and his cock hard and aching. Still tight, so tight, but the pleasure when finally he pulled out and then slid smoothly back in . . .

The way she shuddered all around him . . .

“Protection.” First and foremost, it didn’t seem to be happening.

“Covered.”

Not
that
covered. And so
so
good to go bare.

The cushions squeaked beneath them, a counterpoint to breathy cries and bitten-off moans. He was done talking. Done closing his eyes and trying to pretend that this wasn’t happening. A thousand stolen glances had gotten them to this point, betrayal in each and every one of them. And let’s not get him started on what he’d imagined in his dreams.

He wanted this.

He took it.

Faster now, to match the thumping bass drifting up from the party below. Bree’s hair in his fist and in his face—moonlight all around them and dust motes in the air—and he’d never had sex like this before, buried so deep, all the way to his balls, every piece of him crazy for her—mind, body and soul.

She could have been a dancer, the way she moved, the grace she possessed.

She could have been an angel, that smile, right there, as she took his hand and brought it to her center, reminding him of her pleasure.

“Wanted to see you like this,” she whispered. “Not scowling at me or condemning me. Not locked down so tight you were like a blank page. So impossibly beautiful, Caleb. You don’t know what you do to people.”

Apparently he betrayed them, but he didn’t tell her to stop. He never wanted her to stop.

She came on his cock, a writhing creature of passion and flame and he followed her willingly into heaven, into hell.

First time he ever realized they could be one and the same.

Caleb figured out how to breathe again in the aftermath. He held a trembling Breanna through the twitches that shuddered through their bodies and the blissful lethargy that followed. He shifted up, his back to the wall, still cradling her in his lap as he buried his hands in her hair and his face in her neck, trying to find her beneath the heavy scent of sex. He kissed her, over and over. Long, drugging kisses that felt like worship and sorrow and goodbye.

And then a tear tracked down her face and then another and he caught them with his lips and soothed with his tongue. “Hey . . . ” he murmured. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, and shot him a watery smile. “We’re good.”

Perhaps they had different definition of the word good. His didn’t usually involve tears. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.” Her arms around his neck tightened and her lips found his skin. “No.”

“Then why the tears?”

“I just—I’ve never had a moment like that one. So perfect, Caleb. I wanted it. I feel like I’ve stolen it. I loved it, and I’m never going to tell a soul. Makes me want to cry.”

He took a deep breath and laid his heart out before her, just in case she hadn’t notice that it was already hers. “I don’t mind if people know.”

But she was already scrambling off him and shaking her head as she did so. “No. You don’t have to do that.”

“Cutter’ll get over it.” Probably. Eventually.

“No! Don’t
do
that for me. You’re staying here and so’s he and you need each other. Protect the relationships you need.”

“Doesn’t have to be that way, Bree.”

“Yes, it
does
, can’t you see? I’m already gone. Don’t mess up your life for me when I won’t even be here. Don’t tell anyone, Caleb. Please. I’m not asking for me.”

They stared at each other in silence and then finally he shrugged. “Your call.”

She got her clothes on fast and so did he. She stood in front of him, all big eyes and silent pleading, and he did his best to smooth down her hair and make her look as if she hadn’t just been loved to excess. He took her face in his hands and kissed her and watched in silence as her eyes filled back up with tears.

“I won’t regret this,” she told him fiercely. “I will always think of you with love and with pleasure. Can you . . . will you do the same for me?”

“You’re killing me, Bree.”

“You go through girls like crazy. I’m just one more.”

“Is that what you think?” She was Cutter’s girl—or had been. His brother was his closest friend and until this moment Caleb had stood shoulder to shoulder with him on everything. Did she really not see what kind of hold she had on him?

Guess not.

He smiled crookedly. “There’s a washroom just to the left of the stairs, once you get down.”

She probably knew where it was already but she nodded, kissed him one last time with a savoring intensity that threatened to drop him to his knees, and headed for the door.

She looked back, just once, and in that moment he thought that maybe, just maybe, she loved him with the same wild intensity that he loved her.

And then, she was gone.

*     *     *

He waited five
minutes, maybe ten, head bowed and eyes closed—trying to make sense of what had just happened, what he’d risked besides his heart and what he’d lost. He picked up the bottle of scotch and picked at the label for a while before taking a long pull of bitterness, and then he hurled it against the wall and watched it smash to smithereens.

A waste of good alcohol.

Satisfying, though.

He ran his hands over his face and headed for the stairs, skipping the last few steps the way he always did, to land at the bottom with jarring speed. He looked up to find Eli watching him from the shadows of the slipway wall.

Nothing to see here, brother. Nothing to see.

Except that Eli always had been able to see beneath the surface to the bones beneath.

Caleb watched as a range of emotions flitted over his little brother’s face. Incredulity, condemnation, resignation—step by heart-rending step, the fracturing of a brother’s trust.

“Was she worth it?” his brother asked bleakly as Caleb drew closer and Caleb was hard pressed not to deck his little brother where he stood. Only the knowledge that none of this was Eli’s fault stayed his hand.

His doing. His choice. His mistake and he owned it.

“She was to me.”

Ten years later . . .

“G
uess who I
saw down the street today?” said Cutter as he strolled into the boat house, the daily paper in one hand and a bag full of what had better be breakfast for them all in the other. The Jackson boat building shed was a big old wooden structure with a slipway that dominated three quarters of the total space and a long narrow working area to the south that was split roughly into three. Caleb and the scuba equipment held prime position closest to the water for easy in and out. Eli and his computers and his drafting boards came next, and Cutter and his cluttered benches full of tools and engine parts dominated the back. It wasn’t an ideal setup by any means, what with Eli’s endless bitching about the dirt and the dust and the general need for design-plans-on-paper to stay clean, but they’d put him in a shiny new office in town once and you’d have sworn someone had cut off his air.

“Who’d you see?” Caleb asked as he uncoupled the now full scuba tank from the refill tank and reached for the next one. He had half-a-dozen divers heading out to Shark Rock to dive the cave this morning and he wanted their equipment ready to go. “Elvis? Thor? Wait . . .
Batman
?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Eli grumped from his seat in front of the computer.

Cutter dumped a wrapped burger on the bench beside Eli. “Aw, baby, don’t be mean. I even got them to put extra pickles on your burger, just the way you like it. I’ve already thanked you for crewing for me. What more do you need?”

Eli rolled his eyes and reached for the burger.

They’d all three of them been out on the trawler last night, courtesy of two of their regular deck hands going down with food poisoning. They’d returned before dawn, just in time to start in on their regular workloads for the day, which for Eli meant boat design and for Caleb meant dives at eleven-o-clock and again at two. Cutter had gone to get them all some breakfast.

Cutter handed Caleb what had better be a works burger with extra pickles too, the egg over easy and only a squirt of barbeque sauce, and tilted his head in their younger brother’s direction. “What’s with him?”

“Zoey wants him to model a superhero costume she’s just made for one for one of her clients.
Way
too much Lycra, brother. Eli refused. Argument ensued.”

“Best sister-in-law
ever
,” said Cutter with a grin. Zoey was a costume designer by trade and a beloved addition to the Jackson family unit. Cutter liked her taste for dragging Eli into ridiculous situations almost as much as he loved her taste in hats. “How come she didn’t ask you?”

“She did,” said Eli. “He refused too.”

“Brotherly solidarity.” Cutter nodded sagely. “I can work with that.”

Course he could. Loyalty to his brothers was embedded in Cutter’s DNA. “Who’d you see down the street?”

“Bree Tucker. Honey blonde hair. Big brown eyes. Brains. Lit out of here after high school without a backward glance after getting some amazingly good exam results. Remember her?”

“I remember.” Caleb set about unwrapping his burger, slow and easy, while his heart thundered uncomfortably in his chest. Heaven help him, he remembered. “She here for long?”

“Hard to say. Her father’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer. She’s here while he has his treatment. I told her to drop by and talk to Zoey.” Cutter glanced towards Eli. “Zoey still want those costumes photographed?”