He let me down, making sure to hold my body against his as he did so, and my dress rode up around my hips while I touched every single hard plane of his body. Including the erection I felt pressing out of his jeans.
Wide-eyed, I glanced up at him, and he had the audacity to wink. “I’ve been hard for you since I saw you in that dress, Parker. What do you expect from me?”
“Let me go, Remy.” The order fell flat, however, when he dropped a soft kiss to my lips and then got down on his knees.
“Shush, Parker.” Before I could protest, Remy had my black lace panties down around my ankles and his face pressed against my clit.
“Fuck.” I groaned and then slapped one hand over my mouth to silence my moans. The other I used to grab a chunk of Remy’s hair and pulled. His muffled moan of pleasure only made my body respond even more to his actions.
Within a minute, his fingers and tongue had me up against the biggest orgasm I’d seen in a month. Pushed against the wall next to my front door, with the orgasm waiting right there for me to grab, I arched my back so that he’d hit exactly where I needed. So close, so fucking close. And then he stopped suddenly, and I heard the sound of footsteps on the street, along with the jangling of a dog’s collar. Remy stood up abruptly, grabbed me, and carried me around the side of the house on the wraparound porch, into the darkness where no one would see us. Logically, I knew why he had stopped and moved us, but my body didn’t want that. I wanted him to finish what he started, before we ran out of time.
I growled, low in my throat, and Remy chuckled against my thigh. But he got back to it, sucking on the most sensitive part of my body until I shattered right there in his arms. When my knees buckled, he caught me in his arms and held me tight against his body. By the time I’d come back to myself, Remy had fixed my clothing and was staring longingly at my breasts.
“Next time,” he promised them as he stood up. “I have to go let Daisy out, or she’ll eat my couch again.”
I shook my head, clearing the haze of pleasure that had filtered in, obstructing any logic. “There won’t be a next time.”
Except, as Remy wiped my juices from his mouth onto the back of his hand and smiled down at me, I knew that I was lying. The bulge in his pants and the way he’d made me climax in less than two minutes against a wall outside my house called me out as the liar I was.
The silent threat in his eyes both terrified me and sent a shiver of excitement down my spine at the same time.
Jeremy Townsend was my kryptonite, and I just hoped I had the strength to walk away when he was done with me.
14
Remy
Daisy walked at my side up the sidewalk of Parker’s house and sat dutifully as I knocked on the door. I’d never been so nervous in my life. Three deployments, eight years in the Marine Corps, and all the experience I had as a cop, and I felt like everything led me to this one particular moment in time.
Nox answered the door with a smile on his face and the same suit he’d been wearing earlier at his concert. The only thing missing was his father’s Purple Heart. “You’re here?” He turned and shouted into the living room. “Moooom. Uncle Remy is here!” Then he was off like a rocket, and all of the nerves had vanished in a puff of smoke.
Parker wasn’t wearing the same dress she’d been wearing earlier. Instead, she had on another pair of tight black leggings and a dark-green shirt. One that looked suspiciously like it had belonged to me in high school. Even with the curves that Parker had now, my shirt still hung well down past her hips.
“Is that my shirt?” I blurted the question, unable to take my eyes off her.
She looked down, tilting her head to the side as she thought about it for a second. Then she gripped the hem and held the shirt out to inspect it like she was wearing a bib or something, and I was teased with the image of her bare skin and the bottom of her unbound breasts.
“Yeah,” she said, and I realized I’d completely forgotten the question while I thought about getting her naked beneath me again. “I think I stole it from you senior year.”
She righted the shirt, thankfully, and turned toward the kitchen where I saw Nox going to town on a bowl of ice cream topped with caramel and fudge.
“What are you doing here, Remy?” She took a step closer to me while she tried to keep our conversation quiet. “You need to go.”
“No,” I told her. “Not gonna happen. As much as I want to get you naked and beneath me, we need to talk. Straighten some shit out. I knew if I left you alone for too long, you’d get it in your head that I’m using you for something sexual. So now, you’re stuck with me and Daisy for a little while tonight. After Nox goes to bed, we can talk.” I waggled my eyebrows at her. “After, we can maybe get naked and have fun or something.”
“Not gonna happen,” she mimicked me, rolling her eyes as she said it. Then her gaze fell on the flag on her wall, and the dog tags hanging beneath them. A dramatic sigh, one that seemed to be pulled from her toes all the way through her body, escaped Parker’s lips. “Fine. You can stay. But after we talk, you’re going home.”
“Mom,” Nox said from the doorway with Daisy sitting at his side like he was her owner. “I’m giving Daisy a bowl of ice cream. Is that okay?”
I nodded in response before Parker could tell him not to do it. “She’s a sucker for ice cream. No chocolate, though, okay?”
Nox took off without giving me an answer and Daisy followed him, her tail wagging and her tongue hanging out of her mouth.
“Have a seat,” Parker offered. “I’ll only be a little bit. Nox just has to finish dessert and then get ready for bed.”
She walked away, leaving me standing in the living room like a jackass. I took one look at the couch in the living room and decided that wasn’t on the table for me. Instead, I followed her into the kitchen and paused at the doorway, doing my best not to interfere in their nighttime ritual. Daisy, however, had no such compunction. She plopped herself in front of Nox, happily lapping the vanilla ice cream he’d put into a bowl for her.
While Parker washed the dishes and Nox chattered with Daisy about his concert and what he’d done for the day, I got to imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn’t pushed Parker away all those years ago.
Parker’s dress matched my eyes, and I knew she’d picked it out on purpose. Parker did that type of shit, and it made her happy, so I didn’t call her on it. She stood there, at the edge of the party, and waited for me to pay attention to her. Like my eyes hadn’t been glued on her the entire evening.
“Don’t know why you insist on coming to these things.” I handed her a cup of soda because she didn’t drink. “You never really enjoy yourself.”
“You graduated boot camp, Remy.” Her voice filled me with images of her underneath me, completely naked. The same way I’d seen her in my dreams every single night of training. “We have to celebrate.”
A glimmer in her eye, one I hadn’t seen there before, had my heart skipping a beat. I followed her outside, like the lovesick fool I was, and hoped that she wasn’t about to ruin our entire lives. Our friendship was the most important thing to me, and the thought of losing it, of losing her, kept me from ever making a move. Kept me from making her mine.