Brody stiffens beside me, and not in the good way. He stays quiet and stoic while Shayanne rings up my purchases and puts them in a bag with her business card. “Call or text me anytime . . . about anything.” She pauses and adds, “Oh, and for real, let me know if there’s a specific date you want the cake. Or if my soonest availability works for you, that’ll be about four days from now.”
Brody grabs my hand, asking Shayanne, “Think you can handle teardown on your own?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, asshole. I can fold a folding table and shove it in the back of the truck. I’m almost sold out of everything, anyway.”
And before I can tell her goodbye, Brody is dragging me away.
I let him for a few steps, understanding the need to escape family sometimes even though you love them, but quickly, my strides become no match for his and I have to pull at his hand. “Slow down, Cowboy.”
He spins in place, pulling me against him. I have to look up and he has to look down, but somehow, he doesn’t make me feel less-than or weak.
“Lil Bit, that whole thing was weird as fuck, but the main thing I picked up on is that Emily seemed fine with this. True?” His jaw is clenched, tension woven through his muscles as he waits for me to agree.
“True.”
“You didn’t call. You still good with this?”
“I thought about you last night. Got a few ideas. Maybe more than a few . . . if you’re game?”
Heat flickers across his face as his eyes dart to my lips like he wants to taste those words. I think he’s going to do it, kiss me right here to learn all my dirty thoughts, but he growls and starts his speed-walking again.
Now, I can see it for what it really is. He’s not escaping his family. He’s desperately trying to get us alone to pick up where we left off.
And I am one hundred percent onboard for that plan. “My truck’s parked over there.”
Chapter 9
Brody
“No one’s here?” I couldn’t care less if there’s a garage full of people at Cole Automotive as we pull up. I’ll fuck Erica right here in her truck, against any vehicle in one of those bays, and do it with a whole audience of customers if that’s who’s inside there.
I’m that desperate for her.
I’m not a manwhore, not with all the time, energy, and focus I’ve put into keeping my family afloat. So I’m used to going a long while between hookups.
But she has me boiling inside, hungry in a way I don’t know I’ve ever felt. I have this bone-deep need to know how she feels under my hands, what sounds she makes, what her face looks like when she’s lost to pleasure. And I want her fingertips on my skin, branding me as hers, if only for a moment.
It’s been almost thirty-six hours since I last kissed her. Too long by a mile. But it’s like we just blinked because all that fire we stoked up has reignited into an inferno, threatening to take us both under. I want to be consumed by her, turned to ash by her, and burn her up too. Fucking someone has never seemed as life or death as it does right now. Stupidly dramatic, but also absolutely true.
“Shop closed at three so everyone’s gone home. I live upstairs.” She throws the truck in park and is out before I have a chance to bolt around and open her door. But I don’t think she cares about the lack of gentlemanly politeness because she’s dragging me by my T-shirt toward the garage door.
She makes quick work of the up and down, throwing the latch again so we’re secure. And she’s mine. Judging by the greedy look in her eyes, I’m hers too.
“Come on,” she says as she guides me toward a door across the room, on the other side of the garage.
I can’t wait. Alone with her is more than enough for me. I push her against the door, gripping her jaw to lift it as I bend forward to meet her. There’s no battle for dominance. It’s an acceptance that we’re both in charge as we consume each other. Her tongue forces its way into my mouth, and I groan at the invasion, loving how aggressive she is, that she demands that I give as much as she is.
We kiss our way through the door into a breakroom, our hands roving and learning. As we take a split second to gasp for air, I consider the table in the middle of the room. Laminated fake-wood top on metal legs like they used to have at school—definitely sturdy enough for her to lie on, but I’ll break it for sure. I’m happy to stand and fuck her laid back on that table, though.
“No. I’m not having sex where my guys eat their lunch.”
Shit. When she says it like that, I don’t want her pussy anywhere near there, either. She points at another door and I let her lead me that way. A set of stairs is revealed, and she takes them two at a time, even with her short legs. With me a few steps behind her, I have a great view, and I grab her hips, stopping her.
She looks back, a smirk on her pink lips when she sees where my attention is centered. The seductive minx bends forward, her hands going to a step as she presses that tiny ass out toward me.
I spin my hat backward so it’s out of the way and lay a kiss to a thigh toned by hard work, thanking the devil himself for these cutoff shorts because only he would be this perverted. I press a matching kiss to the other thigh, tracing the skin from her ankles to her ass with my callused hands. I roughly knead the flesh of her hips and ass in my hands over the denim, now cursing its existence because it’s keeping me from the rest of her. Luckily, they’re short, especially when she’s bent nearly in half. My fingertip teases along the soft skin at the ripped edge, dipping underneath when she dances and sways her hips.
“More. Finger me.” There’s a breathiness to her voice I’ve never heard before. Not even when we kissed after the battery exchange. This is a new Erica. Needy, desire-filled, sex goddess Erica.
I love that she’s bold and tells me plainly what she wants. No gimmicks, no games, no guessing.
That doesn’t mean I do as she says. I’m not one of the people she bosses around, and she needs to know that. I keep tracing along that hem, getting further and further under the denim until I find her panties. Then I run my fingertips along that edge too, and she arches, fucking air as she searches for the ‘more’ she wants.
Her fingers work the button at her waist and she shoves her shorts down. When my hands get in the way, I move and the denim falls to meet her Converse sneakers, revealing grey cotton bikinis. Plain and sensible, and sexy as fuck on her.
But when she steps her feet as wide as the shorts around her ankles allow, I can see the wet spot on those panties and my cock goes iron-hard as all my blood rushes south. She’s wet for me, and fuck, do I want to deserve it. My thumbs graze along the soft skin peeking out at her core as I bury my nose there, inhaling her. I groan against her, and even that slight vibration has her begging for more.
Not.
Any other woman would. But not Erica Cole.
No, she balances herself on one hand and slips the other into her panties, petting herself if I won’t do it. “Fuck, that’s sexy. But let me.” I slide her panties to the side, watching for a moment longer before slowly licking a long line from her fingers over her clit all the way up to the rosebud of her ass. She bucks, her hips as demanding as her mouth.