I wasn’t sure what I was doing here. Oren had been downright pushy in his texts. I wasn’t in the mood for pushy. I wanted to be mad at him, at the entire world. I didn’t feel stable enough to be around anyone, but I found a sense of relief as I tromped up the steps to his apartment building and to his front door. No matter how I felt or what mood I was in, I still wanted to be near him.
I knocked once on the door before trying it to find it unlocked. So I let myself in.
Zwinn sent me a sympathetic smile as if they knew everything. Then they pointed down the hall. “He’s in his room.”
I headed that way. As soon as I stepped through the doorway, hungry hands pulled me against a hard, hot chest. He kissed my forehead before grasping the hem of my shirt and yanking it up, over my head.
“I thought this wasn’t a booty call,” I said as I lifted my arms to help him along.
He reached around for the back clasp of my bra. “It’s not. No talking.”
After discarding the bra, he leaned in and kissed the top-most swell of my breasts. Then he removed my pants. Yeah, this sure as hell felt like a booty call to me. I expected him to go for my panties next, but he shocked me senseless when he urged one of his huge T-shirts over my head instead. It smelled like him, and I couldn’t help but to inhale the heady scent.
Then he took my hand and led me to the bed. Once we’d crawled under the covers and he’d positioned my head to rest on his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around my waist, he finally released a sigh and all his muscles loosened under me. “There,” he said, sounding satisfied. “That’s better.”
I smiled and closed my eyes, letting his strong, solid heartbeat echo into my ear. It really was better. But he made it even more amazing by threading his fingers through my hair and rhythmically stroking my long locks.
“Mmm. That feels good.”
I could fall asleep to this, no problem. I could just forget everything and let him take care of me.
And in the morning, my womb would still be barren. My brother would still be in the dark about the greatest relationship of my life, and Oren...Oren still wouldn’t know just how strongly or how long I’d loved him.
“Tell me about your childhood.”
His soft question had me fluttering my eyes open. “Why?”
“Because I want to know. Gamble never talked about it. I knew next to nothing about you, except that you existed, until the day I met you.”
“It’s not very glamorous.”
“I don’t care. I just...I want to know what it was like for you. Had you lived in that trailer house your entire life?”
“No. I mean, yes, we’d always lived in trailer houses, but not that one specifically. We stayed in a little bit nicer, three-bedroom place until Noel left for college. My mom couldn’t keep up with the bills, though, so we downgraded to the one you met us in.”
I felt him nod, but he kept petting my hair as I described my life to him. “Noel basically raised us. My mother was gone a lot, and when she was home, she didn’t pay a lot of attention to us. I remember her snapping at me when Brandt and Colton were little, telling me to keep them quiet because she had a headache or something. Noel buffered a lot. He’s such a natural leader.” I smiled. “Still is, kind of bossy sometimes, but I wouldn’t trade him for the world. He always made sure we were fed and clothed and entertained. Looking back now, I’m amazed by how much work he went through to keep the three of us happy. I mean, he couldn’t do much, but he...he tried, you know. He really tried.”
“He’s a good brother,” Oren murmured.
“The best,” I agreed.
“Were you mad at him when he left for college?”
“No. Not at all.” I remembered how petulant Brandt had been, but I’d known Noel needed to go. I’d been ready to take over and do whatever I had to so he could make something of himself. I’d been so proud my big brother was going to get a college degree with his football scholarship. “I didn’t realize quite how much stuff he took care of until he was gone, though.” Until I’d had to step in and try to do what he’d always done.
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen. And I really tried to use the money he sent home wisely. I paid the bills he told me were the most important first, and I got the groceries we needed, but sometimes...I don’t know. I’d splurge when I shouldn’t have, and I’d get Brandt and Colton some toy they really didn’t need or me a cute outfit that cost way too much. But I kept trying to fix every mistake I made, except each one seemed to set us back just a little bit further.”
“You did the best you could.”
“And yet I never achieved the Noel Gamble level of perfection.”
Against me, Oren snorted. “Who could? Trust me, I played ball with the guy for four years. No one can be as great as ESU’s almighty football star.”
Arching my eyebrows, I rolled around to face him. “Do I detect a bit of jealousy in your voice, sir?”
He shrugged and leaned in to lightly kiss my nose. “Not really, but he did steal all the glory, despite the fact I had to catch most of his damn passes. I’ll tell you now, not all of them were that perfect.”
I moved my hand up his beard stubble. “Well, thank God I’m not the only one put out about the fact he’s so perfect, and I’m not.”
“Hey, I never said I wasn’t perfect. He just has to be...perfecter?”
“You mean, more perfect?”
He shrugged. “I like perfecter better.”
I grinned and snuggled against him.
“Keep talking,” he instructed softly as his hand strummed along my back. “I like learning about you.”
“Well, there’s not much else to say. After Noel left, I progressively started to slip. I grew lonely, stressed, perpetually worried. When Sander Scotini said hi to me one day in school, I was so starved for something to just...take me away from it all, I latched on to his attention like the...the stupid idiot I was.”
Oren tensed under me and his hand stopped moving. “You weren’t stupid. The fucker just knew to strike when you were the most vulnerable.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess. But I really should’ve known better. I should’ve known I didn’t mean anything to someone like him. I should’ve—”
“What the hell ever,” Oren snapped. He rolled me onto my back and rose up to send me a piercing scowl. “You meant to say you should’ve known you were too good for a pansy-ass rich prick like him, right?”
I smiled softly, but glanced away. “I know I’m not too good for anyone—”
“The fuck you’re not.” Grasping my chin, Oren turned my face until I was looking up into his eyes. “You are...amazing. And the only thing that douche did right was fuck everything up for you, because it landed you here. With me.”
I drew in a breath, unexplainably touched by the intensity in his gaze and the fever behind his words. He meant what he said. Tears prickled my eyes, but I blinked them away.
Setting my hand on Oren’s bare chest, I felt the steady thump of his heart under my fingers and marveled at what an amazing heart it could be. “So, you really don’t expect sex right now?” I asked.
He blinked at the question, obviously not expecting it, and maybe not even thinking about it. Then he scowled. “I told you I didn’t in the text, didn’t I? Did you think I was lying?” He sounded a little insulted.
“Well, no.” Hmm, this was strange. “I knew you weren’t lying...when you said it. But now that I’m here...”
He huffed out a breath, definitely insulted. “I know this might sound crazy, but I actually can survive without it for one night.”
“Yeah, but...” I shrugged self-consciously. “Since you’re being all nice, and snuggly, and understanding, I kind of...want it now.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he groaned, tightening his arms around me. “I think my dick just went instantly hard. Like, all the blood rushed south so fast my head is woozy.”
A smile lit my face. “Is it, now?” Instead of reaching up to ma
ssage his woozy head, my hand went south to massage...well, his other head.
The boy was definitely not lying. He was as hard as a rock under my fingers. He groaned as I wrapped my palm around him through his boxer shorts and pumped.
“Goddamn.” He arched under my touch, pushing his hips up against me. “I was prepared to be a noble gentleman and everything. But fuck that.”
“I’d rather you fuck me instead,” I said as I pushed him onto his back and crawled on top of him.
I knew I had to go home eventually and face Noel again, but I avoided it for as long as possible. After I fell asleep in Oren’s arms, I didn’t stir for the rest of the night. I woke to light streaming through the window and his palm cupped possessively around my breast.
He was warm at my back and I just lay there a second, reveling in the feeling of waking up in his bed, with his hands on me. When I drew in a deep, invigorated breath, loving this moment, he stirred behind me, shifting until he was spooned up against me, his morning wood nudging my bare bottom and his fingers reflexively tightening on my breast.
“Damn,” he said on a groan. “I could wake up like this every day. My cock really likes snuggling with your ass.”
I grinned. “Oh, does it? Or does it like this better?” Sitting up, I twisted around to face him, and then I rolled him onto his back so I could kiss my way down his chest and take his erection in my hand. His purple birthmark in the shape of West Virginia looked particularly bright this morning. I loved how he never bothered to hide it from me anymore. We hadn’t been together with the lights off since the demise of Midnight Visitor, and I loved that too. We were open about everything with each other, kept no secrets, and we shared all kinds of things I’d never shared with anyone else in my life.
Wanting to show him just how much he meant to me, I paid his birthmark a little extra attention and licked my way up the side of it before taking the head of his cock into my mouth.
He grasped my hair tight, just the way I liked, and I groaned as I sucked him to the back of my throat.
“Okay, you’re right,” he rasped. “I like waking up this way better.”
I chuckled around a mouthful and proceeded to give him the best head of my life, except he tugged me off him just before he came. Then he rolled me onto my back and gazed in awe at me before picking up one of my legs. Starting at my ankle, he kissed and licked and nibbled his way down until his mouth was on my pussy and his tongue was inside me.
“Oh my God, Oren.” I panted and squeezed handfuls of the sheets under me. “You feel so good. That feels so good.”
He glanced up to ask, “You gonna come?”
“Yes!” I snapped, wishing he’d return his mouth to me, but instead he reared up into a sitting position.
Gazing down at me where I was still lying on my back with my legs, splayed open, he smiled slowly. “You are so fucking gorgeous.”
He grasped one of my legs and then the other. “The first moment I saw you, in nothing but a T-shirt, I looked at these beautiful toned thighs right here,” he lifted them as he spoke, “and I wanted to know what they’d feel like wrapped around me.”
I helped him curl my legs around him. He pushed up onto his knees and then hovered himself above me, aligning us until I felt his heat and hardness against me, ready to enter.
“I saw this mouth,” he went on, “chapped and pale. And I wanted to taste it.” Leaning down, he pressed his lips gently to mine. We breathed each other in until he murmured, “then I looked into your eyes, and...Jesus.”
He pressed his forehead to mine and gazed into my eyes. “What the fuck have you done to me, Caroline?”
He thrust into me, and I gasped out my shock from the initial stretch, so full, so big. Always so big.
“Why couldn’t I stay away from you?” he demanded with another long, slow thrust. “Why can’t I get enough of you?” Thrust. “Why do I want to own every fucking piece of you?” Thrust.
“B-because turnabout’s fair play, I guess.” I grasped his hair to help me absorb the delicious impact of each plunge, but that only seemed to make him pump harder and faster.
With a disbelievingly little laugh, he shook his head. “What’re you saying? That I deserve this because you want me as much as I want you? Impossible. No one could want someone else this much. No one could fucking crave another this much.”
Leaning up, I whispered into his ear. “I do.”
With a tortured groan, he went crazy, fucking me to the mattress with a fervor I loved. I tightened my legs around him, tightened my grip in his hair and kissed him hard.
We attacked each other so savagely that when I came, I bit his tongue. And I think he liked that too.
“Damn.” He panted against my throat as sweat dripped off his temple and onto my shoulder. “That was...that was...”
“Fucking awesome,” I breathed.
He lifted his face and grinned down at me. “Yeah.” Then he blinked, and his brow furrowed. “Do I have to take you home today?”
I shook my head, gladly willing to let him keep me forever. But then I frowned and nodded, realizing reality still awaited us, no matter how long we stayed holed up in his room.
He groaned. “That’s what I was afraid of.” Then he rolled off me and sat up. I wasn’t ready for the absence of his warmth yet, but I hugged myself and sat up too.
We dressed quietly. Oren glanced at me with a wrinkle of concern between his eyes as I slid on my shoes and he grabbed his wallet off his dresser. “You okay?”
I knew he was asking about last night and what I’d learned at the doctor’s office, but I rolled my eyes. “After what just happened, I’m fabulous.”
He chuckled, but not for long. “I’m serious, baby.” Slipping his arms around my waist when I straightened, he pressed his forehead to mine. “I know what the doctor told you wasn’t what you wanted to hear, but...” He sighed. I don’t think he knew what to say next, so he just shrugged. “Fuck, you got me, and I’m probably more to handle than any kid you could have.”
His attempt to cheer me up made me smile. I was so tempted to tell him I loved him, that I’d loved him for months, before I’d ever snuck into his bedroom posing as someone else. But I settled for setting my mouth against his and murmuring, “I’ll take it. Thank you.”
He kissed me back just as lightly before drawing away. “Let’s get you home.”
I followed him from the bedroom, only to smell something really, really good coming from the kitchen. “Oh my God.” I squeezed his arm. “What is that smell?”
He winked back at me. “Saturday mornings with Zwinn. Come and see.”
After drawing me to the opening of the kitchen, he paused beside me and looped an arm around my shoulder. “They cook pancakes and bacon together every week. It’s kind of cute.”
Cute? It was freaking adorable. Quinn and Zoey had their backs to us as they stood at the griddle, one pouring batter in, one flipping pancakes. They talked in hushed tones, and their heads were intimately close. Every couple of seconds, one would touch the other.
I could see them in fifty years still doing this very thing, cooking together and just...reveling in ordinary things, as long as they did them with one another.
“It’s like greeting card precious,” I whispered up to Oren. “I think I’m going to cry.” He snickered and passed me an imaginary tissue. I pretended to accept and wipe my face. “Thank you.”
Zoey turned then. “Oh.” She jumped, and Quinn glanced over. “Caroline! You’re still here.”
“We slept in,” I confessed, though neither of us had once mentioned taking me home last night. I think we both knew I wasn’t going anywhere until morning.
“Since you’re already this late, why don’t you stay for breakfast? We always make plenty.”
I glanced up at Oren, and he answered for me as he stepped into the kitchen. “Sure. She needs to understand why I’m not willing to let either of you move out of this apartment.”
Zoey crinkled him
a confused look. “O...kay.”
So we ate breakfast with Zwinn, and it was nice. Oren cracked his usual off-color jokes, and Zoey updated me on her life since I hadn’t seen much of her lately.
“My biological father keeps asking me to visit him in California where he’s staying this summer. But…I don’t know.”
“I say fuck him,” Oren spoke through a mouthful. “The asshole did nothing while he knew you were being raised by an abusive douchebag. You don’t owe that dick shit.”
I glanced at Quinn, who remained quiet. I had a feeling he probably agreed with Oren, but he would loyally back any decision Zoey made.
“I don’t know,” I murmured thoughtfully. “If I ever had the opportunity to meet my sperm donor, I’d want to, if nothing but for curiosity’s sake. Find out where my chin and eyes and stubborn personality came from.”
“I’ll tell you where your stubborn personality came from.” Oren stood and not only gathered his cleaned plate, but mine too. “That’s all from your brother.”
I watched him load the dishwasher. Not only did his sweetness in taking care of my dish impress me, but I liked how he reminded me that I didn’t need to know how far back my roots went; I knew where I’d come from and who my real family was. Noel. No matter how much his thoughtless words had hurt me yesterday, I loved my big brother and he loved me.
I needed to go home and talk to him.
Once Oren was finished, he dusted his hands on his thighs and turned to me. “Ready to get back?”
Zoey spoke up before I could answer. “Oh, I could take her home, if you want.”
Oren instantly scowled. I liked that he wanted to be the one to drive me home. But then he sighed in defeat and mumbled, “Yeah. That’d probably be best.”
So Zoey ended up driving me home, but not until Oren had yanked me into the hall for a goodbye kiss. “If Gam gives you any shit for staying out all night, call me.”
I grinned up at him and slid my fingers over his sexy scruff. “And what’re you going to do if he does?”
He shrugged and grinned back, rubbing his nose against mine. “I’ll come over and run interference, make him hang out with me or something so he can’t rag on you.”