Page 2 of Veiled in Brick

“Zoey’s offering to give your brother head,” she told him.

“Ah,” Luke voiced, scrunching up his slim nose in distaste as he poured a liquor with a milky consistency into both glasses before him. “Yeah, that tracks.”

This was our ritual.

I won’t even try to lie—I wanted James. Bad. The brown hair I could wrap my hands in…the tattoos…the muscles…the beard…it was all too enticing. I frequently imagined that I could climb his arms like tree branches and wrap my thighs around his head until he suffocated in the most glorious, glorious death imaginable, but James had made it clear over the past several months that he wasn’t interested in a one-night-stand. Or a one-morning-stand. Or a one-afternoon-stand. Any kind of stand, really—trust me, I checked. It had been so long of us rinsing and repeating this same song and dance that the man even knew my birth control regimen because damn if I could get him to cave for one goddamn second, then we wouldn’t have to waste any time before he could just fuckin’ stick me already.

But he wanted a goddamn date…and because I just don’t do romance, I was forced to turn him down time and time again.

It was a challenge, to say the least, to continually deny a man who looked like he could throw me over his shoulder and onto his bed with a flick of his wrist. Especially when I was in the driest spell of my life. I used to have sex. Glorious sex. Toe curling sex. Sex that could make one want to believe in a god. Those times were almost an entire year behind me though, and to say that I was chomping at the bit for any sort of sexual interaction would have been a massive understatement.

Luke grabbed the two drinks he had prepared from the bartop and began to walk his way behind Claire, looking at his brother with a sympathetic glance.

“Liam’s right. Let it go, Jay—it’s a bad idea.”

“A bad idea?” I interjected sharply.

Luke exhaled heavily and halted his steps as Claire chuckled, “Oh, baby, you said the wrong thing.”

Luke looked to Liam with a silent, “Help me,” and Liam shook his head vigorously from side to side.

“I—um,” Luke stammered, his grey eyes wide from his sheer aversion to confrontation. He lifted the two small glasses in his hands. “These are getting warm.”

He scurried away and Claire smirked, saying, “I think what Luke’s trying to say is that you both have…different goals when it comes to relationships.”

I grumbled, “Relationships.”

“Exactly my point,” Claire retorted with a grin and glanced at James as she said, “Zoey doesn’t want a relationship. You are a relationship guy.”

James’ eyes rolled to the ceiling. “You say this because of the wife thing.”

She snorted. “Because you were married. Yeah.”

None of us, with the exception of Luke, had met James’ illusive ex-wife, Allison. Any conversation of her would sharply drift off course with James’ direction and, according to Luke, there was no need to pry. Allison was as out of the picture as a girl who had once signed lifelong papers with a man could have been.

“Only time I’ve seen Alli in the past year was to meet up and discuss legal paperwork,” James argued. “The divorce shit is lingering, but we’ve been separated for…fuck, I don’t even remember how long at this point. Year and a half, probably.”

Claire snatched the empty lowball glass that resided in front of him.

“Right.” She poured three fingers of his preferred whiskey instead of his usual two and pushed the glass back to him as she stated, “And you haven’t had a rebound in that time either.”

He scoffed, and I cooed, “Are you looking for a rebound, Jay?”

James looked at me with a gentle smile. “No, Zoey. I’m not looking for a rebound.”

“If you were,” I replied, “you do know that I’m here, yes? With legs wide open?”

Liam choked on his beer, the sound of him sputtering with a deep cough not lost on my ears. He spoke in a few choice words, but they all turned to incoherent chatter as James leaned down to speak to me quietly.

“How about,” his beard scratched at my neck as he moved his lips, and I had to force myself to contain a shudder, “I take you out. If it goes well—and I mean if—then I’ll show you what I really want.”

He said the last few words in a gritty tone that shot a jolt right through me, and I felt my lips stretch into a wide smile. It was the most sexually forward that James had ever been with me, and the feeling was gratifying as all hell. My will to continually tell James no when it came to his dating inquiries had withered away to almost nothing over the past few months—I hadn’t admitted that aloud, sure, but it was true. And now, with the sound of his gravelly voice still fresh in my mind and resonating between my legs, any of my remaining apprehension melted away.

I whispered back in as sultry of a tone as I could manage, “Are you compromising with me?”

James’ shoulders shook in a near-silent, husky laugh, and he leaned back to view my expression.

“Maybe.”

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