Page 19 of Forever Finds Us
I stopped short, clapping my hand over my mouth. I couldn’t believe I’d just said that.
“Scratch that. Please don’t imagine that.” Oh my God, Roxi, the shit that comes out of your mouth sometimes is enough to mortify you to death! “I’m sorry. I’m tired. I’m not makin’ sense.”
“Oh no? Makes perfect sense to me.”
Brand moved in front of me. He didn’t laugh this time, and gently, he removed my hand from my mouth and lowered it to my side. The hooded look in his eyes sent shivers down my spine and sparks to my special girl cave.
When he spoke again, I nearly melted and it was still only thirty degrees outside. “Thank God you’re not into him because I can’t imagine it. I don’t want to. What I want to imagine is you in that shower, naked and waitin’ for me, the water running over your body, slipping between your thighs.” When he said it, he looked down at mine, and suddenly, my whole body flushed. I felt like a juicy piece of chicken. All he needed was a bottle of barbeque sauce, and he could slather me up and take a bite.
Breath punched out of my lungs in a rush. “You do?”
“Yes.”
Had I lost my mind, or had his breathing rate sped up too? He looked over my shoulder and turned to make sure there weren’t any other cops or volunteers nearby. There weren’t.
We were completely secluded in the forest.
“Am I alone in this fantasy?” he murmured, the dark surrounding us making his eyes seem even more mysterious than I had already determined them to be, but they sparkled like aquamarine as they searched my face.
“N-no.” The nerdy, tall, basketball-dunking Roxi couldn’t believe what he was saying, but adult Roxi was about to throw down in the dirt with this man. And the fact that he had to tilt his head down to make eye contact with me didn’t hurt one little bit. “I can imagine you too.”
Looking in his eyes was too much. When I did, I thought my heart might beat right out of my chest, so instead, my slow gaze traveled down the cords of his neck to his T-shirt covering his chest beneath the open, red and black fleece-lined flannel jacket the paramedics had returned to him. And when my appreciative study landed on the front of his jeans, nerdy Roxi was quite sure she could detect a bulge thickening beneath them. He still wore his hat backwards, and little flips of soft brown hair licked around its sides.
“Good. Now,” he said, “imagine that same scenario with me. How tall are you? Six-foot? I’m six-two. A perfect fit.”
I whimpered. What else could I do, because the tinge of bossiness in his tone was hot as sin, and I was already picturing it: Brand pressing me to my shower wall, his chest stuck to my back, warm water fusing our bodies together and my hands planted flat on the ceramic tiles, his strong fingers gripping my naked hips, his knees bent just a little as he pounded into me from behind.
Oh God. The ladies at book club would get a kick out of that little daydream. I was sure I’d read a close representation of the same scenario in a romance book at some point.
But when I imagined myself replacing the heroine of some epic story and pictured Brand as the hero, my eyes fluttered closed, and I whispered, “Perfect.”
He hummed quietly. “Yes, you are.”
Some kind of boldness took over my body like an alien invasion, and without bothering to look behind me, I grabbed him by his belt and backed up, dragging him with me and hoping we wouldn’t stumble over a tree root and fall on our asses, but I knew there were trees behind me somewhere. Eventually, I’d bump into one.
Finally, my back hit bark, and Brand followed willingly. He stalked me to my tree and placed his hand over my stomach above my jacket, and then he unzipped it. Cold air rushed over my chest, and my nipples hardened beneath my uniform and undershirt.
My mouth popped open, but I swallowed down the moan that wanted to slip out, and then his tongue was inside me as he kissed me. He held nothing back, and it felt like all the heightened emotion from our search for Natalie had taken over.
Heat ruled the moment. He slipped his hand between my legs, the moan crawled right back up and rushed past my lips, and the little tingle I’d felt earlier turned into exploding bottle rockets in my belly.
He breathed, “Tonight was insane, right?”
I nodded, my head knocking the tree trunk behind me. My hat had fallen off at some point, but I had no clue where it was. “It’s understandable we’d be amped up.”
Against my lips, he mumbled, “Maybe, but that isn’t all this is.” He moaned this time and kissed me harder, one hand planted above my head on the tree and the other searched beneath the waistband of my ugly, polyester work pants.
“Huh?” I couldn’t concentrate with his fingers so close to such sensitive areas. I imagined them sliding inside me, pumping…
“I’ve wanted you since you rescued me from the side of the highway the night I came home.”
“Y-you have?”
Yes! Thank the sweet baby Jesus, Mother Mary, and Joseph too!
“Yes,” he breathed, and he gave up trying to find his opening between the bottom of my tucked-in shirt and the waist of my pants. He popped open the button and unzipped them, and then his hand found hot flesh, and he caressed my skin, moving lower, his fingers toying with the elastic band at the top of my boyshort briefs.
“Brand, wait.” Oh God. Somebody shut me up. “I-I can’t do this.”
