Bliss Brothers (Complete Series), page 26
Kind of. They might not be totally vanquished yet, but I’m making an effort. So is Beau. He dropped the facade of partying all day and night and started coordinating his efforts with Jenny to set up a regular cocktail hour. As of today, he’s closed for all-night business.
“I’m ready,” I say, more decisively this time.
“All right.” Beau guides me forward. “Okay, stop.” He comes around to my side and takes my hand. “There’s one step, then two, then three—and we’re on the porch. Shit. I mean—we’re on a level surface.”
Three steps up to a porch. It sounds familiar enough, but it could be any number of buildings in Ruby Bay. We didn’t drive far enough to get out of town.
I hear a door opening, and a gust of cool air greets us from inside. It’s a welcome sensation on a hot day like this. Also, I’m starting to sweat slightly, and the more A/C the better. “Come on in.”
Beau guides me by the hand into this mystery location, and we make a left turn. “Ready to see where we are?”
“Yes.” I’ll explode if I have to wait any longer.
“Okay. One. Two. Three.” On three, he pulls the blindfold from my eyes, and a thousand people shout surprise! at me, including Beau.
My natural instinct is to jump into the air, turn, and run, but in the process of doing that I run right into Beau, who turns me around to face the room full of people.
The room full of people.
The...office? Full of people?
They’re all still clapping, and I grab him by the shirt. He’s wearing pressed slacks and a blazer—a real special occasion outfit. I don’t think I’ll ever know a version of Beau who doesn’t subscribe to the shorts and button-down look for everyday living, but this? This is nice, too. Every part of him appeals to me. “What is this?”
“This is your house. Well—it’s not fully a house anymore. We converted the downstairs into an office space and the upstairs into an apartment. It’s small, but it has a full kitchen and an extra bathroom.”
I knew I recognized the stairs leading up to the house, but they didn’t creak. They didn’t make a sound. They were rock solid.
“You renovated my house?”
“Yep.” He sticks his hands into his pockets. “We had all the pipes replaced, and every loose board replaced and refinished. Everything’s been painted and sanded and...renovated. But don’t ask me for too many details. I don’t know that much about building houses.”
The crowd, I’m seeing now, is full of familiar faces. Roman Bliss. Charlie, Beau’s twin. Driver, who’s still in town against all odds, according to Beau. Roman’s girlfriend, Jenny, and—
“Britt!” She steps out from the center of the crowd and comes to give me a big hug. I squeeze the air out of her, then squeeze some more, until finally she unwraps my arms from her neck and steps back to look at me.
“You’ve grown so much,” she says, wiping a fake tear from her eye.
“Did you have something to do with this?”
“Uh, yeah...I definitely did. I used some vacation days and oversaw this project for the men. They needed the help.”
“But how did you—how did all of you know?”
“Every business needs an office,” Charlie says, as if this is patently obvious. “But I think Beau had more in mind.”
Beau clears his throat, and I turn back to face him. “I wanted you to have your own office for when you take on outside clients. That’s allowed in your contract, by the way. You’re still an independent business, just with one main client. Am I right on that, Charlie?”
“One hundred percent.” Charlie does the finances for the Bliss Resort. Now he’s also helping with mine. My teeny-tiny, barely there business.
“And the apartment?”
“An escape,” Beau says. “In case you wanted an in-town getaway. Or you can use it to host your clients. I thought—” He pulls something from his pocket. “I thought we could make our living arrangement a bit more permanent. If you wanted that.”
I’ve spent every night of the past week at his house. I never want to leave. I go forward and snatch the key from his hand, pressing it to my chest. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes.”
“She says yes!” Beau calls out, and everybody else cheers.
I blink back happy tears. “But—what are you all doing here? You’re so dressed up. I’m so dressed up. It’s almost like a—”
“Dinner party,” Driver announces. “And that’s where I step in.” I turn back to the group and Beau wraps around me from behind, easily, like he’s done it all his life. I hope he does it for the rest of his life. I’m sure he will. “This is a one-of-a-kind dinner party,” Driver says with a wink. “Because one of us...is a murderer. And one of us...is going to be murdered.”
“Not really,” Beau murmurs into my ear. “But get ready for the twist.”
“I’m ready,” I tell him. And I mean it.
Epilogue
Driver
The murder mystery party goes late into the night, eventually moving locations back to the main pool at the resort. Rob closed up the bar, brought out a bottle of wine, and joined us.
In the end, Claire was murdered by Charlie, and the big twist was a surprise chocolate cake that she and Beau cut into on one of the tables by a pool. “Renovation cake,” Beau said, and then they acted out a scene from a wedding, with Claire putting a too-big slice into Beau’s mouth and Beau pretending to have an orgasm from the goodness of the cake.
That’s my brother.
They’re canoodling together now in a set of matching pool chairs, and I’m almost out of wine.
I drain the rest of the glass and carry it over to the bar. It’s nothing to rinse it out and put it in the sanitizer, but once I’ve done that, I don’t know where else to go.
Rob and Charlie are deep in conversation about…something I stopped listening to a long time ago. Jenny and Roman disappeared at some point, and Claire and Beau are deeply attached to each other's faces.
I’m attached to no one.
I kick off my shoes by one of the other pool chairs and take the gate out to the beach. The moon is a sliver tonight, but it’s oddly bright. That, combined with the glow from the pool, makes it easy to see while I walk down to the water.
The lake is calm.
Waves lap softly at the shore, waiting for the sun to rise. It was a cloudless day and a cloudless night, a brilliant sunset, and….
And so what?
I can’t tell if it’s supposed to mean anything. The breeze rustles through my hair and I breathe it in. It’s like some supernatural shit. I feel that breeze, and something inside of me says go.
I could do it right now.
In fact, I might do it right now.
Or in a couple of hours, once I’ve had a chance to let the wine clear my system but before the sun rises. I could be out of New York by noon tomorrow. Not even—I’d be out of the state well before then.
There are some deals I could chase out west. I’ve had them in mind for a while now.
That’s the thing. Lately, when I’ve been out there, I get homesick for Bliss. It’s happened the last three trips, and it doesn’t seem to matter which direction I go. East. West. North. South. The homesickness follows, and it doesn’t make any sense because there’s nothing I love more than pushing the speed limit on a dark road. There’s nothing I love more than the feeling of leaving.
Why would I want to stay?
I don’t.
“Hey.”
The voice is soft, about ten feet off to my left.
“I didn’t want to freak you out. But don’t mind me.”
A girl. A woman, walking in the sand, barefoot. I can only see her outlines—petite, with curves that call to that same place inside of me that loves the open road. Long hair, loose around her face. A little turned-up nose. A pilot light pings to life deep in my chest.
“You’re out late,” I say, then wonder if it was the creepiest possible decision.
“Yeah.” She comes to a stop next to me and turns so we’re both facing out over the lake. “It’s nice, this time of night. Quiet. Though this place isn’t always very…uh, serene.”
“I know all about that. I’m one of the Bliss Brothers.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. In the summer, the parties can get a little loud.”
“I’ve been to a few. Is that your brother, who hosts them? Beau?”
“Sure is.”
“He seems nice. Not that we’ve ever…spoken. But he seems nice.”
“He is.” I feel a pang. Beau is nice, but nobody has ever looked at me the way that Claire looks at Beau.
Go, the voice says again—but this time it’s focused on her. Go toward her. Step a little closer.
“Were you coming to see if there was a party?”
“No. I couldn’t sleep,” she says, and I hear the honesty ringing in her voice. “I live a few properties down.”
Not houses—properties. Who is this woman?
Do I even want to know?
Yes. Yes, I do.
There’s a long silence. We listen to the waves. I listen to the wind in her hair, and the cadence of her breath.
“This might be weird,” she says, after a while. “But I don’t normally meet anyone out here that I want to spend time with.”
“Are you looking for somebody to spend time with?”
She turns to face me, her skin silvery in the moonlight. “Tonight I am.”
Go.
“I can stay one more night.”
“Your place or mine?”
A fire roars to life in the center of my chest and burns through every one of my veins. It’s so bright and hot I half expect to see it reflected in the water. Four simple words. That’s all it took.
“Mine’s closer,” I say.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
If you have to know what happens with Driver, read HOOKED ON YOU now!
It has everything:
✓ a hot one-night stand
✓ a pregnancy test
✓ a homebody and a man who needs the road
Turn the page and keep reading!
Hooked on You
1
Driver
THE MOST GORGEOUS girl in the world is in my bed.
In my bed, in this instance, is a technicality. We’re not in it. We’ve destroyed it. At this moment, it’s a mattress with a fitted sheet surrounded by an explosion of cotton in a thread count of Who the Hell Cares.
I don’t care about anything, except the way she’s straddling me.
When I tell this story later, it’ll be simple: I met her on the beach, and I took her to bed.
It’s past late, edging into early, and everything about this moment is simultaneously hazy and oversharp, the details burning themselves into my brain.
My hands on the curves of her hips. My fingers pressing into the delicate bone there. The way it feels when I move one of them to brush the pad of my thumb over the soft, trimmed hair at the apex of her legs.
The way those legs are spread, one knee on either side, and the way I’ve taken her to the hilt.
No. She’s taken me.
She purses her rosy lips and braces her hands against my chest. “I’m going to do it again,” she murmurs.
“You’re going to kill me.”
She leans down, her hair falling in a curtain on either side of my face, and nips my bottom lip between her teeth. “I’m going to do it again,” she whispers.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I pulse inside her. My cock is an impatient bastard, and he wants her to move and move now, but my mind is half-drowned by the ridiculous pleasure of holding her hips in place.
Right until she rolls them.
Another burst of pleasure thunders on the heel of the movement. It curls my toes. It tenses my calves. Even my abs respond, tightening hard. “Not fair.” I can barely grunt out the words.
“What are you going to do about it?”
I answer by stroking a thumb against her clit, my other hand bracing her in place, and she drags her fingertips down my abs as she straightens her back. One circle and her head falls back, exposing her throat. Another circle and she clenches around me. Three, four, five—her hips dance to the rhythm of those tiny circles. She needs a tighter grip. I give it to her.
“Oh, you can’t—you can’t—”
“I can stop any time.”
“You can’t stop.”
Her face is flushed even in the echo of light from the street lamp outside. I always thought they were stupid, here on the club side of the Bliss Resort & Club. Who needs street lamps when it’s a gated community?
Turns out, I need them.
Because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see the way her lips part when she gasps.
I wouldn’t be able to see how she reaches for one of her nipples when she’s on the verge.
I wouldn’t be able to see the particular motion of her hips jerking side to side when she comes.
I feel it—Christ, I feel it. She squeezes me tighter, taking me along for the ride, and that’s a sensation I’d rather die from than have lived without. But seeing it? Seeing her face makes me want more.
I grip her hips with both hands, holding her down harder against the steely length of me so that even as she bucks in my grasp, she can’t go anywhere.
“Oh, oh—”
Music to my ears. A teasing, taunting music, and I can’t resist it anymore.
I have to do the thing I’ve been dreading and lift her off of me, but the moment I do, she’s scrabbling at my chest, begging.
“You think I’d let you down?” I pant, turning her over onto her hands and knees. “Is that what you think?”
“No,” she moans, sliding her knees apart, rocking back toward me. The air in the room snaps and expands, like the universe is telling me to pay attention. As if I could pay attention to anything else. She wouldn’t do this at any other time, I realize. I don’t know how I know it. I’ve known her all of two hours. But I do know it, like I know that this is special, like I know that this is one-of-a-kind, like I know that I’m living through a moment that will make all other moments pale in comparison.
“Please, Driver, please…” The sound of my name on her lips has me up on my knees behind her and my hand at the back of her neck. I push her head down into the mattress and she shivers, another little moan escaping her. She stays in place when I take that hand away and use it to stroke my fingers between her legs. Slick sweetness, delicate folds, another huge portion of my brain now exclusively dedicated to remembering this forever.
“I’ll give you what you want. But enough teasing. Tell me your name.”
Her head is turned sideways so she can breathe, and also so I can see the smile that crosses her lips. “Does it matter? We won’t see each other again.”
“Tell me.” I line myself up with her entrance, teasing her with the head of my cock. She tries to push back, tries to take it in, but I won’t let her. “Tell me.”
“H—H—” It’s a valiant effort, for sure. But her body, bent over like this, so exposed to me, is no match for the strength of my hands. And this mystery woman loves it. She’s wetter with every second that passes. “Holiday.”
“Holiday.” I taste her name in my mouth, rolling it on my tongue. I give her an inch of me and she fists the fitted sheet. “Holiday…” Another inch.
“So…unfair…”
“You’re right, Holiday.” I give her the rest of me in one hard thrust and reach for her clit again. She’s right on the edge and it takes one touch, a single touch, and I’m lost in her cries. I’m lost in the surge of my own release. It’s so strong my vision goes dark at the edges.
How long am I frozen behind her? I don’t know. But when I finally release her and collapse onto the bed, Holiday turns over onto her back and spreads her legs. “Again.” Her eyes are luminous and wide. “I need one more.”
I turn onto my side and slide my hand over her chest, catching the rise and fall of every breath. “Just one?”
* * *
HOLIDAY
I found a man out of a dream on the beach tonight.
Is he the man of my dreams? In broad daylight, I might say no. But right now, with his gloriously naked body stretched out next to me in the bed…
Right now, he’s the man of my dreams.
He was the man of my dreams five minutes ago, when he gave me a third orgasm using only his fingers.
Driver Bliss lays on his side, his head propped up on one palm. Is he really that mind-blowingly gorgeous? In the gentle yellow glow of the streetlight outside, there’s no question that he is. That light catches in his hair like a halo, and I follow the sheen down over a muscled shoulder and then lower to the nip of his waist. Even now, he’s ready for action—that’s clear at a glance.
But his eyes rest easily on me. For once, I’m not crawling out of my skin at the attention.
I’m perfectly…what’s the word I’m looking for?
Content.
My skin hums with the aftershocks of pleasure. So much of it. And those hands of his…
I reach out and trace a pattern with one fingertip across the skin of his chest. His eyes flutter closed at the touch. “Do you play the guitar?”
My own voice sounds like it’s coming from deep underwater. Driver opens his eyes. When the light catches them at the right angle, I can see how blue they are. “The guitar?”
“Yeah.” It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life, but I roll to my side so I can face him without hurting my neck. “Do you?” Those fingers worked between my legs at a level I can only describe as expert.
“No.” The corner of his mouth rises in a half-grin. “Why?”
“You’re good with your hands,” I murmur. It’s too much effort to stay on my side, so I roll onto my stomach and lean my head on my arms. “It’s almost a shame we won’t see each other again.”
