Bliss Brothers: The Complete Series Boxed Set, page 61
10
Everly
Bellissimo is the kind of cute Italian restaurant I’ve always wanted to sit in at a big table with lots of friends and family. Basically, one of my dreams in life is to be in a real-life Olive Garden commercial.
Dinner almost feels like that, just slightly more awkward.
Charlie is subdued on the other side of the table. He keeps his eyes on his own plate.
That doesn’t stop Asher from playing the part of the devoted—dare I say obsessed—husband.
I felt the way his body responded when he kissed in the kitchen, and most of me doesn’t feel guilty about that. I wanted to kiss him. God, I wanted it so badly, and every time he walks into the room I get another chip in the windshield of my self-control.
Halfway through our entrées, he leans in close. “How’s the food?” The heat of his breath against the shell of my ear makes my nipples peak beneath the little black dress I chose for the occasion, but Asher’s not done. He nips at my earlobe, and I know he feels the resulting shiver underneath his hand, which he’s rested on the small of my back. It’s like he knows I’ve been sitting with perfect posture on the edge of my seat just to invite him to do that.
“That’s not fair,” I whisper back.
“It wasn’t fair in the kitchen earlier. Consider this karma.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Charlie watching us through narrowed eyes. He’s the only one looking—the rest of the brothers are involved in a debate about how many times they’ve been to Bellissimo as a group.
“It’s, like, twenty times,” Beau argues.
“It’s not. We used to eat at that other restaurant in Lakeview for special occasions,” says Roman.
“Not more than we ate here.” Beau sticks his fork into his fettuccini, twirls it around, and savors another bite. “I’m right, and you’re wrong. Back me up, Charles.”
“You’re right,” Charlie says flatly.
His girlfriend, a woman named Leta who has a broad smile and pink hair, elbows Charlie in the ribs. “Lighten up, love. We’re all enjoying dinner.”
“I second that,” calls Roman’s girlfriend Jenny.
“Third.” Driver sits next to Holiday, who’s pregnant with his baby, as I learned at the beginning of the dinner. I always thought pregnancy glow was a media myth used to sell tabloids, but it’s not. Holiday has proven that. “You’re stressing out the baby, Charlie. Every time you scowl at Driver, she kicks.”
“She?” Driver needles. “I thought we weren’t making assumptions.”
“I’m an equal-opportunity assumer,” says Holly. “I’ll say he next time. You can count on it.”
I wouldn’t mind being pregnant with Asher’s baby.
The thought floats forward from the back of my mind, translucent and subtle like a jellyfish on an ocean current and stings my heart like I imagine that innocent-looking jellyfish would do.
If I were pregnant with Asher’s baby, I’d have a place at this table. A real place. Not a place that’s only good for thirty days. Less than thirty days, now.
“Are you all right?” Asher’s hand on mine alerts me to the fact that I’m crushing my fork in my grip.
I struggle for breath against a heaviness in my chest that’s caught me totally off-guard. Me? Wanting a baby? Wanting Asher’s baby? It’s no surprise that I wish I could sit at this table every day for the rest of my life, suspicions or not. My mom was in and out of our lives, traveling for work, for as long as I can remember. My father didn’t have siblings, and he didn’t like visiting people anyway. It’s always been me and Brooke, together against the world. Reluctantly together, in Brooke’s case. She wants everything at maximum difficulty so she can prove she doesn’t need anyone or anything.
In fact, she’ll probably be pissed that I saved the ranch for us instead of letting her muscle through the hardship.
Is that what I really want—a baby? Or is what I really want to be closer to Asher in a more literal way, my skin against his?
I breathe in, and I’m filled with his scent. Soap, cologne, and intrigue. He smells like a last-minute ticket to Europe. He smells like an adventure.
“I’m fine. I’m so fine.” I turn and meet his eyes. “Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
I lean in to his ear and choose my words carefully. Desire threads its way down the front of my belly and between my legs, heating me from the inside out. I need to release this, and I need to do it with Asher. I’ll never be satisfied otherwise. I’ll never get over this otherwise. I need to know. Need. “I need to break the rules.”
Asher shoves open the door to the hotel room and whirls around to close it behind us. The key card falls to the floor with a whisper of sound and then he’s lifting me, pinning me to the door. It’s shockingly cold against the bare skin of my back and I gasp.
He drags his mouth across my collarbone and slips his fingers beneath the neckline of my dress. “I consider the hotel technically public,” he says, his low voice vibrating in every nerve. “But we both know this is against the rules. Are you sure you want this?”
“I’m sure.” The ache between my legs is unbearable and I wrap them around his waist, holding on tight. “I’m sure, Asher. Please. Please. I need this from you. I’ve been alone.”
The word alone sends him into motion again, yanking down the front of my dress and my strapless bra along with it. His mouth connects with my nipple and his tongue swirls around it and I am going to explode. I am actually going to explode, right here against the doorway, and leave nothing but a puff of smoke behind.
He works his way to the other breast and I brace myself against the door, arching toward him. Bed. We should get to the bed. But then Asher kisses me, so hard and possessive that it hurts, and I never want to leave this space again in my life. Keep me up against this door. I bite at his bottom lip and he responds by pushing back into my mouth, dominant and strong.
“If I was a better man, I’d take more time,” he growls.
“Don’t.”
He shoves the skirt of my dress up to my waist. I feel the moment when he discovers that I’m not wearing any panties.
His hand hesitates for a split second, and then it dives between us, working frantically at his belt buckle. He’s deft, and his pants fall to the floor along with his boxers in a matter of seconds.
He’s also huge.
I hold on for dear life while Asher lines himself up with my opening. I’m wet, soaking with want and need and sadness and relief.
Then his hands are on my hips, impaling me on his cock, and my body is a firework at its peak, shattering into the blackness of the night sky.
He fills me, and I am nothing but his skin on mine, his mouth on mine, his eyes drinking me in at every available second. Asher thrusts hard, not holding anything back, and my body rocks against the door in a steady rhythm. Someone outside could hear that we were fucking. They could hear the little noises that escape from the back of my throat. I moan louder. Let them hear. Let them all hear. I’ve waited long enough for this. I’ve waited so long. No man has ever…no man has ever…
Except Asher.
The friction against the door musses my hair, I can feel it, and I have never felt so beautiful or so wanted before in my life. Asher’s fingers dig into my thighs as he works me over him.
His release comes hard, pressing the air out of my lungs against the door.
Then my feet are on the ground.
Then he’s turning me.
“Hands here.” He presses my palms against the door. “Spread your legs.”
God, I do.
He pins my hip with one hand and slips the other between my legs, working my clit, stroking my opening, covering his fingers with a mix of our juices. My hips buck against his touch. “Yes,” he growls into my ear. “Come for me. Come on my hand, you filthy thing…”
Filthy thing turns me from a single firework into a fireworks show. I’m the Fourth of July. Asher’s hand leaves my hip to catch my cry in his palm.
When it’s over, he holds me close against his chest, bundling me up against him.
“Asher,” I whisper. “I’m sorry we broke the rules. I shouldn’t have—”
“Shh.” He kisses the side of my neck. “I’m not sorry. Not in the least.”
11
Asher
For a few moments, as I swim back up into consciousness from a sleep so deep I feel like I’ve been at the bottom of Ruby Bay, I think I’m back in Montana.
The sheets remind me of the Marriott, with that particular hotel clean, and I bury my face into the pillow. I’m used to hotels. I live in hotels. I’ve been living in hotels for days and weeks and years, and a hotel room is always a clean slate. Thank god, everything is a clean slate.
But then I open my eyes.
It’s not the Marriott after all. It’s Bliss.
I close them again and stretch out my legs under the covers. At least the bed feels like somewhere I belong, only…
There’s someone else in it.
Everly.
Her breathing is slow and steady, and it comes back to me in a cascade of images—fucking her up against the hotel room door, so desperate to be inside of her that I couldn’t take her to the bed like a gentleman. Fucking her on the bed, only to discover that I didn’t feel more gentlemanly when she was spread out on the coverlet, begging me for more. I only felt gentlemanly when I pulled up the covers over her naked body after she fell asleep.
My cock jolts to life.
Her naked body is still under those covers next to me, as far as I know. She could have gotten up in the night and put her dress back on, I suppose, but who in their right mind would do that?
I turn over carefully and prop my head on my elbow.
We never closed the curtains last night. I thought about it, but then Everly pulled me back into the bed. “Leave them open. No one can see.” She sounded like she didn’t quite believe it. Like maybe it turned her on to think that someone might see.
Breaking the rules is so deliciously wrong. Not that anyone looking in would know we were breaking any rules at all. But that doesn’t matter—not to my core, which pulls toward her with a vicious possessiveness that’s completely forbidden.
Sex was one thing.
This is different.
I rub at my eyes to see if it’s only the vestiges of sleep that’s making me feel this way, but the need still pulses at the center of my chest, right along with my heartbeat.
The need to be near her.
The need to be with her.
Oh, shit.
The sunlight from the open curtains plays gently across her skin, across the curves of her body underneath the sheet. Her hair is a shining spill across the pillow. She could be in a movie—that’s how perfectly it’s arranged itself, as if her post-sex hairdo was the product of several professionals.
I risk it—putting a hand on her hip to feel the rise and fall of her breath.
God, it’s torture.
I remember the way she looked with her head bent over that highball glass in the bar. Something in her called to me then. I thought it was something simple—lust, or attraction, whatever you want to call it.
This feeling isn’t simple, and that’s what’s torturous about it. I want to know everything there is to know about her. I need it, like I need food and water. But I can’t bring myself to ask for it. There have been so many signs that she has secrets, and if she wanted me to know them, she would have told me already.
My mind plays the what-if game. What if the secrets were true dealbreakers? What if the secrets destroy this thing we have going on? What if, what if, what if?
What if I want to defend her from my brothers’ accusations? What if being in love with her means I have to move to Montana, of all places? What if it tears my family apart?
What about hers?
I try to wish the heady feelings away so I can think with a clear head.
The effort fails completely.
The feelings aren’t something I can dislodge through deep breathing and concentration. They’re real. As real as the grief I feel for my father, who shouldn’t be dead right now. I shouldn’t be done with working for him yet. They’re as real as the loyalty I feel toward my brothers, who can’t seem to piss me off enough to break it. They’re as real as the tug on my heart when I see the sun rise over Ruby Bay.
I’ve been fooling myself.
“Hi,” she says softly, and the sound of her voice in the quiet of the room makes me jump out of my skin. I barely manage to stifle the startle that rocks through my body. “Did I scare you?” Everly turns over and heat sprints through my veins.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I was.” She stretches her arms above her head. “You’re still here.”
“Where else would I go?”
“Back to the house?”
“Without my wife?” It should feel like acting to say that, but it doesn’t. It feels frighteningly natural and good. “That would be a dead giveaway, don’t you think?”
“After last night, I don’t think anyone could deny that we’re married.”
“Not any of the guests, anyway. I don’t think my brothers followed us to the hotel.”
“Yeah.” She wrinkles her nose. “That would be weird.”
“More than weird. It would be gross.”
Everly rolls closer to me, and relief spills into my lungs. Part of me was tense, I realize now, waiting for her to say that we’re done breaking the rules. Waiting for her to climb out of bed and go back to business as usual. I should want it to be business as usual, but I don’t.
Because I’m falling for her, head over heels, even though it’s a mistake.
I know it is, and by majority vote, I don’t care.
“What are you thinking about?” Her voice, warm and full with sleep, is the best sound I’ve ever heard.
“You.”
A smile brighter than high noon spreads lazily across her face, and she closes her eyes. “Say that again.”
“I’m thinking about you.”
“Sounds a little dangerous, Asher Bliss.”
“I know.” I run my fingers through her hair. If there ever were any knots, then uncurl for my fingertips. Even her hair wants me back. “It is dangerous.”
Her eyes flutter open. “Dangerous enough to stop?”
I can’t breathe, and then I can. “You tell me.”
She bites her lip and some expression flashes across her eyes and disappears. “No. Not dangerous enough to stop.”
You hesitated, I want to say. But then what? Would she admit to the secrets she’s been hiding, or will I be the asshole who was wrong about her?
I swallow the words.
“All right.”
“I think…” She purses her lips, thinking. “I think there are some rules that we have to break in order to survive.”
That would be ominous as hell if it weren’t for the fact that she delivers the line in a tone that’s just as sleepy and warm as before. My heart picks up the pace, knocking against my ribs, but I don’t want that.
I want Everly in the sunshine, Everly in my bed, Everly against my skin.
I roll over and bend my head to her collarbone, then run my tongue along that ridge.
“Asher,” Everly gasps. “Asher, we shouldn’t…”
“We just agreed to break the rules.” I plant a line of kisses down between her breasts.
“Isn’t there somewhere we should be?”
“We’re supposed to be on our honeymoon, aren’t we? Isn’t a hotel room at a luxury resort the ultimate in method acting?” I curl my tongue around one of her nipples and she arches back against the bed. “Be here with me,” I murmur against her skin.
“I am here with you.”
“Mmm…not quite as present.”
Everly giggles. “What does that mean?”
“You’re still so…coherent.” I kiss the line of her jaw, then work my way back up to her earlobe. “I’d prefer more moaning out of you, Ms. Carson.”
“Oh, that’s…that’s very official.”
Back down her neck. Back down over each nipple. Back down to her navel, with a detour around her belly button.
I reposition myself on the bed, down between her legs.
I spread her open.
Everly shivers.
She tastes sweet—so fucking sweet. It’s the world’s biggest cliche, but the sweetness that explodes on my tongue reminds me of peaches and cotton candy and doing something illicit behind the bleachers at the high school. Only Everly is all grown woman.
I suck her clit into my mouth and she moans, breathy and low, and my cock throbs.
“That’s what I like to hear.”
She mumbles something I can’t understand.
“What was that, sweet thing?”
Everly presses her hands above her head, palms flat against the headboard. “Less talk, more action.”
I give the lady what she wants.
12
Everly
“No meeting with your brothers this morning?”
Asher lifts his head, his face lighting up when he sees me. Oh, god, it feels so good to see that. So good, and so guilty.
“Not today. Roman thought Charlie might snap if we all sat around talking about the trust.”
“Nothing new has come in yet, then?”
“Not yet.”
We agreed to break the rules in the hotel room, that’s true, but it’s been a dance back at the rental house. Sometimes I can feel Asher hesitating, pulling away like the rules still stand, and then I do the same, and then it’s twenty minutes before he’ll stand close to me again.
Out on the porch I don’t have to hesitate at all.
Maybe that’s why he’s out here. A butterfly makes a graceful swoop in my gut at the thought that he’s making it easier for us to be together.
