Five Brothers, page 19
Moving in front of the tire, I kneel down and reach behind it, securing it in both hands. Shifting back and forth, I wiggle it off the axle, but Macon is there before it drops onto my feet.
He tries to take it, but I stop him.
“Just take the other side.”
He tightens his lips and grabs the other end, walking backward quickly, and I hurry to keep hold.
“Why didn’t you go to the club like everyone else?” I ask as we set the tire on top of the other three. “Do you wanna go?”
He’s going to kick me out of here any second if I don’t shut up.
I dust off my hands, my eyes on his back as he hits the button next to the garage door, closing it, and switches off the overhead light. The work lamp under my hood still glows. I guess we’re done for the day.
I walk over to the sink and squeeze soap into my hands. “I’ll go with you if you don’t want to walk in alone,” I tell him.
But he flips on the water, barking, “I told you to wear the gloves.”
He eyes the grease all over my hands and grabs some kind of brush, the bristles grayed and worn. He pours soap all over it.
Taking one of my hands, he scrubs, struggling hard to be gentle, judging from his white knuckles and pursed lips.
“Have you ever been to a strip club?” I ask, looking up at him.
The heat from his body warms me.
I smile. “I can’t imagine you at one.”
“I was in the fucking military, Krisjen.”
My heart thuds hard. He knows my name. That’s twice now he’s said it.
I don’t know why it surprises me, but it does. I was in the fucking military, Krisjen.
Krisjen.
He knows me.
“What?” I hear him ask.
I look up, seeing him staring at me, and I realize I’m smiling a little.
I shake it off. “Nothing. So you wanna go?”
“No.”
I shrug, mumbling, “I kinda wanna go.”
“What the hell for?”
“Why don’t you want to?”
“Why do you care?”
Why do I care? No idea. Why am I even here right now?
“Goddammit.” He tosses the brush into the sink. “I told you to use the damn gloves.”
I gaze at his face as he pumps a different soap into his hands and rubs it into mine. There’s a tiny scar on the back of his jaw. A groove with a few lines—like a shooting star. I never noticed it before.
But I always noticed everything else.
The constant pinch between his brows. The fatigue in his eyes. The tension in his muscles, and the stress and anger rolling off him in waves more and more every time I see him.
He’s not easy, but he’s a good man. I know he is. Feeding these people. Helping their families. Giving up his life to come home and raise his siblings.
“I think someone should be making you smile, is all.”
My voice is so quiet, because my heart is beating so hard it hurts.
“I’ll be happy if the people around me ever do what they’re told,” he growls, rinsing off our hands. “Y’all don’t listen because you think I haven’t been alive longer and might know some shit.”
His scent drifts into my nose, and I fight not to curl my fingers around his. Tingles spread up my arms from my hands where we touch.
“Someone should be taking care of you,” I whisper, dropping my eyes. “At night.”
He stops and just stands there, and he can push me away if he wants, because that’s what he always does to everyone else. Eventually, they just stopped trying. I don’t want to be afraid of him.
“You take care of everyone, all day,” I say quietly. “Someone should be loving you.”
His chest moves up and down, and I lower my eyes to the brown leather belt around his narrow waist. Against his golden skin.
“Touching you…” But I can only mouth the words. I don’t think he hears.
He should have a woman. One woman, because he’s got a body he can’t fuck around with. He’s made for something special.
Deep down, so are Army, Trace, and Iron, and maybe Dallas, too, for someone brave enough, but Macon…I just want to see him exhale.
He doesn’t need tail. He needs her, someone who can take him far away just behind a closed door.
“I can’t dance.” I turn off the water and dry my hands. “Not like the girls at the club, so I can’t bring a lap dance to you, but…I can bend in half.”
He meets my eyes just in time to see me clutch the basin hip-high and hold on as I bend backward, my ponytail grazing the backs of my ankles.
I immediately pop back up and grab the key chain dangling out of his pocket, waving my hands in front of him like a magician. “I can also make your keys disappear.”
Haphazardly, I fling them somewhere behind me, like he totally didn’t notice I just threw them.
He cocks a brow.
I hold up my finger, also pointing out, “I can whistle ‘Ave Maria.’ The entire song.”
And I proceed to blow the first few notes. Aaaaaaaa-vaaaaaay Maaaaaariiiiiiaaaaa…
A whisper of amusement crosses his eyes, and there’s definitely a smile there now. I know his scowls well enough to know that’s not one.
His body towers over me, his broad shoulders boxing me in a room I have no ambition to leave.
Flutters go off in my stomach.
“I can…” My cheeks grow hot. “Do something else, too.”
I can’t look at him all of a sudden. I stare at his stomach and whisper, “Something they don’t do at Flamingo Flo’s.”
He doesn’t move, and while it almost makes me nauseous to have his full attention, I’m on fire.
“Please don’t get mad, okay?” I know he would never laugh at me, but I also know he doesn’t like to be pushed.
Crossing my arms over my waist, I grab the hem of my sweatshirt and pull it up over my head, bringing my T-shirt with it. Eyes still lowered, I let the clothes drop from my arm to the floor. I wait just long enough to see if he’s going to stop me, and when he doesn’t, I stand there in my pale blue lacy bra and start to unfasten my jeans.
“You don’t have to touch me,” I tell him. “Just please don’t look at my face.”
But he does. His gaze burns my cheeks.
“Will you turn on the water?” I ask, gently pushing down my jeans for him. “A little warm, if you can?”
I feel his eyes travel down my body, to the lace of my matching underwear, and up to my bra that doesn’t hide the hard points of my nipples.
He leans in, and I hold my breath as he turns on the water behind me. I hear it spill into the sink. “Switch over to the hose,” I say.
He pauses, but then…he flips the lever, and the water changes over, spilling out of the hose and onto the cement floor. A stream pours out of the garage, carried by the slight slant of the foundation, and I bend over, picking up the hose.
Inching my underwear down my thighs, I twist my leg out, open myself up, and let the dribble of water spill over my clit. I watch it wetting me, teasing the tender skin, and in a moment, the pulse starts to throb and heat floods me down low as I grow wet.
What’s the worst that’ll happen? He’ll yell at me? Make me feel stupid?
Pushing my thumb into the mouth of the hose, the water shoots hard, spraying against my nub, and it feels so good, I close my eyes.
I move into it, breathing harder as I rock my body just a little and roll the spray in slow circles over my clit again and again.
I wish he’d touch me. I would let him.
I try not to, but I raise my eyes and meet his, locked on my face. My heart punches my chest. He’s not watching the show. He’s watching me. I told him not to.
But he’s not stopping me.
Water spills down my legs, drenching my clothes. I lean back into the sink, watching the water cascade over my body. “I tried my fingers,” I tell him. “And a vibrator, but I like this the best. Sometimes I’m in the shower for a while, lying in the tub with the showerhead, and…doing it to myself again and again.”
A wave of pleasure courses through my body, and I sigh, my chest caving.
“I’m scared of you,” I whisper to him. “I’m scared of what they said about you in whispers all while I was in high school, and even more scared of how I thought about you when I didn’t even know you.” My mind would drift to an idea of Macon Jaeger, and how even though he had a houseful of family and a whole tribe on his side, I still always thought of him as on his own against the world.
“But mostly…” I gasp, “I’m scared when you look at me, which you’ve only done five times since I first walked into your house.” I wet my lips, looking at his and hating how those stories I heard left out so much about how he works so hard that he doesn’t sleep. I remember every time our eyes have met. “And I’m scared of why I would have gone to that club with your brothers tonight only if you were going to be there, too.”
I wanted to go. I just didn’t want to leave without him.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve seen my body, is it?” I ask, but I can’t look at him. “Did you watch me by the pool the other night?”
Army, Trace, and Dallas were at Mariette’s after Red Right Hand.
“I think about you,” I murmur. “Do you ever think about me? Do you even know I exist most of the time?”
I lean in, the top of my head just under his chin.
“Hold it,” I tell him, guiding his hand to the hose.
He takes it, and I pull my hair out of the ponytail, watching his chest rise and fall faster as I unhook my bra and drop it to the ground.
I start to take the hose back, but he drops it to the ground, the water feeding a whole river down the garage. He presses his forehead into mine just before he grabs something on the wall, flips a switch, and I hear a machine start.
I suck in a breath, staring up into his eyes and knowing what’s about to happen. My heart races as he switches the water back to the faucet, rinses off the end of the vacuum hose, and then presses the end of the long gray tube to my clit.
It sucks, I jolt, and he grabs my hip with his other hand, holding me to it.
“Ah,” I whimper, gripping the sink behind me on both sides and letting my head fall back. My flesh gets tugged, and I squirm, but all the time trying to get closer. I buck, my hair falling over my face and the suction making my head spin. Oh God. Fuck.
This is so much better than the water.
I wrap my arms around him, one clutching the back of his neck, the other holding his waist as I rest my head on his collarbone and thrust my hips into him, the orgasm building and fucking coming.
I whimper, the heat swirling low in my belly until…it’s there. I hold my breath, stiffen, and clutch him harder, crying out as it explodes all over me. My stomach flips, my head drops back, and I hang on.
I close my eyes and ride it out, loving the feel of his eyes on my body.
He drops the vacuum tube, and I lean into his chest, clutching his belt in front of me. Everything is light. Dizzy.
And when he hugs me back, everything is warm. Like a blanket. Like a shower. Heaven.
I want to look at him so badly. Tell him to put me in the back seat of my car right here in the garage and drive into me. I open my mouth to speak, but then he starts pulling up my underwear instead.
“That was relaxing,” he breathes over my temple. “Thank you.”
Our chests match in rhythm as he reaches into his pocket, and I look down to see him slip a twenty into the strap of my panties. My stomach knots.
“You’re a good girl,” he says.
And then he presses a kiss to my forehead and walks back into the kitchen, closing the door behind him. Leaving me alone with my jeans around my knees and not another look at my face or uttering my name from his lips.
I clench my teeth to stop my chin from shaking.
11
Krisjen
I’m not upset. Days later, I’m still thinking about it, but I’m not upset. Macon hasn’t looked at me one time since, or said my name. He hasn’t smiled or given any impression that what happened relaxed him at all, in fact. You could hear him yelling at Trace this morning when I got out of my car for work, and Mariette is in a tizzy after he called about something and stressed her out more. She’s given me his meals to take every day, which I throw in the garbage that’s sitting right outside the front door of the restaurant on the deck as soon as I walk outside.
He hasn’t missed the food, because he hasn’t called to complain. I don’t know what he’s been eating.
Okay, I’m a little upset. I humiliated myself. I did it to myself because why? Because I thought I would be the one person he’d finally open up to? Because making Macon Jaeger happy would mean something. Because I’m arrogant and self-important. A rich teenage girl, thirteen years younger than him, who has no idea what real pain is. Or what struggling is.
I thought I was going to be profound or some shit to him, didn’t I?
Jesus Christ. I chew the corner of my mouth.
Or maybe he’s just a fucking asshole who paid me for my services because I’m meaningless in his life.
Twenty bucks…I rub my tired eyes—I’m sleeping worse and worse every night.
“Hey…”
Clay walks into the bar and plops down on one of the many empty stools in front of me. She’s got beach hair for some reason, which is very unlike Clay. I love it, though.
“Hit me,” she says, dropping her Prada onto the seat next to her.
I lift my eyebrows.
“Please?” She pouts. “I’ll sleep it off in Liv’s bed. I won’t drive. Promise.”
I inhale a breath and push off the back of the bar, unfolding my arms from my chest. Filling a glass with ice, I grab her favorite vodka, top it with some tonic, and squeeze in a lime. I slide the drink over the bar to my friend who’s just as underage as I am.
She moans as she lifts it to her lips, taking three swallows. “I realized today how much I love working with deceased people,” she says, setting the drink back down.
I break into a small smile. Clay works in a funeral home while she takes online classes.
“We have a makeup artist, right?” she asks, but it’s not really a question. “They do the hair, too. But oh no, the deceased woman’s daughter wants to do it herself, so I let her come in. I take her to the room, and she freaks out because her mother is naked.”
“She was naked?”
“No, she had a sheet over her, of course!” She scowls at me like she probably did with the poor bereaved. Clay doesn’t like to be told how to do anything. “But the daughter wanted her dressed, and I’m trying to explain that I can’t put on her funeral clothes until the hair and makeup are done in case she spills powder or drops the lipstick.”
It makes sense. But I guess now she’ll know to warn the next person who wants to do their own family member’s hair and makeup. See? She learned something, even though she’s not ready to admit it.
She winces. “I don’t think I have the bedside manner for this.”
“You do.” I lean my elbows down on the bar, coming in closer. “We’re just not used to serving others, Clay.”
Except when dressed in cute cocktail dresses at thousand-dollar-a-plate charity dinners. That’s how we empathize. From afar. With a checkbook.
“You know you’re choosing a weird career, right?” I tease, still unable to stomach what she has to see every day. “But there’s no one else I’d trust to take care of me if I go before you.”
“Oh God.” She drops her head back. “Please don’t say that. And please don’t specifically request me in your will, because I won’t be able to deny you your final wish, but I won’t be able to handle it, either. Thankfully, Liv said that I can let my boss tend to her body if anything happens.” She reaches over and grabs a bar menu. “Which it won’t because I’ll die.”
“You’ve talked about your deaths?”
“It comes up with what I do.” She flips the menu over, reading the other side. “Macon doesn’t even want a viewing. Straight to cremation. Sounds like him. No fanfare.”
I rise up straight. “He said that?”
“Nah, it’s in his will,” she tells me. “Liv showed me. He just had it redone this past summer, actually.”
I stand there as Clay scans the appetizers, oblivious to my shock. He just had his will redone? Why?
The loss of appetite. The fatigue. The drinking. The mood swings. Is he sick?
Or is he anticipating an early death? Lots of people would love to see him dead. People who want the land and know that while they can’t get it away from him, his five siblings won’t put up nearly as good a fight. They would never go to the lengths Macon would to keep it.
But then Clay startles me out of my thoughts. “Coconut shrimp!” she shouts, beaming. She meets my eyes, slamming the menu down on the bar. “Psh, please. Two orders.”
I sigh. “But then I have to go over to the restaurant and get it.”
“Ohhhhh, I know,” she mock whines back at me. “You chose a weird career.”
I snicker, loving how she throws my words back at me. I turn and punch in the order to the POS system. “I’m just not used to serving others.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
I jerk my eyes back over my shoulder. What did she say?
She smirks, props her knee against the bar and crosses her arms over her chest. “Iron?”
I growl under my breath. “Shit. How did you hear about that?”
“Liv.”
“Iron told her?” I blurt out.
“Trace told her.”
“Ugh.” I finish inputting her order and twist back around, feeling her smug smile on me.
