Brick’s kitchen was militantly clean, Remi noted as she snooped. Spencer was busy on sales calls in the dining room, which left her unsupervised. Just because she was humoring Brick’s attempt at holding her prisoner didn’t mean she was going to behave herself.
There were no dirty dishes in the sink. No forgotten produce rotting on the counter. No old takeout containers in the fridge.
The bulletin board his grandmother kept inside the door that led to the porch still hung in the same spot. But now, instead of church programs and coupons, it had a grocery list, Brick’s work schedule, and a few personal items tacked up in evenly spaced increments.
The man had always been three steps past tidy, a fascination to someone like her who embraced chaos. One night in bed being deliciously dominated by the man proved to her that the need for control extended far beyond home organization.
Without a hint of shame, Remi flipped over the New Orleans postcard.
Happy Belated Birthday, Will. New Orleans is great! Call me if you’re ever in the neighborhood. Love, Mom.
She’d never met his mother, the woman who had gifted a teenage Brick the beloved cowboy hat he still wore. In all her sons’ years on the island, she’d never once paid them a visit. Busy with a singing career, Spencer had told Remi. Brick didn’t say much about her, but what he did share was painted with a lighter, more forgiving brush than the one he applied to his father.
Remi frowned at the post date. It was several weeks after his birthday, and his mother had only gotten around to dropping him a postcard? Her own parents called her every year at the exact time she’d been born. 5:58 a.m.
She peeked at the Christmas card next to it.
To my favorite ex-husband. Try not to be too bah-humbuggy.
Love, Audrey
Unsure of how she felt about that, Remi let the card flip shut. One night together didn’t give her any claim on Brick. He’d pursued, proposed to, and married Audrey. Meanwhile, his track record with her…well, if history repeated itself, he’d walk through the door any minute now and either withdraw from her completely or awkwardly explain that he’d changed his mind.
There was a tightening in her chest and she tried to ignore it. Audrey wasn’t here now. She was. That had to mean something.
Blowing out a sigh, she eyed the cards again. Brick Callan had been abandoned by his mother, the one woman who never should have left him. Yet he inspired the loyalty of his ex-wife, someone who had every right to move on and leave him behind. Now the woman he’d spent a decade and a half rejecting was standing in his kitchen snooping on the other women in his life.
It was too weird even for her.
Deliberately, she turned her back on the board. She could either spiral into a cycle of confusion and helplessness or she could do something productive.
She was just putting the finishing touches on three towering turkey sandwiches when her skin prickled with awareness, with anticipation, with dread.
Brick.
Once she looked at him, she’d know if it was the man who had taken her to bed or the one who hadn’t wanted her.
“Remington.”
She closed her eyes at the rough caress of her name.
He stepped into the kitchen, and she followed his progress toward her without turning around. Her heart kicked into overdrive as he closed the distance.
“Hungry?” she asked, keeping her tone light.
He stopped just behind her. Not touching her, but close enough that an intense longing unfurled inside her.
One night with this man and her body was on high alert.
Then his hands were on her shoulders, and he was forcing her around, nudging her chin up.
“Starving.” He looked rumpled and tired and undeniably sexy. He looked hungry.
She wasn’t used to seeing him up close like this, to having his hands on her. It took her breath away. “I made sandwich. A sandwich. I made you a sandwich,” she enunciated carefully, willing her brain to start functioning again.
Those lips that had only the night before whispered dirty promises and doled out unbridled pleasure quirked. But the almost smile was gone just as quickly.
“I’m looking into Warren Vorhees.”
Remi sighed, wishing she could live a life without that man’s name in it. “I knew you would.”
“Camille made that statement about the accident being your fault to appease him, didn’t she?”
She blinked in surprise, then nodded. He’d always been intuitive. “I believe so. Her survival depends on proving to him that she’s loyal.”
“And in order to do that, she has to ruin you.”
“She has to try.” It was an important distinction.
“He keeps underestimating you,” Brick said as his fingers slid into her hair with something like reverence.
“His mistake,” she said softly, melting into his touch.
“At some point, he’s going to realize that. And he’s going to stop underestimating and start trying to eliminate the threat.”
His soothing touch helped insulate her from his words.
“I know.”
“Then I need you to know, he’ll have to get through me first.”
“I don’t want that, Brick. I’m not going to ask people to put themselves in danger.”
“You didn’t ask. You just need to accept it. You’re standing for Camille. I’m standing for you. This Vorhees asshole doesn’t know it, but he’s breathing his last few free breaths.”
She looked at him, into eyes the same depthless blue as the ocean. “Do you really think we can put him away?”
He cupped her face so gently she felt like she was made of glass. “Yes. I need you to trust me.”
She trusted Brick Callan with her life. But could she trust him with her heart?
Not trusting her voice, she nodded.
“I like finding you here,” he said finally.
“That better not be some crack about a woman’s place being in the kitchen,” she said, eyes narrowing.
He distracted her by tracing his fingers down her neck to her clavicle. “This room always made me think of you.”
“Me? Why?” she asked, feeling a little breathless.
“This is where you got my grandfather to eat mac and cheese and play tic-tac-toe,” he said softly.
The memory made her smile. “You remember that? It feels like forever ago.”
“I remember,” he said, very, very seriously. “That was the same day you ruined Spence’s favorite shorts. On purpose.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How do you know it was on purpose?”
“I may have been outside that door a little longer than I let on,” he confessed, tilting his head in the direction of the porch.
“You were eavesdropping? What could your grandfather and I have been talking about that young Brick Callan would have found interesting?” she teased.
“You were telling him to give me a chance. That I wasn’t my father.”
Remi glanced down. “Oh. That conversation.”
“You used that Remington magic to make him see me in a different light. I never forgot it.”
She tried to cross her arms, but there wasn’t enough room between their bodies, so she settled for stuffing her hands into the pocket of her hoodie. “Pop was as stubborn as they come. Blaming you for something you had no control over when really it was his daughter he was disappointed in.”
She thought of the postcard again. A backhanded gesture, a belated recognition, yet he still hung it in a place of honor. It made her heart hurt. He deserved more than that. He deserved someone who not only remembered his special moments but actively celebrated them.
Had Audrey been that someone?
“That was the day he started trying,” Brick said. “You convinced him to give me a shot.”
“He would have eventually. A person can only be around you for so long before discovering your ridiculously big heart and your Dudley Do-Right complex.” Testing him, she poked him in that mile-wide chest. “Do you miss them?” she asked. “Your grandparents.”
He nodded, toying with a strand of her hair, rubbing it between his fingers. “I do. I didn’t have a lot of time with them, but I’ll always be grateful for the space they made for Spence and me. They gave us a home when we needed it. Paid for Spencer’s college when I couldn’t.”
She caught the note of shame and zeroed in on it.
“You were twenty-four, Brick. What twenty-four-year-old can afford to send their little brother to college? Hell. What twenty-four-year-old is capable of raising a teenager?”
“Spence was my responsibility.”
She shook her head. “He was your parents’ responsibility. And when they couldn’t or wouldn’t step up, you did. You two were meant to come here. Meant to build a relationship with your grandparents.”
He studied her but said nothing.
“Pop gave you the money to start up the Tiki Tavern because he loved that you fell in love with this place. They left you their home because they knew it was your home. They were so proud of you. Remember the summer you named a sandwich after Pop and a drink after your grandma? They went in once a week just to order their namesakes and support you. Mackinac is where you belong. Whatever brought you here was just showing you the way home.”
“Come with me,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Where?”
He cupped her face in one hand, crowding her against the counter. “I need a shower.”
“I already had one,” she whispered, mesmerized by the way he looked at her. “Not—not that you were inviting me to join you. Unless you were?”
His head dipped lower, and he brushed his nose against her cheek. “I just need you close.”
She didn’t know what was more terrifying, the prospect that he’d changed his mind or the fact that he hadn’t. Yet.
“Okay,” she whispered. “What about the sandwiches?”
“Later.” One word, and he had her tingling from head to toe.
He let her deliver one of the sandwiches to Spencer, who was still on a call in the dining room, before pulling her up the stairs behind him. Spence flashed her a thumbs-up, and she blushed to the roots of her hair.
Brick’s bedroom was the largest of the six. It was at the back of the house on the second floor, with windows that overlooked the backyard and the house next door.
The bed was a massive four-poster with a headboard with sexy leather inserts and not nearly enough pillows in Remi’s opinion. The windows were framed by thick curtains in a dark navy, probably chosen for function—blocking out early morning sun after a long bar shift—rather than fashion, but they still worked.
She stood in the doorway and imagined him there on the bed, naked, sprawled on his back with one hand tucked under his head. His cock thick and swollen, balls heavy while he thought about her.
“What?” he asked gruffly.
Color burned her cheeks. “I was just thinking you need more pillows.”
He flashed her a look that said he wasn’t buying it, then distracted her when he unbuttoned his shirt. She wet her lips and watched as more and more skin and muscle were revealed. He looked as though he’d been carved from granite. Big, powerful, virile.
Brick didn’t just look at her, he smoldered. As if he was reliving what they’d shared the night before and anticipating what was yet to come.
“So, just to be clear. You haven’t changed your mind?”
There it was. That subtle quirk of his lips. He opened the closet door and deposited his shirt in the laundry basket on the floor.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She would have told him had she not lost the power of speech and thought when his hands went to his belt buckle. The whisper of his belt slipping free of the loops sent a delicious shiver down her spine. He coiled the belt with deft fingers and placed it in the top drawer of the tall dresser next to the bathroom door.
Swallowing hard, she watched as he undid the fly of his jeans and shoved them down his muscular thighs. He was hard. The thick shaft that bobbed between those bitable thighs acted as a hypnotist’s watch. The jeans went into the laundry basket, too. He closed the closet door, giving her an impeccable view of the eighth wonder of the world, Brick Callan’s ass.
Butt bongos. The phrase floated to her from the deep recess of her mind. “Oh my God,” she groaned, bringing her hands to her cheeks.
He raised an eyebrow in amusement. “Problem?”
“I just remembered butt bongos.”
Every inch of her skin heated under his leisurely regard. The man was going to melt her clothes right off without even touching her.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, gesturing toward the bed.
Oh, boy.
He disappeared into the bathroom, and she heard the shower turn on.
“Get it together, Ford,” she murmured.
She’d had sex before. Lots of it. This wasn’t her first time in a devastatingly handsome man’s bedroom. He was going to come out of that shower and use that big, hard body of his to make her scream. Despite the fact that she’d not only survived it but reveled in it the night before, she was suddenly as awkward and anxious as a virgin.
Brick made everything feel like it was an unforgettable first.
She hopped up onto the bed, testing the mattress. The white bedding was simple but soft. No potentially embarrassing squeaks that would broadcast their activities to Spencer downstairs.
She didn’t have a view of him in the shower and considered it a little too pervy to stand in the doorway and watch him wash all of that aroused acreage. Too keyed up to relax, she opened his nightstand drawer to snoop. There was an unopened box of condoms, a notepad and pen, a flashlight, and a neatly folded scrap of cotton. White with gold pineapples.
Snatching it out of the drawer, she stormed into the bathroom just as he stepped out of the shower.
“Brick Callan! What’s this?” she demanded, waving the thong at him.
He took his time cinching a white towel around his waist. Droplets of water on his chest caught the light, temporarily dazzling her.
“It looks like a pair of underwear,” he drawled.
She wasn’t fooled. “These are mine! I thought I lost them!”
His hand darted out, almost fast enough to snatch them from her, but she was faster and clutched the prize to her chest. She spun around to run back into the bedroom, but he caught her and deftly wrestled the thong out of her grip.
“I took them the night you were hiding from me in the shower,” he said, walking her forward to the bed with both arms banded around her. He used his weight to bend her toward the mattress.
Her blood was electrified by his damp skin against hers. “You just got busted and you’re not giving them back?”
“They’re mine now.” He tugged her sweater off and bit her shoulder gently. She hissed out a breath. “I thought they were the only piece of you I’d ever get to keep.”
Her knees trembled from the weight of his words as he slid her pants down her legs. “Last night you got more than a pair of underwear.”
He nuzzled against her neck. “I want as many pieces of you as I can get.”
Her stupid heart was about to burst. But she couldn’t let it. It was dangerous enough that she’d opened her legs to the man. Handing him the keys to the heart he’d already broken was a terrible idea.
There was only one thing to do. One weapon she could deploy to protect herself.
“Stand up.”
He stilled against her. “Are you okay?”
She pushed him back and turned to face him. He looked concerned, but that spectacular cock was already reacting to the chemical changes happening inside her. His nostrils flared, a primitive part of him sensing both danger and pleasure.
She sank all the way down to the floor in front of him. The foot of the bed was at her back, a hard, desperate man at her front. “Baby.” There was so much tied up in that one word. Hope, brittle need, intoxicating desire.
“Lose the towel,” she whispered.
His eyes glittered, but he complied, reaching one big hand down to release his erection. She was lightheaded with want. With need. With the desire to give him another piece, another memory of her.
She watched in fascination as he fisted his shaft and gave it a long, rough stroke inches from her mouth.
He reached down and, with one swift yank, bared her breasts above the neckline of her tank top.
She cupped his balls in her hand and squeezed. He hissed in a breath through clenched teeth.
“Now, take my panties out,” she instructed.
He hesitated until she gave another harder squeeze. “I’m keeping them,” he reminded her. His tone left no room for argument.
“They’re yours,” she promised. “So is this.” She leaned forward and took the smooth, swollen crown into her mouth.
He swore violently, and a tremor ran through his entire body. Curling over her, he slapped one hand into the mattress behind her head. The other, still holding her thong, wrapped around the base of his shaft and squeezed.
She took him a little deeper, running her tongue over the underside all the way to the sensitive tip.
She couldn’t take him as far as she wanted, but between the slide of her mouth and the stroke of his hand, it was more than enough.
He was straining to hold himself back. But she didn’t want that. She wanted him as wild as he made her. She dug her nails into his ass cheeks, and when he gave a testing thrust into her mouth, Remi hummed her approval. He did it again and again. Swift, shallow pumps that had his crown swelling between her teeth.
“Need to get you off.” He gritted out the words like he was in pain.
“This is just for you, Brick,” she murmured before taking him in as deep as he could go.
He used her hair to pull her head back, releasing his dick from her mouth. “Ah,” he groaned, giving himself several vicious strokes with his hand before guiding the tip back to her lips. Moisture gathered there, and she licked it off. “Scared I’ll hurt you. I want you so fucking bad.”
“Fuck my mouth, Brick. Please.”
He couldn’t say no to her or the demand, and they both knew it.
When he loosened his grip on her hair, she slicked her mouth over him again, relishing the texture and taste of him. Thick veins on his shaft throbbed against her tongue, making her dizzy with his desire for her.
When he tried to pull out again, she sank her nails into his ass cheeks and held steady.
“Dirty fucking girl,” he groaned and then thrust between her lips.
She sucked hard and deep. Teasing with teeth and tongue then soothing with long licks over the sensitive slit. Sucking and plumping him, she steadily drove him mad.
“Goddamn you, Remi.” She looked up at him and was gratified at the picture he made. His lids were heavy, lips full and parted. A god chasing his pleasure. And she was the one to give it to him.
One hand stroked his shaft in time with her mouth, the other gripped her hair. “Need more.”
“Take it,” she said before sliding her lips back down.
On a groan, he released her hair and once again folded over, this time forcing her head back against the mattress. His fist, still wrapped in her panties, worked the base of his cock viciously as his hips set the pace. She heard his fingers digging into the mattress next to her head as he fucked her mouth and she embraced a euphoric sense of panic at having no escape.
His thick, round head hit the back of her throat over and over again. She could taste it now as his release gathered, ready to uncoil. She palmed his balls where they hung heavy between his legs. Gripping, squeezing. Working them in time with his erratic pumps. Those huge thighs bunched and shifted with every drive. His abs tightened as he took her mouth.
“Remi. Remi.” He chanted her name like a prayer. Like a curse.
She hummed again, a vibration deep in her throat, and opened her eyes to watch him let go. He was already staring at her as his entire body tensed. The eye contact, the lewdness of what she was letting him do to her, had him collapsing onto his forearm on the mattress.
“Fuck, baby. Suck me hard. Make it stop hurting.”
She felt the tension in him. Muscle, bone, cells. Everything coiling, tightening in on itself in his body. And then he was coming. His roar filled her ears as he ejaculated in her mouth, down her throat. Hot, thick spurts of semen. His dick pulsed in her mouth as it released its load. His fist continued to work his shaft violently as she swallowed as much as she could. Those muscular thighs shook against her. She was choking, drowning, dying, living.
He was still coming as he yanked her off her knees and shoved her back onto the bed. Still going off as he forced her legs open and rammed into her. Her wet mixed with his orgasm had him fully sheathed in two demanding thrusts. Heaven. Or hell. He’d propelled her into some other world, she thought, as her inner walls fluttered around the thick shaft.
“Fuck,” he groaned brokenly as he continued to pump into her.
Something rough and wet rubbed against her clit, and Remi realized her thong was wrapped around his arousal.
The piece of her he’d stolen. Kept. Treasured.
It scared her, thrilled her, electrified her. The need he displayed for her was staggering.
There was no warning. Just her own peak suddenly looming in front of her. Jagged and terrifying.
“Come,” he growled in her ear as one of his hands found her breast and palmed it. “Now, Remington.”
She had no choice. Her body was already spiraling into the abyss.
“God, yes,” he groaned as she clamped around him. An erotic vise. “Never giving up that greedy little cunt of yours.”
He was still hard, still rolling his hips, still delivering pleasure.
Knowing that once wasn’t enough for him had her own arousal spiking again.
“You want to come again,” he said. “You want me to keep working my cock in you until you go off. Say it.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Brick. I want you to make me come again.”
He pulled out of her, but before she could complain, he pushed her onto her hands and knees in front of him. She held her breath as he knelt between her legs and stroked a hand down her spine before those strong fingers closed around her hip, kneading the curve of her flesh.
“God. I can’t look at you like this without wanting to put my hand on you.”
Her sex clenched around nothing. Making her ache with a need only he could fulfill.
“Do it. Please.”
“Just once,” he rasped. She didn’t know if he was promising her or warning himself.
“Then you better make it count,” she whispered.
He blew out his breath behind her, reminding Remi of a bull pawing the ground.
She shivered as he guided the blunt head of his penis between her legs, parting the lips of her sex and nestling against the soft, wet tissue that was ready to welcome him back.
For a second, maybe two, the tension between them built as he tensed against her, holding his breath. And then that heavy hand connected with her rear end, delivering a sharp, biting slap.
She didn’t have time to cry out, to beg for another, because Brick was gripping her hips and yanking her back against him, impaling her on his unflagging hard-on.
The low moan that wrenched its way free from her throat was drowned out by his animalistic grunt as her body surrendered to his invasion. The angle. Holy Mariah Carey, the angle had him filling her so deep she could barely breathe.
“Remi. My sweet, beautiful, Remi,” he whispered behind her. His hands worshipped her in long, soothing strokes as he began to ride her. Revering her and defiling her at the same time.
She was flying headlong into the dark, but without fear. Because this time, she wasn’t alone. This time, he was there with her.
“Baby, I can’t get enough of you.” He gritted out the words like a sinful confession as he fucked her harder, deeper. Using his hands to both spread her cheeks wide and to control the speed.
Her shaking arms collapsed beneath her, and when she landed on her forearms, the head of his penis nudged something deep inside her. Again and again, until it triggered a new, powerful orgasm. The spasms began to build in her core and then radiated outward.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Milk my dick with those hungry squeezes, baby.”
She sobbed as her body complied. The orgasm detonated, sending shock waves through her entire body, her entire being. The world ended as she could only tremble her way through the release.
“Fuck. What you do to me,” Brick groaned, his sweat-soaked skin slapping against her with each thrust of his hips. “I’ll never be the same.”
Neither would she. He’d ruined her. And she’d ruined him. But all that mattered was this beautiful, brutal moment of surrender and domination.
She squeezed around him, unable to respond in any other way, and felt triumphant when he went rigid behind her, inside her.
“Remi.” Her name. Always her name.
The first burst exploded inside her, hot and thick. And then he was pulling out of her, grunting his way through the orgasm with violent strokes of his fist. Wrenching, scalding spurts coated her behind, her back, her thighs.
He’d branded her inside and out, and she felt possessed. Adored. Protected.
