I struggled to get my eyes back open to look up at him. He was rising to his knees and working on the button to his jeans. I swore there would never in my life be anything hotter than Shane Baxter getting naked and ready to work me over. My lazy heart picked back up when the top of those flags made an appearance. The look on his face after he got me off was always the same mixture of male satisfaction and appreciation, like I had given him some kind of gift by letting him make me come. It always did something to the very core of me to realize that to him it was something special, that I was something more than what he was used to.
He shoved the denim off over the hard globes of his ass but not before handing me a foil wrapper and telling me to get to work. I was lethargic, sleepy from the orgasm and the emotional turmoil of the night, but I wanted to put my hands on him, wanted to cross this last bridge in the place that had made him go so dark on me. I was all the way in Bax’s world now, there was no more pretending I was just biding my time on the fringe until Race showed his face.
I got the latex over him, took a minute to appreciate the heated length and the weeping head, but he was done making nice, and even though I was still extrasensitive and not really all that responsive, he slid into me. It was a tight fit and made both of us gasp. He held himself up over me on rigid arms and stared down at me while I worked my legs up around his waist and my arms across the broad expanse of his tattooed shoulders.
“You okay?”
That he asked meant everything and shook the last of the lethargy out of my blood. I arched up against him and dug my heels into his ass to get him to move.
“Better than all right.”
He swore and I saw some of the shadows move out of his eyes. He sank all the way into me and I felt consumed by him. Every part of him was hot where we touched, and the drag and pull of his unyielding flesh against my quivering inner muscles had me spiraling out of control all over again. He set a pace that was brutal and all about achieving the ultimate pleasure. We weren’t connecting on any other level than physical. Too much had been bared tonight, and this was the only way it could be.
He kissed me hard and I clutched at him to stay anchored to this bed in this place, otherwise I would fall away and I didn’t know that I could find my way back. He ran a hand down my bowed spine and gripped my ass in a desperate hold. Our chests rubbed together so hard that my already aching ni**les actually hurt at the contact and our mouths slammed together repeatedly. It was almost violent—the unhinged and desperate way we were moving together.
He whispered my name against my puffy and swollen lips and I knew he was going to reach the end before me. If it was possible, his thrusts became more frantic, his hands greedier, and I thought I was just going to have to hold him through the storm, when all of a sudden that sneaky hand that had been clasping my backside snuck between my legs and hooked around my clit. I saw stars and then I think I blacked out for a few seconds, because he kissed me again and then my head exploded.
I heard him groan and felt some of the tension work its way out of his big body, but I was in another world. I was in a world where I was just a girl and he was just a guy, and we didn’t have problems like gangsters, murderers, and missing brothers hounding us at every turn. In this world, we were just allowed to be happy and wrapped up in each other and the reality that this had a time limit on it didn’t exist.
He dropped his forehead to mine and I had to focus really hard to hear what he was saying to me.
“I never considered you might end up being the one who hurts me before this is all said and done, Copper-Top.”
I sighed and tugged him down so I could wrap myself up in him.
“We could just try not to hurt each other, Bax. That’s how people who like each other normally operate.”
“Like that’s going to work for us.”
I ran my fingers over each defined ridge of his spine. I sighed again and nuzzled into the curve of his shoulder. “Sadly, no.”
“We have this right now. I’ve learned to appreciate the good while you got it.”
I yawned and tried to snuggle into him, even though he didn’t seem to want to turn the thinking off.
“With us, that’s all we can ask for.”
He muttered something into the wild waves of my hair but I was too spun out emotionally and physically to keep up with him anymore. I closed my eyes, and the last thing I heard before I fell asleep was him telling me that amongst all the things he thought that I deserved, someone better than him was at the top of that very long list.
I wasn’t sure what woke me up a few hours later. We were on our sides facing each other. He had one arm curled around my shoulders and I was using the inside of his other arm as a pillow. I had my free arm tucked along his ribs and had thrown one of my legs over his lean waist at some point in the night. There was barely any space between the two of us. His naked chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm, like he was still sound asleep. But when I pried my heavy eyes open, the first thing I saw was his wide, dark eyes focused unwaveringly on my face.
I was going to ask him what was wrong, what had caused us to wake up, when I noticed the even darker muzzle of a gun pointed right at Bax’s temple. I woke up because we were no longer alone in the crappy apartment and a looming figure had a gun pointed at Bax’s head. I sucked in a breath and opened my mouth to scream in reflex when the armed shadow suddenly moved and a faint glow of moonlight highlighted the familiar face and glinted off of golden-blond hair. I was going to snap my brother’s name and ask him what in the hell he thought he was doing, but I never got the chance because Bax was suddenly a flurry of activity. Like he had done from the get-go, he put himself between me and whatever the perceived threat might be.
He rolled over so fast it almost toppled me to the floor. I screamed at him to stop, terrified Race would fire the gun by accident, but neither one of them was listening to me. Bax grabbed the barrel of the gun my brother had pressed to his head and shoved it up and back toward Race’s startled face. I knew now that Race wasn’t any kind of saint, but there was no way he was going to be a match for Bax. Maybe before his best friend had been sent to jail they were an even match, but now Bax had five years to fuel his fury. Five years of loss to pay Race back for, and it didn’t seem to matter that he was buck naked.
They both emitted a sound that was more animalistic than human, and the next thing I knew, the gun was lying on the bed next to me and they were trying to rip each other apart with their bare hands. I scrambled to my feet and put on the first thing I could find, which happened to be Bax’s hoodie. I zipped it up and snatched the gun up before either one of them could remember it existed. I called first Race’s name and then Bax’s, only to be ignored by both of them. The sounds of heavy fists hitting flesh and the coppery scent of blood soon filled the small space. I didn’t even try and warn them when the brawl moved from the space near the bed closer to the TV stand. The flat screen was no match for two furious men, both over six feet and apparently intent on destroying each other.