Page 19 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)

“Quiet,” she says, almost surprised. “Good quiet.”

“Good.” I reach past her to the door. The key slides in and the lock turns easily.

Inside, the air smells like the leftover heat of the day and the lemon cleaner I use when my mother’s voice gets too loud in my head about sinks being clean.

I flip the lamp, a soft pool of light spilling over the table and the map on my living room wall and the stupid chair I still haven’t replaced.

I expect the post-ride comedown to hit her—adrenaline drop, little shake, the crash you get after holding your breath for too long.

Instead she turns in the doorway and braces her hand against the frame like she needs it to steady a thought, not her body.

She looks at me in the way people do when they’ve decided on something.

I wasn’t sure what she had made up her mind about. But I couldn’t stop the smile playing on my lips at the fire that sparked in her eyes being back home.

“Kellum,” she whispers.

“Right here.”

She crosses the space between us in three quick steps and puts her mouth on mine.

It’s not timid. It’s not shy. It’s not a question.

It’s an answer she tried out on the ride in her head.

Her fingers climb my shirt, catch in the shoulders like she wants to drag me down to her height.

I let her because I want to meet her exactly where she is.

Her mouth tastes like salt and wind and the cheap ChapStick she keeps in that new tote like a treasure. The first brush is a shock—hot through the fatigue—and then it’s a drag, slow, confident, like she’s trying to measure the shape of me with the softest part of herself.

I should back up. I should say something practical and ugly that breaks the spell and puts us on opposite sides of a line. I don’t. I’ve had a bad day and a good ride and a woman who learned how to lean just asked for something without apologizing for wanting it. I’m hard but I’m not made of stone.

I kiss her back. Not the way I do with women who are looking for a patch and a story to tell a friend.

Not the way I did with women who wanted my mouth to prove something to themselves about men like me.

I kiss her like she’s the only thing on the table.

Slow, deep, taking my time like I have some to take.

Her breath stutters, catches, evens, breaks again.

When I finally pull back, she chases me half an inch and then blinks up, dazed but not lost. I rest my forehead against hers to get my own breathing under control.

“I don’t expect anything from you,” I explain, because a man who doesn’t lay ground rules ends up pissed off at a woman for his own shortcomings in not communicating where he is from the beginning.

Her smile is small and sharp. “We’re both adults and consenting ones at that.”

It’s almost my line from last week thrown back in my face, almost as a dare. It makes the corner of my mouth twitch. “You been practicing that?”

“Maybe.” She rises on her toes and kisses me again, deeper, like she’s memorizing this moment for us both so I can’t forget it. The drag turns into a pull. The pull turns into something with teeth. Her fingers slide under the edge of my shirt, flesh seeking contact.

I let it go as far as it should—no further.

When I feel the moment start to tilt, I turn us.

My back hits the wall. My hands frame her jaw, then slide down the elegant line of her throat, over the fluttering pulse, across the warm weight of her through the cotton.

She shivers. It’s not cold. It’s relief.

Her mouth breaks on a gasp against mine.

“Easy,” I murmur, and it’s not a warning. It’s a promise.

She breathes the word back at me like oxygen. “Easy.”

I edge us toward the couch without breaking. She comes because I’m taking her there and because she wants to see what happens when we run out of wall. We land, not graceful, half-laughing into the cushions, me caging her with my arms.

Her hands are in my hair. My lips sweep the hinge of her jaw, the hollow under her ear where women carry every bad thing anyone ever said and call it posture. She makes a sound that is not polite. I swallow it and give her back a better one.

This is not sex. Not the kind that counts in the way I mean when I say sex.

It’s a fire that burns fast and clean because the wood is dry and the wind is right.

I move down, mouth at her throat, hands sliding her shirt up that new, soft cotton that isn’t trying to sell anybody a lie.

She lifts under my palms like the tide. I take my time.

I don’t make her wait, not really, but I don’t rush because rushing makes the world smaller and I want this to be big for her. Big and simple and completely hers.

When I slide a hand under the waistband of her leggings, she doesn’t tense.

She lets me in. Warm, wet, welcome. Her breath stutters into my shoulder, catches, breaks again.

I work my fingers the way I work anything that matters—attention, patience, pressure where it pays.

She arches, gasps my name like it’s something meant to be said out loud.

The sound claws down my spine and takes a seat in my ribs, satisfied.

“Yeah,” I encourage, against her mouth, against the pulse in her throat. My fingers working inside her like I’m playing her body as an instrument. Hum for me. “There you go.”

She comes sharp and sudden, not a drawn-out opera, more like a clean break. The kind the body makes when it remembers it’s not a problem. She clamps on my fingers and I ride it with her, steady, steady, steady, and then ease her out of the haze of ecstasy slowly, gently.

It would be the simplest thing in the world to keep going. To strip the distance the rest of the way and call what follows inevitable. I could tell myself I earned it. That she kissed me first. That every sign points right. I’m not a man who takes the easy version of important things.

I ease my hand free, slide her shirt back down, and kiss her once more, soft, like a period instead of an open-ended moment.

She blinks up at me, pupils blown, lips swollen, hair wrecked in ways that make me hungry and something else I don’t like naming. “Kellum,” she breathes, a question hooked to my name. Desire still there burning hot.

I shake my head once and put my forehead to hers holding myself back and silently begging her not to ask for more so I don’t snap and take her the way I want to. “You’re on the rebound, Kristen.”

Her brows pull in frustrated with me. “I— I know what I want.”

“I know what you just found in freedom and in yourself,” I state, not unkind.

“It’s good, darlin’. Keep it.” She whimpers and her face saddens.

I continue, “Listen, when we have sex, it’s not gonna be because your head’s messy, my head’s a mess, and we’re the nearest thing to each other.

It’s gonna be because you’re fully mine—mind, body, soul.

Because you pick it in the daylight and don’t stutter when you said it. ”

The words feel crazy in my mouth. Old-fashioned and too big, too honest. They’re the only ones that feel right, though. And something about her, I want to get it right.

Something happens in her face I don’t expect. Not anger. Not embarrassment. It’s like a relief so sharp it aches. Her eyes shine, not with tears—a different light. She exhales, long and shaky, and laughs once, small and broken open. “Who are you?”

“Complicated,” I state. “Hungry.” I continue. “Stupid. Not stupid.”

She presses her palm to my cheek. Her thumb skims the line of my jaw where the scruff of my beard’s gone soft at the end of the day. “Okay.”

“Okay,” I echo, and inside I mean I heard yo u and hold me to that and I promise I’ll hold myself harder .

We don’t move for a minute. The room breathes around us. The fridge hums its dumb song. A car goes by outside and doesn’t slow. Her heartbeat settles against my chest. Home.

“Come on,” I say, after a while, because not moving turns into thinking and thinking is the enemy in nights like this. “Bed.”

She goes with me without questions and without worry. In the doorway, she tugs on my shirt like she wants to say something and doesn’t know how. I solve it by switching off the lamp and letting the room go soft. In the dark, honesty comes easier.

We climb in bed. I don’t make a show of distance. I don’t crowd her either. When she turns onto her side and inches toward me until our knees kiss, I do what I do and hook my arm and draw her across me in the practiced way we’re starting to have. Her sigh is a surrender I respect.

“You’re gonna be trouble,” she mutters into my chest.

“Already am.”

“Not like that.” She taps my sternum with one finger. “In here.”

I snort, humorless and true. “Get in line.”

She goes very quiet, then: “I don’t feel scared.”

“Maybe you should reconsider that.”

“I think you’re worth it.” Her hand rests over my heart like it’s a thing she might take if I offered and one I’d have to wrestle back. “Good night, Kellum.”

“Night, Kristen.”

I stroke her hair, slow and thoughtless, our way.

She falls asleep faster than she should after a ride, a kissing, and a confession.

I lie awake a while longer because men like me check the perimeter before we rest. Door locked.

Phone on the nightstand. Knife where I always leave it.

Gun nearby. Woman breathing steady on my chest like she decided this is a thing she gets to have—rest, safety, a person that doesn’t demand payment for every soft sound she makes.

Eventually even my head gives up. Sleep takes me. Outside, the moths keep throwing themselves at the porch light, stupid as fuck. Inside, a one of a kind beauty blooms between us, patient and sure it can wait. This is something that can withstand the test of time.