Page 20 of Forever Finds Us (Wisper Dreams #7)

Chapter Fifteen

Roxanne

“Why did you leave Wisper?” I asked, and Brand hid his face above the swell of my naked hip, dipping his head below my rumpled covers, rubbing his soft lips over the skin beneath my rib cage and soothing the fingerprints he’d left there.

“I’m not sure I know how to explain. My old man was a piece of work.

The biggest asshole you’ve ever met, and I needed to get away from him.

Bax wasn’t my dad’s biggest fan either, but he loved workin’ the land.

He hated sheep.” Brand laughed, and his breath tickled over my skin.

“But he always knew this was where he needed to be.

“Not me. I wanted out. I needed to be somewhere else, somewhere the smell of sheep shit and desperation didn’t cling to my clothes, somewhere I could breathe. If I had stayed, I’d be a different man now. Maybe not a good one.”

“Do you regret leavin’?”

He nodded. “I regret that I stayed away so long. My dad’s been dead nine years now.

I knew things here weren’t great. Knew my brothers and sister were strugglin’, knew Merv was unhappy, but I was selfish, and I pushed it from my mind and focused on the things I needed.

” He curled into a ball beside me, his arm draped over my stomach.

“What if I hadn’t come home? What if Merv had been alone today? ”

Stroking my hand lazily over his tanned shoulder, connecting the faint freckles there with a finger, I whispered, “But you did come home, and she wasn’t alone.”

“Thank God. I never would’ve forgiven myself if…”

“Hey.” I tugged a lock of his soft brown hair between my fingers, and he looked up my body.

God, his eyes held so much pain. It wasn’t something he often let others see, of that I was sure.

“Don’t go there. It doesn’t help you or your mama if you wallow in the what ifs.

She’s in good hands up in Jackson. The doctors will come up with a plan to get her healthy again, and you and Abey and the family will be there to help her. ”

He nodded. “I know you’re right, but there was an hour today when I didn’t know if she’d make it. I can’t describe the feelin’ inside my body while I raced her to Dr. Whitley and waited for him to tell me if she was dead or alive.”

His arm around my body tightened, and he slipped his other beneath my back and held onto me like a lifeline.

Like I was the only port in his shitstorm.

His grip was almost painful, the tips of his fingers burrowing into my skin, but I let him cling to me because I loved the violent way he needed me.

I had never felt more wanted or needed than the way Brand had made me feel over the last week.

Not within my family, not at work, not in any of the pitiful excuses of relationships I’d had. No one had ever held me the way Brand was, like he’d crawl inside me if he could.

He’d given me power over him. He’d opened up to me about things that weren’t easy to talk about, and knowing he trusted me enough to be vulnerable was just as tantalizing as it felt to be under his command and his body.

“There’s still so much left unsaid, you know?” he whispered. “Today, I could’ve lost my chance to tell her. To explain to her who I am and why I left. And I think that’s what scared me the most.”

“So, you’ll say it now.”

He nodded and asked, “What about you? You said before that your family has a lot of expectations.”

“Yeah. I love them fiercely, but I think you and I have more in common than we know.”

“How so?”

“Mm. I was different than my sisters. I’ve never wanted what they did. And I’m… anxious. You know?”

“You fidget.”

I blushed, embarrassed he’d noticed. No one ever had before, besides Aubrey. “Yeah. Always have. I don’t know. I guess I see the negative around me. I can get obsessed about it. I don’t try to, but I do, and I guess I try to distract myself from all the bad stuff I see every day.”

“I imagine in your job, that could be pretty depressing. Traumatic even.”

“Yeah. But I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t give up my job for anything.

After high school, I knew I wanted to be in law enforcement.

My uncle Al is a cop, and I’ve looked up to him since I was ten years old.

He worked the Oklahoma City bombing. He’s a hero.

He helped so many people.” I smiled, thinking of Al and what he’d curse at me if he heard me call him a hero.

“But in our family, girls get married. They pop out kids and make a home. I didn’t want that.

“Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothin’ wrong with that life. And actually, I’d love to be married, to know my husband was at home, waitin’ on me. I respect my sisters and how hard they work at home with the kids. But I needed somethin’ different.

“I’ve got this… thing inside me. I need to help people too. It’s what fulfills me, you know? It’s who I am.” I shook my head against the pillow. “But my mama still calls once a week to nag me about bringin’ a man home for the holidays and the kids I’ll never have.”

“Hm. And if you did bring someone home? Tell me what that would look like.”

“Well, if I had my way, he’d show up on his valiant steed and shut my mama up, but then he’d back me up and tell her how proud he is of me and the job I do.

” Massaging my fingertips through Brand’s hair, I said, “He would of course be the most handsome man in the world, he wouldn’t care that I’m weird, and he’d be head over heels in love with me.

He’d probably propose in front of the whole family, and we’d ride off into the sunset and they’d all be left speechless. ”

Brand smiled up at me. “You’ve given this some thought.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had the time. And I’ve dated enough Mr. Wrongs to know what I don’t want.”

We were quiet for a while, and I kept up my slow tousling of his hair. Whatever weirdness or difference I had inside me seemed to be calmed when I touched him.

“Roxanne, do you know what neurodivergence is?”

I shrugged. “Not really. I mean, isn’t it like autism?”

“That’s one form, but neurodivergence just means that your brain works a little differently than most people’s.

One of my project leads, Tweety, is neurodivergent.

It makes him uncomfortable when he has to deal with people he doesn’t know, but the man is one hell of a lead.

He’s only twenty-six, but he’s already well on his way to runnin’ my whole company. ”

“Tweety?”

“Yeah. His name is Jason Kendrick, but he wears cartoon T-shirts every day, so the crew started callin’ him Tweety.”

Brand’s hands still clinging to me began to move.

They slid from beneath me and to my knees slowly.

He spread them and moved his body between them, kissing my thighs, tickling the backs of my knees with his tongue, and the barely controlled need in his eyes when his gaze met mine again began to clear away the conversation between us.

“Is that… unappealing? My quirks. Am I not who you want?”

He shook his head. “It’s who you are. There’s nothin’ wrong with bein’ different. Haven’t you noticed I’m a little different too? I think it’s why I’m so drawn to you.”

He couldn’t have answered any more perfectly. “Really?”

He nodded, pushing my bent legs down to the mattress.

“This is who I am, Roxanne,” he said, my name a rasp from his mouth.

“And you are what I want and what I need .” His elbows dug into the tender skin of my thighs, pressing them harder to the bed, and he spread my pussy lips open with his thumbs and fixed his eyes on the part of me other men had barely glimpsed, but Brand stared at my body like he wanted to memorize the sight of my wet, pink, swollen skin.

He’d already dragged me to sweet perdition and back tonight, but there was no mistaking that he was ready to do it again.

He bent his head, and his tongue peeked out of his mouth before he took a long, slow lap between my legs. Goosebumps rose all over me, and I cried out in ecstasy.

“What a mess I’ve made between your legs, beauty,” he whispered, and his tongue entered my body, wet and hot, collecting the cum he’d left inside me the last time he’d fucked me.

Curling it onto the flat of his tongue, he rose above me, his biceps flexing and holding him up.

He worked our cum in his mouth, mixing it with his saliva.

Pursing his lips, he let it drip onto my belly, and he rubbed his spit into my skin with one hand while his other sought things inside me I had no words for.

But we didn’t really need words anymore. Not tonight.

His calloused fingers worked me, the hilt of his hand pounding my pubic bones with every pump.

His eyes met mine again, possession and some kind of depravity I’d never seen before shining through his blue irises. “I want to break this pussy. Wreck it so no other man can have it. No more Mr. Wrongs. Tell me yes.”

“ Yes ,” I consented instantly, but in my head thought, but we may need to set some boundaries and come up with a safe word. “Basketball,” I blurted and he stilled, probably thinking I’d lost my mind. “That’s my safe word. If I say basketball, stop what you’re doin’.”

A curt nod was his only response before he descended again and euphoria rushed through me as he proceeded to indeed wreck my pussy with his wicked, wicked hands and mouth.

Yawning widely, I leaned back against the headrest in Dan’s cruiser.

Most days, I prided myself on my astute dedication and my ability to be engaged on the job no matter the things going on in my personal life, but today my whole body felt like it was being dragged behind Dan’s truck by a rope tied to the bumper.

I’d never been so tired, but I giggled to myself when the words “rope” and “tied” passed through my head.

My phone pinged with a text from my youngest sister, Cecily, and when I looked at my screen, I saw the meme she’d sent: a picture of Betty White from the Golden Girls, holding two light sabers, and the text read “Always be yourself, unless you can be a Jedi Betty White.”

I snorted, and Dan bristled next to me.