Page 24 of Forever Finds Us (Wisper Dreams #7)

Chapter Eighteen

Roxanne

As much as I loved that Lee Construction cap on him, it didn’t escape my notice that he hadn’t worn it around Gina Scott, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t disguise the jealous tinge to my voice.

His careful gaze caressed my face, lingering on my mouth for a moment, but as it lifted to take in my expression, his intelligent eyes missed nothing. They narrowed the littlest bit, eyebrows furrowing for half a second as he stepped inside my door.

“It was fine,” he said. “Just business. I’m glad it’s over.”

Turning away from him, I walked to my kitchen. I needed a drink. “I’m sure you are.”

“I missed you this week,” he said, his gaze now following mine as it roamed my living room.

I looked everywhere but at him. He tilted his head.

“Roxanne? Are you… jealous ?” His voice was a low hum as he tracked me, almost menacingly so, but when I finally glanced at him, a smile lifted the edges of his lips.

I turned to face him. With a jut of my chin, I said, “No,” and I spun away.

“Don’t lie to me.” He touched my arm with the tips of two fingers, but when I tried to yank it away from their warmth, they slid to my wrist, and his hot hand closed around it.

“I didn’t lie.”

“Yes, you did, and if you do it again—” He paused, and his voice was dangerously seductive when he finished his sentence. “I may have to punish you.”

Reaching above the fridge, I grabbed the bottle of whiskey I kept for special occasions, though the bottle was still sealed. What special thing had happened to me in the last two years?

There was nothing until I met Brand.

Annoyance and desire fought for control inside me.

I didn’t want to admit that I’d been more jealous today than a fifteen-year-old girl watching her boyfriend flirt with a sixteen-year-old bombshell at the weekly football game, but it was true, even after Tab explained.

But the images my mind conjured of just how Brand might punish me made my whole body shudder.

I wasn’t a liar, though, at least not a very good one if I wasn’t interrogating a suspect at work, so I let him turn me with a tug of his strong hand.

“Fine. I was jealous but then Tabitha told me who Gina was.”

“And that settled it for you?” he deduced, searching my face, like a detective himself, looking for clues of deception.

Without blinking, my eyes met his, and I stood tall. “Yes.”

“Liar.”

I scoffed. “You’re awfully sure of yourself. Why should I care who you date?”

Turning away, I jerked my wrist out of his grasp, intending to escape to my bathroom with the whiskey and slam the door in his face, just for dramatic effect.

I didn’t need to use the restroom, but I could see no way to end the conversation without admitting I cared for him.

In private, I could let my tics and my anxiety run wild.

I could let my insecurities roar in my head and admit to myself without shame that I’d been so jealous when I saw him with his ex today that my whole world had turned green.

But Brand had no intention of letting me storm off to prove my point, whatever that was. And it seemed he was not about to let me wallow.

He seized both my wrists this time, and his hands slid slowly up my arms. He took the bottle from my hand, set it on the counter, and pulled me against his body, nuzzling his nose into my hair at the back of my neck and letting me feel his erection against my ass.

“Would it make you feel better if I told you that throughout the entire dinner, all I could think about was you?”

“Now who’s lyin’?”

“Roxanne, if you’re under some kind of impression that there isn’t one moment of my day I’m not rememberin’ our time together, you’re wrong.”

“Right,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my mouth, “’cause you’re all about dollar-store merchandise. Everything you do, everything you own is top shelf. I’m not good enough, and you proved it when you acted like you didn’t even know me at the coffee shop.”

“Because you said you wanted to keep this between the two of us,” he growled in my ear, almost betraying his normally perfect composure. “Half of Wisper was in that café. I did that for you .”

“Yeah, right. You did it for her. You did it so your beautiful girlfriend wouldn’t know you’d been slummin’ it with me.”

His hands tightened around my upper arms. “ Ex -girlfriend,” he said, a warning clear in his tone.

“You are more than enough, and she’s nothin’ compared to you.

Not in my eyes. I broke it off with her because when I looked at her, I felt apathy.

I could barely get it up around her in the end.

She may seem beautiful on the outside, but inside, she’s vacant and manipulative, and I wanted more than that in my life.

“ You are so much more.” He thrust his hips once. “Do you feel that?”

Oh, I felt it all right, his dick hard as steel and digging into my non-bouncy, heart-shaped ass.

“You do that to me. I’ve never been so hard in my life.”

“So I’m good enough to get you hard, but can you honestly stand there and tell me I’m your type? I’m not the kind of girl you take home to your mama.”

“You’ve already met my mother.”

“Not my point.”

“What will it take to convince you?”

He rocked against me, his hard cock trying to tunnel out of his jeans and between my shaking thighs, and all my jealous thoughts and the blatant lust I felt for him became a swirling tornado in my mind.

They reminded me of what Tab had said, how we were both from Tornado Alley, how I wasn’t Brand’s type, and how I was too “down to earth” for him.

“What is it you need from me that will show you I want you, not just here in secret, not just at some nondescript motel? That all I think about is you?”

“Dunno,” I breathed, pushing back against him and realizing his touch, no matter how soft or hard, calmed the twisting of my mind. And I imagined him taking me right here in the middle of my dingy kitchen.

“That’s the third lie you’ve told me tonight.”

Suddenly, I was spinning. The kitchen walls swirled around me like I’d boarded the Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair. His hands on my hips, Brand guided us to the counter behind me and pressed me against it. The rounded, Formica edge dug into my low back, and his cock did the same to my front.

My old, threadbare, red and white Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt split up the middle like a book being ripped open at the spine, and Brand’s hands jerked wide with the fabric still bunched inside them.

He didn’t speak, but his pulse hammered away in the thick artery traveling up his neck, and his chest heaved with quick breaths.

Reaching for the whiskey, he uncapped it and his other hand wrapped around my neck.

He tilted my head toward the ceiling with the pad of his thumb and let the amber liquid trickle over my aching breasts.

It ran between them and down to the waist of my sweats.

They soaked up the silky moisture as he leaned over me and licked at the whiskey.

Nipping the tender skin on the side of my right breast with his teeth, he yanked at my sweatpants like he was trying to break into a bank vault on a time crunch. He made quick work of the rope ties at the top, and the sweats fell to the floor.

“Are we definin’ our relationship right now, Roxanne?

” he asked, his strong grip on my hip possessive, his eyes burning me where his mouth had just been, but his question was clearly rhetorical.

“Because if we are, you’re the one who needs to set the rules.

You didn’t want the world to know you were fuckin’ me, but now you’re jealous of a woman I don’t give two shits about because we walked down Main Street together?

So tell me what you want from me. Be clear, ’cause I’m inclined to give it to you. ”

From the red mark he’d left on my skin, he lifted his eyes and fixed his lightning-blue irises on mine, but indecision crossed his face, and he stepped into me.

His nice shirt was ruined as it sopped up the sticky liquid and he touched his stomach to mine, his chest rising and falling and training my lungs to breathe with him, and I swore I could feel his heartbeat pulsing beneath his fancy jeans.

He kissed me, moaned into my mouth, and anchored a hand behind my head, his fingers threading through my hair, holding my lips to his. “Tell me now, Roxanne, ’cause I want this, whatever it is. I need it. I need you.”

What I wanted—what I needed was entirely too bold to say out loud.

In the past, if I had been confident enough to tell a man what I wanted from him, very soon after, I had to figure out how to pick myself up and dust the dirt off my ass without inconveniencing anyone, without causing a commotion.

Roxi Riri Fitts didn’t deserve a commotion.

Her anxieties and insecurities were a burden.

She was the middle sister. That tall daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Fitts.

The one without a husband or kids. Her heartache didn’t merit a commotion, not like her sisters’.

I whispered, “I want to be the only woman you touch. The only woman you kiss.” Looking him straight in the eye, I spoke loud and clearly. “You only fuck me.”

“Done.” His hands left my body needy and cold, and he backed into my living room with the bottle of whiskey, taunting me to follow as he unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his jeans, and turned his hat backward, the CEO of Lee Construction fighting for dominance against the farm-raised country boy he used to be.

I followed him slowly, knowing full well the power my naked skin had over him. The only articles of clothing he hadn’t yanked off my body were my ripped shirt and my stretchy black pair of bikini-cut underwear.

“You know what I think?” Something inside me wanted to defy him, to argue and push him to some limit I could feel but couldn’t see, and oddly, my near nakedness gave me courage.