Page 33 of Forever Finds Us (Wisper Dreams #7)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Brand

Spending the evening with Roxanne and my family had temporarily cured me of the vicious cycle of thoughts swirling in my mind like a cesspool. Even Gina Scott and her dramatics couldn’t spoil it.

Roxanne’s laughter had been like therapy for me tonight and seeing her regain her confidence and her insecurity melt away helped tremendously.

But now that we were back at her place, sipping the leftover whiskey from last night and watching and listening to a fire crackle on her TV screen, Dixon and Stuey were on my mind again.

Dixon’s absence tonight at our family dinner hurt, and being around Stuart was like a knife in my gut.

He probably misunderstood when I whispered in his ear before we left tonight that his daddy loved him and missed him.

He probably thought I had been talking about Bax.

How could I keep lying to the people I loved? To Stuey? He deserved to know his dad was out there, loving and missing him from afar, but I just couldn’t bring myself to rat my brother out. If it was the only thing he’d ask of me, I had to keep his confidence. I owed him that.

“Brand?”

“Hm?” I looked at Roxanne next to me on her couch and realized she’d been talking to me, but I couldn’t recall one thing she’d said. “I’m sorry. I’m a little distracted, I guess.”

“You’re tired,” she said. “We didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I am a bit, but it’s not that.”

“No? What is it? You’re always asking me what I need from you, but tonight, tell me what you need from me . I’d give you anything you ask for.”

“You would?”

She wrapped her arm around mine between us and hugged me. “Of course, what is it you need, baby?”

“I need you,” I said, and I pulled her on top of me, grabbing her glass before it spilled. I set it on the side table next to me, and she straddled my legs.

“You have me,” she said, lifting her dress over her head. Her bare breasts bounced, and seeing her in only her thong drove me wild.

She began to unbutton my jeans and then unzip them. She moved to the floor and knelt between my legs, then tugged the jeans and my boxers down my thighs and rubbed her hands over them slowly. She leaned over me, looking at my cock now standing up between us, smiled softly up at me, and descended.

“Roxanne,” I groaned when she opened her mouth and took me inside. I was so hard, it hurt. My head fell to the back of the couch, eyes closed in ecstasy. “Is this how you imagined it earlier, when I told you you’d suck my dick before the night was through?”

“Mm,” she moaned around my cock and nodded, and the movement made her suck me harder.

“Fuck.”

She increased her pace and wrapped her hand tightly around the base of my dick, then added her other hand and squeezed hard.

“Yeah,” I breathed, begging for more, watching her head bob above my body. My belt hung from my jeans, the buckle glinting in the light from her lamp, and it gave me an idea.

The flat of her tongue dragging up my shaft and then curling around the head of my cock was exquisite torture. I could barely focus, but I managed to pull the belt from the loops of my jeans. I folded it in half and held it by the buckle, then let the leather fall over her back as she sucked me.

She felt it and she shivered. She thought I wanted to use it on her.

“Beauty,” I said, trying not to come, “will you to do somethin’ for me?

” She looked up my body, but she didn’t stop sucking my dick, and the sight of her flushed cheeks and her mouth wrapped around me was almost my undoing.

I bucked into her, and the belt buckle dug into my palm when I grabbed onto the arm and the back of the couch for leverage to fuck her mouth harder.

She didn’t look away, and neither did I as I lifted the belt above her back and let it fall onto her skin with a soft slap . She gasped and sucked harder.

“Goddamn,” I panted, trying to catch my breath. Trying to stay in control. “Your mouth feels so fuckin’ good.”

But I wanted to feel the belt. I wanted her to punish me .

Since Dixon’s call and her bite this evening, I needed it more every passing second.

Draping the belt over the arm of the couch, I sat up and lifted her mouth off me with my finger under her chin.

Her eyes flashed with uncertainty and confusion. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“You said you’d give me what I need.”

“Anything,” she said. “Tell me.”

Without speaking, I slipped my hands beneath her arms and lifted her off the floor. I sat her next to me on the couch and then stood and took off my shirt. She watched me unbutton it slowly, her eyes darting back and forth between the nervous look on my face and my chest as I revealed it to her.

“Brand?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. I had no clue what to say except that I wanted her to hurt me. I wanted her to make me pay for all the secrets I’d been carrying around like a fucking disease. I needed someone to punish me for leaving my brother with a monster all those years ago.

When I knelt in front of the couch and handed her the belt, she didn’t speak, but I knew the change in my demeanor and the begging in my eyes were probably confusing her.

“Please, Roxanne? I need this.”

“Why?” she whispered.

Dropping my head and letting it hang over her couch, I said, “I don’t know how to explain, but I love you and I trust you, and I need you to do this to me.”

Her silence told me she’d heard me tell her I loved her.

I did. I had no clue how it happened so quickly, but it had. I’d fallen so fucking in love with her I could barely see straight, but this nagging, pulling guilt in my core wouldn’t let me free. I needed her to release it so I could laugh with her and love her.

“ Please? ”

Wordlessly, she stood, and she moved to my side and angled her body. The leather zipped through the air when she lifted the belt, but when she let her arm fall, I barely felt it.

“Harder.”

“Brand, what’s happenin’ right now?”

“Harder. Please .”

“No,” she said resolutely. She let the belt drop from her fingers, and she knelt next to me and wrapped me up in her arms. “Talk to me. What’s goin’ on with you tonight?

Please, baby, tell me.” She held me, and it felt better than the belt or sex or anything.

“I love you too, but I don’t want you to hurt. ”

Finally, when I thought I could talk without blubbering, I rose up on my knees and sat back on my heels.

“I lied.”

“To me?” She searched my face, her eyes roaming and trying to find the answer.

“To everyone.”

She was uneasy when she asked, “About?”

“A lot of things. And I have so much guilt. So much fuckin’ guilt, Roxanne.”

“Because you lied?”

“Yes. No. I mean, yes but I’m guilty of more than lyin’.”

She waited. Didn’t push me.

I turned toward her, and we faced each other, both of us still kneeling on the floor. She held my hands while I talked.

“When we were kids, teenagers, my father used to whip my little brother. I don’t think Abey ever knew.

Until she was fifteen years old, she was my father’s princess.

Nothing bad ever touched her. Bax was the oldest, and he was well suited for farm life.

I was… not so much. But I was strong, and I did what our father wanted.

“Dixon didn’t. He was rebellious, as most teens are, but he and my father, they just didn’t get along.

I noticed it even when Dixon and Abey were little.

Our father wasn’t cruel then, but I’d see him get irritated with Dixon about the dumbest things.

But as Dixon got older and braver, our father got meaner.

“Bax and I did our best to protect him, but Merv babied Dixon. He was small and my father saw that as weakness. She made it worse because she coddled him and let him off the hook for things she shouldn’t have. That just made our father irate.”

“I’m so sorry,” Roxanne murmured. “Did he ever hit you?”

“Once. It was enough. It’s why I left really, first chance I got, but he was verbally and emotionally abusive, especially to Dixon.

“When Bax and his first wife, Candy, married, they moved off the farm to a little cottage in town, and it got worse. Abey was a ghost in our house. Our dad didn’t want her working with us by then, after he found out she was gay, so a lot of days it was only Dixon and me with the old man.

“One night, Dixon was fuckin’ around with the shearing equipment, and he broke it. My dad lost his shit. He punched Dixon in the face so hard, he passed out. Broke his nose.”

Roxanne gasped beside me. From her stories about her parents and sisters, I knew she came from a normal, loving family. I wanted to spare her the horrid details, but I needed her to understand.

“When I graduated high school, the only thought in my head was gettin’ out.

I ran. Fast. Dixon was two years behind me, so for two years, he was pretty much alone with that man.

Merv was no help. Abey was livin’ her own hell, and she avoided home like the plague.

Who would blame her? And Bax and Candy were in their own little world.

“My dad cared too much what people thought of him. I think that’s why he hid the worst of it from Bax. And Dixon wouldn’t talk about it.

“But I knew, and I abandoned him. I’ll never forgive myself for it. I should’ve taken him with me when I left, but what could I have done? Dixon was sixteen, but I was only eighteen, and I was tryin’ to figure out how to survive on my own.

“But that’s when shit really started to go bad with Dixon. He started drinkin’. Smokin’. He didn’t care anymore. And why should he have? Everyone who loved him left him or treated him like shit.

“The one person who treated him like he deserved was Bax’s wife, Candy. They were friends. She looked out for Dixon. I’m not certain, but I don’t think she knew the worst of Dixon’s relationship with our father, but it wasn’t hard to see how traumatized Dixon had become.

“Candy loved him. And then she died, and Dixon was with her that day. He watched her and her unborn child die right in front of him. He did CPR. He tried.”

I shook my head, whispering, “After that…” I didn’t need to finish the sentence. Roxanne didn’t need to hear me say it.