Page 16 of Home Game (Fixer Brothers Construction Co #7)

16

STORM

I woke up colder than usual, not under the covers.

It was dark. For a moment I was confused, because my bed felt way nicer than usual, and it kind of smelled like Emmett, which already had my cock thickening a little, because his scent could do that to me in an instant.

I blinked my eyes open a little and remembered everything in little pieces.

It smelled like him because I wasn’t at home. I was in his bed.

I opened my eyes fully and turned over in bed to see it was empty next to me. “Oh, fuck no,” I muttered, a flash of disappointment flooding through me.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and got up, padding across the room and toward the hall. I poked my head into a spare bedroom, but didn’t see Emmett in there. I headed down the stairs, the whole house lit only by the reflected light coming in through the windows.

When I got downstairs I saw through the tall back windows that the snow must have been steadily falling for a few hours. The grass, plants, and trees were blanketed in a thin layer of white, and even I had to admit that it was beautiful.

Like being in a snowglobe.

I walked over toward the couch and finally saw Emmett there, lying back and covered in one of his fuzzy blankets that looked insanely comfortable but probably had cost hundreds of bucks.

I sat down on the edge of the couch right beside him, leaning close.

He hummed, waking up and blinking up at me.

“You look like an angel right now,” I said, marveling at how beautiful he looked in the low light. “And I’m going to smack you in your fucking pretty face.”

“Storm,” he murmured. “What time is it? It’s still dark out.”

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” I said. “What happened to my whiskey hot chocolate you promised? And your cock?”

He sucked in a breath of air, sitting up a little on the couch. “You fell asleep. Not my fault.”

I swallowed past a sudden tightness in my throat, shifting on the couch. “If you don’t want me, you can just say it, Emmett.”

My words surprised me as much as they seemed to surprise him. He furrowed his brow.

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?” I asked. “Quit letting me down easy, if that’s what you’re doing.”

I was speaking softly but a flash of anger moved through my body.

“What do you expect will happen?” he asked, a sudden fire in his voice. “We fuck, it feels good, then what?”

“Then whatever the hell we want ,” I said. “Then we fuck again. And again. And I show up on your doorstep and bother you because I crave your cock and your scent and your fucking smile like I’m addicted to it.”

Emmett looked like he was a nervous, pretty deer in headlights.

He really did have a fear that getting intimate with me would somehow end up with him getting hurt.

But I’d been hurt in the past, too.

I knew what it was like to have broken trust. I knew it all too well.

In a moment, my attitude did a 180, shifting from confusion to understanding in one fell swoop. At first I had wondered if it was a rejection—of me, of everything I was, and everything I represented. But in reality, I didn’t think Emmett wasn’t rejecting me. He wasn’t saying I didn’t matter, like I was always so afraid of.

He was scared .

“Emmett,” I said softly.

“I want to try,” he breathed. “I want you more than you could even know.”

I hummed low, affection flooding me and making my cock start to harden again. I understood now.

And if all Emmett needed was for me to reassure him a little bit, I could do that. Easy fucking peasy.

I placed my hand on his thigh, running it up and down.

“I want you to fuck me,” I growled. “How’s that for trying?”

He breathed out a jagged breath as my hand slid up toward his cock, which was rapidly hardening under my palm.

He was sitting up now and I sat down next to him, tucked in the V-shaped corner of the sofa. There was nothing to stop us. Nothing to overthink. It was just me, him, and the reflected moonlight, coming in off of the blanket of snow outside.

When I crushed my mouth to his he moaned like it was the relief he’d been waiting for. He was pliant and responsive, opening his mouth to mine in an instant. I felt his legs open up on the couch, too.

Like he’d been waiting around for some cosmic permission from the universe, and now he had it.

His mouth was so sweet and warm, and exactly what I needed in the cold house.

More .

Fuck, I needed more.

“I wanted…” I said, stopping because I had to kiss his plush lips again before I continued. “I wanted you in bed next to me. I was lonely when I woke up.”

“Poor you,” he said against my lips in a teasing tone.

There it was. I smiled as my cock throbbed.

“I’ve been missing that attitude from you,” I murmured. “I was lonely, but I was also mad at you.”

I reached low to grip his cock again through the fabric of his pants. “You feel so good.”

He leaned back slightly, his eyes meeting mine. His gaze was all fire, even in the pale blue light from outside.

“I already told you that I want you to fuck me,” I said to him. “I still want it. Now more than ever. Not scared to say it.”

He swallowed, licking his lips. “Then you can have it.”

“I’m all yours,” I said, and it really seemed to do something for him because his cock pulsed under my palm and his eyes widened slightly.

“Get these clothes off,” he said a moment later. He squeezed around my hips and then stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

He pounded up the stairs and for a minute I was alone on the couch, breathing deep with my mind spinning.

I was harder than a diamond. When was the last time anything had turned me on this much? Had anyone ever turned me on this much? I shoved all of my clothes off, somehow both cold and overheating at the same time.

When Emmett came back down the stairs, every ounce of the uncertainty from before was gone. He had a condom and a bottle of lube in his hand and he set them down on the table beside the couch, looking at me.

“Good,” he said, looking over at my naked body. “Turn over for me.”

“Yes, sir ,” I said, flipping over on the couch.

I suddenly had no idea what to expect. Emmett really was the one who had to be more in control, here—he’d done this before, and I had no idea what I was doing.

“You have a perfect ass,” he said. I heard the click of the bottle cap opening.

I gasped as I felt his hand spread me from behind. No more hesitation. It was slick and cold at first as he gently felt around my hole. He started to swirl his fingertips around it, and the slickness heated up.

And then it felt good. Really fucking good.

There was no way I was going too far—if anything, I wasn’t going far enough.

“More,” I said. “More of that.”

I felt the bulk of him come down over the top of me. He leaned over me, stopping to gently bite my ear.

“I’m just getting started,” he growled near my ear, and then in one smooth motion, I felt him push a finger inside me.

I moaned.

God damn .

That was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I looked forward past the couch, my eyes fixating on the fireplace, suddenly hyper aware of every sensation in my body.

I tensed up and I knew Emmett could sense it. “Just breathe,” he told me. “Relax.”

The idea that he was inside me—inside me and commanding me above me, made my cock throb where it was pressed up against the couch.

“Give me more,” I said, even though I had no idea if I could take more, yet.

He didn’t hesitate. I felt a slightly painful stretch as he pushed the tip of a second finger inside me, and I let out a strangled sound.

“Breathe, breathe,” he repeated above me, and the desperate desire flooded through me again. “You doing okay?”

“God, I like having you inside me,” I said. “Give me more.”

“I’ll give you more. We have to go slow.”

“Just push me down and take me,” I said. “I don’t care if you hurt me. I want you to claim me, Emmett. Like I fucking belong to you.”

I pushed my hips back, shoving against him and fucking backward onto his two fingers, forcing the matter. It hurt, and a bit of sharp pain went through me, but I couldn’t care.

I didn’t feel like I’d just been waiting for this tonight. I felt like I’d been waiting for something like this for a very long time, but I hadn’t known what I was looking for.

Emmett was someone I could really level with.

I trusted him, actually. Being vulnerable with him earlier had felt so right, even though it didn’t make any sense logically. I wanted to be more vulnerable with him. I wanted to be raw. What did I have to lose?

We could fight right, and it only made sense that we would fuck right, too.

He moaned deeply as he felt me shoving back against him. His free hand came down to grip against my waist.

“You’re so eager,” he said.

“I go all the way, or I don’t go at all.”

He hummed as he pulled his fingers out of me. I heard the sound of the condom wrapper opening, and I leaned over, turning to look up at Emmett.

He was slicking himself up, looking down at me.

“All yours,” I said, my voice coming out sounding a little desperate.

“Tell me if you need me to stop,” he said. “Because I’m not going to hold back.”

My cock throbbed. “Please.”

His hand came down to grip the side of my ass hard. I felt his slick, warm tip line up with my hole and a brief moment of fear washed over me. He started to push inside and I hissed through clenched teeth, reaching out to grip a fistful of the blanket on the couch.

It really hurt, for a moment, as his thick tip started to press against my tight ring, slowly working me open.

But I wanted it too badly to care.

We had earned this. Pushed each other to our limits. And I wanted to be as close to him as humanly possible, wanted him inside me, because Emmett had shown me that I could be his equal.

All at once I realized that what Emmett had been able to do for me, against all odds, was to help me forget who I was, even for short bursts of time.

I was always in the moment with him.

I groaned as he pushed deeper, and my fingers clenched around the blanket in front of me.

“Don’t stop,” I uttered.

“Breathe,” he said in a low voice, his palm steady against the small of my back. I’d never known how much it could turn me on to have another man reminding me to breathe, but it worked, with him.

He was right. The more I breathed evenly, the more I relaxed into the pressure and tension, the better it felt. What started out as pain gave way to a richer, deeper sensation.

I was actually getting fucked .

Why was that so goddamn hot?

“Yes,” I said, my voice coming out in a whisper. I cleared my throat, straightening out my spine, and spoke again more confidently. “God, I want you to fuck me.”

He knew how to pace it better than I did, and he didn’t start thrusting right away. But slowly, as he worked me open, he began to move faster. To push a little deeper. To give me inch after inch of him, as my body heated up underneath him.

“I needed this,” he murmured above me. “God, I needed you, Storm.”

My neglected cock throbbed. “You can have all of me.”

He moved forward and finally, I felt the base of his groin hit my skin. I was taking all of him. I felt so full and so stretched and so much like I belonged to him, like this.

I was his.

I didn’t know what it meant, but it was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I trusted him completely.

“We should have done this sooner,” I uttered, squeezing around him. “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”

“You mean when we were constantly fighting? When you met me and wanted to sock me in the jaw?”

He moved out slightly and even the little bit of change in sensation inside me made my cock throb again.

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, we could have still hated each other, but we could have been fucking the whole time.”

He laughed, a genuine, low chuckle that I could feel against my skin as he leaned over me. “There’s no one like you, Storm.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I want to do this again. And I want to fuck you, too—holy hell, that sounds so hot.”

He hummed. “It’s settled. Next time we’re feeling like we want to kill each other, I’ll remind you that we should just fuck it out, instead.”

“Please,” I breathed. “Anytime. All of the time.”

He moved out and then thrusted back into me. The pain returned for a moment, but it was diminishing more and more each time, now.

“You are so perfect,” he said under his breath.

“Harder,” I said.

He moaned, thrusting again. “Perfect,” he repeated.

Every move he made turned me on, now. With the pain subsiding, I’d entered a new state of desire, where I actually could thrust back against him, too.

I was taking his cock. It made me feel a strange sense of pride, like I had somehow been able to arrive at a place with him where this felt like the only thing that made sense between us.

I loved that we could be like this.

Hating each other at first, then belonging together like this—in the night, when no one else was around.

A wave of emotion washed over me. How long had I been missing this? Missing out on being with someone who had just as much fire in him as I did?

I didn’t just want Emmett like this, I wanted him all of the time.

I liked walking around with him. Talking with him. Arguing with him. I even liked it lately when I saw his damn Porsche, or the God-forbidden Ferrari on the weekends.

Everything I thought I’d hated, I’d gotten a taste for, now. Like a magic trick.

“ Mmh ,” he hummed deeply now, his body draping over mine, pressing me up against the couch as he fucked me in earnest. He smelled like himself. Vanilla and spice. Warmth, in the middle of the cold.

I felt at home with him here.

“It feels so good,” I uttered in a broken breath.

“I’m so close, Storm,” he said.

“Good,” I said as his free hand found its way to the back of my palm. He gripped my hand tight as he kept thrusting inside me. He moved his hand back, then, leaning upward and hoisting my hips up a little so that he could reach around and touch my cock.

He couldn’t quite get a grip on it from the angle, but the feeling of him touching my cock at all while pounding inside of me was enough to drive me crazy. I put my own fist around my dick and stroked it as he fucked me, desperately needing a release.

“So close,” he repeated above me, and the low sound of his voice sent a shudder through me.

“I am, too,” I said.

“Come for me,” he said as he pushed deep inside me. “I’m going to come deep inside you.”

“ Please ,” I said, not giving a damn how desperate I sounded.

I could feel his cock thicken as he groaned deeply, and I knew he was coming, filling the condom in me as he let go. I was coming a moment later, spilling over my hand and the blanket on the couch.

Everything was hot. My skin was on fire. My ass felt so full and so used, in the best way. I lost all sense of anything other than him—his perfect scent, his skin, his warmth.

Him. This person who had made the impossible possible for me. And now he had taken me somewhere I’d needed so badly, but never could have arrived at on my own.

He hummed as he slowly pulled his cock out of me. I felt spent on a bone-deep level, but even more emotion was flooding through me now, at an alarming rate.

Emmett padded over to the kitchen, got rid of the condom, washed his hands. He returned with a warm, wet towel, rinsing me off and taking care of me like I mattered to him.

I mattered to him .

Why was that so hard to believe? To internalize?

He gave me a serene smile and went to put the blanket in the wash. When he returned I was almost more anxious than I had been right before he’d pushed inside of me. He was so beautiful. So strikingly handsome. I felt like I’d just been more intimate with him than I had with any other human being in my life, and now I almost didn’t know how to act.

What now?

Did I still matter to him, beyond being a fit body that he could enjoy a good fuck with?

And what the hell was this feeling? It was something like a crush, but almost more nerve-wracking. I’d never given a fuck what anyone thought of me before, but now I desperately wanted Emmett to…

To like me. To want me. To be with me, and not stop being with me.

“Lot of snow out there,” I said, feeling like I needed to break the silence but suddenly feeling so unsure of what to say.

This was exactly the kind of emotion I always avoided feeling. That I’d successfully avoided feeling, for most of my adult life.

Flustered. Embarrassed. All of the things I thought I had always thought I was so above .

“A winter wonderland,” Emmett agreed. “Your most hated thing, right?”

I pulled in a breath, seeing the way Emmett’s eyes looked as he glanced out at the snow and then back at me. He looked more serene than I’d ever seen him. Even on a day where he’d experienced his greatest disappointment, he was able to look like that .

Happy.

Here, with me.

It made my heart do a backflip in my chest, and also made me feel all mushy-vulnerable all over again, the same way he’d been making me feel a lot, lately.

“Maybe the snow isn’t so bad,” I said. “Not when I’m under cozy covers inside, at least.”

He looked down at me. “Fuck, Storm, you have goosebumps again. I’m sorry. I’m so used to the cold. Come upstairs and get under the blankets?”

My heart was doing a backflip before, but now it may as well have done a damn pole-vaulted triple axel.

You still want me?

I immediately felt a hot streak of shame for having the thought at all. I wasn’t supposed to care if anyone wanted me. I’d arranged my whole life around being independent, outspoken, and not giving a damn what anyone thought. Because for so long, no one wanted me. All I could do was hold up a proud middle finger in response.

But when it came to Emmett, I cared. I cared what he thought, about me and about anything else in the world. I’d fought with him so much only because I didn’t want to care about what he thought, and because I didn’t know how to act otherwise.

There was no denying it anymore.

I really, really liked that he still wanted to invite me up to his room, even if it was just to sleep next to me.

And I loved the way he looked at me.

“I wouldn’t mind getting cozy,” I said.

He held out his hand to me and I joined him upstairs. The moment we were under the covers together and I was surrounded by his scent, I couldn’t hold back. I slid over toward his side of the bed, wrapping my arms around him tightly and pulling him close.

The warm bulk of his body against mine was everything I needed.

Thoughts swirled through my mind. There were so many things I wanted to say, but couldn’t make myself.

I think I want you too much.

I might want more than just a fun hookup, and I don’t know what that means.

I know you might still hate me a little, Emmett, but… how much?

Could he ever see me as more than a hot hate-fuck? As more than a meathead football player that happened to have a good body and also want his cock?

It was still true that people like Emmett didn’t usually associate with people like me. Guys like him kept company with… heirs to corporations. Wealthy aristocrats. People who were Ivy League graduates and hung out on yachts and came from the long lines of wealth that I’d always hated, with every fiber of my being.

No matter how much money or fame I had now, Emmett knew what I’d come from.

We could have hot sex, but could it ever be anything but that?

Christ, I was getting ahead of myself.

Emmett made a small, satisfied sighing sound in my arms, and I heard the sound of his breathing change. He was asleep. Asleep, and so perfect, and good Lord I was screwed, because I really, actually was starting to like him, and it was impossible to deny any of it, now.

I spun the thought around in my mind for minutes and minutes, feeling like I was in limbo.

But then I felt his body up against mine, breathing gently. So good. So fucking sweet .

I had to break free, if I was ever going to truly live.

The same thought from earlier today lit up like a neon sign in my mind: what the hell else did I have to prove?

I’d spent a lifetime trying to prove something. Who I was, or what I was worth.

But maybe I didn’t have to prove anything to Emmett.

Fuck it.

Sure, it was almost certain that whatever was between me and him would be fleeting. But while I had this—this perfect mix of fierce passion and genuine goodness, this sexy incredible person that was in my arms—I was going to make the most of it.

I was going to treat Emmett like a goddamn king. Then maybe, years down the line when he was falling asleep in the arms of some posh lawyer or bank executive, he’d at least remember how good his short time together with a football player was.

If I was bound to just be a memory, I was going to be a good one.