29. Brandy

29

Brandy

E ven as the road stretched on for miles and miles in front of me, I didn’t see it. Not as my mind wandered back to last night and the way Reed’s lips felt on me. He hadn’t devoured just my mouth, but parts of me I never would’ve expected him to touch. Especially not with his tongue.

He’d lapped at my skin, leaving trails of moisture dotting me as he took. My body had never felt so alive and full of need, which had only made me feel guilty. Guilty for giving in and letting him kiss me, letting him touch me the way I craved to be touched. Desired. So I’d resorted to what I knew best with him—hate. My words and my body had been polar opposites, one pushing him away and the other pulling him in. When he’d come up for air, I wanted him to go further, to suffocate along with me in our moment of weakness.

Or maybe it wasn’t debility, but rather finding the courage to try it out. And maybe that was all it was—a sample. One I’d wanted the entire helping of after one taste. But he’d said he was doing it to rile me up, and that was exactly what he’d done, just not in the way he’d intended. Whether he knew that fact or not, I wasn’t sure, but all I was certain of was that every inch of my body had ached for him, and I had not a fucking clue how to feel about that now.

As I pulled up to the Bronsons’ ranch and saw Reed’s truck parked outside the white barn, I figured I might as well find out. Or apologize for last night. But the one thing I wouldn’t do was cower or hide.

It was barely sprinkling as I slid out of the Bronco and closed the door behind me. As I walked up to the barn, a gust of wind blew my loose ponytail from my shoulder, indicating the storm was only beginning.

The door slammed shut behind me as I headed inside, out of the rain. In the short walk alone, strands of hair had come loose, framing my face. I shoved them away, the sleeves of my dark green crewneck covering my palms, nearly touching the tips of my fingers. I hadn’t planned to do anything other than groundwork with the horses today, so I’d opted for black leggings and tennis shoes. But before I did that, I had to talk to Reed.

For the second time in a matter of days, I was purposefully seeking him out.

With the overcast sky, the barn wasn’t as bright as it typically was, and I knew instantly where Reed was with the light from the tack room illuminating the hallway. Callan had taken the day off from riding lessons because of the weather, and Bailey finished his chores early enough that he was gone by now. Which meant Reed and I were alone in here, and that could either be a good thing or a very, very bad thing.

Keeping my steps light on the mats, I walked toward the tack room, taking a steadying breath. Why was I nervous? It was just Reed. I’d known him basically my entire life.

But I hadn’t kissed him all my life, and that fact was now louder than a freight train horn blaring in my mind. I should get off this track of self-destruction, but instead, I only wanted to balance among them. Maybe see how far I could go.

No .

I had to get it together. Cut this off before it turned into something catastrophic.

Stopping right inside the doorframe, I found Reed facing away from me, changing a bit on one of the brown bridles. My shoe met the concrete as I took a step into the room. The quiet sound was enough for him to pause with his fingers on the leather, his broad shoulders going stiff under the black t-shirt he wore.

Reed hooked the bridle on the saddle horn in front of him, abandoning it to turn and face me. His deep hazel eyes held so much emotion in them, a contrast to how he typically walked around, hiding every feeling from sight.

We didn’t say anything as we stared at each other. My fingers wove around the edge of my sleeves, nerves I’d rarely felt before taking root in the center of my confidence and spreading like a vine.

“What are you—” he started. At the same time, I said, “What did the—”

We both stopped, closing our mouths. He tipped his chin up, telling me to continue.

With a deep breath, I took one step back and leaned against the doorframe, needing something stable to keep myself grounded, as it felt like my entire world was knocked off its axis and trying to work overtime on a new one and utterly failing.

I wanted to ask what the kiss meant, if he had truly done it just to provoke me out of my depressive stupor. But now, with him staring at me like that, I didn’t know what to say.

“We shouldn’t have kissed,” I blurted.

He arched a brow, saying nothing.

“Last night was a huge mistake, and I was upset, and really, I just don’t like you at all, and that was probably overstepping—”

“Are you rambling right now?”

I snapped my lips shut, feeling my cheeks heat as if he took a flame to them himself. “No.”

He took a step forward, his thumb rubbing a circle into his opposite palm. “The Brandy I know doesn’t ramble.”

“Well, I wasn’t.”

Another step. “Are you nervous?”

My brows pulled together, my eyes narrowing on him. “What? No.”

Two steps, and now he was barely a few feet away. “Are you flustered because of me?”

My mouth popped open, but I quickly shut it and hardened my gaze. “No.”

His hands dropped to his sides, brushing along his denim jeans as he closed in. I stayed planted next to the door, too afraid to lose its support. “I think you are. It’s because of the kiss, isn’t it?”

My nose scrunched, my mind reeling from the audacity of this man. What the fuck was he doing? “If this is another brilliant plan of yours to rile me up, forget it. It won’t work.”

I moved then, pushing off the doorjamb to walk away, but I barely made it a step before his hand wrapped around my arm and tugged me toward him. My back hit the doorframe, and he was suddenly towering over me, invading my space, my mind, my heart.

No, not my heart. Stop it, Brandy.

I tried not to look at the muscles in his arms flexing or the way his tattoos shifted with the movement as his arm braced against the doorframe above my head. His other hand still gripped my arm loosely, but it was very much there.

“Did you hate it as much as you hate me?” he asked, and the breath in my lungs punched out of me because fuck. No, I didn’t hate it, but I hated him, and that’s what mattered. Right? Or did I just not like being around him? Because right now, the latter seemed entirely more logical than the former with the way my mind was spinning. Was I even breathing?

What the fuck?

I blinked up at him, not knowing what to say. Should I lie or be honest? And if I was honest, would that only hurt me more when he told me it was the worst kiss he’d ever had? But was it? Should I ask?

“I—” My words cut off as I choked on my tongue. With a hard swallow and a deep breath, I continued. “I think you’re just trying to distract me from—” But I didn’t get to finish my sentence as he dipped his head and pressed his lips to mine.

The act was anything but gentle, his mouth rough as his tongue slipped into my mouth. Naturally, my lips parted for him, allowing him entrance. Just one more time to get whatever this was out of our systems, and things would go back to normal and he wouldn’t keep having the nerve to kiss me. Maybe I was getting too soft and he was taking advantage of it. I should put my walls back up, shove him away, do something , but his lips were intoxicating and I was getting drunk off his taste alone.

My hands shot forward to shove at his chest, but instead of doing what I commanded, they fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer.

The back of my head pressed into the doorjamb, and as if he fucking knew, his hand slipped between the two, cradling the back of my skull with fingers tangled in my hair, my ponytail coming looser with the act. His teeth clashed with mine, our hunger for each other apparent, but even then, it wasn’t enough.

He pulled my bottom lip into his mouth, sucking and nipping before releasing it and crashing into my mouth again. He tugged on my hair, I pulled at his shirt, and we were at war again, one neither of us would win because we wanted so much more than what was okay to offer.

Or was it?

Did we have to hold back?

I wasn’t sure—not through this cloud fogging up my mind and heightening my senses with the feel of him.

His mouth left mine, his forehead pressing against my own as we both panted, unable to catch our breaths. I wasn’t even sure either of us wanted to breathe in this moment if it wasn’t mingled breaths and desperate hands.

“Drop your guard, Little Devil,” he growled, his words breathless and starved.

My head shook on its own accord, my instincts telling me no .

His hand moved from the back of my head, gently brushing a stray lock of hair away from my cheek. He kept smoothing my hair, as if that was the only thing messed up in this moment.

“You don’t have to keep this tough exterior up all the time,” he murmured, his forehead still resting against mine, his other hand gripping the frame above my head. “Not around me.”

My eyes closed as I willed my heart to steady itself and stop feeling like it was about to burst from my chest in a moment’s notice. I didn’t know what to say to him. Didn’t know how to tell him I was scared because the second you let someone in, you allowed yourself to be vulnerable.

“You can let people take care of you, Brandy,” he continued.

I shook my head again, this time by my own will. If I got used to someone—him—taking care of me, I feared I would only regret it later.

“That’s how people get hurt,” I whispered.

He cupped my cheek, angling my head up, but still, my eyes remained closed.

“Look at me.”

I listened, my eyes opening to find him right there, anchoring me from falling off the cliff of my emotions. This was why I tucked them far away. What was I doing right now?

“I would never hurt you,” he said, his voice stern with the purpose to ingrain the words into my brain.

My eyes darted between his, searching for what, I wasn’t sure—but whatever it was, I found it.

“Let me in,” he added in a whisper.

It took less than a second after the last word passed his lips for mine to meet his again, but this time, it wasn’t full of hunger or starvation or craving. No, this kiss held us and all the things we wanted to say to each other over the last seven years but never did. All the reservations and hate and bickering melting away to an us I didn’t know but wanted to become familiar with.

His other hand finally moved from above me, his warm palm meeting my cold cheek, snaking its way past my ear and to the back of my head again. He tugged me closer, but not with force. Rather like his intentions turned from feral Satan to savoring Reed. His free arm snaked around my waist, pulling me flush to him so that I had to arch my neck.

Taking the opportunity, his lips left mine, trailing down my jaw to the sensitive skin on my neck, sending goosebumps up my arms.

“Tell me I can have you, Little Devil,” he murmured into the crook of my neck. He sucked my flesh into his mouth, my lips parting on a small gasp.

“Do you want me?” I asked, feeling some sense of power come over me with the way he begged.

His mouth paused on the column of my throat before he pulled back, looking down at me. “Isn’t that obvious?”

I shrugged. “This might just be another act of yours to rile me up.”

“Let me know if you feel that way after this.” Before I could ask what he meant, his hands fell to my ass, lifting me so I had to wrap my legs around his waist.

“You have three seconds to tell me to stop,” Reed continued, moving us away from the door. He kicked it shut behind him, closing us in the room without a glance back.

“What?” I squeaked, watching as the door slammed shut.

“One,” he started, carrying me across the tack room.

“Reed, we’re in the barn.”

“Didn’t peg you for someone who cared about privacy. Two,” he continued.

“It’s not that—”

“One more second, Brandy,” he warned.

My butt hit the edge of the counter, my eyes darting to his. He was utterly starved in this moment, the sheen to his hungry gaze silently begging me to let this continue.

I didn’t want to stop. Didn’t think I could if I tried.

“Please don’t stop,” I whispered.

A brief look of relief flashed across his features before some animalistic need took over him. He set me on the counter, his hands leaving my ass to skim down my thighs. “That’s the good girl I was looking for.” He crouched, placing a kiss to my knee as he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of my leggings.

“I’m not a good girl,” I argued. Even in this, I was unable to stop pushing at everything he said. Despite that, my hips lifted on their own accord, giving him easier access for what he intended to.

He arched a brow up at me, pulling my pants down past my knees. He moved his hands to my shoes, taking his time unlacing them and placing them on the ground, along with my socks. He returned to removing my leggings, sliding them off the rest of the way. “No?”

I shook my head. “No.”

A villainous smile pulled at his lips, one I’d never seen before but almost liked that it was aimed at me. “Not even when I do this?” His mouth fell to my inner thigh, his eyes focused on mine as he pressed a kiss to the sensitive skin. His hands moved to my panties, tugging them down.

I shook my head again.

He nipped my thigh, eliciting a little shriek from me. “Words, Little Devil, or this stops.”

“No,” I said quickly.

“That right there proves that you are,” he teased, his voice low and rumbling against my skin. His lips moved higher, peppering kisses to my bare flesh. Rough hands glided up the outside of my thighs, the feeling intoxicating.

His mouth nearly reached my center, but he pulled away, looking up at me. “Fight it all you want, but I will make you come undone, and you’ll love every minute of it.”

I nearly rolled my eyes. “In your dreams.”

“Been there for a long time, Brandy. But this is reality, and I’m making good on my promise.”

“Promise to what?”

“To break the rules.” He lowered his mouth to my pussy, dragging his tongue up my center as he gripped the inside of my thighs to pull them apart. A gasp ripped from my lips, and I grabbed the edge of the counter for stability as the unsaid rules between the two of us melted away with each flick of his tongue, breaking and shattering and obliterating into millions of pieces so small, they nearly never existed.