Because of Kian (14 page)

She nodded gently and gazed up at me. “
It was all so overwhelming. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. We should have done that a long time ago. That day in the gym…”

I grimaced. “That day in the gym was probably not my finest hour.”

A soft laugh escaped her. “Mine either,” she admitted.

“You were so
irresistible. And I wanted you so badly. I’ve wanted you for so long, since the first time I saw you. I was so afraid you’d run.”

“I did,” she sadly whispered.

“I made you.” I pulled her tightly against me. Her warm soft skin still carrying the scent of the oils I’d massaged into her skin. Not her usual scent, but more the smell of sex on skin. So smooth and supple. “But I couldn’t stay away. I needed to make sure you were okay.”

She hefted a shuddered breath and I pulled back to look down at her again, seeing tears collecting in her eyes. She tried to bury her face back against my chest, but I wouldn’t let her. I caught her jaw and forced her to look up at me.

“What is it, Brynn?”

“Oh my God, I don’t cry for a whole fucking year, and now it seems like that’s all I can do.”

“Tell me…”

“
I don’t know,” she said with a quiet, broken whisper. “I just… everything feels so… I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“
Everything you released is still so raw. But, Jesus, baby, you were perfect. Your peace and your serenity. You hit a trance in the ropes. It was fucking amazing.”

My hands skimmed her arms, caressed her shoulders, massaging more firmly in the muscles along the back of her neck
.

“Are you stiff?” I asked. “Sore anywhere? Does anything hurt from the ropes?”

She shook her head the faintest bit, barely moving. I couldn’t help but smile down at her, looking so sweet and soft in my arms.

“Is there anything you need?”

Brynn nodded slowly as her hand slid up my chest. “You,” she breathed.

I bent down and tasted her lips, settled myself against her soft little body. Her arms wrapped around my neck and she arched up against me. Everything felt amazing, the warmth of the bed, the scent of her skin, the silky way her
hair spread across the pillows.

Slowly, with e
ach caress, I worshipped her. I reveled in the essence of her body and soul, gently and silently sharing mine with her. In a trance-like state of my own, I donned a condom and slipped inside her wet heat, catching her gasp firmly with my kiss, breathing her in as I cradled her close to my heart.

So many times that
we’d been together, it had been so frantic… frenzied.

But this time, it was deliciously slow. Every kiss, every touch, every heavy thrust was savored. I felt every shiver that coursed through her, every tight squeeze of her muscles around me as
I pushed deeper, withdrew, and buried myself again fully in her wet, sweet warmth.

It was heaven.

It was nirvana.

It was sheer fucking Elysium.

I buried my face in her neck, in her hair, and twisted my body to trail biting kisses down her shoulder and chest. My tongue laved along the soft swell of her breast, firmly sucking in the tender, hardened peak. Pushing myself up on one arm, I pulled her closer with the other, and her back arched erotically to give me access. The angle of her body against mine tightened her muscles around my throbbing length, and I thought for a moment I was going to lose it right then.

Her quiet sob echoed throughout the
silent room as her head turned to the side. She was getting close, her breathy gasps and the tensing of her body. With an agonizing steadiness, I fanned the flames, brought her closer to release. I nipped at her neck just below her ear and felt her fingernails cut into my lower back. She gripped me tightly to her, her body rigid, as I slowly pushed her over the edge and let myself go inside her.

As she came back down, h
er muscles contracted around my dick. I couldn’t let her go, I simply had to hold her and press soft kisses over her flushed cheeks. Every puff of air she exhaled caressed my skin as I held her so closely.

Still buried deep inside.

Still a part of her.

• Team ~
  Lorde
  
• All the Pretty Horses ~ Judy Collins
  

Brynn

Mattie’s babysitter was sick.
Sage was beside herself trying to figure out what to do. She needed her job too much to stay home with her, and, to add to it, she was in the midst of clinicals for her nursing degree. The long days and long nights were wearing her down, and she burst into tears on the phone to me late on a Sunday night.

“Oh my God, I don’t know what I’m going to do. My mom is kind of out of it at the moment, so she’s
not the slightest bit reliable.”

“I’ll watch her,” I offered. “She can just spend the night at my house. You can come have breakfast before your clinicals.
Tomorrow’s Monday, so I’m off anyway. We’ll hang out and play ponies and watch movies and shit.”

So that’s what we did
.

And Kian was introduced to the wonderful world of My Little Pony.

Mattie adored him. And it really was amazingly sweet watching him with her, so big and tough and alpha, as he combed the little pink and yellow and, of course, purple manes and tails. She chattered along and filled him in on all the details, likes and dislikes, personalities and histories.

“You’re fun,” the little blonde girl giggled. “Are you a daddy?”

“Um…” Kian blanched.

“Because I don’t have one.”

Kian looked over at me with a queasy look on his face.

“Mattie, honey, Kian isn’t a daddy
… that I
know
of,” I grinned with a raised eyebrow, enjoying his discomfort. “But that’s also not really how it works. You don’t just go looking for one. That’s kinda more up to your mom.”

“At this rate, I’ll never get a daddy,” the little girl groused. “She doesn’t even have a boyfriend.”

“What about Jeff?” Kian asked.

“Who’s Jeff?” Mattie looked at
him quizzically.

“I don’t think
he has met her,” I murmured to Kian.

“Really?
They’ve been sorta dating for a couple months now.”

“Yeah,
” I whispered under my breath to Kian, “but Sage isn’t really keen on introducing her daddy-wanting little girl to dudes at the moment.”

“Probably wise where Jeff is concerned. He’s a fun guy, but I’m not sure he’s remotely father material.”

“Who’s Jeff?” Mattie asked again loudly, clearly exasperated.

“He’s just a friend of your mommy
’s. And your mommy is going to kill Kian for mentioning him,” I smiled. “But, he’s not really a daddy either.”

Mattie looked perplexed for a moment,
then looked back up at Kian with wide blue eyes. “Well, I’m going to pretend you’re my daddy, okay? And you can pretend I’m your little girl.”

Tears sprang to my eyes as she climbed up onto Kian’s lap, and he wrapped her in a gentle hug. “Sounds like a plan, Mattie,” he murmured as he rested his chin on the top of her head. “If I was a daddy, I’d be lucky to have you.”

And, as bedtime neared, we made popcorn and curled up on the couch to watch more My Little Pony. Kian was surprisingly accommodating and sweet, and before long the little girl had zonked out in between us.

“She’s something,” he smiled down at her where she lay, snuggled into her My Little Pony sleeping bag. She’d flopped over onto my lap a bit, and her mouth gaped open.

“Yeah, she is. So sweet and… she just wants a family. Sage is working so hard to make a good life for her.”

“Must
be rough, doing all that alone,” he frowned. “Where is her daddy?”

“Don’t know. Sage isn’t sure. It was a one-time thing and then he was gone.”

“Fucker,” Kian growled.

“Always so protective of
women and children,” I smiled at him. “You can’t save us all, Kian.”

“I can try,” he replied, and pulled me up
on his lap, Mattie and all.

Kian

Mattie was like a little blonde shadow. The minute her sleepy little eyes opened from her makeshift bed on Brynn’s couch, she followed me everywhere I went. She even sat outside the bathroom while I showered. Before long, it was time for me to go teach pre-K kung fu.

And Mattie wanted so badly to go.

She also wanted a purple belt.

One second of her puppy-eyed
look, and I was a goner. So I brought her and Brynn with me to the gym.

She really was a fun kid
, and she fit right in with the class. This youngest group was my favorite to teach. Something about three- and four-year-olds doing their little judo chops made even the worst day a little better.

Slowly,
the after-school crowd began to arrive. Brynn and Mattie started heading up the stairs to my apartment to wait for me when Brynn leaned down and whispered something to the little girl. Mattie turned and ran towards me, jumping up to wrap her pudgy little baby arms around my neck.

“Thank you
,” she squealed fervently and gave me a sloppy wet kiss on the cheek.

“Anytime,
squirt,” I replied before I set her on the ground and watched her skip away to Brynn.

“She’s adorable,”
Holly MacPherson cooed over my shoulder as Brynn and Mattie disappeared up the stairs. Her long manicured nail delicately traced along her extraordinarily low-cut blouse.

Shit
.

“
Yeah, she’s a great kid,” I smiled wanly and stepped away.
Why couldn’t this woman take the hint?

“Is she yours?”

“Friend’s kid,” I said dismissively as I stepped away from the hallway and into the gym.

“
Hmm, a friend…” she purred, looking over at the stairs before trailing closely behind me. “You really are so good with kids. My little Bobby is a bit lost, what with the divorce and all. His father is so… absent. He really needs a
strong
male role model in his life.” As the word strong oozed out of her mouth, she reached forward to skim her nails down my chest.

“Holly,” I warned. “This isn’t really—”

“You know,” she quickly interrupted, taking another step closer, forcing me to take another step back, “Bobby talks about you all the time. I was thinking, maybe you’d like to come over for dinner sometime. I make one
hell
of a dessert.”

I almost shuddered at the image of Holly with a can of whipped cream, pretty sure that was likely the
type of dessert she promised. She seemed to be stepping up her game. I couldn’t recall her ever been this blatant about hitting on me.

“I’m sorry, Holly, but I’m seeing someone.”

The woman had to gall to look offended. “Oh,” she gasped. “I had no idea.”

“
Yeah, so… sorry. Thanks, but no thanks,” I said, placing my hands on her shoulders to set her away from me.

“Well, that’s… lovely.”
She narrowed her eyes with a dangerous glint. “Who is it?”

While
I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, Brynn wanted to keep things under wraps. Why, I had no idea. That was Brynn. A bit of a mystery, still wanting to fly under the radar in every aspect of her life. Very few people had a clue that anything had ever happened between us. Only Sage and, through her, Jeff. I wasn’t even sure if Pete knew.

“I don’t think you’d know her,” I smoothly responded
, which wasn’t a lie. I really doubted Brynn had anything to do with a money-grabbing cougar like Holly. Completely opposite ends of the spectrum. “But, I need to get these kids going, so…”

“Oh, of course.
By all means,” she forced out with a smile that didn’t come anywhere near her eyes.

• I Would For You ~ Nine Inch Nails
  

Brynn

For the most part, things were
blissful.

Almost eerily so
.

My brain really didn’t know what to make of it all.
I shared my feeling with Rose, and she encouraged me to be open with Kian, to avoid sabotaging this fragile connection. We continued to discuss relaxing mechanisms to release the fear and worry. The nagging sensation that something was going to tear it all to shit.

As a result, I wanted more.
I craved the bite of the rope. The intensity that surrounded me, only allowing me to see and feel Kian. The catharsis that left me relaxed and at peace in his arms.

Still no sign of Evan.
I was watchful. Wary. I didn’t want the attention, so I avoided anything that would pull me into the limelight. The trashy wenches at Hyper continued to hit on Kian, and I continued to do nothing about it. Kian was a big boy and could take care of himself, which he did, brushing them aside and directing them towards whoever else seemed to be standing nearby.

H
onestly, though, any of those girls would likely have been better for him than me.

The occasional guy hit on me, and
I
did
do something about that. So did Kian, though, ensuring that they backed off.

After being more-or-less manhandled
a particularly persistently grabby dude earlier in the evening, I’d left Hyper dying for a bath. I wanted to be clean, to wash the feel of those sweaty hands from my skin. Kian had filled his big bathtub and lifted me into the water with him. Lying against his strong, protective form in the water, everything seemed to be normalizing again.

“You know,” he pointed out, “if they knew you were mine, there’s not a guy in here
who’d touch you.”

“I know,” I smiled sadly.
“You walk into a room, and everyone notices you. That’s kinda the problem. Because, if I walked in with you, everyone would notice me too. I’m just not ready for that.”

“
Are you still scared of Evan? Because I won’t let that fucker hurt you. Ever again.”

I thought for a moment, trying to figure out if that was it. But I really didn’t have any idea.
Things just felt so jumbled and uncertain in my mind.

“I don’t know what I’m scared of, Kian. Maybe I’ve just tried to stay in the shadows for so long that I’m afraid of being exposed. Maybe I’m afraid that someday this will wear thin. That all my fuckupness will get tiresome. There’s no guarantee. This is all still fresh and new. It may not work in the end, and then what? You won’t always be here to protect me.”

“I don’t know how to convince you. This isn’t a flash in the pan. This isn’t some fly-by-night thing, here today and gone tomorrow.” Kian shifted me in the water, pulling me around to face him. He settled one hand at my neck, holding my gaze to his. “You’re mine, Brynn. I’m not going to bail on you because you have this fucked up notion that I’m better off without you.” He kissed my lips sweetly and wrapped me in his strong arms. “I’m not giving up on you.”

My hands crept up around his neck, molding my body to his in the warm, soothing water. “I want to believe you,” I whispered
.

“I know you do, baby,” he replied softly as he kissed my forehead. “You will eventually. I’ll prove you wrong.” The conviction in his voice brought tears to my eyes.

Sometimes the conversations got a little too raw. This was one of those times.

It had only been a few months, weeks really. Relationships could fall apart after years. I had no idea how Kian seemed to be so confident in our ability to thrive.

I wanted to believe right along with him.

But I didn’t.

It was almost like I couldn’t allow myself to be comfortable. I had been comfortable my whole life up until Evan, and then everything had suddenly turned into a nightmare. All that was still so fresh in my mind. I kept waiting on pins and needles because it all just felt too good to last.

I waited
for Evan to show up.

Or for
Kian to give up.

Kian

Brynn and I continued to go Hyper together, but always split up before we walked through the door. It kind of drove me nuts.

Well, more than
kind of. It really drove me nuts. It frustrated me almost to the point of anger, but I tried to be understanding. I sure as hell didn’t want to be a dick about it all. Most everything else was perfect. Stellar. Fucking awesome. I could work with one little hitch.

But, damn
… I wanted to walk in there with my arm around her, to let every asshole in there know that she was mine. To tell them to keep their fucking hands off her. I wanted her to stake her claim on me, to get in some little bitch’s face and tell her that I was her man.

I wanted her to need me like I needed her.

Instead, it was almost like a game at Hyper. The secretive glances. Watching and teasing each other until we were burning up inside. Finally one of us would break and say something about heading home.

Game on
.

I stood waiting beside my bike just around the corner of Hyper’s parking lot.
Waiting for Brynn. Hard as a motherfucking rock.

F
ootsteps approached, but they went a different direction.

Fuck
.

Then, finally Brynn’s quick footfalls
sounded.
My God
, I even recognized the sound of her walking. My obsession with her was reaching staggering heights.

She stepped around the corner, and I immediately grabbed her from behind.

“Finally,” I groaned, kissing her neck as I slipped one hand down between her legs and the other squeezed and pulled at her breast.

“Kian,” she breathed.

I roughly pressed her against the wall, biting at the sweet, tender skin of her shoulder bared by her loose-fitting top. Her hands lay flat against the wall above her head, her sleeves falling slightly to reveal the coarse red marks left from the rope the night before. The light caught them just right, just enough to make them noticeable, and I stopped marauding her neck to lightly run my fingertips over the raw skin with a little wonder. She watched my fingertips trace along the marks.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” I growled.

“Kian…” she squirmed against me. “I need you. Right now.”

“Brynn—”

“I’ll never survive if you don’t fuck me right now. I’ve been feeling those rope burns all day. It’s been killing me. And now, watching you trace the marks… oh my God. Kian, please.” Her voice had grown fervent and needy and her luscious ass pressed up against my dick.

I
tried to be good. Really. I tried to remember all the reasons she didn’t want to broadcast this thing we had going. Except that I didn’t understand them. But I gave it one last shot.

“Baby, someone might see. I know you don’t want that,” I murmured as I bit hard on her earlobe. “Why don’t we go home and get out the rope again?”

“We’re in the shadows. I’ll be quiet. Just pull up my skirt and fuck me already,” she fiercely grated out.

One more squirm, and that did it. My dick took the lead.

I quickly unzipped my zipper and slipped on a condom as her fingers frantically lifted her short skirt and pushed her little lacy panties down over her ass. I slightly bent at the knees to get the right angle, and then I was inside her.

In the fucking parking lot
.

God, this was insane
. But it was so fucking good.

As I pumped into her, her hands
slipped back to grasp at my hair, pulling hard. My fingers traversed from her hips to skim the length of her body, up her arms to capture her wrists. I squeezed tightly, and her pussy tightened around me with a whimper of pain.

“I’ll just have to be my own fucking rope,” I groaned in her ear.

I practically straddled her, my feet on either side of her as she stood on tip-toe and tilted up to allow my entrance. With her legs together like this, she squeezed me so amazingly tight. A quiet sob escaped her lips.

“
Shhh… baby… someone will hear.”

A thrill coursed through her. I fucking felt how much that turned her on, the danger of being caught
. Furiously, I pounded into her until she began to shake around me. I gripped hard once more at her wrists and bit into her bared shoulder, and she let loose a hoarse cry that triggered my own release. As my cock pulsed inside her sweet warm pussy, the aftershocks of her orgasm coaxed every last drop of cum from my body.

Neither of us moved for a moment. Overcome with the awe and wonder at the power of our carnality.
The sweet fragrance of Hawaii in my nostrils as I buried my face against her neck.

“Much better,” she finally whispered.

I gave a choked laugh, and the motion caused her to tighten sharply around me as she gave a little gasp.

“Think you can make it home now?” I murmured in her ear as I pulled out of her.

She turned in my arms, facing me with her back to the wall. “I think so.” Her head rested against my chest and she kissed me through the fabric of my shirt. “Then you can tie me up all proper-like and do that again.”

With a chuckle, I nuzzled my face into her soft, fragrant hair. “Sweet Jesus, Brynn. You’re gonna kill me,” I murmured.

She straightened her skirt as I removed the condom and tied it off, slipping it into my jacket pocket.

“Don’t let me forget that’s in there,” I joked, and her light laughter filled my heart as I tucked my dick back into my
jeans. “I’d hate to have it fall out with my keys or something.”

We climbed on my bike and pulled out of the lot to head back to my place
.

Back to the purple rope.

But neither of us noticed the angry form lurking in the shadows.