Long Shot: An MMA Stepbrother Romance (8 page)

I try turning over again in my bed, pulling the pillow over my head. As many times as I’ve gone over what happens next in the story between me and Josh, the further I fall down into the rabbit hole of might-have-been. I think of that kiss, the dress falling away from my body, the flick of his rough fingers over my nipples.
 

I open my eyes and stare straight at the ceiling. The heat begins to pool between my thighs, sending little shocks of longing through my belly and down my legs, all the way to my toes. My exhaustion compounds my desire, making it pulse harder. Searching for relief, I reach down inside my panties and touch myself. There’s already a flood of wetness between my legs, and I groan softly. I try to conjure up the image of one of the doctors at the hospital, one of the surfer guys I met on Match, anyone but Josh. As my fingers move in circles over my clit, Josh’s face is all I can see—the jagged line of his nose, his full lips, those eyes, green and gold and amber and copper all at once. I think of the kiss that night. And more—I think of his fingers on my body, moving over my waist, flipping my dress up and lifting it over my thighs. I moan softly and increase my speed, and I’m wondering if his cock is really as big as it looks through his shorts.
 

“Josh,” I moan, my mind starting to tip into oblivion. I imagine his cock, long and thick and hot against my thigh. In my thoughts, I’m naked now, and his fingers are buried inside of me, gently hooked and massaging my g-spot as his palm rocks against my clit with aching slowness. In my bed, I spread my legs and slip one finger inside. I’ve repeated this scene over and over in my quiet moments, but never with Josh in the next room, never with his perfectly muscled body lying on my couch, only a room away. I slip another finger in and rock against my hand. I’d wanted Josh to fuck me with his expert fingers, my back pushed against the cabinet that held his mother’s china figurines. I imagine rocking back against the glass pane, my pussy drenched and throbbing against his hand. I imagine coming for him, the tea cups and Precious Moments dolls clinking in protest behind us. And then he’d cast his shorts aside and fill me with his cock, slipping in easily and grinding against my clit with every thrust…

Biting my lip, I come hard, my toes clenching against the covers.

After that, I sleep, deep and dreamless.

I wake up with a raging boner and the need to piss out the two liters of fluid Nat gave me. I groan and try lifting myself up on my right arm. My shoulder burns with the same crawling pain I felt after my stepsister jammed the thing back into joint—no, fuck that, it hurts worse than it did last night.
 

How do I know if she even did it right? She’s got every reason to try and fuck up my shoulder even worse.

I finally manage to stand up and I gently pull my IV needle out. There will be a bruise three inches wide from where I slept on the fucking needle, but at least she got me good and hydrated. It was worth it. The fight was good, relatively clean. Well, besides the razor blades. I chuckle.

This is all you fucking think about, Josh. No wonder she ain’t pleased to see you.
 

I manage to make my way down the hallway to the bathroom. The walk is difficult. The flesh is barely willing, and the fire ants seem to have taken my entire body over, not just my shoulder. I’m able to coax out my dick—no, make that my boner—and I have to wait nearly a minute before I can actually piss. I pull my shorts back up and wash my hand the best I can, the whole time reviewing the disjointed thoughts and dreams of the night before.
 

“That can’t be right,” I mutter as I think about the moan I heard coming from Natalie’s room. I think I hallucinated the sound of Natalie...
coming
.
 

I definitely hallucinated that. That was not a thing that happened.
It’s been a long-ass time since I’ve touched anything like morphine, and I have to think that I had some sort of wish-fulfillment opium dream, starring Natalie and her long, sexy fingers running over her tight—and quite likely perfect—pussy. I splash water on my face and try to think back to the fight instead. Before I leave the bathroom, I’m hoping my dick cooperates with me for once.

Despite my undying certainty that Natalie would never want the man who had walked out on her after her father’s funeral, the man who had never proven himself, my dick responds to the thought of her in bed, thinking about me. I groan and try to position my cock so it won’t bulge against my shorts, but it’s gotten the message that Natalie lives in this house, soaps up her tits in this shower.
 

Do women soap their tits up in the shower? Some of them must. There’s no justice in the world if they don’t.

I let out a heavy sigh and drag myself back to the living room. I feel off balance, dizzy, probably because the blood is rushing to my cock, my shoulder, and the throbbing stitches on my forehead all at once. I stand against the wall, right where I once stood when I tried to kiss Natalie. I wonder if she ever thinks about that night, about me. But it’s not worth worrying about what might have been, if I made the right decision to let her go on to Chapel Hill thinking I didn’t give two shits about her.

But if Natalie was in her room, doing what I think she was doing—

“That ain’t the plan. She comes to you in her own time, if that’s what she wants.” I have to remind myself again, have to stay steady. If I hadn’t thrown my shoulder completely out of joint, if I hadn’t needed stitches—if I hadn’t been so fucking stupid to keep taking fight after fight, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be saving my money, biding my time. But God, she’s fucking perfect—her body’s curvy and flirty and sexy, and she’s got no idea how goddamn gorgeous she is.
 

Maybe I was drawn here because it
is
time.

“What wasn’t the plan?” Natalie steps out of her room, clad in tight black leggings and a baggy UNC shirt. I try to keep my eyes on her face, but my confused body wants me to look down to see if she’s wearing a bra. I can almost sense the soft outline of her nipples under the white cotton shirt, and I firmly suspect she’s bra-free. She’s always looked like walking sex to me, like she needed to have her lips wrapped around my cock, like her ass was made to be spanked. But this morning, she looks even
better
, and I wonder what it would be like to wake up next to her, to see that wavy blond hair like a shock of gold across her pillow, to kiss her lips, bite down, to slip my cock inside her as she spreads open wide and—

“Josh, what the hell plan are you talking about? Getting your arm almost ripped off—was that part of the plan?” She smiles at me, and I see she’s still got that tiny gap between her top teeth. Her daddy never gave a shit about getting her braces, she always told me, and I guess she never got those invisible braces she was talking about. She’s shy about it in pictures, but I always fucking loved that tiny little space. I heard once that it meant you were good in bed—and now I’m thinking of Natalie in bed again, but this time she’s riding my dick and I’m smacking her perfect ass, and I’m unable to focus on her words.

“Earth to Josh.” She snaps her fingers in front of my face. “You still high from the morphine?”

“Uhhhh... I...”

“Because it wasn’t
my
plan to take you in after you walked off into the sunset three years ago. Now that you’re conscious and feeling better, we need to get you all gussied up and back to your place. I’m sure you have some girl who can come take care of you?” She raises an eyebrow and crosses her arm.

Oh shit. Shit. I have to stay here or Frank’ll get me training at the gym, book me for fights. Dammit.
 

“I’m not exactly ‘feeling better,’ Nat. I feel like shit.” Her gaze roams over my body and lands on my enormous boner, still straining against my shorts.

“I see one part of you is feeling just fine.”

“That happens in the morning.” I shift, uncomfortable. My cock throbs in response to her voice. After all this time, it still has that Pavlovian response down pat, trained through many sessions of abuse where my thoughts rested solely on Nat’s beautiful body.
 

“Oh? I didn’t know. I’ve never seen like a thousand
boners
before, at the hospital.” She smirks and walks across the living room to the kitchen. The same dining room table still sits in the breakfast nook, next to the old hutch where my mother kept her things. Nat must have long ago gotten rid of that shit, but the hutch still stands. Maybe she sent off the Precious Moments figurines to the crackhouse in Wanchese where my mother supposedly stays, but I somehow doubt it.
 

I sit back down on the couch where I slept and watch Natalie as she makes coffee. Her movements are jerky, angry. She keeps running her fingers through her hair, pulling it back from her face, and she nearly drops the coffee beans several times before grinding them. I shift again, trying to will my morning wood away, but the only quick cure is jerking off, and I somehow think Natalie would like me even
less
if I started jerking it in her living room. I’d also probably be staring at her tits the whole time, which would make things extra creepy.
 

“Can I get some coffee, Nat? And some ibuprofen or something.” She stuffs coffee into the French press just as the water in her kettle starts to boil. As she pours the water, the smell of the fresh ground beans fills up the little house. My stomach rumbles, and I’m suddenly hungry and absolutely fiending for a cup of coffee. Natalie doesn’t respond. Instead she flashes me a withering look. “Nat? Please? Maybe some breakfast.”
 

She lets out a frustrated groan. “Let me call the coffee fairy, Josh. I’ll see if she has any painkillers. Maybe she can crush them up and insert them in your ass while I make you some breakfast.”
 

“Nat.” I’ve had this same feeling a million times talking to Nat—I blurt out exactly what I’m thinking, and it turns out to be the worst thing I could possibly say. “I’m a fucking dick. I’m sorry Natty. But the pain is godawful. I’ve blown out my shoulder a million times, but this one’s a bad one.”
 

She sighs. “It’s probably because your ribs are bruised as all hell too. Shit’s painful. And yes, you’re a fucking dick.” She bites her lip. A jolt runs through my body, like I’m being taken back in time, back to the night when I kissed those pink lips and tasted her sweetness. It was like time stood still that night, and all my thoughts slowed down and made sense. The months that followed were a dark, deep hole of self-loathing and anger, but for that one moment, Natalie’s lips helped me make the right decision—to leave her be. It seems like time turned me around and brought me here again, to redo it all over again. And maybe this time, I can earn her back, show her
why
I left.

“You were nicer when I showed up last night, Natty.” My voice is too jaunty for the way I actually feel—but that’s always been one of my shortcomings.
Cocky, arrogant.
 

“Because you were hurt, probably. Or maybe because I was actually in shock—like the medical definition of shock. I couldn’t respond how I wanted to because I literally couldn’t process what was happening. But I can now. And I want you
out
.”
 

I take a deep breath and let it out. “That’s probably not the best idea, Nat.”

“Why the fuck not? You haven’t needed me once in three years, not even enough to respond to my emails, my texts, a phone call on Christmas day. So I’d like you to go.” She wipes a tear away. But I know Natty, and she won’t let herself cry in front of me. She never has.

“I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me.”
 

“I did, Josh. I wanted an explanation. Why did you leave that night? Do you even remember why?”
 

“Yes, I remember.” She looks at me like she expects me to say more, like she wants me to tell her
why
. But it’s best if I don’t have a
why
for her right now. Who knows? It might be worse if I tell her what my plan was, what my drunken reasoning led me to. That day I woke up on the beach was the worst day of my life, and I know now that I should have gone to her no matter what. I should have told her I was leaving for
her
, but my world, finally full of possibility, was so big that I couldn’t. If I tried to explain all that, I know how fucked up it would sound, how selfish.
 

“Well?”

“Well, nothing. I was an idiot. I got drunk, I was hungover. My trainer booked a fight for me three days out, and I was at the gym training as soon as I was marginally sober.” She purses her lips and pours coffee in two mugs. Before she brings it over, she looks at me for a long, silent moment, as if trying to comprehend my meanness.
 

“I get that you didn’t want me Josh, but all I was asking for was a little bit of help—some kindness. I wasn’t trying to tie you down. I know you don’t want that.”

“Nat, I—”

“I know you have all these girls falling all over you at the gym, and I wasn’t going to take that away from you.” She walks over and hands me the coffee but doesn’t sit down next to me.