Trouble (Orsen Brothers #1) (3 page)

“Slow,” I whispered huskily, cupping her chin in my hands and rubbing a finger over her swollen lips.

“Screw slow,” she said stubbornly, her voice coming out in a ragged breath as she trailed hungry kisses down my neck. “I’m tired of slow.”

I groaned as her fingers grazed my crotch, trailing my calloused palms over her legs as her skirt rode up her thighs. She smelled amazing—like summer bottled and turned into a perfume—but somehow not too much like flowers. She moaned softly and allowed me to take charge, lifting her hips to aid me in removing her panties.

“Please don’t ever do that to me again,” she panted as I balled up the cotton fabric and tossed it to the floor, massaging the pad of my thumb over her throbbing clitoris. “I missed you so much…I had to end things with Liam…”

“Yeah?” I questioned, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “Why?”

“He wasn’t you,” she whispered, shaking her head as her dark eyes burned against mine. I caught a glance of her only tattoo—written in small black caps on her inner arm—and grazed my fingers over it.

‘Think you're escaping and run into yourself.’ It was her favorite quote—from her favorite book—Ulysses by James Joyce. In fact, I could still remember the first time she ever introduced me to it…

We were twenty-three and she had just started dating Liam. I watched her read as she rubbed her temple and closed her eyes, exhaling an elongated sigh as her fingers curled just below the crescent moon scar beneath her right earlobe—a permanent reminder of the incident at the bridge. She looked up at me from the table and scrunched her face in contemplation, waving a hand at the open book in front of her.

“This is—”

“Amazing ain’t it?”

“I was going to say pretentious.”

“Aw come on,” I said, sitting down beside her, “It’s my favorite.”

“It’s the only book you’ve ever read,” she pointed out, raising an eyebrow at me, “you don’t have anything to compare it to.”

“What don’t you like about it?”

She shrugged her small shoulders and cocked her head to the side, her slight smirk becoming more pronounced. “I don’t know. I guess I get that Wilde is like—this literary genius—but I’ve never much related to his prose.”

Prose.

She was always using flighty words like that.

She ruffled through her backpack and pulled out a heavy book, handing it over to me. “Here,” she said, nodding at it. “Now that’s a book.”

I turned it over in my hands and frowned. “There’s no way I could ever read that,” I said, “it’s what, a thousand pages?”

“Seven-hundred,” she corrected with a crooked smile, “and you really should give it a chance, it’s a classic.”

“So is the Importance of Being Earnest.”

“Well.” She shrugged and closed book. “It’s also contrived.”

I rolled my eyes. “Why do you do that?” I asked her. “Why do you always use some big word where a small one could fit just fine?”

She frowned at me and scratched her chin with a red painted fingernail. “I didn’t realize you were analyzing me…”

“Yeah, well—” I stood up and crossed the room to grab a beer from the fridge. “I’m not. It’s just something I noticed is all.”

She nodded and stood up, gathering her things and stuffing them in her bag. “When you hear from Liam would you mind telling him to give me a call?”

I sighed and took a slow drink of my beer, sloshing it around in my mouth before swallowing. “Yeah,” I answered drily, “I would, actually.”

She looked back at me with her full lips slightly parted and her eyebrows raised. “Sorry?”

“You heard me.” I shook my head and took a step towards her. Her bag slipped to the ground
from a stiff shoulder.
“I’m tired of this. I’m tired of you coming here when Liam isn’t around and spending all day with me under this false pretense that you just need somewhere to study…”

I swallowed hard and rubbed my back. “He’s not calling you…don’t you see that?”

“He’s just busy with work.” She laughed bitterly and tore her gaze from mine. “He told me it might be like this sometimes.”

I shook my head. “Come on. You’re smarter than that, Nean. He’s my baby brother, you think this is easy for me to tell you?”

She tried to pull away from me but I deflected it.

“You make it sound like he’s some asshole,” she breathed, “he’s not, you know he isn’t. If he’s not calling there’s a reason. Maybe things are busy at the plant…”

“So maybe they are.” I shrugged. “It’s just, I’m tired of this. I need to be honest here. With you and myself…”

Her eyes softened.

“I—” I licked my lips and lowered my eyes. “I wouldn’t treat you like this.”

“Well,” she spoke up after a few minutes, pulling her arms from my grasp and taking a seat on the couch. “I’m not yours, Anders. And I’m not Liam’s either. I’m not some piece of property to be bought and traded.”

“I wasn’t saying—”

She nodded, her dark eyes burning against mine. “I know what you were saying.”

“But we can’t,” she added, reaching for her bag. “You’re a great guy, even if you do have a terrible taste in literature, and I like spending time with you. But this isn’t…we’re just friends…really good friends. Let’s not complicate things for ourselves alright?”

I shrugged and swallowed the lump in my throat, taking a seat beside her on the couch. “So what’s it about?” I asked, changing the subject.

“What?”

“This book—” I picked it up and gave it another once over. “What’s the story?”

“Oh.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and shrugged. “It’s about this guy, Ulysses. He’s kind of an untamed spirit. But he has a disease and the only cure for it is for him to keep traveling. It’s not that his sedentary life isn’t good. It’s just that there’s this voice inside his head telling him to preserve, to keep moving even when it seems hopeless, to experience as much as the world as he can…even if it kills him.”

There was a glimmer in her eye and she was breathless by the time she was done speaking. She talked about that book with so much passion that I actually ended up sitting down to read it myself, granted it took me the better part of the summer.

“You were right,” I told her one-day, “about the book I mean. It was a damn slow burn but I’m happy to call it the second greatest one I’ve ever read.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes at me. “You’re really something, you know that?”

I shrugged and took her small hand in mine. “Actually there’s something I need to tell—”

“What?” she interrupted.

“It’s not that.” I shook my head. “I was just going to say that he kind of reminds me of you. Ulysses, I mean.”

“Oh?”

I nodded. “Yeah. He—”

I fell silent when the bathroom door opened and Liam advanced from the steam with a towel wrapped around his waist and water dripping from his hair. Nina sat up straighter and let go of my hand, shifting away from me on the couch. “You two look cozy,” he joked, stepping into his room.

I exhaled a deep breath when the door closed.

“Anyway,” Nina spoke up, “what were you saying?”

“Right.” I cleared my throat. “Ulysses. You remind me of him.”

“Yeah? How?”

I waved a hand at her. “He wants the world. You want the world…”

I swallowed hard and pulled myself from the memory, trailing a finger down her neck and over the soft cleft of her cleavage. We spoke with our actions. Her fingers moved hastily as she undid my jeans and used her legs to ease them down.

“Please,” she begged, pulling at my shirt and clutching my flexed biceps as I pulled it off and tossed it to the ground.

She gasped when she saw my scars and I froze, not entirely sure of how she would react to them. “I’m sorry,” she breathed, tracing her fingertips over each one.

I started to tell her that it was all right, that it was just another part of the job description, but I stopped when I felt her lips press against my flesh. Before I could react, she hooked her fingers in the waistband of my briefs and pulled them down in one sharp tug. I groaned and kissed her with every ounce of intensity I had on reserve, pulling her bottom lip between my teeth as she clawed at my back and kneaded the fading tattoos on my shoulders.

A million sensations rushed through me all at once when she took me in her hands, guiding me inside of her and adjusting her legs to accommodate my girth. The soft whimper that slipped from her mouth damn near sent me over the edge, but I regained my composure, easing slowly inside of her as her body formed to mine.

Everything we did was synchronized. I eased forward and she eased up, a wet moan brushing against the cusp of my neck every time I stroked her favorite spot.

And god…

She was so fuckin’ beautiful.

Even like this, with her face all contorted and flushed and her hair sticking up in every direction. I groaned and grabbed hold of her buttocks, pressing her harder against the wall as the pressure in my loins began to build in intensity. “I’m close,” I warned her, nibbling at her earlobe.

Her cleavage bounced free from the captivity of her blouse. I pressed a sweaty palm against her mouth to keep her quiet and when we came, we came together, lost time and sexual tension dissolving into a single, electrifying release that radiated throughout both our bodies

When it was finally over, a comfortable silence settled over us. I pressed a kiss against her temple and started to gather my clothes but she held out a hand to stop me. “Just stay a minute,” she pleaded, meeting eyes with me. “Please?”

I nodded and smiled at her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and pulling her sweaty form against mine. “Of course,” I whispered into her hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And I didn’t.

Chapter 3

—

“
Anders?” the therapist’s shrill voice jolted me forward. She spoke tentatively, keeping her eyes trained on me. She was giving me that look shrinks seemed to have down to a practice. That condescending
‘I’m trying to understand you’
look. “You look like you might want to share something…”

“No,” I clarified, clearing my throat. “I’m good…”

“Are you sure?” she insisted, sitting up straighter in her chair. “Look, I’m
well aware
that these sessions are court ordered—that none of you would be here if you didn’t have to be—but that doesn’t mean they can’t benefit you if you let them…”

A guy seated in a chair in the corner of the room snickered and I smiled at him. “I get it,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I just don’t have an answer to your question.”

She sighed and turned her attention to the woman sitting beside me—who was staring off into space and twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “Amy,” she said, looking down at the file flipped open in her lap. “Would you care to share anything?”

I stood up as Amy began to speak and pulled on my jacket. “I have to piss,” I noted, limping towards the door.

“Five minutes!” she called after me, “after that you’ll get a demerit!”

Yeah, yeah…

T H E N

Nina sat quietly across from me. We were in a booth in the back of Louie’s—a little hole in the wall famous for its never-ending supply of draft beer. We came here on a whim. I was starving and she kept making a point of how badly she needed a drink after her shift ended.

I was frozen by her presence.

Her olive skin glowed against silky brown hair and her dimples became more pronounced as she chewed. She caught me staring at her and frowned, a slight smile curving over her full lips as she reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze.

Everything around me blurred when we met eyes.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she breathed. “I don’t think I ever stopped worrying about you.”

I smiled at her and took a sip of my drink. “I wish you could read my letters,” I told her.

She furrowed her brows and took a slow bite of the French fry balanced her fingers. “I wonder if Liam kept them.”

I shrugged and sloshed around the melting ice in my glass. Somehow I doubted it. If I were in his shoes I sure as shit wouldn’t have. But I didn’t tell her that. “Anyway,” I said, changing the subject. “Back at the diner…that was—”

“Amazing,” she finished for me, biting down on her bottom lip as she studied her hands. Her face was all elongated and scrunched up in that way it only ever was when she was thinking about something.

"Hey—Nean," I said, reaching for her hand and giving it a squeeze, "what is it?”