Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 50759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
“I can save my fire for whoever I see fit,” I pursed my lips.
Brody chuckled. It was quickly becoming my favorite sound.
“As you wish,” he kissed my head.
“So, the story, please,” I urged.
He sighed. “It’s not a happy one.”
“Neither was mine.”
Not until now, is what I didn’t add.
He rubbed my arms. “Not getting the scholarships was the best thing that happened to me. I wanted something else anyway. Wanted to do something that mattered. Wanted to prove I was a man, strong, something more than my father.” He shrugged. “It’s pretty cliché, enlisting when those are the things you want, but I was a cliché, angry kid. I became a man quick enough through basic training, though.”
It was impossible not to know he’d served. The look about him, the way he carried himself was different. Like he was dangerous, like his past was something more than football games and cheerleaders.
“War was nothing like I’d expected,” he continued. “None of the glory. Fuck, none of the excitement either.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We were bored shitless most of the time.” He looked off into the distance, as if he was seeing something far away. “Until we weren’t,” his voice was quieter now. “I was in for ten years. Left when I had to deliver my best friend’s dog tags to his widow.”
My heart stuttered over the pain in his voice.
I stroked his face.
He leaned into my hand, laying a kiss in my open palm.
“I didn’t know where else to go so I came here,” he said. “It’s that simple, I guess. Apart from my father, I love everything about this town. It’s my home.”
I chewed my lip. It was so simple for him. Sure, he had plenty of demons that followed him around, plenty of pain in his past, but he hadn’t attached it to the place he grew up like I had. He sounded like New Hope was his sanctuary, and I’d viewed it as a prison all these years.
But I was starting to question that.
My eyes shifted to the window. It was too dark to see the snow that blanketed the trees and surrounding mountains. I’d been spending my days out in the crisp winter, the forge warming me, my mom bringing me warm mugs of coffee. I’d woken up without the sounds of the city, without the smog, the overcrowding, the clogged freeways.
I thought I’d preferred the bustle of the city, thought I’d craved it. But now, in the quiet of my hometown, I wondered whether I’d just been seeking the noise so I didn’t have to listen to the voices in my head. The ones that told me I needed to let go of my past.
Even though you couldn’t say I was letting go of my past when I was currently naked and tangled up with my high school bully.
But I didn’t think about that…
“Now, are we done with story time?” Brody asked. “Because I remember promising to make you fall asleep with my cock inside you.” He turned us to cover my naked body with his, cock poised at my entrance.
His lips brushed mine.
“And I’m a man of my word.”
He was.
I hadn’t thought such a thing was possible, but I fell asleep with Brody’s cock inside me.
Chapter Fifteen
BRODY
I dropped Willow off at her place the next morning. I hadn’t wanted her out of my bed. Hadn’t wanted her out of my house. But as much as I wanted to fuck her into oblivion, I had a shift, had responsibilities.
I’d fucked her plenty last night. The vision of her flushed face, the way her back arched as she came, it made my cock hard just thinking about it.
Which I couldn’t do.
I was at work. So I focused. Focused on things that didn’t make my cock hard. Like the future. Like Willow’s future. She didn’t consider this place her home like I did. She was in a state of flux, her life in L.A. ruined. My hand flexed into a fist, thinking about it. Thinking about the asshole ex I wanted to bury.
Willow Watson was not someone to stay down for long. She was already back in the forge, already had a creative fire lighting up her fucking soul. She was already a firecracker that day I’d pulled her over driving into town, but there had also been something tired about her. Something defeated.
That thing was gone now, replaced with a grim determination and a defiant tilt to her chin.
She would get to where she wanted to be. I knew that for a fact. And where she wanted to be was not here.
I was mulling over that disturbing thought when there was a knock at my door.
“Enter,” I muttered.
“Sam Norton came in here, wanting to press charges against the sheriff for assault,” Hannah, my deputy said, leaning against my desk and cradling what I guessed was her third coffee of the morning. Hannah was a good cop, better woman, and a newly single mother to a baby who apparently didn’t like sleeping all that much. I’d given her all the maternity leave it was in my power to give, which was sweet fuck all and should’ve been criminal in my opinion. Luckily, Hannah was born and bred in New Hope, and had family to help, including a mother who took to the grandma role utterly and completely, and watched Maisie—Hannah’s daughter—while she worked.