CHAPTER 17

 

 

One Year Ago—In the Middle of Robocop

 

Charis: If you had to guess, at what point did human beings stop turning to violence to settle petty disputes?

Asher: That's another trick question, right?

 

Asher

 

IN THE AFTERPUNCH, I FELT a helluva lot better.

I was alone there. Karl and Aura were—well, who knows what they were doing or where they'd gone, I don't really care. But I guarantee you Karl wasn't smiling anymore.

Nor was Charis. She sounded depressed. "I told you you weren't over Aura."

"What gives you that impression?" I asked.

We were strolling, vaguely headed toward her place, fighting the wind and stinging rain. After I'd belted Karl in the jaw, we'd all stood around staring at each other until he and I said simultaneously, "I'll just—" and grabbed the arm of the nearest woman.

I let him settle with the restaurant and headed out with Charis. I didn't know where her car was, but mine was blocks away and the only thing that mattered was that I had her to myself for the first time in ages.

"Oh, gee, I don't know, maybe the fact that you just slugged your brother in the middle of a crowded tavern because he decided to marry your girlfriend instead of me."

I paused, rubbing my sore hand. "You've got to be kidding me. That's not why I slugged him."

"Oh, no? Then why?"

"He just reneged on your engagement, taking assholishness to a whole new level. At least now he'll have to wait until the swelling goes down before he actually fucks her."

"How is this not jealous behavior again?"

I opened my mouth, then shut it and started walking again. How to convince her that the thought of my ex-girlfriend in bed with my brother was weird, a tad unsavory, but not a major thing? "I was defending your honor, Sloane."

Now it was she who halted. "Oh."

"That's it? Oh is all you can say?"

"That was…I guess nice of you? Is that what you want to hear? Even if it was pointless violence toward a perfectly innocent family member."

"Innocent my ass. He booted you to the curb, Sloane. Why are you making excuses for him?"

"I'm not. I wasn't offended by what he did. He knows that. But as I said, it's nice of you to care."

If she wanted to think I was being nice, rather than possessive, that was fine by me.

We were stopped half a block from her place. The rain smelled like the honeylocust next to us, which hadn't even bloomed yet. I turned her to face me, liking the way she freaked at my free and easy handling of her.

Get used to it, sweetness.

I stepped close and let my bare hands cup her cold cheeks. "Karl's okay. He could have avoided that punch if he wanted to. But since I'm such a nice guy, I'll call him tomorrow and make sure I didn't hit a pimple or something."

I felt zero hostility toward Karl at the moment. As soon as that punch had landed, I'd seen that by snatching up Aura, he'd done me a huge favor. In hindsight, I wasn't sure that hadn't been his intention all along. I only wondered why I hadn't thought of the whole scheme first.

"Do, uh, you fight like that with your brother a lot?" She looked cute pretending to ignore the way I was holding her face.

"Not since it dawned on me that he can cream my ass every time. The only exception is when I catch him by surprise."

"He knows how to fight, like, really fight?"

Her cheeks were warming up. I stroked them with my thumbs, enjoying the satiny feel of her skin. I wondered how many men had discovered that Charis's skin was the softest, silkiest thing you could ever hope to touch.

"He spent all his tender years in Detroit, he's worked as a bouncer, he's done some MMA and boxing, he basically taught the rest of us how to defend ourselves…and why don't you know this about your ex-fiancé?"

She adjusted her hat. "We're not that close. Uh, Asher, what are you doing?"

"You know what I'm doing." My thumb was near her mouth. I skimmed the corner of it. It opened.

Opened. Sweet. Maybe she did it out of habit or reflex, but it meant her guard was down. Just how I wanted her.

I cleared my throat. "So you're disengaged. Unengaged. Reverse engaged."

She blew bangs out of her eyes. "Yeah."

"How does it feel?"

"It's a relief," she admitted. "He shouldn't marry Aura, though."

"No fucking kidding."

"I mean, it's kind of twisted, the whole idea. Not of marrying someone. I'm talking about, you know. Marrying your ex."

"A nightmare for everyone involved," I agreed.

"Still…I'm glad he did it. I was close to crapping out on him. And I felt really bad about that."

Her confession sent a surge of blood to my cock, like she'd reached down and given it an encouraging yank.

"Thank the lord, Char. Not doing so would have been a move of epic stupidity."

She scowled at me. "I'd promised. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal. And you know, I was kind of lonely. You weren't hanging around. I just thought it might work out fine…"

I couldn't help it; my thumb swiped across her lower lip. That made me groan and her smack her lips together.

"No, don't close your mouth." With increasing urgency, I probed the seam of her lips.

She jerked back, looking confused. But she didn't shove me away.

"You're weirding me out," she said, hardly moving her lips.

"Let me see some tongue."

Her eyes started crazy-blinking.

"Come on. Pink tongue. I've seen it before, woman, what's the big deal here?"

She was breathing hard, steaming little puffs of air against my thumb. She knew my question wasn't as innocent as it sounded, all right.

My voice turned coaxing. "Aw, one tiny peek…just the tip…that's all I'm asking. Once I get that, I'm good for now."

A laugh sputtered out of her, giving me what I wanted. "You are such a goofba—mph!"

Her mouth was warm and slick and so luscious that taking it made my cock aim straight for the sky. Kissing women in the cold, your primary thought is generally, get inside where it's warm. Kissing Charis out here in the blowing rain, I had no primary thought, just more of that. More. This is so fucking right.

I withdrew an atom's width to mutter, "It's a done deal that I'm going to see your naked body," then took her mouth again.

She made a muffled sound and tried to pull back. "You can't—Asher—you really can't say that to me."

"Charis Sloane's naked body, naked body, naked body…" This time I didn't actually withdraw, just chanted against her mouth.

"Asher!" She was having a hard time of it, between giggles and wiggling to evade me—both my mouth and the hand I'd slid behind her back, lightly crushing her against me.

Oh, fuck, yes. She tasted good. Sure, she was smacking me here and there, but her efforts were feeble compared to what I knew she was capable of.

"You gonna knee me in the balls?" I said softly against her mouth.

"You know it." But her body language told me I wasn't going to get my balls kicked quite yet.

"Then maybe I'll check you out right here." I flicked open a few black buttons and slid my hand inside her coat, curling my fingers around her ribcage to bask in the heat coming through the thin camisole. I wasn't used to seeing her in clothing so bare. Even as a teenager, she'd gravitated toward tee shirts.

No way she was wearing a bra with this thing. A happy thought.

Her eyes bugged out, as if she couldn't believe I'd dared. "What are you actually doing?"

"Checking you out." My thumb eased up along the softest of swells to a nipple. My intentions had been merely to brush it, test it out, maybe tease it through the cloth, but I didn't expect it to be killer-hard already, to stab my palm. I sucked in a breath.

"Holy hell, Char, I know it's cold out here, but damn, you're…"

"Asher, don't you even—"

But I was already squeezing the bud between my thumb and forefinger.

"Asher!"

The sound of motor traffic nabbed my attention. I was standing here in the rain with street lights shining on me, embracing a woman in an entirely inappropriate way, considering, A) we were in public, and B) it was Charis, not some woman I was already fucking.

But now I'd started, why stop? The nipple I'd captured was aroused, and not only from cold, since as soon as I started rolling and twisting, its owner started moaning.

Now I was helpless to stop, because fuck me, Charis clearly liked tit play.

The words were out before I thought twice: "You want me to go under your shirt and work you over?"

"Work me what? Oh, geez, I can't believe this…" She started to push me away, but ended up arching into me, pushing her flesh even harder into my hand.

That little push did me in, detonated something in my brain. Sloane's breast wasn't just responsive; it was wildly responsive. Whatever her voice said, her body wanted my touch.

I backed us into the shadows, in the semi-privacy of a nook, never taking my hand out of her coat, an essentially moronic thing to do. Any passersby could easily see us if they turned their heads.

Yet stopping didn't occur to me, not with Charis letting me virtually milk her with my fingers. I mean, she was mewling. Could she get any hotter?

If I'd been thinking it through, I'd have determined that my friend is no quickie to snatch like the last piece of pie. She's the whole freaking pie.

I wasn't thinking, though. My hands and cock were doing that for me. I licked my lips, like a raw boy in Stage One.

It kept thundering through me, deep in my cells: This was her. Forbidden fruit. With a nipple that was tight and needy of loving. This was the girl I'd kill to have completely naked, to lick every inch of her body until she couldn't do anything except explode while I proved to her the puny age difference between us meant shit and she wasn't anything like one of my sisters…

I raised up her shirt—

"Oh shit, hold up, Asher, what are you doing?"

Oh, shit, what?

Oh, shit—she was right. What was I doing?

This wasn't a kiss. This was foreplay.

I let her go like she was on fire. Did a complete three-sixty on my heel while my lungs drank in the frigid air. "Oops," I gasped. "Fucking hell, Sloane, that was hot."

She was hugging her waist. "What just happened?"

"Nothing like what's about to happen." Determinedly, I strode back up to her, fisting my hands so they didn't do anything stupid. "We're going back to your place."

"Oh, yeah?"

"And when we get there, you know what we're gonna do?"

"Um, take over the world?"

I bent down to murmur in her ear. Otherwise I didn't touch her, because, cock out of control.

"No, smartass. I will remove every stitch of clothing touching your skin. I will put you on your bed and I will look at you the way I've dreamed of looking at you."

"Dreamed! Pff, you're on crack. C'mon, Ash, what's really going on? This can't be about my engagement any longer, since it's history. Is this to do with Aura, or what?"

I stiffened, like she'd kicked me in the balls.

"Fuck your suspicions!" I exploded. "You're unreal sometimes. What's really going on is that I have a hard-on for you that won't die. You were my first wet dream and again when you came to our Christmas that year I was sixteen and the only reason our friendship has been a hundred percent platonic is because you made it clear that the only way I could have you was to direct my cock elsewhere."

Her jaw was hanging open. Good. It was time for a dose of reality.

"So I did. I fucked half my high school and then I found Aura. You know how long my relationship with Aura would have lasted if you weren't around?"

She didn't reply, not even a head jerk.

"I have a pretty good idea it wouldn't have lasted more than a few months, tops. I did hope we'd be something more together, her and me, but it didn't happen. But I'd have given up on the whole affair a lot sooner if you weren't there. Because with you around, I'd better be involved with someone or I'd explode. I actually thought there was something wrong with me, can you believe that?"

I saw her flinch at that.

"Yeah, you treated me like a little brother and I felt like a libidinous jerk. So I went all in with Aura, trying, I don't know, trying to prove I could be a decent boyfriend. Ironic, because apparently I dicked her over good. Ultimately I was bad news for her and she's well rid of me."

"You're not making sense. It makes no sense. You loved her."

"Not enough. Truth is, Char…truth is I lied to myself about you. It's the biggest mistake I ever made, letting everyone tell me what to think about you. I always liked everything about you, every fucking thing, and all you'd have had to do was crook your finger one time and I'd have taken all of you. All. Of. You. Not friends with benefits, not sex…everything.

"But you were off limits. And now…now it's all fucked, I'd want you if you were ten or twenty years older, not just four measly ones. Fuck Karl, I don't want you getting engaged to fucking anyone. I want you for myself. And I hope to God I can get you to want me like that, too. Because that is the only future I see for us."

There. I'd said it.

Damn, but it was terrifying, this spilling all my shit thing.

"That's not true, Asher. You can't." She shook her head.

Her disbelief slammed into me.

Struck me dumb.

I'd said all that to Char…and it meant nothing.

Aura hadn't trusted me when I told her how much I wanted her, but Aura was an insecure mess. To have my best friend in the world not trust me when I laid myself out there and admitted my feelings…

How could she? Even if she didn't reciprocate them, how could she just throw them back in my face like that?

I swallowed, feeling my eyes water.

"Don't believe it then. I'm lying. Why should I try to convince you? Just fucking forget the whole thing. We'll go back to hanging out and everything'll be hunky-dory. It was all a dream. It never happened."

Her hand flew to her mouth. Remorse filled her expression. "Oh, my God, no. I didn't mean it like that. Asher, I do believe you. I…" Her face screwed up and her hand rubbed at her nose and forehead.

Charis was tough, yet she looked on the verge of crying, and the only time I'd seen her cry from emotional causes was when her grandmother had died.

"I just…you don't get it about me. You think you know me, but there's stuff you can't know, because we don't talk about it." She muttered something under her breath.

"What? I didn't hear that."

"I said I'm as bad as Aura in certain respects. I'm not…how did you put it the other day. Secure in my body. So whatever it is you imagined…doing with me…there's no point. You might as well forget it. Because I'll just screw you over, maybe as badly as she did."