SEVEN
Brinley
Warren was right.
Those were not words I liked thinking.
But in this case, they were fitting.
I needed a break.
I was running on empty.
Had been for weeks.
The headache had come up on me as I walked down the flea market, pretending to be excited, trying to play it up for the camera that followed me, all the while a jackhammer had decided to take up residence behind my eyes, slamming away until the sun made it hurt worse, until even just the low hum of the car radio on the way back set my teeth on edge. The pain had moved down my jaw and neck until my entire head felt it, until it was all I could really focus on.
And it was just proof that I was pushing it too hard.
I didn't like admitting I had limits, that I wasn't some automaton that could just keep going no matter what.
But if I couldn't take the sounds of the work site without them bringing on a wave of nausea from the pain, then it was time to take up Warren on his offer, take the truck, head home, and relax for a change.
That was what I did, downing some headache medicine with coffee for an added boost, drinking some water, then climbing into the tub in a darkened room until the pain finally, finally started to ease away.
I called home, talking to my mom and dad, realizing I hadn't heard their voices in weeks, that I had been so wrapped up in myself that I had forgotten to check in on them. The stab of guilt was immediate as I hung up with them and called all my siblings. Then, finally, Brent.
"How's that asshole?" he asked as soon as we exchanged greetings.
"Maybe he's not as big an asshole as I originally thought," I admitted. "We bump heads a lot about plans for the house still..."
"But?" he prompted.
"But we have... I don't know, managed to separate work and home life."
"Home life," he said in a gruff grumble. "That sounds... cozy."
"Ew. No," I immediately scoffed. "It's not like that. At all."
"You're sharing a bed."
"With a pillow barrier!"
"Mhmm."
"Stop," I demanded, looking inside the fridge for something to cook.
We had been doing a lot of eating out, or just grabbing sandwiches on the set. On the rare occasion that we did eat at home, Warren was the one cooking.
I oddly felt like I owed him dinner.
For recognizing I needed a break.
For insisting I take one.
For being nice.
Plus, he seemed to be working late.
And if the crew was gone, there would be no one to bring in more food. He had to be hungry. I figured I would make him something, then bring it to him. If he was ready to call it a day, he could come back with me. Or I could leave the truck with him, and do the walk myself.
"Come on. You're trying to convince me that you're sharing a job, a house, and a bed, and there hasn't been even a hint of something more."
"I don't have to convince you of anything since that is exactly how it is. Just coworkers and roomies. We have sort of gotten used to each other now. It's just easier. Hence the lack of bitching. We get home pretty late. We usually just eat, shower, and head to bed."
"The same bed."
"Yes, Brent. The same bed," I said, rolling my eyes even though he couldn't see me as I tossed some chopped meat into a skillet to cook through. Tacos, it seemed, was what we had the ingredients for. I didn't care that it was one-hundred degrees out. There was never a bad time for tacos.
"Don't roll your eyes at me," he said, knowing me far too well.
"Then don't be ridiculous. We're professionals."
"Even professionals need to fuck sometimes, Brin," he said in his annoyingly superior voice. "And it's been, what, for you? A year? I don't even remember the last time you had a date with a guy."
"That doesn't mean I plan to jump him," I countered, stirring in taco seasoning and water before chopping up lettuce and tomatoes.
"Even late at night. In bed. When he..."
"Not even then," I cut him off, mostly because the words were actually conjuring up the image of him in bed, without his shirt as he always was.
Usually, he was up before me, but one morning last week, I had gotten woken up by a stress dream in the early hours of the morning, the sun just casting soft yellow hues across the room, making it all dreamy and almost romantic as I lifted my head from the barrier that - no matter how I tried to prevent it - I always ended up sprawled all over, to see him still beside me.
Asleep, his features were softer. There was no cocky set to his brows, no condescending smirks, no eyes that were silently telling me I was being a pain in the ass.
He was five days late for a shave, the scruff adding to his good looks, as it almost always did.
Which was incredibly unfair if you asked me.
My eyes had trailed down his neck to his chest, finding it bare as it always was, the muscles firm even at rest. Then, lower, taking in the deep indents of his abdominal muscles, noticing for the first time the delicious sharp V shape of his Adonis belt, disappearing down into the waistband of his lightweight black pajama pants. There was a light, wispy trail of hair disappearing there as well. Happy trail. That was an apt name if you asked me.
And the strangest ideas moved through me at that moment.
I want to see more.
I want to run my tongue down those lines.
Absurd, of course.
I didn't actually want that. Not when I was awake and aware. When he was as well. Nope.
So it wasn't a lie, what I told Brent.
Somehow, though, it felt like one. Or maybe even a half-lie. But a half-lie amongst the oldest of friends was just as bad as a full one in my book.
Lying.
I was getting too used to it.
Too good at it.
I didn't like that about myself.
It's just for a year, I reminded myself, as I found myself doing many times a day when I felt like I hit my wall, like I couldn't take it anymore, like I couldn't fake another smile.
As soon as the year was up, I could go back to being fully myself. Only faking smiles for clients. Only lying when it would hurt you to tell the truth - like when my sister with a somewhat oblong face decided to get a severe pixie cut that just didn't work on all levels.
Hell, we were already pretty much done with our part on one house.
They were actually bringing in two people to work on decorating the house how I wanted it.
Which felt weird.
But we had to follow the rules they set.
Like it or not.
So we had one house down, fifteen to go.
Apparently, the next one wasn't quite as damaged, would be quicker. We'd see about that in the morning, I guess.
"It wouldn't be a bad thing, y'know," Brent said, snapping me out of my swirling thoughts as I laid down several tortillas, and started layering them with ingredients.
"What wouldn't be a bad thing?"
"If you were into him."
"What? Ew. Yes, it would be."
"Why though?"
"This? Coming from the man who refers to him as That asshole?"
"Just 'cause he's an asshole doesn't mean you can't be into him. Besides, it sounds like he's softened up a bit since you started cohabitating. I guess you haven't broken out the glitter yet."
"You totally miss the glitter," I told him. "I need to send you a glitter bomb."
"No."
"A penis glitter bomb," I specified, having once looked into it as a prank when he got me good on April Fools Day a few years back. I never got up the nerve to do it to him though. "Little tiny glitter penises all over you."
"You suck," he declared, but I could hear a smile in his voice. "But I miss having you around. The place is so quiet."
"Is that some crack about how I can never shut up?"
"Maybe."
I smiled at that, rolling the tacos that somehow became burritos since I wasn't paying attention in tinfoil. "I miss you too," I told him, smiling. "But I have to go have dinner. I promise I will check in more often. I've been a sucky friend."
"You've been a busy friend," he corrected.
"I've always been a busy friend. But I always have time for you," I told him as I stuffed the food in a paper bag, grabbed drinks, and moved outside. "Love you. Talk to you later."
"Love you too. Try not to fuck that asshole. Or do it. Whatever."
That was his parting.
I was still smiling as I opened the door to the truck, having to haul myself up even with the step rail that would be enough for normal-sized people.
On the drive, I opened the windows, the air thick, heavy, damp with sea water, a lifetime of knowing that sensation telling me that a storm was brewing. We'd be in for some epic rain and the kind of thunder that shook the house's foundations sometime later tonight. Summer storms, they were my favorite. Always angry, refusing not to be seen and heard. But over just as quickly, leaving behind steaming roadways and that amazing smell that I knew came from the dirt, but always thought of as a rain scent.
The driveway to the site was empty, the inside lit only by the newly installed lights in the kitchen and the spotlights Warren clearly had on upstairs.
I closed the door quietly, for some reason not wanting him to hear me coming, to genuinely surprise him. I tried not to analyze the impulse as I moved inside, feeling oddly light, my heart thrumming a bit, my belly jumping.
Excitement.
There was no other way to describe those sensations.
I was excited.
Until I walked through the entry, my head immediately swiveling to the doorway to the living space where there was a massive, ornately carved slice of wood over the top, something that had clearly come with the house, which had somehow managed to survive the storm.
Except... it wasn't there.
It wasn't there.
After I expressly told Warren that it was vital, that there was no choice, that it had to stay.
He had gone and ripped it off.
All that was left was a freshly spackled wall.
Just when I thought we had found a rhythm, had learned to work together, to be upfront with our concerns, to stop being petty and backhanded.
He had to go and do this.
He had to undo what respect and trust we had learned to show each other.
"Warren!" my voice broke out of me without thinking, without considering how I should approach the situation, without me even knowing what was going to come out of my mouth next. "Get down here now!"
Red.
It had been a while since I had seen it.
Maybe some light pinks here and there, when he was being stubborn about the project, but it hadn't deepened to red since the last job we had done together.
I could have sworn I heard a sigh from above before the footsteps sounded, walls and ceilings in this place as thin as leaves that barely survived the winter, I could hear every stomp of his boots across the master bath, then bedroom, then finally, the hall, before they started clomping down the steps which groaned with the effort of holding his weight - something I found charming, but Warren had been annoyed about keeping.
What if whoever buys this place has a kid?
It was even a valid argument.
But he had been overridden by Andy who thought it was an unnecessary expense and Rachel who thought it would simply take too long for something so unnecessary.
It wasn't really a victory for me since they had pulled the boss cards on him, but I almost wanted to smile as I heard them.
Almost.
If I wasn't so mad.
"Where is it?" I demanded, actually feeling a hip jut out, having to fight the urge to cross my arms and glare at him.
"Where's what?" he asked as though anything else was out of place.
Wait.
Maybe it was.
It wouldn't be unlike him, after all. He went behind my back more than once on our last job, then acted like I was irrational for being upset by it.
Maybe he had just been placating me, yessing me to death to my face while he did whatever he wanted behind my back.
"The wood, Warren, obviously," I said, waving a hand toward the doorway.
"Did you make me dinner?" he asked instead of answering me, gaze fixed on my arm that I had aloft, the bag swinging, filling the air with seasoning, an unmistakable scent everyone knew.
My gaze shot back to him, finding him watching me with a look I didn't quite know how to interpret. Brows low, lips parted ever so slightly, eyes almost a little lost, heavy-lidded.
I knew that look.
I'd seen it before.
But not on him.
And, if I were being honest, not on anyone in longer than I cared to admit.
So long, in fact, that I was struggling in placing it, in putting it into context.
But my body seemed to understand it, wasn't the least bit confused by it.
Because it responded in kind.
My breathing felt more shallow and rapid, my pulse pounding in odd places - throat, wrists, temples. A heaviness settled in my lower belly, aching and oppressive, begging for things I hadn't wanted in far too long.
"How dare you?" I asked, voice almost a little frantic, needing to use it as a smokescreen to hide any possible signs on my face or in my body that might give away what was going on within it.
"What?" he asked, shaking his head, but it seemed to oddly go in slow motion, like his body and brain were wading through something thick, making it hard to think and act as quickly as usual.
"Go behind my back. Again. I mean I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you would do it. You've done it before. But I thought we had come to a sort of agreement, a comradery or something. That we were done being childish and backhanded. But no, you had to take it down. You asshole. After I decided to come here to surprise you with dinner because I thought you were just being nice to me for a change. But no, you were just trying to shoo me away so you could..."
"Shut up," he cut me off, tone almost a little soft? But that couldn't be right. This wasn't the moment for soft. Those weren't the words for soft.
"Excuse me?" I snapped, dropping my arm to my side, shaking my head at him. "Did you actually just tell me to shut up? Who do you think..."
I didn't get to finish my sentence.
He moved impossibly fast then, so fast that my eyes had trouble registering the motion before I suddenly felt a strong, calloused hand grip the back of my neck, the contact sending a shiver through my system, making the pressure on my belly increase, making my nipples harden, my breath catch.
My body moved suddenly backward, Warren's hand shoving into my hip, sending me slamming back into wall, head protected from impact by his hand at my neck, but my back hit with force, knocking out what was left of my air - which was admittedly little - just a second before his body was pressing into me, pinning me, as his lips crashed down onto mine.
They did that.
Crashed.
There was nothing soft or sweet or tentative about it as his lips claimed mine, hard and demanding.
Rough.
Primal.
Something within me responded to that, to the animalistic pull of sensations, softening into it, surrendering to it, offering anything he wanted to take.
My hands curled involuntarily for a moment before they moved upward, the bag dropping carelessly as my fingers traced up the corded muscles of his arms - one behind my neck still, holding me where he wanted me, the other pinned to the wall beside my head, blocking any escape, as though I was even seeking it, then curling into his shoulders as my hips moved off the wall, pressing into his, wanting more, wanting to feel his hard lines pressed to my softer ones.
A low, throaty, whimpering noise rose up and out of me as his tongue traced the seam of my lips, entreating entrance. Getting it, his body curled forward, forcing mine back as far as the wall would allow.
His hand slid down the wall, the sound a familiar one, callouses catching the wall with the same noise produced by sanding. It slid low, gliding under my behind, bracing, almost, for a moment before pulling upward.
Upward.
Forcing me up on my tiptoes.
Then higher.
Until my feet left the ground completely, hands frantically curling around his neck for stability as he rose up again, keeping me against the wall and his body while his tongue ravaged mine, dragged sounds and sensations out of me that - had you asked me just a moment ago - I would have claimed were impossible.
But there was no denying the heaviness of my breasts, the way my skin felt alive, electric, ultra sensitive to every small sensation - the brush of his tee against my bare arm, the button of his jeans just under my hipbone - finding something erotic in every little brush, breath, rush of air.
Everything heightened, as his head slanted to deepen the kiss, his chest brushed to mine, making an aching pain/pleasure mix move across my nipples then downward, causing a loud moan to rip from somewhere deep inside.
A low, deep, rumbling growl moved through Warren's chest and into mine, reverberating through my insides until every bit of me was humming with it as well.
My leg had just started to lift, to seek the stability of his lower back, to allow my core to press to his, to feel his hardness stroke where I needed it most, when it happened.
The storm I had predicted earlier came roaring to life.
The thunder cracked viciously, moving up through the floor and into our bodies, the sound making us jerk almost violently apart.
Where I had been aloft just a second before, my feet were suddenly slammed back down as we both struggled for air, for calm in our systems, for some sanity to return to our brains.
My legs felt wobbly forced to hold me again, making my butt press back to lean into the wall as I sucked in a slow, deep breath, trying not to focus on the way my lips felt swollen and tingly, how my body was screaming for more, how the unfulfilled desire was an aching pain that was impossible to ignore even as reality came hurtling back.
Warren had just kissed me.
And not just the little peck he would - or I would - give for the cameras. On the cheeks or forehead or close enough to the lips to look convincing, but not actually make that forbidden contact.
No.
He just grabbed me, pushed me up against a wall, and kissed me.
The way a woman secretly always craves to be kissed by a man - with reckless abandon, with everything within him, like he had absolutely no control over his reaction to you.
Warren had done that with me.
And I had no freaking idea what I was even supposed to think about that, let alone say, or react.
All I really knew was that the storm raging outside paled in comparison to the chaos going on within me in that moment as I tried to calm my body, tried to remind myself why I wasn't supposed to have thoughts and feelings like that about Warren Allen Reyes. That, in fact, I was supposed to be angry with him, not wanting to jump his bones.
But even as I desperately sought it, the anger was nowhere to be found, drowned, no doubt, under a tidal wave of need that was refusing to stay at bay.
"I didn't get rid of it," Warren's voice said suddenly between the unmistakable cracks of lightning and the room-shaking crashes of thunder.
He sounded... different.
But controlled.
More controlled than I felt, that was for sure.
When my mouth opened to speak, it was somehow both airy and croaking all at once. "You didn't get rid of what?"
"The wood carving," he specified, making my head turn up to finally look at him, finding he had leaned back against the banister, gaze forward, casting him half in shadow, making it impossible to truly read his expression, to glean anything from his eyes, to learn if he was as affected as I was in the moment.
"Where is it then?" I asked, taking another deep breath, hoping my heart would get the message that it was time to stop slamming so hard.
"Danny came by right as the crew was leaving," he started. Danny was one of the electrical guys. "He had to rewire the lights for the front porch. But the wire shorted out, burned up through the wall. We were lucky it didn't turn into a full-blown fire. But we had to rip it off the wall to get the new wire in. I didn't get rid of it. I know how much you liked that. I figured we can stick it back up. Or I can use it to frame that mirror you got. I can make another couple of sides to match it, age it, make it all look like one giant piece."
How did he sound so calm, so normal?
My body was still begging me to run over there, rip off my clothes, then his, and finish what we had started.
"Oh," was all I could seem to manage as I leaned against the wall. "Okay," I added when that didn't sound like enough of a reaction.
"So what do you want?"
You was clearly not the right answer.
He was very squarely set in work mode. How he had gone from alpha-man-grab-her-and-kiss-her mode to work mode was beyond me.
And he had been into it.
I hadn't been imagining it.
He had initiated it.
His body had been tense.
His cock had been hard.
He had been controlling the situation.
He'd been into it, damnit.
How had he gone from that to this so quickly?
While I still couldn't seem to force my thoughts and body to work together, so that I could at least stop using the wall for support like some virgin heroine from an old-school romance novel, all overcome after something as basic as a kiss.
But there was nothing basic about that kiss.
"The mirror sounds nice," I managed to tell him.
"Great. I'll get on that tomorrow after we check out the first house." He paused then, giving room for me to speak, as I was prone to do, prattling on about everything and nothing because I could never seem to get comfortable with long silences. But I couldn't think of anything to say right then. "Are those tacos?" he asked.
Somehow, that permeated.
My muscles unclenched, my heartbeat evened out, my blood seemed to cool back to normal temperature.
"Yeah. I... it was the only thing we seemed to have the makings for."
"I was going to make it last night, but we were too beat," he agreed, bending to grab the bag. "You eating, or did you have yours already?"
I was starving.
I had planned to eat with him while talking ahead of time about the plans for the next house, so maybe we could avoid some of the fighting on camera.
My stomach was churning angrily at the idea of what I was about to do.
"I was just dropping it off. I planned to take a walk."
"It's pouring."
"It's almost over," I assured him, knowing that these kinds of storms didn't last long.
"You can't go out in this," he objected, digging in the bag with one hand, but his gaze was on me, eyes unreadable.
"I'll see you back at the house," I said, turning, and walking to the door before he could say anything else.
The rain was still coming down, the kind of unrelentingly steady that had me drenched before I was halfway down the path.
I should have been cold.
But my body was overheated, overstimulated, over... everything.
I reached up, throwing sopping wet hair out of my face as I made my way down the empty streets, moving in the direction of the beach.
I wasn't stupid. I didn't go on the sand. Not until the storm eased. But as I predicted, the lightning crashed one final time about half a mile to my left, followed by a half-hearted rumble before the clouds finally decided to close up shop for the night as well.
Moving off the pier, I walked out onto the sand, finding that - for a rare, wonderful moment in time - it was all mine.
Never before had I needed it so much in my life.
I had never been the sort to need solitude to think things through.
I was a talker. I sorted through my own mind best when I got together with a friend, or called my mom, or sister, or Brent, and just aired it all out there, bounced ideas off them, talked until I found the way out of the labyrinth of my thoughts.
But I wasn't sure this was something I could bring to any of them.
My mother would remind me of why I took this job, why strict professional lines were of the utmost importance. My sister was in the very horny part of her second trimester. She would tell me to jump his bones. And deal with the possible fallout after we got our jollies.
And Brent, well, after the comments on the phone earlier, I felt weird at the idea of bringing this to him.
Especially given what happened after.
Was there really another word to put to it other than rejection?
It sure as hell felt a lot like rejection.
Even just remembering the way he acted like nothing had happened made my chest feel tight, my stomach swirly, my cheeks heat with an unmistakable embarrassment.
Though, I had nothing to be embarrassed about.
I hadn't been the one to attack him.
Sure, I had reacted.
Maybe I even reacted very openly to it.
But that was all chemicals, hormones, a primal impulse to, well, respond to an alpha male.
I did nothing wrong.
Warren, on the other hand, had not only told me to shut up, but then initiated the kiss, and went ahead and pretended like nothing had happened afterward.
He should be the one sitting at the beach trying to figure things out, worrying about implications, about how we were going to bounce back from this, if there would be awkwardness, if we needed to talk it out.
Well, we had to talk it out.
There was no way around that, was there?
We needed to be adults.
For the show.
For our futures.
And, quite frankly, for my sanity.
Because my mind was never going to let it go until we sorted it out.
Was it something he had wanted to do for a while?
Was it simply the heat of the moment?
Was it as good for him as it was for me?
No.
Those were not the kinds of thoughts I needed to have.
I needed to take feelings out of it.
It needed to be approached calmly, clinically.
A while later, long enough that the tips of my hair had slowly started to dry, I finally got up off the sand, spending almost the whole walk home swatting sand off of places it had accumulated.
His truck was in the drive.
My stomach knotted a bit at that, but I reminded myself that it had to be handled.
I moved inside, stopping just inside the door, finding a figure sprawled on the uncomfortable sofa with a pillow from the bed and a blanket from the closet.
Whether he was asleep or just pretending was too hard for me to tell.
But, well, there was no mistaking his actions, was there?
He didn't want to talk about it.
He didn't want it to happen again.
He didn't even want to be anywhere near me again.
Why there was a sinking feeling in my stomach at that realization, yeah, I was going to go ahead and choose not to focus on that.
As it would turn out, though, pretending there wasn't an issue, yeah, that was a major mistake.
Everything went to hell.