Bryan
Bryan pulled his squad car up to the curb outside Lexis’ house and threw it into park. He was one of the few officers allowed to take his vehicle home, since he lived a mere two miles from the station and had signed an agreement to respond even while off duty. It was a blessing and a curse, honestly. On the one hand, no one ever messed with his house. On the other hand, it kind of cramped his style on dates.
Not that he had ever really dated before. He fucked and he left. It was his modus operandi, until now. His date with Lexis would mark his first official date since taking Suzette Collins to the prom in high school, where they both lost their V-cards in the science lab halfway through the dance.
Which might explain why he was nothing but a ball of nerves at that moment. Chase down suspects. Investigate crimes. No problem. Nutting up and going to knock on his date’s door suddenly seemed to be the most nerve wracking thing in his life. Were guys supposed to get butterflies? He had never understood the expression before, but suddenly he did.
Bryan pulled in a deep breath and opened his car door. He liked Lexis’ neighborhood. It was quiet. The houses were on the small side and set close together, but everyone kept their lawns trimmed and their houses kept up. Now that the house next to hers had sold, he could stop paying the kid down the street to mow the lawn.
Another breath, and Bryan rang the doorbell, rocking back on his heels as he waited for Lexis to answer the door. He’d opted to go dressy casual for the date. Nice khakis that almost never made it out of his closet and a light blue button down that he had rolled up at the sleeves a little. It was more thought than he had ever put into what he wore.
Bryan looked up as the sound of the door unlatching reached his ears, but no amount of deep breathing could prepare him for the vision that walked out. Lexis wore a black skirt that hugged every one of her sinful curves, from her knees to high on her waist. A white silk blouse was tucked into the skirt, with just enough buttons undone to show a hint of cleavage that Bryan desperately wanted to follow with his tongue. A leather belt called attention to her tiny waist, and suddenly Bryan felt an all new kinship with Sir Mix-A-Lot that he had never known before. Because, yeah, he was sprung.
Bryan stumbled back two steps until he was leaning against the porch railing, allowing it to hold him up while he took in the rest of her. Sky-high red heels. Blond hair in soft waves falling over her shoulders. Plump lips the color of strawberries. And eyes made impossibly bigger by that black pencil stuff women put on, with a little swoop at the corners. From head to toe, she was his greatest fantasies come true. And he wasn’t sure he could take it.
“You okay there, big guy?” Lexis turned to close the door and lock it.
With her back to him, Bryan saw the slit up the back of her skirt. It showed a tiny sliver of skin to mid-thigh. All the blood ran straight to his hardening cock, and he had to bend over and brace himself on his knees to keep from passing out.
“Woman, you are trying to kill me? First I’ve had images of all those sex toys and what we could do with them.” Bryan sucked in two breaths, trying to force some oxygen back into his brain. “Now you look like that for our date? I’m going to be walking around with a raging hard-on the entire time.”
The click of her heels preceded their appearance below his face. Unable to keep his eyes away from her, Bryan gazed up at her amused face.
“Poor baby. I’ll just have to walk in front of you the whole time.”
As Bryan stood to his full height, Lexis slid her eyes down to the giant tent in his pants. One of her eyebrows quirked up as her eyes widened in surprise. “You weren’t joking. It is going to be hard hiding that thing.” Her hand reached out, patting his straining dick gently. Bryan let out a hiss, desperately willing his hips not to surge forward seeking friction.
Withdrawing her hand, Lexis smiled up at him with mischief in her eyes. “So, should we take your car or mine?”
***
Despite his inability to tame the wild beast in his pants, the date actually went off without a hitch. Lexis’ face lit up when she saw their destination. It was a moonlit dinner cruise around the three rivers of Pittsburgh. The furthest thing from bars, bounce houses and fast food Bryan had been able to think of.
They sat at a table by a window in the dining room, candle light flickering between them as they were served a meal of steak and roasted veggies, red wine, and for dessert, a chocolate cake so divine it made Lexis moan several times. Which did not help the situation in Bryan’s pants.
After dinner they strolled out to the deck where a dance floor had been set up, and a band played classic pop standards. Bryan’s whole body felt at peace as he took Lexis into his arms, and they swayed back and forth under the stars, talking and gazing at each other. Thankfully, she was polite enough not to say anything about the bulge in his pants.
He’d learned a lot about her over the course of their date. And each new tidbit of information came together to form a picture that he desperately wanted to be a part of. How she worked strange hours at her three jobs. The fact that she had been raised by deaf parents, serving as both their child and interpreter to this day. Her love for her work as a telephone nurse. Her passion for tattoos, classic cars, and all things sweet. But one subject she had carefully avoided was her son.
“Tell me more about Ashton. You haven’t talked about him much.” Bryan tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as they swayed back and forth to the music.
“I wasn’t sure if I should on our first date. This is the first time I’ve been on a date since becoming a single mom. I don’t want to freak you out with all my mommy talk.” She winced, obviously nervous with the topic.
“You won’t freak me out. He‘s a big part of your life. I’d like to know more.” He hadn’t let go of her hair, instead weaving it back and forth between his fingers, enjoying the silkiness. “Can I ask where his father is?”
“You can ask, but I really don’t know.” Lexis sighed, and looked at her hand resting on his shoulder, where she fidgeted with his shirt collar. “I went through a bit of a bad-boy phase in my early twenties. He was a regular over at that dive bar, Shady’s. Fought in some underground rings. I knew he cheated on me regularly, but I tried not to think about it too much. Then I told him I was pregnant, and he disappeared. Tried to ask around once about where he might have gone, but his buddies weren’t giving anything up. I was never actually all that upset about it. His not being around is the best thing for Ashton. And me.”
“And me.” Bryan gave her a soft smile. “Can I ask a question about Ashton that I’m not sure is very PC?”
Lexis gave him the side eye but reluctantly nodded her head.
“Why does he speak sometimes, but only signs other times? Can he hear a little bit?” Bryan had been wondering for a while. He didn’t get to interact with the boy much, because he only saw them in the mornings when they were running around getting ready for school. But he wanted to get to know Lexis’ son. Ash seemed like a cool kid, and Bryan hoped if things worked out with Lex, he and the kid could be buds.
“Don’t worry, that is a perfectly fair question.” Lex sighed, a gentle smile pulling her lips up as she talked about her son. “Ash got a cochlear implant when he was just under three. It was a sore point with my parents. They didn’t think he should get the implant. I thought he should be able to live in both the hearing and Deaf communities. He usually doesn’t wear the sound processor at night. He sleeps better without it, and it saves on batteries. So when we are running around in the morning, we sign. He also exclusively signs when he is with my parents. But once he turns the sound processor back on, he usually prefers to speak.”
Bryan started to regret asking the question, as he saw a little sadness enter her eyes, and her voice go quieter.
“My parents love him, but some of the truly hardcore people in the Deaf community will never accept him. They think I didn’t accept him as he was, and that I was trying to fix him.” Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “But to fix him, there would’ve had to have been something broken about him. Being born deaf didn’t make him broken. He was perfect. Is perfect. But I couldn’t ignore a technology that would make his life a little easier.”
Her gaze landed on Bryan again, and her eyes seemed to plead with him to understand. As if she had had this argument several times with both herself and the people in her life. “Isn’t that what all parents want? To make things a little easier for their children? Give them the best possible start in life?”
Bryan wrapped his hand around the side of her neck, rubbing his thumb along her jawline. “I’m not a parent, so I don’t know. But I’m starting to get to know you, and I think understand you. I have a feeling you would never do anything that didn’t have his best interests at heart.”
She leaned into his touch, taking the comfort he offered her, and the gesture of trust made an affection he had never experienced before well up in his chest. “Want to hear something crazy that I’ve never told anyone before?”
“Always.”
“The night before his surgery, I sat and rocked him to sleep, like I did every night. But I stayed awake all night and just held him, staring at this freckle behind his ear. It was right in the crease where his ear met his head. And I cried, knowing that freckle would be gone the next time I rocked him to sleep. That freckle almost made me change my mind.” A tear escaped the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. “Then, after the surgery, when they showed me the incision site and how to care for it, the freckle was still there. It was like a sign or something. That I’d made the right decision. Ash doesn’t need me to rock him to bed anymore, but I kiss that freckle every night before bed.”
The lone tear that had rolled down her face turned into steady streams, as the emotion of her confession spilled from her lips. In that moment, Bryan knew. He knew he would look back for the rest of his life and pinpoint that moment as the moment he fell in love with Lexis Johannes.
He cupped her head in his hands, kissing the trail left behind by her tears. “You are amazing.”
Lexis laughed this embarrassed little chuckle and wiped her tears. “Okay, I’ve talked enough. You need to take some of the getting-to-know-you burden here, buddy.”
“Okay, I can do that. What do you want to know?” He slid his hands down her back to rest on her hips again, as they continued their soft swaying to the music.
Lexis bit her bottom lip between her teeth, then released it with a slight pop. “What were you like as a little boy? I bet you were trouble.”
Bryan laughed, because she had no idea how true her words were. “You could say that. You could also say I was a delinquent.” He didn’t usually talk with people about his youth. It wasn’t something he looked back on fondly. But he wanted Lexis to know all of him. “I entered the foster system when I was five. I was the eighth of ten kids born to my mom; all but two of us had different dads. She was a nice lady, but fell in love easily and with the wrong men. The last guy cleaned out her bank account, and she started doing what she had to do to make ends meet. Prostitution led to drugs, which led to an overdose and all ten of us in foster care. When I turned thirteen, I got sent to a foster home that was not the greatest.”
He refused to say the names of the monsters he had lived with for that dark year. They put on a great face for the authorities, but once they were alone, they beat and starved the kids in their care.
“I took to stealing and acting out. Vandalizing buildings, getting in fights. Then I made the mistake of spray painting a giant pink pig on the side of Officer Jon Gallo’s house.” The laugh that always came when he thought of the most fortunate crime he committed bubbled out from his mouth. “Jon came out and tore me a new one when he caught me and my buddy. Made us scrub and repaint the siding on his whole house. Then he took us under his wing. Eventually got us to tell him what was going on in the foster home, and got the assholes shut down. I idolized him. Now he’s the Chief, and I’m the officer, and I still do.”
Blinking, Bryan felt like he was coming out of a trance. The lights of the city, the scent of Lexis’ sweet perfume, the heat of her under his hands, it all reminded him that he wasn’t that damaged little kid anymore. He had made it out.
He looked back at Lexis, her beautiful face, hypnotic eyes, pouty mouth. He’d made it out of the hell that was his childhood, and all so he could find her. Sadness and joy were twin emotions in her eyes. No words were needed for him to know she felt bad for his pain, but proud of how far he had come.
The words he so desperately wanted to say bubbled on the tip of his tongue, but instead of letting them take voice, he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. One swipe of his tongue along the seam of her mouth, and she opened, letting him in.
The taste of her mouth, the confident caress of her tongue on his. Goddamn. It was why whatever higher power that controlled these things had put him on the earth. To consume Lexis. To possess her completely.
Instead of speaking those three little words, he breathed them into her, trying to tell her with his kiss how much she meant to him. Bryan knew it was too early in their relationship to voice such things as love and forever, so he showed her instead.