It wasn't until the driver steered right past the big house on Beacon Street that I realized Brandon hadn't given the driver his home address. My heart sank. For a minute, I'd thought he was going to take me home with him instead of sneaking into my building like a thief. But, of course, that would be too risky. If his ex-wife was watching him, someone was likely camped out by the house, waiting for Brandon to return.
"I had to give it up," Brandon interrupted my thoughts.
I looked back at him. "What?"
"It's part of the divorce agreement that she's supposed to sign."
I pressed my lips together, surprised by the ambivalence I felt. On the one hand, I was sort of happy the place would be gone. It was a palace that had always made me a bit uncomfortable with its opulence, which I now realized more reflected Miranda's expensive taste than Brandon's. Plus, it was the house where he had lived with her, even if just intermittently, and where she had discovered us together.
But it was also a house where I had fallen in love with Brandon. We had first met in its enormous living room, when I had been stranded in his basement during a snowstorm and wandered upstairs to find cell phone service. We had spent countless hours making love in almost every room, and just lounging together in various other spots as well. Just before Miranda had walked in on us, I had agreed to move in there with him.
There was that feeling again––that feeling of being railroaded, blindsided by the pure force of Brandon Sterling in my life. I knew it wasn't really any of my business what he did with his property, but all of the changes were so intense. Would we ever have those moments again where we could just relax? Where we could exist on equal terms?
"Red?" Brandon interrupted my thoughts, tipped my face to look back at him. "The next time I find a home, I want it to be with you. Because you're home to me, Skylar. That's all there is to it."
I relished in the warmth that seeped through my entire body with his words. Everything still felt very overwhelming, but when Brandon looked at me like that, anything felt possible. Maybe I just needed to focus on that.
The car pulled to a stop in front of a large apartment building just a few blocks from Copley Square, close to where Sterling Grove and Kiefer Knightly were both located. Brandon's door opened, and we were greeted by the jovial face of a middle-aged doorman.
"Welcome, Mr. Sterling," he said.
"Hi Gordon." Brandon looked at me. "Will you come up?" he asked hopefully.
I smoothed my hair, looked warily out the car door and then back at him. "Won't we be spotted? Isn't there someone watching?"
"I doubt it. I sent David to Rhode Island and back." He pressed his lips together, then leaned down to touch his nose to mine. "I don't give a shit anyway."
It was bravado, but I appreciated it anyway. "I'll have the driver take me around to the service entrance if there is one," I said, and gave him a brief kiss. "Go. You'll make Big Brother suspicious if you linger here too long."
Brandon's mouth twisted reluctantly, but he gave a short nod. "Other side of the block. There's a garage entrance. Code 24821."
He kissed me back, more thoroughly this time, then closed the door. I ignored the pit that swelled in my stomach as the driver took me around to the garage.
I entered the building easily and then found my way through the service hall into the nicest lobby I had ever seen. The interior was all white and glass, decorated with white marble flooring and massive, modern chandeliers that hung from twenty-foot ceilings. Brandon was waiting for me while he chatted up Gordon the doorman.
"Hey," he said with a bright smile as I approached. He took my hand and pulled me into the crook of his shoulder. "Gordon, this is my girl, Skylar Crosby. She's allowed up anytime."
Gordon gave me a friendly nod. "I'll put her on the list, Mr. Sterling."
I followed Brandon to the elevators, still taking in the mirrors and glass. Everything shined, like we were in the middle of a prism.
"Funny, I never would have put you in a place like this," I said. A million reflections of myself echoing between the twin banks of mirrored elevator doors.
"Yeah, well. Don't hold it against me." Brandon took my hand and kissed my knuckles. "It's a rental."
Once inside the elevator, Brandon punched in a code before the doors closed again. We went up. And up. And up. Until finally the doors opened directly into an enormous penthouse apartment. Brandon placed his keys, wallet, phone, and hat on a small table near the elevator doors. I stepped inside curiously.
The apartment was basically one open room, a wide space that took up one corner of the building's top floor. Two out of the four long walls consisted of floor-to-ceiling windows that showcased a panoramic view of Back Bay and the Charles River. Boston twinkled from twenty-seven stories below.
After Brandon flipped on the lights, I took in the rest of the apartment. A kitchen was built against one of the interior walls, complete with a spacious granite-covered island and breakfast bar. The other interior wall was hung with several pieces of modern art, split by a hallway entrance that likely led to bedrooms, bathrooms, guestrooms, or an office.
The open living space was clearly designed around the view. Gleaming slate floors covered all of it, with a spare, modern dining set taking over one corner and an angular, steel-gray sectional couch oriented with two black leather armchairs in the other. A few other cloistered seating arrangements dotted the perimeter of the place, but mostly it was just spacious.
And kind of a box. A beautiful glass box, but a box nonetheless. It was the opposite of where I ever would have expected Brandon Sterling to live.
"What do you think?" Brandon asked behind me.
I turned to him. "I...kind of hate it."
Brandon sighed, almost as if he were relieved to hear me admit it. "Me too." He shrugged, looking around. "Margie found it last minute. It's a place to live."
"It just doesn't feel like you. It's so cold." I glanced around at the hard metal fixtures and the gray and white color scheme. "What happened to fireplaces in every room? And big comfy couches?"
Brandon just gave me a rueful half smile and walked into to the kitchen. I took a seat at the bar as he found us something to drink.
"Tea?" he asked. "Or something stronger?" He held up a bottle of Lagavulin and two glasses.
I nodded gleefully. "Ooh, you've got the good stuff."
I was rewarded with a grin that immediately warmed up the entire chilly room.
"I keep it around in case someone special stops by," Brandon said.
So he still hadn't given up that habit. At the big house on Beacon Street, he had kept an entire room full of bachelor-style furniture and accessories for old friends who never came. He wasn't normally a scotch drinker, generally preferring IPAs or maybe a bourbon or brandy. That scotch was for me, a girl who, up until just a few weeks ago, wasn't supposed to be coming back. My heart twisted a little at the thought.
Brandon poured us each a few fingers of the golden-brown liquid, then added a splash of water.
"Do you mind sitting here? The dining table makes me feel like I'm at a board meeting, and those couches are really uncomfortable," he said as he sat next to me at the bar.
Suddenly I couldn't bear the distance between us anymore. I craved our intimacy, the feeling of just fitting together. I slid off my stool. "Come here."
I grabbed ahold of his shirt sleeves and pulled him to me for a kiss. My fingers threaded through his soft, curls. Instinctively, he wrapped his big arms around my small frame to engulf me in his scent, in his body.
At last, I let go, and took my seat. Brandon watched with a sly half-grin, as if already a little drunk.
"What was that for?" he asked as he sat back down, although he scooted much closer and set a hand on my knee as he took a sip of his drink.
"That was for the scotch," I said with a wink.
He laughed.
"Did you keep it here knowing we were going to get back together?"
Brandon was silent for a second, conveniently taking another drink. He swallowed, opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.
"I hoped," he said finally with a concessive shrug. "A man can dream, Red."
That was Brandon in a nutshell. A man who dreamed. He'd dreamed his whole life: of a family, of a better life, of a job, of money, of his firm, even of a family at one point...and of me. And now there was nothing to hold me back from showing him that I had dreams of him too.
We sat there, sipping our drinks, watching each other as a silence fell between us. He's been to my apartment a few times in the last few weeks, but we hadn't been fully intimate yet, always because I had put on the brakes. But now there was nothing to hold me back. Blue eyes or green? Now was also the perfect time to tell him.
I took a deep breath and opened my mouth.
"I'm sorry," Brandon interrupted. "You're too far away."
He dragged my stool even closer so that I was basically wedged between his knees. He picked up my hands and kissed them solemnly, one by one, then set them down in my lap, so he could cup my face.
"It's been a hell of a night, Red," he said. "I just need to keep kissing you right now."
His blue eyes were bright and curious. I hadn't said much since leaving the Petersens' house, and Brandon was clearly a bit nervous, considering the bomb he'd dropped. I didn't say anything, instead just fisted his shirt and pulled him to me.
He took my mouth slowly, continued the soft thoroughness that had characterized our kiss moments before. But now I was the one who couldn't get close enough. Suddenly the fact that it had been months since we had last really slept together seemed absolutely unbearable. I needed Brandon inside me, and I needed it right now.
He seemed to feel my sudden urgency. His mouth opened hungrily as his hands clenched at my waist. With a grunt, he reached down under my ass and lifted me up onto the countertop so that I was eye to eye with him.
"You," he murmured in between kisses as his hands ran insistently up and down my bare thighs, pushing the flimsy material of my dress farther up.
"You," I groaned back as I sucked on his full lower lip.
My hands naturally rose to grasp at the ends of his hair. Brandon's deft hands drifted up my sides, slipping over the cotton to cup my breasts, my ribs, the muscles in my back, my waist. He played with the hem again, but retreated. He was waiting for me to give him the okay to move forward.
I broke the kiss then, and Brandon stared, licking his swollen lips.
"Too fast?" he asked, out of breath.
His gripped the edge of the counter so hard that his knuckles turned white. I glanced down at them and back at him. It looked like he was physically struggling not to touch me. I felt the same.
Without blinking I reached down and pulled my dress over my head. He stared at my suddenly bared, lightly freckled skin, his mouth dropped open slightly.
"Christ, Skylar," he croaked as his gaze dragged up and down my body. "You are so beautiful it hurts." He blinked, blue eyes wide and glistening. "Say something."
I didn't. His look, his words made me feel too full. I was so overwhelmed by him––it was a feeling that never seemed to stop with Brandon––and the number of emotions swirling in me were too complicated to say. I craved clarity, and in this moment, the only thing that promised to do that was his body.
"Come here," I murmured finally.
I pawed his shirt over his head, eager to feel his skin on mine. I groaned as I found my payload: the smooth muscles of his chest, that broad expanse that I drew my fingers across before shoving them over his shoulders to pull him closer, skin to skin. With a grunt, he grasped my thighs again, eliciting a moan through his kiss with every deep knead of my flesh.
"God," he finally breathed as his mouth trailed down my neck, kissing, biting, licking until he could bury his face between my breasts. "I never stop wanting you," he groaned into the soft skin there. He kissed me again.
I reached behind to unsnap my bra. His muscles flexed all the way down his ridged stomach with tension as the bra fell to the floor. He stared hungrily where the tips of my hardened nipples grazed his chest, shuddered, then voraciously took them into his mouth, one at a time. As if acting of their own accord, my hips gyrated against his, eager to find some union there.
"Fuck!" he breathed as his stiff length pressed through his jeans and my thin cotton underwear. The hands at my ass squeezed even harder. "I need you. Right fucking now."
"I don't want to wait," I said into a salty sheen of sweat on his shoulder. I licked it. He tasted delicious.
A split second later, he had shredded the thin lace of my underwear and was busily shoving his pants down his legs.
"Shit," he muttered. "I...hold on. Condoms are in the other room."
I wilted slightly at his words as he pulled out of my grasp. Brandon noticed the small movement and stood tall.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
I bit my lip. If he needed a condom, did that mean he had slept with other people? Did he think I had slept with someone else?
You tried, I reminded myself.
As if he could read my doubts, he returned to stand between my legs, eyes dark and searching. "I haven't been with anyone else," he said quietly. "I couldn't."
I gulped. Relief washed over me, although his muscles tensed even more. He was clearly wondering the same thing about me.
"Neither have I," I whispered.
My hands trailed over the contours of his muscles: the elegant lines of his neck, over his deltoids, the curves of his defined biceps and triceps. He was so beautiful, with the grace of an athlete.
He searched me for a moment, as if looking for something I might have to hide. The tension in his body released, though his hands on my thighs still gripped with urgency.
"Are you...are you still on the pill?"
I shook my head. He started to step away, but I grasped his wrist.
"IUD," I said softly. "A few weeks ago."
His face turned feral. "Thank Christ."
Before I could respond, I was picked up from the counter and heaved over his large shoulder.
"Aaah!" I cried, but Brandon just laughed as he hoofed me down the hallway to a door he kicked open. I was dumped on a huge blue bed, sumptuous and soft.
Brandon kneeled between my legs with a look that said all jokes were done. His fist wrapped around his erection, which he meditatively rubbed as he perused my body. When his eyes met mine again, they were dark and demanding.
He leaned over and slid his palm between my breasts, over my belly, and down my clit with just enough pressure to make my hips jump off the bed. Then he rubbed his length against the slick space between my legs, never entering, just teasing, causing my hips to arch even further, begging him to enter.
"Not yet."
He stood up, still massaging himself. I watched the movements of his hand. He was teasing me, on purpose, but for what reason, I didn't know. Brandon read my expression knowingly.
"Turn over," he ordered.
Obediently, I flipped onto my belly, then looked back over my shoulder just in time to see his eyes dilate at the change of view. He moved back between my legs, his free hand drifting up the interior of my limbs until he reached my ass, to which he then gave a quick slap.
I jumped, and my breathing picked up. My hair flipped over one shoulder as I looked back at him.
"Really?" I asked. "It's going to be like that?"
Brandon just bent over my body, pressing himself against my skin as he gave me a quick, biting kiss.
"Really," he replied. "Now, get up on your knees and touch yourself."
I obeyed, my hand snaking under my hips to find my clit while my face pressed into the soft dark blue of the duvet. The fabric muffled my moans as the feel of him pushing just slightly into me from behind.
"Christ," Brandon muttered again as he pushed in further. Both of his hands took solid handfuls of my ass, pulling me toward him so he could sink in all the way. "Fuck. You feel so fucking good, Skylar."
I gasped at the feel of him, and my fingers, as if of their own accord, picked up the pace.
"Fuck," I whimpered into the cotton. "Brandon...I....need to..."
"Not yet," he growled as he pulled out.
"No!" I cried out at the sudden loss. We were just getting started!
In response, all I got was another quick slap on the ass, hard enough to make me jump. I cried out, but just as much out of pleasure as anything else.
"You're going to come when I let you come," Brandon growled as he flipped me back over and knocked my hand away. "Hands up. Now."
Obediently, I raised my hands over the bed, feeling his gaze like fire.
"Clasp your hands together. Don't move."
My skin prickled all over with anticipation as I followed his orders. I hadn't seen this side of Brandon before, and while normally I wouldn't have said I had a dominant fetish, I was so starved for him that I would have done just about anything he said.
With firm hands, Brandon pushed my knees apart so he could stand between my legs and survey my body like some kind of conqueror. He pulled my legs up around his hips so that just the tip of him brushed against my entrance. I squirmed as my hips pressed forward to take him. His hand found my ass with another loud crack.
"I said don't move."
With every bit of self-control I could muster, my palms squeezed together over my head as I stilled the rest of my body. Everything pulsed.
Brandon trailed a hand down my torso, over my breasts, belly, down to the sensitive spot that ached for him. Every muscle in my body tensed as I worked overtime not to rise into him. He looked on with satisfaction.
"You want me to touch you, don't you, baby?" he asked with a wicked smile.
His thumb flicked over my clit, and my hips jerked slightly.
"Please," I whimpered, tortured by the way he lingered, teasing at my entrance, teasing at my clit.
"Please what?"
I hardly knew. They were gentle, but his ministrations were agony.
"Please–you–I–" My words came out stunted, half-formed.
Without warning, Brandon shoved himself fully inside.
"Fuck!" he barked.
"Oh!" I shouted.
He pummeled into me with a few sharp, intense thrusts before pulling out just as suddenly.
"No!" I yelped at the sudden absence, but then the thumb on my clit started to work, and I melted back into the sheet. "Please," I begged again as he brought my body closer to its edge. Seriously, the way the man used his fingers should have been illegal.
My body tensed again, this time preparing to let go completely. He pulled his hand away.
"Hey!" I shouted, slamming my hands on the mattress in frustration.
I glared up at him, and he chuckled, although from the way the bricked muscles of his torso were flexed, he was having a difficult time maintaining his control too. He covered me with his body, silenced my cries with kisses.
"Do you have any idea how gorgeous you are right when you're about to come?" he murmured into my ear.
His long length slid into me again. I moaned and tried to tilt my hips to bring him in even deeper. I craved those deep, punishing thrusts from before. My hands were no longer clasped, instead grabbing angrily at the sheets. But he kept his slow, steady pace, finding a rhythm with his body as he caged me with his warmth.
"Your whole body seizes up," he continued, his deep voice vibrating against my ear. "Your eyes get so wide, I could get lost in them. Your mouth opens, a perfect, fuckable 'O'. Sometimes I can't decide whether I want to fuck your mouth or your pussy." He paused over me, closing his eyes as if in pain. "Fuck, Skylar. You feel...fuck."
"Brandon," I whimpered as I raised my mouth up, looking for a kiss. "Please." I didn't know how much more of this I could take.
His eyes popped open, their bright blue searing into me. He pushed up to his knees and continued to move, somehow finding a way to sink deeper, to touch the darkest parts of me with every merciless drive of his hips.
"Yesssss," I hissed as he found a harsher rhythm that would undo me completely. "Keep going. Don't stop."
My hand drifted down my body to find my clit, but Brandon slapped it away.
My eyes blinked open, confused. "What––"
"Not this time, Red," he said, his breath ragged and harsh with his effort as his hips started to move even faster.
Beneath his assault, my limbs began to shake, hips jerking involuntarily to meet his. I writhed, desperate for contact, every nerve in my body alight and yearning for the simple touch that would send me soaring.
Brandon just pressed his hand, palm down firmly over my center to still me against his onslaught.
"No!" he said sharply. "Tonight's pleasure is mine."
He rammed so hard I yelped in response. Once, twice, three more times. But just when I thought the feel of him would push me past that point of no return, he pulled out with a shout and released himself all over my stomach, fisting his length while his groan filled the room.
Our eyes met, flashing something almost dangerous in the dark-lit room. After a few minutes, once we had both caught our breaths, Brandon pushed off the bed and walked into the en suite bathroom. I lay there, my entire body still tensed for a release I wasn't going to get. Casting an eye toward the closed bathroom door, I contemplated just finishing myself off. But something made me stop. This felt like a penance, one that maybe I deserved. Brandon could read me like a book; how often had I been lost in thought only for him to anticipate my worries before I'd even had a chance to speak them aloud.
Maybe he knows.
Could he?
Blue eyes or green?
When he returned, I cleaned myself up with the damp cloth he brought, then curled into a ball under the covers. Brandon slid into bed, but didn't gather me close like he used to. Instead, he faced me, with at least a foot of space in between us. It might as well have been a mile.
We didn't say anything, just let the sound of our breaths fill the room. A few streams of moonlight soared through the blinds, casting long shadows over the sharp lines of Brandon's face. He just watched me, with a curious expression I couldn't quite read. There was love there––there was always love there––but it was guarded. Mixed with something that looked like curiosity, fear, maybe even a bit of quiet, lingering anger.
Several times Brandon opened his mouth as if to speak, but he always closed it again. I just hugged the covers tightly to my chest and pulled my knees closer. Eventually the silence overcame us both and we fell asleep.
~