By the time I reached my tiny apartment, the buzz of alcohol had completely worn off, but the heady feeling of the evening hadn't. I sent Brandon a quick text to let him know I was home and that I'd talk to him tomorrow.
But after I pulled off the ridiculous dress, I took one glance at my small space and knew I couldn't stay there. I had two choices: I could roam the city at night by myself and have even more to drink (which probably wasn't the best idea). Or I could take this adrenaline and use it productively.
I grabbed my gym bag and chose the latter.
It was well after midnight when I swam my last lap at my gym, which was thankfully open all night. Only diehard gym rats were in the building; I was the only one in the three-lane pool.
All vestiges of alcohol had evaporated. I could see the evening for what it was: a medium-sized disaster, but not necessarily one I had to flip out about. There would definitely be fallout, but I intended to make sure that Brandon listened to Kieran from now on. I was done being humiliated by his ex-wife.
I finished my last flip-turn and soared through the water, making it halfway down the twenty-five-meters before I surfaced for air. There was someone standing at the end of my lane––likely one of the gym staff sent to kick me out of the pool for the night. I swam quickly to the end, pushing myself until my muscles started to shake. I reached for the concrete edge with my final stroke and pulled myself up to catch my breath.
I pushed my goggles over my swim cap, and it was then I got a look at the shiny black oxfords in front of me. Definitely not the sneakers of your average gym attendant. I yanked my cap and goggles completely off and looked up.
Brandon towered above me, broad shoulders still looking indecently handsome in the all-black shirt and embroidered vest. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, and the black bow tie lay loose on either side of his collar. His jacket was gone, and his hands were shoved deep into his pockets. His hair was mussed, like he'd been running his hands through it too much, gold waves in haphazard pieces around his forehead. The wavering reflection of the pool water cast deep shadows under the strong lines of his cheekbones and jaw.
He pulled his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms.
"Having a nice swim?"
He squatted down so our faces were only a foot or so apart, close enough that I could see the slight perspiration on his forehead from standing in the humid pool room. His eyes glowed bright like tiger's, despite their brilliant blue, but the faint lines over his brow told me he was tired.
I bit my lip, treading water. "It was all right. How did you know I was here?"
Brandon sighed, his features unreadable. "You didn't answer your phone after you texted me, so I went to your place. Eric told me where you went."
I blanched. "You woke up Eric?" He couldn't have liked that.
Brandon sighed and rocked back and forth on his heels. "I'm his boss. He was happy to accommodate."
I pulled my damp hair out of its bun, happy to relieve the weight. It fell in thick ropes around my shoulders, causing water to trail over my skin. It was a far cry from my earlier, more glamorous look. My face was bare, wet, and likely had goggle marks around my eyes. My sport bikini wasn't the skimpiest of suits, but the rough intake of Brandon's breath told me it was alluring enough. He looked like he wanted to eat me.
Good, I thought. Fair's fair.
Finally, Brandon blew out a long sigh. "Why did you leave?"
I cocked my head in disbelief. "Come on. Staying wasn't an option."
"I got that. But why didn't you wait for me?"
I pressed off the ledge with my feet, but kept my grip on the concrete, arms straight while the water swished around me. Without moving, I should have been cold, but Brandon's presence lit a fire inside me.
"I had some things to think about, and you were busy." I looked up. "I'm not at your beck and call, you know."
Brandon exhaled heavily through his nostrils and rocked backward onto his heels again. "No one thinks that, Skylar."
"It sure felt that way tonight," I said. "Sitting around waiting for you for two hours, put in a corner like inconvenient arm candy, then forced to flee when your wife busts in."
"You didn't need to run off like that. You knew I'd come back for you. Come on, Skylar."
"I didn't run off," I corrected him, even though I literally did run. "I told you I was going, and then I told you I was home and I'd talk to you later."
"Well, it's not like you have the best track record of following through on those kinds of promises."
His words were almost as bitter as mine, and I flinched, thinking of when I'd left him, still in my bed, to run away to Brooklyn after I'd discovered his divorce papers. He had a point, but he also wasn't the one who had to accept all of this somewhat passively. I wasn't planning to leave him again, but it was still a lot to take. Especially tonight.
We stared at each other, bristling and irritated. Finally, eager to break the stare-off, I pushed off the wall with my feet to float on my back. I stretched toward the opposite end of the pool, arching in a way that made my breasts peak toward the ceiling, then flipped backward until I popped up again through the water. When I surfaced, Brandon was watching intently, a different kind of fire in his ice-blue eyes. Did he wanted to strangle me or eat me alive? It was hard to tell the difference.
"I know what you're doing," he said finally, low and almost menacing.
I continued to tread water, then flipped over again, slowing my movements even more. "Do you?"
"Get out of there, will you?" Brandon reached a hand out, beckoning me to swim back.
I just stared at it. "No," I said. "I'm not done with my workout."
I rolled backward through the water once more, then resurfaced to find Brandon standing up. His face looked like murder, but the tenting in his pants spoke of something else.
"Get out of the pool, Red," Brandon said, barely concealing his frustration.
"Stop telling me what to do."
"I'm not joking. Get out."
"No."
"Get out of the fuckin' pool, Skylar!" Brandon shouted, his South Boston accent out in full force. He thrust both hands into his hair and yanked. "Fuck!"
I just kept treading while sounds of the water lapping on the sides of the pool filled the space between us. Brandon stared at me, then dropped his hands.
"Fine," he said as he started to remove his vest. "Have it your way." He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed them both on the lounge chair next to him.
"What are you doing?" I asked as he started pulling off his shoes and socks, which then joined the clothes.
"What do you think?" Brandon snapped as he unbuckled his belt. "You won't come out, so I'm coming in."
"In your underwear?"
He pulled off his pants and threw them on top of his other things. He now stood in front of me in nothing but his boxer briefs, his perfectly sculpted body, including his sizable erection, on display for anyone to see. The reflected light glimmered over the broad lines of his shoulders and pectorals, the v-shaped muscles of his abdomen, the lean, long shapes of his thighs. Now he was the one who looked like a Greek statue.
I bit my lip, willing the heat building in my core to calm down.
"Well, it's either that or nothing at all," Brandon said just before he jumped in with a splash.
Tall as he was, he didn't need to tread water, but he still dipped underwater and surfaced like some kind of mythical sea god. The water glistened on his muscles as he tracked me like a shark.
My legs somehow kept circling, but the rest of me stilled. I wasn't in the mood to be pounced on, as Brandon sometimes did. He often used sex as a Band-Aid, and right now, I wasn't okay with that, even if the water droplets sliding over his pecs were getting me pretty hot and bothered.
My instincts took over: fight or flight. I dove underneath the blue lane barrier and swam to the corner of the pool. Before I could climb up the ladder, though, I found myself caged by two tanned, rock-hard arms.
"I don't think so."
Brandon's voice vibrated in my ear, and I froze. I turned slowly, and he released his grip on the ladder, backing off just enough so that I could turn around. His gaze bored into me like a drill. But it wasn't just the intensity in his eyes that pinned me to the ledge; it was the hurt there as well.
"You can't keep doing this," Brandon said in a low, taut voice.
Around me, his body was pulled tight as a drum. The evening had taken a toll on him too.
"You can't keep running away every time I do something you don't like."
"I don't––"
"You do," he cut me off gently.
We were close enough that he didn't need to raise his voice. Around me, his muscles flexed even more.
"Every time. My office. The airport. After you found out about Miranda, about Messina's payoff. That night at the club. And now tonight. If I railroad, Red, you run."
I heard my grandmother's words to me in Brooklyn after I had escaped there in April. She had compared me to my mother, who couldn't even stand beside me for the length of a party. And now I was becoming just like her.
"My life is complicated," Brandon continued. "I know that. I know it's not easy for you. But I am yours, Skylar, body and soul. But I can't be yours if you're not mine too."
I gulped. Bubbe was right. Brandon was right. I didn't have to act like everything was okay tonight, but I shouldn't have run. I should have stayed and dealt with things like an adult. Like the partner I wanted to be.
I leaned my forehead on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry," I whispered into his damp skin. "You're right."
"I'm right?"
I lifted my head and smirked. "Don't get too excited, Casanova. You screwed up too, leaving me there for three whole hours. But yeah...you have a point. We can't rebuild our relationship if I'm running away."
Almost immediately, the tension in Brandon's muscles relaxed, although he kept his arms propped on the ledge beside my shoulders, refusing to let me go.
"I'm...glad you agree," he said as he leaned down to kiss me gently on the lips.
The quick connection, which started out innocently, ignited the smoldering fire between us. My mouth opened hungrily, and when his tongue touched mine, my entire body shivered.
Brandon pulled back, a different kind of spark in his impossibly blue eyes. His gaze slid over the visible parts of my body: over the wet surfaces of my shoulders, my neck, the hint of cleavage at the top of my bikini. Slowly, he reached a finger and traced the edge of the spandex, following the border of the top along the strap, down across the sensitive skin of my upper breasts, and up the other strap until his hand came up to cup me behind the neck.
I couldn't move. I was like a startled deer, caught in his headlights.
"In the mood to be teased, Red?" he asked as his finger played with the straps behind my back. "You in the mood for games?"
He pressed his warm, hard body into me against the ladder. Only the thin fabric of his underwear and my bikini separated us. I could feel him straining through it, even as the corded muscles at his neck also strained with the tension of holding back. His blue eyes glowed into my green as we breathed into each other's space, allowing our bodies to touch, but neither of us willing to make the first move.
"I-I don't know," I stuttered.
Slowly, one side of his mouth and then the other rose in a wicked smile that made my insides flip over. And again. Brandon leaned in further. I wanted desperately to kiss him, but I couldn't move. Kiss me, I willed him. Show me you want me.
To my reluctant moan, his hand fell from my neck into the water, fingertips drifting up and down the, the dip of my waist, sensitive skin of my thighs, toying with the elastic band of my bikini bottoms.
"Spread your legs," he ordered.
Breathlessly, I obeyed. His thumbs hooked the interior edge of my suit and slid up and down the elastic, finding slight contact with the center of me under the fabric.
"You hate it when I tell you what to do." Brandon's voice became distractingly low as he dipped his mouth near my ear. "But you like it when I boss you around like this, don't you, baby?"
I couldn't deny it. It went against every urge I had for control, but maybe it was the desire to let go of that control that attracted me so much to Brandon. His ability to manipulate my pleasure seemed as important to him as his own. I didn't like it anywhere else in my life, but with him, it was...freeing.
His fingers tugged aside my suit so that I was fully exposed under the water, while his other hand spread my legs wider.
"Hold this to the side," he said, guiding my hand down to keep the fabric out of his way.
Together we watched through the ripples of water as his fingers found me. One slipped in and out of my heated center, followed by another as his thumb found my clit and started to move in slow, teasing circles. If I hadn't been propped on his hand, I would have fallen under water.
"Brandon."
My voice started to fade as my body instinctively melted toward him. I didn't just want his touch. I wanted his mouth. I wanted everything.
The hand on my thigh gripped hard while the other continued its work. Still only inches from his hard chest, my nipples pebbled through the thin material of my suit. Brandon leaned down to nip one briefly through the fabric, causing me to moan as his fingers picked up their pace.
"That's it, baby. Does it feel good?" He leaned in again to growl in my ear. "Do you like it when I fuck you with my hand? Right here, where anyone could see you?"
I whimpered into his neck, then bit hard enough that Brandon gasped. He shoved his steel length against my inner thigh. He wanted me just as badly as I wanted him. He thrusted more forcefully with his fingers, and his thumb found a more insistent rhythm on my clit, driving me further and further to the edge of my undoing.
But just as my body was starting to approach its point of no return, he pulled his hand away and tugged my bottoms back into place.
"What are you doing?" I gasped. Not again! "No! I was just about to––"
I didn't finish my sentence as large hands found my thighs, and with a splash, I was tossed up onto the ledge. Brandon pulled himself out of the pool, then practically dragged me off the floor toward the men's locker rooms.
"Brandon, we can't––"
"No, I can't," he barked as he whirled around. "Wait, that is."
He yanked my entire body against his with a kiss that utterly and completely gutted me, an urgent attack with a relentless tongue and bruising lips. His hands grabbed my ass hard enough that I'd likely see finger-shaped bruises there in the morning, but the brutality only made me groan louder, especially when his thick length pressed between my legs.
Before I could stop him, Brandon bent down, grabbed me like I weighed nothing, and hoofed me in the direction of the locker rooms. My arms wrapped around his head in a death grip. I couldn't get close enough.
Our mouths firmly attached, Brandon kicked open the door to the men's locker room and carried me into one of the shower stalls. Hot water sprayed over us in a warm embrace as we made short work of each other's clothes: my bikini landed on the floor with a wet splat right next to his soaking briefs.
"Fuck," Brandon breathed as he stared at my naked body. "Fuck, you are so goddamn beautiful."
His gaze fell down my stomach, my legs, resting a moment between them before coming back up to my eyes.
"Come here," he growled as he hoisted me up again, pulling my legs back around his waist so that he could slam me against the wall. He was warm––the man was always warm––and his desire was thick and hard against my stomach.
"Oh, God!" I cried out as he slammed into me against the shower tiles.
My arms flailed, looking for something to stabilize me against his onslaught, seeking purchase in the muscles of his neck and the wet curls pasted onto his head.
"No, baby, that's me," Brandon snarled with a sharp nip at my neck. "And don't you forget it."
He took my lips again, his tongue demanding as much as the rest of his body. We feasted on each other as every thrust brought us each higher, closer to our mutual edge.
"Use your hand, baby," Brandon breathed between ragged breaths. "I got you."
His fingers dug into my ass, biceps bulging as he continued to pummel me under the shower spray. I somehow detached one hand from its death grip in his hair and slid it down between our bodies. Brandon moaned as he felt it reach its goal, the apex of my pleasure right next to our joining.
"That's it, baby. Touch yourself for me. I want to feel you come...God, Skylar!"
He started to move faster, and my body responded in kind, all the nerves alight with each unforgiving thrust, each quick twitch of my fingertips.
"Brandon!" I moaned, losing my voice completely.
I bit his shoulder, and his cries echoed off the tiles.
"Fuck, baby." Brandon voice was hoarse, ragged, almost as if in pain. "I'm...fuck, you feel good."
"I'm close," I whimpered, steadily losing my ability to hold on to him. "So close. Please."
"It's okay, baby, I got you. Let it go."
Brandon rammed me up against the wall one, two, three more times before I fell apart completely, hands falling to the side, limbs shaking in his strong grip. He closed his mouth over mine, cutting off my cries as he pulsed and found his own intense release.
"Jesus," Brandon whispered as our bodies melted together.
We were both gasping, completely out of breath. I opened my mouth to reply. But before I could speak, the door into the showers opened, and the high squeak of sneakers echoed across the rubber-tiled floors.
Brandon and I stood like statues as the water ran over our still-joined bodies. The sneakers walked around the showers while the attendant whistled a tune under his breath. I bit into Brandon's shoulder, trying not to laugh until the footsteps retreated and the clear creak of the locker room door signaled the attendant's exit.
We let go of our breaths in a barrage of laughter. Then Brandon released his hold on my thighs, slipping out of me with a grunt as my feet fell to the floor. The roar of the shower filled the space between us as he pressed his forehead to mine, hands slipping lovingly down the length of my body, dipping about my waist and back up my ribcage and breasts until they cupped my face.
"It's only you," he promised with a sweet, slow kiss. "It's only ever been you."
I pulled him closer, wanting the warm feeling to last forever.
In my heart, I knew it wasn't true. We both had past lives that sometimes interfered with the present, real struggles and pains that still hadn't been dealt with properly. But I was determined to do it together, not alone. If we loved each other this much, everything just had to work out. The universe wouldn't be that cruel.
~