Standing in at the wedding had turned into standing in at the honeymoon. I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d gotten here. Why I’d let it get this far. Why I hadn’t pulled her aside at the reception to tell her what was up.
I knew part of it was because I didn’t want to hurt her, but I couldn’t ignore how this whole day felt so right. I had a conscience—I knew I did. Somewhere. It had made itself known plenty of times before where Cora was involved, but today, it seemed to have disappeared. Taken a temporary hiatus.
I supposed I should have been more concerned than I was.
Maybe now that we were about to finally be alone, I should tell her. She might never forgive me, but she definitely never would if we went into that cottage and something else happened. I had to tell her before we got to that point.
“Is this for real?” Cora squealed when the driver stopped in front of a dark cottage at the edge of the resort. I couldn’t see anything else around but the beach, a few lonely palm trees¸ and an endless starry sky that bled into the still ocean.
“Better?” I said before sliding out of the cab and taking her hand to help her out. She was still reeling from downing a handful of mini bottles of airline booze. I wasn’t exactly sober either.
“This is perfect.” She smiled at the cabin as the driver stacked our suitcases outside of the door. “This day was perfect. And you are perfect.”
I grunted. “I am completely unperfect.”
She glanced back at me as she continued toward the cabin. “I’m not used to you not taking a compliment and being so modest. That’s more your brother’s style.”
I focused on paying the cab driver. She knew us both so well—it was a damn miracle she hadn’t figured it out sooner. I had wedding day anxiety and swarms of people and small bottles of alcohol to thank for her not realizing it, but tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow would be only her and me and no one to distract us, nothing to pull us apart. She’d figure it out. Jacob and I might have looked the same, but that was where our similarities ended.
I lingered at the bottom of the stairs after the cab left. She was waiting for me, but I knew what she was waiting for. She hadn’t been subtle about it, and this was her wedding night. There were times in my life when I’d thought myself a strong man—like the first time I saved a life in the ER or helped an injured passenger at the scene of an accident—but never when it came to Cora. Not once. I would abandon all of my supposed morals and beliefs to protect her. My beliefs about what was right and wrong became intermingled with my complete and total adoration of the woman standing before me, waiting.
Waiting for me to carry her inside and make love to her.
I’d have given her anything, but I couldn’t give her this. Because it wasn’t me she was asking. It was Jacob. Always Jacob.
“Well?” She held out her hand, a gleam in her eyes that made every muscle in my body ache. When I took a moment to meet her in front of the door, she absently twirled the charm bracelet. “Do you remember the time my mom took us all to Disney World and both of you were fighting over who got to ride with me on Magic Mountain? And I said I’d ride with you both so you’d stop fighting?”
“Yeah,” I answered, climbing the stairs. “I remember you picking Matt first.”
Her eyes lifted, like she was familiar with this type of jealousy. God knew she’d seen no shortage of it growing up with us. “But then you threw a fit, so I went with you first and Matt second.”
I nodded as I stuck the key in the lock. “And he never stopped reminding me how you just wanted to save the best for last.”
She laughed gently, then her face ironed out all at once. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about him right now. I know it makes you uncomfortable.”
My brows pulled together after I opened the door. “Why does you talking about Matt make me uncomfortable?”
Cora shifted. “Because.”
“Because why?”
She sucked in a breath. She was in the middle of letting it out when she said, “Because you’ve always been under some impression that I’m into him. You’ve never liked me talking about him, or even talking with him.”
I’d been about to grab the suitcases, but I stopped. More like I froze. Jacob had been under some impression that Cora liked me? He’d never said anything to me—never even indicated anything that would make me think he didn’t want her around me. “Please. When have I not wanted you to talk with my brother? We grew up together.”
Cora’s hand settled above her hip as she blinked at me. “Are you really going to make me recap the past decade for you? Because that might take the next decade to sum up.”
For real? Jacob had never hinted at Cora having feelings for me, but clearly he’d brought it up to her. Plenty of times, from the sound of it. Which was its own kind of surprise. But Jacob believing she might have harbored feelings for me didn’t mean she actually did. That was all I really cared about. Not my brother’s tendency toward jealousy.
“So?” I crossed my arms and leaned into the banister behind me. “Did you? Like my brother?”
She sighed, turning toward the open door. “Jacob . . .”
“What? It’s a fair question.” I shoved off the banister, feeling hope and heat tangling in my veins from the look on her face, from the sound of her voice. She’d felt something for me, whether it be the most passing of crushes or something much deeper. Realizing that had me feeling drunk from something other than alcohol. “Besides, you’re stuck with me now. Won’t matter what you ’fess up to.”
Cora started through the doorway. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Grabbing the suitcases, I followed her. I wasn’t letting this go. Never. Not if she threatened death or castration or anything else. “Why not?”
She broke to a sudden stop a few feet inside the room. “Because I don’t want to focus on the past. I want to concentrate on the future. That’s not going to work if you keep asking me questions about Matt.”
There was a sharpness in her voice—one she didn’t use too often. She didn’t want to keep talking about me, which only made me want to continue talking about me. I’d struck a nerve, but I wasn’t sure how deep that nerve went.
I needed to know how deep it went. I had to know. My whole life, I’d been under the impression that Cora saw me as nothing more than a good friend and substitute brother. She cared for me, but not in the same way I cared for her.
Or did she?
“This thing with Matt . . .”
Her back stiffened.
“Was it a thing? Like ancient history? Or is it still a thing?” I closed the door and wondered why I could feel my heartbeat in my eardrums.
She kept her back to me, standing in the middle of the dark room like a lone ship on a vast ocean. “I married you.”
Yeah, she did marry me.
“But if he’d made a play for you, way back before all of this”—I waved my finger between the two of us, not that she could see it—“would you have given him a chance?”
“He never made a play for me.” Her voice sounded faraway, like she was out of reach when she was less than an arm’s length away.
“That doesn’t answer my question.” I stepped closer. “If he had? Would you have?”
Her back was moving faster from her quickened breathing. This conversation was making her uncomfortable. Why was that?
“Stop, Jacob. Enough.” She spun on me, swaying in place just enough that I reached out to steady her. She shook my hand away like it was white-hot. “I’m not going to get into another fight with you over Matt. I’m done. I picked you. I married you. What else do I have to prove?”
“That you don’t—”
“I don’t love Matt!” Her arms flung out at her sides as her voice spilled across the room. ‘There. I said it. Are you happy now? Are you happy we’ve managed to get into another argument over this infatuation you’re convinced I have for your brother? On our wedding night of all times?” She glared at me with bleary eyes. I couldn’t tell if that was from tears or from alcohol. Maybe both.
“Cora, I’m sorry.” I ran my hands through my hair, wondering what in the hell I was doing—for the millionth time that day. Deceiving her, betraying her, and now accusing and angering her. Maybe I didn’t know the first fucking thing about love. Maybe Jacob knew more about it than I did, because I wasn’t sure love was supposed to hurt as badly as this did.
“Just . . . enough already.” As she shouldered past me, I reached for her, but she shook me off. “I need to be alone.”
She slammed the front door behind her a moment later, leaving me alone with my idiocy.
“Cora,” I called to an empty room. I wasn’t thinking when I rushed toward the door after her. “Cora!”
The moment I pulled the door open, something crashed into me. It made a sharp breath rush out of my mouth as I staggered back a few steps.
My arms barely had time to wrap around her before Cora’s mouth was on mine, moving in such a way that made staying upright next to impossible. Before I had a chance to catch up to the fact that I was kissing Cora in an entirely different way than we’d kissed at the wedding and reception, her fingers were working at my belt. Quickly.
I didn’t know she’d already gotten it undone before she’d moved on to my zipper. The sounds she was making as she kissed me, the way her body felt aligned against mine, the way her mouth knew the intricate balance of submission and domination . . . one moment at a time, Cora was crushing the last remnants of my resolve. Destroying the final pieces of my views of right and wrong.
My arm stretched out to brace against a porch beam, Cora clinging to me like I was trying to cling to my senses, and that was when I saw it. The thick shining band on my finger. That wedding band might have been on my finger, but it wasn’t meant for me.
Cora might have been tangled around my body, but she wasn’t meant for me either.
“Wait.” I didn’t recognize my voice. I didn’t want to acknowledge my demand. “Cora—stop.”
Her mouth slowed, but her lips hovered against mine. Her fingers slowed . . . but they didn’t stop. A throaty groan echoed in my chest when her hand slipped through my zipper, cupping a part of my anatomy that felt like it had, at present, taken over my mental capacity.
“I don’t want to argue with you,” she breathed against my mouth. “I don’t want to feel distant from you. Not tonight. I want to be close. I want to be part of you. I want you to be part of me.” Her hand moved against me, slowly and methodically, and I felt like my lungs were about to explode. Kind of the way a balloon pops when too much air has been added. “I want a part of you inside me. Please.” Her mouth lifted to my ear, my back trembling when her breath warmed my skin. “Please.”
I’d never been able to resist Cora whenever she’d asked me for something. Never once. Whether it was the time we were kids and she’d asked me to eat her Brussels sprouts so she didn’t have to, or when we’d been older and she asked for a ride to the movie theater to meet some friends. Feeling like such a strong person in so many areas of my life was a hard thing to reconcile with how totally and utterly weak I felt in one area—her. Always her. She was as much my strength as she was my weakness. My best memory and my worst regret.
Cora had yet to request something of me that I’d failed to give her. I doubted if she ever would.
This time included.
My answer didn’t come as a verbal one, but I wasn’t sure responses came any clearer. Pressing into her, I backed her into the thick beam of the porch my arm was still braced against, still trying to keep me from falling out of whatever dream I’d landed in. When her body was as fitted against me as it was against the beam, I hoisted her up so I was looking her in the eyes. So I could press my hips between hers as her legs wound around my back.
A ragged exhale spilled from her mouth when I ground myself against her. I did it again, desperate to pull the same sound from her. Drunk with the feeling of knowing I could make her feel the way I did. Her chest rose and fell hard, writhing against me, lost in the same crutches of lust I was overtaken by.
My arm wasn’t braced against the beam any longer. It wound around her, clinging to her body like it was my only salvation left in this world. My mouth covered hers when the next breath trembled from her. I reveled in the taste of her lips on mine, the feel of her tongue against mine.
Cora was everything I’d fantasized she would be, and nothing I ever thought I’d get to experience. I’d expected nothing, and here I was, getting everything.
Her hips tipped back from mine, just enough for her to free my dick, then her lap was burrowing into mine again. Except this time . . .
“Oh, god, Cora.” My forehead fell into the beam in front of me. “Fuck,” I breathed, feeling like my heart was about to break out of my chest from the way it was hammering.
“Easy access.” I felt her smile curve against my lips as she took me inside her, millimeter by painstaking millimeter. “That’s the way you like me, right, baby?” She trembled in my arms as she continued to take me.
All I could do was stand there, my fingers curling into her, my lungs about to collapse, and try to hold still while the woman of my dreams fucked me one unhurried inch at a time.
A weaker man couldn’t have withstood it, and would have taken control and rammed the rest of the way inside the perfect body he was presently experiencing. A stronger man would have put a stop to this before we’d gotten here—here being me fucking my brother’s girl on their wedding night.
“You’re not the kind of woman who needs to make anything easy for any man. You’re the kind who should make a man work for it. Make him work to earn your anything.”
My chest was moving hard and quickly along with hers. My eyes squeezed shut when she stopped sliding down me, having no farther to go. She moaned when her legs tightened around my back, managing to draw even more of me inside her.
I wasn’t going to last long. If long could even be ascribed to the embarrassing number of seconds it would take for Cora to get me off if she kept me deep inside her while she ran her hands down my body the way she was.
“What are you saying? You’ve changed your mind on your preference of me being easily accessible to you whenever and wherever?” Her lips grazed up my neck, pausing just below my jawbone to nip at a tender patch of flesh.
I flinched against her, which had me pulling out of her. This time it was me who controlled the rate of our fucking—and it wasn’t slow and gentle this time. Both Cora’s and my cries echoed into the night as I seated myself deep into her welcoming body.
“I’m saying you’re worth every battle. Every challenge.” I moved my face in front of hers so I could look her in the eyes. God, having her eyes on me when I was buried inside her was the single most erotic thing I’d ever felt. I could already feel my orgasm building, and I’d barely thrust twice into her. “You’re worth ever bead of sweat and every groan of frustration. You’re worth the work, you’re worth the wait, you’re worth everything I have to give you.” I moved closer, so our foreheads were pressed together, our eyes aligned. “So make me work for it. Make me work hard for it. I will. You won’t hear one complaint from me working myself to the bone for you. Not one.” My hand slipped up her waist, molding around her breast, and my thumb played with her aroused nipple. “Make me work for it, Cora. Don’t make it easy, make it hard. Make it so fucking hard I feel like I just might die if I don’t get to be with you.”
Cora’s head fell back as I continued to palm her breast, her hands bracing on my shoulders as she started to slide off me. “I think I already make it hard. So fucking hard.”
She slid back down on me, and a breath hissed from my teeth as I felt close to blacking out. If she did that once more, I wouldn’t be able to control myself. I’d be going off inside Cora for real this time, instead of imagining it like I did whenever I’d taken my dick into my hand. My release would be spent in her body instead of wasted in my sheets. Some part of me would be inside her after this. Forever.
That thought alone almost had me going off inside her right then.
“You could make my dick fucking hard on your worst day, baby. You’ve got no worries there.” I circled my hips against her, reminding her of just how hard she made things for me. “But you make the rest hard too. Make me work for you. Make me earn your love. It’s worth whatever price. Whatever cost. Don’t let me come to expect easy with you. Make me want to work hard for you.”
The way she was squirming in my arms from the way I was touching her breast, her back bowing whenever I pulled at her nipple, had me reaching for the neckline of her dress and yanking on it.
The sound it made when ripping didn’t jolt either of us, and neither did the sounds of small buttons skipping across the wood porch. I felt my dick kick inside her when I took my first look at her naked breast on display. Perfect. That was the only way to describe Cora, from the person she was as a whole to her right breast glowing in the moonlight. Her nipple managed to harden even more from the cool night air whispering around it, or maybe it was from the way I was staring at it, my jaw grinding in an effort to keep from coming right then.
“Put me in your mouth.” Cora’s chest was still rising and falling hard, but her voice was even, her eyes unblinking as she made her request. She must have seen something on my face she read as surprise, because her eyebrow rose. “You told me to make things harder on you. Then I guess that means I need to be more vocal about what I want and less willing to just give you what you want.”
It looked like she might have been about to add more, but all manner of speech was rendered incapacitated when my mouth fell to her breast, sucking her nipple. It must have surprised her, because the loudest cry I had yet to draw from her fell from her mouth, so loud I wondered how far it would travel across the ocean. One of her hands came around my head, her fingers tangling in my hair as I worked her over in my mouth. I became a student in that minute, studying her for signs of pleasure, watching for signs of ecstasy, committing to memory the way her body bucked against mine when my teeth sank into the delicate, prickled flesh.
The sounds she made for me as I made love to her body, I’d never forget. The way she submitted to me, letting me do whatever I wanted at the same time I realized just how much she was demanding of me in that moment of unabashed intimacy, she had me questioning if what I’d done, and what I was doing, was really so reprehensible.
Who I was or wasn’t didn’t change the way this woman was responding to me right now, in this moment. It didn’t changed the way she writhed in my arms, begging me to give her what she wanted as I felt her desire run down her legs. For this moment in time, this infinite journey between one moment to the next, we were meant to be together. The time between two seconds was immeasurable, and though I knew our moment would come to an end, it would be a limitless one. We were two halves of one being who had at last found each other and come together in this union.
“Please. Please,” she breathed, begging me with her eyes as well when I looked up to meet them. “Come with me. I want our first time as husband and wife to be together.”
When I released her nipple, I felt my inner demon gloat when I saw it was red and wet, compliments of my mouth. “Are you asking me to fuck you? Do you want me to stop fucking around and just fuck you now?”
Her throat bobbed, her eyes going wide like she wasn’t expecting these words from me. At the same time, she looked like she liked them. “Yes. That’s what I want.” Her legs tangled around me again, her lap circling mine in a way that made my eyes roll back into my head.
“Are you close, baby?” I grunted, clenching my fists in an attempt to keep from going off. “Because I am. I’m so close, you do that again, and you’re going to be in trouble.”
“You’re that close?” Her mouth was back on my neck, kissing it between her words, but I didn’t miss the note of disbelief in her voice. I didn’t get it though. As it was, it was the miracle of this lifetime I hadn’t already lost it inside her yet.
I tipped my head back to give her better access to my neck. God, I hoped she’d put a couple of marks on me like I already had on her. I wanted Cora’s mark on me for everyone to see. A mark of the physical variety, because her mark had been all over me in every other way.
“Closer,” I breathed when I felt her tighten around my dick after my fingers dug deeper into her backside. Moving my other hand between us, I slid it under her dress, only one destination in mind.
The moment my thumb circled the sensitive spot, I felt her orgasm unfold. Her body went rigid on mine at first, her body pulsing around me, as her moans turned to cries.
“Tell me you want it, Cora.” I ground my jaw as her orgasm spilled through her body, taking everything inside me to keep from following her. “Tell me you want me.”
Her hands dug into my shoulders as she rode me, pulling me deep inside her with every thrust, making me feel like the damn ruler of the universe from the way she was getting off. I’d never known pleasure existed the way I could see it playing out on her face. The way I could feel it pulsing around my damn dick.
“I want it.” She panted, her chest bouncing as she pumped against me. “I want you.”
That was all I needed to hear. She could have stopped bouncing on my dick and gone rigid, and I still would have come. Those were the words I’d dreamed of hearing come from Cora since she’d first come into my life. I’d wanted her to want me the way I wanted her. I knew she might have been referring to it in a different way, given our present situation, but it didn’t change the words she’d spoken or the way I’d taken them.
I want you.
My orgasm hit me hard and violently, like it had been building for years and it had just burst free of whatever wall had been damming it up. Pinning her hard against the porch beam, I drove into her so hard she slid up the smooth wood beam a foot with every thrust. The whole time my release went off in her body, I forced my eyes to stay open so I could watch her. So I could remember the way she looked as I took my pleasure from her, and she took hers from me.
So if the rest of my life was as pathetically lonely as it had been up to now, I’d have this memory to get me through the long years. It would be enough. This moment would be enough for any man.
Even after my orgasm was long over, I kept my body moving inside hers, reveling in the new sensations. The way every muscle in her body felt spent and soft, supple and submissive. The way the union of our pleasure felt between my legs.
It took me forever to catch my breath. It took her just as long. The whole time, I held her, keeping her close as her body floated down from the high we’d just climbed.
She was still breathing deep, heavy breaths when she smiled. “Wow.”
I knew what I’d just done. I knew what it meant. I should have been feeling guilty and ashamed and everything in between. I should have felt like whatever hopes I’d ever had of deserving this woman, whose body I was still sharing, was forever gone. But the thing about Cora was that no mortal man could ever hope to deserve her. They could only die trying. I was good spending whatever was left of my life doing just that.
“Yeah. Wow.” I pulled her closer because I knew soon, I’d have to let her go. It made me want to hold her that much tighter now. “Let me just take this opportunity to apologize for the way we did it our first time as a married couple. I think I was supposed to make love to you instead of fucking you up against this thing, with most of our clothes still on, outside in the open. You make love to your wife on your first night together; you don’t fuck her like some kind of animal.”
She gave a contented sigh, before kissing the corner of my mouth. “I don’t know what you classify that as, but that was the best sex we’ve ever had. No apology needed.”