Brooke could kiss.

Hot. Damn. Brooke could kiss. For a moment, I questioned the sanity of what we were doing, the line we were crossing. But it felt so good, she felt so good, that any argument brewing in my head was gone. The woman moved against me shamelessly, and I loved the way she rolled her hips against my hardness. She smelled incredible, the patch of skin at the curve of her neck the most potent. Lightly, I dragged my tongue against the tendon there, took a deep breath of her clean, fruity scent.

Her lips were warm and smooth, now reddened and plump from the endless kisses we traded. Each one deeper, wetter, hotter than the last, and before long, I couldn’t handle being up against that door with her pressed up against me. My hands dug into the rounded curve of her ass and I boosted her up in my arms. Without missing a beat, her legs wrapped around my waist and I walked us back into the family room.

“Where am I going?” I whispered in between kisses. “Please let it be close.”

“I don’t care,” she moaned. “Couch, floor, bed, please, just somewhere.”

Floor it was. I sank to my knees and we tumbled down together, a mess of tangled legs and arms and kisses that never stopped. Grabbing the neck of my t-shirt, I ripped it over my head, watching without a shred of humility while Brooke eyed my stomach and chest. She bit her lip as she sat up, mirroring the way I faced her

I jerked my chin up. “Your turn.” My voice sounded like I’d gargled with acid.

Her eyes were practically black, and I wanted to remember her just like this. Not in a creepy way, but sitting the way she was, her hair wild around her shoulders, and the look in her eye enough to make my skin singe, Brooke was my ideal woman.

The prototype.

The kind you search for in vain.

With smooth, unconscious sexiness, she stood and crossed her arms so she could grip her shirt and pull it over her head. The bra she wore was plain black--cotton, maybe--but it was perfect. She was perfect. Curved, sleek skin that made my mouth water. Soft flare at her waist to hips that she uncovered slowly when she pushed her leggings and underwear down.

“I feel like I should have some music playing or something. Make you give me a lap dance,” I teased.

She slugged me in the shoulder and we both laughed.

Then she swallowed my laugh by shoving me onto my back. I braced my hands behind my head and grinned when she started unbuttoning my jeans.

“You just going to lay there and do nothing?” she asked with a dangerous edge to her voice.

“Maybe.”

Her eyes narrowed and I pushed up on my elbows.

“Come here,” I told her in a low voice. The way she watched me when she crawled over me, settled onto my lap and twisted her hips when she did, I knew this wasn’t the same meaningless exchange. This was more. My heart jumped in my chest when she laid soft hands over my skin, leaned in for another deep kiss.

My chest met hers, and she sighed into my mouth. My hands twisted in her hair so I could direct her head to the side. In her kisses, Brooke gave so much of herself. I swallowed her reactions, her noises, her everything when she did, like the selfish bastard that I was.

She was trusting me with this, and the fact that she meant more to me than just about any other person in my life, made me feel strangely open. Like she’d cracked my chest and reached inside. More was not something I was used to. But for her, for what we’d become to each other, I could be everything she needed. I could be more.

With ease, I rolled us so she was underneath me and her back arched in pleasure when I unhooked her bra and kissed my way across her chest after flinging it across the room. Her hands dug into my hair again and I rolled my forehead against her breastbone so I could steady my breathing. When I stopped there, I could feel the hammering of her heart.

I took a deep breath and nuzzled the warm spot of skin above it, laid a sucking kiss onto the top curve of her breast where the sound came from. Brooke exhaled heavily, and I pushed up so I could kiss her again. I had to kiss her again.

She wrapped herself around me, sighing my name in between each article of clothing we got rid of, until there was nothing but us. But her and me, and the dark, quiet room around us.

After pulling a condom out of my wallet, Brooke cupped my face and looked into my eyes, so deeply that I almost looked away. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not with her.

“Please,” she said again, just like before we kissed. With the edge of my thumb, I followed the line of her bottom lip.

“Anything,” I promised her. And I meant it. For the first time in my life, I knew that I’d be anything she needed me to be. I entwined our fingers and raised our arms above our heads, pressed hers into the floor. Never taking my lips away from hers, I pushed in with one long thrust.

Her legs tightened at my hips, and she sobbed against my mouth.

Even though my heart battered against my chest to take and take and take, I kept my movements slow and measured, my words muffled against her hair when she arched her chin up toward the ceiling with whispered entreaties for more and more from me.

I gave her everything.

Her fingers tightened painfully around mine when she finally fell over the edge, an explosion of noise from her mouth so loud and so full of relief that I wondered if I would ever forget it. I tumbled after her in the next harsh breath, slumping over her body while she ran her hands over my sweat-dampened back.

“I think I have rug burn on my back.” She spoke into my shoulder, kissing it after she did.

I laughed and rolled off her, but kept my arm draped over her waist. “Not so comfortable now, is it?”

She smiled. “You think I’m kidding? I really think I do.”

“Oh shit,” I said and turned her to her side so I could see. The stretch of skin in between her shoulder blades was slightly red, so I leaned down to kiss it. She hummed and rolled back next to me.

“Can you grab those pillows off the couch?”

I leaned up and snagged them, and when she lifted her head, I put one underneath her messy hair. After shoving the purple one under my own head, I tweaked her in the side and she laughed, smacking at my hands. In the back of my head, I knew I should go get some water, go clean up or something, but Brooke seemed content to snuggle into my side.

There we laid, stark naked on her family room floor, and I could not have felt more content. Her eyes didn’t meet mine as I stared at her profile, but her hand reached out to follow the edge of my pecs and then trace the line in between my abs. The manly shiver that came out, I swear, it was the manliest shiver you’ve ever seen.

Still staring at my stomach, she spoke quietly, “Can I ask you a weird question?”

“Of course.” Then I adopted a grave expression when she finally glanced up at me from underneath the dark fringe of her eyelashes. “No, I’m not a virgin.”

Without a moment of hesitation, she pinched my side and I yelped. Her smile was smug, and I wanted to lick across the curve of her lips. I almost did, leaning in to sip at her for just a second … just another brief taste of what I already knew to be sweet and sinful and decadent.

“Well, not to make things creepy, but it’s about your mom.”

Okay. That stopped me.

“Just what every man wants to hear when laying naked with a gorgeous woman.”

Brooke smiled, but rolled her eyes a little. “You said she was a single mom. Was your dad in the picture at all?”

Ahh yes. It was inevitable that we’d circle back to that skinny douchebag who’d shown up at the door. I’d never imagined what Brooke’s ex looked like, but I was instantly and insanely gratified to see that I was probably five or six inches taller and far bigger than him. The sight of him, the way he took that single step like he wasn’t going to respect Brooke’s wishes, and I’d never felt such a sudden, white hot surge of violence course through me. The only thing that had tamped it down was Brooke looking up at me like she wanted to swallow me whole.

I pulled in a slow, deep breath, trying to redirect my thoughts to one of my least favorite topics- my father.

“Not really,” I said after a long stretch of silence. “I was really young when he left, so I don’t even really remember a time when he lived with us. Tristan does, though.”

Her fingers absently traced over my forearm while I spoke, and it amped me up as much as it soothed me, the strangest dichotomy I’d ever experienced. I wanted to bite and kiss and suck again, as much as I wanted to turn and find comfort in her arms, let her warmth settle over me.

“Did he come around at all?” The sadness in her voice was how I knew she was drawing the obvious parallels to her situation with Kevin.

Somewhere deep inside of me, in some dried over section of me that I hadn’t tapped into since I was a child, I desperately wished that for Brooke, I could tell her a different story about my father’s role in my life. Staring at her with only a dim light from the kitchen illuminating her face, the gentle slope of her nose, the way her hair curled wildly, I wanted to be able to tell her a better story. A happier story. Just so that she could have hope.

But I respected her too much to lie to her. I cared too much about her to not open myself up in this way.

Naked, yeah I really was. She was seeing more of me than anyone ever had.

“Not very often,” I said slowly, and watched the sadness in her eyes morph into a deeper emotion, something I couldn’t name, but I thought it was directed at me. “He promised a lot, delivered very little. But he came around just enough with envelopes of cash for my mom that she never turned him away when he said he wanted to see us. Tristan started refusing to see him when he was about sixteen. I held out for another four or five years because my mom thought it was the right thing to do. I think I was seventeen the last time I waited on the front porch just for him not to show up when he said he would.”

Brooke swallowed slowly, her fingers tightening on my skin. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I told her with nothing but truth behind the words. “Our mom worked her ass off to provide us with everything we needed. She taught me what a strong woman should be. What a strong woman is.”

Then she smiled. “Are you like her?”

With a quiet laugh, I pulled Brooke a little closer and she came immediately, the curve of her breast warm and heavy against my side. “No, not really. My mom was … she was serious. She worked two jobs until we were old enough to start working part-time after school. Tristan started younger than I did.”

“How did you manage that?”

My throat closed with a brief thickness, and I swallowed it down. “Once Tristan was helping out with money, it eased some of the pressure on her. I didn’t need to get a job until I was about seventeen. And I think she liked having me at home.”

“Why’s that?” She stared up at me, guileless and so damn direct that it made my chest tight. Who had ever looked up at me like that? Like every word that was about to come out of my mouth was fascinating and important. Like the things I might say were important and weighted.

“Because my job was to make her smile. Make her laugh.”

My words dropped in between us like a rock through water, and the change in her face was instant. Honestly, I just prayed that the darkness hid the heat spreading over my face. More than anything, I didn’t want her pity. I could handle just about any reaction than pity.

After a minute, she nodded slowly, searching my face. “That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah.” Brooke shifted slightly so she could wrap her arms around me, and we were pressed fully together, front to front. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a fantastic way to be pressed together, but she and I both recognized that it wasn’t about that. She wanted to comfort me, and in that moment of quiet, I wanted nothing more than to let her. I don’t think anyone ever had. “I get why you came here that first night. It never really made sense to me.”

I smiled into the top of her head. “Gee thanks. You didn’t think I was just being a nice guy?”

“Nope.”

We laughed at the same time, and she pulled back to look at me. “That’s not entirely true. I just figured there had to be more too it than that. Hot single guys don’t just randomly show up to babysit my chubby little monsters because they’re being nice. Not in my experience at least.”

“Well,” I said slowly, running my hands up and down her silky smooth back, “I don’t think you know the right hot single guys then.”

Our legs were tangled together, and her laughter made my body shake too, we were so closely wound.

Why was it so nice? Maybe I didn’t sleep around to the extent that everyone assumed, but I was certainly no monk. But this was something I’d underestimated.

Brooke opened her mouth like she was going to speak, then closed it again. Unable to resist the temptation so close, I leaned forward and touched my lips to hers. The gentle touch stayed light for a brief moment, then she tilted her chin up, swept her tongue against my bottom lip. My arms tightened around her, and she moaned.

Then she moved in the entirely wrong direction. She moved away from my lips. She took her tongue away.

“No, no,” I whispered, sucking her bottom lip into my mouth. “Come back. That was good.”

She smiled and I pressed kisses to the outer corner of her lips. “It was good.”

Huh. The was was definitely emphasized.

Not hey, let’s move round two and three into the bedroom where we can work a little more comfortably. Emphasis on the past tense was meant, dude, you need to go.

And the disappointment on her face was how I knew I was right. It probably mirrored the look on mine.

“I should go, huh?”

She sighed and nodded. “As fun as it would be if you stayed, I have no clue how early Julia will be here to help me get ready for the party.”

The fact that her reason was valid didn’t help. I wanted to pout like a giant man baby, but somehow held it back.

“Makes sense.”

Brooke sat up and stretched and I gave her a dirty look.

“Hey, if you’re trying to get me to leave, that’s not the way to do it.”

She glanced over her shoulder, and oh, her inner vixen was still awake and ready to play. “Sorry. I guess I forget how powerful all this,” she gestured over her still naked body, “is.”

I tackled her back onto the ground, swallowing her shriek with a hot, fast kiss. I palmed one breast and then dropped my head to kiss it. “Don’t tease me, woman. You’ll never get me out of here.”

Being the gentleman that I was, I helped her up and slapped her ass when she leaned over to pick up her clothes. The narrow-eyed look she gave me only made me laugh.

When I zipped my jeans up and snagged my t-shirt from where it was hanging on the couch, I took a chance that the weird bubble of honesty was still intact between us. “So, what are you going to do about Kevin?”

Brooke pulled her hair over one shoulder and stared at a spot past my shoulder, indecision clouding her features. Then she blinked and looked back at me. “I have no idea.”

Instead of wanting her to wrap me up, sink into her warmth, I wanted to give her my own. I didn’t want to leave. The drive to make her feel better, happier, was so strong in me, that it was almost impossible to stay away from her.

But I did.

I gave her a small smile, even though worry for her still made my skin feel tight. “You’ll do the right thing.”

Even though the right thing to me was kick him in the balls while wearing steel-toed boots, I knew it wouldn’t help if I told her that.

Brooke let out a deep breath, and suddenly came to me and wrapped her arms around my waist in a tight hug. I returned it, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head.

“Thank you,” she said into my chest.

Maybe I didn’t know exactly what I wanted from Brooke just yet, the way her words wormed into my heart, I knew it wasn’t only her thanks. That shook me enough that I was able to pull away from her, walk out the door, and leave.