Cocky F@#ker (Tangled Desires #3) (2 page)

Mace

“Thanks for walking me home, guys.” Chelsea opens the door and kicks off her high heeled red sandals, the ones that make her legs look like they go on forever and have made it impossible for me not to stare at her all fucking night. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

But she and I have unfinished business. That’s nothing unusual when it comes to Chelsea Taylor. It’s almost our tag line. Our entire relationship from when we were teens, for the last ten years, until now has been a series of unfinished moments. And I’m fucking over it. I press a hand to the door as she goes to shut it. “How about one last drink? It’s been a long time since the last time we had a night like this.”

Her eyes widen a little. It’s fucking cute how she acts surprised when she knows we have things we need to talk about. Things I need to get off my chest.

Coming home hasn’t been easy. Seeing her again after four long years is more irritating than enjoyable. Ok, that might be a lie, is a lie. Seeing her again is like it always is, like it was before I left, like it was in Vegas. But that isn’t the point. If I’m going to settle back here, surrounded by my family, which includes her, then there are things we need to bury properly this time around.

Tom, my youngest brother, grins. “I could go for another beer.”

He’s drunk, swaying slightly, but then he probably doesn’t usually drink like we did tonight. I’ve had a lot more practice and it was mostly rotgut stuff, so dirty it can scour your insides.

“Sure.” She half-shrugs, stepping out of the doorway, letting us in.

A long tufted ottoman sits centered in the middle of the living space, topped by an oak tray that holds her mother’s prized possession; the globe her mother kept before she started gallivanting around the world. Not much has changed since the last time I was here.

I’ve thought that a lot tonight. That not much has changed. That my family are the same, the town the same. But I’ve changed. I’ve seen things, done things that change a man whether he likes it or not.

Truth be told, being here in the middle of the night works for me since I don’t sleep much anyway. Haven’t for the past six months. At first it was the pain in my shoulder and my hip, superfluous injuries from my time overseas. And the nightmares. The pain faded and so did the nightmares. Now I wake with the edges of something similar to them, but not with the detail. More a sense, a feeling that crawls into my gut like sand. The smell. The heat. In some ways they’re worse than the nightmares. More… real.

Tom collapses on the couch, throws his head back and shuts his eyes. Yeah, he probably doesn’t need anything more to drink. Still, I follow Chelsea as she pads through the living space and into the kitchen. Its long picture windows are awash with darkness and stars. It reminds me of nights spent in our backyard as kids, staring up at them while we all laid around the fire pit talking shit. Rush, me, Razer, Tommy, Claire, and of course her. Back then, she’d be curled up on the blanket between me and Rush. Holding hands with my brother, flame shadows dancing over her face. I could never tear my gaze away, though I tried.

I stretch my shoulders, wait for the crack, the pop as I shake out the tension that has settled between my shoulder blades. She still has no idea how much time I spent wishing it was me she was with back then.

“Beer or something a little harder?” She bends over to get a beer from the fridge, her tight ass highlighted by these soft white shorts that hug around the hips before they flare over her curves. I’m going to need something stronger.

I lick my lips as I get closer. My fingers itch to explore the soft edge of those shorts and the creamy skin of her thighs. Yeah. I’m definitely going to need something stronger. Like a bullet.

Because I’m a sucker for punishment. Because I’m going to ask her about the annulment. “Tommy looks pretty rat shit. I don’t think he needs anymore to drink, but I’ll have a scotch if you’ve got any.”

“In the study.” She tilts her head in the direction of the room off the living space—although I don’t need the reminder—and her hair brushes her arm.

Her hair got longer while I was gone, blonder too if that’s possible. It falls like a shiny fucking waterfall over her shoulder and has me itching to run my fingers through it. “I remember.”

I remember a lot of things. Like the way she used to smile at me without the wariness in her eyes. And the way her skin felt under my palms, glistening with sweat from the heat that night we shared in Vegas.

Pushing open the door of the study, I spy the cupboard where her mom always kept the hard liquor. I wonder if she ever clued in on the fact that we used to sneak in or a regular basis. Probably. We certainly weren’t very smart back then.

I’m not sure we’re any better now. The key sits on top of the old, dented, armoire style cupboard, and I unlock it, rifling through the contents until I find the scotch.

“So Tommy’s passed out.” She lounges in the doorway, observing me, her arms around her middle. Wary, as though I’m the enemy and not someone she was once friends with.

“Figures,” I mutter. Actually, I was counting on it. Turning around, I use my hip to shut the cupboard. “He’s all right where he is, though?”

She glances over her shoulder and crosses her ankles. “He looks awfully uncomfortable.”

Don’t we all?

“Well, I’m not carrying the fucker home.” I spin the lid off the scotch and pour a liberal dose into a couple of tumblers on top of the armoire. Chelsea’s the only girl I’ve met who can drink scotch like a man. It’s one of the qualities I actually used to like about her. Unlike her always wavering decision making skills. That’s definitely something I could have done without in my life.

She blows a breath that flutters her bangs. “Help me get him up to my room. He can sleep there.”

“Are you and him…?” The idea of her and Tommy hooking up is like being hit with a baseball bat even after all this time. But after what my sister, Claire, said this afternoon about Tommy’s revolving door love life, the possibility pisses me off.

“Fuck no. Jesus, do you always have to be such an ass?” She snaps out the words, but all that does is make me wonder why she’s so defensive about it.

“Thought you might have been going for the Hadley Trifecta.” I hear her sharp intake of breath as I march past her. Probably shouldn’t have said that, but she only needs the one to complete the set, and that gets me right in the gut.

“You’re an asshole.” She follows me back into the living room, and I can’t help grinning as I haul Tommy up from the couch. I have no doubt she’s glaring at my back as I manhandle him up the stairs to her room. I don’t need directions. This isn’t the first time we’ve done this drunk-ass climb. No, nothing really changes. This is just like old times.

Tommy grumbles something but he’s pretty much out of it. His head lolls forward as I drag him up the stairs and toss him on her bed, fully clothed. Then I have a moment of softness for him, or for her. I’m not sure which. So I yank off his shoes while he starts to snore, a rumble of sound from his chest, rattling through his throat and between his parted lips. I probably should have cut him off a drink or two earlier, but we were celebrating.

I don’t know what the fuck we were celebrating. My coming home, I guess. It’s not exactly something to be joyful about since the reason I’m back in Reverence is locked into the worst moment of my life.

Closing the door on him, I tromp back down the stairs to find Chelsea.

She’s in the kitchen, an elbow propped on the island counter, half the scotch in her glass gone already. She cocks her head to the side, indicating mine. “So I guess you want to talk.”

I drain the amber liquid. This shit goes down smooth compared to what I’d been drinking the past year. “That’d be something new for us.”

“Yeah.” She places her glass on the counter. “You were always good at evading anything important.”

Bullshit.
She’d been important. Always. I can’t remember a time when she hadn’t been, until a couple years back when I’d finally got it through my thick fucking head that not even marrying her could change what was fundamentally wrong with us. My brother’s girl was always going to be exactly that.

“And you could never make up your mind,” I grumble, placing my glass down beside hers.

“That’s crap,” she says, staring at me, at my mouth, her gaze drifting in this little triangle the way it does when she wants me to kiss her. “I made up my mind.”

I haven’t seen that look on her for a long time, though I held onto the memory of it for far longer than I should have. Fantasized about it, but that was when there was an ocean between us. It’s almost impossible to ignore now.

Not that I’m sure I want to. She’s irritating and ridiculous and so not fucking mine, but that’s never stopped me from doing stupid shit when it comes to her. I move in front of her, leaning in to get in her face. “Did you?”

“Yes,” she says, her eyes flashing, her whole body shifting that little bit closer to me. “But it doesn’t matter now.”

Yeah, I like to tell myself that lie, too. She smells like flowers, getting in my nose and making me hard. Such a weird reaction to have to flora, but it’s all sweet and sunshiny, and her. “It never fucking mattered. It was all a stupid mistake.”

“Exactly.” I think she realizes I’m too close, or maybe I’m having this effect on her too because she pushes at my chest. “You’re not really staying, are you? You’ll go back at some point?”

“Nope.” I grin when her face falls. I might be a bastard for enjoying her discomfiture, but if I’m going to have to suck it up then so is she. “Which is why I thought it best to get this conversation out of the way.”

“The annulment,” she says. “That’s what you want to know?”

“The only thing I’m interested in.” See, now I’m a liar, because that’s fucking bullshit. But doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, and if I’m going to start over in this damn town then I need to give up on the idea that anything between us will ever change.

Chelsea

He’s levelling that stupid smirk at me, like he’s expecting me to whip my panties off and whirl them around my head while yelling ‘come take what you want from me.’ Of course I visualize doing exactly that. It’s been a long time since I’ve had sex. Any kind of sex… with a man. A real man. Especially the rock hard kind, the type with wide shoulders and brawler’s arms, veins visible on his skin that I want to run the tip of my tongue along.

Moisture pools in my mouth, heat spreading in other places I’d rather not think about. My memories are a little too good, filling in the gaps of what he tastes like, what he smells like, what he feels like.

Except, he’s standing so close I can actually smell him.

But fuck him if he thinks I’m going to make that mistake. Again. For a third time.

Cocky fucking bastard.

Except he isn’t moving. Hasn’t moved a damn muscle while I’ve been having my way with him in my mind. Because he’s waiting for something. An answer. The annulment. “I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy to get our marriage annulled?” He raises one eyebrow, extreme blue eyes penetrating my ability to think straight, so I can pretend he doesn’t affect me. “I would have assumed you’d have wanted to take care of that as soon as you got home from Vegas. Four years is a long time to be too busy to deal with something you seemed so desperate to finish.”

“It’s only a bit of paper.” I wave it away, like it’s nothing. As if the one shiny night I got to be his wasn’t all I could think about for months on end, for years after he left me behind. He didn’t even look back for a second when he left. Just proved he could have me with a few sweet words and that cocky ass grin, and then he was done with me. Yeah, he’s a mistake. The biggest one I’ve ever made. “You could have dealt with it.”

“I asked you to do it while I was deployed. I wouldn’t have thought it would be such a chore.” His expression ripples, darkens like a storm coming in. A portent of things to come? “Unless you didn’t want to absolve it?”

“Yeah, well I forgot about it.” I shiver.

“Forgot. About. It?” He stabs the words out, getting closer. “Or maybe you liked the idea of being mine so much you couldn’t bring yourself to go through with it?”

“No.” One small step back, then two. Something hard at my back. The flat edge of the island digging into my hip. “God, you’re still so full of yourself. Thinking you can do whatever you want without repercussions.”

The lines on his forehead deepen as he freezes with his hand halfway to my hip. Something in his gaze makes my chest twist for whatever he’s been through. His body angling away from mine, he turns, ready to storm out. “There’s always fucking repercussions.”

It doesn’t surprise me that he’s going to march out. It’s nothing new.

And it’s what I want.

Not his hands on me, not his mouth on me, not his cock between my legs, plunging into me.

God, I want that. My entire body is wound so tight. Has been since I first saw him tonight. He’s harder now than he was last time I saw him, the softness I used to be able to find in his gaze gone. But it doesn’t stop my body from responding to him the way it always has. I clamp my lips together. I will not give him the benefit of knowing he still gets to me. Every. Single. Time. “Fuck you.”