One of the Guys (11 page)

Dean’s insistent voice cut in through the fog of sexual arousal, buzzing around her like some sort of pesky insect. Licking her lips, she looked back at Dean. “Huh?” Brian laughed and nuzzled her neck.

“Are you two
together
?”

The disbelief in Dean’s voice jarred her enough that she came dropping back down to earth. She really should say something. Really. But the way Dean was glaring at her, like she’d done something wrong, totally pissed her off. She slid a hand down and covered Brian’s. Their fingers twined and Jaynie couldn’t keep relaxing against him.

“Sort of looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Whatever else Dean might have said, Jaynie didn’t know because Brian spoke over her shoulder. “Congratulations, Dean. Now, Jaynie, about that dance…” He took her drink and put it down on the table before guiding her out onto the dance floor. Jaynie let him pull her into his arms and then she looked over his shoulder toward Dean. “You shouldn’t have done that, Brian,” she said, even though she couldn’t stop smirking.

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“Done what?” he asked as he pulled her up against him. He rested his hand low,
way
low, on her back. He was practically cupping her ass to hold her against him and she shivered at the slow, deliberate way he caressed her flesh.

“Let him think we’re talking about getting married,” she said.

“Oh. That.” He seemed unconcerned, lowering his head to nuzzle her neck.

“Yes,
that
,” she responded.

“Don’t see why not.” Brian brought his free hand up and brushed the strap of her dress aside, kissing her naked shoulder.

“How about because it’s not true?”

Finally, he lifted his head to stare at her with a queer little smile. “Oh, it’s true, all right.” He cupped her chin, holding her still so that she couldn’t have looked away from that intense stare if she had to. There was no way she
could
have looked away just then, though. “You’re going to marry me, Jaynie.”

“I am?”

“Hmmmm.” He kissed her and it wasn’t the sort of kiss that belonged at a very public party. He kissed her as if they were already naked, as if he was already inside her. He kissed her in a way that had her so much more aroused than she had ever been with Dean. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, kissing her deep and hard, circling her tongue with his and then settling into a rhythmic ebb and flow that had her rocking against him and whimpering in her throat.
More
…
more
…
more
…she thought mindlessly as he pulled away.

Kisses like that shouldn’t happen unless she was in a place where she could strip naked and jump on him. But that was exactly why he’d done it, she realized, to make her so stupid with lust that she barely paid attention to what he said. “We haven’t even really gone out on a date, but you’re telling me that we’re getting married?” 79

Shiloh Walker

He shrugged. “We can do the dating part later. And don’t worry, I know you need a little bit of time to get used to the idea.” He skimmed his hands down her sides, pulled her flush against him. “But you’re going to marry me, Jaynie.” He stepped back a little, putting a few inches between them as he looked around the room. When he grabbed her hand and started walking, pulling her along behind him, Jaynie numbly went along. She was still trying to process this marriage thing he was rambling about. “Brian, where are we going? And what are you talking about, us getting married? We
can
’
t
get married.”

“Yes, we can,” he said as they left the reception hall, but not through the main entrance. He was walking so fast she could barely keep up with him. “And we’re going to. But don’t worry. I’m not in any rush…ah, that’s what I need.” She looked up and saw the closed door in front of her. She had no idea where they were but figured they were in some administration part of the rental hall. “What are we doing here?”

He opened the door and went inside, pulling her in after him. It was dim—the only light came through a partially opened door in the back. He let go of her hand and went to peer through the door. She saw enough to know it was a bathroom and then she looked back at Brian. The look in his eyes was all the answer she needed to know what they were doing.

With no preliminaries, without saying a word, Brian reached out and fisted his hands in her skirt, slowly raising up and baring her to his gaze. “It’s been driving me crazy, thinking about you naked under this dress,” he murmured, watching with rapt fascination as he bared her knees, her thighs. As the hem edged up past her hips, he sank to his knees in front of her.

He leaned in and put his mouth on her and Jaynie’s knees damn near gave out. She slammed her hands down, bracing herself against the smooth wooden door at her back but it didn’t help much as he slid his tongue around her clit in a slow, teasing circle.

Then down…down…down…and in. Jaynie gasped out his name and began to sag 80

One of the Guys

down. In an effort to stay upright, she gripped the doorknob, squeezing it until her knuckles went white.

He stiffened his tongue and stabbed it inside her, over and over. Then he slid his hands up over the back of her calves, her knees, her thighs and cupped her butt in his hands. As he took some of her weight, she sagged back in relief and fisted her hands in the thick, unruly silk of his hair. “Brian…” She opened her eyes and found herself staring into the darkened office. The wedge of light coming in through the open bathroom door fell on him, highlighting half of his face, throwing the other half into shadow. He lifted his head and glanced up at her.

“You’re so fucking sweet,” he muttered, and his voice was thick, almost drugged-sounding. He pressed his mouth back against her.

“Brian, we can’t—”

“We can,” he growled. The vibration of it went singing through her and she shivered. “We will. Come, Jaynie. I’m dying here.” His tongue circled her entrance and then pushed back inside her. She sobbed, feeling the world around her begin to shake and deep inside she felt a hot, thrumming beat start, pulsing and pounding through her in rhythm with the strokes of his tongue moving in and out of her sex. He stroked his fingers up and down her hip, pulled her in closer to his mouth, away from the door so that she was all but riding him. Then…he spanked her, his hand coming down with jarring force on the curve of her rump. She arched up and screamed his name.

He growled against her and shifted to take her clit between his teeth, biting down with soft, gentle force. Jaynie came, rocking against him and crying as the climax tore through her. Before she had a chance to even breathe, he had her on the floor under him, her legs shoved wide and her skirt pushed to her waist. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a rubber.

Brian never looked away from her face as he tore the packet open and rolled the thin latex barrier down over his rigid cock. He covered her, pushed inside her and 81

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Jaynie reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. He crushed her into the carpet and muttered in her ear, “You’re going to go out there looking like you’ve been fucked, smelling like me. He’s going to look at you and know he can’t ever touch you again. You
are
mine, Jaynie. Even if you haven’t figured it out yet.”

His control was gone and Brian didn’t seem in any hurry to get it back as he shafted her, pumping into her with a strength that had them sliding across the floor. Her hair fell down around her shoulders in tangles. He fisted his hand in it and used his hold on her to angle her face up to his, taking her mouth with the same heated intensity.

“Mine,” he muttered, lifting up just enough that he could growl it against her lips.

“Mine. Mine. Mine.” He echoed each time with a deep, driving thrust. Deep inside, she felt him swell. He shifted his angle and she whimpered as it had the head of his cock rubbing against the bundled bed of nerves deep in her pussy. He passed over it—once, twice, three times—and by the fourth, she was coming again, clenching down around him and sobbing out his name.

He followed, his cock jerking almost viciously inside her as he climaxed into the rubber. Jaynie closed her eyes, tried to calm her breathing, but she was still gasping for air when he stroked a hand down her arm. She lifted her lids just a little to stare at him from beneath her lashes. “Can’t move yet,” she mumbled.

Brian chuckled and left her lying there as he got to his feet and dealt with the rubber. Then he crouched beside her and pulled her into his arms and smoothed her hair back from her face. “Come on. We’ll go out there, get your purse, then I’ll take you back home.”

She glanced down and shook her head. “I can’t go out there like this.” Brian’s smile faded away, replaced by an intensity that shook her to the core. “Yes, you can.” He stood her up and smoothed her dress down and smiled at her possessively. “You look beautiful.”

“I look like I just had sex.”

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“Exactly.” He slid his hand under her skirt and cupped her in his hand. “You look rumpled and sexy and beautiful.” She was still so wet and when he pushed his finger inside her swollen sheath, she whimpered and clenched down around him. “Mine, Jaynie.”

She forced herself to open her eyes and look at him. “You and me, we need to talk.” He pulled his hand out from under her skirt, and holding her gaze, he slid his finger inside his mouth. “Yeah, we do. But not now. Now, we just go out there, get your purse and my jacket and we leave.” Then he fell back a step. “Unless you’re really opposed to everybody seeing you like this, with me. People will look at you and know, Jaynie. They’ll look at me and know. If you can’t handle that, tell me now. I’ll get your purse and I’ll take you home.”

Unspoken were the words—
and then I
’
ll leave you alone
.

It was a dare. It almost felt like an ultimatum and Jaynie wanted to be pissed off about that. She wanted to do it that way just to prove to him that he couldn’t challenge her. But she didn’t care if a hundred people, a thousand, saw her looking like this, her clothes wrinkled, her hair a mess.

Lifting her chin, she said calmly, “Let’s go.”

Brian hadn’t been planning it. Yeah, he’d been suffering a lot of sleepless nights since that first night of mind-blowing sex months earlier. But it wasn’t just that. It was like she had gotten under his skin and every little thing she did or said only made it worse. The way she smelled, the way she smiled at a crying child as she promised she could save a beloved pet—and the way she waited until she was alone to cry when she couldn’t.

He’d fallen in love with her, but sometimes it felt as if he had been waiting his entire life just to do that, waiting for just this moment. He could think back and recall things about her with a clarity that amazed him, like the way she’d looked on prom night when she and Kate had rushed around for hours getting ready, primping in the mirror, wearing a silvery purple dress that shimmered against her skin. The way she 83

Shiloh Walker

looked a few months after the prom when her mother finally got too careless and overdosed on Jack Daniels and sleeping pills, how she’d stood out in the rain, watching the paramedics as they took her mother’s dead body away. She hadn’t cried, not once.

Not until he had wrapped his arms around and held her close. Kate had been there and the two of them had held Jaynie between them as she cried herself hoarse.

He remembered that night when he’d run into Jaynie at the frat party. Geez, it had been more than seven years since he had looked down into her wide, vacant eyes and realized somebody had slipped her some kind of drug.

He’d seen her with Dean just a little before and she’d looked fine but then, her motor coordination had been so poor, she’d stumbled into him. To this day, he still didn’t know what had been stronger, his fear for Jaynie, or his rage at the still-unknown bastard who had drugged her.

Then there was the way his heart had stopped when she had come racing to their house the night she caught Dean involved in a threesome. Her eyes bright with tears and her face pale. Something had hurt her and Brian had known he’d move heaven and earth to keep her from being hurt like that, ever again.

And the way she looked now, strolling out into the dimly lit reception hall with her arm linked through his. Her dress was wrinkled, her hair mussed and her makeup had suffered some serious damage in the past twenty minutes. She still looked amazingly beautiful and as they walked past Dean and Kit, her chin tilted up just a little. Brian met Dean’s gaze and he couldn’t keep the satisfied smile from spreading across his face when he saw the knowledge enter Dean’s eyes.

They reached the table and he paused long enough to grab his jacket while Jaynie knelt to get her purse from under the table. He suspected the purse had been Kate’s doing because Jaynie hadn’t so much as touched it since she’d dropped it under the table when they first got to the reception.

She slid the delicate gold chain over her shoulder and smiled at him. The sight of that smile hit him like a punch in the gut and he almost kissed her again. Instead, he 84

One of the Guys

wrapped his arm around her and guided her to the door. Once there, he glanced back over his shoulder. Dean was still staring at Jaynie and as Brian grinned back at him, Kit got up in his face.

By the time the door closed behind him, Kit was yelling so loud he could hear her over the music blaring through the speakers.

Jaynie grinned up at him and Brian felt his heart get all tight. Yeah, he’d probably been falling in love with her for years, and never even realized it.

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Chapter Six

When he took the turn west down Highway 180 instead of east, Jaynie glanced over at him. “Where we going?”

“The beach.” Most of the beaches along that way were privately owned but there was Bon Secour, right before the old Civil War fort, Fort Morgan and the ferry to Mobile. As far out of the way as it was, that particular stretch of beach usually wasn’t very busy. The occasional family or nature buff might hit it but when Brian turned down the broken paved road that led to the beach, it was empty.