The Cornerstone (8 page)

“What’s the point? You’ve already destroyed it,” she said, a laugh softening the edge of her voice.

“The point is I want to be inside you again,” I said. My inclination was to push her buttons, but instinct told me to do whatever the fuck this girl wanted, and do it now. “And while I
can
fuck you against the wall, I’d like to take advantage of beds while they’re available to me.”

Shannon hesitated, and I seized that opportunity to scoop her up and throw her on the mattress. She hated being manhandled in the sense that she hated
liking
it, and it had the side benefit of breaking the tension building between us.

“You are such an arrogant ass—”

“Yep. I know, Shortcake.” I crawled between her legs and lifted one knee to rest on my shoulder. “No more talking unless it’s to say ‘Will, you’re so amazing’ or ‘Will, your tongue deserves the Nobel Peace Prize’ or ‘Will, the only thing better than your tongue is your big, fat cock.’ Got it?”

I tugged the bathrobe loose and leaned my head against her thigh. A sigh slipped from her lips but that didn’t erase the sharp gaze she aimed at me. “I’m concerned there won’t be enough space in this room for both your ego and oxygen.”

My hand coasted over her mound and up her torso, resting between her breasts. “Relax. You can’t enjoy this when you’re all wound up.”

Shannon blinked, and I didn’t give her the chance to object. Instead, I rubbed my chin scruff against her inner thigh until she giggled and shrieked and tried rolling away from me. When my tongue finally connected with her clit, those sounds morphed into moans and purrs that traveled down my spine and lodged in the base of my cock like a hot vise.

She was soft and sweet, and again I was confronted with her tiny shape when my splayed hand fully covered the space between her hipbones. Right here, with my arm wrapped around her leg and my mouth on her cunt—nope, nope, I totally meant pussy—there was nothing else in the world.

Except a faint noise coming from the other room, and that was really fucking strange considering I locked the door myself.

I moved my hand from Shannon’s chest to her lips, shifting to pinpoint the rustling sound that seemed to get closer with each breath. “Did you hear something?” I mouthed.

She shook her head, swatted my hand away from her mouth, and whispered, “Maybe you should focus on the task at hand”—she glanced between her legs—“and not interpret every gust of wind as a guerilla attack.”

And maybe you need to be a whole helluva lot more careful, peanut.

“I like you better with my cock in your mouth.” I listened for a few more beats while she rolled her eyes. I wanted to spank her, I wanted to fuck her, and most of all, I wanted to wipe that frustrated frown from her beautiful mouth and see her come apart in my hands. “I’ll take care of you in a minute. I’m gonna look around first.”

Shannon yanked her robe closed while I tugged on my boxers, and when I focused in, I could hear someone in the other room. I flattened myself against the wall to get a feel for the location of the breathing, and I sensed footsteps moving toward my position.

I gestured for Shannon to stay on the bed, and she responded with another eye roll.

Then a crash sounded from the hall and I rounded the corner, my fist immediately connecting with bone and soft tissue. He crumpled to the ground, howling in pain, and I secured his hands against his lower back with the not-so-gentle pressure of my knee.

Shannon flipped on the light—so much for staying on the goddamn bed—and she cried, “Riley!”

“Riley?” I rolled him over and sure enough, Shannon’s little brother and his busted nose were bleeding all over the slate floor. She stomped into the bathroom and emerged with a damp towel for him.

“Son of a bitch,” he groaned, clutching the towel to his face.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I couldn’t remember which room was mine and Patrick kicked me out, but I had your key from when I was bringing in the gift baskets last night. I was just going to sleep in your bathtub but then I heard…well, I was going to trying to leave quietly but I tripped on your shoes, Shan.”

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

He eyed me up and down, not missing the fact I was in his sister’s room wearing only my underwear. An uncomfortable scowl was obvious beneath the growing rush of bruises that would dominate his nose and eyes tomorrow. “Long enough.”

Shannon fussed over him until the bleeding stopped, but that didn’t prevent her from casting several irritated glances over her shoulder. For my part, I stood with my arms crossed over my chest, trying to figure out why a grown-ass man was creeping into his sister’s room at three in the morning and letting her wipe his fucking nose. It wasn’t unlike the scene I observed at the reception tonight, where she kicked everyone’s asses into gear and didn’t sit down once. She did everything short of busing the tables after dinner service.

I couldn’t explain why, but it didn’t sit well with me. I knew I didn’t like it.

“Go snuggle up on the couch,” she instructed, gesturing past Riley to the small living room. “I think I have some ibuprofen, and I’ll get you some ice.”

You have to be fucking kidding me.

“What?” I snapped.

“What do you mean, ‘what’? Look at what you did to him.” She glared at me, nodding toward the bloodied towel as if I’d ripped off the guy’s arm and not simply knocked his nose off-kilter.

“And I’d do it again,” I said. “When it’s the middle of the night and something isn’t right, I shoot first and ask questions later.”

“Yeah, that’s brilliant,” she said. “You and your itchy trigger finger can go now. You’ve done enough.”

“No, no, I’m good,” Riley said, wobbling to his feet. “I’ll crash with Sam.”

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all night,” I murmured.

Shannon’s little fist shot out, landing square on my bicep. “It’s rude to be an asshole after breaking someone’s nose.”

“It’s also rude to creep into someone’s cottage in the middle of the night,” I said. “I think we’re even now.”

“Not exactly how I’d define even,” Riley murmured, wiping his nose again and grimacing at the trail of blood on his hand. “Anyone want to point me in the direction of Sam’s room? Wouldn’t want another beat down tonight.”

“He’s three cottages down,” she said, patting Riley’s shoulder.

“Great. Thanks.” He moved toward the sliding glass door near the beachside patio. “And I didn’t see anything. I never do,” he muttered. He shot me another glance, but between the bruising and swelling, I couldn’t discern much from it.

Shannon followed and I trailed close behind her, my hand resting on her hip when Riley stepped out onto the patio. He turned toward Sam’s cottage but soon stopped, groaning. “Why do I always walk in on this shit?”

Shannon joined him, pulling her robe tight to her body as the damp air surrounded her. I stepped beside her, and surveyed the beach plum shrubs and sandy dunes connecting the string of cottages to the shoreline. Only a few feet away, I spied the doctor kicked back on a lounge chair.

With Shannon’s sister on his lap.

And his hands under her dress.

“Could you not wait until you got inside?” Riley yelled. “This fucking night…I’m tellin’ you. I just want to go to sleep but no, I get punched in the goddamn face and swallow a pint of my own fucking blood, and I don’t even get to stay on the couch!” He glared back at Shannon and me, shaking his head. He shifted to face Nick and Erin, and now that he wasn’t crying about his busted nose, I realized that Riley was built like a pile of bricks. If he wanted to knock me on my ass, he had a decent shot at it. “You really want Matt to blow a gasket on his wedding night? Really? Because that’s what would happen if he saw this. I can’t even go there with you two. Can’t. Even.”

“There’s no reason to tell Matt,” Erin said.

“Don’t tell Matt?” Riley shouted. “Are fuckin’ kidding me, E? You’re here
one day
and you’re starting shit like this? No, no. No one is telling Matt a fucking thing about
any
of this.” He gestured to both his sisters, and this time, I didn’t miss the fire in his eyes. “We’re all pretending none of this happened. We’re pretending there’s no attention-whoring or hate-fucking going on right now.”

“I think you might be exaggerating the situation, buddy,” Nick said. “Really, we’re just having some drinks and hanging out.”

Somewhere between the blowjob that made me hear colors and laying Riley out, we must have fallen into an alternate, cock-blocking reality. It was like every one of these assholes knew I was half-desperate to be inside Shannon again, and they were inventing obstacles in my path.

“You might be a smart guy, Nick,” Riley said, “but right now, you have no idea what you’re talking about. And you—” He pointed at Erin. “If you don’t want shit storms everywhere you go, don’t stir them up.”

I watched Riley’s fingers curling into fists, unclenching, and repeating the motion. I had no idea who he wanted to pummel more—me, the doctor, or his sisters—but I wasn’t letting that shit go down tonight. I stepped in front of Shannon, forcing some distance between her and whatever the hell was going on with these people.

Alternate. Fucking. Reality.

“Riley,” Erin said, and his gaze snapped to her. “I got this.”

“You fucking owe me,” Riley called as he walked past Nick and Erin, his head shaking and his hands fisted at his sides. “
All
of you fucking owe me.”

Riley disappeared into the night, and that seemed like the perfect opportunity to stop watching the doctor and the quiet sister get it on. Shannon didn’t object when I led her back inside, and she didn’t even roll her eyes when I checked all the locks. She just stood in the center of the room, her arms wrapped around her, gazing into the darkness.

She was thinking hard, if the frantic fingers tapping against her elbow were any indication. The doctor—the one who had his arm around Shannon only a matter of hours ago—had something to do with this, but the sister was most of it. Erin might be the quiet one, but she was the troublemaker.

I pointed to the robe. “Off.”

She continued staring for a moment, her fingers never quite stilling, then shrugged out of the fabric that I was torn between loving and hating.

The robe dropped to the floor but she didn’t meet my eyes. I gestured to the mattress. “Bed.”

She slipped between the sheets at my command, rolling to her side and curling her arms around the pillow. Her body was tight, coiled, and I saw it all vibrating through her. At once, she was tired and tense, and those merged into a vulnerability I couldn’t ignore. Shannon was so much—loud and nosy, spoiled and bossy—but she was so much more, too. If I watched her all night and through the rest of this weekend, I wouldn’t be able to categorize it all.

Instead, I spanked her until she begged for my cock.

*

“Doesn’t Kaisall have
a house in the Hamptons now?”

I glanced over at Wes from where I was marooned on the shore. The North Atlantic in May wasn’t toasty warm, and after years away from salt water, I was reminded how hard it was to swim against ocean currents.

Oh, and I’d spent the past two nights fucking and fighting with Shannon.

“He does,” I said. “Why?”

“Let’s catch a ferry over to Montauk,” he said. “There’s good surfing out there, and I want to hear about the firm he’s running these days.”

Jordan Kaisall was a good SEAL but a better businessman. He pulled one deployment, during which he took a bullet through the kneecap when a mission went tits-up, and went on to open a private security firm. He was a good friend and he never stopped recruiting me to help run the tactical side of his operation. His protection details ranged from Washington insiders and CEOs to the occasional heiress or celebrity.

“Yeah, I’ll give him a call,” I said, feeling my heart rate gradually edging into normal territory.

Getting the fuck away from Cape Cod and mouthy redheads with delicious thighs was probably for the best. That, and the mouthy redhead in question was leaving for Boston this afternoon.

She’d yanked the blankets off sometime before dawn, and tossed my trousers at me. “You’re leaving now,” she announced.

Her hair was wild, her lips kiss-swollen, and her expression told me there was only a slim chance that she’d let my cock change her mind.

“Here I thought check out wasn’t until noon,” I said.

“And I thought you’d be a grower, not a shower,” she said. “Guess we were both wrong.”

“Hmm,” I murmured, scratching my chin while I stared at her. “You need me to tie you to the headboard again, don’t you? Maybe a good, hard fuck to start the day? We can bend that bratty attitude of yours into shape.”

Shannon murmured to herself, a small smile lifting her lips, and she narrowed her eyes in my direction. “That’s a charming offer,” she said, “but I don’t think your dick can reach my
attitude
, let alone bend it. I’m also leaving for Boston soon, and I’d like you to get the fuck out of my cottage.”

I kept my eyes on Shannon while stepping into my wrinkled clothes. “Have you ever met anyone with bigger balls?”