Cocky F@#ker (Tangled Desires #3) (16 page)

“Is that what he said?” Now I’m the one staring at my hands, because Mace is pacing in front of me, his agitation palpable, while I’m torn. Gem didn’t tell him about the baby. He doesn’t know, and I thought I’d feel relieved because he didn’t hear it from someone else, but I almost wish he had. My insides twist, the flutter of nerves making it hard to breathe. I hate that I’m so scared that he’ll look at me like I’ve betrayed him. That’s why I need to deal with this feud between him and his brother first. This time he needs Rush more than I do. And the only way to do that is in a way neither man has afforded me. Face to face. If this mess I made between the three of us is ever going to be fixed it has to be while we’re all together in one place.

“Well, of course he heard from Claire, but this is Rush we’re talking about. He’s not one to come home for anything less than something that’ll serve his own purposes.”

“That’s not fair.” I almost want to pretend like I wasn’t the one to finally get Rush away from the spotlight.

Mace’s angrier than I thought he’d be. Rush isn’t the bad guy Mace makes him out to be, not really. He’d remember that if it weren’t for me. If Rush hadn’t told him I’d fallen straight into his bed after Mace left me behind in Vegas. I don’t know what I was thinking when I asked Rush to tell him that. Only that I couldn’t bear having to deal with him myself, and getting Rush to lie to him would make sure Mace wanted nothing to do with me. He didn’t even think twice, didn’t consider the implications. Neither of us had. “Yes. He has his moments, but he misses his family. He misses you.”

“And how would you know?” He turns sharply, coming straight at me. “But I guess you can’t have one of us without the other, can you, Hells? We’ve always been some kind of perverted package deal.” He’s in my face, staring me dead in the eye for the longest of minutes.

My heart hammers, and I swear he can hear it. “That’s not true.”

“Shit.” He slides to his knees, cupping my face with his palms. “I shouldn’t have said that. But it’s pretty fucking clear from the way he was looking at you tonight that he still wants you.” He brushes a loose tendril of hair from my face, silently. Staring into me, not my eyes, but my soul. Searching for answers he already knows. Surely he knows. He has to, doesn’t he? I’m way past the point of being able to let go this time.

“Fuck, Hells.” He exhales quickly, moves faster, catching me up in his arms. All hard, burly, corded muscle.
Mine.

His mouth slants across mine, a whisper of what I want, what I need from him.

“Tell me there’s no part of you that isn’t with me, tell me this sense of competition I get when I see you with him is in the past. I’ll believe you. I’ll let it go.”

He tugs me flush to his chest, and I spread my legs on either side of him, my hands to his back, pressing him to me. Even now he’s semi-hard.
That’s mine, too.

I could say a lot of things right now, but I don’t. Words have never meant a lot when it came to us. They’re too easy to say, and too easy to forget. And I don’t want to tell him that he has no competition and then tell him I’m having his child. I don’t want it hanging over our heads as the
only
reason I choose him.

But he has no competition. Never truly did. I would change the past if I could, but I can only work with right here, right now. Standing up, I reach for the zip at the side of my dress and slowly drag it down. There’s a house full of people, including Rush, most of who are still awake, and I don’t care.

I don’t give a flying fuck if they burst in on us. I don’t care if they hear me moaning his name. I simply no longer care what everyone around us thinks about him and I. My insides quake a little at all the explaining we’ll have to do. More so me than him. Of telling my closest friends, my family for all intents and purposes that everything they think they know about me, and Mace, and Rush have been lies. How it was never Rush that broke me. How it was me that kept Rush from coming home. How I married, am still married to Mace. Hell, yet another thing I need to tell him. I let the dress slip from my shoulders.

He’s on his feet too.

Stepping out of the dress, I run my fingers down the buttons on his dress shirt. Undo them one at a time with trembling fingers. It’s not like this isn’t something we’ve done before, but it’s more, because tonight my heart is on display for him. I don’t try to hide it as I look up at him through my lashes.

Maybe he’ll break it again, and I know I won’t get over it a third time. But right now I don’t care. It’ll be worth it.

Mace

She’s undressing me. Taking off my shirt, sliding the fucking thing right off me and letting it drop to the floor.

There is all this shit left unspoken between us. But I know she’s not trying to distract me. Not with the way she’s looking at me. Then she moves into my arms, her hot, lithe body against mine, and whispers in my ear, “Make me scream for you.”

I wanted to hear her use the L word, the same one I’d been thinking of using earlier, but this works too. Hell, it might even be better. And not because she wants me inside her.

God, I get so fucking hard at the idea. My dick throbs, pressed up against the zipper of my suit pants, her hip on the other side of the all too thick right now material.

It’s like she’s telling me we’re no longer a secret. This is legit. Her here with me is true, and it isn’t going to disappear. I’m not going to be left wondering if I imagined her here, or wondering whether we’ll ever be able to get our shit together enough to be a real couple.

That’s all that counts right now.

That tomorrow this will still be real. I won’t have to keep my hands to myself in front of my family. I won’t have to pretend this girl is nothing to me when she’s the world. Yeah, I’m cocky enough that the idea makes me puff up.

She’s dressed in skimpy red lace, and I drop my hand to her ass cheek, run my thumb along the line where her panties hug her ass while I bring her mouth to mine. I go slow, gentle, nibbling along her top lip while she sucks in my bottom one. The sound of our breathing fills the quiet in the room. There’s a low buzz of conversation somewhere in the distance, but it’s a whole world away.

She gets all breathy, anticipating, as she reaches up on tiptoe so she can deepen the kiss. The tip of her tongue sweeps along my lip, darting to mine. I suck it into my mouth, bending over her. I lick at her taste, at her not quite submission.

One of her legs winds around my hip with the angle, and my hardness is no longer at her hip but pressed to her flimsily clad pussy. The burst of heat as she grinds against my cock leave my balls heavy and aching. I groan. The sound gets tangled with her low whimper between our mouths.

“You’re going to cry for me, Hells.” I squeeze her ass as I pick her up. We’re so close to the bed. Two steps, and I toss her on it and climb over her. “My cock in you, hitting all those places you love to feel me so much, pleasuring you until you need to cum so hard you beg for it.”

“I want you,” she practically breathes, but it’s not a whisper. Her words are caught up in desire, and need, and conviction. There’s a softness in her wide eyed gaze, her lip curling gently on one side she puts her hands on my face and pulls me closer, our foreheads touching. I’m pretty sure she’s not just talking about fucking. That these three simple words have meaning that go far beyond the physical.

I cover her, my weight pressing her into the mattress while my hands roam her curves, and I claim her mouth, eating up the things she doesn’t say until she’s writhing beneath me.

Her hands somehow get between us, attacking my belt and the fly on my pants, though I’m almost loathe to allow that much room. But when she has them undone, pushing them from my hips, I jump off her. Only long enough to shed them and my boxer briefs before I land on the bed at her feet.

Her legs together, she props herself up on her elbows and stares at me while I take her in. Soft, creamy expanses of skin and gentle curves against slashes of vivid red. But I want her naked, I want to see the pink of her skin as she flushes with arousal. Hooking my fingers in the front of her panties I drag them down, my knuckles bumping against her clit.

She whimpers, her knees falling apart for me, spreading herself open so I can see the line of her pussy, her lips shimmering with wetness. I lift one ankle at a time as I take her panties and toss them aside.

She spreads wider for me, and I graze the pad of my thumb along the length of her slit, dipping into her with each stroke before circling her clit. And I watch her flush, watch her as she stares at my hand between her legs. While her hips buck to me, I drink her in as her eyelids get heavy and her chest rises and falls more quickly. My dick twitches, leaks a little pre-cum when her hands fist in the sheets and she whispers, “Fuck me, Mace.”

It’s a siren’s call, and I heed it. I settle against the headboard, and pull her on top of me. She’s hot and wet as she slides the length of my cock back and forth between her folds.

And perfect. Fucking perfect. And mine.

Her hands grip my shoulders for leverage as she grinds on me, and I tug down the cups of her bra so I can pinch her nipples, lick them, bite on those sweet points. The sounds she’s making get harsher, louder as the crown of my cock rubs her clit. Then she shifts her hips, and I’m inside her, her swollen pussy gripping me like a vise.

I glance down between us, to see where we’re joined. How her pussy swallows my cock as she lifts herself up and down my length. It makes me want to cum, right there and then. Seeing her take me to the base. My cock surges, my balls tightening. And she’s getting louder, less controlled each time she impales herself on me.

When I look up I find her watching, too. It’s the hottest thing I think I’ve ever seen and I’ve watched a lot of porn in my lifetime. But I guess that’s what happens when you meet the only girl you want when you’re only seventeen.

“You’re fucking breathtaking,” I tell her. “Watching you watch yourself take my cock is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She makes this strangled, warbling cry as I brush my thumb over her clit. “I’m so close, Mace.”

“Good.” I push her back on the bed, falling on top of her. “Touch yourself. Make yourself cum on me.” With the angle change and one of her hands locked with mine, my cock flicks her g-spot with each thrust. It’s fucking heaven, tearing me up inside. “I want to feel you cum on me.”

Her fingers slip between us, frantically rubbing at her clit, slipping deeper between us so she can feel my cock sliding in and out of her while I pump into her. It brings me closer, so fucking close. My nerves are a jumble of pleasure and the pain of holding onto my release as those cries of hers get throaty, hoarse. Then she takes this little shuddered breath, her whole body tightening around me.

And I’m undone. She cries out as she cums. I’m sure it’s loud, high-pitched, the kind of cry that can’t be mistaken for anything other than what it is. Her whole body vibrates under me as she falls apart, but I catch it up, swallow it with my mouth and my tongue, because it’s for me and me alone. Her orgasm triggers mine, her pussy squeezing me greedily as I shoot inside her, milking me of every last drop.

Then I roll to my side, taking her with me. I’m still inside her, still-semi hard. If I stay here long enough I’ll be ready to go again. But I slip out of her with a soft pop and pull the covers up over us, just holding her, one arm wrapped around her waist.

It’s been a long ass night and while I still don’t sleep much she has to be exhausted. And right now I want to watch her sleep. And maybe, tell her all the things I haven’t been able to say yet while she’s awake.

Her hand finds my wrist, locks onto it as she burrows in a little tighter, and I smile. I’m so fucking content.

Then she exhales, and I know she’s on the verge of sleep as her body jerks lightly.

“You know I fucking love you.”

I should probably take it with a large lump of salt, hearing her say that. I shouldn’t take it and run with it as meaning exactly that. But I do. I tuck her hair behind her ear. “I know you do.”

Chelsea

I wake with Mace wrapped around me. One leg draped over mine, his arm over my chest, his cheek pressed into my hair. There’s no fighting how I feel about him anymore, if there was any point at all. I don’t know if I ever stopped loving him in the first place. My chest swells as I shift so I can stare at him. I don’t ever want to give this up.

But there are still things between us. They stretch like an ocean in my mind. There’s the baby, which he doesn’t want. And his brother. I don’t even know how to begin setting things right between them, only that I have to. I’m the gulf between them, the reason Mace can barely stand to be around Rush. Now that he’s home, I need to find a way to get the two talking to each other.

I cup Mace’s face and press my lips to his mouth, careful not to wake him. I know these moments are precious. These times where he sleeps more than normal. I’m loath to climb out of the warm cocoon of his embrace, but I’m not going anywhere. Surely, he has to know that by now. I extricate myself from the weight of his body on mine and make my way to the bathroom, running into Rush in the hallway.

“Hey there, beautiful.” He grins, lifting the coffee cup in his hand to his lips. “So you and Mace are knocking boots again, I hear.”

He winks at me, smirking, and I shove at him. “You don’t need to be crude.” And then I wonder if they all heard us last night. My face heats. “Do you think—?”

“No, I don’t.” He laughs. “But it was always so easy to rile you up.”

“Stop it,” I tell him. We haven’t got long before the whole house rises. Before Mace wakes, and the last place I want to be when that happens is in this disastrous scenario. Because isn’t this where our story always goes to hell in a handcart? “We need to talk about Mace.”

“I don’t want to hear about how he floats your boat, Chels. It’s not my thing.” He takes another swig from his cup.

Rolling my eyes to the ceiling, I inhale. He always was easy-going, and a jokester. “Can you be serious for a minute? When was the last time you talked to your brother?”

“Last night.” He flips his wrist to check his watch. “In the kitchen.”

I slap his arm and he pretends to duck away from me, grimacing. But his eyes dance with humor. Why can’t he ever just be normal? Other people seem to understand when to drop the showiness for being thoughtful, but not him. “No. I meant when was the last time you really talked to him? Not just a Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas over the phone?”

He puts his hands up in surrender, losing the grin. “You know exactly how long it’s been.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” I twist my palms together in front of me, my stomach aching. It’s my fault they fell out so completely. It was hard enough the first time I put Rush between us, but when I asked Rush to lie for me I took it too far. And by the time I realized it, it was too late. Not that he was willing to back down.

“You were a mess, Chelsea.” He wraps an arm around me, tugging me into his side. “He didn’t see you after. I did. I picked up the pieces. That was me who looked after you while you were shell-shocked. I was the one who got you loaded onto the plane and on your way home when you finally stopped crying.”

“I know.” I run my fingers under my eyes. For some reason his words make me want to cry now. Because he did all that for me. Because he sacrificed his relationship with his brother. Because there’s nowhere left to hide if this all falls apart when Mace finds out I’m pregnant. “I still shouldn’t have asked you to lie to your own brother for me.”

“You know I was going to do it anyway,” he whispers, pressing his lips to my hair. “You’re my friend, my family. Besides, I’ve always enjoyed giving him hell.”

“But this isn’t a joke.” I separate myself from him. “This is your brother we’re talking about.”

He shrugs, as though he doesn’t care, but I know better. The two of them have been in competition with each other so long, I don’t think they know how to let it go. Then he exhales, and pushes away from the wall. “It wasn’t the smartest move I ever made. I didn’t think through the implications. I mean, after all you two didn’t even wait for me to leave the state before jumping each other’s bones, and I was happy to let it go.”

“You thought he would too.” I guess.

“Yeah, but apparently I was wrong.” He’s gotten closer, right up in front of me while we’ve been having this conversation. “And since the bastard wanted to be so hypocritical about it I didn’t bother to correct him. You know he deserved it.”

“I’m not so sure.” I whisper, trying not to raise my voice. “But it’s time to fix it. No matter what happens…” I glance at the door behind me. “He needs to know his brother wouldn’t betray him like that. He needs you more than you realize.”

“Yeah.” Rush exhales, as though he too is tired of this war we’ve built between the three of us. And then his lips rise smoothly into a smirk, and I cringe as the door behind me opens.

“Couldn’t wait to have this little tête-à-tête, huh, brother?”

I can feel Mace behind me, a solid wall of heat at my back. One of his hands lands on my shoulder, and I relax into his grip, though he remains tense.

“We were just catching up, weren’t we, Chels?” Rush gazes at me and winks as though it means something. A slight chuckle gets caught in his throat when I scowl at him. “Talking about the time we spent together in Vegas. You remember that, don’t you, Mace?”

Jesus mother-freaking Christ. I swear my eyes almost pop out of my head, and Mace’s fingers momentarily dig into my shoulder. “That’s not what we talked about.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Mace shifts behind me, squaring off as his stance sharpens. “Because there isn’t going to be a repeat. So if that’s what you’re after you may as well go back to your bright lights and overcrowded venues. I’m sure it’s only a matter of hours until you leave anyway.”