Dirty Little Mistake (Dirty #2) (20 page)

When I pulled away, I did it slowly.  I traced the ownership of my lips with my fingers and met her gaze.

“Pancake. Brenna. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have told you to go. It was the last thing I wanted. Please forgive me.”

Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes.  Her mouth opened and for a moment my heart dropped to my stomach.  I was sure she was going to say something that would tear me in two.

Instead, she pulled me to her, kissing me hard.  Her nails bit into my shoulders, then my back.  Her fingers moved from my skin to my jeans and she fumbled to unfasten them.  Once she had the button free, she slipped the zipper open and thrust her hand under the waistband of my underwear.  Her warm grip closed over my cock. 

She stroked me firmly.  Lovingly. 

If I thought I’d been hard before, I was rock solid now.

She only stayed there for a few moments, though, before pushing my jeans down from my hips.  She slid forward.  It was a torturous move.  Her body dragged across mine as she did it.  Her beaded nipples coasted down the length of my chest, followed by her mouth. 
As she hit the ground, her sweet, succulent lips closed over my erection.

“Oh. God,” I groaned.

My hands sought her hair.  They dug into the softness as she took me in a little further.  In and out, each time a little deeper.  Her tongue teased the tip, sending sharp heat through me.  She circled outward and caressed the length of me with her lips.

I was close to the edge, near enough that I wasn’t sure I could stop.

“You have to stop,” I commanded.

She paused and it was torturous. “Please, Ridley. Let me.”

She drew my hardness in once more.  That was it. 

Holy fuck.

A satisfied growl tore from my throat as I exploded in her mouth.  Still she sucked, taking in each pulse until I had nothing left to give.

I reached for her and drew her up to cradle her in my arms.  I breathed in deeply, trying to calm the raggedness of my lungs.

“Ridley?” Brenna wrapped her voice around my name in a way that made me ache.

“Yes, sweetheart?” My reply was as rough as sandpaper and as raw as my heart.

“Can I come home with you?”

“Pancake, you can have anything you want.”

I scooped her into my arms and kicked the tailgate shut.  Then I set her in the middle seat, climbed inside and fastened both our seatbelts.  By the time I got the engine started, she was curled under my arm, fast asleep and the truth hit me.

I thought I’d been laying claim to her, making her mine.  I was wrong.  I was hers.  All hers.  She owned every piece of me.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Brenna

I woke up slowly, nestled into the perfect crook of Ridley’s well-muscled arm.  I breathed in his masculine scent and trailed my hand down his abs, pausing at the ink between his bellybutton and the left side of his pelvic V.
  I hadn’t notice the tattoo before, but now I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. 

A tiny teddy bear was clearly visible, but the lettering that accompanied it was a little hard to make out in the dim light of pre-dawn.  I traced the word with the tips of my fingers, trying to read it.

“It says Maya in Gaelic lettering.”

Ridley’s deep voice rumbled pleasantly against my cheek.

“For your sister,” I replied, remembering the story he’d told me.

“Mmmhmm.” He rolled toward me and drew my hand to the same spot on the other side. “This one says Ginnie for my mother. That flower just above it is an azalea. Her favourite.”

A large lump formed in my throat. “And your aunt?”

Ridley smiled and cupped my che
ek. “You have me all figured out, don’t you?”

His words caused a stab of guilt to penetrate my heart and I shoved it down.

I will tell him the truth. I just want this moment. This one moment.

“Here,” Ridley said and drew me closer by pulling my arms around his waist and pressing my hands into his lower back.

I drew in a sharp breath as he pressed his body flush against mine.  Every one of his hard lines matched up with one of my soft curves.  And there were a lot of hard lines.

“Can you feel it?” His voice was husky.

I ran my fingers along his underwear band, wondering if it was supposed to be textured in some way.  It took one of his chuckles and a face-reddening moment to realize he was teasing me.  I tried to let him go but he held me in place firmly.

“It’s a copy of the ivy vines that climbed up the side of my aunt’s house. They were the thing she woke up to every morning and the thing she fell asleep to every night. She had her bed put under the window, just so she could see them in her last days.”

I looked up at Ridley’s face.  I had a desperate need to memorize the intense emotion in his eyes.  The tenderness.  The hurt.  The longing.

I tipped my face toward his and placed a gentle kiss on his lips.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked softly.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to break my heart.”

Oh, God. Is that what I’m going to do?

My own heart had that full, brittle feeling that let me know it might shatter too.

How did I let it get this far?

But Ridley didn’t give me a chance to respond.  His mouth crashed down on mine, demanding and passionate, and I was powerless to resist.  My lips parted while he devoured every corner of them.

My hands travelled the width of his shoulders and the length of his back.  In the same way that my eyes wanted to in
grain his face into my memory, my fingers sought to ingrain his body to it as well.  I ran them through his shock of too-long hair and over his collarbone and around his pecs and then back to his tattoos.

“Brenna.” My name was a thick moan. “Sweetheart.”

He’d begun his own slow, loving exploration of my body.

His lips and his fingers.

My neck to my hips.

The sweet, heat-inducing ministrations made me ache.  They made me writhe.  They made me forget everything but Ridley.

His thumbs and his tongue.

My mouth to my breasts.

My stomach to my knees.

“Oh!” I gasped as his teeth found my inner thigh.

He traced the outside of my hot, wet sex with his mouth, then his fingers, then his mouth once more.  He flattened his hand and pushed his palm against my clit in an agonizingly slow circle.  I trembled with longing, my knees shook with yearning.

And then he stopped and rested his palm casually on my hip, turning anticipation to torment.

“Pancake?”

I could barely form a mumbled reply. “Mmm?”

“Tell me you want me,” Ridley commanded.

“I do!”

He dragged himself up the bed and positioned himself over top of me.  Maddeningly, his boxer briefs were still in place.  I tried to yank them down.  But in a deft move, he grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head while still managing to keep himself propped up on one elbow.

“You do what, PC?” he asked in a sexy, teasing voice.

“I want you.”

He kissed my mouth softly. “Tell me again.”

“I want you. I need you. Please, Ridley.”

“I like it when you say my name.”

“Ridley,” I breathed.

He rolled to his back, taking me with him.  A small, pleasure-filled cry escaped from my lips as my legs straddled his hips and his still-covered hardness drove into me.  I had to have him.

This time when I reached for his underwear, he let me pull them off.  His erection sprung free, making me moan once more.

“Take it, Brenna,” Ridley growled gently. “Take
me
.”

It was all the encouragement I need
ed.

I put one hand around the base of his cock and the other in the centre of his chest and I eased myself onto him.  My fingers released and I rocked forward, taking him further in.  He thrust upward too and the motion sent a shockwave of pleasure through me.

“Ridley,” I gasped. “Oh, God.”

“You like that?” he teased.

“Yes!”

He pushed up again.  My toes curled and I cried out with the nearly unbearable sensation of having him fill me completely.  In reply, I circled my hips over his, making him groan.  I went slowly at first, and then with increasing fervour.

His hands were everywhere on my skin.  Stroking.  Caressing.  Rubbing.  Heat seared each spot he touched and soon my body was on fire with the attention.

Each rhythmic thrust was agonizingly ecstatic.  Our bodies were perfectly in time, our breaths in sync.

My insides grew tighter and tighter too and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it in much longer.

“Come with me, Brenna!” Ridley called.

And with a final lift of his hips that pushed the full length of him into me, we both cried out.  My core released as he pulsed inside of me, sweet and satisfying.  He slid his fingers into my hair and brought me in for a deep kiss.  At last we rolled apart and he tucked me back into his side.

I said his name again, this time in an awed whisper. “Ridley.”

He was silent for a long moment, and when he spoke again, his words brought back the crushing pain in my chest.

“If I confessed to you that I wouldn’t mind waking up like this every morning, would it scare you away?” he asked.

“No.”

It wasn’t quite a lie.  It didn’t scare me.  It terrified me.  But not for the reason he might think.  I knew that once I confessed about Ian and the baby, Ridley wasn’t going to want to wake up like this.  I’d be lucky if he ever looked at me again.

Tears pricked at my eyes.

“Hey.” Ridley’s concerned voice was punctuated by his thumb sliding across my damp cheek. “Are you crying?”

I met his gaze through blurred eyes.  I needed time to compose myself.

“Do you think you could you get me a glass of water?”

He frowned, but kissed my cheek and nodded. “Sure. Be right back.”

As soon as he’d slipped into a pair of sweats and left the room, I swung my legs out of the bed and grabbed Ridley’s
T-shirt from the night stand.  I inhaled.  It smelled exactly the way he did.  And I knew it was selfish, but I wanted a part of him with me when I made my shameful confession.

As I started to slide it on, an angry shout and a crash sent me running.  I paused outside the kitchen when Ridley’s furious voice carried out into the hall.

“You want to tell me where the fuck you were last night, man?” he demanded.

“Right here.”

“You want to tell me where the fuck you
should
have been?”

“I dunno what you mean.”

“Didn’t you take a girl to my hotel last night?”

“Oh. That. I was gonna
—”

Ian’s statement was cut off by a resounding smack and another crash.

“You hit me!” Ian yelled.

“Say something about her tits again,” Ridley replied coldly. “I fucking dare you.”

“What the fuck, man?”

“You. Are. An. Asshole,” Ridley told him. “You took a girl to a hotel room with the intention of banging her. Fine. A fire breaks out and you run off and leave her. Not so fine. You don’t even bother to come looking for her or stop by her house and see if she’s okay? Truly a douchebag move.”

“You know what, Rid?” Ian said. “You have this high-and-mighty attitude, but you’re no peach yourself. Even if any of what you just said were true…You’re worse than I am.”

“How do you figure?”

“At least I
know
what kind of man I am.”

“I know who I am,” Ridley snarled.

My heart dropped.  I knew I should announce my presence – that whatever Ian was about to say was going to be bad.  But my feet were made of lead.

“Do you?” Ian countered. “Let me remind you how this went down. First, you tell me to stay away from Brenna, who’s a nice girl and pretty enough but not the kind I’d normally even look at twice. Then you want me to date her. Really, I would’
ve just asked her out as a favor, but you want to pay me, so okay. I agree take your five fucking grand because maybe there’s something going on in your head that I don’t know about. I do it. I be
me
. Because you’re my goddamned family and I respect you even when I don’t understand you. But you have never – not once – given me the benefit of the doubt. I would never have slept with her under false pretences. Can you say the same thing?”

Finally, my feet moved.  I stepped into the kitchen.  Ian sat on the floor, covered in eggs, and Ridley stood over him with his hands closed into fists.

A tiny cry popped out of my mouth, making both men spin in my direction.

I focused on Ian because I couldn’t bear to look at Ridley. “Is all of that true?”

Ridley reacted first. “Brenna - ”

I cut
him off. “I’m talking to Ian.”

Ian shrugged. “Sorry, babe. You’re hot, but bros before hoes, right?”

“Bros before hoes,” I repeated softly.

“Why can’t you just shut up, Ian?” Ridley demanded.

“You
told
me to be a douche,” he replied.

“I didn’t tell you to be a douche!”

“You said for me to be my usual self and she’d tell me to fuck right off. And the fact that she’s standing here in
your
clothes with that just-fucked hair tells me you won.”

My eyes sought Ridley’s.  It was an easy out.  I knew
it just as I knew I should come clean.  But I grasped at my hurt and channeled my anger right at him.

“Just so we’re clear. You paid him to date me and not sleep with me. Then
you
slept with me. How much of everything else you said – or did – was utter bullshit?”

“None of it, Pancake.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Let me explain.”

“I don’t want an explanation.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he told me.

“No? Because I’m not sure how else to take this.”

“Please, let’s just talk about this,” Ridley begged.

I forced down the urge to give in to his pain-filled plea.  It was better this way. 

“We have nothing to talk about,” I snapped.

And before I could change my mind, and before Ridley could see how much it was hurting me, too, I turned and fled.