The Boy Next Door: A Standalone Small Town Romance (Soulmates Series Book 3) (12 page)

Chapter 22: Connor

“You’re so big,” she breathed.

The sound of her voice made my mouth water. Of course, I’d
always been big. She just had no point of comparison back then so she probably
took me for granted.

But like I said, I was sick of her shit. I was sick of her
making excuses and acting like she didn’t deserve to feel good, to feel loved,
to be the center of attention.

And I’d lied awake all night regretting the fact that I’d let
her walk away.

I sure as hell wasn’t going to listen to her apologize, especially
when I knew she wasn’t sorry.

The face she made last night before she went inside wasn’t the
face of a regretful person. It was the face of someone who was leaving against
their will.

And if she didn’t know her own mind well enough to know that it
was a good thing she kissed me, than I obviously hadn’t kissed her hard enough.

She dragged a hand down my chest, and I raised my face to look
at her.

“You feel so good,” she said, her crystal eyes bouncing back and
forth between mine.

I clenched my jaw and drove into her, relishing how tight and wet
she was as I savored her sweetness on my lips.

She tasted better than I remembered, better than any pussy I’d
eaten in years.

I leaned up and lifted her hips into my lap so she could watch
me fuck her, my swollen dick straining as I slid in and out of her.

Then I moved a hand to work her clit.

I wanted to make her come so hard she’d cry. Lord knows it
wouldn’t be the first time.

She reached her hands over her head, hiding her furrowed brows in
one of her elbows.

“How’s that?” I asked, her clit swelling for me. “Are you sorry
about this, too? Are you sorry about how hard you’re going to come on my dick?”

She shook her head.

“That’s what I thought,” I said, dropping her legs to my sides
and sliding my hands under her back.

She moved like a rag doll as I rolled back at the top of the
steps until she was straddling me.

“Now apologize with your pussy,” I said, smacking her ass.

She fell forward so her face was just inches from mine.

I grabbed her ass in my hands and rocked her up and down my
dick, crushing her clit against the base of my shaft between every thrust

She reached out to steady herself, placing her hands on both
sides of my face so her tits swung over me.

I grabbed her face with one hand. “Come for me, Laney. Coat my
dick like you used to.”

She kept her eyes on me and licked her plump lips.

“That’s it,” I said, watching her face as I felt her pussy start
to shudder. “Give it to me.”

She started grinding against me like my body remembered, her
weight all the way down on my cock.

“I’m coming,” she said, letting out a moan that was music to my
ears.

When she began to spasm, I rolled us onto our sides, fucking her
clenching pussy with all the energy my hips could muster.

She kept her eyes on me as she jerked in my arms, spilling over
my dick as I burst inside her.

“Fuck,” she breathed, blinking her heavy eyelids at me.

“Fuck is right,” I said, trying to catch my breath as her
pulsing pussy milked my dick.

“You were incredible,” she said.

“I always thought you brought that out in me,” I said, pulling
out of her and rolling onto my back.

“Was it something I said?” she asked.

I rolled my head towards her.

“In case I want to say it again.”

One side of my mouth curled up, and I let my eyes trace the
curves of her breasts and hips as she lay on her side.

“I don’t really know what to make of what we just-”

“Just shut up,” I said, suddenly conscious of a carpet burn
sensation in my knees.

“You can’t really get away with that afterwards, ya know?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Not everything needs to be analyzed,
Laney.”

“You think talking about this will ruin it?”

“I think talking about this will be a huge waste of your breath
because there’s no blood in my brain right now.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Though I do want to know what the hell you think you’re doing showing
up like that.”

“Like what?”

“With bedroom eyes in a come fuck me t-shirt.”

She laughed. “I was deliberately trying to look like shit,
actually.”

“What?”

“So my apology would seem more sincere.”

I laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know where to start.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Start with why you’re fucking laughing
at me.”

I sighed. “First of all, you did a shitty job looking like crap.”

She pursed her lips.

“And second of all, that was the least sincere, most bullshit
apology I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

“Well you didn’t exactly let me finish.”

“I didn’t have to,” I said. “It was bullshit through and
through.”

“It wasn’t bullsh-”

“Look, Laney. You don’t have to be honest with me about
everything,” I said. “I get that that was a privilege I enjoyed when we were
together back in the day. But the least you could do is not go out of your way
to lie to me.”

She swallowed.

“Which is exactly what you just tried to do.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “Before you so gallantly stopped
me from making an ass of myself?”

“Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures.”

Her cheeks were still bright pink. “Those were some pretty
extreme measures all right.”

“You’re welcome.”

She laughed. “How selfless of you.”

“What can I say?” I leaned up to rest on my elbows. “I’m a
selfless guy like that.”

“You always were.”

“No kidding,” I said. “God knows that’s not the first time I’ve
had to fuck you to shut you up.”

“How can you tell if I’m genuinely annoying or just being
annoying because I want sex?”

“It’s not in my interest to know the difference.”

“Mmm.” She sat up and looked around. “So now what?”

I reached for my pants. “I suppose I should give you the rest of
the tour since you haven’t seen the upstairs yet.”

“Sounds good,” she said, rising to her feet. “And in case I
forget to mention it, I absolutely love what you’ve done with the landing.”

Flashback: Connor

Laney pulled some bread from the end of her sandwich and threw
it down by Waddles where she was poking around the water’s edge.

I crumpled the wrapper from my own sub and stuffed it in the
outside pocket of my backpack.

“Do you think Waddles speaks duck?” she asked, her eyes on the
speckled brown bird.

“Hard to say,” I said, leaning back on the blanket and wriggling
my back to get comfortable on the pebbly ground beside the lake.

“I like to think she does,” Laney said. “I like to think the
wild ducks are always inviting her to come hang out and she’s like, ‘naw, maybe
later.’”

“And what if she means it?”

“You mean what if she takes off with a bunch of ducks someday?”
she asked. “Or if she finds a handsome mallard who she thinks she’d be happier
with?”

“Yeah.” I pulled my sunglasses from where they were hanging in
the front of my shirt and slipped them on so I could look at her without being
bothered by the glare off the lake.

“I guess I’d have to be happy for her,” she said, throwing
another piece of bread. “I mean, she is a wild animal.”

I laughed. “I don’t know how wild she is. Wasn’t she watching TV
with Helly when I brought you home yesterday?”

Laney shrugged. “I don’t think that makes her domesticated. I
think that just means she’s lazy.”

I watched Laney pop the last bite of her sandwich in her mouth.
She was wearing a baggy tank top and shorts that were so short the pockets
poked out the front.

“We should probably head back,” she said. “I haven’t done any of
my homework yet, and math always takes me six times longer than I think it’s
going to.”

“It’s not because you’re stupid, ya know?” I said, sitting up and
putting our picnic snacks back in my bag. “It’s because you stop in the middle
to do your nails and call Amber and watch American Idol.”

“Not true.”

“If you say so,” I said. “But I bet if you did your math
homework at my house while I did mine, you’d get it done in at least half the
time.”

“As if I could trust you to not distract me.”

I pulled her close and she straddled my lap, twirling her
fingers through my messy pile of blond hair.

“I suppose you’re right,” I said, kissing her. “But I’d leave you
alone for at least a few minutes because you’re so cute when you concentrate.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

Waddles splashed in the shallow water, and we both looked in her
direction.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing near a piece of drift wood on
the sandy bank.

Laney craned her neck in that direction and stood up. “I don’t
know.” She kicked her flip flops over, slipped them on, and walked over to the
item in question.

I watched her crouch down and dig around it.

“It’s a bottle,” she said.

“No kidding.”

She squinted at me.

I craned my neck back. “What?”

“There’s a message in it.”

“What are the chances?” I asked, feigning surprise as best I
could.

“Pretty slim since I can see all around the lake from here,” she
said, pulling it out of the sand with two hands. “So I doubt it’s from a
shipwreck.”

“Can you tell what the message says?”

“Something tells me you can,” she said, cocking her head. “Even
from so far away.”

Fuck. Why did she have to be such a smartass? I stood up and
walked over.

“I can’t get the cork out,” she said, pulling it with her
fingers.

“It must’ve been buried there a long time.”

She made a skeptical face and handed it to me.

I pretended it was more difficult to open than it was before
finally twisting the cork out of the clear glass bottle.

She tipped it over and reached a small finger inside to try and
snag the note.

“This is so exciting,” I said.

“I hope it’s a map to buried treasure,” she said. “Then I won’t have
to go home and do my homework.”

She wiggled it out, dropped the bottle, and unrolled the
homemade scroll.

I watched her mouth curl into a smile as her eyes scanned my invitation
to prom.

“If only I knew who left it here,” she said. “So I could give
them my answer.”

I groaned and rolled my eyes.

“Just kidding, babe,” she said, draping her arms over my
shoulders and pressing her lithe frame against me. “Of course I’ll go to prom
with you.”

“Well that’s a relief,” I said, giving her a kiss. “For a second
there I thought I’d have to rebury the damn thing and hope someone else came
along.”

“Good one.”

I shrugged. “I try.”

“We should celebrate.”

“What did you have in mind?” I asked, slipping my hands under
her shirt.

“Hmm.” She looked around. “I’ve always wondered what was on the
other side of that bush over there.”

“That’s so funny,” I said, lifting her up. “So have I.”

She wrapped her legs around my waist and held on tight as I
walked into the tall grass and laid her down.

And if I wasn’t already delighted she’d said yes, I certainly
was ten minutes later.

Chapter 23: Laney

I felt giddy and smitten, and that was completely inappropriate
considering the fact that I was a homeless person who was supposed to be
recovering from a breakup and looking for gainful employment.

Instead, I was indulging in nostalgia by poking around Connor’s
room after having cheeky sex in his parents’ house in a spot we’d never done it
before.

It was surreal.

“I can’t believe you still have them all,” I said, running my
fingers along the spines of the Choose Your Own Adventure Books.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked from where he was sitting on the end
of his bed.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“My parents always threatened that they were going to get rid of
my stuff, but I guess it was never a priority.”

My eyes dropped to the next shelf where a row of cheap little
league trophies stood in a row. “Most Improved?” I asked, holding one up.

“They got sick of giving me MVP.”

“Wow,” I said, setting the trophy back down. “That couldn’t have
made you popular with the other kids.”

“The kids were fine with it,” he said, leaning back on straight
arms. “It was the parents who took issue.”

I walked over to his desk. It looked smaller than I remembered, but
the ticket stubs I’d paper clipped to the lampshade were untouched. “I forgot we
saw some of these movies.”

“Some of them were forgettable.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “The vodka we used to sneak in
probably didn’t help.”

“It helped us find the comedy in movies that weren’t supposed to
be funny, though.”

“It’s a miracle we only got kicked out twice,” I said. “By that
old usher guy- what was his name? Something with an S.”

Connor nodded. “I forgot about him. God he used to say the
craziest shit to us.”

I laughed. “I think he had some kind of Tourette’s.”

“He’d never get away with talking to kids like that now. Kids
are too precious these days.”

I turned around. “I don’t understand how they’re supposed to
grow a thick skin if they’re not allowed to rock climb over pavement and get cussed
at by strangers.”

“They’re not. They’re supposed to get coddled forever.”

I shook my head. “But that’s how you end up with college
students saying they don’t want to be graded anymore because it puts them under
too much stress.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. We’ve created an entire generation
that can’t cope with feedback.”

I leaned against the desk. “I suppose we were lucky in some ways.”

“No shit. I asked Dave the other day if he’d ever spanked any of
his kids, and he laughed until he cried.”

“Because it’s so out of the question?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not all for
corporal punishment or anything, but I got spanked and I turned out okay.”

I craned my neck forward. “You got spanked?”

He nodded. “Twice”

“For what?”

“Once for kicking my babysitter in the shin.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I had my cleats on, and she said something mean about Dave’s
older sister and he just stood there.”

“And the other time?” I asked.

“I put firecrackers in my teacher’s mailbox.”

I furrowed my brows. “What?”

“It’s not like he was anywhere near it when I set them off.”

“So how’d you get caught?”

He laughed. “He was watching from the window. Saw the whole
thing. My dad knew before I even got home.”

“Shit.” Connor knew better than to ask if I got spanked. He knew
more about my childhood than even Helly, though I’d told her a lot about it
over the years. Still, I would’ve traded some spanks for the verbal abuse I got
at that age in a heartbeat. “Is that where you learned it then?”

“What?” he asked.

“The spanking?”

He leaned an ear towards me. “What are you talking about?”

I folded my arms. “I’m talking about the one you gave me twenty
minutes ago.”

His face turned red. “I can honestly say that had nothing to do
with my dad- or my childhood- and everything to do with the fact that I was so
excited to see your ass after all these years I didn’t know what to do with
myself.”

“Well, like you, I certainly learned my lesson.”

“Good,” he said. “Because I won’t hesitate to smack that ass
again if I need to.”

It was my turn to look at the ground and blush.

“Speaking of which, is your back okay?” he asked.

“My back? Yeah, why?”

“Because I think I might have sustained some minor carpet burns
on my knees,” he said, reaching forward and covering them with his hands.

I laughed. “That’ll teach you to fuck on the landing.”

He shrugged. “It hadn’t been christened yet. Besides, I didn’t
know whether I should turn towards this room, where we used to always hang
out-”

My eyes swept the ceiling. I could’ve drawn this room from
memory and gotten everything in its rightful place.

“Or my parent’s room, but being with you made me forget that it
was mine now.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “As long as you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Way finer than I should be considering the
circumstances anyway.”

“Well, that’s all most of us can hope for, isn’t it?”

The doorbell rang a moment later, and Sarge came bounding out of
the room down the hall and thumped down the steps.

“Where’s he been?” I asked.

“Sleeping,” he said. “He likes a little nap after his first feed
of the day.”

“Who doesn’t?” I asked. “You expecting someone?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

I followed him downstairs and watched him toss a tennis ball towards
the back of the house before opening the door.

“Helly,” Connor said. “Hi.”

Helly looked from Connor to me to Connor to me. “Laney. I
thought you were still sleeping.”

I descended the rest of the stairs. “I just popped over this
morning to tell Connor… that I remembered something I forgot.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Your shirt’s on inside out.”

“Oops,” I said, wanting to disappear. “What’s up?”

“I’ve been working quietly in the garden so I wouldn’t wake my
precious granddaughter.” She shot me a look. “And I’ve just found some newborn kittens
behind the shed.”

Connor raised his eyebrows.

“They look healthy enough to me,” she said, turning to Connor.
“But I thought maybe you could give them a once over in case any of them needs
anything their mother can’t give them.”

“I’d be happy to check them out,” Connor said. “Give me a few
minutes to let the dog out and grab my stuff, and I’ll be right over.”

“Thanks so much,” she said. “And sorry to bother you.”

“It’s no bother, Helly,” he said. “I’m glad you asked.”

“Okay then. I’ll see you shortly,” she said, stepping back off
the stoop. “And it’s probably a good idea if Laney stays here,” she said,
failing to suppress a smile. “You know, so you don’t get lost on the way.”