The Copper Valley Bro Code Series: Volume 1, page 43
Holy honeybees. My knees drop open, and I reach under my shirt to rub at one aching nipple. “You think you’re any good with dessert?”
“I’m terrible. I’m going to need hours and hours of practice.”
I’m going to need some serious private time with my fingers in a minute here. I pinch my nipple, and a hot arrow of pleasure rockets from my breast to my lady bits. “Hours?”
“Hours. With my face between your legs.”
I whimper.
Because what are words again?
“Dammit, I’m doing this wrong. I was supposed to talk about how much I want to kiss that mouth again first.”
“Not…wrong,” I manage.
I can hear him smiling. “Sarah Dempsey, are you turned on?”
My head drops back, my eyes squeeze shut, and my hand drifts lower. “Just…little.”
“Oh. Only a little? I’m hard as a cast iron frying pan.”
And now I’m picturing him with an erection straining his black boxers, and there’s an overexcited buzz happening in my pussy. My pussy is the yapping chihuahua of pussies right now, wagging its tail and calculating a plan to ride across town with my head hanging out the window so I can attack his boner.
I whimper.
“I’m doing this wrong,” he says. “You want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Ah. So you would want me to kiss those lips again. And strip you down to your bare skin. And suck on your earlobes.”
I hate having my earlobes touched, but offering them as tribute if that’s what Beck wants to suck on sounds utterly divine. Especially if I got to hang on to his broad shoulders and bury my face in his hot skin and taste the very essence of him. “What…about…you?”
“There’s not a single inch of my entire body that wouldn’t be completely turned on if you were touching me.”
I smile. It’s a breathy smile, and I want to rub my clit so bad.
“I really want to kiss you again,” he whispers. “And I want to peel you out of your clothes and worship your body and learn what you like and taste you and stroke you and love you until you can’t remember a time when you were unhappy about anything.”
I suck in a shuddery breath, my skin alternating between flaming hot and icy cold. “I don’t think you actually need lessons in anything.”
“Don’t rob me of my fantasies here. Any of them. Not the ones in my bedroom. Or my hot tub. Or on my patio. On a picnic blanket surrounded by fried chicken and biscuits and peach cobbler.”
I laugh softly while I rub my jeans over my clit. “Strawberry shortcake.”
“Donuts.” He groans softly. “Banana pudding donuts.”
I picture him using a donut as a cock ring, and I’m suddenly so turned on that my panties are dripping, but I’m also laughing.
It’s a weird mix, but I like it. “Cream cheese Danish,” I say.
“Fuck, Sarah, warn a man.” He blows out an audible breath, and I wonder if he’s honestly as turned on as I am. His ragged breath suggests he might be.
“Okay. Control. Okay,” he rasps. “Pepperoni pizza.”
“Mint tea and gazelle cookies.”
“If I were next to you, I’d be slamming into you so hard right now, neither one of us would be able to walk tomorrow.”
It’s not his words.
It’s the way his voice has gone completely hoarse and shaky, like he’s a man on the verge of losing control.
“Are you touching yourself?” I whisper.
“Do you want me to?” Gritted. Harsh. Like he’s not in control.
“Yes.”
“I wish you were touching me.”
“I wish you were touching me too.”
“Where?”
“My nipples are very sensitive.”
“Sarah,” he groans.
The bathroom door suddenly jolts against my back. “Sarah! SARAH! The booty dance! TELL BECK WE NEED THE BOOTY DANCE!”
The game.
Shit. Dammit. Hell.
I leap up, my legs wobbly, my nipples pebbled so hard they’ve probably turned inside out, my head light, my heart pounding. “No! No booty dance!” I shriek.
“Sarah?” Beck’s voice is pained, half-moan, half despair.
And then there’s silence. For half a second before Mackenzie pops the door and peers in at me with one eyeball.
One very wide blue eyeball.
“Oh my god,” she whispers.
I make some motions with my hands that I hope mean go away and do not tell my parents and I might hate you right now but I’ll still love you tomorrow.
“I mean, if that’s what it takes for them to win, I guess you’re going to be really fucking satisfied by October. Good for you, girlfriend. But can you text me that video?”
“No!”
“Okay, okay. Sheesh. Just asking.” She pulls the door shut again. “No, Judson, she’s taking a bath. Leave her alone. She gets all shrieky when people see her naked.”
“Did you use the bath salts we sent for Valentine’s Day?” my mom calls.
I drop my head to the bathroom door, suddenly missing orgasms more than I have at any time in the past year.
“I owe you something better than chocolates for this, don’t I?” Beck says in my ear, making me jump.
“You totally got off, didn’t you?”
“You like waffles? Or omelets? I make a killer waffle-omelet sandwich. I could come make you breakfast in the morning. Or right now.”
“It’s fine. I have a vibrator.”
“Fucking hell, I’m going to be thinking about that all night.”
I wince. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m going to enjoy the hell out of these fantasies.”
“You’re adding funnel cakes and barbecue to them, aren’t you?”
“Sarah Dempsey, I’m going to talk you into marrying me one day.”
I laugh.
He doesn’t.
Probably because he’s salivating over the idea of me masturbating while surrounded by food.
“You sure you have plans tomorrow night? We could head out to my place in Shipwreck. I’ve got a telescope out there.”
My heart squeezes behind my still tingling nipples. “Maybe next weekend?”
“Done. You’re on my calendar. No backing out now.”
“Did you just text Charlie?”
“Nope. I put it on my calendar all by myself. Right next to eat at that Indian place down the street. But I can move that.”
“Wait. Which Indian place? The one with the garlic naan that you can smell baking halfway through Reynolds Park?”
“Is there any other Indian place in this city?”
“Technically, yes.”
“It’s a date. Indian, then Shipwreck. And banana pudding donuts.”
“OH MY GOD, WE WON! WE WON IN EXTRA INNINGS! WE WON WE WON WE WON!”
I smile at the white wooden door and Mackenzie’s shrieks in the living room. “Thanks for being the Fireballs’ good luck charm again,” I say softly.
“Anytime. Especially if it gives me an excuse to talk to you.”
The belly flutters join the warmth in my heart and the frustration in my lady bits.
This feels real.
And fun.
And easy.
I just hope it can last.
30
Beck
I’m so hyped up Friday morning, I can’t even concentrate on Donkey Kong. I keep hearing Sarah’s ragged breath and soft gasps, that need in her voice, and I don’t even want second breakfast.
I want to go find her.
But I’m stuck in meetings with my team that I can’t get out of by frying another motherboard, especially since my coffee this morning is from a local shop down the street that uses cinnamon sticks as stir sticks and it’s delicious and I’d have to go get a different cup of coffee to dump on my computer if I don’t want to cry while I’m doing it.
Plus, Bruce has decided that Operation: Fix Beck’s Reputation has gone so well that we need to jump on getting Vaughn signed up for doing a business partnership around socks.
Yes, socks.
“It’s an easy market,” he insists. “Who else is doing designer socks? And we could pull the girl into it. Those shots of you looking at her while she’s making that donkey face with the penis shoulder are exactly the sort of thing that would sell if you were sitting on a couch together, showing off your socks.”
“Donkey face with the penis shoulder?”
Charlie slides me her phone, and I look down to see Sarah laughing so hard her mouth’s open and her eyes are squeezed shut, and somehow her braid’s hanging over her shoulder but looks fuzzy enough that okay, yeah, if you have a dirty mind, it could possibly look like a penis, but Christ, you really have to twist it.
“She looks like she’s having fun,” I say.
“Whatever.”
“Not whatever,” I growl, and I don’t give two shits that I’m currently contemplating asking Judson if we can hire some of those Euranians to go toss flaming poop bombs on Bruce’s front step, because I’m not doing a business partnership over socks. “Her name is Sarah—”
“Serendipity, technically,” Hestia says.
“Her name is Sarah,” Charlie says. “And I’m violently opposed to the idea of trying to bring profit into this partnership with Vaughn. It’s for kids, not for growing already overinflated bank accounts.”
“Vehemently,” Hestia corrects.
“No, violently.”
“Honey, you’re just the assistant,” Bruce says.
“She’s a fucking genius, and you’re getting on my nerves,” I growl.
Huh.
I get why Judson’s doing it.
It feels really fucking good to growl when you’re pissed.
Everyone goes silent. It’s four talking heads on my video screen, all gaping at me.
Except Charlie.
She’s glaring at my computer screen like she’s squishing Bruce’s head with her mind.
“We’re not asking Vaughn to go into socks with me,” I tell Bruce. “Next.”
There’s another hour of mind-numbing business discussions about some small-time partnerships that I have with a rising celebrity chef, an Instagrammer, and a tea company—my team was pissed about that one, but dude, sometimes a guy on the road needs a solid cup of chamomile, and Snore-Tea fucking rocks—and by the time we hang up, I don’t want food, or to go take a run, or to go hang out at my parents’ house and see who’s around from the neighborhood.
I want to see Sarah.
Her phone goes to voicemail.
I send a text, but that doesn’t even show as read.
“No,” Charlie says when I grab my keys.
“I’m going out to get a burger.”
“You’re going out to drive past Sarah’s house and her office.”
“And to get a burger.” Two burgers. Or five. I don’t actually know what her favorite toppings are, because I’m pretty fucking certain she ordered that burger last night for me, and while she ate it, that doesn’t mean it was her favorite.
I need to figure out what her favorite burger is.
And what she likes on her pizza.
And if she eats whipped cream straight out of the can.
Fuck, I’m getting a boner again.
“She’s visiting a client site today,” Charlie informs me. “Doing her actual job. And I might not make it another week before Bruce drives me to quit, but you can be damn certain I’ll be suing you for hostile work conditions if I quit.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “I’ll call him. Don’t quit. I’ll give you my firstborn and a peanut butter factory.”
“You’re not having children, and the beauty of peanut butter is that I’m not stuck with one kind for eternity. Tell. Bruce. To. Knock. It. Off.”
She looks pointedly at my phone.
“Okay, okay. Right now. I’ll call him right now.”
It’s easier to chew his ass out about respecting everyone on the team—including Sarah—when I realize this guy could actually have reason to talk to her, or my mom, or my sister one day. He reminds me he’s done a shit-ton of work to help me launch and keep not just the RYDE line going strong, but also my loungewear and body care lines, and I remind him that that’s exactly what I pay him to do, and if he fucks up this foundation with Vaughn by trying to weasel more business out of him when I’ve specifically told him not to, I also have a crackpot legal team and I know he’s been cheating on his wife.
I don’t actually know that until he blusters that I’m full of shit and trips over his tongue daring me to prove it.
Call it a gut feeling.
When I hang up, I feel like shit, because I hate chewing people out.
I find Charlie in a small office across the hall. “Why didn’t you tell me a year ago he was this much of an ass?”
“He wasn’t until his last mistress dumped him. Now he’s seeing some twenty-three-year-old who thinks he’s richer than you, and the stress of going broke pretending is getting to him.”
I gape at her.
“But I’ve had Hank monitoring your bank accounts and any attempts to make unauthorized transactions, plus your legal team has combed through his employment agreement, so you’re fine.”
And now my eyes are going to fall out of my head.
“Beck. When we’re on the road, you’re going twenty hours a day. You don’t play the diva, you don’t tell the photographers to wrap it up, you don’t complain about living on watercress and four black beans a day, you make us stop so you can play soccer with random kids in public parks, and you give me raises every single month. My last boss slapped my ass regularly, would pitch a fit if his coffee wasn’t exactly 183 degrees, and ultimately quit paying my salary because he ran out of money after one of his mistresses discovered he was cheating on her and hacked his bank accounts. It’s in my best interest to make sure you can still pay me.”
I’ve been in this business a long time. Her story doesn’t surprise me, and that pisses me off. I hold out a fist. “You’re a total badass, and I hope you punched him in the nuts when you quit.”
She bumps me. “I got to quit. That was good enough. Plus, I don’t actually like to punch men when they’re down, and his second mistress put him in the hospital with a bleeding kidney. Don’t piss off a woman wearing stilettos. Also, you have a phone call with Vaughn at eleven—don’t piss him off either, because he’s letting his people keep working with our people to keep this going—and Tripp’s upstairs waiting for you. Apparently you’re his best chance for adult conversation. Poor man. Telecon with your Ryder Family Foundation manager in thirty. Don’t be late.”
He’s not Sarah, but I’m still smiling when I head up to my apartment. James is flying an airplane around my living room and Emma’s gnawing on a stuffed giraffe. “Hey, watch it, kid. Those things are endangered.” I boop her nose and dive out of the way of James’s airplane. “Aahh! Out of control airplane’s gonna get me!”
He chases me around the living room and kitchen, giggling and shrieking, until we collapse on the floor in front of the couches and he flops onto my belly to vroom the airplane into my nose.
“And up you go,” Tripp says, pulling him off me and turning him to stare at some cartoon on the TV. “Uncle Beck needs his pretty nose to stay pretty if he’s going to stay employed.”
“Are you kidding? Being injured while saving bunnies and children from runaway evil airplanes will only add to my mystique and improve my reputation.”
He shakes his head and runs a hand through his brown hair. “It’s like having a third kid,” he mutters.
I grin. “Just like being on the road, except now your actual kids are smaller.”
“And growing.”
“Do I need to wrap Emma in a plastic tarp, or is her butt better?”
“There’s nothing left in her until we feed her again. Your floors are safe for now.”
She glances at us, tosses her giraffe to the side, and then goes down on all fours to dart over to James’s abandoned plastic airplane, which also goes straight in her mouth.
“Huh. I should’ve thought of that,” I say. “That looks like it’s delicious.”
Tripp shakes his head. “You selling out?”
He’s lounging on my couch, and he’s pulling off relaxed—helps that he’s in a RYDE cotton shirt, because dude, those things are so soft they’d melt on hot toast—but I’ve known him since I could talk, and there’s something gnawing at him.
Also, why does he keep asking me that?
“You going stir-crazy?” I ask with a head tilt at the kids.
He props his elbows on his knees and steeples his hands. “Yes. No. I—yes.”
“No guilt, dude. Remember when our moms used to dump us all on the men and disappear for whole weekends away?”
His smile goes sad. “Yeah. Mine always felt guilty.”
“What? Why?”
“Because she had to dump us on somebody else’s dad.”
“Nobody cared.”
He opens his mouth, then shakes his head again. “Heard a reliable rumor the Fireballs are for sale.”
“Aw, snickerdoodles,” I mutter. Not that I’m surprised. “Mackenzie’s gonna die.”
“Sarah’s friend?”
“Yeah, she’s—” I stop myself, because thinking of Mackenzie’s superstitions makes me think about last night, and thinking about last night makes me think of Sarah, and thinking of Sarah is making me think of Sarah whispering about food porn, and thinking of Sarah and food porn makes me think of Sarah naked, with me, alone, and I’m reaching for my phone to text her again before I realize Tripp’s sitting there staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Got it bad, Beck,” he mutters. “Just…be careful.”
From a man who married a Hollywood darling.
Not that Sarah’s a Hollywood darling, but her parents are.
And now he knows what it’s like to lose the woman he loves. So his warnings are coming with layers.
James glances at his sister and an unholy shriek fills the entire penthouse floor. “STOP EATEE MY AYAPWANE!”
Emma bursts into tears and throws the toy to the ground.
