Something's Come Up Read online

  She’d only met Adrian once before, shortly after her little run-in with my parents, so let’s just say he had enough ammunition to ride her ass that whole night. And not in the same way I did, fortunately. I never did like to share. They’d sparred for two or three hours, but, naturally, she outwitted him, and her victory seemed to work in my favor in the bedroom later that night.

  “There’s his car.” I pointed to his black Audi. “That’s the good news.”

  “Huh…an A8. Nice.” Steph twisted her lips into a satirical grin that made me want to spank her on the spot. “Little brother pulling in more green than you? Or does he just have a thing for going fast?”

  No, that made me want to spank her.

  I clicked my tongue against my teeth and grabbed her hand, leading her to the door. “He lives like four floors below me, makes half as much, and spent twice as much as I did on his car. The only thing he’s ever had more of is asinine priorities.”

  She pursed her lips like she was going to whistle. “Easy, killer. I didn’t mean to challenge your virility.”

  “Yes you did.” I let go of her hand and gave her a small tap on the ass.

  I held the door for her as she walked in, turning to speak over her shoulder. “Save that shit for later.”

  Not spotting Adrian during my first visual pass, I approached the bar. A young hottie with the name Marley stitched into her shirt spun around the bar in an organized fury.

  “What can I get you?” she asked, eyeing me like she was trying to figure out if we knew each other.

  “My brother, Adrian. He was here for the engage—”

  “Wow, you two look alike. He stumbled for a walk down the beach a few minutes ago—”

  “He’s drunk by the water?” The muscles in my shoulders and back tensed, and Steph put her hand on my lower back.

  Marley put up her hands. “He didn’t make it that far. He’s sitting in a chair out on the deck.”

  Steph sighed and pointed at Marley. “Lead with that info next time, honey.” She made her way to the back door and I followed.

  On the back deck, as promised, was Adrian, folded forward with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Steph stood a foot away from him with her hands on her hips, surveying the pile of sensational drunkenness.

  I walked over to Adrian and bent down, slinging his arm around my shoulders without a word.

  “Pace?” Adrian turned his head and smiled like an imbecile. “Hey, man, it’s good to see you!”

  “Wow, baby brother, you’re a mess. Let’s go.”

  He shook his head. “We should wait for Ember…she’ll be back. She was just going to take Bo home…but he lives in New Hampshire. Maybe he’s going to CJ’s, or that Regan guy’s.”

  Steph’s eyes shot to mine then looked on in pity at Adrian’s ramble. I tossed her my keys and she navigated the sand in those heels like a pro, opening the back driver’s side door so I could deposit Adrian. She shut the door and got in the passenger seat without so much as a word. She and I shut our doors at the same time, and it seemed the double slam was the first indication to Adrian that someone was with me.

  “Woooweee!” He leaned forward, sticking his head between me and Steph, looking at us both. “Looks like I drank myself straight back to 2009.”

  “Adrian,” Steph mused, “always a pleasure.”

  “Daaaamn, girl,” Adrian drew out, causing Steph to look at me with sardonic fire in her eyes, “time’s done you a serious solid. Lookachu!”

  “Adrian,” I warned, eyeing him through the rearview mirror.

  Steph put her hand on my leg. “It’s okay, he’s just being honest. Thanks, Adrian.” She turned and addressed him. “You’re looking…thicker.”

  I put a knuckle in my mouth and bit down hard to prevent myself from laughing. Adrian’s moods were unpredictable when he’d been drinking, so I thought it best to avoid a brawl in my car.

  “Ha!” he blurted out. “In my pants, maybe.”

  Steph threw her head back and laughed, the sound throaty and beautiful. “Well played! Look who grew a sense of humor, or is that just thicker, too?”

  “Nice. So how ya been?” Adrian softly punched Steph in the shoulder. Before she answered, though, he shouted at a song on the radio. “Turn it up, bro! This is my jam!”

  Steph covered her mouth as she laughed. It was my turn to converse with the drunkard. “Uh, I’m sorry... “Super Bass” is your jam?”

  Adrian didn’t answer us directly, but for the next three minutes, Steph and I laughed until we had tears in our eyes as he serenaded us with the vocal stylings of Nicki Minaj. It was, it seemed, at least his current state of liquor-infused goodness, his jam. Especially when he wrapped his arm around Steph’s seat and sang directly to her, never missing a beat. He couldn’t walk to the car unassisted, but this…this he nailed.

  “Damn,” Adrian slumped back as the song ended, “she’s perfect.”

  Steph’s face twisted. “Nicki Minaj? She’s okay. It’s like having a root canal to do a photo shoot with her, though. You should see some of the—”

  “Not her. Ember.”

  Here we go.

  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned that name,” Steph said. “Sounds fami—”

  She stopped mid-sentence and eyed me. I nodded, knowing exactly what she was thinking. While Adrian and Ember had been broken up for a little over a year by the time he and Steph met, Ember’s name wasn’t absent from conversation.

  “Adrian Fucking Turner,” she turned around capturing his attention deftly, “are you still pining over that redheaded girl? Well, you know what they say, once you go red you never get better h—”

  “I’m not pining… She’s mine,” Adrian snipped. “We’re together.”

  Steph’s eyes shot to him in the rearview mirror and she scoffed, “Clearly.”

  I winced. Even when Adrian was knee deep in horny coeds, Ember had always been a sore subject. Steph knew it, too. She always knows exactly what she’s saying.

  Adrian sat back, waving his hand dismissively. “Oh yeah, Steph, you know aaaalllll about love, don’t you? How’s that shiny actor boyfriend of yours?”

  “Adrian!” I gritted my teeth, not wanting to listen to a fight.

  Steph shrugged. “Not mine. At least I’m in touch with reality about it.”

  “Steph…” I leaned my head back on the headrest, uninterested in umpiring the Little League Burn Series. “Don’t make me turn this car around, you two!”

  Adrian started snoring in the back, which allowed me to loosen my grip on the steering wheel. Steph was silent for several minutes. Not a relaxed post-fellatio silence, either.

  “Hey,” I whispered, not wanting to risk waking Adrian, “I didn’t tell him about Kevin. He’s the one who told me.”

  “It’s not like it’s a state secret.”

  All the sarcasm in the world couldn’t have covered the hurt lingering underneath those words. Still, I decided not to call her on it. Instead, we drove in silence for the next hour.

  As we pulled into Boston and maneuvered the thick post-fireworks traffic funneling through the narrow streets, Steph turned around and yelled into the back seat.

  “Adrian! Rise and shine, lover boy!”

  I jumped halfway out of my skin and cursed under my breath. It was a small price to pay to watch Adrian shoot out of drunken slumber and scramble around the back seat like he was looking for his alarm clock.

  “Fuck!” Adrian yelled back. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Far more than you can possibly imagine.” Her tone was stale but her face was victorious.

  Several minutes and one comical conversation with the doorman later, we let a rapidly sobering Adrian into his apartment. He chugged several glasses of water and started making himself an omelet. I told him we’d be back if we heard the smoke alarm. Steph graced him with a little side hug on the way out. Apparently bygones were just that.

  “He rallies nicely,”
Steph mused in the elevator. “Nice trip down memory lane, though.”

  I pulled my head back. “With Adrian?”

  “Yeah.” She shook her head with a nostalgic smile. “He just reminds me a lot of my dad.”

  Steph crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. Adrian had stirred up some history she’d done a damn good job of compartmentalizing. No matter how recent it was…like Kevin. I had no intention of bringing up the ex-boyfriend that brought her to my door. All that mattered was that she came to me specifically, and I would make damn sure she got what she came for.

  I yawned as I opened the apartment door, which caught Steph’s attention.

  “Tired, old man?” She dramatically swayed her hips as she strutted past me.

  “You’ve been begging for spankings all night. I thought a young girl like you would have outgrown those by now.” I smirked, but she shrieked.

  “Look at the window!” Steph scampered in her giant heels all the way over to the window we’d been fucking against before Adrian interrupted us with his high school drama.

  I made a few long strides to catch up with her, wondering what she was looking at. Steph stood in front of the window with her finger pointing a third of the way up the glass, to where her ass had rested against the window. And, there for all of us to see, was a faint ass print situated in picturesque glory between two hand prints from when I’d had her bent over.

  “Nice.” I widened my eyes purposefully, licked my lips, and turned back to the kitchen in desperate need of a drink.

  “Nice? No, that is so not nice. Jesus, my ass is huge! Get that shit off there. I’m not that girl.”

  Facing her again, I strode slowly in her direction. “Seems to me you are. In fact, I know you are. I’ve never had any woman up against that window.”

  “I call bullshit.”

  “Call whatever you want.” I shrugged. “It takes a special breed to trust nothing between my cock and the harbor but a little bit of glass.”

  Steph dropped her finger from pointing at the offending window, the fire in her eyes back to the same burn they’d had before our little field trip to Barnstable.

  “Thanks for taking that ride with me tonight.” I lifted her hand, kissing one knuckle at a time.

  “The ride’s over? But we hardly got past the kiddie ones.” She tried to tease, but her voice shook a little as she smiled nervously at my lips on her hands.

  I threw my head back, sighing and groaning at the same time. “Come on, Steph. Be serious for like half a second.”

  “I’m dead serious.”

  I fixed my eyes on hers like a laser. “I’ve missed you, Red.”

  She broke her gaze from mine for a split second, looking to the floor then back up. “The girls around here don’t do it for you, huh?”

  “Oh…they do it just fine. What they don’t get to do, is this.” I picked her up in a cradle hold with little effort. I could bench three times her weight easily.

  “What is this?” Her arms were tightly around my neck and I could feel the heat coming off of her body.

  I opened my bedroom door and slid her carefully out of my arms onto my oversized bed. “They never, ever get to come in here.”

  She sat up on her elbows. “You’ve never had a woman in this bedroom before? What’s that, the male version of not kissing on the mouth, Pretty Woman style?”

  I shrugged, unbuttoning my shirt as I stared at her mouth.

  “Why me, then?” She knitted her eyebrows with what looked like genuine confusion as she delicately slid her feet out of her shoes.

  Once her clothes were on the floor next to mine, I crawled over her, caging her between my forearms. “You know why.”

  She started to retort. Protest, maybe. But there was nothing she could say. The night before Rome was the last time Steph was in my bed. Three years ago. It was the last time any woman was in my bed. Sure, that made things complicated at times, but I’d always favored oversized furniture. Not allowing them into my bedroom only helped reinforce my bachelor reputation. Many had tried over the last four years to get through the door, but they failed every time.

  Looking down at Steph, though, I realized it was a bad idea. Seeing her beneath me, in my bed, did all of the things to my insides that I’d spent the last four years trying to prevent.

  Feel.

  Maybe just for tonight she’d let me. Let us.

  “Well,” she finally said, grazing the tips of her fingernails down my chest. “I’d say this is actually the best view in your place. From what I’ve seen, anyway.”

  I took several deliberate seconds leaning my lips toward hers. Ever the sucker for a Steph Brier pre-kiss moment. I’d never paid attention to those until the three seconds before we kissed for the very first time, and, since I was certain these would be some of our last, I intended to savor them.

  When our lips finally connected, we let out synchronous sighs that would’ve had us laughing four years ago. Not tonight. Tonight they turned into moans as our hands moved hungrily over each other’s skin. I moved my mouth down the side of her neck, over her collarbone, and excruciatingly slowly down to her breasts.

  As my lips skimmed her nipple, I felt goosebumps sprint up across the plump white skin of her breasts. Her back arched as her hips ground in the opposite direction. I was glad to see it still made her antsy. She bent both of her knees and leaned them out wide, inviting me in.

  My lips made their way back up her body until she was able to reach her hand between us and grab me with her cool hand.

  “Mmm,” I moaned as she took the head of my cock and rubbed it against her clit.

  “You always liked that.” The corners of her mouth turned up as she stared at me with soft intensity.

  With a growl, I took her wrists in my hands and wrapped her arms around my neck. Moving my hips slowly up and down, I gave her a hands-free version of the move she’d just tried on me. I could have easily slid into her right then. So easily. Instead, I teased us both to the point of breathlessness. She got wetter by the minute, and when we were both moaning in anticipation, I pulled back.

  She looked startled for a moment. I took a deep breath, and on my exhale I slid into her slowly, carefully, never shifting my gaze from her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered and her eyes rolled back slightly as I took every second I could to be completely inside her. Once we were locked into each other, I let my hips move a little faster, but only slightly. She seemed to agree with my pace, her hips easily mimicking mine, not pushing me faster or pulling me back.

  Small noises came from her lips at first, between shallow, begging breaths. Each time she moaned I found myself pushing a little harder and a little faster. Her vocal approval gave me drive. Incentive. Before I knew it, we were in a hard and fast rhythm, sweat forming between our chests.

  “God, Red… Damn, you feel good. So good.” I bowed my forehead toward hers and let it rest there for several minutes as we moved in unison.

  Her hips began pushing against mine, almost pushing me away. I sat up, still moving my hips as I studied her motives.

  She looked exasperated. “I’ve been trying to get you to roll over for a minute. I owe you an orgasm.”

  “You don’t owe me anything.” I leaned down and kissed her on the mouth, letting my tongue slip in just slightly.

  She pushed her hands against my shoulders. “We’ll see if you’re still saying that when I’m done. Roll. Over.”

  My eyes widened and I swear I stopped breathing for a moment. She used the voice. My command voice.

  So, I listened.

  Pulling out of her slowly, studying her serious eyes, I rolled over and laced my fingers behind my head, elbows splayed out. “Let’s see what you got, Red.”

  My hands didn’t stay there for long. As soon as she drove down on top of me, my hands were gripping her hips. When we first got together, she didn’t get on top often, citing the physics problem of my length versus hers. Clearly, she’d been working on that.

  And
I was reaping every benefit.

  Steph wasn’t much of a talker during sex, but her moans and facial expressions brought me to the edge faster than any words could. The closer I got, the tighter I gripped her hips.

  “Ow,” she hissed, throwing her head back.

  I couldn’t loosen my grip, I was too close. There. I held her all the way down as I came with a loud cry.

  “Ah! God!” My stomach was tight and my breath was all over the place, faltering as she screamed too, leaning forward and digging her nails into my shoulders.

  For a few minutes, the only sounds were our labored breathing and the occasional delayed moan, like our voices were just catching up with the experience. Finally, Steph slapped my chest.

  “I’m going to have bruises, Hulk.”

  I pulled her closer, kissing the top of her head. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “You’re right about that. I miss that crop, by the way. Do you still have it?” She nuzzled her head against my shoulder and I soaked it in. Stephanie Brier never nuzzled.

  “Nah. I don’t have any of that stuff anymore. Though I should stock up again, since women who enter my apartment seem to expect me to be Christian Grey’s bastard brother.”

  She laughed into my chest. “You were ahead of your time, Cary.”

  “Always was.” I sighed, feeling my eyelids begging for closure.

  She yawned and rolled over, pulling a blanket up over her shoulders. I said nothing as I listened to her breathing even out. When she was fully asleep, I curled my body against hers and breathed her in. Every second I got with her was one less I’d have. I’d always wondered where we’d be if we hadn’t gone to Rome, but settled that it was best that we broke up when we did. Any longer and we would have only hurt each other more.

  If every moment could be like this, I thought as I drifted off to sleep, I could be in it for the long hall. As it was, morning would come and we’d move on. It was for the best.

  Pace, February 2009

  We all sat waiting for lecture to begin. Our professor was perpetually late, so we knew not to bother leaving after fifteen minutes like we would for any other college course.