“I feel safe with you, Branch.”
“Don’t say shit you don’t mean to make me stop being pissed, Evangeline.”
“I actually did feel safe with you until you, um … got pissed that I apologized then made an irate speech about wanting me to feel safe with you.”
“Now don’t say shit that’s cute that just serves to piss me off more.”
She clamped her mouth shut.
He glared at her.
She let him.
This went on awhile.
Eventually, she opened her mouth again.
“Just to say, I agree with your assessment of the load you offered last night, Branch, but I don’t think the world’s population of females is ready for a whole country of Branches. Forget about it for Dominatrixes. Thank God you want this all on the hush-hush. If I had to claim you in the hunting ground at the Honey, I’d have to beat them all back with my baton.”
And the woman just got cuter.
He couldn’t hack it.
He let her go, rolled to his back and wished he didn’t because it brought the pain in his ass up acute, that feeling might make him hard again, and if she saw it, she might feel inclined to do something about it.
He did not lie, she’d wrung him dry, and he might get off on her fucking him on her couch while she watched, he would not be down with her witnessing a lame-ass spurt of cum for any of her talented efforts.
She rolled with him, pressing down his side and laying a hand on his chest.
His eyes slid her way and the look on her face …
Fuck him.
Fuck him.
Staring at it he knew without a single doubt that was the last vision his brain would call up before he left this earth.
Playful. Sweet. So damned pretty.
Amazing.
“I didn’t know you had that many words in you,” she teased.
“Shut up, Evangeline.”
“And I promise never to apologize again. For anything,” she kept at him.
“Your ass can get red too,” he warned.
The grin flirting at her mouth became a smile.
Fuck him.
“Last, I’ll take your request to fuck me under advisement.”
“Appreciated,” he grunted.
“And feel free to hold me whenever you want, that being when I haven’t ordered otherwise. I promise not to freak out again either.”
“Evangeline—” he growled.
“Okay, okay,” she lifted her little hand with her red-tipped nails and waved it, still smiling, “I’ll stop busting your balls. Until, of course, I have you tied down again. Then all bets are off.”
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
She lowered her tits to his chest, he felt her face get close to his, her hair brushing his skin, and he’d gone through the most intensive training a man could face, and that not being as a submissive, but he’d pretty much checked all the boxes on that too, and he still didn’t have the control not to look into her eyes.
“I’m really glad you like what we do together, Branch,” she said softly. “Because I really like it too. It’s been a while for me, and I won’t get into that, some of it you’ve obviously guessed, but I’m super-happy that the man I found to break that seal I wound tight around that part of me was you.”
He needed to kiss her.
Needed his mouth on hers, to know the taste of her there, to connect with her the second most important way a man could connect with a woman physically.
He hadn’t kissed a woman since Tara.
But he needed to fucking kiss Evangeline.
She stayed close and he knew, he knew in her eyes she was waiting for it.
Wanting it.
Maybe even needing it too.
He rounded her waist with an arm and gave her a squeeze, saying gently, “I got shit to do today, Angie. Fucks me but I gotta get this raw ass on the road.”
He had to give it to her, she did her best to hide it.
But he still saw the disappointment.
And it cut like a blade.
“Okay, honey.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll be back tonight?” she asked.
“What time?” he asked back.
“I don’t know,” her lips twitched, “it’s you making dinner.”
Fuck him.
“When will you be home?”
“Six?” she said like he could confirm.
“I get dressed, you get me a key. I’ll have dinner ready when you get home.”
She blazed him with a smile.
Oh yeah.
Fuck him.
“Anything you don’t eat?” he asked, fucking his own damned self because right then, even if he got in a shootout five minutes before—and the shit he was into, that could happen—he’d still make it to her house with groceries in time to feed her.
“Celery. Green peppers. Red peppers. Yellow peppers. Any peppers that don’t pack a punch are useless. Zucchini. We’ll just say squash in all varieties, except cucumbers, if that’s a squash, because I love those. Spinach, if it’s cooked. If it isn’t, I love it. Iceberg lettuce, I’m uncertain why it exists, it tastes of nothing and I avoid it unless it’s slathered in blue cheese dressing and sprinkled with red onion and bacon bits. No lamb, because I always think of those fluffy little darlings following their mummies and I want to create an anti-lamb-eating collective à la PETA and go on a militant rampage—”
So cute.
She was killing him.
Branch interrupted the cuteness because he could take no more.
“Rewind, what do you eat?”
And she kept fucking smiling.
“Mostly everything else.”
“I’ll figure something out,” he grunted.
“Branch?” she called.
He focused on her.
“Thanks for liking getting your ass whacked.”
Shit, he was going to kiss her.
To stop himself, he rolled, taking her with him, surprising an adorable little “Eek!” out of her, and he set them on their feet beside the bed.
There, he smacked her ass and ordered, “Key.”
She slapped her ankles smartly together, saluted and rapped out, “Aye, aye, Captain.”
Then she shot him a grin and strolled to the stairs as he muttered, “Smartass.”
“Until the day I die,” she called, skipping, goddamned skipping, down the stairs.
Narrow stairs.
Shit, she was going to break her neck.
He’d have a word with her about skipping on those fucking stairs.
And setting her alarm.
And getting motion sensor lights.
He took a second to take a breath before he enjoyed the burn in his ass as he walked to the bathroom.
He looked in her mirror that had curlicues etched into all its scalloped edges.
Curlicues.
Not one inch of her house wasn’t decorated.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
He took in his reflection.
“You’re an asshole,” he said.
His reflection shared that he was totally goddamned right.
And still.
He didn’t give a damn.
nine
Hope for Something
BRANCH
Branch got out of his shower and inspected his ass in the mirror.
He saw what he felt.
It was red and raw.
He shook his head because he got off on the look of it, mostly because he got off on the memory of how it got that way.
He also shook his head because he knew he was taking being an asshole to the highest heights, seeing as, even an hour after leaving Angie, time he should have taken to get his head straight, he still didn’t give a damn.
What he did give a damn about was the fact that the ring of red lipstick she’d planted around his cock, yanking him out of his jeans and dropping in front of him to do it before he’d walked out her kitchen door, had been washed away in the shower.
He didn’t like losing it but with some of the shit he had to do that day, it wouldn’t be good he smelled of lavender, mint and Evangeline.
He wrapped a towel around his hips, walked into the kitchen to see if he had any food (this would be a negatory, but he could always hope there was a stray leftover, fast-food chicken tender that didn’t need to be thrown away a month ago), his phone chirped on the counter and he looked down at it.