Breaking Brent Part 18

With one final kiss, he pulled completely away from her. He rolled from the bed and retrieved his discarded clothing from where it lay in disarray on the floor and dressed quickly.

He hated to leave her without saying goodbye, but she needed to rest and he needed to leave unnoticed and return home in the same way. It was for the best.

With his clothes back on his body, he turned to leave. He took one quick glance at her and noticed the first few rays of morning light were starting to make their appearance. He also noticed how the light caught the edges of the ring she still wore on her finger. He didn't like the fact that she still wore it, but it made him feel better to know she wouldn't be wearing it for much longer. Not if he had anything to say about it.

110.

Chapter Eighteen.

At two o'clock on the dot, Peyton ushered Lucky Davis toward the front door. He was drunk, sourly so, and kept repeating her name. Over and over again.

"Peyton, Peyton, Peyton..." Lucky slurred as his body swayed from side to side.

"Lucky, Lucky, Lucky," Peyton replied as she tried to shuffle them both closer to the doors.

"When are you going to give this all up and let me take care of you?"

She opened the heavy wood and gla.s.s door and held it with her booted foot, allowing Lucky to waltz through it. Over an hour ago, Peyton had called her Uncle Mitch McCready, Lucky's current employer, and asked him to pick the man up. Mitch, being the man he was, was parked right in front of the bar waiting on Lucky.

Lucky saw Mitch, lifted his hand in a wave and then turned back to Peyton.

"I can take care of you, girl. Make you happy. A lot happier than that Nash feller ever could. At least I'm around the majority of the time." What he said was true, and she was getting tired of hearing and thinking the exact same thing. Lucky staggered once and his heavy body fell into hers. She was expecting it and caught him before they both hit the concrete.

"Lucky, you're here all the time and you can't even take care of yourself, let alone me." She helped Lucky right himself as she spoke.

"But I loves you, Peyton." Slurred speech and whiskey-sour breath didn't help Lucky's declaration.

"I understand, Lucky. But you're going home alone." The weight that was Lucky Davis lifted from Peyton as her Uncle Mitch hefted his employee toward the truck.

"Thanks for calling me, Peyton. I would have hated for him to be on the road tonight." Uncle Mitch was a bear of a man with the demeanor to go along with it, but a teddy bear's heart when you got right down to it.

"I appreciate you coming to get him. I wasn't about to let him have his keys. Speaking off..." Peyton reached into her front pocket and retrieved a set of keys and handed them over to Mitch.

Mitch took them, opened the pa.s.senger side door of his old beat-to-h.e.l.l-and-back work truck, and helped Lucky in. He slammed the door once Lucky was seated, more in an attempt to make it close than in anger, and then walked around the dented hood to his own door.

When the ignition caught, Mitch waved once more to Peyton and pulled away from the bar. Lucky was already sound asleep against the gla.s.s of the window. Peyton waited until they made a left out of the parking lot before she stepped back into the bar and locked the door behind her.

Once alone, she surveyed the damage. Well, her jukebox was still intact, which was something. The tables that took up the left side of the room were littered with beer bottles and napkins and condiment holders. A few chairs had been knocked over in everyone's haste to leave at last call. Peyton set them back upright and was glad to see they were still in one piece.

Taking a break from the ch.o.r.e of sweeping, she slid onto one of the many stools the bar owned and rubbed the tension from her neck and shoulders. If she were lucky, within the next hour or so she would be soaking in her large sunken tub with bubbles galore. It was rare that Peyton took a bath, she preferred the convenience of a shower, but tonight she would pamper herself a bit. It did a body good.

She ran her hands from her aching back and neck up her throat, across her face and hair and then let them rest on the bar top. Glancing at the mirror behind the bar revealed what Peyton knew to be true-she looked tired. Too tired. Her eyes looked dim, her face seemed pale and her hair looked lackl.u.s.ter and limp.

At least the bruises were fading and the smelly-as-h.e.l.l ointment had done its job and the scratches could barely be seen.

"Pretty one, aren't you?" she said to the reflection. Peyton laughed at herself and pulled the ponytail holder from the heavy ma.s.s and ma.s.saged her scalp where the band had been for so many hours. She toyed with the idea of cutting the mess. It would be easier, and would put an end to the headaches she always seemed to have at the end of a long night, but she knew she wouldn't go through with it.

Peyton scanned the bar once more and dreaded the fact she had to clean the place up. Wade had left just after last call as he always did on Sat.u.r.day nights, which left her alone in the place to clean up. Not that she cared. Being alone gave her time to herself and her thoughts-not that she needed any more time with them. Over the past few days she'd had more time to think than she wanted.

What to do about Brent was at the top of her list every night. They couldn't keep on like this. True, it was exciting to a point, but it was also confusing and insane and dangerous. The danger was for her and her alone. When it ended, and it would, she would be the one left with nothing-no Brent and no Carter. She needed to pick a path and follow it. She just didn't know what path to take.

In one direction there was the truth. The truth about Carter, his current status as her ex-fiance-an ex-fiance who was conveniently missing most of the time. The truth could do things. The truth could open the doors wide enough for Brent to enter or slam that same door in her face.

Then in the opposite direction was silence and Brent. Brent. Her heart beat his name. Brent was complicated. Her and Brent's current relations.h.i.+p, if one could call it that, was complicated. She hadn't seen or heard from him in four days-four very long days. After spending the entire night in her bed, wringing o.r.g.a.s.m after o.r.g.a.s.m from her body, he had departed with the rising sun.

112.

What to do? That was the question. What the f.u.c.k to do?

Deciding the mess was not going to clean itself up, the mess of the bar and the mess of her life, she hopped off the barstool, grabbed a broom and dustpan and started to fix what wasn't broken.

She strolled past the jukebox, dropped a dollar's worth of quarters from her pocket into the slot and picked six selections to entertain her while she worked. Kenny, Pink, Hank and a little Paramore would make the time go by more quickly.

Kenny had just begun with his latest heartbreaker when Peyton heard a light tapping against the gla.s.s of the front door.

"We're closed," she said to the visitor without looking up from her task. The tapping turned into a knock, a persistent one. Peyton huffed a bit, placed the dustpan on a table, leaned the broom against one of the pool tables and made her way to the door to tell the late-night drinker they would open tomorrow at four, not before.

"We're closed," she said as she opened the door and ceased the knocking. The man standing at the threshold both shocked her and sent a thrill through her bones.

"Don't you know better than to open a door late at night when you don't know who is on the other side?" Brent propped an arm against the doorframe and waited on Peyton to answer him.

"I can see through the gla.s.s. What do you want?" Peyton said, leaving him and returning to her work.

She heard the door close and looked over her shoulder to see him leaned against the frame, hands in his pockets, eyes boring into her. "What?"

"Do you always open the door to anyone who knocks?"

"Are you serious?" She swept the shattered remains of a bottle into a pile and tried her best to ignore him. It was a difficult feat. He was well over six feet of muscle-wrapped bone and long-legged s.e.xiness.

The worst part was he knew it.

"h.e.l.l yeah, I'm serious. I could have been anyone. What if I had been here to rob you?"

"Are you?" she countered, c.o.c.king a dark eyebrow at him.

"No." He pulled out a chair from the table closest to him, turned it around and straddled it.

"Then I have nothing to worry about." She squatted and raked the pieces of gla.s.s into the dustpan and emptied them into a trashcan before looking at him again. He was watching her. His dark chocolate eyes matched his hair, but they seemed darker and more brooding than usual. Which was saying something.

"What's on your mind Brent?"

"What makes you think there's something on my mind?"

"Well, let's see. It's a little after midnight on a Sat.u.r.day night and you're sitting here watching me sweep gla.s.s into a dustpan. Either you're extremely bored or something's on your mind. So, being the person that I am, I'm asking. What's on your mind?"

113.

Peyton watched Brent remove his Stetson, run his long, tanned fingers through the thickness of his hair and then replace it. She watched him watch her.

When Brent didn't answer her question, she turned her attention away from his sullen pose and returned to what she was doing before. She made quick work of the mess, grabbed a damp rag from the counter, wiped the tables and was about to set out on a nightly garbage run when Brent appeared at her side.

"Maybe I just wanted to see you. Maybe I missed you." He moved quickly and without any noise. Of course, the jukebox was now blasting a heavy Paramore tune and noise other than that could barely be heard.

"Maybe?"

"Maybe." Brent's gaze was on her once more and once more she felt an odd and discouraging feeling rise from the bottom of her stomach.

"Don't do that," she finally said.

"Don't do what? What am I doing?" He moved a step closer, crowding her, paralyzing her with his size, his heat, his everything.

"I haven't heard one word outta you for years and then suddenly you miss me. We have s.e.x, you disappear as soon as the sun comes up and then you just waltz in here acting all charming and d.a.m.ned mysterious. I don't like that."

"What do you like, Peyton? Tell me."

Her heart didn't flip or flop this time-it completely dropped to the bottom of her stomach. "If you want someone to inflate your ego tonight, Brent, you need to look further. I'm tired and I really don't feel like playing your games."

"I'm not playing a game with you, darlin'."

"You are. You run hot and cold. You ignore me for years and then out of the clear blue sky you can't stay away from me. You can't keep your hands off me."

"I can't stay away from you. I can't keep my hands off you." To prove his point, he pulled her body to his. Her chest connected with his and on contact her nipples went hard and her heart hammered. She needed to choose a path and choose one quick. Tell him the truth now and see if it changed anything-see if the only reason he wanted her was because he thought he couldn't have her. Or she needed to bite her tongue and let things fall as they may. If she kept the truth to herself then she kept Brent-even if it were just for a short while.

She knew if she didn't decide on her path her heart was at risk of breaking all over again. What really worried her was the thought of it breaking no matter which direction her heart chose to move.

Brent didn't know why he'd driven to the bar in the first place-just that he had. He'd had to.

114.

He'd had to see her.

Had to be near her.

Had to breathe the same air she did. When he had first left the main house with his brothers questioning his destination as he went, he'd just driven and thought. He didn't plan on going to Big Jack's.

He knew she closed at midnight during the week, but he'd made his way there anyway.

He'd watched as she hauled Lucky from the place and waited until Mitch had pulled away before exiting his truck and walking to the front door. The last thing he wanted was for Peyton's uncle to see him entering the bar after everyone else had left. It would create some rather interesting questions. Questions he couldn't yet answer.

All he knew was that existing without Peyton was a part of his life that was over. He thought about telling her just that, but stopped himself. She wouldn't believe him-yet. He had to show her. She had to see that he needed her and she needed him-not Carter.

Ever so gently, he brushed his fingertips over her chin and t.i.tled her head back until her eyes met his.

"What?" she asked a split second before his lips settled against hers. The kiss smothered her words and halted her protests-if she had any. Heaven. He was in heaven. Brus.h.i.+ng back and forth created a friction that generated waves of lightning throughout his entire body. Evidently it went through hers as well because he felt her tremble, or better yet ripple beneath his mouth.

Rea.s.sured he didn't have a kick to the groin coming, he traced his tongue along the seal her lips created. She gasped and the movement gave his tongue safe pa.s.sage into the sweet warmth of her mouth.

Letting his tongue tempt and tease at will, he kissed her until she responded. And boy did she respond.

Shock and elation ran though his bones when she grabbed his forearms and pulled him gently into her body. He didn't know if she realized she had done so, but he didn't care. He let her fit her body into his, loving the way her frame met his.

He took the opportunity and pulled her closer to him. He heard her moan and the sound made his c.o.c.k throb harder than ever. He felt the front of his jeans caress his flesh and her hips cradle his hardness.

Perfect. His hands were still and idle for the briefest of moments before they ran along her spine and around to her rib cage.

The back of his knuckles brushed the underside of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and he felt the weight and the softness of them. Deepening their kiss and finding her willing and accepting, he pressed further. Leaving his left hand on her ribs, he brought his right to rest fully on her rounded breast.

He heard her moan again and he smiled into her open and wanton mouth. d.a.m.n, he thought. His palm itched to mold and shape the firm and heavy flesh, but he was still weary of Peyton. At any minute she could change like a storm and unman him. That was the last thing he wanted.

115.

His eyes flew open when he felt her hand cover his. Pulling away, he looked into those eyes that had held fire for him earlier. They still held it. Only it was a different type of fire. Her eyes seemed to glow and gleam and were only halfway open and shaded by those long lashes.

His lips brushed hers once more before he caressed the breast under his and her hand. Her breath quickened and she squeezed his hand, causing his to do the same to her breast. Her head fell back a bit, but she never relinquished the hold she had on his hand.

"d.a.m.n," he whispered, before capturing her mouth again. With quick movements, he backed her against the counter. Releasing her breast, he grasped her waist with both hands and raised her until she was seated on the bar. Before she could regain her composure or close her open thighs, Brent placed his body between them. Instantly, she clasped his body to hers.

He smiled up at her and kissed her damp, swollen lips. He meant for it to be a quick kiss, but she wasn't having that. Her hands ran the length of his back until they rested on his shoulders. The top of her head nudged his Stetson back. Grabbing the hat from his head, he placed it on the counter beside her.

With one less obstacle in the way, he went back for more. More of Peyton. Catching sight of the fluttering pulse in her neck, Brent ran his lips along the length, letting his tongue follow suit. Tipping her head to the side, she gave him all the access he needed to devour her throat. His teeth raked the flesh, causing goose b.u.mps to form on her arms. He could feel them beneath his fingertips. He would bet all the money he had on him that Carter had never caused goose b.u.mps on Peyton's flesh.

Brent made his way slowly, painfully so, back to her mouth. Before, he had been the aggressor, this time Peyton took control. Her lips sought, her tongue played and she devoured him the way he wanted to devour her.

"G.o.d, you taste good," he said as he fused their mouths together. He could feel his d.i.c.k throbbing between her open, welcoming thighs. "I want you. I want to be inside you." Watching her eyes flare gave Brent a burst of courage. He caught the front of her T-s.h.i.+rt in his large hands and pulled it from the waist of her snug jeans.

The material was soft but not nearly as soft as her skin. Brent leaned back and watched as he moved the white barrier inch by inch, revealing the flat line of her stomach and then the white bra covering the twins that tempted him all night long. The bra was nothing fancy. Not seductive or sultry. Just plain and white, but it had the same effect on him as those little ones in a Victoria's Secret catalog. He wanted her naked. Naked, wet and willing.

"Are you wet?" he asked in between kisses.

In reply, she seized his mouth and sucked his tongue deep into hers. "Maybe."

Brent smiled into her lips once before asking his next question. He had never been vocal in bed before. But Peyton made graphic images appear in his head and he wanted her to know. Telling her what he was feeling and thinking turned him on. He hoped it had the same affect on her.

116.

"How wet?" Lowering his head, he caressed the small amount of breast visible above the s.h.i.+eld the cups of the bra made. He could see the deep color of her nipples beneath the almost transparent material.

His mouth watered. "Your nipples are hard." He covered them with his hands and rubbed the tight peaks between his thumbs and fingers. "So hard."

"I'm not the only one that's hard." The tone of her voice was his undoing. Peyton's voice was always low and throaty, but arousal made it even more so. Wasting no time, his lips found hers just as his hand pulled the material away from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His fingers found her nipples and he pulled and plucked until they were throbbing beneath his touch and she was pressing herself into his hand.