Wanting It_A Brother's Best Friend Romance Read online

  “You’re such a child,” I hissed.

  “I can’t believe it!” she whispered, ignoring my last remark. “That’s who you were with last night! Not that I can blame you. Shit, he’s fucking gorgeous. I didn’t get a good enough look at him back at the club, that’s for sure.”

  Watching her stare at Jake with lust in her eyes did something weird to me. I was suddenly furious at her for gawking at him like that and, this time, I did prod her with my fork.

  “Stop staring like that. People might think there’s something mentally wrong with you. And, close your mouth, for God’s sake. I’ll tell you all about it later, but Mom’s on her way back, so please, just drop it for now.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But, dear Lord, I want every disgusting detail. You never even told me his name. Who is he?”

  “Later,” I insisted.

  To her credit, Mia shut up about Jake for the rest of meal. I sat trying not to look at Jake, but when I was able to steal a few glances at him, he wasn’t looking at me. I was a little confused.

  I thought he might look up, and smile, but there was nothing. I felt like a teenager in a school cafeteria. I made an excuse about going to look at the fruit table, which meant I had to walk past him but, even though I thought he saw me walk past, he kept looking down and carried on eating his eggs with his fork in one hand and his cell phone in the other.

  I was so mad I wanted to cry. It was as though he didn’t even know I existed when, only hours before, he’d had his head between my legs and had given me the kind of indescribable pleasure that I only now knew existed. I tried not to let the tears well up in my eyes as I went back to the table and pretended that I was feeling tired and wanted to go back to the villa.

  Mia followed me, coming into the bedroom and sitting on the bed. There, I told her about what had happened with Jake and me, and how it was my first time. She couldn’t believe it.

  “All this time and I never knew you were still a virgin!” she cried. “Damn, I lost mine when I was fifteen. Chris Jacobs. Remember?”

  “Yeah,” I said, but I wasn’t really listening. I was too upset, and I told her about that too.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Mia said. “Don’t let this ruin the weekend. You had an amazing night together, but every girl feels a little bit weirded out by her first time. It’s like the guy she has sex with is the only man in the whole world, and she’s immediately in love. It’s not like that. Just because a man’s great in bed doesn’t mean he’s a great person.”

  I was too exhausted to try and explain that it wasn’t simply a case of being delusional because I’d lost my virginity to Jake. I just didn’t have the energy to try and tell Mia that he was a great person and that I hadn’t just been blinded by incredible orgasms and an amazing body.

  “Come on,” she said. “Don’t forget we’re all going down to the beach now. The rehearsal, remember?”

  “Shit,” I groaned. “I don’t want to go.”

  But, of course, I didn’t have a choice. Mia placated me by telling me that we’d get time to sunbathe and take a swim later, so I put on a blue bikini and slipped into shorts and a t-shirt. We went down to the beach and I wore my sunglasses. At least that way, I could hide the tears that pricked in my eyes when, once more, I saw Jake and, once more, he seemed to ignore me.

  The chairs were already set up on the small patch of grass that overlooked the beach, and Clea and Brandon went through the rehearsal with Clea’s bridesmaids and Brandon’s groomsmen as we stood around and watched. Jake was also wearing sunglasses, so I couldn’t tell if there was a second he was looking over at me, but from the times I stole a glance at him, he seemed to be concentrating only on the proceedings.

  When it was finally over, Mia and I walked onto the sand and put down our towels. She hated to swim, and she was happy just lying back and letting the sun bake her beautiful bronze skin. So, I joined Clea’s bridesmaids and some of her nieces and nephews in the shallow water. We talked for a little while about the wedding, and then I pushed off into the deeper waters and swam for a little while.

  With every stroke of my hand cutting through the water, I tried not to think about how my arms ached because I’d wrapped them around Jake’s neck, or how my legs ached because I’d wrapped them around Jake’s waist. I didn’t want to think about him at all, but there he was, in front of my mind’s eye the whole time, and I was unable to swim him off.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  JAKE

  †

  IT WAS DAMN HARD to eat my breakfast without looking over at Nikki, and it was even more difficult to get through that fucking wedding rehearsal without staring at her long legs and beautiful ass. Every time I glanced at her as we stood near Clea and Brandon while they went through their vows, I had to tear my eyes away because every time I looked at her, I’d look at Brandon and remember the reason we were here, and just who Nikki was.

  I took a long walk after the rehearsal, right along the stretch of sand. When I came back, the beach was full, the wedding party of nearly one hundred guests now having arrived. Most of them were on the beach, sitting under umbrellas and drinking cocktails, and I scanned the crowd looking for Nikki. I saw her friend, Mia, lying on a towel, but Nikki was nowhere to be seen. My eyes moved over each and every figure on the beach, and then I glanced out into the sea.

  And, there she was, treading water a little further back from a group of kids playing ball in the waves. I dropped my things on the sand and took off my t-shirt. I waded out into the water and pushed through the clear blue sea with intent. I could see her, but she hadn’t spotted me yet. I got closer and closer, and then she caught my eye. She stared at me, squinting her eyes before frowning. She didn’t speak to me as I approached her.

  “Hey,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” she said, angrily.

  “You ignore me at breakfast when there are people around, and then you don’t even look at me during the rehearsal, again because there are people around. But now we’re all alone in the vast ocean, you can stoop low enough to acknowledge my existence?”

  I wanted to grin at her, but I knew she’d be mad at me.

  God, she was stunning when she was angry.

  She had the same intense passion she’d had when her hands were on my face and she was kissing me as I was inside her. I must have been thinking about that image a little too long because she began to swim away. I grabbed her arm.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to be around you,” she said. “I don’t like the way you make me feel.”

  “That’s not what you were saying last night,” I teased, and she spun around.

  “Forget last night,” she hissed. “It meant nothing to either of us, right?”

  She stayed there, treading water, and she had to keep her arms out to the side to balance or, I was sure, she’d have folded them in defiance. I ran my hand over my head and sighed.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Well, you’re wrong,” I shrugged. “It meant something to me. A lot, actually.”

  “What, so much you couldn’t talk to me?” she asked, but I was sure that in her voice I caught a little more softness, a little less anger.

  “For God’s sake, Nikki, I know I could’ve handled it better, it’s just… I couldn’t look at you at breakfast or at the rehearsal, because I knew that I might just do something I shouldn’t,” I said.

  “Oh, like what?” she asked.

  I moved toward her, and reached out and touched her face. Then I leaned in and kissed her lips, quickly. She pulled away, looking around her, but nobody had spotted us. “Don’t!” she cried, but I could see from the flush on her cheeks that she was thrilled.

  I liked it.

  She wasn’t mad at me any longer. She moved closer to me and bit her lip. “I thought you just didn’t want anything to do with me after last night.”

  “Fuck, no! Quite the opposite,” I replied. “But every
time I look at you, there’s a war waging in my head. I look at you and I want you. And then I have to stop myself from thinking like that, because this weekend is more than just about the two of us, and you know it. Just look at your reaction just now when I kissed you. You’re also concerned.”

  “Because of Brandon.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

  “Yeah. Look, we’re both adults, and I certainly don’t need anyone’s permission to do whatever the hell I feel like doing. But, I have a history with Brandon. I need to be considerate, and I do want him to be part of my future as well. So, I guess I don’t think this is the time and place to openly flaunt that I’m involved with his sister.”

  “You’re right. I was thinking the same.”

  She was only inches from me, but we weren’t touching. “It’s not the time or place. It’s best if he doesn’t know about us. I don’t want to stress him out or hurt him,” she said.

  “Yep,” I agreed, feeling frustrated with the damn situation.

  She put her head back and sighed. “It’s not fair,” she said. “I still feel like such a kid.”

  “Well, after last night you sure put that behind you,” I smiled, lifting my foot and playing with hers in the water. She blushed again.

  Fuck.

  “You must have a couple of nights to compare it to,” she said. “For me, it’s the only time I’ve ever known. Was it… you know… any good?”

  “Any good?” I repeated her question, my eyebrows raised in surprise. “Couldn’t you tell how much I wanted you? How my body reacted to yours?”

  “Yes,” she smiled, her blush returning.

  “Look at me,” I told her, firmly. She did.

  “Believe me, Beautiful. You were fucking incredible.”

  She giggled and disappeared beneath the water. Her head bobbed up several feet away, a bit closer to the beach. I laughed at her beautiful innocence. It just made me want her more.

  I followed her to where she now was standing, the water reaching up to her shoulders.

  She peeked at me from underneath lowered lashes, a hungry gleam in her eyes, without a doubt. Feeling daring, I moved behind her a little in the water so we both looked out at the beach, I stroked the firm roundness of her ass. My fingers drifted lower, to the tops of her thighs.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, but she certainly didn’t move away.

  “I’m reminding you about last night,” I said, my mouth close to her ear. She reached behind me and stroked my thighs, and I could hear her breath getting quicker. I moved away from her just a little, but my fingers remained on her thigh, and then moved inside her thigh, between her legs from behind. She gave a little cry as I moved the fabric of her bikini to one side, my fingers grazing against the hot slit of her womanhood.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. We were only a few yards from the beach and she looked at me over her shoulder. “We can’t,” she said.

  “Oh, but we can,” I replied as my fingers moved inside her under the water. If anyone had looked at us, they’d have thought we were doing nothing more than just talking, like friends.

  What they couldn’t see were my fingers playing with her clit and, what they couldn’t hear were the tiny moans of pleasure that escaped her lips.

  I wanted to kiss her, but that was out of the question. My erection rubbed against her leg, and she stroked me through my swim shorts. But, this was all about her, giving her pleasure, making her feel the way she’d felt the previous night. I had to put my own desires on the back burner as I stroked her, claiming her with my fingers. She gripped the wrist of my other hand and pressed the other between her legs, making me rub her harder.

  It’s not easy to make a woman orgasm in the ocean. Believe me.

  The elements were against us, the rising water pushing us closer to the shore, necessitating us to kick back against them every few seconds.

  But, nothing could’ve prepared me for the pleasure of seeing her look at me, her mouth slightly open, then closing her eyes with pleasure as she sucked in her breath and, with a gasp, whispered my name.

  “Jake!”

  As we bobbed up and down in the water, which seemed to be moving in time to my fingers now, I felt her spasm, heard her groan, and she rubbed herself on my hand, her hips moving quickly until she couldn’t bear it any longer. She pushed my hand away, clamped her thighs together and swam away from me.

  I grinned at her until I could see that she could barely swim. I quickly went over to her and held her up with my hands on her waist. “Are you okay?” I smiled.

  “I can’t seem to catch my breath,” she said, and then she laughed. “Jeez, I didn’t think it was even possible to do that here!”

  She looked so gorgeous that I wanted to hold her to my body and kiss her, but we were both too aware of everyone on the beach and in the water not too far away from us. We edged closer to the shallows. We stayed in the water so that she could recover from her orgasm and for my erection to die down. Then we waded out of the water with a wave to one another, and I walked back to my belongings on the sand, while she joined her friend on the towel.

  I went back to my hotel room, and I got straight into a cool shower where I held my returning erection in my hands and, with just a few strokes, I climaxed with a roar.

  God, she was doing things to me that I wasn’t even aware of and could barely control. I closed my eyes and thought of the way she’d pushed my hand and made me fuck her with my fingers even faster, and that just made me hard all over again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted a woman this much.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  NIKKI

  †

  MIA MUST HAVE BEEN so tired of hearing about Jake but, for the first time since being a kid with a dumb crush, I was able to talk about him. He wasn’t a secret anymore, at least not in the way he had been.

  Now, I could discuss him with my best friend, which was more than I’d been able to do before. I still couldn’t tell Mom just yet, and I definitely didn’t want to say anything to Brandon, but Jake didn’t leave my thoughts for a single second of the day.

  I wanted to go and spend the night in his hotel room again, but we had too much to worry about with the wedding.

  I woke up on Saturday morning with butterflies in my stomach, and it wasn’t just because my big brother was having a fairytale wedding on a white-sanded beach with waves lapping at the shore.

  The dress I’d chosen to wear was cream and came down to my ankles. I wanted to kick myself now for choosing it. It was so old-fashioned and didn’t make me feel sexy at all. I wanted something else.

  Something that would make Jake want to come over to me and tear it from my body. I’d never realized how amazing it felt to be sexual. Desirable. I’d had a taste, and now I wanted more.

  Mia came to the rescue, once again; this time with a powder-blue strapless number that I was worried I wouldn’t fit into but, once she zipped up the back and I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I knew it was the one.

  It was short, again, cutting across my thighs just above my knees. It made my tan look great. As Mia styled my hair for me, she perched her chin on my shoulder and looked at the two of us in the mirror.

  “I hope you know this is what I was supposed to wear to the wedding,” she smiled.

  “What! Mia, no. Why did you have me wear it then?” I asked, not too happy that she did that. “You didn’t say anything.”

  “Nik, please. I’m not complaining. I just wanted to make sure you know exactly just how good a friend I am, that’s all,” she said. “Besides, it suits you far better. You look far more beautiful and sexy in it than I would’ve, and I want Jake to drool when he sees you today.”

  I smiled and looked back at myself in the mirror. I wanted her to be right about Jake.

  †

  The rest of the day went south quickly. We ran around like headless chickens trying to find Clea’s special order flowers after the florist didn’t arrive at two thirty and wasn�
�t picking up her cell phone either. The resort manager tried to assist, but Clea insisted on us driving into town to find the florist.

  We had no luck. That was until Mia spotted another florist, which quoted an exorbitant fee for the rush order, but Clea’s father seemed only too happy to pay. I couldn’t believe the cash he’d thrown at the wedding, but I think he had experience with his daughter not getting her own way. I couldn’t imagine it would be pleasant.

  So, while she had to settle for sunflowers instead of the yellow tulips she’d dreamed of, we could sort out the last few details of the day.

  One of the bridesmaids was hung over from the night before and threw up over another bridesmaid but, thankfully, it was nothing that a large sunflower couldn’t cover. The very angry vomit receptacle, Carla, would just have to wait until the photographs were done before she could change into something else. I offered her my cream dress, my first choice for the wedding. She looked at it, wrinkled her nose, and politely said she’d find something else. I couldn’t really blame her.

  Finally, at five-thirty, we gathered on the patch of neat lawn that overlooked the beach.

  Brandon looked so handsome and while I couldn’t quite get used to the beard, he’d clipped it really neatly, suiting him much better. I could see his hands shaking slightly as he read over the vows he’d written, but Chester was shaking even more, checking and re-checking that he had the rings.

  Mom looked amazing in a light dove-gray dress and hat, and she dabbed at her eyes before she’d even taken her seat. I didn’t want to hear the words “I just wish your father was here” and, thankfully, she didn’t say it, although I know she knew we were all thinking it.

  I peeked over my shoulder once or twice, and then I saw Jake walk down the aisle. He looked incredible. His new white shirt gleamed in the low evening light and clung to his beautiful body, stretching taut over his broad chest. His smart black trousers showed his tight ass, and I couldn’t help but lick my lips at just the mere thought of him… naked.