No Strings Read online

  I sucked in a quiet breath, holding onto the books in my hands as he began to plant small, soft kisses up the side of my neck.

  “Brody,” I whispered, inquisitive but also encouraging, as the heat fanned out inside me.

  I felt the wet heat of his tongue when he opened his mouth against my neck, making me quietly gasp and quiver, and he sucked gently before pulling back just a bit.

  “Put those books down,” he whispered against my neck, making me shiver.

  “Wha—”

  “Put those down on the shelf right in front you.”

  I did as he said and tilted my head to the side, silently asking for more. I was dying a slow death. Melting in his arms. Skin too tight, too hot. But God I wanted more of that feeling.

  “I packed up your stuff when you were looking for books,” he said before planting an open-mouthed kiss near my collarbone, the heat of his breath on my neck causing all rational thought to flee. I hummed in response, not really knowing or caring what he was talking about. “I want you to come home with me. Now.”

  “Oh.”

  “I can’t wait until the weekend.”

  And just as his hands were moving away from the shelf and coming down to wrap tightly around my waist, I breathed, “Take me there.”

  Chapter EIGHT

  What happened to our plans for next weekend?” I asked, slightly out of breath as Brody dragged me at a very brisk pace past his doorman, nodding at the man, and then walking toward the elevators that led up to his apartment. I tried not to blush as we walked past, knowing that he most likely knew what we were up to if the urgency in Brody’s strides were evidence enough.

  As soon as I had agreed to come with him, he hadn’t even bothered to call an Uber. He had picked up my bag in one hand, grabbed my hand in his other, and then pulled me along, hailing the first cab he saw on the street when we got to the main road. He had practically run out of the library, and I was surprised he hadn’t plowed anyone over in his attempt to get out of that building as fast as possible. Brody had pulled me along with him every step of the way while my blood ran in an electric current through my veins, the anticipation for a second time with Brody almost too much to bear.

  During the cab ride, we had ridden in relative silence, the tension thick around us. The silence was only broken when I asked Brody how he knew I was in the library. He just grunted at first, but then he said he saw me go in with Callum after class and followed me in.

  “I watched you, you know,” he’d said in the cab, his voice rough, making me shiver. I didn’t say anything—I couldn’t—and he finished with, “I couldn’t keep my eyes off you when you were studying. I feel like I watched you for hours, and I knew I couldn’t wait until the weekend.”

  I gasped and went back to sitting with him in the thick silence of the cab.

  Brody’s response to my query about waiting until the weekend was nothing more than another grunt as he continued to pull me along, his focus single-minded, his grip on my hand strong, his back muscles—back muscles that I had gripped and scratched only about twenty-four hours ago—tense as he strode toward their goal.

  “Brody—”

  My rushed, breathless words were cut off by Brody yanking me forward and slamming me against the wall of the elevator, making me gasp as he pressed me against the wall with his body and gripped my face in his hands, bringing his mouth down to mine.

  I couldn’t stop the whimper that tore from my throat in response to his obvious need for me. His mouth on mine and his hard body pressed against me causing the lust I felt for him to course through me, almost unexpected, almost painful, almost enough to make me go completely mindless to it all.

  My hands were clutching at the fabric at his waist, trying to pull him closer even though he was about as close as he could get without our bodies melding into just one big ball of lust and need.

  “I realized there was no way I was going to make it until the weekend,” Brody whispered heatedly against my lips. He moved his mouth away from mine, kissing along my jaw as he said, “Because I could barely make it through these past few fucking hours,” right before he moved and bit my neck gently, making me bite my lip as I tilted my head back, breathing heavily, nearly shaking with desire, still so unused to the feelings that Brody inspired, just knowing I wanted more and unable to get enough.

  “I can’t stop thinking about you,” Brody murmured before he sucked gently at the spot he had just bitten, and I bit my lip even harder as a small sound of need seemed to come straight from my chest. I wanted to wrap those words around me, get lost in them, but Brody erased any attempt to do so when he growled at the noise I had made and brought his lips to mine roughly for one hard moment before pulling away abruptly when the elevator doors dinged.

  I felt the loss of contact so acutely that my heart started to thud even harder in my chest. I watched him as he backed away, his eyes still on me as I leaned against the cool metal wall of the elevator, chest heaving, mouth hanging open as I stared right back. And he grabbed my hand again, practically yanking me out of the elevator and down the hall to his apartment.

  When we got to the door, I didn’t move, just waited as Brody fumbled to put his keys in the lock. But then I remembered last night, the way he sounded when he said my name while he was inside me, and I suddenly desperately needed that again.

  “Brody, hurry,” I whispered, putting my hand on his back and trailing it down his spine.

  He grunted again and basically slammed the door of his apartment open, dragging me inside. I pushed the door closed behind me and dropped his hand, taking a step back and waiting as Brody turned and walked slowly toward me until he was so close that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. His scent bombarded my senses and I couldn’t take my eyes off him as time seemed to stand still, hanging in the space between us.

  Then Brody reached forward, tucking a strand of my red hair behind my ear, just as he had done at Starbucks yesterday—God, yesterday, how was that only yesterday?—and my heart clenched at the sweetness of it as his eyes softened a bit from their hard, determined lust to something a bit gentler, something that made me feel something even more powerful than the desire that Brody inspired.

  “You’re really fucking beautiful,” Brody said, his voice low and smooth. My mouth hung slightly open. “You know that?”

  I couldn’t breathe. My breath was caught in my throat and my skin was tingling. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. Wanted to because he was looking at me in a way that no one had before, like he could see everything, see me, and I could barely take it.

  I didn’t want this to mean something, didn’t want him to mean something, because it couldn’t. He couldn’t.

  Wanting to break the intensity of the moment, I huffed a breathless laugh as I tried to push away the forbidden feelings. “You don’t have to say that, Brody, you’ve already had sex with me.” I looked down, unable to look at him anymore. “And I’m here right now, ready and willing, no need for overtures.”

  After he had tucked my hair behind my ear, his hand had slid to my neck aimlessly, cupping it slightly, gently but firmly. After I looked down, he used his thumb to gently nudge my chin up toward him as he stepped closer, eliminating what space remained between us.

  I looked up at him and he was smiling softly. It was a smile I had never, ever seen on his face. “I’m not saying you’re beautiful because I want to fuck you, Catrina,” he said quietly, his smile turning into a bit of a smirk. “I know I already have, and I know I’m about to as soon as we go in my bedroom.” I shivered at the look of predatory anticipation that glanced across his features. “I’m not saying it in order to get something out of it. I’m saying it because I mean it. Because you are beautiful.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just continued to look into his gorgeous eyes. His sincere, clear, gray eyes. I knew I hadn’t said what I said because I was insecure or because I had low self-esteem, although I would be perfectly entitled to feel however I wanted, e
specially with our fucking society’s impossible standards of beauty, thank you very much. No, I said it because he was the one saying it to me, and if Brody Galen thought I was beautiful and I thought too much about it or let it mean too much to me, then when he had decided he’d had enough of me, knowing he thought those things would only make everything that much worse.

  “Come on,” Brody said before I could respond, stepping back and taking my hand so he could pull me along into his bedroom.

  When we walked over the threshold, Brody walked to one of the bedside tables and flicked on the lamp, giving the room a soft, dim glow. Then he walked back to me where I was standing right inside the door, and he took my hand, twining his fingers with mine, as he pulled me further into the room, toward the enormous bed against the opposite wall.

  He shot me a look over his shoulder as he said, “I’m about to show you just how beautiful I think you are.”

  When we got to the side of the bed, Brody stopped and turned to face me, dropping my hand and stepping back a bit to be able to see me completely, but still close enough that he could reach out and touch.

  I was wearing a pair of skinny jeans and an oversized navy blue Klein sweatshirt, and he was dressed similarly in that same gray hoodie (or maybe he had lots of gray hoodies because he knew how good they made him look) that brought out his eyes and jeans. We gazed at each other, my heart thumping madly in my chest, and suddenly I was nervous.

  I had stood right here the night before, naked as the damn day I was born, but standing here again, under his scrutiny, I couldn’t really explain why the nerves came flooding back. Maybe it was his eyes on me, maybe it was the anticipation of what was to come, or maybe it was just the way he had been making me feel for the past several days. Maybe it was something else, I didn’t know. What I knew, as I stood there, was that my stomach was churning with unexpected nerves, and even though I was completely clothed, I suddenly felt overwhelmingly exposed.

  “Catrina.”

  Brody reached out and touched me, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he clearly started to take in my nerve-wracked features. His hand rested on the side of my arm.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head quickly—briefly.

  “I…” I faltered. “I don’t know.”

  I sat down on the side of his bed, looking down at my hands that I was wringing in my lap. Brody seemed to halt for a moment, considering, and then he sat down next to me, angled slightly toward me.

  “Catrina—”

  “We slept together,” I said, looking up at him.

  His frown deepened and he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He gave me a small smile. “I was there, remember?”

  “I…” I couldn’t bring myself to smile back despite the swoop his smile made my stomach do. “I guess I haven’t really had time to stop and think about it. Like really think about it, and I guess—”

  “This is what you were afraid of,” Brody said quietly. He paused for a moment, and when he spoke, I noticed the tinge of agony in his voice. “You want to take it back.”

  “No!” I shook my head quickly. “No, that’s not… I don’t think that’s…” I looked down for a moment and then back up at him. And it was the sincerity and earnestness in his eyes that made me able to say what I said next. “I did it for me, right? Last night was for me… and right now… that’ll be for me, too?”

  “Catrina…”

  “I’ve been telling myself that it was all for me,” I went on, processing through my own thoughts that had decided to make an appearance right this moment, very inopportune, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything with Brody until I was able to sort through them, until I was able to be sure, until I knew that everything that was happening was for me, that I could keep doing this knowing that it was exactly what I wanted.

  “That’s what I’ve been telling myself, but now I don’t know…”

  “My friends?” he suggested.

  “No, no,” I shook my head. “I didn’t do it to prove anything to them,” I said. “They don’t even know about this.”

  Brody nodded. “So what are you worried about?”

  I sat on that question for a moment. “I’m worried that I was so eager to do this because I was scared it would never happen,” I said. “And that’s a shitty reason.”

  Brody didn’t say anything. We sat in silence as my statement hung in the air, and gently, Brody slid his hand across the space between us, and reached up into my lap to pull one of my hands into his. I jerked my head over to look at him, but he was staring down at our joined hands. I knew he didn’t know what to say, that there wasn’t really much that could be said, but that he wanted to reassure me, just as he had the night by the reservoir, just as he had last night, and let me know that he was here, he was supportive of whatever I did or decided, and that sometimes silence was the only thing people needed.

  “I’m so sorry, Cat,” he said finally after a long bout of silence. “I just dragged you here not even thinking if—”

  “Brody,” I interrupted. I wanted to explain to him that it wasn’t him. That I did want him. That he hadn’t done anything wrong in this whole thing. He had done nothing but listen to me and care for me and open himself up to me and allow me to take and give exactly what I wanted.

  I looked at him, took in all his features. I noticed the gentleness of his touch on my hand. And the truth suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks.

  Yes, I had been thinking about sex and wondering what it would be like, but I wouldn’t have taken just anyone up on the offer Brody had made. It was him. He was what I wanted, and it wasn’t until he had sat down next to me and had his first real conversation with me that I realized it. It wasn’t that I did it because I was terrified it would never happen. Of course I knew it would happen eventually. It was that he came along. I’d watched him for years. And I had wanted.

  Just as I wanted him right now.

  It was the same thing I realized last night. Right after that smile. Right before he asked if he could kiss me. I knew.

  I was waiting for him.

  And without another word, I removed my hand from his so I could grab his face in my hands and kiss him hard. He froze for a moment, but then almost immediately took control of the kiss. He grabbed my waist to pull me closer and angled so he could deepen the connection between us. I kissed him like someone was trying to pull me away. Like I was just trying to get one last taste before it all came to an end. Without even thinking, beyond thought already, I put my hands on his chest and pushed him onto his back so I could climb over him and remove my sweatshirt.

  “Catrina…?”

  Just moments ago I had been questioning my motivations and my desire to do this, and now I was straddling his hips and pulling at the hem of his hoodie so I could yank it over his head. It was bound to cause some confusion.

  “What?” I breathed.

  “Are you sure about—”

  “Very.”

  I wanted him. I had waited so long for him, and now he was here. He was all mine. A damn, did I want him.

  I got his bare chest below me, and I leaned down to kiss him again, slowly moving my hips against his as I did so, loving the feeling of the hardening length underneath me.

  Brody put his hands firmly on my hips, and before I knew what was happening, he had somehow managed to toss me over his head so that I was in the center of the bed, trying to catch my breath, and he was climbing over me. The lust and need in his eyes made my blood ignite in my veins.

  And then everything slowed.

  His movements, time, it all slowed so that the only thing that existed, the only thing that moved, was his hand caressing my bare stomach and his eyes roaming my face.

  It was like I didn’t know who I was in that moment. I wasn’t Catrina Murphy, I wasn’t at Klein, Brody wasn’t a guy who had just agreed to take my virginity. I was more. We were more, and as his hand slowly slid down to flick open the button on my jeans, I trembled
with anticipation, with the need for more.

  “Are you sore?” he asked in a gravelly voice as he hooked his fingers inside my waistband and slowly began to pull my jeans down my hips and thighs.

  I kept my eyes on him as he leaned up and pulled the jeans all the way off and tossed them to the side before going back to caressing my stomach, his gray eyes glued to my blue ones.

  “Um…” I said, writhing a bit, the desire coursing roughly through me. The truth was that I was rather sore, but I didn’t want that to stop him from what he was doing or what was coming.

  My arms were spread out on either side of me, limp on the bed, and Brody leaned down toward one of my arms, so he could trail feather-light kisses along the length of it. I shivered and tried to scoot closer to him.

  “I think you are,” he murmured against my arm right before he continued along until he was gently kissing my chest. And when his mouth moved to my neck, I bit back a moan.

  “Brody,” I breathed.

  And then I arched up just a bit when his hand slipped under the front of my panties and his fingers began to massage me. It wasn’t enough.

  “It’s okay if you are,” Brody said, his voice a whisper against my neck, his hot breath there making me feel needy. “It just means we’ll have to”—he sucked roughly at a spot just below my jaw, making me gasp—“adjust things a bit.”

  “Brody—”

  Suddenly he was moving onto his back and pulling me with him. He gripped my thigh tightly and moved it so that when they settled, I was straddling him. I exhaled slowly, moving against him, trying to relieve some of the pressure between my legs.

  Brody slid his hands up to grip my waist for just a moment before he continued to slide them up my body until they were behind me, unclasping my bra.