Love Around the Corner Page 22

  “Hmm.” She began working the knot of his tie loose. “That gives me all kinds of interesting ideas.” As the tie slithered out from under his shirt collar, she wrapped it once around her hand and tugged. “Let’s keep this for later.”

  His eyes lit up with interest. “By all means.”

  Next she pushed his suit jacket off, smoothing her palms over the hard curves of his shoulders and down his sculpted, toned arms. Then she went to work on his shirt buttons, leaning forward to kiss and lick at his chest as it was exposed inch by glorious inch.

  “You’re so gorgeous,” she murmured as she flicked her tongue across his nipple.

  Brendan’s breathing grew deep and a little ragged, and he raised a hand to tangle it in her hair.

  “And you,” he growled, fisting his hand in her hair and pulling her face up to his. “Are fucking stunning.” Then he kissed her, hard and deep, banding an arm around her waist to hold her steady.

  “I didn’t finish with you,” she gasped when he finally broke away.

  “There’s no rush. We have all night,” he said, before sweeping her up in his arms. “And we’re going to use every second of it.”

  In his bedroom, he laid her on the bed and straightened up to shed the rest of his clothes. She watched him hungrily as he unbuckled his belt and shed his pants and boxers.

  “You forgot your shoes.” He tsked, reaching for her and easing off first one high heel then the other. He slid his hands up the length of her legs, coming to kneel on the bed between her knees. “And these.” His fingers hooked in the sides of her panties and slid them off her body, too.

  She was aching for him, so wet and ready she could barely stand it. Still, he took his time, tracing his way back up her legs, pausing to kiss her knees, to lick the insides of her thighs.

  “You’re so pretty,” he said, sinking his teeth lightly into the side of her hip. “Pretty everywhere.”

  Then he shifted his weight, lowered his head, and put his mouth on her. Gemma groaned, arching up off the bed, but Brendan pinned her hips down with one hand as he slid the fingers of the other inside her.

  “Brendan,” she gasped.

  He was gentle and relentless, not letting up until her orgasm had washed over her and she was shaking with the aftermath. She was panting and spent as he crawled up the length of her body.

  “There’s the first,” he murmured, reaching for the bedside table to retrieve a condom. It made her wonder how many times he planned to make her come tonight. Whatever goal he’d set for himself, she had no doubt he’d achieve it.

  “I need you,” she said, tugging at his shoulders to bring his body over hers. She was pretty sure she’d never said that to a man in her life. And yeah, right at this second, she meant she needed his cock inside her, but they both knew it meant more than that.

  “You have me, sweetheart,” he murmured, kissing her gently as he lifted her thigh and nudged in slowly.

  “Please,” she gasped.

  “Shh.” He stroked the sweaty hair back from her face as he moved deeper in tiny increments, teasing her with it.

  “Brendan...”

  “Look at me, Gemma.”

  She hadn’t realized her eyes were closed. When she opened them, his face was looming over hers, those chocolate eyes pinning her in place. Eyes wide open, he leaned in and kissed her even as he slid a little deeper. Then he eased out again and she moaned, but she didn’t look away. She couldn’t.

  “Stay with me,” he whispered, easing in again. Her back arched but there was nowhere for her body to go. He was everywhere, over her, pinning her down, his hand on her face, his thumb on her bottom lip, his cock pushing into her. She’d never felt so overwhelmed in her life. Blinking, she realized tears had begun to slide down her temples.

  “I’ve got you, Gemma,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” Then he buried himself deep, forcing muffled moans from both of them, but she still kept her eyes on his.

  He began to move again, deep, slow strokes. Another orgasm was bearing down on her. Instinct told her to look away, close her eyes, grip the sheets, let her body take over. But Brendan wouldn’t let her, his hand on her face holding her still in the moment. “Don’t look away,” he commanded.

  “I won’t.”

  And she didn’t. Not when her climax broke over her, not when she cried out with it, clinging to him like a life raft in a storm, and not when he gritted his teeth, every tendon flexing, growling as he came, too.

  Oh, God, I love him, she thought wildly, as he collapsed down on top of her. I’m totally, out of my head in love with him.

  She finally closed her eyes when he rolled off her and pulled her into his chest. It had been, without a doubt, the most intense sexual experience of her life. And she was in love with him. She should have been terrified, but right now, all she felt was safe, cherished. Brendan’s hand made long, slow passes down the length of her hair as she breathed in the warm, salty smell of his skin, the scattering of chest hairs prickling her cheek as she rested her head against him.

  For the first time since he’d come back into her life, she wasn’t rushing on to the next sexual experience with him. Right now, being held in his arms felt like more than enough. It felt like the only place on earth she ever wanted to be. And what she wanted, more than she’d ever wanted anything, was to never let him go again.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Her father said nothing when Gemma rolled into the bar half an hour after her scheduled start time the next day. He just glanced up from the glasses he was wiping down, raised one eyebrow at her, and wordlessly went back to work.

  Ugh. No doubt she looked like a walking ad for debauchery and dumbstruck infatuation. She’d stopped by the house for a shower and a change of clothes, but she was quite sure the stupid amount of sex she and Brendan had was written all over her face.

  It sure felt written on every inch of her body. Her skin felt flushed and tingly, and every place that had known his touch during their night together seemed to throb, as if waiting for more. And every time she let herself imagine his face, a slow, sappy grin spread across her lips against her will. She was totally gone for him. Luckily it was a slow day, because she was a shit bartender in her current state.

  “So is he coming by tonight?” Dad finally asked, after refilling Dennis’s beer when Gemma wandered off and forgot to.

  “Who?”

  Dad gave her a bored look. “Come on. Your old man’s not that clueless.”

  “Oh. I don’t know,” she said. “We didn’t discuss it.”

  “You should tell him to come on over. I like him.”

  “You do?”

  John gave a brusque nod as he rang someone up on the register. “Smart guy. Hardworking. Good head on his shoulders.”

  That was a glowing testimonial as far as the undemonstrative John Romano was concerned.

  “And he treats you right. That’s the most important thing.”

  Gemma smiled to herself. She’d thought the same thing about Teresa when she first started coming around. The most important thing was that she treated her father right.

  She’d just picked up her phone and typed out a text to Brendan, asking him if he wanted to come hang at the bar as she finished her shift, when the door opened and he walked in. At the sight of him, her body flooded with arousal and her heart started to pound. Maybe this was a bad idea. She was having a hard enough time focusing when he was just in her head. Having the flesh and blood Brendan sitting just feet away from her was going to wreck whatever was left of her concentration.

  He strode across the bar, looking positively edible in a pair of faded, worn jeans, a white t-shirt, and a leather jacket. She thought the suits were deadly, but Brendan in jeans was lethal.

  “Hi there.” He grinned, sliding onto a bar stool and shrugging out of his jacket.

  “Hi.” Some pa
rt of her realized that she was just standing there, smiling at him like a fool, but she couldn’t seem to help it. It was like he had her hypnotized.

  “Hey, John.”

  Dad nodded his head in Brendan’s direction. “Evening, Brendan. Can I get you a beer?”

  That startled her out of her trance. “I got it, Dad.”

  When she set his beer in front of him, he reached out to trail his fingertips across the back of her hand. “Is it okay that I came by?”

  She flipped her hand over and briefly squeezed his fingers. “I was about to text you and ask you to.”

  Brendan hid his grin behind his glass as he lifted it and took a sip, while Gemma desperately tried to focus on customers who weren’t Brendan.

  It was nearly eight p.m. when the door opened and a grinning Frank strolled in. That was odd. In her distracted state, she hadn’t even registered that Dennis had been here on his own for two hours. She couldn’t remember the last time the two of them hadn’t come in together.

  Feeling bad for neglecting Dennis, she poured him another refill as she got Frank’s beer and set them both down as Frank took a seat.

  “Sorry, guys. I didn’t get a chance to cook anything this morning.” She’d been far too busy having wake-up sex with Brendan.

  “That’s okay,” Frank said. “I’ve already eaten.”

  “You have?”

  “With Veronica.”

  “Veronica? That’s still going okay, then?” Frank had mentioned Veronica once or twice, but he’d had yet to spend the evening with her instead of Dennis, so she hadn’t thought it was progressing very far. The grin on Frank’s face told a different story, though.

  “Better than okay.” Frank beamed. “We’re getting married.”

  Silence fell over the bar. Dennis gaped at his best friend. Gemma froze. Dad turned back from what he was doing as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Married?” Dennis was the one to say what they were all thinking.

  “Yep. Popped the question tonight and Veronica said yes.”

  Brendan was the first one to snap out of it, reaching over to shake Frank’s hand. “Wow. Congratulations, Frank. That’s great news, man.”

  Dad came next. “Yeah, that’s great, Frank. Veronica is a lucky woman.”

  “You’ll have to bring her in to meet us all,” Gemma finally managed.

  “There’s more,” Frank said.

  “More than you getting married again?” Dennis asked. His bushy white eyebrows had hiked nearly to his hairline.

  “We’re moving to Florida.”

  “What?” Gemma couldn’t hold back her shock. “Florida?”

  “Veronica’s got a little condo down there in Vero Beach. So we’re selling up and moving down there.”

  “But... Florida?” Dennis said. “It’s a little sudden, isn’t it?”

  Frank shrugged. “How many good years do we have left? Veronica and I got to talking and we decided why not? Let’s go for it.”

  “So...you’re going for it,” Gemma said. “Getting married and moving to Florida.”

  “Isn’t that what us old retirees are supposed to do? Go spend our golden years on a beach?”

  “Um...”

  Dad stepped into the breach. “I think this calls for a toast. Gem, we got another bottle of that prosecco hiding someplace?”

  “Uh, yeah, I think we do. Hang on.”

  Gemma headed toward the back room to find the prosecco, but she caught a glimpse of Dennis as she passed. He looked lost, adrift, like his world had just been shaken to pieces. In a flash, she knew they’d lose him, too. With Frank gone to Florida with Veronica, what was there to keep Dennis here in Brooklyn? He’d move down to Toms River to be near his daughter and then that was it. The two last Romano’s regulars would be no more.

  It wasn’t as if Frank and Dennis spent enough here to keep the doors open. Romano’s wouldn’t be much worse off financially with the loss of those two, holding down their end of the bar. No, it wasn’t money that made Gemma feel like someone had just walked over her grave.

  Frank and Dennis were more than customers. They were part of the extended family that had kept this place anchored in the neighborhood for nearly ninety years. She honestly hadn’t ever imagined the bar without them. But now that she had—imagined the unthinkable, Romano’s without Dennis and Frank—it became sickeningly easy to imagine much worse. No Romano’s left at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  A shaft of weak early spring sunlight fought its way to Brendan’s bedroom window, hitting him square in the face and waking him up. With the bedroom facing the back of the building and another building just ten feet away, the light only managed to reach that window for about twenty minutes a day, and those twenty minutes had to come at seven a.m. on a Saturday.

  Groaning, he rolled over to bury his face in the pillow, but found himself instead facedown in a tangle of long, dark brown hair. He cracked one eye open to see the sublime landscape of Gemma’s bare back—the sharp angle of her shoulder blade, the gentle bumps of her spine curving down her back, the shallow dip of her waist.

  Sleep could wait.

  Reaching out, he laid his palm in that hollow above her hip and she sighed, a low, sexy little sound that went straight to his already half-hard cock. He just couldn’t get enough of her. Last night was a blur of lips and skin and heat and orgasms.

  He’d thought his memories of the two of them in high school had been overblown. That almost obsessive need, that explosive chemistry he remembered—it had to be a product of their situation. It was first love for both of them, with all the heightened emotions that came with it. Add to that the sneaking around, every sexual encounter a desperate, furtive act...well, yeah, to his eighteen-year-old self, it had all seemed hotter than hell.

  But it was no trick of his memory, no glow of nostalgia making it seem better than it had been. Every time they came together, it was just as hot—hotter—than it had been in high school.

  The emotions were bigger, too. He’d thought he’d loved her in high school. And he had, as much as that idiot kid understood love. But it was nothing to how he felt now. He’d had relationships in the intervening years in Chicago, but he’d never been able to envision a long-term future with any of them, and consequently, none had lasted more than a few months. With Gemma, almost from the first time he’d kissed her again, a future was unfolding in his mind with alarming specificity. He saw all the forevers with her he’d never been able to imagine with anyone else. None of those other relationships had lasted, he realized, because he’d remained more than a little in love with Gemma for all these years.

  Gemma shifted under his hand, letting out another sexy little groan, and his half-hard cock finished the job. She rolled to her back and turned her head, blinking at him with those sleepy, half-lidded, dark eyes.

  “Morning,” he murmured, his eyes darting down her body. The sheet remained wrapped around her waist, exposing her breasts. As he stared, her nipples hardened. He slid his hand up from her waist to cover one. She sighed, arching up slightly.

  “Good morning,” she said, reaching for him.

  He came, rolling over and sliding between her long, slim thighs. “You okay with this this morning? We were kind of rough last night.”

  She wiggled underneath him until his cock brushed against her wetness, forcing a grunt of pleasure from him. “I want you to be rough this morning, too. Let’s be rough all day.”

  Rolling his hips against her, he watched her eyes slide closed and her head arch back. “I’ll be as rough as you want this morning,” he said, imagining all the depraved shit he still wanted to do with her. “But you have to work this afternoon.”

  “Screw work,” she groaned, rubbing herself against the length of his cock.

  “And I have lunch plans.”

  Underneath hi
m, she stilled, her eyes opening. “You have a lunch date?”

  He chuckled at her wide-eyed question. “With my mother.”

  “Oh.”

  He hesitated, then just sucked it up and said it. “Come with me?”

  “To lunch?”

  “To meet my mother.” He’d met her family; it was time she met his, especially in light of all these forever feelings he was having.

  “Um...”

  He could see the uncertainty in her eyes, and he remembered how angry she’d been on his behalf the night he’d explained his leaving. She still blamed his mother. Maybe meeting her would change that. Maybe then she’d understand.

  “I promise, it’ll be a lot easier for you than it was for me.”

  She laughed at that. “Okay, I’ll come. I suppose I owe you one. Meeting the whole family and a wedding. That was a trial by fire.”

  He dropped a kiss on her mouth. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

  Her legs wrapped around his hips, drawing him closer. “But please tell me we still have time to get rough.”

  He slid his hands up her arms until he could close them around her wrists and pin them to the bed over her head. “Plenty rough.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  As they stood on the front stoop of his mother’s house a few hours later, Gemma fiddled with the zipper of her jacket.

  “Don’t worry, she’s harmless.” Beyond harmless. His mother was like an egg walking around in the world without its shell—fragile and vulnerable.

  “She nearly ruined your life,” Gemma muttered under her breath.

  “Not on purpose, I promise you. You’ll see.”

  The door opened and his mother blinked in the sudden bright sunlight. “Brendan!” He could tell from the way she said his name that she’d forgotten he was coming. “Oh.” She smiled tremulously at Gemma. “Who’s this?”

  “Mom, this is Gemma, my girlfriend.” It was the first time he’d said it out loud, and he liked it. A lot.