Dirty Secret (The Burke Brothers #1)(22)
Author: Emma Hart

“Condom,” he murmurs.

“Pill,” I murmur back, pulling him toward me.

I unbutton his jeans, shoving them down his thighs with my toes, and he lies on top of me. His body is hard and hot, heat spreading across my skin where his chest connects with mine. My hands trail across his back, feeling his muscles flexing beneath my fingertips when he chucks his boxers to the side.

He picks my legs up and pushes them open, the end of his cock resting against my opening. He pushes into me, and it hurts, it stings, but that’s good and it’s bad. I hold him tighter, fighting the clenching of my muscles as he thrusts.

Fast and furious, driven by our anger and frustration. From our kiss to our touch to his movements inside me, it’s unrelenting. It’s painful and soothing, chilling and thrilling. It’s a dream and memory mixed into the past catching up with the present.

It hits me like an explosion, and I cry into his mouth as the pleasure pulsates through my body. He tugs my hair, and with a few final desperate thrusts, he comes hard, his lips pushing against mine almost painfully.

But it’s a relief, because this is it, this is what we needed. It’s what we always need.

He drops his forehead to my shoulder. His heavy breathing cascades over my skin, sending tingles flowing across it.

“Shit.” I whisper the word, dropping my arms from him.

“Fuck!” he retorts, pushing up and standing. He pulls out of me quickly and grabs his boxers.

He tugs them on, followed by his pants, and finds my eyes. His sear into mine, conflicted. He steps back, turns without another word, and his footsteps seem to echo on the stairs as he runs down them. Thirty seconds later, the front door slams, and he’s gone.

I push the heels of my hands into my eyes and roll onto my front. “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

My body is still trembling from the hit of the orgasm. My skin is still slicked with sweat, and my lips can still feel his kiss. But it’s wrong, so freakin’ wrong.

It’s been days since I came back, so few I can count them on one hand, and I already know this is impossible.

I get up and walk to the shower with one thought running through my mind.

It’s so about us that sometimes I wonder if it’s even about Mila at all.

I can still fucking taste her.

Twelve hours later, like a sweet drug, the softness of her lips lingers on mine. So does that addictive taste that’s so very Sofie. I can still feel her fucking hands in my hair and her soft body against mine. I can still hear the way she whimpered when I nipped her bottom lip, except I don’t think she knew she did it.

Worst of all, I can still hear her. You’re not mine, Con, not anymore. Like a never-ending echo, I can hear it, the contradiction of her words slicing through me brutally. Because I am. My heart knows I’m hers. I’ll only ever damn well be hers. But she refuses to let me be.

That’s her answer. Don’t let it be that way. Like I can stop the fact she’s mine. I couldn’t change that, no matter how bad I want to.

And that’s exactly how I ended up fucking her. It was harsh and hurried, and what she needed barely crossed my mind. It was just me and her, coming together in a ragged and uncontrollable burst of lust. She never fought me. She melted against me, as desperate as I was for it. But I needed to know. I needed to damn well feel that she’s still mine.

When I left, I hit a bar two towns away with the intention of picking up a random girl, an insane bid to get Sof out of my mind and scrub her touch from my skin. And I couldn’t even pick up a girl.

All I could see was blue eyes, all I could feel was silky blonde hair. All there was, was Sofie.

I still can’t fucking change how mine she is.

There’s no escaping how I feel. Or how she feels. It’s like a bad trap, with both of us dancing around our feelings in favor of something more important. With both of us ignoring them until we can’t, until it gets too hard and too heated.

Then I go and do something dumb like fuck her.

Now I have to get up and go over there, walk Mila through the woods, and pretend to her like I’m not completely hung up on her mama. I have to fake a smile and not let her see an inch of the gut-twisting pain I’m currently in.

And I get how Sofie must have felt, just a little. What she’s felt for two and a half years, what she’s lived with every day.

“Fuck!” Tate yells, cutting through my thoughts.

That’s never good.

“What?” I shout back, running down the stairs.

“Remember those reporters I sent Dad after?”

Chills run down my spine.

“They heard your conversation with Sofie.”

I sit next to him and grab the laptop. It’s there, in big, bold letters:

DOES DIRTY B.’S LEAD SINGER HAVE A SECRET LOVECHILD?

“What bullshit! How the hell did they hear?” I slam the screen down, not bothering to read the article.

“The woods,” Dad answers, coming in.

“Isn’t that an invasion of privacy?” Leila asks, following Kye in. “Trespassing?”

“We only own some of the woods,” Dad points out. “We have no way of knowing if they were actually on our property or not.”

“And I hate to break up a party, but we have company.” Aidan points to the window.

I get up and walk over to it, the net curtain obstructing anyone’s view inside. Unfortunately, I can see outside clearly, and there are already news trucks and vultures waiting for me.

“Fuck!” I yell. “Leila, get Sofie and Mila here. Now. Just, for fuck’s sake, don’t let them be seen.”

“Not a big task or anything,” she hisses. “How do I get them here? I can’t exactly drive up to the house!”

“Walk back,” Tate answers. “Get your car later.”

“Fine. What do I tell her?”

“Nothing,” I reply. “You tell her nothing.”

“Fantastic.” She snatches her keys from the dish in the hall and opens the door. “Dirty B., sending their little sister to do the real dirty work.”

She slams the door behind her and I watch out the window. Leila climbs into her car and pulls up to the edge of the drive. Reporters and cameras swarm the end, and she blares her horn, then screams, “Get out of my way before I fuckin’ run all y’all over, you nosy bastards!”

Tate chuckles.

Fuck.

I should have been smarter. Sofie didn’t want this yet—neither did I. I should have known the reporters would have tried to do something. As if there wasn’t enough pressure or tension between us, now there’s this.