Priceless (Forbidden Men 8)

“Nothing,” he murmured, glancing around the bed before he spotted his shirt. Snagging it, he shrugged it on, his fingers trembling the entire time, quivering more than my own were. “I have to go.”

“Brandt?” I said.

He refused to look at me as he blew out a breath and wiped his clothes free of wrinkles. “I shouldn’t have...we never should’ve...” Shaking his head, he turned toward the window. “This was a mistake. I have to go.”

As he jerked the window up, I pressed my fingers to my lips. This wasn’t like the way he’d fled after our first kiss. He was pale, shaken, unsettled. Scared. What I’d done has triggered something, something bad.

Needing to apologize, I whispered, “Brandt!”

But he held up a hand, stopping me. Not facing me, he snapped, “I asked you not to push me, and you fucking pushed. Can you just give me a fucking minute here to clear my head?”

Shying backward, I hugged myself and nodded. “Okay.”

He jumped out the window, abandoning me.

Worried, confused, even a little scared, I stared at the window he’d closed from the outside, shaking like a leaf. Something really, really wrong had just happened. I could feel it in my blood.

I’d messed up big time.

Sliding down onto the mattress, I curled my knees up and wept into them, praying I hadn’t just destroyed everything.

BRANDT

I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I went straight home from Sarah’s place, locked myself in my room and paced my floor.

At first, I panicked, worried as hell that I’d just ruined nine years of friendship. She’d been counting on me to make her feel special, and not like a freak. She’d needed someone to show her the best things that could happen between a man and woman. And I’d failed her majorly.

And then I went through a mad phase, angry with her for pressing the subject when I’d told her over and over again not to go there with me. Why the hell hadn’t she just fucking listened and trusted it was the worst idea ever? God...dammit. If she’d only dropped the subject the first time I’d tried to give her an out.

But the anger lasted the shortest amount of time before I was freaking out again, wondering what she’d probably figured out about me. She’d heard what I’d blurted, clear as day, and then asked me if I was okay after she’d seen my face. She knew...she knew something was up, something that had absolutely nothing to do with how desirable I found her.

I scrubbed my hand over my face, my fingers shaking again, as I kept wearing out the carpet.

I hadn’t been able to help the memory. But my back had been to the wall, a mouth had been around

my dick, and suddenly I was thirteen again, in that rotted-out trailer house with my mom kneeling in front of me, gagging as she fed her coked-out self too much of my cock.

“Fuck,” I muttered, fisting my hands and wishing I could beat the memory from my brain, scrub it free with a wire brush, burn it away with gasoline and a lighter.

Nothing about Sarah reminded me of my mother, so why had I been sucked back to that moment?

This was why I didn’t allow women to give me blow jobs. I knew it’d drag up stupid unwanted visions. Damn it. Why had I let Sarah—

Because it had been Sarah, obviously. Like I could tell her no when she’d been wearing that and reaching for my zipper.

I hissed another curse and paced some more.

The night passed, I continued to feel crappy, and by the time morning came, I had a fucking headache from hell.

I collapsed onto my mattress and slept a few fitful hours before dragging my ass out of bed sometime after noon. Glad it was a Sunday, so I didn’t have school and didn’t have to work that night, I shuffled barefoot from my room and down the hall, in search of food.

“Yes!” a voice shouted as I entered the kitchen, yawning and rubbing the back of my head. I dropped my hand to find Ten popping up from a chair at the table where he’d been sitting to spike his arms into the air in a victorious dance. He spun to Caroline, who was still sitting with Teagan in her lap. “You owe me twenty bucks, woman.”

Caroline rolled her eyes as she reached for another cookie to let her daughter maul. “Just because it looks as if he had sex all night long doesn’t mean he actually did.”

“Excuse me?” I frowned at the two of them and opened my mouth to demand what they were even doing here, when Ten pointed at me.

“Hot Wheels wore that silky black and red number, didn’t she?”