Wreck Me: An Older Man, Younger Woman Standalone Romance Page 9

  Or so I thought.

  An hour later, we’re sunbathing out on the beach – with still no sign of Brody, who must be sleeping in – when Cheryl suddenly bursts out laughing. The three of us all turn to look at her and find out the joke.

  Holding up her cell phone with a wide smile on her face, she says, “You’ve got to see this!”

  Allison jumps up from her chair and goes over to grab Cheryl’s phone from her hand.

  “Oh, my God!” the redhead exclaims. “Sara, you better be glad Dalton didn’t ask you out.” She shoves the phone’s screen in Sara’s face. After a second, Sara’s jaw drops and then she lifts her sunglasses to the top of her head.

  “Oh. My. God,” Sara echoes. “And wow, he does have a teeny weeny.”

  “Let Riley see,” Cheryl instructs. Sara passes the phone back to her so Cheryl can hand it to me. “Vigilante justice,” she says as I take the phone to see what all the fuss is about. If it has to do with Dalton, I would rather not see…

  “Holy shit!” I exclaim when my eyes eventually land on the photo.

  “If you ask me, it looks like a professional photographer took that picture. Don’t you think?” Cheryl asks.

  It takes several long moments before her words seep in because I’m too busy taking in every aspect of the image. There sits Dalton Michaels, baseball god, completely naked, on the front steps of the University with the words, “I’m a date rapist with a tiny dick” written in large letters over his chest and stomach in bold, black, permanent marker. Under those words is, in fact, his small pecker for the whole world to see.

  “Wow,” I say in awe, while shaking my head. “If I knew who did this to him, I would kiss him or her–”

  My words trail off as Cheryl’s comment begins to sink in. It is a well-taken photo…and Brody was gone all night…

  “Son of a bitch!” I shout, before I jump up out of my lounger and start into the house.

  “Riley!” Cheryl calls out, bringing my bare feet to a stop when I realize I still have her phone in my hand. Turning around, I jog over and give it back to her.

  “Thanks. I want to go…go in and see it on my own phone,” I hedge in front of Sara and Allison.

  “Right, well, it’s all over Facebook,” she informs me with a smile. “Dalton posted the picture on his own page very early this morning, and from there it’s gone viral. Shared over a thousand times already.”

  “Looks like he’s getting what he deserves,” I reply with a grin.

  “Yeah, I’m glad someone decided to make him pay.”

  “Me too,” I agree. “You all should go share this with the guys down the beach. I bet they would get a laugh out of it,” I suggest, wanting them to stay out of the house for a while.

  “Good idea!” Allison agrees. “Now we have a reason to pop over and see them today,” she says, getting to her feet. Even Sara is in too good of a mood to argue.

  “I’ll catch up with you later,” I tell them.

  “Take your time,” Sara sasses.

  “Oh, I will,” I assure her as I head inside to find Brody.

  …

  Brody

  “Mmm,” I moan happily when a hand strokes over my bare stomach and starts easing into my boxer briefs, the only thing that I’m sleeping in this morning. My cock gives a twitch of keen interest at the soft, sensual touch.

  “Morning,” Riley whispers into my ear, chin on my shoulder, and I wake up enough to realize that her body is currently pressed against my backside.

  “Morning,” I reply groggily, covering her hand with mine and giving it a squeeze of encouragement rather than removing it.

  “Where were you last night?” she asks.

  “Had some work to catch up on at the studio,” I mutter. Her hand suddenly begins to retreat from my underwear, which makes my eyes fly open. “Don’t stop.”

  “If you want me to keep going, then tell me the truth,” she says, smoothing her fingertips up and over the lines separating my abdominal muscles.

  “I had some work…out of town,” I say honestly, and am rewarded with her small hand slipping underneath my elastic waistband again.

  “How did you find him?” she asks while fisting my cock and stroking it from root to tip. She’s already seen the photo and figured it out. That didn’t take long. “Tell me everything and I’ll keep doing this.”

  Needing her hand on my cock more than oxygen in my lungs at the moment, I tell her.

  “You said his name…that he was a baseball player. Finding him on Facebook was easy and his profile was public.”

  “And?” she asks, brushing her thumb back and forth over the head of my cock to spread the leaking moisture around.

  “I was almost to Greensboro, when he stupidly checked in at a bar. When I got there, he was about to leave with a girl.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I knocked him out with one punch to his jaw, told the girl to go back inside and call a cab. He had the Rohypnol in his pockets with his cell phone. There were messages to people, saying he was on his way with the girl to the field…”

  Riley’s hand stills with the understanding that another girl almost ended up like her. And I should be given an award of self-restraint for not killing him right then and there with my bare hands.

  “Go on,” she eventually urges.

  “After I loaded him in my car, I stuffed the other four pills he had on him into his mouth. While he was out of it, I stripped him, posed him, and took the photo with his phone.”

  “You posted it online as him?” Riley asks.

  “Yeah, and I changed his account password so that he wouldn’t be able to take it down,” I reply with a grin as she resumes stroking my dick.

  “That’s all it took, huh? Sounds like it was almost too easy for you to fuck him over,” she says with a kiss to my ear.

  “There’s one other thing,” I add, hesitant about what she’ll think about this part.

  “Oh?” Her hand stills again and I really want it to keep going. After what I tell her, she may think I went too far and stop touching me. “Tell me, Brody,” she demands.

  “While he was…sleeping, I went to one of the adult stores that’s open late and bought a…toy for him, one he’ll remember every time he sits down for a few days…”

  Riley gasps next to my ear and I wait for her reaction.

  “You didn’t?” she mutters before she giggles.

  “Oh, I did. Bought the biggest dildo for him that they had in the store. It only seemed fair…”

  “You’re a freaking evil genius and I love it,” Riley says before she rolls me over and climbs on top of me.

  When she kisses me hard and grinds down on me, I know the time for talking is coming to an end, and that she’s not angry at me for what I did. In fact, I’m pretty sure she approves.

  I didn’t want or need her approval. The asshole deserved everything I did to him and more for hurting her, and who knows how many other girls. Someone had to punish him and make him feel the same humiliation as he made Riley feel.

  “Take my clothes off,” Riley demands, so I quickly remove her skimpy swimsuit with the pull of a few strings, then shove my boxer briefs down my legs and off.

  When Riley sits back, her long dark waves trailing over her perfect tits, she looks down at me as she starts to guide my cock inside of her. “I can’t believe you did that for me.”

  “I would do anything for you,” I tell her before I even consider the words. They’re true, I realize after I say them. “I wanted to kill him.”

  “No,” she gasps, sinking even further on my cock. “Public humiliation…will make him suffer…even longer.”

  “Fuck, I missed you last night,” I tell her when she starts riding my cock slowly, as I reach for two handfuls of her bouncing breasts.

  “I missed you too,” she says, big blue eyes locked with mine.

  “I’ll make it up to you tonight, sweetheart,” I promise her.

  “You already have
,” she says.

  Falling forward, Riley kisses me while our bodies become slick and melded as one, neither of us able to get close enough to the other.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Riley

  Brody is…freaking amazing.

  By the end of our week, Sara is no longer running from him every time he comes around. She’s even speaking to him occasionally, although she continues to glare at me. And while I’m happy that he and his daughter are getting along better, their time together means that there’s less and less for Brody and me.

  Each and every night after Brody sought his own unique and perfect justice for me, I’ve snuck up to his room as early as possible and stayed until sunrise, when he wakes me up to send me on my way. During those few hours, we always have sex at least once, but usually it’s more than that. And it’s still just as hot.

  Sometimes Brody fucks me like an animal while other times he takes his time and “makes love to me” as he refers to it. I’m still not entirely comfortable with the whole slow and sweet style, but it’s been growing on me.

  Unfortunately, our time together is coming to an end.

  Tonight’s my last night here, so after one of our rolling, frantic, “need you now” romps, both of us are flat on our backs, staring up at the ceiling while the sweat on our skin dries and we try to remember how to breathe again.

  “Fucking…amazing,” Brody says, rolling his head to the side to look at me. “You’re gonna give this old man a heart attack one of these times.”

  “You’re in better shape than me, old man,” I tell him sincerely with a satisfied smile before I realize that was likely the last time we’ll be together.

  “I hate that the week is ending,” Brody says, addressing the elephant in the room with us, one currently squeezing my throat and causing my eyes to burn.

  “Me too,” I agree, because this has been the absolute best week of my entire life.

  “Can’t you talk the girls into staying another week? A few more days?” he asks, rolling to his side to reach over and run his fingertips down my stomach.

  “I wish, but Sara has told us to all have our shit ready by ten a.m. tomorrow, so convincing her to change her mind is very doubtful.”

  “Dammit,” he grumbles.

  This is the moment where I want him to ask me to stay, or to at least come back and see him. Something, anything!

  But those words never come. Just like I knew they wouldn’t.

  Call it what you want, but despite how sweet and tender the nights have been, it doesn’t change the fact that we were just fucking. Nothing more.

  Why did I even get my hopes up, when I knew from day one how this would end?

  When my vision goes blurry, I know I need to hurry up and bail. With a deep breath, I roll over and get to my feet to start putting my pajamas back on.

  “Where are you going?” he asks.

  “I better, um, get back downstairs,” I say, gathering my clothes from the floor.

  “Riley…” he starts, but I don’t need him to give me any excuses.

  “It’s okay, Brody,” I tell him, even if it’s not. Keeping my back to him because it’s too hard to look at his face, I put on my shorts. “We had one hot week and it was fun, but now it’s over.”

  “I don’t want this to end,” he says, the proverbial “but” hanging thick in the air. “It’s just, you know I can’t do anything to drive Sara away when we’re finally making progress. And I’m certain she wouldn’t approve of this…”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” I agree, slipping my top back over my head and pulling my arms through.

  Sara hates me so much that she probably still thinks I’m a huge slut, even after Brody called out Dalton with the truth. Even if Brody wanted to be with me, she would flip out and tell him all the stories. He may say that my past doesn’t matter to him but once she starts laying it all out, he’ll change his mind. She’ll convince him that I’m a waste of his time. And I probably am.

  “See you in the morning,” I say over my shoulder as I head for the door.

  “Riley, wait,” Brody calls out, but I don’t stop for him.

  I jog down the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible, and then seal myself into my dark room. Tears are already falling down my cheeks before I feel around and find the bed, to crawl underneath the sheets. When a stupid sob escapes from my throat, I want to kick myself. God, I sound like a silly little girl, crying over the boy who broke her heart.

  I’m twenty-two years old, just graduated college, and have my whole life before me. It may not look all that great now while my heart crumbles to ashes in my chest, but I’ll get over it. I always do.

  The stupid tears are finally starting to subside before I hear the creak of the bedroom door opening and shutting again. Then the bed dips and his arms come around me, making me cry even harder because he knew. He knew I was upset and came to comfort me. That’s why having this end is so fucking devastating.

  Brody’s the first man to ever care about me.

  But just not enough to keep me.

  …

  Brody

  “Are you sure you have everything?” I ask the girls when they roll their luggage into the living room early Saturday morning. “Anything still hanging outside on the line?”

  Fuck. I’m grasping at goddamn straws to try and delay the inevitable, and I know it.

  “I think that’s everything, Dad,” Sara says, her tone only about half as huffy as the first day they got here.

  “Do you want me to carry your luggage down?” I ask her.

  “Sure, that would be great, thanks,” my daughter replies, not only accepting my offer but being courteous.

  Yeah, we’ve definitely made progress this week. I just worry that after she leaves, things will revert back to the way they were --- her despising me, and me not having a clue on how to begin making amends.

  “Let me take yours and Allison’s down, and then I’ll come back for the other two,” I suggest, going over to grab the luggage handles. This way, I’ll hopefully have a moment sort of alone with Riley before they leave. A quick glance over at her, and I see that she’s leaning against the wall casually, looking down at the cell phone in her hand, but I can tell from across the room that her blue eyes are still red-rimmed from crying last night.

  I feel awful that things are ending this way, but there’s nothing I can say or do to change the fact that having something more with Riley is impossible. For days, I tried to figure out a way we could be together and I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s just not one.

  Down at the car, I toss the suitcases into the convertible’s trunk and then say goodbye to Allison before I turn to Sara.

  “Call me to let me when you get home safe,” I tell her, rather than go in for a hug and get shot down.

  “I will,” she agrees. “Thanks for letting us stay here this week. It was fun.”

  “Glad you all had a good time. I did too,” I say with a nod. “I better go grab the rest of the luggage.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Sara replies, before she steps forward and quickly hugs me around my waist. “Bye, Dad.”

  “Bye, sweetie,” I say, hugging her back and placing a kiss on the top of her head before she pulls away.

  As I head back upstairs, I realize that was probably the first time my daughter has initiated a hug in…well, ever. Maybe I really did break through a few of her walls this week.

  Back in the living room, Cheryl looks from me to Riley, then back again silently.

  “I can take my own luggage down,” she offers.

  “No, I’ll get it,” I assure her. “Just one second.”

  Walking over to Riley, she continues to avert her eyes from me, until I lift her face and kiss her, pouring everything I feel for her into it. She stands frozen for several seconds, before she grips my shoulders and kisses me back. I know the girls downstairs are waiting, so I need to let her go. It’s just so fucking hard to do…

  I finally force
myself to pull away. Still gasping for breath, I turn around without a word and pick up the two suitcases, carrying them down the stairs to squeeze them into the trunk. I take my time, arranging the four pieces of luggage to all fit, to give Riley and Cheryl time to get in the car because I don’t think I can say goodbye to her face-to-face without making it obvious that I care for her.

  After I hear the two car doors shut, I slam the trunk closed and go around to the driver’s side. It’s cloudy with a chance of rain rolling in, so Sara has the top of the convertible up today.

  “You’re all set,” I tell her with a pat to her rolled-down window. “Be careful and come back to visit me again soon.”

  It hits me that I should’ve told Riley the same thing.

  But what’s the point?

  Secrets only remain that way for short periods of time. And she doesn’t deserve to be strung along by an old man like me. It’ll only end with her getting hurt worse when I would eventually have to choose between her and my daughter.

  “I will,” Sara agrees, shifting the car into gear. “Bye!”

  “Bye!” I call out, holding my hand up to wave as they back out of the driveway.

  A panicky feeling starts crawling up my stomach and squeezing me around my throat, telling me that I’m making a huge mistake.

  Saying goodbye to Riley was one of the toughest things I’ve had to do, after watching my wife and daughter pull away on a bus twenty years ago.

  And just like then, I fucking hate it, but I know I don’t have any other choice.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Riley

  AUGUST

  “Brody, wait!” I cry out his name as I jolt awake from my dream. My heart slams around inside my hollow chest while I gasp for breath and tears stream down my face.

  Sitting up straight, I look around and realize that I’m in my dark apartment bedroom, not alone on the baseball field. The dream is so fresh in my mind, though, that I can still smell the oniony scent of freshly cut grass and feel the gritty dirt coating my skin.