Pranked (67 page)

Sarah enveloped me in her arms, holding me in that moment of cosmic bliss like she was the night sky. And I worshipped her. For the first time ever, I worshipped someone and something other than my own ego.

I’d put her needs before my own. I’d taken care of her in the way I’d always taken care of myself. And in return, I’d ended up having the best sex I’d ever had. But I couldn’t just reduce it to that. Looking up into her eyes, glinting softly in the dark, I knew there had been more to it than that. I couldn’t put a name to it—not yet—but there was something we’d shared just then that was a hell of a lot more sacred than what our bodies could contain.

I had never believed in souls. But there, in Sarah’s arms, I was utterly convinced she had just touched mine.

T
he night it happened
—the night I lost my virginity—I hadn’t had the time or presence of mind to really reflect on it. It had all been a blur of passion and lust, and when it was through, something warm and tingly had settled in me and weighed me down into sleep.

Now that it was morning and Reid was still asleep, I had the wherewithal to wonder: what had I done?

I didn’t exactly regret my decision. In fact, I didn’t regret it at all. Surrendering to temptation had lifted me to heights I’d thought impossible to attain. Heights I hadn’t even known existed. My spirit still sang Reid’s praises, a ballad that electrified my bones. And when I looked at him, asleep on his side next to me, I had the sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

So why did I still feel guilty?

I knew what Hannah would say. She’d say it was our upbringing—our
brainwashing,
as she called it—that was making me feel this way. I supposed that was at least partially true. Our community devalued women who gave up their bodies before marriage.

Except I didn’t feel like I’d given up anything. To me, it felt like something had been gained. There was no emptiness within me, no void as I’d always heard tell there would be. That was the burden of damaged goods, our mother had said. They would carry around the absence of their virtue their entire lives.

Instead of a cold well of shame and despair, I felt the flicker of a flame. I felt warmth in my heart, and in my soul. And when I reached over and touched Reid’s bearded cheek, the intensity of that flame only grew and spread, until all my limbs ignited with desire once again—and something more. Something that ran deeper. Could I call it love? I wasn’t sure. Love, the way it had been related to me, should have felt different. Less intense. More yielding. What I felt for Reid was neither of those things. It was consuming and powerful. A force to be reckoned with.

I kissed him to quench my thirst. He stirred, but barely. So I kissed him again, beckoning him from sleep with my tongue. Yesterday afternoon’s Sarah would have been embarrassed and red, but this morning’s Sarah was a different person altogether. One who learned fast and knew how to please a man. This man.

Groggy but awake, Reid slid his palm over my cheek and to the back of my head, pulling me closer. I drew up against him, my bare breasts crushed against the hard plains of his chest. His free hand drifted down to my thigh and grasped it, hiking my leg up over his hip. I moaned, and I felt him smile against my lips.

“Good morning,” he said. His voice was low and raspy, made of gravel. It rumbled in my chest and vibrated in my mouth.

“Morning,” I sighed, a lamentation for the scant moments in which our lips had to part. Then I was kissing him again, and he was definitely not resisting me.

We stayed like that for far too long, and yet not nearly long enough. I felt drunk on Reid, and yet my throat burned as if I were parched. When he hardened against me, I immediately reached down to touch him, to grasp his weight and girth and feel him throb between my fingers. A throaty chuckle escaped him and I lifted my leg higher, letting him feel my wetness and my heat.

“Damn,” he murmured, “you’re ready to go again?”

I nodded and brought my lips to his neck, tasting his skin. “Yes. But I still need you to teach me.”

Reid cupped one of my breasts and brushed his thumb over my nipple. I gasped. “Teach you what?” he asked me. “Seemed to me you knew what you were doing last night.”

I pulled away from him and looked at him hard. “Are you suggesting I lied to you about never having been with a man before? Because…”

“Calm down there, Rambo,” Reid laughed. Though I didn’t understand the reference, I judged by his tone that I’d taken what he said the wrong way. “I just meant you’re a natural. That’s all.”

I smiled and looked away. All right, so maybe there was a bit of shy Sarah left in me, after all. “Thanks. I just… didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“You sure as hell didn’t,” Reid said, raising his hand from my leg to my rear and squeezing. “Now, what’d you wanna learn?”

With my leg still hooked over his waist, I turned us so that Reid was lying on his back and I was straddling his hips. I looked down at him, my hands on his chest. “It… it seems to me that, if we wanted to, we could do it
this
way. With me on top of you. Isn’t that right?”

Reid raised his brows and tucked his arms back behind his head. “Uh-huh. Is that what you wanna do? You wanna ride me?”

Ride him.
Like he was a horse. I bit my lip. “Is that what it’s called?”

“Mmhm.” The lazy way Reid pronounced his words made my core clench. “There’s nothing to it. You just slide down on this…” He slid his cock up against me and I gasped. “…and then you bounce.”

“That’s all there is?” I asked him, getting a good look at his manhood for the first time. It was huge, velvety, and flushed with desire. How had I fit it inside me? And how would I do it again?

“That,” Reid said with a grin, “and a little rhythm.”

I let out a long breath and eased myself up onto my knees, holding myself over the tip of Reid’s cock. “Hannah… um… she gave me something for this. A, um… a condom. Do you want to put it on?”

Reid cocked his head. “Do you want me to? I’m clean, if that’s what you’re worried about, and—”

I shook my head at him. “No.” And I didn’t—I liked feeling him. I hadn’t even thought to use it last night, and given how incredible that felt, I wanted the same connection between us this time, too. I needed to feel all of him, and for him to feel all of me. I didn’t want anything between us.

Carefully, I adjusted the angle of my hips and lowered down onto Reid’s cock. I was still a little sore from the previous evening, and taking his tip made me wince a little, but after that…

I moaned and closed my eyes, sitting down hard on the rest of him. Oh, God, it felt so good…

“Shit,” Reid gasped, grabbing my hips. “Ooh, fuck, darlin’. I didn’t expect you to come down so fast…” He grit his teeth and I felt him throb inside me.

“Was that… bad?” I asked, squirming to get him all the way inside me.

Reid shook his head. “No. It was good.” He dug his thumbs into the soft spots on either side of my mound. “It was really,
really
good. Just… if you’re not careful… I’m not gonna be able to pull out in time.”

“I’ll be careful,” I told him. But some part of me wished I didn’t have to.

Gripping his wrists, I straightened my back and began to move up and down on Reid’s hard length, slow at first to get a feel for what it was like to be on top. Reid helped by guiding my hips at a steady pace, his glassy eyes fixed on the gentle motion of my breasts. I raised his hand to one of them and shuddered as he teased. He was so good at that. He was so good at all of it.

I wanted to impress him. I wanted to make him feel as good as he’d made me feel before. So I relaxed and paid mind to the synchrony between our bodies, coming down when Reid pulled, rising up when he let up on the pressure.

Soon, I didn’t need his hands. Our shared pleasure coursed through me, guiding me, providing me with everything I needed to make Reid melt. The sounds he made encouraged me—groans that trailed off into strangled growls.

His thumb found the aching bud he’d introduced me to last night and pressed. Gently I removed his hand and replaced it with my own. “No,” I told him. “Lie back. I want to take care of you this time. I want to… ah… be in control.”

“Mm. I thought you Amish girls were all about submission?”

I couldn’t help it. I rolled my eyes. “Do as I say. Please?”

Sucking his lip into his mouth, Reid obeyed. He kept a loose grip on my thighs as I rocked on top of him, seeking out my pleasure center and rubbing it in small circles the way I’d done the previous night. I’d heard of things like divine ecstasy before, but I’d never been able to fathom it. For me, this was it—this was the most pleasure any human had a right to endure.

And yet I wanted more. I wanted to explore Reid’s body, seeking the rapture he could give me. I wanted to find new ways to scratch this itch he’d put inside me, to push the limits of what we were capable of giving one another. As my orgasm swelled, I picked up the pace and rode Reid faster, harder, trying to take him to the peak I was so close to reaching. I could tell by the sounds he was making that he was already there.

“I’m… Reid, I’m…” I couldn’t find the words to describe what was happening to me. They eluded me, a side-effect of no real sex education, and fumbling for them stalled my progress.

“Gonna come?” Reid finished for me, and I nodded. “Good, darlin’. That’s what I want for you. Come all over my cock…”

Vulgar. Dirty. Those were the kinds of words that came out of Reid’s mouth. I should have found them off-putting, but… God, it was so sexy to hear him say those filthy things.

It was enough to push me over the edge. Digging the nails of my free hand hard into his chest, I sat all the way down on Reid’s cock and came, shuddering and squirming as I fell victim to an indescribable orgasm.

“Reid…!”

And then suddenly Reid was lifting me off him, kissing me with such ferocity and passion it hurt. But I liked the pain—the sting of his teeth embedded in my lower lip, the bruises his hands were surely leaving on my arms as he disengaged just in time to come on me rather than in me.

I threw my arms around his neck to tether myself to something, to the only thing that could keep me grounded now. Reid returned my embrace, holding me so tight my lungs strained to draw in air. I could have suffocated in his grasp, and I wouldn’t have cared.

We fit perfectly together. Every inch of us. Even the parts we couldn’t see—the parts on the inside. The ways in which Reid and I entwined ran deeper than our bones.

The harsh sounds of our breath faded and steadied. His heartbeat, once palpable through his chest, gradually softened until it no longer drummed a tattoo on my breasts. I looked down into his eyes, tracing his cheekbone beneath the rough stubble of his beard. There was something in his eyes, then. A little sadness, I thought. But then he kissed the hollow of my throat, and when he looked up at me again, it was gone.

“Did you get what you needed?” he asked.

I smiled and nodded. “Did you?”

Reid squinted at me and pursed his lips. “Hm. I’m not sure.” Idly, he caressed the small of my back. “Half of it, I think.”

A thread of concern stitched through my gut. “Only half?”

“Mm.” He kissed my forehead. “Yeah. The first half was that really fantastic sex we just had. But…”

That thread was quickly turning into an anxious tapestry. What hadn’t I done? Where had I gone wrong? “But? What’s the other half?”

That was when he grinned at me. “Food. You have worked me hard, darlin’, and I need fuel for this fire, if you’re gonna keep it up.”

I had never wanted to slap someone so hard in all my life. But at the same time, relief was flooding me, and all I could do was surrender to the desire to kiss Reid’s lips instead.

“You’re awful,” I accused.

“I know.” His tone was serious. Enough to bring me down from my high again. “But I’m trying to be better. For you. ‘Cause… I think I like the person I am when we’re together. And I don’t wanna lose that. Okay?”

I looked at Reid a long time, my lips parted, but no words coming forth. None of them seemed adequate enough to describe what I was feeling, or to address what I knew he was feeling too. We lapsed into silence, but held each other’s gazes. I think, at that moment, it was just enough that we understood one another. That we knew. It was certainly enough for me.

“I’ll make you breakfast,” I offered, but Reid shook his head and gave my rear another squeeze.

“Nah. I’ll get it. What you need is a shower. I’ve made a mess on you.” He brushed the wild strands of my hair back behind my ears. “Go on in. I’ll join you in a minute. Just gotta get somethin’ in my stomach.”

I nodded and he lifted me off him, setting me down on the bed as he vaulted to his feet. Draping a robe around his shoulders, he smirked at me. Something wordless passed between us once again. Then, with a slight shake of his head, Reid padded out of the room and left me to my own devices.

I missed him as soon as he was gone.

“
A
sh
? Dude, it’s me. Why the fuck aren’t you picking up your phone?”

It wasn’t the best way to start off this conversation, but it was the only way I knew how. If I waited for the right words to come to me—the ones that would make me sound noble and good, instead of like the scared, repentant fuck-up that I actually was—I’d never make this call. And it was a call I absolutely had to make, because what had just happened between me and Sarah was too important not to.

I had just won our bet. And now, I was going to settle up.

By calling the whole damn thing off.

I’d known from the get-go what a stupid fucking idea this all was. Sarah was a
person,
goddammit, and I’d come
this close
to using her as a tool in the never ending pissing contest between me and my brothers. It was like we’d never grown up from being teenagers. Our egos were still our only friends. Our reputations meant all.

Not anymore. Now, I had something more important in my life than any of that. Or at least, I could—if I put a stop to this shit right here, right now.

I’d waited until I could hear the shower running to put in my call to Ash. I didn’t want to risk Sarah overhearing our conversation. I hadn’t had a chance to explain things to her yet, or to beg her forgiveness. When she inevitably heard about the stupid thing I’d done, it should’ve been because I was sitting her down and telling her about it like a man, not because I was yelling at Ash so damn loud it might bring the cabin down around us.

Yeah, I was fucking furious with him. He was the one who’d dragged me into this. The bet had been all his idea. And I’d proved quite the sucker, letting him lead me into it. Who the hell cared what he called me behind my back? What other people said about me was none of my business.

It’s an attitude I hadn’t held until Sarah showed up. Shit… being with her seemed to free me from all this horseshit I’d been worried about before. I’d meant it when I’d told her I liked who I was when she was around. That Reid was way better, way cooler, than the Reid I was without her. Before her.

I didn’t want to go back to being that guy—the one who made everything about him. The one who was constantly chasing the next high, the next dangerous stunt he could pull that would have everyone worshipping at his fucking feet. I didn’t need that anymore. The chase was over. I’d found what I’d been looking for all along in Sarah, and it was so much better than I could have hoped.

I’d fallen hard for the girl. I had to admit that to myself. Admitting it to Ash and Wyatt would come later. Right now, my main concern was shutting this bet down and ridding myself of the stains that lying about it had left on my soul.

“Look, I need to talk to you,” I growled, rubbing the back of my neck. “It’s about… that agreement we made.”
Shit, Reid. Call it what it is. Admit to yourself, at least, what a shitty thing you’ve done.
“About that goddamn bet…”

I paused as a dark desire welled up inside of me, one I knew all too well. It seemed that being with Sarah hadn’t entirely cured me of my need to come first. To win, at the expense of all others. Part of me wanted to tell Ash I’d won. Rub it in his face. Use it as a shield, so that when the accusations came that I really gave a damn about Sarah, I would have something to hide behind.

Sure, I’ve fallen for her. Whatever. But you can’t say shit, because I won our bet. I corrupted my Amish girl first…

The thought was physically sickening. I put my hand on the kitchen counter to steady myself and closed my eyes, letting that wave of nausea pass, along with any desire I had to lord over Ash and Wyatt the idea that I’d
won
something by being Sarah’s first.

You’re a sick fuck, Reid Brody.

“It’s over,” I said at last. “You hear me, fuckface? This stupid bet about which one of us can get our dicks wet first is
done.
I’m calling it off. I want no part of this, you understand me? This… childish bullshit has got to stop. Someone has to have the goddamn sense to stop the ride and get off before we all crash and burn. Before we take these poor girls down with us. And—I know, it’s a shock—but it’s gonna be me.”

Since when am I the voice of reason?

“This was a mistake from the start,” I continued. “Nothing more than a dick-measuring contest, right from the beginning. If this is what you and Wyatt wanna measure your worth by, so be it. But leave me out of it. You know what? You don’t even have to call me back. I’ll assume, since you speak English, that you understand. I just hope you two figure your shit out before Hannah and Beth get hurt. They don’t deserve it. And you don’t deserve them—not when you’re more worried about who gets to claim bragging rights. Anyway, I gotta go.” I started to hang up, then realized I’d left something unsaid. “Oh, and one more thing, Ash: go fuck yourself.”

I threw my cell phone down on the counter in front of me and rammed my head into one of the cabinets, letting out a long sigh. Shit, that felt good. Hurt, too, coming face to face with who I’d been—but mostly, I was thinking about who I could be. How even though this had all started off so wrong, being with Sarah could make it right.

I could be a good man for her. I knew it.

As I turned around, though, the look on her face told me otherwise.

Time came to a standstill. My heart shuddered, then stopped. My blood froze in my veins, filling me with icy dread. Sarah was standing on the other side of the kitchen island, just… staring at me. Her face was pale. Her eyes were wet.

I watched, helpless, as her expression crumbled. As the light in her eyes snuffed suddenly—the spark I’d helped kindle last night.

No. Jesus, no.

“Sarah…”

“This was… a game,” she whispered, voice strained like it took every ounce of willpower she had to make the words pass through her lips. “This was all just a game to you. We were all… pieces that you could play against each other. You used us. You, Ash, and Wyatt—all three of you.”

I wanted to answer her. I wanted to tell her that was bullshit, that it wasn’t like that. Except I couldn’t. Because it was.

Sarah raised her hands suddenly, using them to cover her face. “Oh, God. Oh, Lord, what have I done?”

“No,” I said hoarsely, taking a step toward her. “Sarah, no. Please, listen…”

She pulled away from me. The only person in the world who could save me from myself pulled away from me. And she looked at me from between her fingers like I was a monster. Like I was the devil himself.

There was nothing but utter horror on her face. My stomach turned. And then it did it again when that horror turned to betrayal.

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped, pulling the over-sized robe she wore tighter around herself—like it could put an extra bit of distance between us, and she wanted all she could get. I stopped, still reaching for her, but knowing now it would do no good. Sarah wasn’t going to reach back. She was going to run.

No. I couldn’t let her do that. She meant too much for me to just let go of her.

“It’s not what you think,” I started; but then I realized that was something of a lie. “I mean—it is, but not anymore…”

“Not anymore?” Her lips moved, hard and slow, around the words, like she’d gone numb. “Not
anymore?
You… you made a bet about… sleeping with us. About corrupting us. Diluting our faith. You were just talking to Ash about it—but you don’t think it matters
anymore
?”

Rage replaced betrayal now. Sarah clenched her hands into fists. “Doesn’t matter anymore to who, Reid? Because it matters to me! And it’s going to matter to Beth and Hannah, too!”

“If you’d let me explain…”

“Fine!” I stared at her, dumbfounded. I hadn’t been expecting that. When I didn’t say anything, she shook her head at me. “You can’t, can you? You can’t think up a good enough lie to cover your tracks.”

“It’s not that,” I said, then stammered through a string of possible explanations before I threw up my hands. “Look—yes, there was a bet. About the three of you. About the three of us. It was stupid and juvenile and—”

“And it was about sleeping with us,” Sarah interrupted. I watched the vein in her neck pulse. “About
ruining
us!”

“I didn’t ruin anything!” I snarled. A hard, smoldering ember was weighing heavily in my stomach, threatening to explode into flame at any second. It wasn’t fair to Sarah, I knew, but there were few things I hated as much as being talked over—being silenced. Especially when I’d been well on my way to doing the right goddamn thing. “All I did was take your virginity, Sarah. It’s not—”

“Yes! You took something from me, Reid—don’t you get that? You took my future. My value!” She sat on a nearby ottoman. Her knees were shaking so hard they were nearly knocking together. Again, she hid her face in her hands—or maybe it was that she didn’t want to look at me. “But you don’t care, do you? You couldn’t possibly understand...”

“Where the hell is this shit coming from?” I sputtered, snorting in disbelief. “You weren’t talking like this last night. Or this morning! Back then, it was all, ‘please, Reid, teach me. Show me how.’”

Oh, shit. That was an asshole move if there ever was one.
Low blow, Reid. Low blow.

Sarah stared at me, eyes wide. Her jaw sagged. I knew I’d wounded her. Shit, I might as well have slapped her right across her pretty face.

Quickly, I tried to recover. “Things changed, Sarah. After I got to know you. Once I saw who you were… once I realized I was capable of being a better person—a better man—as long as I was with you… I didn’t want to play this stupid game anymore. What we did—the sex—it didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“The bet was… how did you put it? Oh, right.
To see who could get their dick wet first.
” Sarah snorted, disgust twisting her features. “You’re telling me that this trip to the cabin, the kiss on the Ferris wheel, the date at the movie theater—
none
of that had anything to do with trying to win?”

She had me there, and I hated it. I hated that I couldn’t tell her “no” without it being a lie. Because for a while there, it had totally been about winning the bet and making some cute little Amish girl forsake the tenets of her faith. But I couldn’t tell her “yes,” either. Not directly. Not unless I wanted her to run off screaming and never come back.

“The important thing is,” I said as evenly as I could, “that it’s not about that now.”

“I suppose not,” Sarah answered, “given that you’ve got what you wanted.”

“For fuck’s sake!” I slammed my hand down on the island counter. “Sarah, if I gave two shits about that stupid fucking bet,
why would I have called Ash to tell him it was off
?”

“Easy,” she said with a shrug. “Because you think you’ve won.”

“But I didn’t tell him that, did I?”

She didn’t have an immediate response for that one. Wringing her hands, Sarah only narrowed her eyes.

I sighed and ran both my hands through my hair. “I was going to tell you, you know. I didn’t want you to find out like this.” I closed my eyes. “I really, truly didn’t.”

Sarah shook her head. “You should have told me from the start. You should have been honest with me.”

“I’m being honest
now,
” I groaned. “And the truth is that I’ve called off the bet. What the hell is the big deal?”

She stared at me, aghast. “The big deal is that our relationship is built on a foundation of lies! The big deal is that everything I thought I understood about us—the things I felt for you—the things we shared—they’re all tainted by the fact that you were constantly, consistently lying to me about your intentions. Right from the start!” She shook her head. “How are you not getting this, Reid?”

“Because the past doesn’t matter, Sarah!” I said, trying once again to approach her. I felt like if I could just hold her, she’d understand. But she shrunk away from me and I stopped short again. “It’s all bullshit. It’s gone, and there’s nothing either of us can do to change it. It’s over.”

“The past is
everything,
” she whispered, looking away from me now. Her tears were getting the best of her. That anger was fading, replaced by grief. “The past—the parts of it we share—that was the whole reason I came here with you. The reason I trusted you…” She laughed, but the sound held no mirth. “God in Heaven, how could I have been so stupid? So blind? How could I have thought you were it for me?”

If I thought I might as well have slapped Sarah across the face before, in reference to one of my own scathing comments, that one right there got me back good. No, better than good. Because when she said that—when she asked how the hell she could have ever thought we could be together—I realized two things.

The first was that Sarah had wanted to be with me. That she’d wanted to stick around. That she had been thinking about abandoning her home, her family, her religion—everything—to stay here in Bright Falls with my sorry ass.

The second was that she’d used the word
thought.
Past-tense. Meaning she didn’t feel that way anymore.

That was the part that got me. That was when she drew a blade across my stomach and made my guts spill out onto the floor. Figuratively, anyway—but those kinds of wounds can be so much worse than the ones that scar your skin.

Emptiness took hold inside of me. And the words that came next out of my mouth… they didn’t feel like they came from me. They felt like they came from that black hole she’d opened in my soul.

“I have no idea, darlin’. Because bet or not, this was never gonna be a long-term thing for me.”

I knew very well what creature had said those things. It was the same one that reached greedily for the limelight, the one with an ego just as big and dark as it was. It was the old Reid, the one that had to save face at any cost. The one that had controlled me for so many years I sometimes wondered where it ended and I began. Being with Sarah had made the lines clearer, but now that she was leaving… now that she was beyond my reach… everything was ugly and gray again. Including me.

Especially me.

I knew, the moment I said them, that I’d fucked up. Not only were they cruel words, but they weren’t true. They were just an amalgamation of all the shitty things I’d felt about women in the past. They were the whisperings of a ghost—of the man I used to be, and the ego that drove him.