Brendan (The Doherty Mafia Book 4) by Kasey Krane (summer reads TXT) 📗

As she stared at me, it seemed like she was close to tears again. And the last thing I wanted to do was make her cry.

“Okay, look. I didn’t mean to scare you, all right?” I said.

Even though I had moved closer to her, she hadn’t stepped back. So maybe she wasn’t so scared of me after all.

“You don’t scare me,” she claimed with quivering lips, voicing my thoughts.

Lips I wanted to kiss. Lips I wanted to own.

“All right, if I don’t scare you, what do I make you feel?” I asked.

She was close enough for me to touch her, and I wanted to touch her. If this was any other chick, I would have grabbed her and taken her. She was right there with nowhere to go. But there was something holding me back. I didn’t want to treat her the way I treated every other woman I encountered.

“I don’t know…I don’t know if I’m thinking straight right now,” she said, trembling a little.

“You’ve had a shock. Those men are assholes. You can’t let them get to you,” I said. My voice was a deep gruff. Every time I thought about those idiots touching her with their grubby hands, it made me mad.

I didn’t know the first thing about her, but I knew I didn’t want any other man touching her.

Rosalie looked surprised, then she gulped and nodded.

“I’ll be fine. I just need some time. This job is…it can be difficult,” she said.

She stared up at me again and it was getting harder by the minute not to touch her. It was almost like she expected me to do it. She expected me to touch her.

“This is not the kind of place you should be working at then,” I said.

I knew I had no business saying it. I knew nothing about her. I didn’t know why she had this job, why she hadn’t quit already.

“Like I said before, it’s not like I have a choice.”

“Yes you do, you can walk out with me right now and never come back,” I said. What the fuck? What was that supposed to mean?

“And what are you going to do, Brendan? Save me?” she asked, half-laughing bitterly.

I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t hold back. I reached for her, grabbing her by her waist. She gasped when I pulled her to me. Then she did something that convinced me she wanted this as much as I did. She tilted her head to the side and lifted her chin up towards me. She wanted me to kiss her.

So I did.

Five

Rosalie

He didn’t recognize me. In fact, he had no idea who I was. The only reason Brendan followed me to the storage room was because he was the kind of man who needed to know everything about everything.

I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did when I saw him. I shouldn’t have run away. If I’d managed to keep cool when I recognized him, spoken to him politely and parted ways amicably—this wouldn’t have been happening.

He wouldn’t have chased me down and demanded to know why I was behaving this oddly with him. It was all my fault.

And now I had nowhere to go. He had me cornered.

Well…not technically. Like he said, he hadn’t locked the door. He wasn’t forcing himself on me. I could have walked out any time I wanted. And yet, I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Just like the first time we met, Brendan Doherty had a kind of debilitating effect on me. Like I had lost complete control of my body and mind. I surrendered myself to him, and the closer he came to me, the worse it got.

I should have put a stop to it and walked out. Just like I should have the first time. But instead, when he kissed me, I kissed him back.

I closed my eyes, raising myself up on my toes so I could reach him better. He kissed me slowly, softly—parting my mouth with his lips so he could thrust his tongue in me.

I was powerless against him. Powerless and hungry. I wanted this, I couldn’t deny it—even to myself. I wanted him with every fiber of my being. I felt safe there with him. Then slowly, he engulfed me in his arms and my need for him became more intense.

I pushed myself into him, melting into his body. The urgency with which I kissed him back would have made it very clear to him that we both wanted the same thing. However, the reason for wanting it was different for both of us.

For him it was pure sexual need. The same reason as the first time we met. He liked what he saw and even though I had no idea why he wanted me, he did. And he took it.

My reason for kissing him back was nostalgia. Kissing him transported me back to that time in my life when I had no responsibilities weighing me down. When my life was my own, and open. When I had choices and a whole future ahead of me.

Kissing Brendan Doherty was like tasting freedom again.

Four years ago, I wasn’t supposed to go to Mia White’s house party. I was supposed to be at home, working on a college essay that needed to be submitted the next Monday. And usually, I was known to be the girl who would skip a party to stay home and finish her homework.

And a part of me wished I did. Another part of me knew that if I never went to that party—I wouldn’t have experienced the night I was about to have. And there were lots of things that were special about that night.

My friend, Petra, forced me to go. When at first, trying to emotionally blackmail me into going with her for moral support didn’t seem to work, she told me how people thought I wasn’t cool enough. That I was ashamed of myself for being a bad drunk,