Page 3 of When We Burn

“Better.” I smile up at him. All of the Blackwells are cute, but Bridger? I’ve started to notice things about him lately. Things that I’d never tell him because I would be mortified. He’s just my friend, but he’s my brother’s best friend, and I know those two things will never change. “You don’t have to stay with me. I’m okay.”

“I’m happy here,” he says and then looks over my head to his sister. “You happy here, Billie?”

“Yep,” she says and licks her cone. “Why did he do it, Dani?”

I blow out a breath, still not altogether steady.It.No one wants to say out loud what he just tried to do to me. “I-I-I forgot to get the eggs this morning, and when he said he was going to hurt me, I saidn-n-no.”

They’re quiet for a long minute, both of them forgetting all about their ice cream. Alex tips her head against my leg. She’s so quiet, and I know we’ll huddle together under the blankets later and cry.

“He’s a monster,” Billie whispers, repeating what I thought myself earlier. She leans her head on my shoulder.

But Bridger still hasn’t said anything at all, so I take a peek up at him, and the look on his handsome face almost scares me.

He’smad.

“Bridge?”

“Fuck, Dani.” He shakes his head and tosses his cone into a trash can before he wraps his arms around me and hugs me close. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

I let him hold me, because Bridger gives really good hugs. Billie’s rubbing circles on my back. I look around the porch and notice that everyone is quiet, watching us.

They heard.

Holden’s breathing hard, his eyes narrowed. I know he wants to kill Dad, but he can’t because then he’d go to jail, and he won’t leave us.

So we’re just stuck. Charlie, my baby sister at just two years younger than me, crawls into Holden’s lap, crying. She’s ten, but she still clings to our older brother as if she’s a baby, and he holds on to her but never looks away from me.

I feel loved here. Protected. But I have no idea how long this feeling will last.If it will at all.Because the monster will never stop.

Chapter One

BRIDGER

Her skin is velvet. Pure sin. Pure fuckingeverything.Her big blue eyes shine as she bites that lower lip and spreads her legs, welcoming me to rest my pelvis between them. I’m so fucking hard, I can barely breathe as I rub my length through her already wet pussy, and she arches her neck back on a moan.

“Bridger. Yes. Oh, God, yes.”

Her fingers fist in my hair, but I grab her wrists, kiss them, and pin them over her head before I lick and suck on her already hard nipples.

“You like this, Dani? You want me to lick your delectable little body?”

She purrs, her hips lift, and her mouth makes a perfect O as I rear my hips back and rest the crown of my cock against her entrance.

“Yes. Please, Bridger.”

I nip her jaw, lick my way over to her ear, and whisper, “I’m going to fuck you so good, sweetheart.”

“Yes!”

I’ve wanted her for my entire adult life. She’s a siren that I can’t walk away from, and with her spread out, so hot and wet and needy for me, I can’t resist her. I nudge just the tip inside of her, and she moans, and I can’t hold back.

I slam into her. Her eyes go wide and glassy, and her legs lift, already begging for more. Her walls clench around me, as if she’s already right there, on the edge of falling apart.

“Jesus Christ,” I growl against her lips, licking along the seam of her lips, and she opens for me, giving me back as good as I give. “You’re a goddamn temptress, you know that?”

She’s so damn beautiful.

So perfect.

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