Read Online Never Been Kissed by Molly O'Keefe - Free Book Online

than last time you were here.”
    Brody doubted it but he smiled and took the first step up to the apartment. He liked the joking around, but it never lasted long. Sean always wanted to turn serious, talk about the bar and Ed. His own life and its problems, like Brody should have an opinion. A desire for involvement. And that always put Brody deeply off balance. “You need some help?” Sean asked.
    “No. I’ve got her.” He pulled the feather and air weight of her closer. An effective barrier between him and his brother’s desire for more brotherhood.
    “I put some basics in the fridge. And clean sheets on the bed.”
    “Great. Thank you, Sean.”
    Brody climbed the stairs, deeper into the shadows, but he could feel his brother’s eyes on him from where he stood in that pool of light.
    “You know,” Sean said, suddenly very serious. “We’re going to have to talk about this.” He pointed at the woman in Brody’s arms. “And Dad. We have to talk about Dad.”
    “Tomorrow,” Brody said. “Noon.”
    After a second Sean nodded and went back into the bar and Brody climbed up the rest of the stairs to the apartment.
    Where am I?
    She awoke with a start and a cry in a dark, hot room. Her heart pounded with fear. With adrenaline. Anger.
    Yeri!
    But this was not Africa. Not Somalia. She was in a bed and the smells were all wrong.
    God, she had to go to the bathroom.
    She had to go to the bathroom so bad, it made her whole body hurt. Or made it hurt more because she remembered in a rush why her body really hurt.
    I’ve been beaten. Stabbed.
    Hands shaking, she pushed the sheets off her body and tried to stand up, but only knocked a lamp on the small table next to the bed into the wall.
    Where am I?
Now she was scared. Scared and hurt and she had to pee.
    “Ashley?”
    Brody. It all came back to her. She’d asked him to take her somewhere, hide her, where her family couldn’t find her. He stood in the doorway, watching her carefully, his dark eyes seeing everything. Seeing too much.
    Oh,
she thought,
I clearly didn’t think this through.
What seemed like the perfect way to escape her family, to give herself time to heal and get her head together, left her alone and in the care of Brody Baxter.
    I don’t even know where I am!
    “Brody,” she said, her voice warped and cracked. “What … what time is it?”
    “Nearly dawn. You okay?”
    No. Decidedly no.
    “Can I help you to the bathroom?”
    Oh God.
    Her eyelids fluttered shut, overwhelmed by horror and her poor decision-making. She should have gone to a hotel. She could have hired a nurse. A stranger.
    “Ash? Let me help you—”
    “No!” She snapped. “I don’t need your help going to the bathroom!”
    Her snarling words fell into a well of Brody-silence. She was embarrassed and worried and considering theway her emotions were ping-ponging around the room a little frightened of herself.
    Out of nowhere, tears filled her eyes again.
    Good God, Ash. Get it together.
    “Ashley.” It was just a breath, barely a whisper, and he was pushing open the door, his pity and sympathy softening the sharp lines of his face. “Let me help you.”
    He wore jeans and nothing else. All that dark, smooth skin revealed. It was the most of his body she’d ever seen and it was shocking to see it now. She couldn’t look away from the muscle along his hip, sliding into the edge of his jeans, pulled low by the weight of his hands in his pockets. There were burn scars along his rib cage, pink taut tissue, barely visible, but there.
    How unfair that he was only more handsome as a thirty-four-year-old than he’d been as a twenty-four-year-old. Unfair that he was more interesting and more competent, more naked and still utterly distant.
    When she was so broken and needy and tired and had to pee and couldn’t get there on her own.
    She pushed herself up from the bed, surprised that it took all her strength. But of course there he was. His hands, wide and warm, helping her