Priceless

Three things in my life were fact.

I needed Sarah to survive.

I needed sex to remain sane.

And I could never mix sex with Sarah.

I just knew—deep in my marrow—that if I did, I’d somehow lose her. All my deepest darkest secrets would crack open, bleed out, and ruin everything between us. I wouldn’t unleash the shit inside me on my worst enemy, let alone her. So she stayed strictly in the friend zone.

People probably thought I never went there with her because of her cerebral palsy, but f*ck them. She knew she was the most important person in my world, and I wasn’t about to risk hurting our relationship just to make my c*ck happy.

Until the moment she begged me to take her virginity.

Now it’s all about to hit the fan, because how the hell do you resist the one person forbidden to you when she says please?

--Brandt Gamble

On September 14, 2013, exactly a month after I pushed publish on my first true self-published book, Price of a Kiss, I received an email that started out a little something like this:

Dear Linda,

As an avid reader and wife, mother and attorney with severe cerebral palsy, I am begging you to please take the opportunity to write Sarah’s story. I am so tired of reading stereotypical romances where the woman with the disability is bitter, helpless, has no self-esteem and is just waiting to be rescued or miraculously healed. Well, the real world doesn’t work that way (even when it’s prettied up). Real life can be beautiful. I found a wonderful guy that thinks I am the sexiest woman alive despite my wheelchair. This year, we will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. Our oldest son is 23 and in medical school, and our youngest is nearly 10 and a 4th grader....

Well, this is still one of the most meaningful letters I ever received from a reader along with the scariest, because holy crawfish, how was I supposed to say no to that? But then...eek, how was I supposed to write about a character who lived with something I knew nothing about, and do it any kind of justice?

Then I realized, oh yeah, I did that with every story I wrote! LOL.

So I replied to Ms. Mary Crawford and told her this was one request I couldn’t refuse. But I knew it was going to take me some time to come up with a suitable story line, a suitable hero for our precious Sarah, and a suitable way to work them into what later became my Forbidden Men series. And now, nearly three years later, I’m hoping and crossing my fingers that I have something to please and honor our very patient Mary.

I would also like to note how happy I am for Mary. In the three years it took lazy ol’ me to come up with something for her, I also nudged her into following her own desire to tell stories (yeah, look at me, taking the credit for all her hard work. Ha!), and she now has eight books published! Isn’t she amazing? Everyone, tell Mary how awesome she is!

Okay, sorry! Enough of my rambling. Let us now proceed with the story.

BRANDT

AGE 13

Get out of my bed!

Jolted awake by the hand shoving my shoulder, I bolted upright with a gasp. What? Huh?

An irate sister jostled me again. "I said out, you little dweeb."

Damn it. I collapsed back onto the mattress. She was home.

With a groan, I rolled over to flop onto my back and yawned up at the darkened ceiling of our bedroom as I tried to rouse myself enough to crawl off her bed. But against my will, my eyes drifted shut and sleep tried to reclaim me.

Brandt! Caroline snarled through an irritated whisper. I’m serious. Get out. What’re you doing on my bunk anyway?

What do you think I’m doing? You weren’t home, and Colton’s sick. I wasn’t sleeping anywhere near that kid when he had a torrential flood of green shit gushing from his nose. Besides, with his fever raging, he’d been hot as hell to lie next to.

It seriously sucked ass that I had to share a room with both my older sister and younger brother, but to have a single bunk bed to sleep on between the three of us was even worse. To top that off, the bottom twin-sized mattress Colton and I used had become a tight fit in the last year since we’d both hit a growth spurt.

When I’d seen Caroline’s empty top bunk, I hadn’t been able to resist hogging a mattress all to myself for a while.

Well I’m home now. She ripped the warm covers off me. So, move.

I cursed as the cool night air stole through me, settling straight into my bones, and tried to reach for the blankets again, but Caroline was having none of that. As we started a snarling tug-of-war, I muttered, Jesus, why couldn’t you have just stayed the entire night with your rich prick boyfriend?

The douche probably had a king-sized bed all to himself too. Bastard.

Goddammit, Brandt. She let go of the sheets so abruptly that I went sailing backward and landed with an oomph onto her mattress, all the covers piling on top of me.

Batting and spitting cotton out of my face, I lurched upright to give her a piece of my mind. She was the one who’d left me alone with a sick-as-hell eight-year-old so she could prance off with her new, jerk-of-the-century boyfriend. I deserved this bed for the entire night. But as soon as I opened my mouth to rant, she sniffed and wiped the back of her hand over her nose.

I squinted through the dark to see her face better and finally caught sight of the tears dripping down her cheeks. Fuck.

What’d he do? I demanded.

Nothing, she answered quickly. Too quickly.

Nothing my ass. I wasn’t an idiot. We heard all the juicy high school gossip down our middle school halls, and no one was talking about how the rich Sander Scotini was dating trailer park trash, Caroline Gamble. So that meant he was making her keep their relationship a secret. The jackass was using her big time. If she was crying, it was his fault.

Just...give me my bed back, all right? She sounded tired and beaten.

This time, I hopped over the side without complaint, landing on the floor next to her. Do I need to kick his ass?

She blurted out a hard laugh and wiped at her eyes. As if you could.

I straightened in indignation. "I totally could." Scotini might have five years on me, but no way could that douche take me.

When my sister surged toward me unexpectedly and wrapped her arms around my neck, I stumbled a couple steps back before I could catch my footing. We weren’t exactly the hugging type, so having her hug me now was...odd. But then she sniffed again, and her tears soaked through the shoulder of my shirt as she said, I love you, Brandt, and I found myself squeezing her back as my worry peaked.

Seriously, Care. What’d he do?

Nothing I want to talk about. She pulled away, wiping at her eyes once more.

Yep, I was definitely going to beat the shit out of Sander Scotini.

Thanks for giving me my bed back. She turned toward the ladder but before she could climb up to her bunk, Colton sputtered out a rattling cough in his sleep. Caroline stooped down to press her palm to his forehead. Sucking in a breath, she said, He’s burning up. Did you give him any medicine before bed?

Yeah, but... I shrugged. The medicine wasn’t working.

Caroline sighed as if she were seventy instead of seventeen. I shouldn’t have left you home alone with him.

I found myself shrugging again as if it were no big deal. The resentment I’d been feeling toward her all night for leaving me stuck with Colton just kind of slipped away. She was a kid too and shouldn’t have to put her life on hold just to take care of us. She should get to go out with a boy if she wanted to.

It was our fucking mother’s job to take care of the sick eight-year-old, except Daisy hadn’t been home in...oh, was it four or five days now?

Who knew?

Who cared?

Life was easier when she wasn’t around.

He’d still have a fever if you’d been here, I said lamely, trying to make Caroline feel better.

She heaved out another sigh and rubbed her face. I wish Noel was home.

Me too. Our older brother might’ve been stricter on us than Caroline was, but he had kept an order to things. Bills got paid, groceries never ran out, broken things were fixed, and sick members of the family healed quickly. Though he sent home every extra penny he made since he’d left for college and called on the daily to check in on us, things around here were definitely slipping since he’d been gone.

What? You think he could miraculously heal Colton? I tried to tease. Noel was awesome, sure, but he wasn’t that awesome.

Caroline sent me a dry look. At least I wouldn’t have to be the one to deal with this.

It was funny, I realized, or maybe it was just sad. But neither of us wanted our mother to come home to shoulder the responsibility. We hadn’t even considered her as a form of help.

Get some sleep, I said, awkwardly patting Caroline’s arm. Maybe it won’t suck so bad in the morning.

As if. She snorted, letting me know she totally didn’t believe my words any more than I did. But she climbed up onto the top bunk anyway. ‘Night, bubba.

‘Night. I helped pull the blankets up over her and then I stood there a moment, watching both her and Colton on their respective mattresses—safe and sound, for now—before I turned away and slogged from the room.

To the couch it was for me.

I had no idea how Noel had lived for eighteen years, sleeping on that uncomfortable hunk of junk. It was too short and hard as a rock. I didn’t even like to sit on the ratted piece of furniture.

Realizing the front room was too cold to sleep in without some kind of blanket, I shivered and rubbed my arms before I backtracked to the second bedroom in our single-wide trailer. But I paused just outside the door, hesitating to push my way inside. Daisy wasn’t home, yet it still felt strange going inside her domain to fetch an extra blanket where they were stored in her closet.

All the sex and drugs she did took place in her room. Noel had made sure she’d kept all her shit behind this closed door, and for some reason she’d followed his edict even after he’d moved off to college...or maybe she wasn’t aware he no longer lived here. Whatever. This room was Daisy’s den of iniquity, and it smelled gross.

I wrinkled my nose as I crept inside. No idea why I was tiptoeing; no one was here. But I did anyway.

Wanting to get in and out as quickly as possible, I dashed to her closet, slid open the door and yanked the first blanket-feeling thing I found down as soon as my fingers sought one in the dark. On my race back to the exit, however, I miscalculated in the dark and cracked my shinbone on the baseboard of her bed.

Motherfucker. Dropping the blanket on the bed, I skipped in a circle on one foot as I bent my knee up to my chest and clutched my throbbing leg.

Unable to keep my balance, I plopped down on the edge of the mattress and hissed through my pain until I thought I could stand again.

Instead of pushing to my feet, though, I glanced back at the rest of the unmade bed behind me. All that expanse of available sleeping space...just going to waste. Most of the sheets were rumpled up in one corner and who knew what she’d been doing the last time she’d been here, but temptation seized me anyway. I didn’t even care how rank the place smelled of ass and stale alcohol. There was an empty, soft mattress right here, just waiting to be used.

The likelihood of Daisy returning home before morning had to be about one in, oh, a million. And the couch didn’t smell much better, anyway.

I was so tired, and my ass had already sunk into the lush softness. It would be easy to just stretch out and... Ahhh. Bliss. I tugged the fresh blanket I’d just fetched from the closet over me and closed my eyes, sighing as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Unconsciousness claimed me within moments.

It was a good sleep too. I wasn’t roused by coughing from Colton next to me or the squeak of Caroline’s bedsprings above me. It was just quiet.

Nice.

Peaceful.

My dreams turned toward pleasant things. Since I was waking up with morning wood pretty much every day now, a hazy vision of Jamey Hester, who sat next to me in English class, sprang up in my head. In real life, she wouldn’t give a trashy Gamble like me the time of day. I was too poor, cussed too much, got into too many fights. What the fuck ever. But in my dream, she liked me just fine.

Her hand wrapped around my junk, right through my boxers, and I gasped from the pleasure, arching my back off the bed. Fingers squeezed appreciatively and pumped, making my balls tingle in a way that let me know I was seconds away from coming.

Damn, baby. You sure are a big one, aren’t you? Jamey cooed, except she didn’t really sound like Jamey. She sounded more like—

My eyes flew open.

Daisy loomed above me, looking down at me until all her hair flooded around her face. The blanket no longer covered me, and her hand was...Jesus.

What the fuck? I lurched up and scrambled away from her, dislodging her grip on me with my haste.

When my back met the corner of the wall, I sucked in a breath and shook my head, unable to stop gaping at the woman who’d given birth to me. My shin ached from smacking it into her bed earlier, letting me know I was definitely no longer dreaming, and my mother was honest-to-God kneeling right there on the bed in front of me.

Still. No way had she just been giving me a hand job. That part must’ve been in my dream. It had to have been. I shook my head again, trying to wake fully.

What’re you doing here? I asked without thinking.

She let out a husky laugh. "Honey, this is my bed. You’re the interloper. Then propping herself on her hands and knees, she began to crawl toward me. But I don’t mind if you stay."

Holy shit, I squawked, digging my back deeper into the wall.

It wasn’t quite morning, but the sun was beginning to rise outside the window. It let in just enough gray light to let me see how bloodshot her eyes were. The woman was probably high as a kite, doped up with who knew what mix of drugs.

Do you know who I am? I had to ask because, hell, even as fucked up as she was, she had to know this was wrong. Right?

Colton, right? she asked as she paused before me and snapped her finger. "No, you’re Brandt. Brandt..." she cooed, reaching out to trace a finger over my erection through my shorts.

I shoved her away, and she slapped me. Hard.

The instant sting made my eyes water as she pointed a finger at my nose.

Don’t you shove me, you little asshole. I brought you into this world. I can take you right back out. You hear me?

Gulping, I nodded uneasily.

She smiled as if everything was good again. Licking the corner of my lip, I tasted blood and glanced toward the door, wondering how easy it’d be to slip past her and make a run for it.

But she murmured, Now where were we?

I jumped when she grabbed me again, which only made her laugh and press against me harder.

Gritting my teeth, I clenched my hands down at my side and tipped my head up toward the ceiling as I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to feel what I was feeling. But no one had ever touched me there before. The contact made my boner grow harder as all the while, the sick unease in my stomach grew queasier. I swallowed repeatedly to keep from vomiting as an unnatural chill swept through my limbs, making me tremble uncontrollably.