Resisting Roots (Lotus House Book 1)

by Audrey Carlan

  “That’s awesome. You’re lucky.”

  Even though it should make her sad, after having lost both of hers, Genevieve was upbeat. Happy to be talking about my family.

  I nodded. “I am. And of course, they boast every chance they get about their son. Being an only child, I wanted them to be proud. Dad and Mom worked their buns off to put me into every baseball clinic, travel ball, fall, summer, and spring ball all my life. I wanted it, showed commitment, and they rewarded that.”

  “See, that’s what I want for Row. He’s good, Trent. Really good. I don’t want him to miss out.” She frowned.

  “Did you talk to him about college ball?” I asked, nervous that it would make the mood turn a bit sour but interested nonetheless.

  Genevieve’s coal-colored eyes seemed to light from within. “Yes! Finally got him to agree to let me meet with his coach.” She shoveled a bite of pasta into her mouth and chewed. “He said he’d consider the scouts for UC Davis and Berkeley, but he’s adamant about staying in the home, being where he can keep an eye on me and Mary.”

  Something about a sixteen-year-old kid planning to forgo his own future to protect my woman ruffled my feathers. “You’re not his responsibility,” I said the words, and damned if I didn’t mean them. I’d wanted to add “you’re my responsibility,” but didn’t. Thank God. For a moment, I’d almost lost my mind.

  She nodded and sipped her drink. “Right. I’ve told him that time and time again, but he feels like he’s the man in the house, and our dad would want him to look out for his sisters.”

  No truer words… A good man, any good man who cared about the women in his life should protect them. Unfortunately, the kid felt the need to step up and was risking his own future to do so. I had to give it to him, even though it irked me. “It’s a trait to be respected. But keep driving it home that he needs to think about himself, too. Maybe I could help, talk to him for you. You know, man to man?”

  She lifted her gaze from her plate and almost choked on her meal. Once she took a sip of her water, she brought her napkin to her mouth and coughed into it. Fear swept down my spine, and I stood.

  Genevieve stopped me from coming to her by holding out her hand flat in front of me. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Sorry. Your offer just took me by surprise.” She took long slugs of her water and then cast her dark gaze to mine. “You’d really do that? Talk to him, that is?”

  Man, she was sweet. Not only did she smell like sugar and spice, she damn well was sugar and spice and all things nice. Fuck. My gut twisted tight. “Yeah. For you, and for him. I like the kid. He seems like he has a good head on his shoulders, wants to take care of his family. Ain’t nothing wrong with a man who has values. Especially when he’s devoted to the women in his clan. If my dad goes, you’d better believe I’d be Johnny-on-the-spot to take care of Ma. Hands down.”

  Genevieve bit down on her lip, and her eyes went soft, more dark chocolate than espresso. The woman looked at me as if I were the sun, the moon, and the stars. Even though the warning sirens were blaring loud, I pushed them aside and enjoyed every second of a good woman looking at me as if I alone could make each day brighter. Hell, it felt damn good, too. Better than any home run, and that, more than anything else, was far too telling. I had to put the brakes on whatever the hell was happening to me. Start focusing on the prize. And that was Genevieve under me, in my bed, screaming my name at the top of her lungs. Yeah, that was where this was headed. Anything else didn’t matter.

  * * *

  GENEVIEVE

  Trent was full of surprises. He’d shared things with me that I wouldn’t normally have thought went along with a casual type of date that we both knew was heading straight to the bedroom. Did I want to get to know him better? Yes. Was I scared of that? Absolutely. I knew that, once Trent was back in fighting shape, he’d be onto the next game and likely the next good-looking female within a ten-foot radius of him. We had not set any parameters for this thing between us, but I knew the score. Fun now, heartbreak later if I didn’t rein it in. It was time to stop thinking of him as boyfriend material and focus on the physical benefits of a casual fling with Trent.

  Sex.

  Really hot, satisfying, mind-bending, body-melting sex was the only thing on the table. And it sounded delicious.

  Trent paid the check and led me from the table to the elevator. Instead of hitting the lobby level, he silently pressed button number eighteen. I raised my eyebrows as he looped an arm around my shoulders. “My apartment is on twenty,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  He tightened his hand around the ball of my shoulder. “Okay.”

  Besides the endless conversation, he’d touched me constantly. We hadn’t sat across from one another but on the sides of the square table. He touched my hand, pressed his knee into mine, swept a lock of hair away from my face. We even had a brief generous kiss after we shared a slice of Kahlúa mousse cake. I’d wanted to say no to the additional purchase. Even though the restaurant had customers in jeans and nice shirts, the price tag on every item was way over the top. My pasta was twenty-six dollars, and that was the cheapest thing on the menu. Trent had ordered a fifty-dollar steak. What I could do with fifty dollars…

  I shook my head to clear the thoughts and let him lead me down the hall to his apartment. I couldn’t believe I was about to see where the famous Trent Fox lived.

  He opened the door and ushered me into the foyer. It was a step up from a sunken living room. The room had plain white walls with nothing but a TV hanging from them. Across from the TV were a single leather couch, a glass coffee table, and an end table with a lamp on it. No knickknacks or even magazines lying around. Trent walked to the left and turned on the lights in a sprawling kitchen.

  It was beautiful. White cabinets with shiny steel handles. Black granite countertops that gleamed under the lights, and high-quality stainless steel appliances. A toaster and coffeepot were the only things visible on the counters. No canisters, spice rack, homemade trinkets, or anything that remotely gave a hint as to what type of things interested Trent. I could see through the kitchen to a dining room that had a glass table and six chairs. Nothing else. No pictures hung, no sideboard with special china dishes, or anything remotely comforting.

  “Come, I’ll give you the rest of the tour.” He leered. Not in a gross creeper way but in a cheesy, ‘I’m going to show you my room, and we’re going to spend time in there’ silly way.

  “Lead on.” I chuckled but continued to be baffled by the lack of pictures lining the hallways. “How long have you lived here?” I asked, thinking he must have just moved in.

  “Five years.”

  I stopped right in the center of the hallway.

  “What’s the matter?” He lifted his hands to my biceps. “You know, babe, you don’t have to do anything with me tonight. I mean, yeah, obviously I’ve been thinking about nothing else since we’d had some of the best oral sex in my life.” He grinned and licked his lips. “But we don’t have to take that last step right now.”

  Of course he’d think I was having reservations. I wasn’t, but what I was having was a mental stutter over the lack of personality. He only had the items he needed to survive. Couch, table, lamp, television, kitchen table, toaster, coffeepot. “I’m fine, just surprised you’ve lived here so long.”

  He ran his hands up and down my biceps. “Yeah, why’s that?”

  I grabbed hold of his hand to remove the tension that had seeped into his form. I liked that he’d worried about my comfort and was concerned with how I felt about this step. He didn’t seem like he was trying to play me, though I knew what we were about to do would mean far more to me than him. I’d only been intimate with one man, and at the time, I thought he’d end up as my husband. With Trent, I was planning to have sex with him, share my body with him, and I also knew beyond a shadow of doubt that was all it would be to him—a physical release.

  He continued to walk down the hall until he reached a set of double doors.
He opened them and walked in. The biggest sleigh bed I’d ever seen sat in the center of the room. Two end tables hugged each side. The wood was a fine cherry finish and chunky, not quite manly but elegant and sturdy. A midnight-blue comforter with the slightest sheen to the fabric covered the beautiful bed. In the corner was a long dresser with a mirror above it. Catty-corner to the bed was another tall dresser and above that, another wide flat-screen television hung on the wall.

  This room had a bit more life. Above the bed was a beautiful picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. “That picture is beautiful.” I pointed to the giant framed photograph. The red tones of the bridge seemed to escape out of the confines of the misty fog surrounding it.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, did you buy that from a local photographer?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, I took it.”

  I let out a shocked breath. “Really?”

  He exhaled, looked up at the painting, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, a little dabble into photography. I didn’t frame it and hang it though. That was my ma. The bedroom set and comforter, too. They bought me the set when I got signed by the Ports. It was their gift. I get new bedding every year for Christmas, but yeah, Ma’s got good taste.”

  I scanned the furniture, appreciating its beauty once more. A five-by-seven framed picture sat alone on the dresser. I walked over and picked it up. A tall gray-haired man stood, holding on to a very small blond woman. They both looked to be in their fifties.

  “Your parents.”

  Trent pulled me into his embrace from behind. His chin resting on my shoulder as we both looked at the happy couple, so very obviously still in love. My parents would have been like them, too.

  His chin warmed the side of my neck. “Yeah, that’s Richard and Joan Fox.”

  “They seem happy.”

  Trent’s breath tickled along my ear. “I think they are. They found the one they were meant to be with very young.”

  I nodded. “My parents, too.”

  Trent reached around me, took the photo, and set it back down on his dresser. “Enough about my family and the mood killer. I’ve got something I think you’ll be very interested to meet.” He thrust his hardened shaft against my bum.

  Automatically, my hands went to the sides of his thick thighs where I held on. Trent swept my hair away from my neck, reached around me, and pulled back the lapels of my jacket until he got it completely open and removed. He tossed it haphazardly on the dresser.

  “I’ve been dying to get my hands on you all night. Hell, for two weeks. Do you know what your body does to me?”

  I shook my head as his hands crept under my loose tank and up to cup my breasts over my bra. I arched into his hands, the pleasure swirling around us both almost like a fog filling the room. Our breaths came in soft sighs and eager pants as he explored my curves. He’d figured out that I wore a front clasping bra and undid it expertly. I tried not to think about why he was so good at removing undergarments and instead went with the flow.

  Trent growled against the side of my neck where he bit down. Simultaneously, he plucked at each hardened nipple, and I cried out. I was shocked that my body was responding so quickly and elated that he knew just how to touch me to bring the most pleasurable result.

  “Baby…” I blew out a heated breath.

  He hummed against my ear where he traced the shell with his tongue. Warm and wet, just like the space between my thighs, growing with intensity under every new sensation. Trent was a master at the art of seduction and I his willing subject.

  “Mmm, I like hearing you call me baby. Makes me so hard.” He thrust against me once more and then spun me around so we were face-to-face. “I think we should take this someplace a bit more comfortable.”

  I looped my arms around his neck and grinned. “Oh, yeah? Where did you have in mind?”

  He leaned close, planted his hands on my bum, and lifted me. I wound my legs around his lean waist.

  “Why tell you when I can show you?”

  With quick steps, he planted me on the side of the bed and fell right on top of me. “Hmm, where was I?” He placed a fingertip at my ear and ran it down my cheek, along my neck and down between my breasts. “Oh yeah, right about here.” He traced the tip of my erect nipple, which poked visibly against the thin fabric of my tank.

  “Trent…” I gasped as he pinched the nub through my shirt. The motion sent a bolt of fiery need directly to the tight bundle of nerves that wanted nothing more than for him to relieve the pressure, relieve the ache.

  “Relax. We’ve got time. It’s still early…” He shifted my tank up.

  I lifted my arms so he could remove it and the loosened bra while straddling my form.

  “Jesus, gumdrop. Your tits…” He cupped them with both hands as if lifting them in worship. “Never fucking seen better.” Trent used his thumbs to play around the areola and flick at each tip.

  I jerked, grabbing the comforter below as he got to know my more feminine attributes. Trent’s greatest strength, his patience, was currently my biggest weakness.

  Trent petted my breasts, lifting, squeezing, rubbing, plucking, elongating the nipples until I shook with unfulfilled carnal need. I wanted his mouth on me and bigger parts of him inside me. Now.

  “Please,” I whispered, my gaze locked on his face.

  A lazy smirk crossed his features when he leaned forward and took one reddened peak into his mouth.

  The sensation was so extreme, I almost came against the single movement of his tongue laving my nipple. “So good,” I whimpered, my legs shifting.

  He licked and kissed every centimeter of flesh covering my chest. Saying he was committed to his task was stating it mildly. The man was downright obsessed.

  He licked and took long sucks on each nipple before trying to pull as much of each breast into his mouth at one time. Not an easy task because my breasts were huge—size D on a five-foot-five body was ginormous in my opinion, but the vote was in. Trent Fox was a serious boob man.

  “They’re just perfect.” He leaned back, slapped each side playfully so they knocked into one another. “Babe, I could die a happy man sucking these.” Again, he latched on to a breast, swirled his tongue in the same dizzying circles he’d done on my clit the other day in the yoga room, and that’s when it happened.

  My phone buzzed against my bum. I jolted up.

  Trent backed off as if I’d been stung by a bee. “What was that? What happened?” He looked around the room.

  I laughed and, wiggling, found my phone in my back pocket and pulled it out.

  It was Row. I tapped the green button and held it to my ear. Trent groaned and sat back on his haunches.

  “Row?”

  My brother’s voice was shaky. “Vivvie, I… I heard a noise. Well, not one noise, lots of ’em. I think someone’s trying to break in. Mary’s in bed, but Viv, I…should I call the cops?”

  I sat up, pushing Trent off me. “Is the house alarm on?” I clasped my bra and scrambled for my shirt.

  “Genevieve?” Trent said.

  I didn’t have the time to answer. I put the phone on speaker.

  “Yeah, the alarm is on,” Row said. “But the light near the garage and the backyard? That motion light is still on. It hasn’t gone off, Viv.”

  I pulled on my tank. “It’s okay. If you hear or see anything, call the cops. Trent and I are on our way. Stay on the phone with me, bud.”

  My brother’s voice sounded low and frightened. Reminded me of how he sounded when I’d told him our parents had been killed in a car accident and it was just the three of us from then on. Why the hell had I gone on a date? If I had been there, he wouldn’t be scared right now. He and Mary wouldn’t be at risk.

  I clenched my teeth as Trent raced us through his house, down the elevator, and through the parking garage. “We’ll take the Harley. It’s faster.”

  “I’m going to be on a motorcycle, and we’re ten minutes out. Please call the cops if you’re that sca
red. Okay?”

  “Okay. Vivvie?”

  Rowan’s voice was so low I pressed the phone so hard against my cheek it would leave a phone-shaped Imprint.

  Trent put the helmet on my head and snapped it closed. Without knowing what to do, I just hopped on to the back seat. Trent readjusted my booted feet to the appropriate pegs.

  “Phone off. Now,” he said.

  “Yeah?” I said to Rowan while nodding to Trent.

  “I love you,” Rowan said and hung up.

  A pit the size of the Grand Canyon took position in my stomach. Trent grabbed my hands and tucked my phone into his jacket pocket. “It will be okay.”

  “How do you know?” My voice shook, and tears flooded my eyes as I imagined my brother home alone, scared out of his mind, and me sitting on the back of a hot guy’s bike. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to them because I was being selfish and taking time to date instead of caring for them.

  “Not gonna let it happen, babe. Period,” he declared in that alpha I’m-a-bad-boy way I liked so much and worried would break my heart.

  “Not going to let what happen?” I asked, gripping his waist.

  “Anything,” he growled. With that, he gripped the throttle, revved up the engine, put the bike in gear, and raced across town, weaving in and out of traffic like a madman, blowing through yellow lights without any thought of caution.

  If I hadn’t been so scared of what could be happening at my house, I’d have been bone scared of the ride from hell. Instead, I thanked my lucky stars that I was with someone who could move fast and react even faster.

  The house alarm was blaring as we pulled up to the house. I hopped off the bike and took the front steps two at a time. I’d unsnapped the helmet, yanked it off my head, and left it on the ground as I fumbled to get my key. Every windup of the alarm reaching its crescendo took my heart right along with it.

  “Christ, gumdrop, wait!” Trent hollered behind me.

  I didn’t care. Stopping this train was useless. I had to get to my family, and I’d plow through anyone, lack of weapons or protection be damned. If anything happened to my siblings, I had nothing left to lose.