Ignoring him, I poke my head into Dylan’s room, finding his eyes bloodshot, and staring unblinkingly at his TV like a zombie. “Hey buddy, I need your help putting groceries away. Can you give me a hand?”
“No,” he says with monotony. “That’s not my job.”
“Dylan, bud, you’ve been playing video games for way longer than you should be today. I need you to come downstairs with me for a bit.”
“I. Said. No!” He shouts at me and throws his controller across the room, where it leaves a sweet dent in the dry wall. Shoot. Come on, Dylan.
“How about a snack?” It’s not snack time, but I’m using one vice to get him away from the another. I should never be allowed to care for another human being, obviously.
“No snack. I’m playing. Was playing, until you ruined my day.” He’s gritting his teeth and seething with anger.
“Dylan, now, shut it off.” I raise my voice a bit, and his cheeks turn red. He covers his ears with his hands and shrieks so loudly my shoulders shoot up toward my ears, feeling his voice shudder through my entire body.
I hear Liam storming up the stairs as I sit here like a child, staring at Dylan having a tantrum, so I move toward him with my arms out, offering to give him a hug. I just want to calm him down. He’s flailing his hands around as I wrap my arms around him, and I quickly realize how strong he is for his size. He’s elbowing me in the stomach and I try to pull him toward his bed while hushing him. “It’s okay, Dylan.”
Liam runs in, breathlessly. “What’s going on?”
“I think he played for too long. I asked him to shut it down.”
Dylan is still screaming when Liam drops down in front of him, grabbing his hands and holding them tightly. “Dylan, look at me.”
As a rule, Dylan doesn’t really look anyone in the eyes, but he will look at Liam’s face. He’s breathing heavily and groaning, still sounding angered. “I want to play,” he cries out.
“What happens when you play for too long?” Liam asks him.
Dylan starts rocking back and forth, unable to control whatever feelings are reeling through his small body. “It hurts.”
“I know, Dylan,” Liam says to him quietly.
“Come on, I need your help downstairs.”
Dylan willingly stands up and Liam wraps his arm around his shoulders. “I have like ten different types of pasta, and I need you to put them in order for me. Can you do that while I unload the rest of the groceries?” He’s so good with him, and I’m such a failure.
We all head downstairs, and I silently shuttle the bags from the door into the kitchen and begin to empty them as Dylan rummages through the bags for the boxes of pasta.
“I’m sorry, Dylan,” I tell him as Liam leaves for the car again.
“Stop saying sorry. You don’t care. No one cares.”
“Dylan, I care. I promise you, I care.”
“You don’t know me enough to care,” he spits back. “No one does.”
“That’s not true,” I argue, knowing I should not be arguing with him after what just happened. I’m so frustrated. I don’t want to cause him pain, but I want to help and I have no clue how to do that. Liam just has this magic touch, and I’m like the devil or something.
Once Liam closes the front door and brings in the last of the groceries, I walk over to him and nod to the living room. “You got a certified letter that I had to sign for. Just wanted you to know it’s on the coffee table.”
He looks at me wide-eyed as if he were possibly expecting this letter, and of course, the guilt of just knowing a little part about the letter is dripping through me like black tar. I’m a terrible person, so, so horrible, and now this is going to eat me up alive.
“Okay,” he says, sounding winded. “Dylan, keep sorting. I’ll be right back.”
I’m wringing my hands around my wrists nervously, unsure of what the repercussions will be once Liam reads that letter.
I hear the paper tear open, and I hope it was quick and unnoticeable that the envelope had already been tampered with a tiny bit. The sound of the paper unfolding echoes around me as if it were coming from a bass speaker.
Then everything goes quiet. All I hear is deafening silence.
I casually walk into the living room, finding him sitting on the edge of the couch, raking his hand through his messy hair as he holds the letter in the other hand. It looks like he keeps reading the same line of text over and over. “I hope it’s nothing bad,” I tell him quietly.
At first, I’m not sure he hears me because his focus is so strained, but after a second, he folds up the paper and looks up at me with no expression—neither happiness nor sadness. Instead, he stands up and jogs up the stairs, followed by the quiet clicking sound of his door closing.
I shouldn't have assumed Liam would be an open book, not with as little information as I have learned about him so far.
Heading back into the kitchen, I find Dylan still arranging the items of food. “You’re doing a great job, buddy.” He looks up at me as if I said something offensive, and I think it’s easy to see he’s still not responding to me.
I sit at the table watching him intricately debate his method of organization, which I find intriguing. If nothing else, I’m going to learn a whole lot of life this summer. Maybe Dylan can help me become more organized.
I pull out my phone and scroll through my emails, looking for anything interesting, but like usual, there’s nothing but bill reminders. This adulting crap is for the birds.
As I shut down my phone and place it on the table, I hear a loud crash from upstairs, followed by shouting. What the hell? Dylan looks up at me with concern, like I should have an answer for what’s happening up there right now. While I may know the general idea about what’s going on, I don’t know specifics or how Liam is feeling about whatever he read.
“Can you take the groceries out of that bag and line them up by size on the table for me?” I ask Dylan.
He shrugs and squats down in front of the other bag.
Taking the opportunity to make sure the house is in one piece upstairs; I quietly head up and knock softly on Liam’s door.
He doesn’t answer. The last time I walked in without an invitation, I was greeted with the unexpected, so, I knock again.
Still no answer, though. “I’m coming in. Just warning you,” I say through the crack of the door.
I open the door, finding Liam crouched in the corner on the phone. “You thought you could hide from both of us, you fucker.” Liam doesn’t acknowledge I’m standing here, and I’m not sure he can sense anything other than what’s happening on the other side of the phone call. “Don’t even try to make an excuse. You’re a piece of shit and you know it. Drop dead.” Liam looks down at his phone, and I take the opportunity to back out of the room and close the door along the way.
“Julia,” he grunts.
I guess he did see me. I reopen the door. “What are you doing? I’m not blind, I saw you standing there.”
“I—I was just worried,” I tell him.
“Well, you don’t have to worry. Everything is fine.”
Then why are your eyes glossy? Why are you shaking, and why is your face beet red? Why are your knuckles white, and why do I think you could crush your cellphone within your grip right now? “Sorry for intruding,” I tell him.
He glances over at me, looking through me as if I were a window. “What?”
I shake my head, realizing I’m in over my head. “Nothing.”
Feeling like we’re suddenly strangers, I leave his life and close him back up in his room before turning to walk away.
Another crash hits the wall, sounding like its only inches away from where I’m standing. It causes me to jump, and I think it’s best if I stay away until he calms down. If I can’t wrap my head around any of this, I’m not sure how he can.
The door flings back open, and he brushes by me and into the hallway bathroom, locking the door behind him, probably to ensure I don’t barge in agai
n.
While in the bathroom with the door closed, Liam has left his bedroom door wide open, and the letter is lying, unfolded, in the middle of his floor as if he wants me to look at it.
I take a step forward and . . . oh no, I tripped into his room, landing just an inch away from this evidently life-shattering letter I shouldn’t be looking at.
My eyes are closed to respect his privacy but when I hear a crash come from the bathroom, my eyes flash open, forcing me to look at the upside-down letter.
Crap. I shimmy to the right, pivoting around in a circle, looking like a freaking second hand on a clock. What is wrong with me? Loose screw. I have a loose screw and I accuse others of being crazy.
But as my eyes focus on the right-side-up letter, my mind goes haywire. Whoa.
I’ve avoided Liam like the plague for the last three hours because um . . . yeah, I know too much, his life has probably just been flipped upside down, and I have a big mouth that I need to learn to control really quick. I can’t comprehend the ins and outs, and the who-knows-what details of this situation. Sam must know, considering Dylan is a minor, but if Sam knows, why would Liam need a DNA test?
My brain hurts.
Dylan and I have been watching a movie for the last hour, but he’s getting fidgety, and the clock is ticking closer to four, which means Sam and Daniel will be home soon, probably in tornado mode to prepare for tonight.
“You need to go pick out something for Dylan to wear tonight or he’ll come down in a wetsuit,” Liam calls down from the top of the stairs.
I turn my head, looking at Dylan. “Is that true? You’d really wear a wetsuit to one of your parents’ parties?” I can’t help but laugh at the thought of it.
“It would embarrass them, so why not?” Sarcasm. I like it.
“I hear ya, buddy. I’d probably do the same thing at your age.” I nod my head toward the stairwell, and Dylan groans as he drags himself from the couch and up the stairs.
“I hate these stupid parties,” Dylan grunts.
“What’s so bad about them. I thought you were happy that Leelee is coming?”
“Everyone gets drunk, loud, and stupid,” he says. His words—words from a ten year old’s mouth—surprise me. How does he know what drunk even means? That’s awful.
“Drunk?” I press.
“Yeah, you know, like they drink a lot of beer and wine, and suddenly they’re acting like stupid eight-year-olds.” He does have a pretty accurate way of describing the scene of drunk adults. “It’s not like I can sleep through it, yet I’m forced to go to bed at nine while the other neighborhood kids get to stay up until their parents go home.”
I’m gathering this is a common party for the area. “Do they have parties at the other neighborhood houses too?” I ask as we enter his room.
“Every week, someone from the neighborhood has a big party. It's annoying.” It sounds kind of fun, but maybe not for Dylan.
“You know,” I sit down on the edge of his bed. “You have peanut butter stretching from the corner of your mouth all the way to your ear.” I try to keep my face straight as I tell him this, but he erupts into laughter.
“Do I look like the Joker?”
“You kind of do,” I tell him with a smile. “I’ll get you a face cloth, and you look for something other than a wetsuit to wear tonight, okay? Be right back.”
I cross the hall into the bathroom, running into Liam, who’s scrubbing the sink. He’s scrubbing it so hard, he might be taking the finishing polish off the Granite countertop. “What do you need?” he asks coldly.
“Just a face cloth for Dylan.”
He turns around and grabs one from the towel rack, then tosses it at me. “Here.”
I kind of feel like we’re back to square one with his pissiness. While I understand, he has a reason to feel whatever he’s feeling, I’m not going to take the brunt of it. I nudge him away from the sink with my hip, so I can turn the faucet on. “Excuse me.”
He stumbles backward, probably from my unexpected shove. “Watch it,” he says.
“Um, how about you stop being rude?”
He pushes me back, not even giving me enough time to wet the damn face cloth.
That’s it. I grab ahold of the sink as he’s still trying to keep me away from reaching the faucet and I manage to shimmy in front of him, crunching myself between the sink and his solid body.
“Really?” he says. “You’re such a child.”
“Me?” I shout back. “You’re the one who won’t let me get some water.”
Liam takes a step back and leans toward the bathroom door, slamming and locking it before stalking back over to me.
I attempt to ignore his animalistic predator-like behavior while I keep my focus on soaking the cloth way more than needed. Liam grabs me by the waist and pushes me into the sink, forcing me to watch the dark glare of his eyes in the mirror as they pierce the side of my neck before he devours the spot with his mouth.
It doesn’t take long before my knees weaken and threaten to give out on me. “Liam,” I mutter.
He doesn’t stop, though. His tongue is drawing circles as his teeth are pressing into my sensitive flesh, and his lips are sucking. I keep my grip firm on the vanity, holding myself up, trying not to look at our reflection because if I do again, we aren’t leaving this bathroom anytime soon.
His hands slide up the front of my body, slipping under my loose camisole and tugging at my bra to maneuver his hands beneath the material as he pinches both of my nipples between his calloused fingertips.
As if the kissing and nipple clamping weren’t enough of a sensation overdrive, his cock jackknifes upward, pegging me in the back. “What about Dylan?” I mutter. So super hot, but I’m supposed to be Dylan’s nanny right now.
“He’s ten and looking for clothes. He’ll be fine for a few minutes,” Liam whispers into my ear.
“You only need a few minutes?”
I watch the reflection of my brow rise questioningly while meeting his gaze in the mirror. He spins me around and lifts me up, placing me down on the counter top.
“I need to clear my mind before tonight, okay?”
“Clear your mind from what?” Maybe this isn’t the best time to press my luck, but I want to know what’s going through his head.
“Julia,” he says firmly, looking me straight in the eyes. “I’ve been trying to piece together parts of my life that have been very, very fucked up for a long time, okay? I don’t want to talk about it. I just want you . . . and that will help me right now. Can you do that without question, and without kicking me in the balls?”
I’m looking around the bathroom, trying to figure out how this will work, but knowing Liam, he’s already got a plan.
“Take your shorts off,” he says.
“But you just washed this countertop.”
“I’ll wash it again.”
I unbutton my shorts and shrug them over my thighs until they slip over my knees and fall to the ground. His hands graze up my thighs until his thumbs slip beneath my panties. “You’re already wet for me,” he mutters against my cheek.
“I guess that means you should stop talking and start doing something about that . . .” I don’t know who I am or who I’ve become since Liam has entered my life, but I have never felt so alive with whatever the hell this is going on between us.
He lifts me back off the sink and strips the belt from his pants, creating a whipping sound. Confused for only a second, he grabs my hands, pulling them behind me and binds them together. My heart is pounding; my pulse is thundering within my ears, and I’m dripping between my legs. Holy crap, this is hot.
“Get down on your knees,” he says, pointing to the small bath mat in front of the shower.
With the ache throbbing between my legs and my apprehension of Dylan needing something, I do as he says, but instantly realizing I can’t catch myself with bound wrists held behind my back. I fall against the bath mat, my cheek smashing into the plush threads, and I try
my best to balance the rest of my body on my knees. Do I look as weird as I feel? I’m like all ass right now. He’s probably looking right into that dark hole of wonder, and I don’t even know what it truly looks like. I always hear about anal bleaching, and I never knew why, but I’m suddenly super self-conscious about not doing that.
Adding that to my to-do list.
Without being able to see anything but the door in front of me, I hear the zipper on his jeans tear apart. My panties are pulled down, and while I was expecting a thick plunge into the darkness, I’m taken completely off guard as I feel his tongue tracing a straight line from the small of my back, down. Down. Down. Um . . . so . . . a finger is one thing, but . . .
Oh. Okay. So we’re doing this.
Um. Wow, yeah, I—whoaaa. Okay. Oh, my God.
Seriously though, what if I just pooped like twenty minutes ago? He would have no—no . . . Oh, ah, oh . . . God, “Mmm,” I moan, nearly breathless.
“I knew you’d like that,” he says, pausing his tongue play.
Without much of an intermission, his tongue continues down further, reaching what I would have assumed to be a more normal place to land, but I won’t complain about the path he has chosen to take. Though, I can’t help but consider the whole wipe front to back thing…Great, I’ll probably end up with some kind of yeast infection now, but—I—I . . .”Oh, holy shit,” I cry loudly.
“Shh,” he reminds me. He has to because I think his tongue might be licking my ovaries . . . is that possible? No, no, it’s not, but oh holy wow, it kind of feels that way. I can feel him through every inch of my body as he flicks and twists his tongue. He hums as his tongue glides against the outer fleshy area and my body is bucking so hard, I’m afraid I’ll hurt him.
Just as I come to the edge of screaming a string of every obscenity I know, his cock plunges into me with ease, filling me entirely.
He holds me up by my breasts and pumps into me fast, hard, and rough, accompanied by quiet growls of pleasure purring from his throat.
After several moments of agonizing pleasure, Liam flips me over until my back is resting on my bound wrists. He presses my knees apart and dips back inside, holding himself up with one hand as if he were doing pushups, and I was the floor holding him up. The look on his face is one of anger, but at the same time, pleasure and relief.
The Man Cave Collection: Manservant, Man Flu, Man Handler, and Man Buns Page 23
