Soft Sounds of Pleasure

by Eden Connor

  Inhaling, he enjoyed the scent that she always wore. He spun her so her back was pressed against one of the huge fluted columns he'd found at a salvage yard he'd heard her mention once, and he slid his hands along the softness of her thighs and hips under the thin rosy cotton of her nightgown. His earlier suspicions were correct; no panties stood between him and her soft folds.

  Those folds were already wet, he discovered, sliding one finger along her slit as she wrapped one of her incredibly long legs around his waist. Moving to cup her ass in his hands, he lifted her just a bit, seeking the spot inside her where the head of his cock would give her the most pleasure, knowing he'd found it when her nails dug into his shoulders. He reached down to tug on her thigh, and she obediently wrapped her other leg around him. Now he had the control he sought, his hands returning to the soft curves of her ass, pulling her onto his cock and then pushing her away, only to bring her back to him again and again, loving the low sobbing cries she made as she climaxed, until he couldn't fight the pleasure any longer and he came too.

  By the time he eased her back onto one of the benches he had built to line the wide pergola and seated himself firmly into her again, the scent she wore was forever entwined in his mind with the ones he associated with the only two other women he'd ever loved.

  He made love to her again, and afterwards, when she reached the short distance to pluck a honeysuckle flower and pulled the stamen out to suck the single drop of nectar from the throat, he told her of his memory, and the one about his sister as well.

  "Your tattoo," she said, comprehension dawning in her eyes, "I always thought it was beautiful, but it seems even lovelier now that I know it's the way you keep your mother and sister close to your heart."

  "I felt so helpless, watching Sarah cry. My mom's garden was all she left us."

  "I understand that feeling of helplessness," she confided, telling him of the way she'd felt when the fancy surgeon she'd come to first distrust and then to hate had told her that Pete was never going to walk or lift his arms again. "If I never see that man again, it will be too soon," she joked humorlessly. "I remember it was the first day of April and I kept waiting for Dr. Fielder to tell me he was making a sick joke, but the joke was on me, and on Pete too, I suppose."

  He kissed her nose. "You're so brave, Lila," he said truthfully, because that was the way he saw her.

  "No braver than you, taking your sister's teenager to raise," she replied. "That's a tall job for anyone, but for a man who has never had a child it seems to me to be a huge concession to make to the carefree bachelor life you must have led before."

  Not nearly as large as the one she had made by staying at the side of a husband that ceased to be any sort of a husband to her, and still looking at him with the love he recalled in her eyes that last time he'd seen them together before Pete's death.

  He'd give anything to see that look in her eyes as she looked at him, but for now he knew he'd have to settle for the hunger he saw rising in them as she began to move her hips against his. A bird began trilling nearby as he nipped at her lips, wondering if he had it in him to go for round three.

  "Mockingbird," she murmured, the corners of her mouth rising, her ankles locking together at the base of his spine. "He's crying for a mate."

  He kissed her, soft and slow, telling her the only way that he thought was safe to tell her yet that he was too.

  He was longing to cuddle up with her and sleep. Round three would make a damn fine breakfast. Standing up, he held out his hand. "Let's go inside, sweetheart. I know you like doing it in the great outdoors, but my bed's a damn sight softer than this bench."

  She shook her head. "No, I can't do that, Jonah might wake up."

  Exasperated, he growled. "Lila, the kid is no dummy. He knows we're more than just friends. Come to bed with me. I'll get Dan to take Jonah to school in the morning, and I'll take the day off work, and you and I can just stay in bed till it's time for the game."

  "I need to work on the cabinet tomorrow, Colton, and Jonah does not need to see proof we sleep together."

  Stung by her response, he demanded to know why that was such an issue.

  "I told you why," she replied, getting off the bench and finding her sandals. "Jonah goes to school with all manner of people that know me. By the way, did you read any of Pete's notebook?"

  Furious now that she'd bring up Pete after he'd begged her to sleep in his bed, he just shook his head. "I'll walk you to your truck. I need a couple hours sleep before work."

  He punched his pillow in frustration after she'd gone. How fucking long was she going to insist on keeping him her dirty little secret?

  Chapter Eighteen

  "Hey, stop the truck! Let me out right here."

  Colton looked over at his nephew in surprise, but obediently jammed on the brakes at the top of Lila's driveway. He'd talked Jonah into going fishing with him again, but he knew the only reason the kid showed any enthusiasm for the idea was that he knew Lila would feed them.

  Sometimes, he worried they took advantage of her. This wasn't how he'd expected to romance a woman, dragging her to kid's baseball games and eating dinner at her house on Sundays, but Lila seemed content. Colton didn't want her content, he wanted her head-over-heels in love with him the way he was with her, but it seemed all he could do was wait and hope that happened.

  Jonah slid out of the seat and slammed the truck door. Colton pulled further down the drive, watching the boy from his rearview mirror, amazed to see him open her mailbox. He smiled. Jonah would have bitched if he'd asked him to grab their mail, but the small gesture he was making on Lila's behalf pleased him.

  Her less-than enthusiastic welcome when he entered her garage did not. She only offered him her cheek, and her attention remained on the cabinet door she was stripping. "If you guys catch anything, I'll cook them another night. I have some chicken breasts I can fix for dinner," she informed him distractedly.

  "Why don't you let us take you out instead?" he suggested, moving away to examine the newly stripped pieces she had laid out to dry. She had done a lot of work on the cabinet in the last week, only the case itself remained painted orange. The bared wood was sort of a washed out, pinkish gray, and he looked forward to seeing what she'd do with it. He had every faith she'd turn the old carcass into something beautiful.

  "No, I don't have time," was all she said.

  "Brought your mail, Lila," Jonah crowed, dashing into the garage. "You got a bunch of junk."

  She stripped off her rubber gloves and stood up, giving Jonah a big smile and a hug before flipping through the mail. Colton felt a twinge of jealousy. "It's impolite to look through someone else's mail," he reproved.

  "It's just junk," Jonah insisted. "Like this big old ugly piece of furniture." Colton wished he'd kept his mouth shut, since Lila didn't seem to mind and he'd spoiled his nephew's good mood.

  "You mean the way baseball is just a game? What's really ugly is the way you argued balls and strikes with the umpire last night." Lila looked up from the mail in her hand to give Jonah a steady gaze.

  The kid just shrugged but he got the sullen look Colton dreaded to see on his face.

  "Jonah, I want you to think about this," Lila continued. "Do you really think these guys come to the ball field thinking 'Which kid's game can I screw up tonight? Who can I cheat out of a run or a strike or a base?' Because that's what you're saying when you put on that sort of show. And you can take my word for the fact that I've never seen a fit like you pitched last night make an umpire change a call, so what's the point?" Not waiting for a reply, she turned away to disappear up the steps and into the house.

  "She can be such a bitch," Jonah said angrily, kicking the cabinet door she'd laid on the floor. "Who does she think she is? My mother?"

  "Jonah." Colton used a warning tone, his heart sinking because the last thing he wanted was to fight with his nephew. Before either of them could say another word, the unfamiliar sound of Lila shouting came clearly through the clos
ed door to the kitchen.

  "You know what, Ron?" she yelled. "I get mail addressed to Pete every damn day, it feels like, but this one just takes the cake. He worked for your company for over fifteen years and you can't update your records to show he's deceased? I mean, if he could fill out this proxy form for his stock, he wouldn't be dead, now would he? It's just plain lazy and a merry fucking insult, on top of everything else, because you and I both know why I can't fill out the damn thing. Just fix it, update your damn records, Ron. Do you think you can get that done?"

  Colton and Jonah exchanged looks as her voice climbed. It hurt him to hear the pain in her voice.

  "He's dead," she shrieked, "He's dead and I hate that. Every day I wake up and it takes me a minute to figure out why I don't hear him snoring. But I figure it out all over again and I get out of bed and I try to move on, but how the fuck am I supposed to move on when the company he worked for over fifteen years still sends mail here addressed to him almost a year after I put him into the ground?"

  Over the sound of the phone being slammed violently back onto the receiver, they could hear her sobbing.

  Colton stood riveted to the concrete floor, wanting more than anything to go up those steps and hold her. He knew most men despised when their woman cried, but to him, their tears were what made them women. The chance to hold her while she cried seemed to him a privilege and not a chore. To his mind, it was like the enthusiasm she showed for sucking his cock when others had done it but let him know they didn't enjoy the act.

  He didn't know if she'd want that from him right now, since she was crying over Pete, but it didn't feel right to just stand here listening to her sobs. She kept him so off-balance, he never figured out what she wanted from him. Besides sex.

  Jonah didn't seem to share his concerns. The kid was already opening the kitchen door.

  He followed Jonah quietly into the house. Lila was sitting on the floor, looking as if the world had her cornered. The kid dropped to his knees and flung his arms around her, and Lila squeezed him fiercely as the kid began to sob, too. Colton just stood there, watching the pair. He felt left out and uncertain.

  "I know how you feel, Lila," Jonah choked out. "I feel the same way every time somebody tells me I look just like my mom, or asks why I live with Colton instead of my dad."

  "Oh, sweetie, you just tell them Colton is your dad now," Lila said through her sobs, hugging him tighter. "The rest is none of their business, and you can tell those busybodies that, too."

  Jonah glanced up at him. "Can I?" he asked doubtfully.

  How the hell had he fucked that message up? "Yes, absolutely," Colton agreed, crossing the kitchen to kneel beside them, still unsure of what they needed him to do.

  "I miss my m-oooo-m," Jonah howled suddenly.

  Lila brushed Jonah's hair out of his eyes, snubbing back her own tears. "Of course you do," she soothed. "There's always going to be a hole in your heart where she was, honey. It's never going to go away. But every day it gets just a little bit less tender, until one day it only aches when you need it to, to help remember her."

  Jonah sobbed. "I want the ache to stop, Lila. It hurts all the time."

  "That ache means she was important to you, you wouldn't ever want it to go away completely."

  Jonah just shook his head furiously, tears streaming down his face. "I don't want to hurt over her anymore," he cried.

  Colton's tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth.

  Lila wiped her eyes on her shirttail and gave the teenager a weak smile. "You're still mad at her, huh? Mad she left you? Mad she went somewhere it wasn't safe and got herself killed and changed your life?"

  "Ye-ees-ss," Jonah wailed, his slender shoulders shaking. "I'm so mad that sometimes I hate her for dying."

  Lila pulled Jonah into her lap, never mind the fact the kid looked like a boxer Colton had once owned that had loved sitting in his water bucket when it was hot. "And it makes you feel guilty that you're mad," she stated. "Then the guilt makes you feel worse?"

  Jonah was crying so hard now he merely nodded. Colton scrubbed his hands along the thighs of his jeans as he thought of his anger with his sister, and his helpless fury about why Sarah had been in a bad part of town, and why she hadn't just handed over her keys and survived.

  "I'll tell you something, Jonah. It's okay to be mad at her. It's okay to be mad because your life changed because of something you have no control over. But there comes a day when your anger goes away, they tell me, and all you have left is the good parts, and it doesn't hurt in the bad way anymore." Lila brushed his bangs out of his face again. The motherly gesture made Colton's heart twist. His mother hadn't been around to do stuff like that.

  He quietly got to his feet, leaving them to this very important conversation he and Jonah had been unable to have. He wandered outside and used his cell to phone for a pizza to be delivered. While he was out there, he installed the new wiper blades he'd bought for her truck, giving her and Jonah more time to talk.

  "You mad at your husband, Lila?" Jonah asked later, around a mouthful of pepperoni pizza.

  "There are days I think about going to the cemetery, digging him up and stabbing him to death," she giggled, licking at the strings of mozzarella on her fingers.

  Jonah's eyes rounded. "Wow that is mad. What did he do?"

  Lila wiped her hands on a napkin before answering. Colton waited quietly, needing to know and glad the kid had asked.

  "He got hurt, and he couldn't walk or use his arms, but his mind was clear and he could still talk to me," Lila stated. "So, our lives were different, but I still had the important part of Pete, until Dr. Fielder got him on an experimental drug that was supposed to help with chronic pain. The pain didn't seem any better, but Pete got worse. It made his mind fuzzy, and sometimes he didn't even know who I was. He would get agitated and take a swing at me. His personality changed. He got mean and he started having seizures. I wanted him to quit taking the drug, and we fought about that a lot, but every time I talked to his doctor, the man treated me like I didn't know what I was talking about. And after the drug erased any trace of the man I loved, it killed him. So, the day I actually go stark raving nuts and dig Pete up, when I finish with him, I'm going straight for that doctor." She laughed. "If I'm headed for prison, I might as well go for the trifecta. I believe I'll just get Pete's mother too, the hateful old witch."

  It shouldn't have been funny, but the three of them laughed for a long time over her frank confession.

  Later, Colton sat on the step, watching her work on the cabinet. Jonah retreated to her den to watch television. "He hasn't cried over his mom since the day I got to California to handle her remains and take custody of him," he said.

  "No doubt some idiot told him real men don't cry," she replied.

  "That'd be Eric," Colton sighed. "My point is, he needed to show some emotion about his mother's death, and I never could figure out how to help him with that. So thank you."

  She only nodded, keeping her eyes glued to her work. "I think you needed to as well," he added lamely, earning another nod.

  This wasn't what he wanted to say. This touchy-feely stuff was hard, never knowing if he might say the wrong thing, but he hadn't missed her comment that talking to Pete was what she missed the most, not the sex, not the money Pete earned, but sharing her feelings with him. Colton sighed deeply, moving across the workspace to turn her around so she faced him. "Lila, I can't tell you how it hurts me to see either one of you cry like that, to hear the raw pain in your voices. I think your life in the last few years must've been hell, and sometimes Jonah says stuff that makes me wonder about his. I'd do whatever it took to make sure neither of you ever have to cry again in your lives, but I have absolutely no idea how to stop that from happening."

  She smiled softly. "You lost someone too, Colton. I know you must hurt, and there have to be days you resent all the changes in your life."

  He kissed the top of her head, pulling her to his chest, just enjoying the co
mforting feel of her against him. "It's been one hell of an adjustment, but you've taught me so much about parenting. I didn't have much for parents, Lila. We don't know what good parents do, how they act. When my mom bailed right after Sarah was born, my dad blamed us for being the reason she left. He mostly just knocked us around because he'd rather have had her than us, I guess."

  She pulled back to stare up at him, concern and sympathy filling her eyes. "That's why you and your brothers are so close." She frowned, tiny furrows appearing between her eyes. "I bet you were mad at Sarah for leaving too, huh?"

  "Yeah," he agreed, amazed at how perceptive she was, how she just watched people and figured stuff out about him most people overlooked. "Eric never forgave her, or Dan either, really. I was the only one that ever went to visit them in California. The other two said if she wanted to see them, she could come here, but she refused to come back even to visit."

  "You ever wonder what she was running from?"

  "Not really. I figured Jonah's dad broke her heart, and she didn't want to ever see him again, but I have absolutely no idea who he was," Colton admitted, the memory of how abandoned he'd felt in the days after Sarah left threatening to make him cry. There'd been enough crying for one night.

  He swallowed hard, reaching out to turn up the radio, pulling her against him again, swaying her to the slow song. He ached to tell her he loved her, but not tonight. Not the night she'd cried over Pete. Instead, he held her close to his heart, kissing her temple, moving his lips down the side of her neck, thinking how perfectly she fit in his arms, knowing she'd fit into his life with the same ease. He dragged his lips along her jawline, over her cheekbone, pausing to press a soft kiss on each closed eyelid, tasting the salt of her tears. He kissed the straight length of her nose, before taking her mouth slowly and softly, trying to tell her with his kiss what he was never sure if she'd want to hear him say. Her arms tightened around his neck and they just moved in a small circle, kissing and swaying to the old rhythm and blues songs Lila seemed to listen to the most.