by Lauren Dane
“I’m sorry. I just want to help. And I live over the water and I go to sleep every night without him. I wake up every day wondering how he’s doing. I miss him. Let me help, Gillian. Damn it.”
“How did you find who the orthodontist was?”
Oh. That.
He thought about telling her the truth. Knew he should. But she’d be mad and it sounded worse than it was anyway.
“You had my financials checked, didn’t you?” She sat down heavily.
“Yes. Okay? Yes. I had to be sure you were on the up-and-up. I had to know. And then I put it all away when I met Miles. I had the envelope in my desk and the DNA test came back and I tucked it away and saw the orthodontist and your payments. It was a lot for you to handle each month. I took care of it. I want to help you and Miles.” He looked at his hands, wishing he could put into words how he felt so she could understand and not look at him with all that hurt in her eyes.
“I feel”—he licked his lips—“helpless sometimes. I hate that. I’m alone and you’re both here and I just want to be of some use.”
For a long time she simply looked at him, clearly having some sort of internal argument with herself.
“Please tell me you understand.”
“I do. More than you can possibly know.”
“So you’re not mad anymore?” He waggled his brows and she scowled, for real.
“Thank you for the help.”
“And you still sound very disappointed with me.”
“You broke a promise to me.”
“I was meeting with my financial guy and he mentioned college funds and I realized I hadn’t done one for Miles for school so I did. I’ll get copies of the paperwork to you so you can see.”
“How am I to know you won’t do it again? You talk about how it makes you feel when I want you to talk to me about spending money. How do you think it makes me feel that you just ignore the things I think are important?”
Her voice hitched and she turned away. Alarmed and torn up inside, he moved to her.
“Baby, please. God, please don’t do this. Don’t cry. Don’t shut me out. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you first. I knew you’d be mad, but not how mad, and I’ve hurt you completely unintentionally but it’s still there.” He hugged her from behind.
Gillian didn’t want to be so affected by him but she was. She leaned back into the solid, warm wall of his chest and breathed him in. He kissed the top of her head, murmuring things she shouldn’t want to believe but did anyway.
“Please let me be part of what you and Miles have built. Let me be your family. Be mine.”
And what woman could resist this? Could resist him and what he offered? In that moment she opened herself to the parts they shared. That loneliness and helplessness she’d felt met his, and the wave of longing rolled through her.
Adrian Brown was no mere lover. Not just a boyfriend. There was something deep and strong between them. It made her attraction to him more intense than she’d ever experienced with a man.
She wanted it so much she was afraid to let herself get lost in it. Tenderly, he slid his hands through her hair, cradling her skull as he bent to kiss her.
She kissed him back, turning in his arms as she fell into him. She’d missed him so much and it had only been four days since she’d seen him last. He and Miles had video chatted every night, even if it had only been for Adrian to ask Miles how his day went.
But they hadn’t been able to talk much, and in just a short time she’d really come to like being with Adrian Brown. To being used to having him around enough that she felt it acutely when he wasn’t.
Needing someone else was a risky thing but she did anyway. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t planned on it, or planned for a man like him ever.
But that didn’t keep her from falling back onto the couch with him as the tenderness began to edge into something else.
He pulled her into his lap and she turned, straddling him. His fingers in her hair tugged the last pin free and it fell around their faces.
He plunged his hands into it, wrapping it around his fingers and forearms and using it to move her how he wanted.
“I missed your taste,” he said into her mouth. Little nips and licks, sweet, quick kisses and slow, dragging kisses until she was light-headed with it.
And then he pulled her hair, arching her neck to his mouth, and proceeded to devastate her that way.
Need clawed at him. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Wondered if there’d ever be enough for him and knew there wouldn’t be.
That she stumbled with him in this new life as a family made her vulnerable. Vulnerable like he felt, and that filled him with a tenderness he wasn’t sure he was capable of before he met Gillian Forrester.
She was so real in his lap—the warm, beautiful weight of her, the heat of her cunt through the pants she wore, her breasts pressed to his chest.
His fingers curled with the need to rip the sweet pearly buttons down the front of her shirt. He wanted to strip her bare and possess every part of her he could see. Every part of her he could touch and taste.
“Off, off, off,” he muttered, pulling at her buttons.
She moved his hands aside, quickly unbuttoning her blouse. He took over then, pulling the shirt open and exposing her to his gaze.
He paused to look his fill. No one else saw her like this. This Gillian—tousled acres of dark hair around her face, her spectacular tits usually hidden by her clothing, exposed in a pretty bra, mounds of creamy, sweet flesh at the top—this Gillian was all his.
He ran covetous hands all over her upper body as she arched into him. So sensual. More than sensual, she was dirty and hot and sexy and pretty much on his mind all the time.
“You’re so fucking beautiful.” He pressed a kiss on her chest, between her breasts, pausing to take a deep breath. “And you smell good enough to eat. At least twice.”
She made a ragged sound, laced with need and something else that brought so much emotion he had to swallow it back.
She didn’t reply, only looking into his eyes for a while and then kissing his forehead before taking his shirt off.
Then she started.
Kissing down his neck, nibbling on his earlobes one at a time until he was a shivering mess of a man who needed to come more than he’d ever thought possible.
“Tell me about these,” she said, pausing to press a line of kisses up each forearm.
He leaned back, rolling his hips to grind his cock into her pussy, enjoying the way her breath stuttered.
Straightening his arms, he rested one in her hands, exposing the musical notes and a date. “Our first top-ten single was called ‘Reflected.’ This is my favorite part of the song.”
Bent over him, she massaged fingers up his forearm, kneading and stroking. She had a thing for his hands and his forearms, which he found ridiculously sexy.
“I like it.”
“Me too. It helps having an in with a great tattoo artist.” He grinned at the thought of Brody. He switched arms. You got to change with it scrolled upward. “You’ve seen this one. One of my favorite Woody Guthrie quotes.”
She dipped down to kiss the hollow of his elbow and he had to close his eyes a moment at how unexpectedly good it felt. “Your arms are so strong.” She kissed up his biceps. “Why do you have Themis on your back?”
“I’m impressed you knew her name. Most people just say justice.”
“I like goddesses. And I really like Themis.” She said these things as she kissed her way across his chest, pausing to flick her tongue over his nipple until he arched with a hiss.
“You can tell me after I’ve sucked your cock,” she said, sliding down his body to settle on her knees at his feet.
He nearly choked on his tongue but then she was back, undoing his pants as she licked over his belly.
She pulled his jeans down enough to get at his cock, licking over it as she kept a tight grip at the base. So fucking good it made his balls draw close
to his body.
“If I can remember how to talk when you’re done,” he choked out.
All he could do was watch as his cock, shiny, hard and dark with arousal, disappeared between her lips over and over. Her eyes were closed, the dark lashes fanned against pale skin.
He looked on as she sucked him hard and deep and then shallow and wet. She licked up the line of his cock, just how he liked it, and then added sweet digs of her tongue in the sensitive spot at the head.
She sucked his cock like it was the only thing she wanted or needed. It wasn’t that he was a stranger to a blow job, but with Gillian it was different. As everything else about her had been, he supposed.
Each suck and draw, each time she pulled back and fisted him a few times and then dived back in, taking him as far back as she could drove him toward the edge.
She hummed for one long moment, as if totally pleased, and he couldn’t help but smile.
Her eyes opened slowly as the fingertip pressing just behind his balls slid back just a bit more, tickling over his asshole. All while he watched.
She pulled her mouth off, waiting for a sign, and he arched toward her. She smiled as she sucked him back in and pressed that questing finger in just a little, stroking and warming.
Goddamn, that felt fucking amazing. He slid closer to the edge of the couch and she got a better angle.
She let go of the root of his cock and reached down, sliding her zipper open, and he knew exactly what she was doing.
“Are you touching your pussy?” He managed to say all the words, which surprised him because his tongue felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Mmm.”
But he’d been wrong because she wasn’t fingering herself, she was bringing her sweet, slick honey up to where her other finger was, spreading it to make him wet. In more, a slight burn, but more pleasure than pain. Waves of that sensation spread through him, echoing straight to his cock, which grew harder with every bit of progress she made with mouth and fingers in concert.
His legs were hobbled by his jeans but he wanted to move so badly. Wanted . . . something. God, something more.
And she gave it to him when she slid her fingertips over his prostate. He didn’t recognize the snarl of pleasure he made, didn’t remember making it, didn’t recall sending messages to his muscles to begin to thrust into her mouth, fucking it as she stroked that exquisitely sweet spot inside him.
He was in a place beyond forming words—unable to tear his eyes from this woman on her knees, her hair wild and loose around her naked torso, her mouth on his cock, two fingers inside him.
And when he came, arched, hips thrust, groaning, it was her name he spoke.
For long moments afterward, she rested her head on his thigh and he simply stroked a hand over her hair. After a while she sighed happily and stood, sweetly placing a throw over his lap. Then she left the room for a moment as he worked to catch his breath and get his bearings again.
“I put the kettle on for tea,” she said, returning to him, still naked from the waist up.
“If the gas guy is in the yard checking your meter, he just got an early Christmas present.”
She laughed with a blush. “I looked to see if anyone was out there first. I’m not prone to streaking past the windows.”
Reaching toward her, he caught her around the waist and brought her to him, settling her in his lap.
“You’re a goddess. That was, well, that was a forty-five on a one-to-ten scale.” He thumbed one of her nipples, which stood up immediately. “I like you right here like this. Spread out on my lap like a buffet.”
Without speaking, she took his hand and guided it down her belly. His cock, which Adrian had figured would be out for a while after that orgasm, twitched as it reawakened at her boldness.
“You don’t know what it does to me when you’re this way,” he said, unzipping her pants again, sending his hand down into her panties to discover a slick, swollen cunt.
He sucked in a breath when his fingers toured each and every fold, rimming her gate before heading back to her clit.
A simple stroke of his middle finger at first as he played with a nipple with his free hand. She made little sounds in the back of her throat, her eyes closed, face turned, beautiful pale pink flush on her skin.
“I seem to remember you like this.” Ever so gently, he squeezed her clit between thumb and forefinger around the hood, letting the slide of skin against skin give her the friction she needed.
Her breath hitched and she arched up, rocking her hips, riding his hand and taking her pleasure.
She undid him.
Even as she spiraled apart and began to come in a hot rush against his hand, it was he who was reeling.
After a long, sensual stretch, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. His sleepy green eyes were obscured by his hair, just a little. Just enough to make him look sort of mysterious. He’d let his beard go a little scruffy. He looked disreputable and utterly delicious, small gold hoops in each ear.
When he smiled, he teased a little, catching his lip between this teeth.
“You’re a rogue. A cad and a bounder, a dog and a cheat.”
He burst out laughing. “You’re a The Bird and the Bee fan?”
“I love them.”
She watched as he pulled his hand from her pants and traced across her nipple with his fingers still wet from her. Time pulled taut as he bent to lick across it and then drop a kiss on her lips.
“Every new thing I find out about you only makes you more irresistible,” he said right before licking across her bottom lip.
“Oh yes, you seemed right pleased with me earlier.”
He looked a little sad, but she still had her own emotions about it so he’d just have to work it out.
The kettle whistled and she bustled in to take care of the tea. She took a tray into the living room and settled back on the couch, intending to keep some space between them but he pulled her close.
“You asked earlier? About Themis on my back?”
She nodded, leaning her head back on his shoulder.
“I spoke to you about Erin’s daughter, Adele? I got Themis when she was killed. Going through the arrest and sanity hearings and then the trial and sentencing stuff was a nightmare. It really shook my belief in the good in people.”
“I can see that.” She thought of her father and wondered how to tell Adrian. How did one tell their lover that one’s father went down for killing his teenage girlfriend?
“Anyway, it was Brody who suggested it. To do Themis and make her sword bigger. Because justice isn’t always bloodless, you know?”
She entwined her fingers with his.
“I don’t know, it just—it helped me to get it all straight. I don’t believe, not anymore, that justice always happens. But I still believe in people and I still believe in doing the right thing. And doing the right thing is protecting the people I love.”
He turned his head and focused his gaze—which had been focused on something long ago—on her. She felt the echo of the connection down to her toes.
“I just wanted to feel like justice was real.”
She kissed him because if she didn’t she’d have ended up crying, or worse, blurting out the story about her father and this wasn’t the time.
“I don’t know how you do it, but you make everything better, Gillian. You and Miles are the best things to ever happen to me.”
She wanted, desperately to believe it so she let herself, just a little. Struggling with her words, she poured him a cuppa and handed it his way before settling in with her own cup.
“So yes, I was mad earlier. No, not mad really, just frustrated that you didn’t share with me and let me help. But that doesn’t erode the way you make me feel, the way I feel about you. I don’t want to make you cry.”
She laughed then. “I am working on sharing myself with you. But my financial issues and the way I do my job isn’t up for debate. I don’t need to clear seeing a client with
you any more than you need to clear meeting with your agent or your manager or what have you. Lastly.” She brushed a fingertip over his brows. “If you can’t make someone cry, they don’t care much about you.”
“Is that your way of telling me you care about me?”
She sighed. “Is there any doubt? Really?” She licked her lips, which still tasted of him. “I don’t do this, you know.”
“Do what? Have tea with bare breasts? I vote you do it far more often, but only with me.” He took her fingers to his mouth, kissed them.
“It’s only you, Adrian.”
“Oh, English, how you undo me.” He leaned back, keeping an arm around her waist to hold her close. “Tell me something about yourself. Why is it just me? And yes, I’m fishing.”
Incorrigible.
“I don’t go out on a lot of dates. I don’t have a lot of love affairs and I don’t fuck people on my couch in the middle of the day.” She closed her eyes. He’d given her insight into his heart, into his head and she owed him that sort of intimacy in return. “It’s a very personal thing, what I like. What makes me hot and melty.” She smiled as he made a humming sound deep in his gut. “I like sex. I like it—raw, hot, hard, dirty. It’s not easy to trust someone else enough to let go and be that.”
Needing a little time, she leaned forward to grab her mug. It was cold in the house so she reached for her blouse and instead, he handed her his T-shirt.
When she smiled her thanks, she caught his gaze. He watched her, she saw, understanding what she’d just said.
“So when I say it’s just you, I mean that. I can be who I am with you. That’s—well, it’s hard to put into words what it means.”
“You don’t have to because I get it. Every single day when I leave my house, or leave the places I feel safe in, I have to deal with people thinking they know me and they don’t.
“There are very few people I can truly be who I am with. You and Miles are two of them.” He blushed, adding quickly, “For different reasons obviously.”
She laughed. “I figured that.”
