His finger was already prying my thong aside.
This was too hot to stop. I tilted my hips and opened my thighs. Then I gasped. “What if Pierre comes?”
“I wasn’t planning on fingering Pierre. And if you come first, we won’t have to worry about that, will we?”
I stifled a gasp when I felt his scruffy face push between my legs.
This was crazy.
I was loving every second of it.
And I couldn’t see a damn thing.
But I could feel every bit of it. Especially his tongue.
Oh my goodness.
I couldn’t begin to describe what it did to my clit.
I don’t know if it was the fact that I got turned on every time Lion was near, or the fact that I was so focused on his mesmerizing scent and his seductive voice, or the feel of his hot head between my legs, or whatever magic he was working with his tongue, but I came quickly. I did my best to stay quiet. I hoped no one overheard.
After, he slithered up my body and kissed me deeply.
I tasted myself on his tongue and I liked me just fine.
“I’ll return the favor later,” I sighed.
“I look forward to it, Ivy.”
“By the way, was that my dessert?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I hear the dessert here is to die for.”
“Really. What do you suggest?”
“The cherry pie.”
We both laughed softly.
Who said Naked Sensations wasn’t a sex club?
Chapter 25
BRIGID
We basked in the warm afterglow of incredible sex on Lion’s leopard print bed in his wildcat themed bedroom. We had come straight to his place in the Hills after our dinner at Naked Sensations to get naked and to come. Many times each. Our clothes littered a trail from the front entrance to this bed like breadcrumbs of love. I meant breadcrumbs of sex. Not love. Just sex. Numerous condom wrappers were scattered around the bedroom. It turned out that the ultra studded condoms had something going for them. This was our third box of them, despite Lion always complaining about the tight fit.
Sex with him was so easy and so good. Why did it have to be so wrong?
He ran his fingers casually through my messy pile of hair.
“You ever think about having another kid, Mrs. Smithsonian?”
My eyes popped out of my skull. “Uhhhh… Now and then?” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by giving a definitive no or “not with my patient.” Not that I thought Lion would make a bad father. He would be a good one. But I couldn’t possibly think about the topic of more kids with Lion or anybody else. I barely had time for one. Besides, this was supposed to be a fun fling. It wasn’t going to last. We both knew that. Kid talk was not fling appropriate.
“I think about having another kid,” Lion said thoughtfully.
Had he said another? I was suddenly uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure why. “Um, I thought you said you didn’t have a family. Except for your cats.”
“I don’t have a family. No brothers or sisters. My mom is dead. My dad was a deadbeat and is probably dead in a ditch somewhere. My grandparents are all dead too.”
“I’m so sorry, Lion.” Three of my four grandparents were still alive and both my wonderful parents were too. So was my younger brother. I was very lucky compared to Lion.
“It’s okay. I’ve got people in my life who are like family. But I think about having another kid.” He choked up. “I’ve always wanted a real family. Of my own.”
“What do you mean by another?”
“I had a son named Cali.”
“Cali?”
“Yeah. Short for California.”
“That’s so cute.”
“He sure was.”
“Can I ask what happened to him?”
“He’s dead.”
Oh, geez. Lion’s life was filled with tragedy. I didn’t want to hear any more, for my sake. My heart was breaking for him. The idea of losing my Daniel would kill me. I couldn’t bear it if it were to actually happen. I squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry, Lion.” Tears spilled down my cheeks and I sniffed, wiping them away.
“He was ten months old. We put him to bed one night and he didn’t wake up the next morning. They said it was SIDS.”
“Oh, Lion.” I was torn between compassion for him and wanting to ask about the mother. It wasn’t the right time. He needed my understanding not my doubt. My heart went out to him. I rolled onto my side and draped my arm and my knee over his naked body. “There’s nothing I can say that will make it better,” I said softly. “Just know that I… know that I…” I couldn’t think of anything that fit within the parameters of a secret fling.
“Thanks. You’re a good woman, Brigid. Really good.”
“Thank you, Lion. I feel the same way about you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. How could you doubt that?”
“I don’t know. None of my relationships with women ever worked out. If you include my mom, I lost all the important ones.”
I remembered about his mother’s breast cancer from the YouTube documentary. She passed when he was 16. So sad. I wondered if the mother of his son had died too. I wasn’t going to ask.
“This is gonna sound dumb,” he said, “but… it’s stupid. Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“What?” I squeezed his arm. “You can tell me.”
He turned to me and searched my eyes with his. “Do you want to be my girlfriend?”
His doctor-patient girlfriend? I struggled not to show fear. I had been afraid of this.
“If you don’t want to, I’ll understand.” He didn’t sound like he’d understand. He sounded on the verge of heartbreak.
I never imagined Lion would be such a sensitive man underneath has savage exterior. The question was, what did I want out of our relationship? I was so touched that he’d asked about having kids with me. I wanted nothing more than a vibrant family of my own. But I had Daniel and my career to think about. Any unfilled fantasies I had about having the perfect family with the perfect man had to take a backseat to the here and now. This strange and necessarily temporary relationship with Lion was challenging enough. Adding the commitment of being his girlfriend or having a child with him was more than I could deal with at that moment. What happened to this being a fling? That had been my plan. Maybe I should’ve been more explicit about that. I could kick myself for it, but it wouldn’t do any good.
I sighed heavily. “Can I think about it?”
He stared at me, his face unreadable. “Okay.”
I felt like an ass. I was hurting him and I knew it.
This was awful.
How had I ended up in this position?
<<<<<<<>>>>>>>
I didn’t know when I’d drifted off to sleep in the leopard bed, but I had.
When I woke, it was still dark out.
The bed was also empty.
Had I been in my own house, I might have freaked out, thinking Lion had left. I wasn’t sure why, but I would have. Anyway, this was his house. He had to be around here somewhere.
I climbed out of bed and walked into the hallway. I grabbed his black button-down dress shirt off the floor, the one he’d worn to Naked Sensations. I hadn’t seen it until after dinner. He looked damn good in a button down shirt and slacks and dress shoes. Very GQ. It was a shame I couldn’t show him off around town. Not that I cared. But I cared. Lion Maxwell was a prize in every sense of the word.
But the jury was still out on whether he would ever be my prize.
I buttoned up the black shirt. It hung down to my thighs and the sleeves covered my hands. His scent was all over it and all over me. I needed to put this shirt under my pillow at home. As a souvenir. I needed something to remember him by. Something told me this thing we had was coming to an end sooner than I would’ve liked.
I walked downstairs, searching the house for him.
The French doors in the living room were op
en. A warm summer night breeze blew inside. I walked out back and found him reclining on a lounger by the blue glow of the pool. All he wore were black boxers. His knee brace was off. Somehow, he’d managed the whole evening without it. Gwen was curled up in his lap, a fluffy black ball, purring as he stroked her.
“Hey.” I sat on the foot of the lounger.
“Hey.”
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Guess not.”
I pressed my palm to his foot. “I’m sorry for…” I had to stop and think because his abs were distracting me like a flashing neon sign: SEX! SEX! SEX!
He waited patiently, focused on stroking Gwen.
“I’m sorry for how difficult this is.”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
Crickets chirped. It was very quiet this high up in the Hollywood Hills. You wouldn’t know we were surrounded by fourteen million people. The only sign was the wind of the constant traffic that twinkled far below.
“Lion, I don’t know what to tell you. I want to be your girlfriend. I just can’t.”
His eyes met mine. “That’s something.”
“It’s more than something. I haven’t dated anyone since Donald. Well, not seriously. It was just one date here and there. Nothing ever worked out. I didn’t even make out with any of them. Just a few clumsy goodnight kisses that didn’t have any sparks. You my friend, are all sparks.”
“Like the Allspark?”
“The what?”
“Transformer’s reference. Ask Daniel.”
I shook my head, grinning. “Right.” Why did Lion have to be so incredibly perfect? “You’re so good for him.”
“Thanks.”
Although Lion hadn’t been spending much time with Daniel outside of karate class lately, Daniel talked about Lion all the time and was always asking when we were going to Disneyland with him. I was starting to feel bad for Daniel that he wasn’t getting any time with Lion lately.
I squeezed his ankle. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything, Irish.”
“Will you wait for me?” I was afraid to say it. I had asked Donald to wait for me just about every day of our marriage for the last several years of it.
“I’ll wait for you forever, Brigid.” He smiled that adorable boyish smile.
“I appreciate the sentiment. But let me tell you what I mean before you go agreeing to anything.”
“Shoot.”
“Here are my ground rules. One, no sex.”
He winced. “For how long?”
“You said you’d wait forever.” I was half joking, but memories of a disappointed Donald stabbed my heart. It wasn’t fair to ask any man to wait forever for sex. That wasn’t a relationship. Just ask Donald. I was well aware I was asking Lion to do the same thing that had destroyed my marriage. Was I asking too much of him and me? I told myself my connection with Lion was different. With Donald, we had met when I was a naive nineteen year old with very little sexual experience and I had gotten accidentally pregnant right away. At the time, I barely knew who I was as a person. Now I was ten years older and knew myself that much better. Lion and I had a connection I’d never had with Donald. With Lion, everything was always fun and light and felt right. I hoped it was enough. The only way to know was to take the risk. With any luck, things would work out this time.
“Okay,” Lion said, “how about five years. I can go five years without fucking you. But that’s it. Will that work? Oh, and my ground rule is that in five years, we have to make up for all the sex we missed.”
I laughed. “I was thinking more like six months or a year.”
“Oh, shit. You shoulda said that. I can do that easy. As long as we make up for it after.”
I smiled. “Agreed. The other rule is that we can only be friends. No dinner dates and no lunch dates.”
“How about breakfast dates?”
“No. No dating. Just friends. You know what I mean.”
He nodded enthusiastically. “I can totally do that, Brigid. If I know you’re waiting for me too, I will be your friend for an entire year. And no sex. And I won’t be dating or screwing anybody else.” He paused for a moment, looking suddenly nervous. “What about you? Will you… you know…” He couldn’t finish his sentence but I knew where he was going. I couldn’t believe how incredibly sweet this man could be.
“Yes. I will wait for you. Heaven knows I’ve waited a lifetime for a man like you. I will wait.” I meant it with all my heart.
He smiled. “Best news I’ve heard all day. Make that all year.”
I smiled. “Yeah.”
He looked at Gwen. “You hear that, girl? Irish wants to be my girlfriend in a year. I can’t even believe it.” You’d think I’d agreed to have sex with him every day three times a day for forever, or give him daily blowjobs forever, or both, or I didn’t know what.
“You’re incredible, Lion Maxwell.”
“You too, Brigid Flanagan.”
Gwen meowed and looked up at him. We both laughed.
He said, “Now all we have to do is wait until the official unofficial amount of time passes, and we’ll be free to see each other. In public.” There was that adorable boyish grin of his. The one that told me I meant something to him and that everything would be all right.
We could make it. I knew we could.
I believed in Lion.
I believed in us.
Chapter 26
LION
I never thought I’d be able to keep my hands off Brigid after all the crazy sex we’d already had, but I surprised myself.
It wasn’t too difficult.
Mainly because she was so damn busy at the hospital. But when she did have time off, we always found something fun to do as a team. Her, Dan, and me. We agreed having Dan around was the easiest way to keep things in the friend zone. It was sure the most fun way I could think of.
I knew Brigid never got out much because of being a doctor, so I made sure everything we did was new for her and exciting.
First place I took them was the climbing gym I used. I’d always loved climbing as a way to develop finesse. Fighting wasn’t always about brute force. Neither was climbing. It was also something I could do with my knee still waiting for surgery. Low impact. By that time, my ribs were doing better, but I kept us on the easier routes for their sake and mine. Dan took to the wall like a monkey. Brigid was a lot better than I’d expected. She was super nervous at first, but by the end of our first day, she managed to scale a sustained 5.8 route all the way to the roof of the gym without hanging on the rope. She gave me a huge smile at the top and said, “I did it!” I got the whole climbing gym clapping and cheering by telling the room it was her first day climbing. She blushed. I loved it when she blushed.
Our next day trip was surfing lessons out at Venice Beach. For once, I sucked ass as bad as Brigid and Dan. Surfing was one thing I’d never gotten into. East LA wasn’t exactly close to the beach and I didn’t have money for a board when I was young. It didn’t matter. Learning together made it ten times more fun. My knee did better than I expected. Probably because I spent most of the day paddling out or getting dumped in the water. We had a blast that day. As proof, I had the smiling pictures of the three of us standing in front of our boards with our arms crossed like the Lords Of Dogtown. I had some 8x10s printed and framed. They sat on the bookcase in my office next to the Harry Potter photo from Universal.
Another trip we took was to a gun range. Talking Brigid into that was nearly impossible. Dan was dying to do it. The guy behind the counter told her kids younger than Dan shot at the range all the time. That convinced her and she let Dan fire a .22 revolver. After she knew it wouldn’t blow up in his face, I convinced her to let him shoot a .38. He loved it. Damn good shot too.
Probably my favorite thing was hitting up the waterslides out at Blazing Waters in San Dimas. It was crazy fun. Dan was a bit scared of the high speed slides like Tower Falls, which got you going almost forty miles an hour, but I boosted his conf
idence to the point he went for it. Loved every second of it. The thing I loved most was seeing Brigid in a one-piece. She rocked that simple swimsuit like nobody else. It had been a few weeks since we’d last had sex, so seeing her in a wet bathing suit made it damn hard to honor our deal, but I enjoyed the tease. Half the time I was staring at her ass hanging out just right or her nips poking through the front of the suit. She caught me staring but she liked it. Like I said, it was a long hard day. Really fucking hard. I went home that night and fucked the shit out of my hand three times before I could sleep. Pictured that perfect ass of Brigid’s the entire time. Only 49 weeks and 3 more days until I hit that ass again for real. Yeah, I was counting. But I could wait. I already knew what I was missing and I wanted it back real bad.
A couple times, I considered sexting with her, but I didn’t want to bend the rules even an inch. Sure, it would’ve been a great way to blow off steam and blow my load, but I didn’t want to tempt either of us.
When I wasn’t with her, I was taking it easy at home, waiting for my knee to be ready for surgery. Spent that time putting the finishing touches on the wood carving of the three lions sitting in clover: papa, mama, and the baby. I couldn’t decide when to give it to her. At the end of a year? Now?
I’d figure it out.
All the swelling on my knee was completely gone. It was getting time to have my surgery. Yes, I had adapted to the chill life of teaching classes at the dojos all over town, staying home with my wood carving, or hanging with Brigid and Dan. But I was getting antsy thinking about my next fight. People were talking like I’d never fight again. They were wrong. Those who weren’t, wanted a shot at my title. Offers were coming in from the WMAA to set me up with various opponents after my rehab. I told them to be patient. The fans wanted a good fight, not one with me limping around the cage. I needed to be fully healed going in. That meant an entire year of rehab after surgery.
By then, Brigid and I would be back to some serious fucking.
I couldn’t decide which I wanted more, the fighting or the fucking.
Broken Lion Page 19
