by Ted Evans
“I can do that,” he says gruffly and pulls the meatloaf to him, spearing a slice and sliding it to his plate.
Willow laughs. “Sorry, habit I guess. Waitressing, mommying, I guess it’s ingrained in me to help. Speaking of which…”
She heads to the refrigerator and comes back with a pitcher of iced tea. When she leans over to pour Liam a glass he catches of glimpse of the soft pink skin of her breasts and she leaves the sweet smell of vanilla behind when she moves. He needs to eat and get the hell out of here.
Whenever they’re all served, Liam tucks into his meal. Shit. It’s delicious. And he can tell none it came out of a box. Willow’s a fucking poor Martha Stewart. He notices that it’s quiet and looks up to find Willow giving him an amused look.
“Hungry?” she grins at him.
Liam clears his throat and takes a swig of tea. “Yeah. It’s good. Don’t get much homemade food.”
Willow beams at him, her smile lighting up her face, her cheeks blushing with pleasure at his faint praise. “Thank you,” she says and scoops him up another serving of potatoes.
Liam turns back to his meal. He’d have to watch what he said around her. She seemed so eager for someone to say anything nice to her. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. He finishes up his food in silence, only glancing up a few times to find her watching him with a puzzled look on his face. The only sound at the table as they eat is the clink of silverware against the plates and the soft noise of Frank choo-chooing a green bean around his dish.
As soon as his plate is cleared, Liam pushes his chair back with a scrape. “Thanks, I should…”
“Oh, no, wait a little longer.” Willow jumps up, running to the fridge, and pulling out a dish, bringing it back to the table with a shy smile. “It’s toffee pudding. My favorite when I was a kid. You were such a good boy, cleaning your plate, you can have dessert.”
Liam gives her a close look and then realizes that she really is just offering him pudding. With a little shake of his head, he drops back into the chair and watches her serve out pudding and top it off with whipped cream.
Twenty minutes later, he’s still there, sitting on her sofa with Frank on his knee, thinking maybe he’d jumped the gun a little when it came to his hot, cooking neighbor. She just seemed lonely more than anything and he could relate to that. He’d never seen anyone but a teenaged girl he figured was the babysitter coming in and out of her apartment. The walls were thin here and if she had a boyfriend he’d most definitely know. Besides, this was a one-bedroom apartment so the kid obviously shared a room with his mom. He was getting a good impression of this chick and didn’t think she’d be bringing men around her kid. She didn’t appear to have anyone. And even though his rudeness was partly self-preservation, maybe he didn’t have to be such a grunting caveman around her.
“So, thanks for dinner. It really was good. And, you know, if you need anything just let me know,” he finally says.
Frank has gone heavy on his lap and he looks down to find the boy curled up, eyes drifting shut, little fingers in his mouth.
“Thank you. So much.” She smiles at him. “Oh, here. Let me take him.” She moves over and lifts the sleeping boy into her arms.
“I should get going.” Liam makes to head for the door when she stops him with a word.
“Stay.”
“I should…”
“Please,” she says softly. “Keep me company for a little bit.”
She’s looking up at him with those sugared violet eyes and he can see the loneliness in her gaze. He should go but he knows he’s going to stay.
Chapter Five
Willow
She settles Frank in his little bed and heads back into the living room. Liam is on her sofa, muscled legs stretched out across her colorful rug. The room seems so much smaller with him in it, like he’s taking up space she didn’t know even know was there. He’s barely said a handful of words all evening, had kept his head bent over his plate all during dinner and seemed in a hurry to get out of her apartment. She’s actually surprised he’s still here.
She clears her throat and he looks around at her. “Would you like a beer?”
The seconds before he answers her seem to stretch long between them. “Sure,” he finally mumbles.
She hurries into the kitchen and grabs a couple of bottles, stopping before she gets back into the other room. She can feel her heart thudding against her ribs and she knows why. Liam reminds her of Carlo. Frank’s father. And the reason she’s been hiding for the past three years.
Sure, Liam isn’t wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit or a glittering, expensive watch, and he’s not surrounded by well-paid lackeys who jump at his command but there’s an arrogance in the tilt of his head and cocky swagger when he walks that’s familiar. The way his eyes shift around a room when he enters it, like he’s checking for danger or the nearest exit; those movements are Carlo’s.
Willow is scared to death of Carlo. She knows what will happen if she ever finds out about Frank. He’ll come after her and he won’t stop until he finds her and takes Frank from her. She won’t let that happen, her son will never be a part of Carlo’s world. She’ll go down fighting to keep that from happening. She thinks she should be afraid of Liam too, but there’s something about him that tugs at her insides, and it’s not just the cut of his just-tight-enough jeans or his square-cut jaw with its shadow of a beard. She feels that he’s like her. Alone. Lonely. With no one he can trust. His eyes are hooded with whatever secrets he has and his shoulders are tense with whatever worries he’s carrying. He looks like he could use a friend.
Shaking off her sobering thoughts, Willow puts on a smile and marches over, handing Liam a cold bottle of beer and dropping onto the opposite end of the sofa. She takes a quick sip of her beer and deposits her bottle onto the side table.
“So…” she smiles over at him “how long have you been here? In the building, I mean.”
He takes a long pull from his bottle and looks at her, his eyes traveling over her legs, lingering on her thighs where her dress has inched up, before settling on her lips. She licks them nervously and feels heat creep up her chest and over her face when she sees the edge of his lips quirk slightly.
“Just a few months.”
“Us, too. I’m from Minnesota. I mean, originally. I’ve lived all over though, the past few years.”
“Hunh,” he half grunts at her and takes another swig of his beer. He opens and shuts his mouth as if he wants to ask something else, and then when he finally does he asks, “Does your mom have the same color hair as you?”
She laughs, “That’s a strange question.”
He shakes his head, “Not really. I’ve never seen a color as light as yours and I can tell it’s natural. I was just curious that’s all.”
Willow’s taken aback by his observation, “That’s weird; people always think that it’s dyed because it’s so light. You’re right. It is an unusual color.”
She shakes her head, trying to think of the original question, “They say it skips a generation, because my grandma has the same color. Not sure what mom’s color is naturally, but I remember seeing photos of her as a kid. It was brunette.”
He sighs and then he finishes his beer. Yet his eyes are on her. She can feel the blood rushing in her ears and her stomach is starting to quiver. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her and she can tell every thought that’s racing behind those deep, chocolate orbs. Most of them involve them both being naked. She shifts, turning to face him, and stills when her leg presses against his denim-clad thigh. When she starts to move away he reaches over and wraps one large, warm hand around her ankle, tugging at her slightly, pulling her across the scant distance that separates them. She pulls back but he doesn’t let go. Fire burns across her skin, skittering up her thighs and landing in the pit of her belly.
“Why’d you ask me to stay, Willow?” His thumb is tracing circles over the skin of her ankle.
“I…just. I wanted a friend.
Some company.”
Liam’s hand drifts up and cups her calf, his fingers pressing lightly into her skin. “And you thought I looked like I’d make a good friend?”
“I...” her voice trails off to a stutter when his hand drifts up to her knee and nudges it open. She drops her hands into her lap, gathering the material of her dress into a bunch and pushing it between her legs.
Liam’s hands skate higher, skimming over her thighs, pushing her hands away, stopping millimeters from the junction of her thighs. Willow feels her belly quiver and her nipples tighten against her sundress. Heat flushes up the back of her neck and spreads down across her chest, turning the tops of her tits a bright cherry red where they peek out over the top button of her dress.
“Do you want this, Willow?” Liam grabs at her hip and tugs her closer; the distance between them closes as he pulls her against him.
Willow chews on her lip and glances over at the closed bedroom door. It’s been so long since a man has touched her. There’s been no one since Carlo. She thought she’d put that part of her behind her. Concentrating on raising Frank, keeping them both housed and fed, had taken up the better part of her time and made her tired. But now, with Liam’s hands searching across her skin and her body heating up, the loneliness she’d tried to suppress was crashing over her. She was a woman who had been abused.
She craved love.
Touch.
Holding.
A man that didn’t want to abuse her, but was attracted to her.
“Yes,” she replied, her voice trembling.
With a satisfied grunt, he grabs her hips and hauls her over his lap, draping her legs on either side of his waist. Willow can feel his thick length pulsing under her ass and she grinds down on him, smiling to herself when a small groan escapes his lips. He reaches up, tangling his fingers through her hair, tugging until the pins come popping out and it tumbles across her shoulders. Shivers erupt over her body when he pulls on her hair, pulling it back to expose her throat to his searching lips. They trail over her skin, his tongue scorching each place it touches.
His mouth travels down, across the tops of her tits, biting at the tender flesh, until he encounters her buttons. He flicks the top button open with a finger. “How attached are you to this dress?”
Willow looks down at him; her vision is blurring and her legs are heavy with desire. She couldn’t care less if he chewed the damn dress of off her at this point. “Not very,” she pants.
“Good.” He yanks at the row of buttons and they pop, clinking and rolling across the floor. He jerks the dress open and rakes his eyes over her body. He palms one breast, testing its weight on his hand. “No bra. Nice,” he mutters, before leaning forward and capturing one pink nipple in his mouth.
Sparks explode over Willow’s body and she arches into his mouth, pushing her tit further into his tongue, gasping when he bites down and her nipples swells against his mouth. Liquid fire pools in her stomach, igniting her pussy and soaking through her white panties. Her head is back and she’s panting as he moves across her chest, teasing one nipple then the other with his teeth, pulling on her hair until she’s bowed back and he’s dipping his tongue into her navel.
Willow’s not sure she can stand the electricity zipping across her body. Liam’s lightest touch sends gooseflesh shivering over her skin, peaking her nipples and making her thighs shake. He hasn’t even kissed her, she realizes. But the thought floats away when he grinds his denim-clad cock into her.
She reaches down to him and tugs his shirt from his jeans, pulling at the buttons until it’s open and his chest, brown and muscled, is there for her fingers and mouth. She bites at the tendons of his neck and watches as his flesh pebbles. She scrapes her nails across his chest, scoring his flesh with light red marks. His eyes flash and their color deepens to black. She slips off the sofa, settling between his thighs. Her eyes never leave his as she tugs at the button to his jeans and pulls at the zipper. She takes a deep breath, trying to steady her thumping heart, and reaches into his jeans. She knows her eyes get big when she wraps her hand around his cock. She hears him chuckle when she pulls it free and sees that her hand doesn’t quite fit around the thickness. A thrill runs down her spine when she thinks of him inside her, stretching her open. But not yet.
Now, his cock freed and in her hand, she leans forward and swipes her tongue across the head. It jumps in her hand and she tightens her grip, smiling to herself at his low groan. His hand has traveled down and is resting on her head, not pushing her, just sitting there lightly. She captures the tip of his cock in her mouth and savors the faintly salted taste of his skin before easing her mouth down the length and back up. She can hear his breathing coming ragged above her and the knowledge that she’s causing it sends a sensuous roll through her body. Now, his hand is tangled in her hair and he’s pushing at her head, urging her mouth down onto his cock. She lets him push until she can feel the spongy tip hit at the back of her throat, then she pulls back, sucking in her cheeks as she draws upward.
“Shiiiit,” she hears him draw out softly above her before he yanks her up by her hair and pulls her back onto him. She looks down when she hears a soft snick and feels something cold against her hip, her eyes widening when she sees the tip of a switchblade resting on her skin. She stills, her heart skipping beats, and watches as he flicks the blade at the fabric of her panties, one side then the other, before pulling them away from her and dropping the destroyed fabric to the floor.
Before she can catch her breath, he’s wrapped one arm around her waist and lifted her up, grasping his cock with the other hand and pushing it against her pussy. She can feel herself stretching around the head, knows her slickened slit is coating his cock. One smooth push and she’s completely opened, her body expanding to wrap around his girth. He reaches up and tweaks at her nipples before resting his hands on her hips and pulling at her.
“Ride me,” he orders her harshly and she does. She slips back, letting him slide from her sex almost completely before pushing back down onto him. She grinds her hips and looks down to see where their bodies meet, watching as he helps her lift up and down, as his cock slips in and out of her. When he reaches one hand forward and pinches at her clit she falls forward with a guttural moan, her pussy clenching around his shaft. She bites at his shoulders, trying to keep quiet as waves wash over her, pushing her over an edge of sharp pleasure.
She’s shuddering against him when he grabs at her hips and pistons into her, pounding at her sex with a fury she’s never felt before. The pleasure is bordering on pain as he hammers into her, stretching her wide, his fingers bruising into her skin. She holds onto him, letting him savage her, his face pressed into her tits as he explodes into her with one final push. She feels him pulsing inside her, pushing his seed deep into her. He’s gasping into her chest and she can feel his heart thudding against her body. Willow wraps her arms around his shoulders and pulls him into her, resting her damp cheek on his hair, waiting for their breathing to slow down.
When he finally pulls back from her, the look on his face is dark. And frightening. His cock is still inside her, she’s still on his lap, but she feels him putting distance between them. Willow tries to lighten the atmosphere that’s tensing up around them. She smiles down at him. “Wow. That was…wow.” She chuckles a little. “So, been a while since you had sex, huh?” she jokes.
Willow falls back against the sofa when Liam gently pushes her from his lap. She tugs at the front of her dress, pulling it across her breasts, trying to cover herself now. Did she say something wrong? Do something wrong?
Liam’s eyes are hooded again, shuttering his thoughts. “I haven’t been with a woman since I got out of the joint.”
Willow starts to laugh but cuts it short when she sees him watching her with a deadly serious expression. Liam stands abruptly, buttoning his jeans and tucking in his shirt while heading toward her door.
“Wait…I didn’t mean anything,” Willow says to his back. “I thought you wer
e joking. I didn’t think that you’d been inside.”
Those words should have told her to stay away from him. He realizes that Willow’s desperate, the type of woman that likes a bad boy. He’s not a bad one. Just an angry one, waiting for the day he gets word about his ex. He’s put a lot of money on the street to find her and until he does or until it’s time to move on. He’ll be out of there.
He stops at the door, his hand on the knob. She swallows when she notices his shoulders drop. He was serious, she realizes. Before she can say anything else he wrenches open her door and disappears into the hall. She jumps up and runs to the door just in time to hear the click of his lock echoing down the hallway.
Chapter Six
Liam
What the fuck did I just do?
Liam slams his door shut and smacks the lock home. Pacing the length of his living room, he aims a punch at the wall beside his door before pulling his fist back. Beating the shit out of his apartment isn’t going to solve anything. Not that there’s anything to solve. He fucked his neighbor and let slip he had spent time in jail.
No big deal.
Except it was. Liam could tell Willow wasn’t the kind of girl who was going to let it go. And truthfully, he wasn’t sure he wanted her to let it go. To let him go. He had too, though. He couldn’t get tangled up with Willow and her kid. Sweet Willow.
He knew that Harriet had a kid. That was a secret that she hadn’t bothered to hide. She was from Minnesota too, but then she never mentioned being a grandma. Nor the fact that she left her kid when she was young. Liam didn’t even know if the kid was a boy or a girl.
Harriet used to fob him off by saying, ‘I hate talking about the past. It hurts too much.’
He never understood why they even got married. Apart from fucking, and talking about where to go next, the only real connection between them was their love of being on the road. Nothing else.
