Chapter Nine – Liana
”See, if you play the cards like this,” Lee explained to Kara, as he lay on the floor a few feet from her. ”You make Liana pick up two. And then she can’t beat us, can she?”
”Oh, my God, I was so close,” I protested playfully, but to be honest, losing the game didn’t bother me one bit. Kara laughed – oh, I loved hearing her laugh so much. She rarely did, but it felt like the gaps between these little explosions of joy were getting smaller and smaller, and I wanted her to feel like she never had to hold them back.
We were playing cards together, all three of us – some elaborate game that I was pretty sure I understood the rules of since Lee had explained them to me, but I was still losing dismally. Well, I was pretty sure I was, anyway, after she had just pulled that move on me.
Lee had arrived back earlier today – we hadn’t had a chance to talk about the freak-out he’d had on me the other day, but I got it, I did. I wasn’t going to rush him into telling me what was going on. I knew he had bigger things on his plate right now than dealing with me, but still, I was curious.
Kara seemed to relax when he was around – something in her unwinding, unfurling, and giving way like a cat settling down on a comfortable spot on the couch. Ever since he’d told her about how the giraffe would take away her bad dreams, she had slept hugging it close every night, and she seemed to wake up less often – I noticed that the mumbling and murmuring she’d done so much of when she’d first arrived seemed to have eased, too, though I knew it was likely far from gone.
I had gone out of my way to make this place as comfortable for her as I could. I had no idea, of course, how long she was going to be here – hell, if I was even remotely qualified to step up and be some kind of parent to her, for however long it took to find her someone more suited to the job. But, whenever I had my doubts, I thought about what I had whispered to Hadley when I had held her in the moments before I had run from that compound. I had promised her that I would take care of her little girl, and I would be damned if I failed at that task.
I had ordered a kid’s bed online, and it had arrived earlier today – though, of course, I hadn’t gotten around to putting it together yet. I was no good when it came to putting furniture together and never had been. All the flat-packs I’d tried to build had wound up upside down or inside out or something of the kind. I wasn’t sure how I intended to go about building this one, but I would have to give it a try. For her.
For now, though, I was happy to have Lee around. I”d made Kara dinner, spaghetti, about the only thing I knew how to cook. Luckily, she seemed to like it well enough. I hadn’t asked much about what she had eaten before, but I guessed she had probably subsisted on the same crappy food I’d been given – takeout fries, pizza, the bare minimum.
She yawned as we finished up the last game, and Lee grinned at her.
”You getting tired?” he asked, and she nodded. She didn’t talk a whole lot yet, but I figured that would come in time. It seemed a miracle she wasn’t just cowering in the bed, refusing to talk to anyone at all. Kids were resilient, I had to keep telling myself that – I had to keep reminding myself that she would get over this. It was just a matter of time, and it would feel like everything she had been through was a bad dream.
I sighed and glanced over to the bed, which was still sitting in the box, waiting for me to put it together.
”I’m sorry I didn’t have time to get the bed ready for you, sweetheart,” I told her. ”But tomorrow I’ll get it fixed up, okay?”
”I can do that for you if you want,” Lee offered. I glanced over at him, surprised.
”You don’t have to,” I replied at once. I didn’t want him feeling as though he owed us anything right now – like he had to stick around.
”I know I don’t,” he replied gently. ”I want to. That alright?”
I managed a smile.
”I guess that would be okay,” I agreed and got to my feet. ”Come on, Kara, you want to get washed up and then you can go to bed...?”
I led her through to the bathroom – she was still getting used to taking care of her personal hygiene, and, for the most part, I had to guide her through every step of the way. But I didn’t mind. It wasn’t as though she had asked for any of this, had she?
I took her to bed and laid her down, sitting with her and chatting quietly until she started to doze off – I had offered to read her stories, but she struggled to keep up with them. It made my heart hurt to think of all she had missed out on, all the little things that I had taken for granted.
When I was sure she had fallen asleep, I made my way back through to the living room – and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the bed unpacked and laid out across the floor.
”What are you doing?” I laughed, as I knelt next to Lee, who was sitting in the middle of it.
”The best way to get a feel for what needs to be done is to lay it all out first,” he replied, as he grabbed for the instructions and turned them the right way up in his hands.
”Maybe that’s where I go wrong,” I sighed. ”I don’t know how to do all of this right...”
”It’s not easy,” he agreed.
”You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” I shot back. ”Of course it’s easy. Everyone and their mother wouldn’t use them if they weren’t easy. I’m just...useless when it comes to this stuff. If you could see what I did to a bookcase that was meant to be easy to put together...”
He chuckled, a warm smile broadening on his lips.
”Alright, point taken,” he agreed. He ran a hand through his hair, and I couldn’t help but notice the way his muscles flexed as he moved. There was such power to him, coiled, like a cobra ready to strike when the moment was right.
”You don’t have to stick around and help, you know,” I told him softly. ”I mean – I mean if you have places to be -”
”It’s fine,” he replied, cutting me off before I could go any further. ”If I didn’t have time for this, I wouldn’t be here.”
”Right,” I murmured back, stealing a glance at him out of the corner of my eye. There was something about having him in my house like this, casually, while he was taking care of the shit I knew I would never have been able in a million years to handle myself, that I liked. Maybe more than I should have.
”Okay,” he muttered, as he squinted down at the instructions. ”Damn, why do they always make these so small?”
”It’s not that small, you’re just old,” I teased him, and I reached over to take the pamphlet from his hands. Our fingers touched for a brief moment, and he turned to face me, eyebrows raised.
”You think I’m old?”
”Ancient,” I replied, flashing him a grin to let him know I was only kidding around. He might have been a decent amount older than me, but the way he carried himself, the way he handled himself, made him seem young by comparison.
”And you’re still setting me to work on this bed,” he grumbled, fooling around. ”When I should be at home collecting my pension.”
”My dad was in a club,” I reminded him. ”I know you don’t get a pension. Now, I think we’re meant to start with that piece there...”
The two of us set to work, me reading the instructions, and him taking care of them with ease. I found myself stealing glances at him every chance I got, watching the way his hands moved across the tools and the nails and the pieces of wood – he had nice hands, and long fingers, not as beat-up as I would have expected for someone in his line of work.
”Your dad was in a club, huh?” he remarked to me, as he paused to take a sip of the beer I had fetched for him. Hey, I was a bartender through and through, when I saw someone working, I figured they needed a drink in their hand to do it.
”Yeah, he was,” I replied with a nod. ”I grew up in it, pretty much. All the guys in the club were like my extended family. Well, until he died, I guess.”
”I’m sorry,” he murmured, and I shook my head.
”It was a long time ago,” I replied. ”And it gave me a chance to get out on my own, you know? I wouldn’t have ever started work at the Kennels if I stayed there.”
”Well, we’re glad to have you,” he remarked.
”You are?” I replied. He shot me a look.
”What’s that mean?”
”You just...” I trailed off, not quite sure how to put this into words. I didn’t want to sound pushy or needy, but I had to admit, he hadn’t exactly been the most open and welcoming of the Dogs.
”I could never really get a feel for whether you wanted me around or not,” I muttered. God, that sounded ridiculous. The two of us had barely spoken that much in all the time I had been working there. I doubted I would ever have thought he was anything other than ambivalent towards me, had it not been for the fact that he’d stepped up to help me when I had been taken.
”Really?” he replied, frowning. I nodded, picking at a spot on the carpet, feeling stupid.
”Forget it,” I added swiftly. ”It doesn’t matter. I was just – just overthinking, that’s all.”
”I care about you, Liana,” he replied, and the fervency in his voice caught me off-guard. As though he wanted me to know, without a shadow of a doubt, just how much he meant it. I chewed my lip, glancing up at him once more.
”Really?
He nodded.
”You know, Chuck didn’t believe me when I said I was sure Lombardi had taken you,” he remarked quietly. ”I was the one who wanted to go out there and find you. I just knew...I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if something had happened, and I hadn’t been there to stop it.”
I drew in a sharp breath. I had been wondering why Lee, of all people, would have come looking for me the way he did, but hearing those words out of his mouth, I hadn’t expected it to go like that. He had come looking for me? He had searched me out? If it hadn’t been for him, I would have been God knows where doing God knows what by now...
Before I could stop myself or think better of it, I reached across and planted my hand across his on the floor between us. He stared down at the spot where our fingers were touching, as though not quite sure how to make sense of it.
”Thank you,” I whispered to him. It didn’t seem like nearly enough to express how grateful I was, but it was the best I could come up with right now. He shook his head.
”You don’t have to thank me-”
”Yes, I do,” I replied, cutting him off in his tracks. He always seemed to do this thing, where he downplayed it when I tried to convince him what a decent guy he was. As though he didn’t want to hear it – as though, maybe, there was some part of him that just couldn’t take it in, couldn’t believe that he was worth it.
”If it hadn’t been for you, I would still be locked up somewhere,” I continued. ”And so – and so would Kara. You saved us both.”
”I should have come faster,” he muttered, his shoulders sagging. He couldn’t just accept that he had done something good – he had to find a way to duck and dive my encouragement like he hated being the center of attention.
Like there was something heavy on his mind, that he was so guilty about he couldn’t accept this act of goodness.
”You did everything you could,” I told him, and I tightened my grip on his hand. I reached out to cup my hand around his face, feeling the stubble on his chin against my fingertips, and drawing his face up to mine.
His eyes were...the emotion in them was something I had never seen before. Not just on him, but on anyone. Like he wanted this, wanted more, but at the same time, felt like he didn’t deserve it. As though he was risking so much by even being here.
And, without another second of thought, I found my mouth crashing into his for the first time.
What was I doing? I didn’t know. But, as his mouth softened into mine, and he reached out to pull me into his arms, I knew I wanted it. I wanted it more than I could make sense of, more than anything in the world at this moment.
His hands came to my waist in a tight grip that seemed to burn into me at once. I moaned against his mouth, marveling at how good he felt this close to me – amazed at the fact that I could have imagined, even for an instant, that this guy didn’t like me. It seemed so obvious now. All this time, I could have been acting on that silly little crush...
Guess I had a lot of time to make up for, huh?
He laid me down on the floor, amongst the chaos of the bed we were building, and moved on top of me, pushing his knee between my thighs and parting them with ease. His strength sent a shockwave of lust through my system, and I reached up to grab him, kissing him again, feeling his teeth catch on my bottom lip with a delicious blend of pleasure and pain. He groaned against my lips, and I felt the vibration course through my whole body, every part of me responding before I could stop it.
He brushed his lips down my chin and towards my neck, grazing them along my throat, so I could feel the warmth of his breath on my skin. I moved my hands to his back, grasping him tightly, needing to feel every inch of him right now – nothing else would satisfy me, nothing would come close.
Pushing his hand beneath my shirt, he pulled the fabric aside so he could draw my nipple into his mouth, his teeth grazing tantalizingly against my breast. I could have watched him like that all day – the dark want in his eyes, all aimed at me.
He continued his journey down, brushing his lips across my stomach for the barest moment – oh, the feel of his breath down below there, it was enough to set everything inside me on fire. I gasped, and he looked up at me, a grin curling up his lips as he undid my pants and slowly inched them down my hips.
Shifting so that he was between my legs, he traced his tongue along the crease of my thigh. I could feel my pussy throbbing with a hungry need, so much want in my system I could hardly make sense of it – I felt as though I was going to fall apart right there in his hands, but, at that moment, there was nothing I wanted more. I couldn’t stop staring at him, burning into my mind the image of him like this, right in front of me.
”Can I taste you?” he asked me softly. I nodded, unable to do much more than that – it wasn’t as though I could get the words out, not now. He hooked his fingers around the hips of my panties and eased them down, the puff of my pubic hair exposed as he stripped me naked right there in front of him.
My chest was rising and falling fast as he tossed my panties aside and slid his hands underneath my thighs, gazing down at my pussy – he flicked his tongue over his lips, the hunger evident and written all over his face. My hips were lifting towards him, moving almost of their own accord, as he hovered his mouth just an inch or two from my pussy.
And then, finally, he planted his lips against me.
The pleasure spun through my entire body, the feeling of his tongue against my clit almost more than I could take. I wanted to cry out, let the sheer shock of this pleasure take control of me – it was as though nothing else in the world mattered, as though nothing else in the world could have come close. I reached down, pushing my hands into his short hair, lifting my hips against him so I could feel the warmth of his mouth against every part of me.
He swirled his tongue around my clit, and I had to bite down hard on my lip to keep from making too much noise. The sheer shock of it, the way it made me feel – God, it was more than I could take, in the best way possible. Drawing my clit between his lips, he began to apply a gentle sucking pressure, as he moved his hand between my legs, his fingers grazing across my slit before he pushed them deep inside of me.
The external and internal stimulation all at once, sent a shudder of pleasure coursing through my whole system. Oh, did he have any idea, any idea at all, of just how good he made me feel? I was grinding back against him, holding him in place, my fingers digging into his scalp. I could feel the pleasure blooming and growing inside of me, faster than I could make sense of it, and all I wanted right now was to lose myself to it completely – I wanted to give in till there was nothing else left, give myself over to the sheer intensity of the way this made me feel. I couldn’t stop it. Not even if I wanted to.
He massaged me from the inside out, tongue against my clit, as the orgasm teetered close to the edge – I was breathing hard, the breath tearing out of my lungs, catching in my throat. My whole body was alight with pleasure, coursing from between my legs to consume every part of me – till there was nothing left, nothing left but the impossible deliciousness of the way he felt between my thighs...
And then, finally, I felt it. The orgasm tore through me, and I pressed my lips together to keep from crying out in sheer pleasure. His tongue continued against my clit, his fingers stilling inside me as my pussy throbbed around his hand. I could hardly breathe as the pulsations of pleasure coursed out across my whole body, toes curling against the carpet below me, coming against his mouth right there on the floor of my living room.
By the time I sank back down to earth, he leaned back, catching his breath – I looked down at him, eyes slightly blurry, and when I saw my wetness smeared across his mouth, I couldn’t resist.
I leaned up to kiss him, drawing him down to meet me, planting my lips against his once more. I could taste myself smeared all over his mouth, and the knowledge of where he had just been, what he had just done, was so impossibly sexy to me. I grabbed his shoulders, raking my nails along his arms, my body already lighting up for round two...
But, before we could take it any further, he pulled back. I stared down at him, panting.
”What’s wrong?” I asked, but he was already reaching for his phone.
”I’m getting a call,” he muttered. ”Sorry, this could be important...”
”No, it’s okay,” I panted back. He lifted his phone to his ear, propping himself up on one elbow.
”What’s going-”
He had hardly greeted whoever was on the other end of the line before they started to speak. I couldn’t hear who it was, or what they were saying, but by the tone of their voice, it sounded serious.
Lee’s eyes widened, and his brow furrowed.
”What the fuck are you-”
He stopped dead in his tracks. Then sprang to his feet, grabbing for his jacket on the back of the chair where he had left it. Oh, shit – did he really have to go? I felt like we were just getting started...
”I’ll be there in ten,” he replied curtly, and he hung up the phone and turned to me.
”Liana, I’m sorry, I-”
”It’s fine,” I replied. I knew whatever it was, he wouldn’t be walking out of here unless he thought it was important. ”Go. I’ll be here when you get back.”
Before he walked out the door, he dipped his head down again and planted a kiss against my lips. And, with that, he headed for the door.
As soon as it clicked shut behind him, I closed my eyes and laid my head back against the ground. I didn’t know what had just happened, but I knew I sure as hell wanted it to happen again.
Provided, of course, that whatever news he had just gotten in that call wasn’t going to make a mess of all the plans I had made.