Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
Clay
Grey pre-dawn light limns the silhouette of the trees outside Gallo’s, and Louisa wedges her foot beneath my calf, making a sleepy little noise in her dreams. I’m tempted to wrap her in my arms and pull her closer, but I don’t want to wake her.
I’m drifting back to sleep when I hear it—a faint noise from downstairs. I lift my head from the pillow, but there’s only silence.
Maybe I dreamed it.
Louisa stirs, her foot slipping out from under my calf. “Can’t sleep?” she asks as she drapes her arm across my chest and rests her head on my shoulder.
“Mm.” I kiss the top of her head. Her body is warm and naked against mine, my cock hardening at the thought of sinking deep into her. “Go back to sleep.” It’s early, and the sun is only beginning to brighten the room. Much earlier than we usually get up.
She lifts her head and smiles. It’s sleepy and sexy, happy and smug.
My chest is full, like there isn’t enough space for everything I’m feeling right now.
I love you. It would be so easy to let the truth spill out—to confess that I will wreck my life for this woman—but not yet. It’s too soon for something so big.
Luckily, her hand, which has been drifting down from my chest, passes over my stomach, and when she wraps her fingers around my cock, I swallow the words on the tip of my tongue.
“I don’t want to go back to sleep just yet,” she says, giving me a slow stroke.
I cover her hand with mine, tightening her grip, and fuck, it’s good. So good. Even better when she climbs on top of me.
Her hair is a goddamn mess, a dark cloud of tangles defying gravity, but the first golden rays of sunlight lend her skin a soft peachy color, and she’s so beautiful I ache for her.
I slide my hands up her thighs to her hips, pulling her down until her pussy presses hot and wet against my shaft. It eases a little of the ache, but I need more.
She shifts to lower herself onto my cock, working her way down inch by inch and wrapping me in the tight heat of her.
She feels like heaven—so fucking good, I never want this to end.
There’s a smug little smirk on her lips, but her eyes flutter closed, and she makes a contented, relieved sigh that I know is because of how full I make her feel.
She gathers her messy hair up onto the top of her head, then leans forward to pull a hair tie off the little knob at the end of the metal headboard. While she secures it in place, I let my hands glide over her stomach to cup her breasts and thumb the stiff peaks of her nipples.
Lou has other plans. She takes my hands and directs me to the headboard. I grip the wrought iron and, since her breasts are temptingly close, reach up to suck a nipple.
Her moan is soft music, and I draw a few more beautiful notes out before she moves back, her hands moving over my chest, playfully tweaking my nipple.
I could watch her ride me all day. The movement flows through her entire body.
When she fucks herself on me slowly, it’s sinuous, seductive, a soft shape that has me transfixed.
But when she speeds up, my grip on the headboard tightens.
Her skin slaps against mine, her tits bounce, and she bites her lower lip, her thick lashes fluttering.
Seeing her so close puts me in danger.
My fingers ache as I force them open to release the headboard.
She yelps as I tumble her off me and onto her back, but I’m already diving face-first between her legs.
At the first touch of my tongue, her legs relax and widen, and fuck, I will never get over how good she tastes or how beautiful her pussy is.
I grip her thighs, pressing them wider as I get my fill.
She wiggles underneath me, but I’m too busy to think about what she’s doing—until she takes my cock in that same confident grip she used in the sauna, tugging me down to her plush lips and hot mouth.
“Oh, fuck.” Christ, the way she uses her tongue. “Not what I had in mind, Louisa,” I say, shifting my weight so I’m better balanced over her head, careful not to kneel on her hair.
Her lips drawing tightly off my cock has me gritting my teeth. “What’s the matter?” she asks sweetly, her hand continuing to work me. “Getting close?”
“Yes.”
A cool stream of air blows over the wet head of my cock. I close my eyes as everything draws even tighter, including my voice. “Lou.”
“If you don’t want to get off yet,” she says in that sexy voice, “maybe you should distract me with that clever tongue of yours. I’ll give you a hint—conversation won’t work.”
I slap her pussy.
“Oh, fuck,” she moans, shifting her hips. “That’ll work.”
So I do it again, and again, then set my mouth to her once more. When her hips start rocking, I back off and slap it again. She gasps, and now she’s the one teetering on the edge, her legs shaking.
There’s something desperate in the way she strokes me as she takes me in her mouth again.
She falls apart as I work her clit with my tongue, but I’m falling, too, thrusting short, shallow strokes into the hot wet of her mouth.
She trembles as she comes against my tongue. I cry out as I come on hers.
I collapse beside her, forehead pressed to her thigh, a satisfied, empty husk of a man. She moves to rest alongside me, wrapping herself around me.
Just beneath her satisfied exhale, I hear that noise from downstairs again.
“What is it?” she asks when I freeze.
If something got into the bar—a raccoon or an energetic mouse—it would be best to deal with it before it can do damage. I have no idea what I’ll do if it is an animal, but if I’m staying at Gallo’s with Lou, I’ll need to learn how to deal with these kinds of problems.
“Thought I heard something,” I say, untangling myself from her to sit up. “Go back to sleep. I’ll check it out.”
She yawns but watches me, head propped in her hand, as I pull on a pair of pants and a T-shirt. “You’re coming back to bed?” she asks as I slip into my shoes.
“Yes.” I’m not going to fall back asleep, but I’d rather hold her while she sleeps than do anything else.
“Good.”
I stop at the door on top of the stairs and look over my shoulder, not wanting to leave yet but knowing the sooner I do, the sooner I’ll return.
Louisa fights the smile for a few seconds, then flops onto her back, hands covering her eyes as she groans, like it’s cringe-worthy to be this happy. Hell, it’s weird for me, too. But I chuckle, unable to stop from grinning, too. “Be right back.”
The dark stairs are cool, and it should ease my overheated skin. Instead I feel the loss of Louisa’s warmth. This will only take a minute. A quick look around, and I can be back where I belong.
The office door is open a crack, and I pause outside.
The lock on the door is old—the kind where you push a simple pin to open it, all predating digital locks.
I changed the locks on the access doors and the apartment door when I bought the bar, but I never changed this one.
Louisa and I keep it closed when we aren’t inside, which means it was closed last night.
Fuck. I’d prefer another opossum in the kitchen. Hell, I’d take a bear dumpster diving over who I know I’ll find when I push the door open.
“I thought I told you not to come back,” I say quietly as I slip into the office.
Travis glances up at me, completely unbothered, as he rifles through a filing cabinet. “Yeah, well, things change. What happened to the desk?” He points at the stack of crates currently serving as a workspace.
I ignore the question. “You need to leave. Now.” Before curiosity or concern brings Louisa downstairs.
Travis closes the filing cabinet drawer. “Let’s have a drink. We need to talk.”
“We don’t.”
He pushes past me, heading to the bar.
For fuck’s sake. I run a hand through my hair, glance behind me at the closed door leading to the apartment, and with a sigh, follow.
It grates me to see him behind the bar, pulling out a bottle of tequila like he owns the place. He never owned the place.
“You want more money?” I should’ve seen this coming. Leeches like Travis—like Tristan and my father—never stop draining from others. They squeeze every last drop before they move on. Happiness, life, money. Whatever they can get.
Travis takes the shot he poured and grimaces. “Sure, why not? Want one?” He holds the bottle up in offer.
“No.”
He shrugs, but then pours the bottle out on the floor.
I pinch the bridge of my nose as the last of the alcohol glugs out. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of provoking me. “What the fuck are you here for? It can’t be to irritate me and make a mess.”
Travis reaches for another bottle. Whiskey this time. The cheap, nasty shit. He pours a shot into another glass.
It’s taking every ounce of self-control I have not to walk around the bar and strangle the man with my bare hands.
“Tell me what you want,” I snap, “so you can get out before—”
“I heard about you and my cousin. Saw you holding hands at the potluck.” Travis smiles. It’s not a particularly nice smile. “Does she know about the will yet?”
My blood goes cold. I should lie. But he could talk to her. Right now, if he can get past me, or anytime he feels like it. His word that he’ll stay away clearly means nothing.
Travis picks up another bottle—white rum this time—and smashes it on the floor.
The noise makes me flinch. Shit, there’s no way Louisa didn’t hear that. “Stop,” I say as he picks up another bottle.
Travis sets the bottle on the bar, a satisfied look on his face. “So she doesn’t know.”
“So confident of that?”
He takes a drink of his whiskey and grins.
“Bro, she was with Hayden for six months, and she left this place to me to chase him down when he took some money from her. What do you think she’ll do to you when she finds out you hid the truth about her bar from her? You know what this place means to her.”
There’s a sick, sinking sensation in my stomach.
She’ll kick me to the curb. I reach over the bar and grab a bottle of bourbon, just to have something for my shaking hands to do.
“So it’s blackmail then? You need to threaten me while you ask for more money so you can feel something other than the crushing disappointment of being a little shit weasel? ”
Travis pushes a clean glass my way. “You keep bringing up money like it can solve your problems.”
I stare at my shaking hands as I fill the glass with bourbon. I should’ve fucking told Louisa about the will the night we got drunk and opened up to each other. She might have forgiven me then, but now? Like this?
Fuck.
Travis will guarantee that she finds out once I cut him off, but how long can this go on?
A little longer. It has to.
I take a drink of the bourbon, and it burns me up all the way down. “How much?”
“I want the will.”
“No.”
“Where did you hide it?”
This time, I flip him off. He won’t find it in the office, the apartment, or anywhere else in Gallo’s. The will is safely tucked away in Briar’s RV, where it has been for a while.
“We’ll burn it,” Travis says in what he probably thinks is a reasonable, coaxing voice. “Right here, right now. Destroy it. No one will ever know. Not Lou, not anyone.”
I set my glass down with a hard thump. He wants to destroy the evidence? “Afraid someone might discover you and that lawyer engage in the occasional bit of fraud and forgery?”
“If Lou finds it, she’ll come for me after she murders you,” Travis says with a casual shrug. “It’s in our best interest to get rid of it.”
Maybe, but it isn’t in Louisa’s best interest. “I’m keeping the will as my insurance policy. How much will it cost for you to forget about it and leave for good this time?”
Travis knocks the bottle of whiskey over, watching it pour across the bar and onto the floor while I grind my teeth. He doesn’t pick it up, doesn’t move to clean up the mess. “How much is my cousin worth to you?”
Everything.