Chapter 4
nipple tractor beams
Liam
The doors swoosh open, and I tap on the reception desk. “Maternity ward?”
The older receptionist looks surprised and cautious and uses way too many words to direct me, but I get the gist and nod before finding my family.
Room 323 is on the other end of a maze in the complex. But soon enough, I knock, fighting back nerves I never experience.
My sister just had Sophia, her first, less than three weeks ago, and I wasn’t nearly as antsy as I am with my brother and his son. I shake out my shoulders as the door pulls open before me.
My brother is grinning, and I have to wonder if his face is going to hurt from all that joy. He grabs me in a hug, slapping my back, pulling back with his hands still on my shoulders. He’s not physically demonstrative like this with me. It’s telling.
“Li, I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too. But first things first.” I head to my sister-in-law, who is glowing in her hospital bed. She doesn’t look any worse for wear. I kiss her cheek quickly. “Congratulations, Mama. Again.”
“Would you like to meet your namesake?” Her voice is quiet but strong in the buzzing room.
My what?
“What did you say?” I stare at her.
“Meet Wills,” my brother offers, placing the baby in my arms. “William Ocotea Murphy.”
I stare down at the sleeping boy in my hands. He’s bundled so tight he looks like a pale blue burrito with a face. My black leather and his soft blue are the ultimate juxtaposition.
Hard and soft.
Dark and light.
Wickedness and innocence.
Taking a seat by the window, I look to our newest family member. “Hi, Wills. I’m your Uncle Liam. I’m your go-to for blood, guts, and pregnancy scares.”
Sariah starts to say something, but I ignore her, talking over her to the boy in my arms. “Don’t do any of that, okay?” Quietly I add, “But when you do, I’m your guy.”
“He’s not four hours old, and you’re already helping him scheme?” Sariah asks.
“Yep.”
“Right on,” my fifteen-year-old niece, Renée adds, plopping down next to me. “But if I had a pregnancy scare…” She leaves the words hanging, and the room implodes.
“Don’t you even think about it,” Sariah starts, waving her arms from her place in bed.
“No one is getting close to you until you’re thirty,” Cian remarks. “And that’s only if we let you out of the house before then.”
“There are reasons I like you,” I say to Renée. “Shit like this is one of them.” I offer my fist, and she bumps it.
“Mom’s head is about to come off her neck.” She reaches for her brother and holds where I expect his feet are in the wrap.
“Today’s probably the only day you can pull a stunt like that.”
“Yeah. I had to take my shot since she can’t get to me fast enough right now.”
“What are you two whispering about over there?” Cian cranes his neck as if the distance impacts his hearing.
“Uncle stuff.” I wink at my niece, the first of my nieces and nephews. The one who made me an uncle. The one who will never know the lengths I’ve gone to to protect her and keep her safe.
This world is crazy, but my family has me. I’m the one for which nothing is off limits.
For my family, I’d burn down the world.
And I have.
Lorien
He complains about noise but has no problem making it himself.
Okay, okay. So, it was just that one time he said no more Madonna, but still, his point was clear. He doesn’t want to be disturbed while he’s in his blinds-drawn, overly-dark house.
So why does he get to rev his stupid motorbike and have the sound echo down the alley where our garages are just as I’m falling asleep?
Well, I’ve had enough. I storm out of my back door as his motorcycle slides into one of his two bays. The other one has a huge black SUV. A nice one. And I’m momentarily distracted.
“You know what? I hate double standards. If you’re going to make noise at all hours, I get to do the same.” I spin on my bare foot and am almost to my house when something jabs the underside of my sole and I go down.
“Hey. You okay?”
Crawling away will seriously ruin my bad-ass speech, not to mention whatever is impaling me hurts like a mother. Instead, I stand, throw my shoulders back, and hobble as quickly as I can toward the three stairs at my back door, where I promptly stub the big toe of my other foot. Shit, that hurts.
“Fuck.” A loud sigh meets my ears and grates on my nerves.
“Does my pain annoy you?” I’m pissed and letting my mouth run away with me. “Should I apologize for inconveniencing you with—”
A cold, thick finger hits my lips. “Shhh.”
I will revolt if he just shushed me and put that cheating hand on my mouth. My eyes squint, and I give him my best bitch face. It would be more effective if I weren’t wincing.
The problem isn’t my tears, anger, or my whimpers of pain, it’s the small intake of air from his touch. Was that me or was it both of us?
His nearness—his looming presence—is less threatening than I expected… except to my body.
The cold radiates off his leather jacket, permeating my heated skin, hitting my pebbled nipples like some kind of sexual torture. My thin tee does nothing to hide it either.
His touch slides from my lips to my chin, tipping my face toward his. “Lorien?”
“Yeah.” Fudge nuggets, it comes out like a sigh and not like the response it should.
“Are you okay?”
Not right now, I’m not. I’m pulsing and hot in all the wrong places, my boobs are freaking headlights, and both of my feet have decided to revolt against me. It’s probably best I don’t use words right now, so I shrug, just as my knees buckle.
Wrong answer.
Worse timing.
The brut scoops me up as if I weigh nothing and carries me, bridal style, into my kitchen, his boots thumping hard against the tile floors. He’s gentle as he sets me on a stool at the bar. Wordlessly, he crouches and lifts one foot, then the other, studying them.
A quick pinch surprises me, and I kick out, hitting him in the chin. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” I reach out and cup his jaw as if I can see through that unruly russet beard… as if I could do any damage to the burly man.
His eyes flick to mine, and the heat there singes me from the inside out. Oh fuck. It’s as if he can see straight through me. Or at least, straight through my clothes.
For a hint of a moment, he presses his face into my hand.
“I got it.” The moment is broken as he holds a piece of glass between us. “First aid kit?”
“I have Neosporin. Does that count?”
“Be right back.” With no further words, he exits the kitchen through the back door, and I’m left speechless.
My brain, though, is whirling with thoughts.
For one, I don’t think he’s said anything other than three-word sentences, at least tonight.
Secondly, he’s been insanely close—in an intimate way even—without being sexual.
He’s a big guy, but moves as quiet as a cat, almost like he’s activated stealth-mode and can’t turn it off.
Third, and worse, I’m insanely turned on by him.
In fact, I rub my breasts, and not in the good way, trying to get them less pointy.
It’s ridiculous, really. It would be better if I weren’t wearing…
Oh shit. A short belly-showing baby doll tee and soft sleep shorts.
Yikes. I jump down, hobbling to the laundry room to grab a hoodie and am almost back in the chair when he comes back inside.
Busted.
“It’s chilly.” It’s the opposite of chilly, but anything to cover my belly button and hide my stupid nipple tractor beams.
“Is it?” He slides his leather jacket down his arms and tosses it on the bar that separates my kitchen from my dining room and returns to his squat. Lifting my foot, he adds, “You’re not going to like this.”
The cold spray that hits my foot burns like acid. “Shit. Ow. Fuck.”
“That mouth.” His words are quiet, and I can’t be sure whether they were for me to hear or not.
“That burns.”
“I know. Told you.” He stares at my foot before shaking his head. “Where are your bowls?”
He’s in the kitchen looking over his shoulder before I respond. I’m rarely the one on the back foot in conversations. At least that’s true at work. Socially, I’m a little… My face must ask the question my mouth doesn’t because he points to the cabinets, swishing his finger.
“Look in the third one.”
He bangs some things around as I cringe and yanks out a bowl. After washing his hands, he fills the bowl and returns to squat before me. He places my foot inside. The water and soap burn—of course they do—as he examines my stubbed big toe on the other foot with his tatted hands.
“This place was vacant a while,” he starts, apparently right in the middle of a conversation I didn’t know we were having.
“You’re right. For more than seven months.
That’s unheard of in this market.” I clench my teeth and tighten my muscles.
I have to fight not to fidget and slosh water everywhere.
My feet are ticklish and even with the pain radiating from my big toe, his hands brush in places that make me want to bounce and writhe. In all kinds of ways.
“I’m right.” The corner of his mouth quirks.
Ugh. That’s what he got from what I said? Ass.
He pulls my foot from the bowl and sets the one with the stubbed toe into the warm water.
It’s as if the skin shrinks, it’s so tight. Why can’t I be one of those people with a super high pain tolerance? I wonder how those people react to certain meds… My brain begins to wander. I’m pulled out of my musings by the rich timbre of his voice.
“I haven’t had to think about neighbors in a while.”
“Did you before?”
“Not really.” His lips tip up as his eyes lift, holding mine captive. They’re not brown and they’re not green. They’re in between, on the gold spectrum. It’s unnerving how they see through me—those ochre eyes. I’m unsure what I was even saying.
I’m supposed to respond but I can’t remember what we were discussing.
His head tilts, as if I’m a puzzle that’s missing pieces, before he uses some gauze to do something on my cut foot and then nothing. No pain. No stinging. There’s soreness deep but the surface level is fine. Weird.
The rip of a bandage pack brings me back to reality. Fresh gauze and a bandage done, he drops my ankle.
“That toe”—he tilts his head to the stubbed one still in the water—“You’ll probably lose the nail.” With that he stands, grabs his jacket and is out the back door.
“Liam,” I call from my perch at the bar.
“Yeah?” his disembodied voice slices through the night.
“Thanks.”
A grunt is his only response.
It was a long, successful day.
It is an even longer night trying to sort through the kind of man my next-door neighbor is. I have lots of hints, but he’s still a mystery.
If I were playing Clue, I’d lose.