Chapter 29
uncross
Liam
She looks suspicious, but stands anyway, sashaying that full ass down the hall behind me.
I look to the ceiling once again. Praying for patience isn’t working… that much I know. I make sure the doors are locked and shut off all the lights. I turn on the microwave light though. She tends to do that on most nights.
I grab my laptop and head back down the hall.
My earlier perusing means I know her guest bedroom has no furniture in it. She has a queen-sized mattress in her bedroom, giving the room an overall larger feeling than my own which has a king. Hers has pillowy covers as opposed to my heavier, denser ones. We’ll have to figure this out.
“Do you have a side?” I ask through the bathroom door as the water runs.
“Uh?”
Oh good, we’re back to her answering questions with questions.
“Left or right?”
“From the foot or the head?”
A smile escapes me on that one. Only her mind would ask that kind of question.
“Either.”
“Left from the foot. Right from the pillows.”
“Thanks for the clarification, Wifey.”
“My pleasure, William.”
If the woman speaks about pleasure too much, I’m going to cross a line I can’t uncross. My resolve is being whittled away moment-by-moment. Day by day.
Hell, it wasn’t twenty-four hours ago when she played with my beard and kissed me. Fuck if that didn’t take all the discipline I had not to roll her onto her back, part her thighs, and sink inside her.
Deductibles. Marital arrangements. My nieces and nephew. My father.
That does it.
Erection gone. I look down, wondering if my dick has turtled itself inside me. Seamus Murphy has that effect on me. He’s the ultimate tool to kill anything good.
Speaking of…
Me: Did you talk to Ayla and Cian?
Christian: Ayla’s on board. I’ll reach out to Cian tomorrow.
Me: If Ayla’s on board, Ci will be too.
There’s no response from my brother-in-law. None is required.
I check the cameras around our units noting nothing out of the ordinary.
I empty my pockets onto the nightstand on the right side, from the foot as Lorien calls it.
I kick off my shoes and socks, drop my pants atop them, and am grabbing my shirt from between my shoulder blades when the woman in question walks out of her bathroom, rubbing lotion or something down the column of throat.
And she’s wearing…
Fuck me. No. No. No. Thin straps hold up a peach silky something with white lace at the tits and dancing just below her ass.
She wanders toward the bed as if we do this all the time, as if she’s in flannel footed pajamas with pictures of moose families on them or something equally as unsexy, and pulls back the downy comforter and sheet. She clicks off the lamp, sliding under the covers, and rolls to face away from me.
The nighty plunges in the back so with the sheet pulled up, it looks like she’s wearing nothing but a piece of thin spaghetti.
Thank God I never put cameras in her bedroom. Also, praise the deities everywhere she never wandered into her kitchen in that torture device.
My t-shirt was enough. My tee on her primed me, made me want her, got me hard.
This? This is… This is not something I can sleep next to on any given night.
She needs guest room furniture stat. And blankets.
Maybe itchy ones that scratch and tickle at the same time.
That way I can hate sleeping here. Hate being in a bed or even horizontal.
I can wish for the time this is over so I can go home to my big comfortable bed with its perfect sheets and not have a woman who makes me fight not to slide into her.
I finish with my shirt. Having frozen in place with my mouth hanging open, head halfway through the neck of it when she walked out. I probably looked like a teenager who caught a glimpse of boob for the first time.
Even the thought of my father can’t fix what’s happening in my boxers right now. I drop the shirt with the rest of my clothes and sit on the covers, elbows to knees, face in my hands, wondering how the fuck I got myself into this situation.
It takes several minutes before I can relax back into the mattress and several more before my mind stops fighting all the what-ifs. Eventually I succumb to sleep if only because staying awake is too brutal on my mind after forty hours with no sleep.
Besides, staying up means my dick is too.
I wake before the alarm goes off, too warm, too deeply asleep for a house that isn’t mine. The light is different, the smells are wrong, and the warm body resting atop me is… talking.
“But the merman needs the money.” Her arm reaches out, and her hand opens and closes as if grabbing for said money, but dangerously close to grabbing something else.
As entertaining as her wild ass dreams are, I need out of this. Slick fabric rubs against my skin. Lorien’s smooth leg rests atop my shin and her face on my pec looks soft but worried. Apparently, the mer people are broke.
I slide my bottom half away as gently as possible and gingerly drop my shoulder onto the bed to slip her onto the mattress.
The nighty has dropped and the swell of the top of her tit is visible.
With all the discipline I have, I step into my pants and shoes, throwing my shirt on only to realize it’s inside out and having to do it a second time. I’m almost out the door when I hear it.
“Liam.” Her voice is breathy.
I turn, thinking she’s awake, only to see her reaching again. “Liam.”
Against my better judgment, and knowing I’ll regret this, I return to the bed I just vacated and kneel beside it. “I’m here, Lorien.”
Her hand reaches out to gently scrub down my beard. “Good.”
She won’t remember.
I’ll never forget.
My name on her lips. Her fingers in my beard. Her wanting me beside her.
She’s killing me, one ridiculous moment after another.
Briggs Barnett is back to normal. At least that’s how he seems. No mention of his kicking me off his property. Not a word of him hoping I’d be willing to commit murder for the low, low price of a couple million. All’s right with the world, and he needs help on a new property, this time in Wyoming.
He wants me to come to him this week and is all too flexible when I say that doesn’t work for my schedule.
Being Lorien’s rideshare driver, plus the need to go car shopping is one thing.
The real challenge is her security. She’s a magnet for trouble, and it seemed to be coming at her from an unknown, unknowable source.
Until I dug deeper.
The not-so-smart guy who watched our homes and broke in when I left is Mark Gascon. His uncle, his deceased mom’s older brother, owns the moving company Lorien contracted to get her into her unit.
The movers themselves are a different matter. They’ve been exceptionally quiet… at least in the days since they served us. I have alerts on them as well, ones to notify me when anything pings with their names.
If the owner of the moving company is making plays, I’m curious what he’s working toward.
We can’t undo the press. We won’t undo the reviews.
The only thing that helps is a public apology…
or discrediting the person who smeared his business.
But, if it were slander in the technical or legal sense of the word, he could sue.
He should sue. The fact that he hasn’t can only be because it’s true.
Or because he isn’t able to smear Lorien without proof.
What could proof look like? And why send a below average criminal to look for it? If he was truly interested in clearing his name, associating with a known felon who’s a blood relation and who sucks at his job isn’t the way to do it.
So, for now, Lorien has me as a shadow.
Not that I don’t believe Cian would do all he could.
Or wouldn’t do everything to protect her.
It’s his nature. Not that I wouldn’t trust Fitz in my absence.
He was an Army Ranger after all. And not, of course, that I couldn’t send her to Ayla’s where Christian has the place locked up against any potential infiltration. Hell, the man has a safe room.
But it needs to be me. So long as I’m able.
On my way to pick up Lorien, I make a pit stop at Nettles and Cohen.
Sherman looks at me with curiosity when he opens the manilla envelope to find print outs of almost everything on the accompanying thumb drive that falls to the bottom with a thud.
I explain the connection to the suits he’s currently defending us on and Mark Gascon, as well as the connection with his uncle.
His eyebrows reach for his receding hairline when he sees a copy of the marriage certificate and the prenup. “I personally dropped off and watched acceptance of the original on my way here. It’s filed.”
“And the date?”
“Is in May.” My tone brooks no argument.
The man, who’s sharper than people give him credit for, nods. A small smile plays on his lips. “Well then, congratulations are in order. Please do give Mrs. Murphy my best. And when will I get to meet your bride?”
My bride. Why does that hit me in the solar plexus?
“Soon.” I extend a hand, shaking with the only person without my last name I’d trust in this situation.
Well, not the only one, I think as I rub my chest and see myself out.