38. Nolan
38
NOLAN
I was lying in bed after pizza, trying to read rather than think of Lilah (it was a losing battle — I always wanted to think about Lilah), when a soft tap sounded at my door.
I lifted my head. “Yeah?”
The door opened and she padded in on bare feet, somehow looking both cute as fuck and sexier than hell in boxer shorts decorated with fireflies and one of her hoodies. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and my dick got hard remembering the feel of it in my fingers when we fucked.
Between Greece and our new house guest, it had been a while.
I grinned. “Speak of the devil.”
She looked around the room. “Were you talking about me? To yourself?”
I laughed. “I was being figurative. But I was definitely thinking about you.” I patted the bed. “What’s up, sweetheart?”
She sat on the bed with a shrug. “I guess…”
“You guess…?”
Her cheeks turned pink. “I guess I missed you.”
I felt like running onto the balcony and howling at the moon. Just because this fucking perfect girl missed me.
Jesus.
I pulled her next to me. “Music to my ears.” I kissed her head. “I missed you too.”
“You did?”
I nodded. “It’s been pretty crazy.”
“That’s the understatement of the year.”
Something dug into my side and I shifted, then reached into the pocket of her hoodie and pulled out a knife. I recognized it as a Mini Osborne, a beautifully crafted weapon.
“Planning to kill me in my sleep?”
She laughed softly. “I just feel better when I have a knife with me.”
“This one’s a beauty.” I turned it over in my hand, then pushed the button and admired the gleaming blade. “Rafe give it to you?”
She looked up at me. “How’d you know?”
“Just a gut feeling.” The truth was, it had Rafe written all over it: an extravagant gift, given in an effort to speak for him, to say all the things he couldn’t say.
“It’s so much nicer than my old knife.”
“Rafe has good taste in weapons,” I said.
“A sentence I never thought I’d hear spoken. About anyone.”
I collapsed the knife. “Mind if I set it on the nightstand for now? Assuming you were telling the truth about not killing me in my sleep.”
“I think you’re safe for now,” she said.
I set it on the nightstand and pulled her tighter against me. We’d been in each other’s company every day since we’d gotten home from Greece, but not like this. I’d missed holding her, just being with her. I’d never felt this way about any woman, had never mooned over someone when we weren’t together, had never catalogued all the things I Ioved about them.
“I like you,” I said.
She laughed a little. “I like you too.”
I pulled back so I could see her face. “No, I mean I really like you. I like everything about you, as a person. I like the way you treat other people. I like the way you live your life. I just really like you.”
The words didn’t seem like enough to express the feeling in my chest, a feeling so big I was afraid it would leak out, scare the shit out of Lilah, who had only really started to trust us — I hoped — after Greece.
I realized I’d never thought much about whether I’d liked women I’d dated in the past. I mean, I liked them. Obviously. I liked them enough to take them out, spend a little time with them, get them into bed.
But I hadn’t known them like I was beginning to know Lilah. Hadn’t ever had that epiphany when looking at them or hearing them laugh: I actually like you.
And I was willing to own some of that. Had I ever slowed down enough to know someone? To like them? Had I ever been around a woman long enough to miss her when she was gone?
Lilah was special, there was no doubt about that, but part of what made her special was that she’d forced me to know her. And one thing I was starting to realize? To know Lilah was to love — and to like — her.
Her expression softened. “That’s a really nice thing to say.”
“It’s true.” I squeezed her tight and was relieved when she lay her head back on my chest because the conversation had made me realize something: Lilah had let me in and I hadn’t done the same.
Rafe and Jude were right: she’d want to know about my diabetes. But it didn’t feel right to tell her, not after everything she’d been through, not with everything she went through on a daily basis because of her AVS.
There was no world in which Lilah should spend a single second worrying about me. It was fucked-up to think about her fussing over me after what I’d done. I wanted to take care of her , to worry about her .
It wouldn’t make up for the past — that might take a lifetime — but it was something.
She ran her fingers absently along my chest and stomach and my dick stood at attention because even when I was feeling all sappy about Lilah I still wanted to fuck her.
Come to think of it, I pretty much wanted to fuck her all the time.
I took her hand and lifted it to my mouth, planted a kiss in the palm of her hand, then stretched her arm over her head and rolled on top of her.
My dick got harder as I sank into the solid softness of her body, felt her tits press against my chest.
I looked down at her, smoothed the hair back from her forehead. I wanted to memorize the angle of her cheekbones, the way her nose turned up just a tiny bit at the end, the sweet little gap between her teeth, the green of her eyes that made me think of the trees on the mountain during the warmest, lushest days of summer.
“You’re so beautiful, sweetheart. I don’t think you know it, but it’s true.”
She reached up to hold my face in her hands. “You’re beautiful too.”
I lowered my mouth to hers and sank into her pillowy lips, felt her fingers in my hair as she opened her mouth to meet my tongue with her own.
She hooked an ankle around my thigh and my hard cock nestled into the heat between her thighs, turning my lust up to a hundred.
I took the kiss deeper, sweeping her mouth with my tongue, and traced her body with my hands, letting my palms run over the fullness of her tits, the taper of her waist, the softness of her stomach and hips.
I slipped my hand under the hem of her hoodie, but instead of her skin, my fingertips found the ribbed fabric of a tank top.
“You have too many clothes on,” I murmured against her mouth.
I slipped my hands under the hem of her tank top and finally came in contact with the silkiness of her skin.
She sighed when I closed my hand around one of her tits, and I stroked her nipple while I trailed kisses along her jaw, then pressed my lips to the hidden place behind her ear.
Her nipple was hard under my thumb, her breath coming fast and shallow, and I had the urge to press my ear to her chest, not because I was worried that something was wrong with her heart but just because I wanted to hear it beat.
Because I loved the sound she made when she was alive.
“Mind if I take these off?” I asked, tugging on the tank top and hoodie.
“We… we can’t,” she said.
I lifted my head. “Why not?”
When she opened her eyes, they were fever-glazed, and I knew if I dipped my fingers into her pussy I’d find her dripping wet. “Come again? And by that I mean I really want to make you come again and again.”
She laughed. “Matt’s here.”
I looked around. “I don’t see him.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not here here. Just… you know, in the house.”
I kissed her long and slow, relished the slide of her tongue on mine. “These walls are very well insulated. Jude insisted.”
“It would be weird,” she said. “I can’t.”
I dropped my head onto her shoulder, my dreams of finally fucking her senseless — alone — dashed. “Cockblocked by the little brother and he’s not even in the room.” Her laughter reverberated through my body and I lifted my head to look at her. “I think you might be enjoying this.”
She held up her thumb and forefingers close together. “Maybe just a little.”
“You’re evil.” I took one of her hands and pressed it to my throbbing dick. “See what you do to me?”
She let out a little gasp and squirmed under me. “So not fair.”
I kissed her, then looked into her eyes. “Don’t worry, it’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready. But now you have to stay for a while to cuddle, because if I can’t make you come, I definitely want to cuddle.”
“Cuddling is allowed,” she said primly.
“Thank god.” I pulled her tank top and sweatshirt down — pretty fucking reluctantly I might add — and lay next to her, lifting my arm so she could settle against me.
I hadn’t been lying: I was dying to make Lilah come, to bury my face between her thighs, to taste her on my tongue, to bury my cock inside her.
But being with Lilah in any way was better than not being with her at all, something I knew firsthand, because when I looked back on the house — on our lives — without her, I had to be honest: they looked pretty fucking empty.
I knew this couldn’t last, that Lilah couldn’t stay with us forever. That she wouldn’t want to because who would want to stay with us after what we’d done?
But she was here now, in my arms.
Mine.
It would have to be enough.