27. Lizzie
TWENTY-SEVEN
LIZZIE
I was living in a dreamland. A place where the hottest man in existence looked at me like I was some kind of supermodel. Where he touched all the parts of my body I’d spent years trying to hide like they actually turned him on.
And the crazy thing was, I believed it. When a rough palm slid to the back of my thigh and squeezed, a jolt of lust went through me because I could feel Sean’s harsh breath against my skin. If I followed the path of my hand just a little farther down, I knew I’d feel something hard behind the fabric of his pants.
There were so many reasons not to do this. He was my brother’s best friend. We both had kids. I was trying to set him up with someone else. Whatever lust had driven him here tonight wouldn’t last—it couldn’t. Not when I was Lizzie Butler, designated mom and babysitter extraordinaire.
But for right now, for this moment , wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy it?
So, when Sean threaded his fingers through mine and tugged me across the room to the couch, I let him. When he pressed me onto the cushions and huffed a laugh as I extricated a kid’s toy from under my butt, I smiled right back at him and extended my arms for him to drape himself over me.
This would end; I knew it would. But it had been so, so long since I’d done something for myself. Since I’d done something bad .
This was bad. I knew it would blow up in my face. But it was also intoxicating, to have a handsome man run his hands over my hips and let out a shuddering breath like he’d never felt anything so good as my body beneath his.
And when he kneeled on the floor in front of the cushions and had me hook my knees over his shoulders, I was too far gone to push him away.
Truth be told, I wanted to see what would happen when his mouth touched my core. I wanted to feel the rumble of his groan against my flesh and reach the peak of another long-overdue orgasm. I wanted to be selfish, for once. To be seen.
The blaze of pleasure still took me by surprise, though. My fingers curled into the cushions as my back arched, and Sean used his lips and teeth and tongue to make me forget about everything other than the feel of my own pleasure. His hand slid up my stomach to my breast, and I placed my hand over his to keep it there.
My vision went white with pleasure, but I wasn’t ready for this to be over. On the heels of my orgasm, I found myself clawing at his pants and tugging them down. I sat on the edge of the sofa and took him in my mouth, and Sean swore above me and curled his fingers into my hair.
Just like I’d imagined—but better.
Pleasure sparked inside me as I sucked him, glancing up to watch the way his head fell back on a gasp. I loved the feel of him against my tongue, the flared tip, the throbbing veins. I loved the way his hand spasmed against my scalp, the breathless, desperate way he said my name.
This wasn’t a moment to think about consequences. It was a decade of repressed desire finally breaking free.
“Lizzie,” Sean panted. “Fuck, Lizzie that feels so good.”
I hummed around his cock and reached down to touch his sac. His groan was strangled, and I pulled back to grin at him. When he met my gaze, his eyes were wild, his cheeks flushed. I hadn’t had this much fun being intimate with a man in a long time. Truthfully, I’d forgotten that it could be fun. That I could lose my inhibitions and get out of my own head. That a man could look at me the way Sean did and make me forget that anything else existed.
“Get up,” he commanded, then reached down to grab my hand. He hauled me up and wrapped an arm around my waist, then kissed me so deeply my head began to spin. Then it was my body that was spinning, my back to his front, his hands running down to stroke between my legs. I felt the press of his free hand on my shoulder, and I bent over to grab the back of the couch.
He entered me in a swift thrust, and I moaned in response. My legs began to tremble a minute later. A minute after that, I was shouting his name and feeling the hard grip of his hands on my hips.
Any control I might have had slipped my grip, and I lost myself to the pleasure, to the feel of him, to the moment. My consciousness was reduced to a series of snapshots. The feel of the couch’s fabric against my palms and shins. The trembling weakness that overtook my limbs. The way Sean stroked down my spine with a broad, hot palm. The feel of him stretching me as he thrust inside again and again and again.
My orgasm was a series of waves that ran into each other, shredding thought as it grew. I collapsed onto my elbows and sobbed into the climax just as Sean pulled out of me and moaned, his release warm on my ass and thighs. I panted wordlessly, body twitching, until Sean shifted behind me.
“Towel,” he gasped. He sucked in a hard breath. “Stay.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled back, collapsing onto my side. Full sentences were evidently beyond us. A moment later, the sink in the kitchen turned on, and a moment after that, Sean was wiping up the mess from my skin and collapsing onto the cushion beside me.
I struggled up to my elbows and laughed as he tried to help me, finally giving up and flopping into his arms. We stayed there like that for some time as our breathing returned to normal. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feel of his fingers drifting down my arm and back up again, listening to his heartbeat slow as the minutes trickled into one another.
Finally, the reality of the situation entered my addled mind. I had one hand hooked over his shoulder, the other trapped between our bodies. Our naked bodies. I blinked against his skin and unmashed my face from his chest to glance up at him.
I’d just had sex with my brother’s best friend. Multiple times. There would be a reckoning.
He met my gaze, a soft smile on his lips. “Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say whatever you’re thinking right now.”
Slightly offended, I frowned. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“You’re going to say something about how we shouldn’t have done that, and I don’t want you to.”
“You don’t want me to?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think we absolutely should’ve done that.”
“Is that right?”
“Yep.”
“What about now?”
“Now?”
“Yeah,” I answered, narrowing my eyes. “What happens now?”
“Well,” he said, “we could have a snack.”
“A snack.”
“That was a lot of energy to expend, and I’m feeling peckish.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Thank you.” His lips twitched.
“I’m not feeding you until you tell me what the hell just happened.”
“Well, Lizzie, when two people are attracted to each other…”
“Stop it,” I said, biting back my laugh as I smacked his chest. “You know what I mean.”
He let out a breath and pressed his lips to my temple. “Do you regret it?”
“I…” Trailing off, I closed my mouth. “No,” I finally answered.
“Good.”
“That doesn’t mean I understand what we just did.”
“We just had sex, Lizzie. Hot sex. Unbelievably, mind-blowingly hot sex.”
A little zip of pride went through me. It had been unbelievably hot, and I was glad he thought so too. “Twice,” I pointed out.
“Twice,” he agreed.
“Maybe we’ve earned a snack.”
He huffed, then dipped down to kiss me. It was tender, just a brush of his lips against mine while his fingers stroked my cheek, and it made me feel more off-balance than when he’d bent me over the couch and had his way with me.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked gently, gaze flicking between my eyes.
“You kiss me like this was more than just hot sex to you.”
His throat bobbed. “I like you.”
A denial was on the tip of my lips, because what did that mean? How could he like me? My life was complicated. I was busy—really busy—and I didn’t have time to date. Besides, he was possibly the worst option in terms of dating prospects. There were a thousand reasons that made dating Sean more complicated than someone else, mostly because my family would go bananas if they found out.
And then what would happen if this fizzled out? Aaron would keep being friends with Sean, probably. Would I have to see him at every family gathering? He’d been a fixture at every Butler event growing up, and I knew my parents and brothers wanted the same thing now that he was back in Heart’s Cove.
How would they react if they found out I’d just messed it all up? Would they blame me, just like they’d blamed me for the failure of my marriage?
I cleared my throat. “I’m supposed to be setting you up with one of my friends.”
“No,” he said.
“No?”
Sean shook his head, and his lips began to curl. “No. You’re not going to do that anymore.”
“But—”
“I’m not going on any more dates, Lizzie. I want you.”
Wow. All I could do was stare at him and blink for a minute, because the thought of this beautiful man eschewing all other women for the sake of me was so mind-bogglingly, intoxicatingly flattering that I just had to breathe through the feeling for a minute or so.
“You want me?” I finally asked in a small voice.
His smile grew. “You’re asking that now? After everything we just did?”
“That might’ve been a fluke,” I pointed out.
“Give me an hour to recharge, and I’ll prove to you that it wasn’t.”
I rolled my lips in to bite back my smile, my heart aglow. “Maybe we should have a snack to help you along.”
He laughed as I got up. We got our clothes back on and shuffled to the kitchen. Sean chose a bottle of wine while I threw the charred remains of my Christmas cookies in the trash. Then I opened the fridge and put together a poor woman’s charcuterie board, which was a packet of Slim Jims, leftover grapes from one of the kids’ lunches, and some sharp cheddar plonked onto my cutting board.
We ate and drank wine. I watched Sean over the rim of my glass, and he watched me over the rim of his.
“Are you going to tell my brother about this?” I finally asked.
Sean finished chewing his bite of cheese and took a sip of wine. He set the glass down, shrugged, and met my gaze. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far.”
“I thought you’d been planning this for weeks.”
He arched a brow. “I said I’d been wanting you for weeks. None of this was planned.”
I took a sip of wine and nodded. “I see. Aaron might be upset.”
“I know he’s protective of you, but—” Sean frowned when I started laughing.
I shook my head. “He’s not going to be upset at you. Well, he might, but he’ll forgive you. He’ll be upset at me .”
“What?”
“My brother…” I took a deep breath. “Both brothers, and to an extent my parents…”
How could I put it into words without sounding like I was wallowing in self-pity? I wanted to tell him that my role in the family had been etched into permanence over the past decade—or even longer. After my divorce, there hadn’t been questions about me dating again. It had been a given that I would focus on the children, that I would put myself second. And I did. But to show up at Christmas dinner on Sean’s arm…
That would upset the balance of things.
“They don’t see you,” Sean said quietly.
I blinked and glanced up at him. “What?”
“They see you as free childcare, as someone who will do the grunt work at family events. But they don’t appreciate that you might want more from your life than that.”
My throat was suddenly tight. “They’re not bad people.”
“I never said they were. But they use you, Lizzie.”
“They—” I shut my mouth, because what was I supposed to say? The little voice in my head that had piped up when no one saved me any stuffing at Thanksgiving, when my brother had called me and expected me to drop everything to go babysit for him when he needed it—that voice agreed with him. And it had been getting louder. When my bottom lip began to wobble, I shoved a grape in my mouth to hide it.
“Lizzie,” Sean said, moving closer. He let his fingers drift down my arm, then dropped his hand. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”
“You didn’t. It’s just…” I took a deep breath, slugged some wine, then shook my head. “It’s just been a long time since someone saw me as something more than just a mom.”
He let out a sigh, and I didn’t have the courage to look at him. I didn’t want to see the pity in his eyes. And I didn’t want to glance over and see all that intoxicating attraction fade away when he realized who I really was. What if I was just a mom? What if I was just good at grunt work?
Then strong arms slid around me, and my face was mashed against his chest. I curled my fingers into the fabric of his shirt on either side of his spine as he held me, deep shuddering breaths moving in and out of my lungs.
“You want to know what I see when I look at you?”
I inhaled the scent of him and shook my head. “Not unless you’re about to tell me I’m a goddess among women.”
He huffed a laugh as his hand made a slow sweep down my spine. “That’s pretty close to what I had in mind.”
I snorted and finally flicked my gaze up to meet his. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“This isn’t why you came here tonight.”
“How do you know what I came here for?”
I arched a brow. “I think you made it pretty clear when you started kissing me two seconds after walking in the door.”
He grinned. “That’s one of the reasons. You want to know the other?”
I licked my lips. Nodded.
“You make me feel good, Lizzie. Every time I’m around you, it’s like life is suddenly easier. Problems don’t seem so bad. My thoughts are peaceful. I can’t get enough of it. Of you.”
Swallowing thickly, I held his gaze. “Oh.”
“When I look at you, I see a woman who’s strong. Someone who’s been battered by life and come out the other side. Yes, you’re a mom. But you’re also a survivor. You’re funny, and sweet, and smart. You keep everyone around you afloat, and you do it without them even realizing it.” He stroked my cheek with his thumb, and any defense I had against him crumbled. “You deserve someone who will carry some of that load for you, Lizzie. And I… I guess for the past few weeks, I’ve been fantasizing about that man being me.”
His words were too big for me to carry. I couldn’t process them all as he held me so tenderly, couldn’t accept that a man would look at me and see all that.
“Can I ask you something, Lizzie?”
“Sure.”
“Will you show me some of your photos?”
I pulled back, frowning. “My photos?”
He nodded to the image on the wall—the one I’d taken years ago of a bluff overlooking the ocean. “Laurel told me you took that. She said you used to be into photography, before life got in the way. The snaps you took of me and Mikey putting up the Christmas tree were amazing, and you just took those with your phone.”
“And that makes you want to see what else I’ve done?” I stared at him like he was crazy, which made him laugh.
“Yes, Lizzie.”
“Why?”
“Do I need a reason?”
“Yes.”
He laughed again. “Fine. Because I find you interesting, and I want to get to know you better. All the parts that you’ve kept hidden.”
“I think I am in a coma. There’s no way you’re real.”
His grin was a little wry. “If you’re in a coma, then there’s no reason not to show me your photos.”
My heart thumped and I knew by the heat burning in my face that my cheeks were red. But I shrugged and led him to the office just off the living room where I kept my laptop. I grabbed the device and headed back to the couch, waiting until the cushions dipped as he took a seat beside me. Glancing at him, knowing I’d show him the product of a hobby I’d abandoned years ago, I felt exposed.
But I also felt seen, and heard, and appreciated in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
So I opened the laptop and found my old photographs, then settled into the crook of his arm to show them to him. When he asked me to send him a few of his favorites, the flush of pride that went through me washed away all the vulnerability and left me feeling clean and cherished.