Chapter 16
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
L yla watched as Rock removed the rest of his clothes and dropped them in the hamper. Her breath hitched as she got her first look at his totally naked body.
Damn, he was sexy. They were both older, but Rock looked even sexier now than he had four decades ago. He was fit and ripped. She knew he’d had a heart attack, but apparently he’d taken damn fine care of himself since then.
He grabbed her around the waist and backed her out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. “We’re going to need a bigger house,” he muttered.
“Why?” She liked his house. It was cozy and welcoming. What more did they need?
Holy hell, why was she thinking as though she was definitely staying? She was in a dream. Nothing seemed real. Maybe none of this had happened and she was still sleeping at the motel on the night she’d arrived, wishful thinking filling her head.
“I don’t like the look on your face, Baby girl,” Rock growled as the back of her legs hit the mattress. He cupped her face. “What’s going on in your pretty head, Little Lyla?”
She threaded her fingers in his hair at the back of his head. It was gray, but it was still thick and soft. “I’m struggling to believe this is real,” she whispered.
He kissed her. “It’s real.” He kissed her again, this time behind her ear. “This is also real.” He lowered his head to kiss one of her nipples. “And this.”
Her breath hitched when he lifted her by the hips and sat her on the bed, encouraging her to lie back. He grabbed her knees, pushed her legs open, and bent to kiss her pussy. “And this… Mmmm… This is very fucking real.”
She fisted the sheets at her sides, arching her chest and moaning when he lowered his face again and sucked her clit.
Yes. Oh, God, yes. This … She remembered this. It had not changed. The fireworks between them were just as real as they had been when she’d been eighteen.
Over the years, she’d decided she’d surely embellished their hours together. That night couldn’t have been as amazing as she remembered it. But now… Now that his mouth was on her again, she realized, if anything, she’d downplayed their time together.
He thrust his tongue into her channel and then lapped at her clit, holding her legs wide the entire time.
She stopped breathing, unable to focus on anything but the feel of his lips on her skin, the way he grazed his teeth lightly over her clit, his thumbs holding her pussy open, his breath hitting her sensitive parts, his nose nuzzling her, the purring sound coming from him vibrating through her body.
Suddenly, he released one of her legs and thrust a finger into her. “Fuck, you’re tight, Little Lyla. Come, Baby girl. Come on Daddy’s finger. I want to feel your cunt clench around me.”
His words were so dirty that she couldn’t stop herself. Her orgasm rushed to the surface, taking over her body and sending waves of pulses to her pussy.
“That’s my girl. Jesus, you’re sexy. I’ve never forgotten the look on your face when you came for me the first time. Heavenly. I want to see that every day for the rest of my life.”
She was panting as he scooted her back and climbed over her. He hovered on his knees between her legs, his hands on either side of her head. He looked down at her, his expression serious, his brow intense, his eyes wandering around her face. “You’re mine.”
She nodded.
“Say it, Little Lyla. Say that you’re mine.”
She licked her lips. “I’m yours, Rock.” She reached for him, needing him to touch her. She wanted to feel him pressed against her body.
When he settled over her with his cock at her entrance, she wrapped her legs around him.
“I need you, Rock. Please. Hard and fast. I want to feel you filling me.”
“Condom?” he asked.
She laughed. “No.” She schooled her face a moment later as a memory assaulted her. “Unless you’ve been with ten other women lately.”
He frowned. “No. I haven’t been with anyone since long before my heart attack.”
“It’s been longer than that for me.” She stroked his back. She believed him. She had no reason not to.
“So, bare?” he asked.
“I’m not going to get pregnant, if that’s a concern.” She gave him a sly grin.
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t give a fuck if you did.” Less than a second after those words left his mouth, he thrust all the way in, taking her breath away.
The sound that came out of her mouth was foreign to her. She hadn’t felt this good in… Not since she’d been with him. It was pitiful but true.
He eased out and thrust back in, deeper, scrambling her brain.
She gripped his back with her fingertips.
He lowered his head and sucked one of her nipples into his mouth.
She moaned again, louder. Thank goodness he didn’t have neighbors close by.
Rock switched to the other nipple, tormenting it with his tongue and teeth while he slid in and out of her.
Lyla felt alive. More alive than she had in years. The only time she’d ever felt like this had been that night they’d spent together. It hadn’t been a fluke. It was Rock. It was them .
She lifted her hips, meeting him thrust for thrust. She hoped whatever issues he’d had with his heart weren’t serious enough that he shouldn’t be doing this. She should have asked more questions about his health.
Rock released her nipple and met her gaze as he slid a hand between them and found her clit. “Come on my cock, Little Lyla. Remind me what it feels like to have your cunt strangling me.”
When he pinched her clit, she cried out, milking him with her pussy. The orgasm was more powerful than the one he’d given her with his mouth. The intensity took her by surprise. The waves of pleasure went on and on for longer than she’d ever experienced.
At some point in the middle of her blissed-out state, Rock emptied himself into her. He groaned loudly as the pulses of his release shook them.
She focused on his face as soon as she was able and found him smiling absently, his eyes on hers. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down. “I want your weight on me. All of it.”
“Baby girl, I’m too heavy.”
She shook her head. “No, you’re not. I need to feel the pressure. Please.”
He dropped lower, resting his chest against hers, his cock still lodged inside her.
She sighed and danced her fingers up and down his spine. “There are no words,” she whispered.
“There are so many words,” he responded, “but I can’t put them into coherent sentences.”
She giggled. “Okay, maybe that.”
He eventually eased out. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
She watched as he padded from the room, breathing heavily. Could she really have this?
A minute later, he returned with a wet washcloth. He spread her legs gently and cleaned her up.
She shivered from the sweat on her skin and the cool air in the room.
He climbed into bed, pulled the covers over them, and dropped onto his back.
She snuggled into his side, wrapping her leg over his, hugging his chest. “Tell me about your heart,” she whispered as she played with the hair on his pecs.
“They put a stent in. My heart is probably in better shape than ever because Remi has been forcing healthy food down my throat and making sure I exercise.”
“Good. I’ll do the same.”
They lay there in comfortable silence for a long time while Lyla’s mind ran in ten-thousand directions. She pictured her condo in Florida. It meant nothing to her. It was just a place to sleep. Did her parents really need her close by? No. She’d only moved there because why not?
But this was happening so fast. “Are we being reckless?” she asked softly.
He tipped his head down to look at her. “No.” He didn’t hesitate.
She rose onto her elbow to face him more directly. “We barely know each other. It’s been so long. We’re jumping in so fast.” The truth was she was scared out of her mind. If she lost him again…
“We know everything that matters, Baby girl. We know we still have the same chemistry we had back then. We know how we feel when we’re together. We’ll figure the rest out one day at a time. We’ll learn each other’s likes and dislikes as we go along.”
She swallowed. He had an answer for everything. “You’re so confident. Maybe we should take a step back and not rush.”
He cupped her face. “Baby girl, if you think I’ll let you walk out that door when I just got you back, you are sadly mistaken.”
His intensity was undeniable. He was serious. He wasn’t going to let her go. That meant a lot to her.
He brought her face closer to his. “I mean it, Lyla. I’ll cuff you to the bed if I think you might slip away in the night.”
She drew in a deep breath. “I won’t slip away.” She dropped back down alongside him, snuggling into his warmth, wrapped so tightly to his side that there wasn’t a millimeter of space between them anywhere.
He stroked her arm up and down while they lay in the peaceful quiet for a while. Finally, he spoke. “Will you tell me why you never came back?”
She inhaled slowly and nodded. Over the past day, she’d begun to wonder if the information she’d had about him back then hadn’t been accurate. She’d never questioned it before, but something felt off about it now.
“Were you seeing other women at that time?” she asked.
He flinched and then extricated himself from beneath her, rolled her to her back, and hovered over her. “Seeing other women?”
She nodded, gritting her teeth.
He searched her face. “Lyla, I didn’t go on a single date with a single woman from the day I met you until long after you left.”
She gasped. “Seriously?” Her voice squeaked. Was he telling the truth?
He frowned. “You stole my heart the first time I saw you. I had no interest in anyone else. It was all I could do to keep my fucking jeans on every time I came to your house. I was a nutjob. While my friends were off sowing their fucking wild oats, I was pining for a girl who wasn’t old enough to touch. Where the hell is this coming from?”
She swallowed. “Jackson… He said…”
Rock’s eyebrows shot to the ceiling, his body went rigid, and then he groaned. He flattened one hand on his face and stroked it down to his beard. “Fuck.” He sat upright, rubbing his chin. “ Fuck .”
She waited for him to say something else. She couldn’t tell if it was him or Jackson who’d lied to her. All she could do was wait for him to elaborate. Fuck wasn’t quite enough information.
His eyes grew watery, and she thought he might cry. His face was tight as he looked away from her, sitting more fully. Finally, his body slumped. “I did this. It’s my fault. Why the fuck did it never occur to me?”
She sat up and moved behind him. Something was terribly out of whack here, but she felt drawn to him anyway. She wrapped her arms around his neck from behind and flattened her chest to his back. She kissed his shoulder. “Tell me.”
He groaned. “I’m an idiot.”
“No, you’re not.”
He chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Oh, yeah. I really am.” He suddenly spun around, grabbed her, and hauled her to his front so that she straddled him. His hands came to her waist, holding her in place.
She stroked his shoulders, waiting for more.
He took a deep breath. “I constantly worried that your brother would figure out I was in love with you. It scared me to death. I was afraid that if he found out, he would punch me in the face and tell me to get lost. Then I wouldn’t get to see you at all. I didn’t want anything to rock the precarious boat I was floating in. I wanted free rein to come and go from your house, see you every day.”
She nodded. He needed to elaborate. She still didn’t know where this was going.
“So I often told Jackson I had a date. I let him believe that I was with various women when I wasn’t with him. He didn’t ask who they were because I pretended they were with the MC. It was a precarious game I played so that he wouldn’t figure out the woman I really wanted was you.”
Her entire body stiffened as she sat up straighter. Suddenly, it all made sense.
Rock groaned. “Fuck. I guess he told you I was a player.”
She nodded, fighting back tears. He was fighting his own. They were staring at each other through two sets of glassy eyes. She licked her lips. “It was after that night. I was mopey when you left town for your internship. I didn’t want Jackson to know we’d been together, but I wanted to know anything I could about you, so I asked him if he’d heard from you as nonchalantly as possible. He chuckled and shrugged. ‘Nope. He’s probably busy with one of the sweetbutts.’ I didn’t have a clue what a sweetbutt was at the time, so I asked. Jackson told me it was a term for women who hang around the club. Various women you were probably sleeping with.” She let her voice trail off.
Rock gripped her firmly and set his forehead against hers. “He didn’t lie to you. I told him all of that, but it never occurred to me he would end up telling you about my fake sex life.”
She scooted closer to Rock, nestling her pussy against his shaft. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Sorry for so many reasons.”
“Me, too, Baby girl. So very fucking sorry. I’ll never forgive myself for letting you go like that.”
“You have to,” she told him. “You have to be able to put it behind you, or we can’t move on. I don’t want us constantly looking at each other with sad puppy eyes because of what we didn’t have. We have to embrace the future and hold on to what we do have.”
He gave her a small smile. “Why are you so wise?”
She shrugged. “Years of practice.”
“We could have been together all those years.”
She leaned back and held his gaze. “Would you give up Atlas, Remi, and Kathy if you could?”
He winced. “No.”
She stared at him. “Then we have to assume Fate had a different plan for us. We’re walking our path now. I’m here now. The timing must be exactly right. Fate put me here to close on my parents’ house so I would run into you.”
He grabbed her hips, rose, and spun around so fast her head was spinning by the time he lowered her to her back. Her legs and arms were still wrapped around him.
He stared deep into her eyes. “You’re mine for the rest of our days. And we’re going to make up for lost time by fucking like teenagers four times a day until we die.”
She giggled. “Okay.”
He kissed her. “Not another word about leaving or stepping back, got it?”
She nodded. “There are other considerations, you know. Namely that I’m not sure how Little I can be.”
“I don’t give a fuck about anything but how I feel when you’re in my arms. I don’t even want to leave you to go pee. The rest will work itself out.”
“Okay…” She eased her fingers into his hair. “Maybe you could fuck me again while we’re figuring it out.”
He gave her a sexy grin while he rubbed his cock up and down her folds. He glanced at the clock. “Shit.”
She stiffened. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s already nine. We only have three more hours to get two more rounds in.”
She giggled. “I bet we can do it.”