Chapter 24
Tori leaned her head against his back for the short ride. She felt calm pressed against him. It would be better as soon as he could wrap his arms around her.
Les stopped the bike. And parked it on the sidewalk. He helped Tori off, and then swung his leg over as he got off the bike.
Tori took his hand and led him to the gazebo in the middle of the rose garden. It was quiet and peaceful. The last time they had been here, she had spilled her heart out to him.
“You have a friend named Samantha, and you call her Sam, and I’m an idiot.” Les spoke evenly as he followed her into the gazebo. He pulled Tori down onto his lap as he sat on the bench.
“Pretty much. But I do have a special long distance relationship with her. Can I tell you about it?” Tori’s face scrunched up, and her vision blurred. Someday she would be able to talk about Sam without crying, but that wasn’t today.
Les’s arms were around Tori, and his thumb brushed a tear from her cheek. “Can I blame my hot Latin blood for jumping to the wrong conclusions and yelling at you like that?”
Tori nodded, her throat tight from the impact of the sadness that came when she talked about Sam. Today, it was compounded with fear over Les’s misunderstanding.
Les lifted the hem of his shirt and blotted Tori’s cheeks.
“I’m going to need a lot of tissues, your shirt won’t be enough.”
Les pulled his shirt all the way off and handed it to her. “This should be all the tissue you need.”
“And if it’s not?” Tori tried to tease.
“Then use me.” Les got quiet. “Tia likes you a lot. She was ready to ban me from her kitchen.”
“That sounds serious,” Tori sniffled.
“Yeah, very serious. I fucked up, Tori. I know I did. And I don’t know how you can forgive me, but I hope you can. Will you tell me about Samantha?” Les’s soft voice was soothing.
She played with the fingers on his hand until she could talk without dissolving into tears.
“I met Sam in college. I decided within ten minutes of getting to know her that I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. She had leukemia, and in the end, it had metastasized into a few other organs. It sucked. But she was a badass until the very end. You know, I had promised her that I would move here because we both loved this area so much. Had no idea what kind of job I would be able to get because I majored in communications, but she made me promise to pursue what I wanted and to figure out how to make it all work.”
“And I went all stupid macho on you because you still text her, don’t you?”
Tori nodded, rubbing her cheek against his chest. “I can’t stop telling her about my life. Things haven’t been too good for me lately, so I’ve been texting a lot more. It’s hard when you can’t talk to the person you need to talk to the most. She was the first person who really got me, my first real best friend since I was little. I told you friends were hard for me. I trust the wrong people too often. But I could trust Sam. We were going to grow up and be neighbors, and our children would grow up being best friends. But now I just have a promise I made to a dying girl to not give up, and it’s been really, really tough.” Tori let out a shuddering sigh.
Les stroked her hair, the soothing caress helped to ease the pain. Her head throbbed, but now she didn’t know if it was because of the crying, or the blow she took earlier.
“Te amo. I’m glad you didn’t give up.”
“But I did. I gave up on you. It wasn’t until I let you go that you came to me on your own.”
“I don’t call driving out to Mission Run giving up,” he said.
“You didn’t see me after I ran out of there. I was so embarrassed and hurt. I just ran. If you didn’t want me anymore, I was done. I was ready to throw my clothes in a suitcase and keep running. But you left me a note. And instead of running away, I ran to you.”
Les shifted and pulled a crumpled up sheet of paper from his pocket. “This note?”
Tori took it, smoothing out the paper so she could read it more easily. “You didn’t write this did you?”
“I didn’t. I found it when I got to your apartment. The place had been ransacked. I thought they nabbed you there.”
“No need to nab me. I waltzed right into their trap.”
“You do that well,” Les said.
“What? Be an idiot? Yeah, I guess I do.”
“No, I mean you’re good at waltzing.”
“How would you know? You don’t dance with me,” she sniffled around her hurt feelings.
Les shifted, and Tori found herself standing with him holding her close. He guided her hand up to his shoulder, while holding the other one close to his chest. There was no music as he stepped, forcing her to step back or fall over. It didn’t take her brain long to catch up and dance with him.
“You are a lovely dancer. I’ve been chicken shit around you. I was afraid if I started dancing with you, I would never let another man near you. That scared me.”
“You were scared of me?” She gazed up into Les’s eyes. How did she tell this man she could see her children in his eyes, when he just admitted he was afraid of her?
“Not of you, but of how much you meant, you mean to me. I was afraid that the fall was going to hurt, and now that I have fallen, I realize I was an idiot for hesitating. I should have swan dived into you.”
He paused and shifted his gaze around. “I don’t think that sounded as romantic as I was trying for,” he chuckled.
“Maybe not, but I think I understand.” They danced in circles. With every step, Tori knew she never wanted to dance with anyone else, ever again.
“What are you, Les?” Tori asked.
Les took her hand and spun her out, holding her in place before stepping in close and pulling her tight against his chest. She laughed and grazed her fingers over his pecs.
“I’m Mexican, and Italian. There’s probably some Native American in there. I don’t know. I just took a DNA test, which should tell us when it comes back.”
“Not that. I mean those men, they were… well everyone was naked, including you. And there was that wolf. And I swear I saw the one man start running, but he turned into a wolf. Look, I know I got hit on the head, but what was all that? What are you?”
Les stopped dancing. He stepped back before dropping Tori’s hands. “This might be easier than explaining.” He glanced around and over his shoulder. “Do me a favor, and don’t scream.”
He dropped his jeans and curled up on himself. A long moment later a large gray wolf, with a brown stripe down his back stood where Les had been. The animal shook, like he was getting water off his back. It was the wolf that she had pet in the hotel.
Tori sank her fingers in the ruff at his neck before sinking to the floor of the gazebo and clutching to him. She buried her face against his shoulder and sobbed. It was all too much.
“I don’t think you are an idiot, Les. You are amazing, and beautiful. If this is what kept you from me, then I think I have to understand. How could you know you could trust me? And when you thought you could, Sam showed up and scared you more. You haven’t been an idiot. You’ve had more to lose than me. I’m just a lonely girl struggling in a new place, and you’ve had to protect all of this.”
Les was no longer fur under her grasp, but warm skin. His lips found hers and he kissed her.
“Take me home. But maybe put your pants back on,” she said in a rush against his mouth.
“What the hell happened?” Tori gasped as she opened the door to her apartment.
“I told you, it got tossed. I thought you were kidnapped. It must have happened after they got you, and I hadn’t come around yet.”
“How did they know you would come after me?” she asked.
“I think everyone knew I was in love with you before I did. They gambled that I would come to get you.”
“You did, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what I was walking into. Did you really hit that guy with an iron?”
“I think I did. He was trying to hurt Cyan, and she was trying to protect me. We were watching out for each other,” Tori said.
“You are brave, and beautiful.” Les held her against him and gazed into her eyes.
“I want to forget everything about tonight, including whatever this is going on in here,” Tori admitted.
“I can help with that. And I’ll help you clean up in the morning.”
Tori wiggled out of his arms and picked her way down the short hall to her bedroom. “Never mind the morning. If we want to sleep in here tonight, we have to clean up. It looks like broken glass all over the bed.”
“Fuck.” Les breathed through his nose. There were plenty of rooms available to the Vista Antiqua, but he doubted Tori would want to go back there any time soon. His place was too far away, so was Mission Run. “Do you have another set of sheets?”
“I do.”
“Good.” He crossed in front of her and pulled the fitted sheet from the bed, wrapping it over the blankets and broken lamp on top of the bed. “I’ll buy you a new comforter and pillows tomorrow.”
He carried everything out to the kitchen and rummaged under the sink for a plastic garbage bag.
Tori caught up and helped him with the bag.
“What am I supposed to do about blankets and pillows for tonight?” she asked.
“You’ve got me.”
As much as Tori wanted to fall straight into bed and into Les’s arms, it was a good hour of cleaning and vacuuming broken glass before her bedroom and the bathroom were inhabitable.
She sat on the edge of her bed. “I am exhausted, what about you?”
Les narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. He shook his head. “I am suddenly full of energy.”
“Les!” Tori giggled as he kicked out of his jeans and tackled her to the clean bed.
He rolled to the side and tore his shirt off. Tori rested her hand against his chest. He wrapped his fingers around hers and brought them up to his lips. She shivered, as if his lips stirred something in her. That was his goal, after all, she had his body thrumming with desire for what felt like hours.
He placed kisses on the inside of her palm, and against her wrist. She gasped when he kissed the inside of her elbow. He looked at her. She lay back, her eyes were closed, and her lips parted. She panted as if he was stealing her air. He placed another sucking kiss in the cook of her elbow.
The sounds she made went straight to his balls. He kissed up her arm and across the round top of her shoulder, continuing to place kisses along her collar bones.
Tori tipped her head back and arched to meet him, tugging at the neckline of her shirt.
Les pulled her arm until she lifted from the mattress. He lifted the hem of her shirt until she took over and pulled it off over her head.
“Thank you,” he whispered as he gazed at her exposed bra-clad breasts. She was a bounty, all for him. He scraped his teeth over the thin fabric until he was rewarded with the popped up presence of a nipple. He sucked on her through the fabric of her undergarment.
Tori threaded her fingers through his hair, fisting and relaxing her hands as he continued to suck and tease her nipple. She was his everything, and right now that was all he could think of. She was his, and he needed to make sure she felt just how much she meant to him. He had given her the words he could. Now he needed to show her. He wanted her to feel every bit as worshiped as she deserved.
He skimmed his hands over her breasts and around her ribs. He touched all of her, from her soft belly to her round and glorious ass. He dug his fingers into the waistband of her leggings and dragged them over her hips and down her thighs. He paused to nip at the flesh he exposed. Les looked forward to being wrapped tight in those thighs, but first, he needed to lick and kiss, suck and bite every inch of her skin.
Shimmying to the end of the bed, he pulled her leggings free, and tossed them aside. He held her foot. Her toenails were painted a soft pale yellow, with one nail on each foot a soft green. He reached forward and laced his fingers through hers so he could examine her nails. They were green, with one yellow nail each.
“Your nails are swapped,” he chuckled.
“I know. I did that on purpose. It’s called fashion,” she chided.
“It’s called adorable. You keep on surprising me, Tori.”
“Why? Because I paint my nails? Lots of people paint their nails, Les.”
“True, but I don’t pay attention to them.” He lowered his mouth so he could place a kiss on the top of the foot he still held. “And I certainly don’t want to lick their toes,” he said a moment before sucking her toes into his mouth.
Tori’s head fell back, and she moaned. If she kept making noises like that, his resolve to drive her crazy before getting lost in her body was going to shatter. With a groan of his own, he licked the arch of her foot. And then he began kissing up the inside of her leg to her knee.
Tori grabbed his hair and braced his head before he could lower it to her knee. “I have very ticklish knees, and a strong flinch reflex. Maybe skip the knees tonight. I don’t want to knock out your teeth or something.”
Les looked at her and narrowed his gaze. “Challenge accepted.”
With both hands firmly gripping her leg above and below the offending joint. Les pressed Tori’s leg into the mattress. She squirmed and giggled as he breathed hard against the skin of her knee. She was fighting him. He pressed a soft kiss against her knee cap. That wasn’t so bad. He tried his luck and scraped his teeth against the soft bit right under her knee cap.
She wrenched her entire body, twisting to escape. “Les, stop it,” she laughed.
“I want to kiss all of you,” he complained, though he was laughing with her.
“You can kiss any part of me, but not my knees.”
“Any part?”
Tori’s eyes and mouth went round with realization.
Les grabbed her thighs and pressed them wide. “Any part? Cause I’d like to kiss as much of you as I can.” He made hungry growls as he lowered between her legs.
He licked over her seam, no longer playing around, or moving slowly toward her core. Her words were the invitation, and he was RSVPing with his tongue.
Tori gasped and bucked under him. His tongue lashed out and played with her folds. She tasted sweet. She sang out when he sucked her clit into his mouth. That was the purest music in his world. She was so hot and responsive to his ministrations. He pushed his tongue deep into her core, and then followed the action with his fingers. She clenched down on him. Her muscles sucked at his fingers as he continued to suck at her.
Damn, she felt good. She continued to writhe and urge him on with the sexiest of sounds. He was lost to her. He would do anything to make her feel half as good as she made him feel, and from her reactions, he was doing a better job than just giving her half of the pleasure he took from her. Her body was an amazing gift that she shared with him.
He continued to thrust his fingers into her, finding the rhythm that she seemed to respond the most to. Her body responded with a faster pulse, her hips rocked harder. She tugged on his hair more. It was all harder, faster, more, more, more.
Her hips collapsed back as her inner walls spasmed and lost the pattern they had maintained for so long. Les continued to work her as her orgasm left her breathless and limp.
He sat back on his knees and pulled his fingers from her. She watched as he licked his fingers. Tori looked wiped out. But he felt like he was just getting started. He leaned over the edge of the bed and found a condom. She watched as he slid it over his hard length.
When she held her arms out to him, he went to her, pressing his mouth against hers. Her body was so soft and welcoming against his. He lifted her leg over his hip, and positioned his cock against her, holding her for a moment before he slid into her.
Her body was overcome almost immediately, and the pulses against his cock were almost too much to bear. He continued to thrust until there was nothing left of himself. He was pulse and heartbeat. He was nothing but screaming light and throbbing muscles. His orgasm reached down his throat and tore his scream out of his lungs.
He fell. At first, he wasn’t certain if gravity had a hold of him or if he fell through the universe. But Tori was there, and she wrapped her arms around him.
“I love you so much, Les.” She kissed him, and he felt all of her emotions roll over him like a wave, but they stayed in place, holding him.
“Me amor,” he said, clutching her as he fell asleep, knowing the fall with her would be the sweetest thing he could ever do.