Knocked Up in Alaska, page 25
“Yeah. She just arrived.”
On the other end of the line, Trace exhaled a long breath and said to someone on his side, “She’s there.” Then, into the phone, “Good. She left here very upset. Too upset to drive in my opinion, but she’s fast when she wants to be. Left half her tires on our driveway. Then she didn’t pick up her phone. We worried.”
“She’s still very upset, but she’s in one piece. What the hell happened?”
The question provoked another long, slightly frustrated breath. “We honestly don’t know. What’d she tell you?”
“Nothing. Yet. She literally just got here. But this is not about baby blankets.”
“No. We were talking about Shay and some of the decisions we’d come to regarding his estate and how to best provide for her and Shayla, and…she freaked out,” he admitted. “Maybe it was too soon. To us it seemed like well past the point to have the conversation, because she deserves to have some security and a little fucking breathing room so she can make a real plan for herself and Shayla, but it took some time, legally, to unscramble the egg of Shay’s financial affairs. I didn’t…we didn’t…appreciate how the discussion might make the loss fresh for her. She hasn’t really had a chance to sit with her grief the way the rest of us have. Right after Shay died, she suddenly had a pregnancy to deal with. In retrospect, it’s totally understandable that she had to put those emotions on a back burner. And then, tonight, she walks in and we’re all sitting down, ready to talk about wills and trusts and…boom. It’s right there in her face again, in a very formal way. He’s dead. He’s gone. He’s not coming back.”
Trace sighed. “We messed up. We saw a need that we could help address on Shay’s behalf, and we were, frankly, happy to do it. We were happy,” he repeated, in a kick-his-own-ass kind of voice. “We didn’t consider how this would blindside Lilah. We just wanted her to have the same financial security Shay would have offered if he’d been here to do it. Give her options beyond what’s she’s got right now.”
Options beyond waitressing for a living, squeezing in one stingy online class a quarter, and wondering who would watch Shayla once school started. Options that could—and should—take her wherever was best for her to go. Like to college in Anchorage, as Rose had promised for so long, with sufficient funds to pay for daycare for Shayla. Ford dropped to the edge of his bed. “You guys can’t beat yourselves up over tonight. You’ve done the right thing. Sounds like you did it ethically and legally. Most importantly, you did it out of love—for her, and the baby, and Shay. Once she settles down, she’ll see that.”
Wouldn’t she? He thought of her and those still waters running deep. Months and months, she’d kept a lonely, heavy secret. He thought of her calling out to Shay in her dream, that same night his relationship with her had started to skid out of the friend zone he’d promised her. He remembered how she’d dreamed of Shay again during labor, thinking he’d spoken to her.
A shiver slid down his spine. Did she have unresolved issues with Shay?
“…hope you’re right,” Trace said from the other end of the call, and Ford forced himself to dial back into the conversation. “Anyway, tell her we love her, and we can re-visit everything when she’s ready.” One of the women spoke, Trace responded, and a short, impatient round of back-and-forth ensued, which suggested the woman was Bridget rather than Izzy. Then Trace sighed heavily before adding, “And, that said, Bridget’s going to call her tomorrow, so maybe give her fair warning.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he assured the man before signing off.
He glanced at the time. Almost nine. Mindful of Shayla’s impending bedtime and aiming not to have two distressed females on his hands, he walked quietly back to the living room. Lilah stopped her bouncy walk-Shayla-to-sleep midstride when she spotted him. She’d kicked off her white sandals, so now her feet were as bare as his, and equally soundless. He came closer and peered at the baby laying over her shoulder. “She’s out,” he said.
Lilah nodded. “I saw you’d given her half the bottle I packed, so I just topped her off, burped her. That pretty much did the trick.”
He lifted the baby from her arms and deposited her in the carrier. Even though Shayla had displayed considerable skill at sleeping in broad daylight and through loud bar-room conversations, he clicked off the table lamp closest to her carrier, which pitched the room into muted light from the kitchen.
He walked that way. “Something to drink?”
“Water would be great.”
He took two bottles from the fridge, cracked the tops, and handed one to her. “Thanks,” she said and lifted it for a long swallow.
“That wasn’t Mia.” He leaned back against the counter as he said it and gestured to one of the stools at the island, inviting her to sit. Get comfortable. Prepare for a discussion.
“Hmm?” She sounded casual but avoided his eyes and ignored the silent invitation to sit in favor of prowling the small kitchen.
“The call. It wasn’t Mia. It was Trace. He said you left their place extremely upset. I know you arrived here in the same condition. They were all worried about you. So am I.”
“Don’t.” She said this over her shoulder as she washed a glass he’d left in the sink earlier. “I’m okay.” When she started to dry it on a dishtowel, he walked over, took towel and glass from her hand, placed them on the counter, and then hemmed her in by bracing his hands on either side of her body.
“Someone who’s okay doesn’t bolt from friends, get behind the wheel while distraught, and burn rubber down a steep drive and narrow roads like a bat out of hell. I’m glad you made it. Don’t do that again.”
“I’ve been driving to and from the Shanahan house since I was fifteen-and-a-half with a freshly earned learner’s permit. I know every turn and twist like a map of my life. Even if I didn’t, I’m a grown-ass woman. Don’t talk to me in that Lilah-you’re-grounded tone.” Her mouth firmed into a stubborn line. She crossed her arms, assembling her defenses against him.
He dropped his head to meet her eyes and flexed his arms to bring himself closer. And got caught up in her soap-and-baby-lotion scent. It served up a dizzying reminder of the last time he’d been skin-to-skin with her. It also served up a reminder of the huge responsibilities riding on her slender shoulders. “You’re a grown-ass woman with a tiny daughter who needs you, a townful of people who love you, and a whole life ahead of you. If you don’t have any regard for your well-being, have a care for the rest of us who do. Don’t put us through such recklessness.” Feeling a lot like someone pressing on a bruise, he added, “Don’t pull a Shay.”
And yeah, she flinched. “I’m not. I’m sorry I worried you all.” She pushed a hand through her hair and stared past his shoulder. “I was upset. I didn’t see it coming and…and…”
Her eyelashes fluttered as she blinked rapidly.
For a man who hadn’t dealt with female tears in well over a decade, he was seeing more than his fair share lately. And still, the helpless dread set in. If the last few months served as any indicator, he was going to have to get better at handling them, or at least surviving them while the female in question handled them. Carefully, he rested his hands on her shoulders. “What upset you so badly, Lilah?”
Eyes full of misery—and some deeper pain he couldn’t interpret—lifted to his. “I can’t explain.”
“Try,” he urged. “It doesn’t have to make sense. Just get it off your chest. You’ll feel better. I promise.”
She shook her head. Not defiantly, but sadly. So sadly, his own heart clutched. “Honey…”
“Talking won’t make me feel better. You could help me feel better.” With that whispered plea misting the air between their lips, she rose up and kissed him. Leaned into him with a plaintive need that spoke to way too many of his own.
Ah, hell. Maybe they’d both feel better…and then they’d talk. He slid his hands from her shoulders to her neck, tipping her head back, drinking her need, absorbing it, mixing it with his.
She caught one of his hands, tugged it down her throat, over her collarbone—he had a yearning to linger, trace the subtle strength there with his fingertips—but she guided him lower, until his palm cradled her breast. Her edgy sigh went down his throat as smooth and addictive as anything he kept on the top shelf at The Goose. He palmed her softness. She surged up onto her tiptoes and wrapped an arm around his neck.
He broke their kiss long enough to mumble, “Bedroom,” against her lips and started walking her backward in that direction.
“Mia?” she questioned, doubling his pace, pausing only long enough to utter the name before putting her lips to work on his jaw.
“Later,” he managed and backed her down the hall. “I pick her up at the theater at eleven.”
“There’s time.” So saying, she shoved a hand under his gray and green U.S. Army Henley that had definitely seen better days. Sometime before she accepted and started exploring those options the Shanahans intended to provide her that would likely lead her right out of his not-too-tight hold, he ought to clean up, dress up, and take her out on a proper date. But tonight? Tonight, he’d try to show her everything she was—all her power and beauty and potential, and everything it did to him.
He lifted his arms and helped her drag his shirt off, then their fingers tangled at the front of his even worse for wear, ripped at the knees, camo BDUs. And then her hands were inside them, and he stopped thinking entirely for a good thirty seconds while his peripheral nervous system simply enjoyed the way she sucked his tongue into her mouth and pressed close and ran her tight fist up and down his length. His peripheral nervous system reconnected with his central nervous system around the time she tugged him hard enough to weaken his knees while pinpricks of light danced in front of eyes he couldn’t manage to focus.
With her name like a vow on his lips, he pulled his mouth away, kicked his legs free of his pants, and reversed their positions until she was caught between the bed and his body. Light from the single lamp in the living room barely penetrated here. Bolder than he would have anticipated, she flicked the bedside table lamp on. Her gaze roamed over him like she couldn’t decide where to concentrate first. Finally, she brought both palms to his cheeks and looked into his eyes. “Let me.”
Then she ran her hands slowly down his chest and abs as she sat on the bed, which put her face level with his… Soft breath fanned out and his neck muscles switched to “at ease.”
“I love your body.”
“I—” Evidence suggested she didn’t have a hell of a lot to compare it to, but the verb still went straight to his heart, while the reverence of her voice went straight to his cock. Then her hands followed, and… “Jesus. Lilah…”
While those competent, delicate hands stroked him every which way, eyes as green and hypnotic as the Northern Lights stared up at him. “Let me,” she said again. “I’ve never.”
Her hands slipped around his hips, cupped his ass, backstopped him while she leaned in and used her lips so gently, he prayed for the strength to stand there and endure while she honed her skills on him.
Skills that didn’t need honing, he conceded after mere seconds of butterfly-light caresses from her lips, tongue, hell, her eyelashes might even have come into play. The sight of her nuzzling his cock while light and shadow played over every exquisite feature of her face brought a thousand unspeakable fantasies to life. But every single touch destroyed him, as did the way her hands softly, steadily stroked his ass like she couldn’t get enough of the feel of those muscles bunching tighter and tighter as the seconds ticked by. She deftly suspended him somewhere between heaven and hell, and he’d hang there at her mercy, forever, if it pleased her. Or killed him.
When at last…at last…she closed her lips around him and took him into her mouth in torturous increments, the voice in his head sighed, Lilah, I love you. Out loud he simply groaned her name and sank his hand into her hair. He allowed himself that one solitary grasp at control while he forced himself to stand there like a gentleman and let her have her way. But the heat of her mouth, the slide of her lips, the strokes of her hands—it was quickly becoming too much. Too hard to hold on or hold back.
“Lilah…Lilah…honey…”
She paused, reversed course, then tipped her head up until wide, questioning eyes met his. “Not good?”
Despite his current state of agony, he laughed. “So good. Perfect.” Her proud smile made him want to surrender everything just to keep it there, but they didn’t have a lot of time tonight. A second round probably wasn’t in the cards. “Now, it’s my turn.”
“But”—her brows slanted with confusion—“don’t you want me to…um…finish?”
Or he could just fucking come where he stood. Instead, he reached down, got his hands on her hips, and scooted her until he could lay her back on the bed. Then he crawled over her, straddled her hips, and took hold of the hem of her sweater. “I’d rather finish together.”
Apparently, she was willing to be persuaded, because she raised her arms and twisted helpfully as he peeled it from her, then lay back against his bedspread, breathing heavy. The sight of her spread out before him, expectant, flushed with anticipation pulled him back from the dangerous brink he’d been on. He could find patience, for her. He could find self-control.
Starting now. Running a fingertip along the edge of her bra cup, he asked, “On or off?”
“I guess I can take it off.” She lifted her hands to do the honors, but he brushed them away.
“Let me,” he said, teasing her with her own words from earlier. Turning his attention to her bra, he freed her breasts from the stretchy contraption by releasing the line of three hooks up the front, then parted the fabric to bare that bounty. She lifted her hands to cover herself, but he caught her wrists and clamped them above her head with one hand. That move earned him a slightly shocked look.
“Hey, Lilah?”
Her look turned distinctly nervous. “Yes?”
“I love your body, too.” So saying, he trailed his fingertip from the plush cushion of her lower lip, along her throat, between her gorgeously full breasts, and down the center line of her torso until he reached the button on her shorts.
She shivered from his trialing touch. Her skin broke out in goose bumps. Her nipples tightened. But she raised her chin a notch and looked at him from beneath long, low eyelids. Not shy now, but imperious. “Then take it,” she said, “and show me.” She even shifted her hips impatiently.
It would take a stronger man than he to deny her. He tugged the button open, then released her hands to lower the zipper. She came up on her elbows to watch as he eased away to slide her shorts and underwear down her long, smooth legs. With a flick of her foot, they landed in a linen-wrinkling tumble on his floor. He cupped her calves and ran his hands up the backs of her legs as he crawled between them.
That wasn’t what she’d expected. He knew by the way she sat up. Since they were within his reach now, he kissed her soft, slack lips. “I love these. And this.” He turned his head slightly and placed the lightest of kisses over her heart.
Air left her lungs in a breathy exhale. Her hand found the back of his neck. Her fingers speared into his hair. She didn’t stop him, though, so he continued the lazy expedition down her body, while her fingers loosened and tightened against his scalp and her breaths grew increasingly uneven.
“I love this.” He lowered his head and nipped the curve of her waist. “This,” he went on and placed an open-mouthed kiss on her stomach, just above her belly button. “This.” He hitched one of her legs over his shoulder and kissed the water-soft skin of her inner thigh.
“Oh…”
Both her hands were in his hair now. Good. He hitched her other leg over his shoulder and kissed her other thigh. Maybe the thought of all her new options, her probable trajectory once she grew accustomed to having them, got the better of him, but while she murmured, “Oh…oh…oh…” he applied himself hard enough, deep enough, to leave a pink mark on the delicate skin. Just a tiny reminder that they were still sinking their teeth into each other. For now. Impermanence might be a fact of life and trying to hold onto someone who’d never gotten the chance to be free struck him as the worst kind of selfish, but that little trace of him would linger on her for a few days. She’d see it. Touch it. Remember him putting it there, and maybe that memory would draw her back to him a time or two more. He couldn’t let himself hold too tightly, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from hoping for a few more crumbs of her time before she moved on to chase the goals she’d had before she’d had him.
He prepared to lean in and kiss the spot again, but she ran her finger over it. He looked up and tumbled into her eyes. “Hurts?”
She shook her head. “No. It makes me want…” Her cheeks went suddenly pink. “I don’t know what I want. It just makes me want things. Badly.”
He shifted her legs, straightened until they were face-to-face, and applied his mouth to hers, giving it the same type of attention he’d lavished on her thigh. When they broke apart, they were both breathing heavy.
“Still wanting,” she gasped and touched her kiss-swollen lips.
That absent little touch was going to undo him. “It makes me want, too. I’ll show you what it makes me want.” With that, he sat back on his heels, leaned in to shoulder his way between her parted legs, and dipped his head, but before he could move in on the target, she clamped her hands between her thighs.
“Oh, no. I don’t think that’s…”
He rested his hands on her open thighs, lightly but insistently, and looked up at her nervous face.
And why wouldn’t she be nervous, you ass? You just roughed her up.
“I’ll be gentle.”
“It’s not that.” The pink swept back into her face, but she didn’t move her hands. “I…uh…don’t think it’s a good idea. I mean, a baby and stuff just came through there not all that long ago.”
