Only In His Sweetest Dreams(33)
Oh, how she needed his strength. A body not withered with age, but vital and firm. She rubbed her face against his T-shirt, let her forehead nuzzle into the warmth of his neck, lifted her face so the stubble of his unshaved neck burned her lips.
He swallowed.
When she had told him she would need him later, she hadn’t meant sex. She had meant this, a hug. Commiseration. That’s all.
But her lips parted so she could taste his skin, faintly salty, absolutely male.
His chin dipped, butted briefly against hers. He found her mouth, pressed his damp lips to hers, licked in with a swift need that opened her to his deep kiss.
Gasping softly, she lifted onto tiptoes, increasing the pressure while her hands sought the hem of his T-shirt, then the skin beneath.
He shuddered and shuffled his feet, pressing her into the dark corner formed by the trellis that separated his patio from hers.
As she felt the warm brick against her back, she arched into the solid warmth of his insistent hips, writhed to feel more of his roaming hands. His urgent touch skimmed her waist, captured her breasts, cupped her skull, then her backside, crushing her breathless in his hungry clasp.
Unable to move, she still tried to imprint herself on him, aware of her own gasps, his labored breath. At some level, she knew they were both seeking escape. This was as much sorrow as passion, but she let it overtake her.
Silky air caressed her thighs and belly as her skirt climbed. She had fought letting this happen for good reasons, but angry rebellion grew in her now. She didn’t want to be sensible and cautious. She wanted to feel alive and take what was in front of her when it was offered. As he stroked her thighs, worked his hand inside her underpants, she ground herself into the firmness of his palm, catching a shimmer of lightning that erased all the pain.
He lifted his head, took his hand away and brought it to himself, opened his jeans.
Her skirt fell to cover her legs and she bunched it up herself, let him crush her further into the corner, lifted one leg to curl her calf behind his hip while he found her again, hooking aside the crotch of her panties and bending his knees, guiding himself to the center of her wetness.
Some sensible part of her knew she was casting off hard learned lessons and succumbing to impulsive, self-destructive behavior. Backsliding as addicts did in times of stress, but—
He filled her, so thick, so hard. She gasped, loving the stretch. The invasion. She clasped at the hot, iron-like stiffness inside her, dug her fingers into the flesh of his upper arms, the straining muscles in his biceps. He drew back and thrust in again. She met him, striving for her own pleasure, grinding against him, tightening her heel into his buttock to trap him deep, silently begging for every last inch of him to stay deep inside her.
He did the same, pressing past any sort of discomfort to a place of locked souls, holding her so tightly she struggled to breathe, holding himself deep, not thrusting, just clamoring for a tighter, closer, harder connection.
They struggled like that for long minutes, their movements abbreviated but intense, silent but for harsh, humid breaths and the whisper of clothing brushed aside and the friction of skin. The sounds of muted demand and greed and desperation. Fury, even. What she needed was eluding her. She wasn’t finding what she sought, but it was here damn it. She knew it was.
She wanted him to give it to her, the blind oblivion of acute pleasure. Sobbing against his neck, she pressed her open mouth against his skin, felt the dampness of tears. His? Hers? With impatient hands, she pushed at him with her hips, provoked him to withdraw a little, then used her leg to roughly draw him back.
He made a pained noise through his teeth at the roughness she was demanding. She pushed again and he slammed back. The primitive force caused a flash of pleasure, keen and strong. Cheek pressed to his slick cheek, fingers digging into his sweaty neck, she goaded for more and more, reveling in his animalistic thrusts, basic and crude, until the crisis loomed, a streak of silver light against a black horizon.
Too much, too much, and then...a near painful breaking. Release. Sweet, sweet release, thorough and final.
She went back into her side of the duplex without a word.
L.C. didn’t know what to say either, and felt a certain relief when she walked away.
Loss followed immediately, along with a return of the severe thirst for hard liquor.
He leaned back against the trellis, making a half-hearted effort to close his jeans over the erection that hadn’t completely subsided. Listened for her to come back.
He hadn’t used a condom. Really fucking stupid. Christ, did he never learn?
The idiocy, the sheer abandonment of consequence, closed his eyes. This was the reckless man he’d tried to leave in Liebe Falls. Really fucking stupid.
He wasn’t worried about disease. He was clean and doubted she’d be so thoughtless as to dose someone. He deserved it if she did, but if there was a baby...
He winced against the agonizing thought, finding it so bittersweet he closed his fists in agony.
Christ he wanted a drink.
Was that her coming back? No, just the faint noise of her using her bathroom.
He could go to a bar right now and no one would know. The thought had teased him all afternoon. He’d start with something neat and sharp. It would enter his bloodstream hot and fast.
The way he’d entered her.
He had hung on all afternoon and evening for her, because she had asked him to. He wanted to get drunk with her. Dance dirty, talk dirtier. He wanted to show her off and pick a fight if someone admired her too closely. He wanted to hold her.
He wanted to sleep beside her. Feel her warmth against him, smell her skin, brush her springy hair from tickling his lips.
He waited a minute longer, to see if she would come back. One more minute. If she came out, he’d stay here with her, but he would only give her one more minute before he left to find a drink.
The sun was beginning to stain the red cliff above him when Mercedes’s sliding door finally opened. Zack. He checked when he saw L.C.
“You been up all night?” Zack frowned with suspicion.
“I’m not drunk.” L.C. pushed himself away from the trellis where he’d stood since Mercedes had walked away, willing her to come back to him.
“Zack?” Her voice carried from inside. She came out, eyes puffy, hair wild, wearing a long T-shirt nightgown with books and wine glasses printed all over it. “I heard the door, thought it might be the kids.”
“No, they’re still sleeping.”
She glanced over her shoulder then stepped out enough to mostly shut the door behind her. “Thank you for staying with them yesterday. Were they upset?”
“Worried. They’ll be glad to see you.”
L.C. waited for her to look at him, but her gaze only touched him long enough for him to read self-consciousness in the extreme. He stole another peek at the way her braless nipples peaked the soft fabric of her nightgown.
“I, um, could probably use you again this afternoon,” she said to Zack. “If you have time. I need to make arrangements for the service.”
“Sure, fine.” Zack sent L.C. a look, caught him oggling. Damn kid was far too perceptive.
“Thanks.” Mercedes went into her place with a barely acknowledging nod toward L.C., closing just her screen.
Zack came through the gate and let it fall back into place with a loud clang. “Are you kidding me?” he demanded.
“Whatever you think—” L.C. began, voice hoarse from exhaustion and lack of use.
“Have you told her?”
About Lindsay, he meant. For all the understanding Zack gave him over Ester, there was none, absolutely sweet-fuck-all when it came to Lindsay. Which was why he couldn’t tell Mercedes about his daughter back in Liebe Falls. She would feel exactly the way Zack did. She would expect him to go home and be a father to his child.
He didn’t want to go back there. He didn’t want to leave here.
“Don’t you have any conscience at all? She’s in the worst possible frame of mind and you take advantage—”
“I swore I’d never hit you, Zackary, but today is the day if you don’t shut your fucking mouth.” It was an empty threat. He would kill anyone who lifted a finger against his kids, including himself, but he did clench a fist as his son continued to goad him.
“Go for it. You’re already halfway to being just like Pops. You might as well—”
The screen slid open with a hard bang on Mercedes’s side.
“Keep it down,” she said in a hissing tone. “You’ll wake the kids. And Zack, you might ask who was using who before you climb onto that high horse of yours.”
The screen slammed back into place with a smack.
Zack reddened and glared at L.C. before he shouldered past him, into the house.
Chapter 17
The children were in school during the service that Mercedes arranged for Wednesday. By then, between the regular demands of her job, the delving into Harrison’s finances to arrange a cremation his estate could afford, and the midnight wake-up calls from the unsettled kids, she was exhausted.
She hadn’t even begun to think what effect Harrison’s absence would have on the board. If Edith Garvey ran for President, well, Mercedes wasn’t ready to contemplate what that would mean for her and the kids. Mrs. Garvey might have developed a slight affection for Dayton, but she was still a stickler for rules.
Mercedes hadn’t seen L.C. since the morning-after with Zack. He arrived at the service looking decent enough despite hair wet from a recent shower and a shirt with crease marks that suggested it had been torn out of the package ten minutes ago. His eyes were red and bruised. Drunk?