AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Was he warning heraway or acknowledging that pesky “inevitable” that’s been a phantom presence between them since last night? Since this morning and her mouth on his dick. Both? Neither?
The back of Lily’s neck heats. And by the time they’re seated across from each other at the breakfast nook with a beer for her and a seltzer for him, she almost regrets her restraint. Maybe she should’ve asked him about the music after all. About what those lyrics really mean. Could someone like her really take his soul? Or wear his ring? He seems to have no inkling of her inner turmoil. He hums with appreciation as he spoons lentils alongside his eggs. It sounds way too much like those noises he made when she had him in her mouth. She could get used to hearing him pleased and satisfied. But she shouldn’t. She can’t.
Eventually, Michael leans back in his chair, pushing his empty plate aside. “What’s putting that look on your face, sweetheart?” Those keen blue eyes tell her that he hasn’t missed a single thing.
“Reality,” she sighs, scraping her fork through the last of her eggs. It’s an oversimplification. “Everything that happens when I leave here.”
He nods. “I get that. As much as I try when I’m out here, you can’t shut out the world. It’s always waiting for you. ‘Wherever you go, there you are,’ as they say.”
“What’s so bad about your world? You’re rich.” Yes, Lily’s saying this as someone who went to private school. Someone who’s had her life bank-rolled until she insisted on paying her own way.
“Rich.Alone,” Michael counters. Like he didn’t have a wife up until a few years ago. Like he couldn’t have a whole entourage up here with the snap of his fingers.
“Poor baby,” she clucks with mock sympathy.
He tips his sparkling water at her. “That makes two of us, doesn’t it?”
Tou-fucking-ché.Lily shakes her head, chuckling. There’s no shortage of irony in it. She has the same privilege that let Sheila make a respectable society match after running around on tour with rock musicians for a year. A cushion. A safety net. Her dad will never let her starve, no matter how much ramen she ate in college. No matter how much dick she swallows this week. Sheila is another story. If Sheila finds out where she is right now, she’ll want Lily to choke.
The joy of a good meal and good company turns sour in her belly. She knocks back the last of her craft beer to try and erase the feeling of sudden dread. Michael doesn’t ask about her expression this time. Maybe he already knows what—or who—put it there.
The last thing Lily wants is to serve the past for dessert.
Not when she has a much sweeter, hotter, present in mind.
###
The clouds are ominouslydark tonight, and the air feels heavy. When Mick goes out to the back deck to put the cover on the fire pit and the extra wood, Lily follows. Her jean skirt’s knee-length and not all that tight, but his eyes are still drawn to her ass and her legs as she prowls around the outdoor space. There’s nothing risqué about her v-neckl green t-shirt except for how much he’d like to see it on his bedroom floor. He’s such a dirty old man. A dirty old man who shot a load down her throat this morning and wants to do it again. And the looks she keeps throwing him...? She knows exactly what he’s thinking about right now. She’s thinking it, too.
“You can relax. I’m not going to bite you, Michael,” she laughs. “Not unless you ask.”
He shouldn’t ask. Doesn’t mean he won’t. “I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed,” he jokes instead.
Lily must read something in his body language. In his face. She tilts her head. Studies him. All that dark hair spilling sideways. “You don’t need to feel guilty. I sucked your cock because I wanted to. If we fuck, it’ll be because I want it, too.”
It’s the first thing she’s said to him that’s outright sexual, no matter that her intentions have been clear from the get-go. Bold as brass. Proud as hell. It’s a shock to his ears and his system. He goes instantly hard. Lily DeSilva can render Viagra obsolete just by saying something naughty.
“I don’t feel guilty,” he lies, turning so his hips are facing the wooden railing. And obscured by the matching latticework under it. “I feel a little used.” That’s maybe a little bit of the truth. “What is it that you want, Lily? Why are you really here? Do you even know?”
“Sheila.” One word, but it has about a hundred layers to it. Every one of them painful.
Michael doesn’t know how to make that weight go away. But he’s willing to try. Anything to take that tone away and put the naughtiness back. “I didn’t love her. Whatever fantasy she’s had in her head all this time, we weren’t like that. It was fun, and then it wasn’t, and then it was done. Is that what you came to hear? That she never loved me and I never loved her?”
“Maybe?” Lily shrugs, leaning on the deck rail beside him. Her eyes are as pewter gray as the sky. “I don’t know if anyone can love Sheila enough. If there’s anything that can fill that giant void inside of her. Maybe I’m here to see if I have that hole inside me, too? If I’m just as needy and selfish and unlovable as she is.”
Each word is like a sour note. A broken guitar string. His chest goes tight. He hurts for her. With her. This beautiful girl he shouldn’t want but does. “You can’t honestly believe that.”
“After this morning, how can younotbelieve it?” She rubs her thumb across her plump rosy lips, as if replaying where they were just eight hours ago. And he tries not to imagine her painting her mouth with his cum. “I practically forced myself on you. Because it was what I wanted. Because it felt good. Even coming here...I didn’t consider whatyouneed. And I’m still not thinking that hard about it.”
You. What I need is you. I just didn’t know it.“There was nothing selfish about what you did for me this morning,” he assures her. He wants to strangle whoever taught this girl that looking for connection is a crime. But first he wants to put the sass and seduction back in her eyes. “I am a grown man. If I didn’t want my dick sucked, I would’ve stopped you. If I didn’t wantyou, I would’ve stopped you.”
Lily’s not convinced. Her brows pull together in a frown. “Butwhydo you want me? Because I offered?”
“Woman, have youseenyourself? You’re gorgeous.” Mick points out the obvious. His wife was a model and Lily could strut a runway right next to Teri if she were just a little taller. “And I just met you, but I think what’s on the inside is pretty damn amazing, too. So, hell yeah, I took what you had to offer.”
She makes a thoughtful noise. Then tips her head back to welcome the first drops of rain on her pretty face. It’s a minute or two before she shares where her mind has gone. “I graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, and Sheila got mad because she was a magna and I ‘beat’ her.” she says after a while. “And when I picked a small design firm instead of a corporate position, she went on a whole tear about how she didn’t give up everything she wanted just so I could slum it. Her new bullshit is that I might marry for love when she didn’t get to.”
“Jesus. What a crock of shit.” Michael has to laugh. Talk about extremely revisionist history. “She was so happy to skip back to her prissy society life and get back into her family’s good graces. Nobody was holding a gun to her head when she got hitched to your dad.”
