Liam

 

 

 

 

Good freaking Christ. My breath trembled and my knees were shaking so hard when she finally let me go, I stumbled backward almost tripping over my shorts pooled at my feet.

That had to have been the hottest thing I’d ever seen. Or ever done. Getting someone off like Claudia, pure and so damn perfect, made my dick still hard even after she jacked me so hard I thought my balls might explode.

I yanked up my shorts, grunting as I caught the waistband over my dick and pulled my hands down my face.

“Fucking hell, Claudia. What was that?”

She gaped at me, hands still covered in my cum, shirt and shorts wet, and still flushed from the orgasm I gave her. All at once, like I hadn’t just had the orgasm of my damn life, she turned and washed her hands at the kitchen sink.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

“Shouldn’t have made me come so hard I thought I was going to die? Yeah,” I laughed. I was fucking laughing. She’d pulled my brain through my dick and I couldn’t see straight. Much less think clearly. “Yeah, that was a bad thing. Definitely.”

She wiped her hands on a towel and peered at me, uncertain. “You’re teasing me.”

God. This girl. Had she never been teased? Or given a fucking compliment?

“Yeah. I’m teasing you. That was so damn hot I’m still shaking.” I held out my hands to prove it to her but didn’t stop walking closer. I hadn’t made out with a girl, fingered her through her clothes since I was fifteen years old and Mary Baker took me into the woods during a summer bonfire and dared me to kiss her. We dated for six months and she was my first. It wasn’t fucking pretty. It was sloppy and over too damn quick, but I’d learn enough in the few months before it took us to go all the way on how to make sure a girl got off before I did.

I’d mastered it since, but sliding my fingers against Claudia’s silky and hot slit had almost been my undoing.

My palms went to her cheeks and without thinking, without hesitation, I yanked her to me until I was pressing my lips against hers. She was ramrod straight, stunned by my move, but quickly relaxed, melted into me. Her hands splayed at my hips, drifted to my back, up and beneath my shirt and then we were moving, heads tilting and tongues sliding and gasping and moaning into each other’s mouths.

And it was insane, this feeling I had for this woman I barely knew but thought of whenever she disappeared from my sight. There was something about Claudia that brought out protective instincts I hadn’t had since Sophie was fucking raped at her first keg party in college, when she called me battered and abused and bleeding from her lip and her cheek when some assholes with small dicks had punched her before tearing off her underwear and assaulted the hell out of her.

I was only sixteen, barely old enough to drive when she’d called me, freaking out. I’d hauled my ass to Lawrence, took her to the police station and then as soon as she’d told me where she was partying, I stormed out of there and proceeded to rain down my own brand of justice before cops showed up, arrested us all, and let me off with a warning and ten hours of community service.

Why did I get off so easily? Because every fucking officer knew they’d do the same damn thing if it was their daughter or their sister or any fucking girl they’d ever said hello to.

Claudia evoked that same damn anger and jealousy and the thought she’d touched other men made me want to slide my tongue so far into her mouth my taste would be branded on her permanently.

Fuck the contract. This girl was so far beyond three pieces of paper and a signed name on a dotted line to me.

I slowed the kiss, keeping my dick away from her where I knew she’d feel how hard I still was. Or again. I had no damn idea but I couldn’t push this farther.

Not yet.

Pressing my forehead to hers, I maintained my hold on her cheeks. Our breathing was harsh, panted, the only sound in the room and it wrapped me in warmth. My hips stung from where she clung to me and I wanted her to press harder. Dig her nails into my hips and ass and back and leave marks on me.

Because I sure as hell planned on marking her. Everywhere.

Fuck. I hadn’t even sunk inside of her and I was already claiming her. Fucking or not, contract or not, this woman was mine.

I didn’t give a shit what the paps said. What happened after we left. I was debating getting on a flight home and getting the shitstorm and gossip over with so we could move on when she pulled back.

Her lips twitched, fighting a grin and she made a face. “I should go get cleaned up.”

My cum had already dried on her shirt and her shorts but who could blame her.

“All right.” I kissed her nose. The corner of her upturned lips. The pink hue on her cheek and her eyebrow. “Come to my studio when you’re done. I want to play something for you.”

“Okay,” she whispered softly.

“Also, before you walk away and re-think everything that happened here this morning, I want you to know I don’t regret a single second of it. Best damn morning and breakfast of my life, Claudia, and I’m not shitting you. You okay with everything?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, nibbled on her bottom lip and grinned. “I don’t regret it either.”

“Good.” I kissed her again and stepped back. Hands on my hips, I kept my eyes glued to her until she moved around me, left the kitchen and disappeared around a corner at the top of the stairs.

Once she was gone, I cleaned myself up in the downstairs bathroom and headed to the music room.

I was playing at the keyboard when she arrived, chords and melody that made no sense and weren’t necessarily a song, but sitting on the bench, keys beneath my hand was almost as calming as having the strings beneath my fingers. Music had been bled into me, my mom a local bar country singer. On my eighth birthday, she handed me my first guitar and sat with me for hours, teaching me how to play basic chords and spin them into music.

She was talented, and never too hurried to listen to me play or teach me something new. She might have quit her bar gig when Sophie was born, choosing instead to only teach music at the high school and be home with us at nights, shuffling us wherever we needed to go, but she had more talent in her fingers and in her soul than I held in mine.

“Come here.” I gestured to the bench and scooted down so Claudia had room to sit next to me.

“You’re not playing from sheet music.”

“Nah.” I shook my head, ran a hand through my hair. She made me so damn nervous. Excited. It was hard to stay still around her. “I don’t play off sheet music.”

“Never?” Two brows arched as she gaped at me. “You just make it up?”

I pressed a basic E chord and messed around for a second, fingers playing nothing but the keys of chords and a pointless rhythm. Her eyes bounced from mine to my hands, to the keys and my bare foot on the pedal beneath. “Mom taught me on the guitar with chords, but I picked up the piano later the same way. Can I trust you not to spill my deep, dark, secret?”

She gave me a look and grinned. “Yeah? What is it?”

“I can’t read music for the life of me.”

“What? But you write your own songs.” Her brow furrowed and she pressed a high C note. The shrill highness contrasted with the deep notes from my left hand. “Don’t you?”

“Most. Not all.” Like some musicians and entertainers, I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed I had songwriters. I did what I could but when albums were due and you were touring thirty-five cities in forty-one days, it didn’t leave a lot of time to create something new. My band and I were too concerned about getting sleep and not losing our voices.

I flattened a scrap of paper I’d wrote on earlier that morning. Later, I’d fix it and adjust the lyrics but for now, it was filled with scratches of words with letters above some of them, showing the chords.

“This is how I write.”

She scowled at it, ran her fingers atop the folding and already bent paper. “It looks like a mess.”

“It is. It won’t be when it’s done.”

“Does it have a title?”

I dropped one hand from the keyboard and slid my hand to her back. I’d touched her frequently in the last couple of weeks but after this morning, it meant more. Every curve of her back, every bump along her spine burned the tips of my fingers until I was at her nape, guiding her toward me.

“Captivated by You,” I whispered the title, still a working one, and the label could scrap it but I’d fight tooth and nail for them not to change a damn thing I had so far, and would until it was perfect. Her eyes widened, pupils dilated as I continued pulling her closer until our lips brushed. “For you.”

“Me?”

I nodded. “You, sweetheart.”

“Wow,” fell from her lips like a breath and her eyes flickered to the paper before returning to mine. I was still holding her close, wanting her exactly where she was because damn it, she just fit.

I pressed my lips against hers again, mumbling an affirmative, but needing to taste her more than I needed to speak. Opening my mouth, I flicked my tongue along her lips and jumped as my phone startled me, ringing on top of the keyboard.

“Ignore it,” I groaned, already knowing it was Anne by the ringtone.

Fucking hell. It was like she knew I was finally getting somewhere. With my music and my girl, thinking I had exactly everything I wanted in my life, right there, in my arms and in front of me, of course that was when Anne would call. Cock-blocker extraordinaire.

The phone stopped, only to start the obnoxious ringtone all over again, a series of alarm bells. I’d chosen the most annoying tone for Anne because while she rocked at her job and I respected her a hundred and twenty percent, she still bugged the crap out of me.

If she knew, she’d probably cut off my balls.

“I should get this. It’s Anne,” I said, dropping my hand from Claudia and reaching for my phone by wrapping it around her. As I answered the phone, she settled into me, hand dropping to my thigh.

“You have crappy timing, Anne.”

“And you currently have a shitty life,” she snapped. “Someone’s been digging and they’ve uncovered your first arrest.”

“What the hell?”

“You heard me. TMZ released a report twenty minutes ago about your arrest when you were younger.”

“I was a teenager,” I barked. “That shit was expunged and erased or whatever the hell is supposed to happen when I turned eighteen.”

“Not permanently. You’re going to have to answer for this, Liam. Immediately.”

I gritted my teeth. Claudia, sensing my anger, pushed away from me and I climbed off the bench, tugging on my hair and staring at the tiled floor. Fucking hell. “Do they say why I was arrested?”

Shit, shit, shit. Sophie would have a heart attack if her ordeal were brought forward. I’d paid millions to get her trial and the imprisonment of the men who hurt her buried. They were out of jail now, because asshole college students only got minimum sentences for beating and raping teenage girls because the system was fucked.

But now, so was I.

“Just assault so far.” Anne’s voice softened uncharacteristically. “But you might want to call Sophie because if they’re digging, I don’t doubt it will come up.”

“Who?” I clipped. “Who’s searching?”

“We’re working on it. But you need to get here. I can schedule you off the island tonight.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Liam—”

“First thing tomorrow, Anne. I’ll be on it. But I want one more day here.”

Not that I saw the point. Claudia was across the room, arms crossed protectively over her stomach. She was worrying her bottom lip and watching me like she really was afraid I’d hurt her.

Fuck.

“Fine,” Anne sighed. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll text you details. And prepare Claudia. Between this and her own family drama, shit will hit the fan once you get back.”

“I’m not coming back to New York,” I said, not removing my eyes from Claudia. She’d gone pale as a ghost. “We’re going to Kansas.”

I hung up before Anne could argue. I understood why I needed to get back, but I’d be stopping at home first. Sophie and I needed to talk, and like we’d done so many times before, I already knew what she’d say. She’d beg and plead for me to keep it hidden and while the last thing I wanted to do was throw her back into that hell that took years to climb out of, I’d also always wanted her to tell her story. I wanted her to help others. I wanted her to move beyond it so it didn’t always cling to her. I wanted her to take back her power.

It also, sure as hell would have helped me out when charges were flung in my direction.

“So,” I said, sliding my hands to my hips. “How do you feel about visiting my family?”