Liar liar hearts on fire.., p.21
Liar, Liar, Hearts on Fire: Bro Code Book 3, page 21
More.
Definitely more. More Lila. More kisses. More touching. More rocking my cock against her hot center.
More sucking on these sweet nipples.
More making her moan.
More slipping my hand under the waistband of those damn jeans to find her slick folds and her hidden, swollen clit.
“Tripp,” she gasps.
I slip one finger inside her, still suckling on her breast, and her walls clench and spasm around me, hard and fast, like maybe I’m not the only one with a hair-trigger here.
She strains into her climax, riding my hand and holding my head to her breast while she moans out a long, slow release.
And I bask in every minute of knowing that she wants me as badly as I want her.
“Tripp,” she whispers as her body melts against me, the last spasms fading.
“You’re fucking gorgeous.” I’m hoarse. My cock is throbbing like she didn’t coax an orgasm out of me herself barely an hour ago.
And I want to stay here, in this bed, with her, all night long.
All week long.
All damn month long.
Her mouth finds mine, and she kisses me hard and deep, our tongues gliding together, our arms tangling around each other. She scrapes her nails down my back. I push her pants lower and dig my fingers into her curvy ass.
She thrusts her center against my cock.
And all I can see is getting her completely naked.
Stripped bare.
Driving into her hot, wet pussy, and drowning in her.
I’m clumsy and sloppy and uncoordinated as I yank at her jeans. She reaches between us and pulls my cock out of my sweatpants, stroking me once, twice, until I have to stop her. “Want inside you,” I grunt.
“Yes.” She kicks her pants off. Her eyes are wide and dark. Her cheeks are flushed. Her breasts are lifting quickly as her breath comes in fast bursts.
I get one sneak peek at that sweet pussy, and then she’s pulling me on top of her, and I’m sliding inside her, and fuck, I’m home.
I moan.
She moans.
We both stop, for just a moment, while I adjust to being gripped by her body, and—
“Condom,” I gasp.
Jesus.
Jessie was pregnant, then uninterested, then sick, and—I didn’t—it’s been—I haven’t needed—
“I’m on birth control,” Lila whispers while she rocks against me, taking me deeper inside her, making my world flash in Technicolor. “I’m clean.”
“You’re sure this is okay?” The words are rough, because I’m suddenly not sure of anything except for how badly I want to thrust into Lila until I can’t think, can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t exist without carrying a part of her with me.
“Make love to me, Tripp.”
Yep.
I’m gone.
I drive deep, pull back, and drive in again, letting her pussy stroke me and squeeze me and her gasps and yeses and mores urge me on while she holds my gaze, those bright green eyes asking for pleasure, for acceptance, for forgiveness, for love.
Who does she have to love?
Her hair is tangled all over the pillow. Her lips parted, her eyelids drifting lower.
It’s the vision I’ve jacked off to in the shower more than once, but better.
Because she’s here.
Meeting me stroke for stroke.
Caressing my face. Holding me captive.
“God, yes, Tripp, there.”
I thrust once, twice more, and she’s suddenly gripping my cock so tight my eyes cross and my own release spills out of me. I grind into her hard, holding myself steady while everything inside me erupts and her pussy spasms and clenches and her legs go straight in the air while she moans out that wheezy release that makes me want to get hard all over again before I’m even done coming.
Too soon, I’m collapsing on top of her, burying my face in her neck.
We’re both panting.
Her legs curl around me again, holding me inside her while her arms snake around my ribs. Moisture touches my ear as she inhales a shaky breath.
I lift my head.
Her eyes are clenched shut tight. So’s her mouth. Her nostrils are quivering, and a single trail of tears leaks out of the corner of her eye.
“Lila?”
“I’m going to deserve you, Tripp Wilson. Just wait.”
“I’m no saint, sweetheart. You don’t have to do much.”
She shakes her head, then opens her eyes and meets my gaze head on.
“I’m going to deserve you,” she repeats.
“Can we do this again in the meantime?”
I get a reluctant laugh and a smile. But what I’m really looking for is the nod that eventually comes.
“Good. Because I don’t think I can ever get enough of you,” I murmur.
“You know you’ll be saying different as soon as you get back to the office.”
“Yep.”
She laughs again, and I drop a kiss to her forehead. “You’re not alone, Lila. I’ve got you.”
23
Lila
I wake up disoriented in a brightly-lit bedroom with a homemade quilt on the bed and family pictures smiling down at me from the opposite wall.
But they’re not my family.
They’re Tripp’s family.
Last night comes rushing back, and I simultaneously want to sink back into the bed and bask in the happiness of being here, in this bed, where Tripp made love to me, and also throw up.
I lunge for my phone.
And, naturally, there’s a message that totally kills my buzz.
I don’t like the Wilson kid. Say the word, and I’ll get him fired.
I text him back a single picture, one that I have to dig deep into my phone’s archives to find, one of the very, very few that I have, with one simple message.
She would be so ashamed of you.
It’s a dirty trick, but it’s the only thing Uncle Guido will understand.
I don’t think he knows that I know just how much he loved my mom. But all you have to do is listen to him talk about her, and you can hear it.
If there’s another person left in this world who loved her, I don’t know who it is. For that alone, I can’t cut him out. Because no one who loved my mom could be totally bad.
She wasn’t perfect.
But we loved her anyway.
And isn’t that what most people want?
It’s basically the same thing Tripp himself said to me last night. I know you’re not perfect, but you don’t have to be for me.
I pull myself out of bed, make the most of finger-combing my curls and tying them up in a sloppy bun, rush through a shower, brush my teeth with the spare toothbrush I find in the guest bathroom, and make my way through the house, following the music.
I know the song. It’s an old Bro Code song that I’ve heard Parker and her band perform. I don’t know what it’s called—“Party on the Avenue” or something like that—but I know it’s happy and upbeat and reassuring.
Songs like that aren’t regret songs.
I step through the butler’s pantry between the dining room and the living room, and I draw up short at the sight before me.
Tripp’s standing at one counter in the massive kitchen, making waffles and shaking his ass in gray sweatpants, crooning along to the music while his kids have a dance party.
He’s shirtless, giving me a view of that tattoo of an eagle clutching a rose.
I’ll have to ask him someday when he got it and what it means.
Someday.
Because I’m not leaving. And neither is he.
We have a someday.
Emma’s in a princess nightgown, stomping her feet and giggling and throwing her chubby little arms in the air, showing off a saggy diaper.
James is in navy blue pajama pants stamped with trucks, and he, too, is shirtless. He’s singing the words, doing fancy dance moves for a four-year-old that involve looking like a drunken monkey leaping from black floor tile to black floor tile.
“Tequilaaaaa,” Tripp and James croon together. “Party on the Avenuuuuuuuue.”
My heart swells.
My feet itch to dance along.
My arms want to lift to the sky just like Emma’s.
And I suddenly understand what love feels like.
It’s not that I’ve never had love. I fall in love every time I read a book. I see love every day that I’m hanging out with my friends. I feel love from them, and I give them back all the friend-love that I have.
But this is different.
Probably because this time, it’s the real me doing the falling. And not in a platonic, safe way, but in a my heart could get broken but it’s worth the risk kind of way.
“Break it down, Emma.” Tripp’s grinning at his daughter as he spins with waffles on a plate. And his smile grows when he sees me.
“Dada, waffa!” Emma shrieks.
In one smooth move, he sets the plate on the island and scoops Emma onto a stool. “Climb up, James. Yours is ready too.”
“I wantsa dance,” James says. “Can we see the kangaroo? Can I go to school? Emma has a booger.”
Emma bursts into tears. “No booga!”
“Bacon?” Tripp asks, and the tears instantly dry up as she lunges for the piece he dangles in front of her.
They’re all so freaking adorable.
And he’s so damn patient.
He turns the music down as the next song starts, and glances at me again, his eyes asking so much more than his words. “Morning. Sleep well?”
You okay? Can I fix you a waffle? Should we set up a code word for when we want to have nookie at the office in the supply closet?
I nod.
And I swear that’s relief I see in his eyes. “Good. We have lots of work to do.”
“Daddy, why she here?” James asks. He follows the question by wiping his nose on his bare arm, then coughing all over his waffle and bacon.
Tripp moves in for a full-body wipe with a tissue. “Since Daddy can’t go to the office, the office is coming here today.”
“Can Smushy come to the office?” James pulls a thing out of his jammies.
A moving green thing that Tripp pounces on with reflexes of steel. “Smushy needs—” he starts, but his phone rings loudly on the island, and he cuts himself off to balance the frog in one hand and the phone in the other.
I dump the fruit from his fruit bowl onto the counter and offer it to him.
He stops mid-hello to the phone, eyes going momentarily round before a grin overtakes his face.
“I’m a quick study,” I say quietly.
He sets the small frog in the bowl, leans in like he’s going to kiss me, and stops just as quickly.
Because his kids are watching.
Right.
Slow and easy.
“Yeah, let them in,” he says into the phone.
“Unka Wevi?” James asks.
“Uncle Beck.”
The alarm system beeps, and a minute later, there’s a loud crash, followed by someone yelling a profanity in the front hall.
“Dat a bad word, Unka Beck!” James slides off his stool, waffle in hand, and darts out of the kitchen.
Emma reaches over and takes his bacon, then grins at me like she knows exactly what she just did, and exactly how mad it’s going to make her brother, and yep.
I’m done for.
I slide onto the stool next to her. “Did you just steal your brother’s bacon?”
She’s still grinning when she chomps into it.
Tripp winces. He’s holding a bottle of hand sanitizer over his palm, but he glances at me, goes a little pink, and slowly pockets it again, turning to the sink instead. “Emma, your brother sneezed on—never mind. Grandma says it’s good for your immune system, and I’m trying not to be crazy paranoid. As much.”
She ignores him and points to her ear while she looks at me. “Money ee-ah.”
“You have money in your ear?”
She nods.
Crunches bacon.
And stares at me with those big eyes over her chubby cheeks.
So I pull a quarter out of her ear.
She squeals and claps and starts to topple over backward off her stool.
My heart freezes, but the rest of me leaps into action, lunging for her as she tumbles, and I steady her before she’s all the way off the stool.
“Sorry,” I gasp. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
But the words die as she wraps her little arms around my neck. “Hugs!”
And she laughs.
“Okay, hugs,” I sputter.
But it’s not just hugs.
It’s Emma climbing into my lap, her little nose running while she touches the button at my collar. “I aay awa bay-bay.”
Tripp’s watching us both, and I can’t make out the expression on his face.
It’s something between relief and panic and so this is my new normal. He blinks twice, and the grin comes back. “More bacon’s coming, Emma. Ask before you touch, okay?”
“I touch? Pwease?”
I’ve read hundreds of novels with kids in them, everything from sweet little babies to moody teenagers.
None of them have prepared me for how much I want to not let go of this little girl on my lap. How much I want to understand her words and give her everything her little heart needs. “Yes,” I tell her softly. “You can touch. Do you have shirts with buttons?”
“I a pin-sess!”
“You are definitely a princess,” Tripp agrees.
“Wi’ a penis,” she adds.
He pours himself a refill on coffee, then lifts the carafe to me. “Energy drink?”
“Do you have sugar and cream?”
“No, but—”
A herd of voices makes their presence known, getting closer, and I look up as Beck, Sarah, and Davis all file in, with James on Beck’s shoulders.
“They will,” he finishes.
“See my frog?” James cries while Beck ducks through the doorway so James doesn’t get his head banged.
Sarah smiles at me and mouths morning.
“I’m here for meetings,” I blurt.
Davis brings up the rear with a box that smells a lot better than cardboard should. His brown eyes settle on me, and there’s something lurking in there that makes my heart shiver.
He knows.
And I’m not talking about knowing that Tripp and I had sex last night, which I swear Beck and Sarah are figuring out too, based on that sly look they give each other.
That’s fine. They can judge my sex life.
But they can stay out of the rest of my secrets.
Just as quickly as the sensation roils through my body, Davis nods an easy greeting like me being here is normal, and he sets the box on the island next to me “Hope you’re hungry.”
Beck leans over the bowl. “James, dude, that’s the most awesome frog I’ve ever seen. You want to build him a house outside? Uncle Davis has that box we can use, and we can order some frog furniture, but it’s gonna take a week or two to arrive. Shipping, man. It takes forever. You know what I mean? But while we’re waiting, we’re gonna let that frog here play the greatest game of pretend ever known to man. It’ll be like Dream Castle: The Frog Era. You know what I’m saying?”
“His name’s Smushy.”
“Awesome. Airplane ride for Smushy!” Beck lifts the bowl, and the two of them vroom vroom their way to the covered porch.
“I think I understand Emma better than Beck,” I whisper to Tripp while he puts a plated waffle and a cup of coffee in front of me.
“Welcome to the club.” He grins, then looks at Sarah, who’s laughing. “More food? You just brought a month’s worth two days ago.”
“Beck’s using you as an excuse to trick his mom into making cinnamon rolls as often as possible. This is all I could salvage from what we picked up at her house this morning. Hey, Emma.” She leans over and boops Emma’s nose, and the little girl giggles, but she doesn’t reach for Sarah.
“Money ee-yah,” she says instead, then looks at me expectantly.
I’m out of quarters, so I do the next best thing, and I pull a small piece of bacon out of her ear.
Emma pumps her legs and shrieks in glee, and I grip her tighter, both because I don’t want her to fall and also because I love the feel of her little body in my lap. She doesn’t have preconceived notions of who I am or what I want, and she doesn’t care about secrets and the CIA. Or even baseball.
She just wants friends who pull things out of her ears.
Sarah tilts her head. “Can you teach me to pull food out of people’s ears?”
“No,” Tripp answers.
Davis gives her that same I know secrets look he leveled on me a minute ago. “Didn’t need that mental image.”
“Oh, please.” She rolls her eyes. “Like you two have never wanted to know magic in the bedroom.”
Tripp definitely knows magic in the bedroom.
I squirm.
He squirms.
Sarah grins.
And Davis points to the back door. “Someone needs to monitor the children, and you’re grossing me out. Go away.”
She’s laughing as she retreats. “Enjoy the snuggles, Lila. She’s a fickle one.”
“Bye-bye, Sawah!” Emma cries.
“I’ll be back after I check on the boys.”
“Boys icky,” Emma proclaims.
Tripp nods. “That’s exactly right.”
And Emma spills her orange juice all over both of us, prompting her to burst into tears and me to leap to my feet with her still in my arms while Tripp dives across the island with a roll of paper towels that he apparently pulled out of his ears.
He’s quick.
Davis leaves us to the orange juice mess while he moves the food box to a clean counter and starts digging through it. “Know what you need?” he says to Tripp while Emma squirms out of my arms and darts out to the back porch.
“There’s no right answer to that question.”
“Waylon.”
“Translation?”
“Waylon. Waylon Rivers. Cash’s brother? Six-one, one-ninety, likes basketball, numbers, cheesecake, and just got laid off because of a merger?”
“What? When?”
Davis’s gaze flits between Tripp, who almost has the entire orange juice mess mopped up, to me, who needs to go back to my hotel and get a fresh change of clothes.
