by Lucy Gilmore
She whimpered and arched her back, causing her legs to open wider and allow him better access to the sweet heat of her.
“Oh, dear,” she moaned as his kisses intensified, his tongue seeking purchase everywhere it landed. “Harrison, I think I changed my mind about that ravishing thing. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
He paused long enough to give her a moment to back out, a moment to give up on him, but she didn’t. She only kept clinging to his hair like a woman about to fall off a precipice, her eyes glazed with desire and something more.
“You took me at my worst, Sophie,” he said, though he didn’t know how much of it she heard. “You can take anything.”
Her moans gave way to whimpers, which soon transformed to an increasingly low humming sound as she neared orgasm. That was the part of her he wanted to taste most, so he pressed one last kiss against her clit, holding the pressure there until she came. She shook and cried out, her grip on his hair so strong he couldn’t have pulled away even if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to though. He wanted to stay there, on his knees before this woman, buried in the sweet, glorious heat of her forever.
Forever.
That word rattled him almost as much as Sophie’s body quivering against his lips. He wanted her with him for everything—not just while puppy training lasted, and not for a few hot weeks while his life settled back into a semblance of normal.
He didn’t just like Sophie Vasquez.
He fucking loved her.
That thought shook him even more than the feel of her orgasm crashing tight and hot against his lips. It was the worst possible moment for such a life-altering realization. He should have been reveling in her body, tossing her to the mattress and making love to her until neither of them could stand anymore.
Not clutching her legs like he’d never touch her again. Not feeling—for some inexplicable reason—like all he wanted to do was cry.
“Hey,” she said and released her hold on his hair. “What’s wrong? Harrison—are you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost. Or, um, tasted one.”
A light laugh shook him. Even now, she was giving him a gift. Even now, she was lifting him up simply by being herself.
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her what he felt, to admit that he was so far from being okay, that his life’s happiness was now entirely in her hands, but he didn’t. That was one of her gifts too. With a smile that stitched the last piece of his heart into place, she took his hand and helped him up.
“Come on. We can scoot Bubbles over and snuggle in your secret clubhouse bed. I think I spied some Neruda on your bookshelf. I had no idea you were such a romantic.”
“He’s okay,” Harrison admitted with a blush.
Sophie lifted his hand to her mouth and placed a soft kiss in the palm of his hand. “You’re okay too, Harrison.”
He blushed deeper. He wasn’t willing to go that far just yet. But the one thing he did know for sure was that if Sophie was willing to stay in his life for good, he could be.
Chapter 18
“That’s weird. Are you expecting one of your sisters?” Harrison turned his truck into his drive, not bothering to lift his hand from where it sat on Sophie’s leg.
She liked the way it lay there—naturally and heavily, an extension of the man himself. He often held Bubbles that way, with that one hand curled possessively over the puppy’s fluffy coat. Sophie had always considered it more of Harrison’s way to comfort himself than to protect the animal, and she liked that hand on her thigh for the very same reason.
He could have stroked it too, if he’d wanted. In fact, she kind of hoped he would. She was ruined for all other normal human interactions. She wasn’t thinking about work or dinner or even the blue sedan parked in the drive that looked an awful lot like the one her mom drove. All she wanted was to go back to that quiet, perfect attic space where Harrison had finally let her in.
And she hadn’t been forced to push even once. He’d just opened the door and followed her up those stairs.
Harrison, however, had other things on his mind. “I thought you said you expressly forbade them from contacting you for anything less than a major medical emergency,” he said.
“I did, but that’s not going to stop either of them stopping by anytime they darn well please. They might even be compelled to bring my mom.”
She stole a look at Harrison’s profile, but he didn’t appear unduly worried by that declaration. Then again, he did have a hand curled around her upper thigh, so maybe he was preoccupied with other thoughts.
But when he spoke, it was with nothing but a relaxed, calm air. “Would they? Huh. I’ve been wondering what she’s like.”
“She’s intrusive and overbearing, but in such a nice, likable way that it’s impossible to complain. Once you open the door and let her in, you’ll never get rid of her again.”
“She’s like you, then.”
She smacked him on the arm. “Excuse you. I’m a freaking delight.”
He leaned down and pressed a kiss onto her hand, which lingered on the swell of his bicep. “Yes,” he said, his voice grave. “You are.”
Those simple words, simply uttered, sent a thrill through her. Harrison Parks wasn’t a man who gave compliments very often—or very effusively—but that was what made this one so powerful.
He liked her. He took delight in her. And more to the point, he wasn’t scared of the possibility of meeting her mother.
They pulled up next to the car, which Sophie quickly realized didn’t belong to her mom. Alice Vasquez’s car was a mess of her husband’s academic papers and books, with half a dozen stuffed puppies of various breeds crammed below the back window. Dawn had given them to her for Christmas one year, joking that dogs were all the grandchildren she’d ever get. The toys were faded and lopsided now, but she’d never remove them. They’d been there so long they’d become a family totem.
“That’s not my mom,” Sophie said as the truck came to a halt. “Her car isn’t nearly that clean, and she’d never dangle a crystal from the rearview mirror like that. She read an article once about how many people crack their windshields that way.”
“Then who—?” Harrison asked before cutting himself off.
Sophie didn’t have to say what she was thinking.
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe it. You and Oscar can conjecture all you want, but he’s not seeing someone. My father doesn’t even like regularly seeing the dentist.”
“Would it be so bad?” she asked, wishing Wallace hadn’t sworn her to secrecy about his moving-out plans. “If he did find love?”
“No.” Harrison turned the key and sat back against the seat, his rugged face relaxed into a semblance of calm. Then he grinned, his smile so devastating and warm she almost feared her heart would stop. “If it had happened a month ago, I might have called the FBI and warned them about a case of body snatchers in the area, but not now.”
She couldn’t resist. “But not now?”
One of his fingers came up and brushed her cheek. His hands were always a little rough, a little callused, and now was no exception. She loved that about him, actually, the gruff exterior that hid the soft, melty marshmallow inside. “No, Sophie. Not now.”
It wasn’t the declaration of love and affection she was aching to hear, but it was enough to give her a feeling of buoyancy as she and Harrison followed Bubbles into the house. She was also propelled by rampant curiosity. She had no idea what kind of woman could capture the heart of a man like Harrison’s father, but she had to be something special.
And hardcore.
“Knock, knock!” Sophie called loudly. As much as she wanted to meet Wallace’s mystery woman, she didn’t want to meet her in a state of undress. “We’re back.”
A grunt from the direction of the kitchen proved that her warning had been a wise decision. It didn’t sound like a mid-coital noise, but there was that gorgeous, work-worn table in there that seemed ideal for
being bent over…
“What the hell are you doing home?” Wallace appeared in the kitchen doorway before either she or Harrison could walk through. Despite his lean build, he acted as a great barrier, his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. “I thought you two were going to a movie in town tonight.”
“We are,” Harrison said, his voice low with suspicion. “We just needed to grab a few things for Bubbles first. Speaking of, where did she go?”
“Uh-oh.” Sophie made a darting grab for the puppy, but she too had noticed a visitor in the kitchen. Her tiny size made it easy for her to slip past Wallace’s firmly planted feet to investigate.
“Well, hello there, little doggy,” a low-pitched female voice cooed. It was a pleasant voice, confident and warm. “Aren’t you just the sweetest thing? Wallace, you never told me you had a puppy. You hate animals.”
“It’s not mine—” Wallace began in a scrambling, almost desperate way, but he didn’t manage to finish the sentence. Harrison had stepped forward, his whole body stiff.
“Mom?” he asked. His voice was strangely hollow, sounding as though it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. “Mom, is that you?”
A face materialized next to Wallace’s. At one glance, Sophie recognized the woman as Harrison’s mother. It would have been impossible not to. Harrison’s rough-and-gruff exterior might have come directly down Wallace’s bloodline, but his size and those hard, gray eyes had obviously come from her.
So had the smile.
That was the thing that struck Sophie the most. The woman’s first response at seeing Harrison standing in front of her was one of unadulterated joy. Her eyes flew open in shock, but the lines of her face spread in the same devastating smile that had so much power over Sophie.
Not a beautiful woman, Harrison’s mother, but with a smile like that, she was magnificent.
Like most magnificent things, however, her smile didn’t last long.
“No.”
The moment that oh-so-familiar syllable left Harrison’s lips, his mom’s face fell. Sophie’s did too, but she stepped forward to place a restraining hand on Harrison’s arm.
“Oh dear,” she said, but he didn’t register her touch. “Harrison, why don’t we—”
“No.”
“Harry, my love,” his mother said. She hadn’t regained the smile yet, but she wasn’t put off by the stony-faced front he presented. “It’s so good to see you. And your friend too.”
When no one said anything, she added a tentative, “Girlfriend? Wife? Wallace, why didn’t you say anything?”
“No.”
That final no was Harrison’s last attempt at gaining some semblance of control over himself, but it didn’t work—especially when his dad’s sole contribution was to cough heavily and say, “She’s the dog trainer, actually. The one I was telling you about.”
Sophie winced. To be so reduced in this moment, with tensions so high they were thrumming like a too-tight guitar wire, was hardly the way she’d have chosen to go about things. Apparently, Harrison felt the same way. He turned on his father with a snarl that reminded her of a dog who’d been pushed into a corner and betrayed by the person he loved most.
In other words, it broke her heart.
“How long?” Harrison asked.
Instead of being intimidated by the fury in Harrison’s voice, Wallace squared his stance to meet his son’s. “Not long.”
“How long?” he echoed, his voice growing dangerous.
“A few weeks, that’s all. A nurse called her when you were in the coma. She’s still listed as next of kin at that hospital, and—”
Harrison had yet to even look at his mother, but he did so now. Sophie wasn’t able to get a full reading of his mood, but from the way he held himself, like a bomb that would explode at the slightest touch, she realized it was a dangerous one.
“And you came to take care of me, is that it? You came to sit up by my bedside night after night, watching to make sure I’m still breathing? You came to sing me to sleep and kiss away my troubles and do all those things that moms are supposed to do when their children are suddenly knocking on death’s door?”
“Harrison, I—”
“No. I’m not going to listen to this. I don’t know what you’re doing here or why you’re doing it, but I’d like you to leave. Now.”
Sophie had no idea what to do in the face of such strong emotion. She’d always known that Harrison’s history with his parents was a strange one—as different from her own as possible. Her parents had reacted to her illness with an overzealous desire to protect her from anything and everything this world had to throw at her. From the sound of it, his had done the exact opposite. This woman, who looked so ordinary and kind, had packed her bags and run away—leaving not just her husband, but her son too. And she’d left them both broken.
A part of Sophie hated her.
Looking at Harrison’s face right now, she felt kind of sorry for his mother too. By leaving when she had, this woman had missed out on twenty-two years of this man’s love and respect, twenty-two years of his hardships and his joys.
And the worst part was, she had no idea what a loss that was.
“You will not talk to your mother that way, young man.” Wallace stepped forward, his expression mulish. “She’s here because I asked her to be. If you can’t be respectful, then maybe Sophie should take you somewhere to cool off.”
Sophie felt as though Harrison had every right to his anger, and she was about to say as much, but Wallace made that impossible.
“Minerva and I are taking a few boxes over to the apartment, Sophie,” he said. “If you could explain to him, help him understand…”
All of Harrison’s emotion—all of it justified, all of it simmering under his parents’ watchful stares—should have exploded at once. In all honesty, Sophie wanted it to. She’d worked so hard to get him to open up, spent so much time helping him realize that it was okay to wear your feelings on the outside, rather than bury them deep inside.
For him to close off, to rebuild those walls, to isolate himself in a cocoon of razor wire and loneliness… She’d do anything to stop that from happening again.
But it was too late. He turned to Sophie with a look so full of icy, disdainful cold that the chill permeated to her soul.
“You knew?”
“Yes, but it’s not what you think,” she explained.
“You knew.” Flatter this time. Broken.
“I wanted to tell you, Harrison. I—”
He turned away from her, and that was when she knew she was lost. She was no longer talking to Harrison, the myth, the hero, the man. She was talking to the little boy who’d been left all alone at what must have been the scariest moment in his life.
“Where’s my goddamned dog?” He pushed past his parents to the kitchen, remaining only long enough to scoop up Bubbles and curl her against his chest. “I don’t care what you do with your life, Dad. I don’t care what you do with yours either, Minerva. The only thing I want is for everyone to leave me the fuck out of it. I’ve been fine on my own for years, and I’ll be fine long after the entire lot of you leave.”
Sophie didn’t know if that last bit was meant to keep her away as well as his parents, but Harrison had to know it would never work. Like the goiter she’d always been and always would be, he was stuck with her.
With only one meaningful look at Wallace—full of equal parts sympathy for his position and annoyance at him for putting her there next to him—she followed Harrison and Bubbles out the door.
“Goddammit, Sophie. Can’t you leave me alone for five minutes?”
She took a page from his book and kept doggedly following his tracks with one hard syllable. “No.”
“It’s the least you can do after stabbing me in the back like that.”
“No.”
He kept moving toward the direction of the barn, his steps long and furious. Sophie had to pick up to a jog to keep up, but she didn’t mind. As she’d
already shown, she could more than keep up with this man.
Harrison knew it, of course. He came to a stop at the barn door and waited for her to catch the rest of the way up.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice prim. “I was starting to get a hitch in my side.”
He snorted on a laugh. “Bullshit. You could have followed me for hours. Over mountains and through lakes—into a fucking volcano, if that’s where I was heading.”
She tilted her head and watched him, careful to give nothing of her feelings away. Her heart ached for this man—for the little boy—and the only thing she wanted to do was pull him into her arms and tell him that everything was going to be okay. But that wasn’t what Harrison needed right now.
“I’d probably make it over a mountain just fine, and I might be able to survive a fall into a volcano, but I’d definitely die in the lake. I can’t swim.”
Her distraction worked, his attention caught. “What are you talking about? Everyone can swim. You just wiggle your arms and legs.”
“First of all, I think it’s slightly more complicated than that, and secondly, of course not everyone can swim. Especially not people who spent most of their girlhood in the hospital. By the time they were done with me, I barely knew how to take a shower on my own. I’m great at sponge baths though, in case you’re wondering.”
He fought the smile rising to his lips. “I’m not going to feel sorry for you.”
“No one is asking you to.”
“I’m not going to let this go either. How long have you known?”
That one was easy. “I didn’t know she was your mom. He told me right after the camping trip that he was seeing someone, but only that her name was Minerva.”
The rest was hard. She didn’t know what to do, what to say—or even if there was anything to do or say in a situation like this one.
“Oscar knew.” Harrison’s mouth was a grim line. He was still clutching Bubbles, but he set the animal down now.