by Vicki Tharp
“My apologies,” her grandfather said.
Levi nodded his acceptance, but for the rest of the dinner, conversation remained stilted, and despite how hungry Levi had claimed to be, he barely touched his food. Clementine dozed on and off in her seat, taking the occasional bite after she’d eaten most of what she’d been served.
When Olivia and her grandfather finished eating, she started clearing the plates and told Levi, “I made up a cot in the guest room for her, and she has her own towels in the bathroom at the end of the hall if you want to get her ready for bed. And I think there might be a pair of her pajamas still in the dresser in there.”
Levi pushed away from the table and went to take Clementine in his arms. “Yeah. Poor thing. These trips really wear her out.”
After she’d finished washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen, she searched for Levi and Clementine. She’d half expected the bath to give Clementine a second wind, and that Clementine would be raring to go late into the night, but Olivia hadn’t heard much noise from the end of the hall.
From the hallway, she heard the soft murmur of Levi’s voice. She stopped in the doorway of the guest room and saw Levi sitting on the floor in the darkness, an arm over an upraised knee, his other hand on his daughter’s head with his thumb brushing softly across her forehead.
“So, you’re okay with me being your daddy?”
Clementine nodded. It wasn’t like Clementine to be so quiet, even when she was tired. The news must have been a lot for her to take in, even at three.
“Lebi?”
“Yeah, Pix.”
“When is mommy coming back from heaben?”
Levi stilled, then blew out a long breath. “As much as she loved you and would like to be here, Mommy’s not coming back, Pix. That’s not how it works.”
“You came back.”
Olivia’s heart cracked, and the tightness in her chest made breathing next to impossible. She must have made a noise, because Levi glanced over, the pain in his expression a looming, palpable entity. The slight shake of his head said, ‘I don’t know what to say to that.’
Then he turned back to his daughter and after a few moments said, “I was gone, but I wasn’t in heaven. But I’m here now, and I pinkie promise I’m not going away again. Okay?”
“’Kay.”
He leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. “Night, night, Pix. I love you.”
“Lub you, too, Lebi.”
After hearing those words, he rubbed at his sternum as if trying to ease a pain in his chest, though he seemed unaware he was doing it. Slowly he stood, somehow looking exhausted, gutted, and elated at the same time. Right then and there, Olivia vowed to do whatever she could to make sure June and Clive never took Clementine from her father. Levi and Clementine deserved better than that.
Levi met Olivia at the door. His expression was enigmatic. Putting her arm around his waist, she whispered, “You okay?”
He chuckled, more sad than sincere as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and walked her back down the hall. “I don’t know yet. Joe got anything to drink around here?”
9
“Where’s Joe?” Levi asked as he set the bottle of whiskey and two glasses on the coffee table in front of the couch.
The kitchen lights spilling into the unlit den. The two-seater, worn leather couch, the coffee table, and a recliner filled the room. In the corner sat a small television with tinfoil on the rabbit ears. He sat down and poured them both two fingers of Joe’s Black Label whiskey,
“I sent him to the VFW hall.” Olivia pulled off her boots and sat in the corner of the couch next to him, her legs tucked beneath her. “The widow Warren plays bingo on Monday nights. He’s sweet on her.”
“Does that mean we shouldn’t wait up?”
“Probably not.”
Levi chuckled and handed Olivia her glass. “Here’s to the old dog and new tricks.”
Olivia laughed, clinking her glass against his before taking a sip. “May we never be too old for love.”
They lapsed into silence and let the whiskey do its thing. Olivia sank lower into the cushions, facing him and resting the side of her head against the back of the couch. “Sorry about Gramps. He didn’t know, and I didn’t think to tell him otherwise.”
“It’s okay. It’s probably better this way. I wanted Clementine to know I’m her father, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. She’s smart but she is only three. How much of it can she really understand?”
“The important thing for her to know is that she’s wanted and that she’s loved. You show that to her every day. That even a three-year-old can understand.”
“You’re right.” He swirled the whiskey with the ice cubes in his glass before taking a sip. It took everything he had in him, including the whiskey, for him to say, “I’m terrified June and Clive are going to win. I can’t lose Clementine. I promised I’d be there for her. I don’t plan on breaking my word.”
Olivia set her glass on the coffee table. She took his hand and made sure she had his full attention. “You’re not going to lose her. We have an appointment with a damn fine lawyer first thing in the morning. We’re going to fight this and we’re going to win.”
There was that ‘we’ again. As much as he liked the sound of that, he couldn’t let go of the way she’d left the day before. No goodbye. No nothing. That didn’t sound like a ‘we’ to him.
So, he called her on it. “We. You say that like we’re together. That we’re a package deal...” He slurped down the rest of his whiskey and poured himself another. “I went to your motel room last night. When you weren’t there... When the desk clerk said you’d checked out early...” he shook his head. Damn. It shouldn’t be that difficult to say out loud. “I didn’t know what to think.”
He took another gulp, and a portion of the anger and frustration he’d kept bottled up leaked out. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he couldn’t leave the conversation there. It didn’t do a damn bit of good to talk about it if he didn’t say what was on his mind. “No scratch that. I do know what I thought. I thought whatever it was we’d started was over. Finished. And now here you are... using words like ‘we’ and I guess it’s now that I don’t know what to think.”
“I think it’s time I gave you that apology.” Olivia’s voice had grown soft and her expression sheepish. “I could have handled leaving a lot better.”
Levi raised a brow at her. “Ya think?”
She chuckled when she said, “You’re such an ass.”
Then she took a sip of his drink and set it on the coffee table next to hers. She straddled him on the couch and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You asked me on the phone what I’m afraid of, and honestly, I don’t know. You. Me. Clementine. My life here. Yours on the road. It’s got ‘never-gonna-work’ written all over it, but then there are times when it’s just you and me and Clementine... that’s when I ask myself ‘why not?’”
He shouldn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t get his hopes up. It felt like he was standing in the middle of an arena with nothing but a red cape and an angry bull. One false move could turn into a disaster.
“We don’t have to get ahead of ourselves, plan out five, ten, or fifteen years into the future. We need to get through today and then tomorrow and then the next day and the day after that. One day at a time. We’ll make it work until it doesn’t.”
He held her hips and pulled her tighter against him as her fingers traced tiny circles on the nape of his neck.
“I guess it’s the ‘until it doesn’t’ that I’m afraid of. You’ve foul-hooked my heart, Banks, and I’m afraid you’re going to rip it right out of my chest.”
“The feeling’s mutual.” This wasn’t a time to play it coy or hold his cards close to his chest. It didn’t seem like they had that kind of luxury, not with the odds stacked against him like the back, back room of an off-the-strip Vegas casino. “We’d better make this thing work then or else we’re looking at our mutual des
truction.”
She laughed. “Did you just equate our relationship to a nuclear standoff?”
“Only this has the potential to end much worse.”
Olivia trailed a hand down his chest, and it landed on his belt buckle. “Or potentially much better.”
He grabbed her hand. “Hold that thought.”
She gave a small whine of displeasure.
“Why don’t we go somewhere a little more private, in case Joe decides to come home early. Go to your room, I’ll meet you there.”
She leaned back far enough to see his face. “Where are you going?”
“To the truck. I brought you a little something.”
* * *
While Levi went to his truck, Olivia nipped into the shower. He’d have to be messed up to think the scents of motor oil and horse sweat were a kinky aphrodisiac.
She left her dirty clothes in the hamper in the bathroom and tiptoed in her towel past Clementine’s partially open door into her bedroom. Even though Gramps wasn’t home, she was glad her room was across the hall and down one from his because the house was old, and his ears were still too good.
Levi was already in her room when she got there, his torso and feet bare. His back was to her, as he studied frame after frame of pictures and awards from her childhood. She didn’t bother turning on the overhead light, the soft glow from the bedside table lamp provided more than enough visibility for what they had in mind.
“Hey there.” She closed and locked the door. They didn’t need Clementine, or God forbid, her grandfather to walk in on them.
He turned, with a box in his hands, the ribbon a little smashed and lopsided. “For you.”
She held the box of condoms up to the light and laughed. “I would say you shouldn’t have but I’m damn glad you did.”
“You are?”
“Sure,” she teased, “when the local guys hear that I’m back in town—”
Levi made a sound, a possessive growl of disapproval that should have annoyed her, but the sound made her hot. A muscular arm shot out and wrapped around her waist, holding her tight against him. Into her ear, he whispered, “I don’t share. My condoms or my woman.”
“I thought they were my condoms. Are you taking back your gift?”
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, his eyes smiling, his grin as wide as Llano County. “I’ll make you a deal. If, after we polish off this box, you still want to bang other men, I’ll buy you another box myself.”
“Cocky much?” She laughed, but the joke was on her. She had no desire to screw other men, but he didn’t have to know that.
He answered with a kiss so deep, so long, so consuming it had her arms coming around his neck, drawing soft moans of pleasure and leaving her wanting to climb him like a tree. When he finally pulled away, he said, “Confident, not cocky.”
He took the box from her hand. “You mind?”
She shifted until she straddled one of his thighs, her fingers trailing across the waistband of his Wranglers. “Not if you hurry.”
Deftly, he ripped through the ribbon and used his teeth to tear the outer cellophane wrapper.
“That’s a pretty big box,” she said. Not that she was complaining.
“I’ve been accused a time or two of being too ambitious. I won’t apologize for that.”
She grinned. “Ambition is admirable.”
Finally, he pulled a condom free and set it and the rest of the box on the desk beside him. The same old oak desk that she’d had since grade school. She had to admit, she liked it better covered in condoms than construction paper.
Resting a hip against the corner of the desk, he leaned in and kissed and nipped his way down her neck. She let her head fall back, giving him full access, but when his hands went to the tucked corner of her towel, she stopped him. “You first.”
His tongue trailed the length of her collarbone. “Me first, huh? Why’s that?”
“I want to see you.” She palmed the condom and sat down on the corner of her bed.
He reached for his belt buckle. “Fair enough.”
Though he was the one stripping, the way he watched her, the way his gaze glided down her torso, touching, almost caressing her with his intensity, made her feel like the naked one. She could feel the places he wanted to squeeze and suck and fuck.
He teased her, making a play of undressing by taking his jeans off first then going back for his underwear, the bulge of his half-hard shaft made it impossible not to stare.
Not that she was really trying.
Then he pulled the thin cotton fabric to his ankles and kicked it aside. He stood there in front of her, his hands at his sides, his erection growing by the second. She wanted to reach for the overhead light switch, to see him in his naked, luscious, colossal, glory but didn’t want to break the mood. She ripped the corner off the square package in her hand and took out the condom.
She shifted on the bed, his eyes going dark and his smile going feral when she spread her legs and ground against the corner of the mattress. Feeling emboldened, she said, “Stroke yourself.”
His eyes smoldered, and he took a step toward her.
“Ah, ah.” She held out a staying hand. “That’s as close as you get.”
He raised one dark brow, and one side of his wicked mouth curved up. “Guess I’ll have to make you come to me, then.”
Instead of reaching for his cock like she’d instructed, he ran a hand across his chest, over the peaks of his pecs and the vast valley in between. “I want your lips here.” His fingers eased across to his flat nipples. They hardened as he brushed a thumb over them. “I want your teeth here.”
Goosebumps erupted on his skin, and when he had her undivided attention, he let his hand drift ever so slowly downward. “Your tongue here.”
Down past the washboard of muscles on his abdomen. “Here.”
Down past the circle of hair around his belly button.
Down past the V of muscle angling toward his groin.
Down.
Down until the tips of his fingers dipped into the hair at the apex of his thighs and his cock landed in the web between his thumb and forefinger. “Your hot, wet mouth here.”
His voice had dipped so low. It was more grumble than growl. She reached up and pulled the thin cord dangling down from her ceiling fan before she self-combusted. The blades began turning, and the bad bearing in the motor whirred. But the last thing on her mind was yet another item on her fix-it list.
Right now, the only thing that needed her attention was this mountain of a naked man in front of her.
Then his large hand curved around his base, making a slow, long slide to the tip and back again. A drop of precum at his slit begged and begged to be licked away. Before she’d made the conscious decision to go to him, she fell to her knees at his feet. The old wooden floorboards creaked under her weight.
She ghosted her hand over his as it rode up and down his shaft, the dual exploration adding an erotic kick. As if she wasn’t already turned on and cranked up to eleven.
With her free hand, she cupped his balls. He hissed in a breath, his other hand going to the back of her head, encouraging her.
He let go of himself when she grabbed the base and gave him a few firm strokes of her own. She glanced up as his head fell back. She breathed in his musky scent, and licked the salty, dewdrop from his tip.
Levi groaned.
As much as she wanted to tease him, Olivia couldn’t bring herself to stop there. She laved around the head, her tongue following the ridge around and around.
“Jesus Christ,” he moaned, his hips thrusting toward her, wanting, needing more.
Then she opened her mouth and took him down to the base, her throat threatening to spasm as the hard length of him hit the back of her throat. He pulled out a fraction, easing the pressure. She sucked and licked until moisture pooled between her legs. She wanted to knock him to the floor and have her wild, wicked, way with him.
“Oh, baby,” Levi sai
d, his voice too gruff to be considered a whisper. “That feels so goddamn good.”
She took him deep again. His balls tightened. So close, she wanted to finish him off.
“Come up here,” he said. When he went to help her up, she resisted long enough to slip the condom on and roll it down his length. Then she stood, and his mouth came crashing down on hers. Possessing. Owning.
She gave in to the kiss, the passion, letting her emotion fuel the burning need she had for this man.
When their breaths went ragged, and their lungs burned and ached, he broke the kiss. “Turn around.”
The look she gave him fell between what’s-up-your-sleeve and I’m-not-falling-for-that.
“Trust me,” he said as he took her by the shoulders and spun her around to face the desk, “You’ll thank me later.”
10
“Lose the towel,” Levi told Olivia as he gave himself a slow pump and then another.
Olivia glanced at him over her shoulder, her damp hair leaving the occasional drip of water down her back. She didn’t argue. Her towel dropped to the floor with a soft whompfh. He traced a finger down her back, following a drop of water as it slid down the length of her spine until it disappeared into the crack of her ass.
He blew cool air on her skin, sending a rash of goosebumps across her heated flesh. “Bend over.” He pressed a gentle hand against her shoulder until her forearms rested on the desk.
Her skin glowed in the soft light, the sight of her cocked over her desk, her ass in the air, almost made him blow his load. It made his heart hurt, and his lungs seize. “You’re so stunning.”
He ran his hands over her body, from the hard line of her shoulder blades, down the lean muscles along her spine, to the gentle indention at her waist, to the soft curve of her exquisite ass.
He held her hips and pressed himself into that enticing cleft. He could have taken her then as she arched her back, pressing her ass even tighter against him. Holding back, he nudged her feet farther apart. The time would come for that soon enough. Until then, he planned on blowing her mind.