by Lisa G Riley
“What?” she glanced up and caught the frown on his handsome face. Her first reaction was to smooth the frown away with her fingers and she knew she had it bad for this guy. She brushed the thought away, not wanting to examine the effect he had on her after such a short time.
“Landon never has trusted Uncle Allen.”
“Why not? How do you know?”
“It’s not anything he’s actually said, rather what he doesn’t say. He’s in the military and the few times he comes home, he always seems to avoid actually being in Uncle Allen’s presence. And when he is, he finds some excuse to leave. Or maybe it just seems that way to me.” Josh shook his head. “Anyway, I’ve worked with the company since I graduated from college. I love doing what I do, and I’m good at it. Making money can be better than sex,” he laughed.
“Oh really?” Lilliana placed her hand on her hip and gave him a look. The universal look women gave men that screamed oh no the hell you didn’t just say that!
“Baby, that was before I made love to you. Now, I’d rather make love to you than roll around buck naked in a bed full of Imhan shares. That was, before my experience with you, the closest I ever came to heaven in my imagination.”
“Rolling around butt naked on a bed of Imhan shares?” she laughed. With the sudden explosion of trading for this up-and-coming new software company, shares were skyrocketing. “Oooh, baby you sure do know how to make a brown chick blush,” she laughed. “It doesn’t get much better than that!”
The remainder of their walk had been filled with them sharing memories, laughing and walking in the park, as though they’d been lovers for years.
“I’d better head home. I have a ton of work to do, and if I stay much longer, I won’t leave.”
As she stood at the kitchen sink, finishing up cleaning, Lilliana felt a moment of hesitation. What should she do now? After the weekend she’d spent with him, she was honest enough to admit she didn’t want it to end. But did he feel the same way?
Some of her doubts eased when she felt him wrap his arms around her waist, and give her a warm kiss on the neck. She glanced down at his forearms and loved the way his tanned, muscular arms looked wrapped around her body. She wiped the back of her hands on her shirt and turned to face him.
“I wouldn’t kick you out.” She smiled and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. He grabbed her and held her tight as he returned her kiss, kicking it up a notch. When he released her and took her face between his hands she saw the honest regret reflected in his eyes and was relieved.
“I’d better go. I was just assigned a new client and I have to go over his portfolio before I meet with him tomorrow, or you wouldn’t be able to get rid of me. Walk me to the door?” he asked.
She allowed him to take her by the hand and lead her through her small cottage. When they reached the door he kissed her again. “I don’t want this to end. I’m assuming you feel the same way,” he said. When he kissed the palm of her hand, his tongue giving it a sensual lick, she clenched her legs together when she felt the instant wetness between her thighs that his caress invoked. Her treacherous kitty cat was acting a fool. Give her a sample of dick and she didn’t know how to act! Although it hadn’t been an ordinary sample, Lilliana thought with a silent laugh.
“Yes, you assume right. I don’t want this to end,” she admitted.
“Would you like to go out to dinner this week? How does Tuesday sound?” he asked and she agreed. After they secured the time and date, Josh kissed her, lingeringly, and left.
After the door closed behind him, Lilliana leaned against the heavy oak, a deep, satisfied smile of contentment crossing her face before she let out a laugh. Wait till she told her girls.
8
“Ooh, mami! Somebody is way too happy for a Monday morning!” Lee grumbled as he plopped down in his cubicle, next to Lilliana.
“What are you talking about?” She accepted the coffee he held out for her.
“Please lower your voice! Do you have to yell like that, chica?”
“Okay, first off, I’m not yelling. Secondly, it’s Wednesday and not Monday. You’ve lost a few days, I think…still sick?” she asked and turned back toward her work when she saw the way Ms. Hillman was eyeballing her as she stood at the front of their section, speaking to one of the other assistants.
“Something like that. Who in the hell gets the flu in the middle of a heat wave?” Lee blew out a frustrated breath when he couldn’t open the bottle of pills in his hand.
Lilliana took pity on him and removed the bottle from his struggling fingers, shook out two of the tablets and handed them to him. With a thankful murmur he swallowed the pills and took a careful drink of his coffee. “Oh, God. The next time I decide to hook up with a blind date, who I was warned was sick…shoot me, okay? Just shoot me. The things we do for love, or the potential for love,” he groaned.
“That bad?” Lilliana laughed.
“That bad.” He focused his scrutinizing dark gaze on her. “Now you, on the other hand…you’re positively glowing. Care to share why? Spill. Wait a minute…ooooh. You got some! That’s what’s going on with you! I knew it. When you came sashaying in here late last Monday I knew something was going on!”
“Just now noticing that? Had you decided to come into work last week, you probably would have noticed the glow then,” she told him and rolled her eyes.
“I already told you that wasn’t my fault!”
“As far as that goes, had you shown up for work yesterday or stayed the entire time Monday, you’d know the scoop,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “Now you have to wait ’til lunch. That is, if you decide to stay that long. Get back to work, we’ll talk later.” She laughed at the moue he made but turned away anyway to start working.
Lee had been ill all of last week and the beginning of this one, and Lilliana found that she really wanted to talk to someone about her burgeoning relationship with Joshua. She’d found herself avoiding Simone and Melinda’s phone calls for almost a week, until she’d finally decided to check her answering machine and wasn’t surprised that they’d both left several messages.
Actually, between the two of them, they’d left over a dozen. Lilliana had listened but had not called her friends back until her lunch break. Melinda begged for details, but Lilliana hadn’t been ready to disclose what happened between she and Josh until just yesterday when they’d met up at Simone’s club, and she’d finally told them about her developing relationship.
“The club is hopping for a Wednesday night! What’s going on tonight?” Lilliana asked as she and Melinda threaded their way through the early evening crowd toward the reserved table that Simone had set aside for them.
“This is the second week of speed dating. Remember Simone started it last week? She told us about it last weekend. You should have come, it was fun!” Melinda spoke loudly above the music, loud hum of conversation, and ringing bells notifying the couples when it was time to move on to the next table and the next date.
“Did you go? I didn’t know that! Did you actually participate?” Lilliana asked as they finally made it to their booth and she scooted toward the middle of the leather booth and made room for Melinda to sit.
“Yes, I did. It was fun…wasn’t like I was doing anything else,” she muttered with a disgusted look plastered on her face.
Lilliana didn’t have time to ask further in-depth questions as Simone came up to their booth, looking flushed and excited.
“Wow, Simone! This is awesome. Was it busy like this last week, too?” Lilliana asked after they’d exchanged hugs and Simone sat on the edge of the booth seat.
“Girl, yes! I think it is the best promotional idea yet! Business on Wednesday night has picked up significantly in just the two weeks we’ve been doing date night,” she said with satisfaction, as she waved her hand to get the waiter’s attention, and ordered drinks for them.
“Well, it’s hopping, that’s for sure,” Lilliana agreed and the women caught up with the gossip
of what had been happening in their lives.
After they finished playing catch-up, Lilliana was sipping her virgin daiquiri when she felt the burning gaze of her friends. “What?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious.
You know why we’re looking at you…give up the goodies,” Simone spoke around her straw. “We want all the details about this hot young thing you’ve been hanging around, and you’d better not leave out any details. We want to know the who, what, when, and how. When you let him rock you, what it was like…and girl…just how good was it, and from that grin on your face, my guess is that it was, is, damn good!”
With that pronouncement, Simone sat back in the booth, crossed her arms over her chest, eyebrows raised, waiting to hear the juicy details of her friend’s newfound love interest.
“Not only was it damn good,” Lilliana said and paused for effect, “ladies, I had no idea how good it could be when the right man spanks that ass…just right.” She didn’t try and stop the blissful smile from crossing her face before she happily gave up the goodies on her relationship with Josh.
9
“Dang it. I need blueberries and all he has is raspberries…Simone, have you ever made raspberry pancakes?” Lilliana muttered, looking into the back of Joshua’s fruit bin in the refrigerator as she spoke on the phone to her friend early Saturday morning. She’d spent the night with Josh and had gotten up early in order to make him breakfast.
“No, you’re not making him blueberry pancakes!”
“Yep, sure am…and homemade at that!”
“It’s like that, huh? He put it on you so hard you’re making homemade pancakes…oooh, go girl!”
“Sim! You’ve no idea…yum! We already, um, used the strawberries and whipped topping last night so I have to improvise for my pancakes!” Lilliana laughed happily, feeling no shame in her game.
“Ooooh…you so nasty!” Simone chortled. “I can see your fast behind now, running around the kitchen in flip-flops, wearing his shirt and no damn panties on…damn hussy!”
“Not flip-flops, got on socks instead.”
Lilliana looked down at her garb and refrained from laughing out loud. Besides the flip-flops, Simone had nailed it. She’d gotten up less than an hour ago and after she’d kissed a groggy Josh good morning she’d grabbed the nearest thing, which happened to be his T-shirt, and pulled it over her head. She’d pulled on a pair of his socks and scrunched them down. Sans panties, she’d left the bedroom and made her way down to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
“Well, I’m no culinary expert, you know how I avoid the whole domesticated thing.”
Lilliana could picture the look of disgust on her friend’s face as she said the word “domesticated” and refrained from laughing. Simone was as far from domesticated as any woman could possibly be and took pleasure in reminding a man of that, if one ever mistakenly thought she wanted more than fun and good times from him.
“Yeah, I know. I could be experiencing PMS—I feel kind of irrational. So…speaking of domesticated and all of that, when are you going to place the ad for someone to…” Lilliana allowed the sentence to trail off and waited.
“Spank my ass?” The laugh Simone gave was short and to Lilliana’s ears sounded forced. “Ummm. Who knows? Soon, I guess. Anyway, tell me what you and the young wonder stud have planned this weekend,” she asked lightly.
Lilliana was tempted to call her out but refrained. They’d made the agreement that when they’d placed their ads they would decide when and if they wanted to share the details with each other. So for now, she let it go.
“Ummm. Well, let’s see. After I make breakfast I’ll go serve it in bed to him. After that, I figure it should be around lunch time…”
“Nasty heffa. Go on, I’m listening,” she giggled and they both laughed.
“Uncle Allen isn’t as bad as you make him out to be, Lan. I think you need to either come to terms with the fact that dad alone made the decision to leave, or let the shit go. Either way, it’s time to move on,” Josh said to his brother. He held the phone away from his jaw as he stared at his face in the bathroom mirror and rolled the electric razor over his morning stubble.
Usually when his brother talked about their uncle or their father, a hard knot of stress would ball up in the pit of his gut. He didn’t like to think too much about the hows and whys of his father leaving. He’d been so young at the time, and besides, his father had been busy with the business when he was there. The truth was Josh hadn’t ever been particularly close with him.
When his father had disappeared, leaving only a note saying he no longer wanted to be a part of the family or the business, Josh had felt the sting of his betrayal like the rest of the family. But for his older brothers, particularly Landon, it had been worse.
“Does this mean you’re not coming home this year for the holidays?” he asked, moving his jaw side to side and examining his shave.
“I don’t know yet. Depends on this mission. If it’s over by then…I may,” Landon hedged.
In addition to his distrust of their uncle, Landon was in Special Forces. Athough Josh could never tell the exact nature of what he did or where he went, Landon was able to tell the family enough to let them know when he was okay and in the country, which was rare. 24/7, Lan lived and breathed Black Ops, which made his next statement even more surprising.
“Maybe I’ll take leave. Come home and check out what’s going on.”
“You? Take a vacation? What brought this on?”
“We don’t call it ‘vacation,’ you damn pussy,” Landon guffawed, “It’s called leave. We take leave from duties. And I want to check out this woman who’s got my baby brother’s shorts in a knot,” he finished.
“She’s got more than my shorts in a knot, man. She’s got my heart. And I know you don’t like Uncle Allen, but he helped me out and made sure Lilly got hired on full time at the firm,” Josh said as he sat down on the end of the bed.
“What did he do that was so great?”
“All I had to do was ask and he made sure it happened. It was pitiful, man. She was working as a temp, no medical or dental, making God-knows-what an hour. Hell, she couldn’t even go to a doctor’s office to get her birth control pills, she said she went to the damn free clinic to get them! I told Uncle Allen I needed him to get her on full time…”
“It’s the least he could do. Hell, you own stock in the damn company, it’s as much yours as his,” his brother interrupted.
“That may be true, but he still helped me out of a jam. I didn’t know what I was going to do about Lilliana, but Uncle Allen got me out of that. I knew she wouldn’t accept anything from me directly, but she needed medical. She needed a stable job and Allen helped me take care of it. He’s not as bad as you think.” Josh’s voice trailed off when he heard a gasp and looked up to see Lilliana standing in the doorway with a tray, wearing his T-shirt and a murderous expression on her face.
He mumbled a goodbye to his brother and quickly got off the phone and stood to walk over to her. He could tell by her expression she was pissed off. Her next words confirmed it.
“You manipulative son-of-a-bitch!” She threw the tray down, food splattering everywhere, and spun around to leave the room
Damn. She’d overheard his conversation.
Lilliana had never been so hurt in her life. He sounded way too much like Marcus. Just another full-of-himself asshole who hid it better, that was all. She didn’t need another man taking care of her. She didn’t need another man thinking she was useless. She didn’t need another man who would tell her she was a leech and a waste of space. She didn’t need another man…tears were running down her face when Josh grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him, his breathing harsh.
“What the hell is wrong? What did I do that was so bad?” he asked, confusion etched harshly on his face.
“I don’t need you, or any other man to take care of me! I’ve been doing that since I was a child! I am more than capable of taking
care of myself. So thank you and your rich Uncle Allen,” she said, her breathing just as harsh as his, “but no fuckin’ thanks! You’re no better than that jackass I was with for twelve years! Well, I learned my lesson. It may have taken my dumb behind twelve years, but I finally learned! Nobody has to take care of me! You’re just a silly boy trying to be a man…no damn thanks!” She tried to jerk her arm away from his, but he held on. His grip didn’t hurt her, but she sure as hell couldn’t get out of it.
“Oh, okay. You think I’m no better than Marcus? You think I’d hurt you? Make fun of you and hit you? Treat you like shit and demand you fuck me? Is that what you think, Lilliana?” The look on his face was fierce and set. Lilliana panicked and tried to strike him as she increased her struggle to escape his hold. He simply allowed his hands to slip down her arms and held her above the wrist, effectively preventing her from hitting him or getting away.
“Get your damn hands off me, Josh! I mean it, let me go!” She struggled and yelled out in surprise when he suddenly lifted her into his arms and angrily strode back into the bedroom and slammed the door closed.
“Just in case you get too loud, I wouldn’t want the neighbors to know what I’m doing to you,” he muttered grimly and tossed her on the bed.
Before she could do more than bounce a few times on the firm mattress, he’d reached into a side drawer and withdrew several long strips of black leather. With obvious expertise, he had her bound and trussed, her hands behind her back and her ankles securely fastened, so fast she didn’t know what hit her.
“You can’t trust me, Lilly? Think I’d hurt you, baby?” he whispered hotly in her ear, just before he ripped the T-shirt she was wearing completely off her body and flipped her onto her belly.
“What—what are you going to do?” she asked, apprehension, fear, and…excitement all pooling together in her belly as she waited to see what he’d say, what he would do to her.