Lila’s eyes fluttered closed, once more, and she nearly entertained that idea.
Her stomach growled, again.
Chase met her gaze, nipple still implanted between his lips, and matched her laugh. His eyes closed tightly as the laughter nearly overwhelmed him. Soon, her nipple had fallen from between his lips as his happiness, paradoxically, rendered him unable to keep hold of it.
--
On her way into the house, Lila swiped up her silk robe from where she’d left it hanging along the railing of the deck. Chase’s white swim trucks hung next to her robe, and she turned towards the water as she slipped the silk over her arms. He was still on the beach, stretching naked in the sand. His hard muscles rolled under his skin with every stretch, reminded her of what a beautiful man he’d grown into.
She tightened the robe around her body, hoping that Frank and Bitsy had enough food in the fridge to feed him. If he was hungry enough, Chase could eat a horse, and they’d been neglecting themselves in the name of love making for nearly twenty-four hours. Whatever was in that fridge, she concluded, would not be there for much longer.
Turning back to the house, Lila slid open the sliding glass door and stepped inside.
The sight that met her stopped her cold.
Bitsy Halloway and her husband, Frank, were just closing the front door of the house. Rows of suitcases lined the foyer.
Lila froze in mid-step.
Bitsy was the first to see her, just happening to look towards the backyard as Frank was removing his windbreaker. Her blue eyes went wide in shock the moment they landed on Lila. For a moment, she seemed frightened.
Blind as a bat, she adjusted her bifocals, frowning, taking a step deeper into the foyer.
It would be almost comical if Lila weren’t so terrified.
Recognition eventually washed over Bitsy, just as Frank turned into the house and caught sight of Lila, as well.
“Lila?” Bitsy beamed in half question, half excitement. She shook her head in shock, making her short, silver hair wobble. “What in the world?”
Lila sputtered for something, anything, to say.
“Hello, Lila,” Frank smiled.
Bitsy and Frank were familiar with Lila. Back in Manhattan, she’d spent nearly every moment of her waking life entrenched in the lives of their only two grandsons. Wherever Jack and Chase were, Lila was never far behind.
That was apparently true even outside of Manhattan, at their vacation home in Portland, Maine.
As Bitsy and Frank watched her with curious, raised eyebrows, waiting for an explanation, Lila heard the sliding door being pushed open behind her, and her eyes jammed shut.
She didn’t look back to him, but she heard Chase inhale sharply, and she knew he’d spotted Frank and Bitsy, too.
“Chase!” Bitsy cried out, still frozen in the foyer.
Lila’s eyes opened, and she took in the old woman’s stunned face. It was as if Bitsy couldn’t decide which would’ve been worse, Lila being there with the grandson half her age, or Lila being there with the grandson getting married in a few weeks.
At the moment, Lila couldn’t decide which would’ve been worse, either.
“Are you two here…” Frank motioned between the two of them. “Together?”
Chase came up next to Lila, and when their eyes met, she saw what a great job he was doing to hide the alarm in his eyes, but it was still there. She knew him well enough to see it flashing behind a cleverly executed veil of collectedness.
“No,” Chase said, widening his eyes in Lila’s. “I just brought Lila out here… for research purposes.”
Lila’s eyes grew hooded. Was that the best he had?
“Research purposes?” Bitsy cried. “What on earth about?”
Lila had the same question. It was now her turn to widen her eyes in Chase’s. Wearing nothing but a pair of swim trunks and a silken robe, what the hell did they have to research, outside of what each other’s spunk tasted like?
With a sigh, Lila looked back to the door and met Bitsy and Frank’s eyes. Without a word, she took Chase’s hand.
Chase froze, his eyes shocked when Lila looked back at him. In the next instant, however, his fingers tightened around hers, intertwining. All falsities vanished from his face, replaced with the truest smile.
Lila smiled back, and then returned her gaze to Bitsy and Frank, clutching Chase’s bicep in her other hand. She squeezed it softly, looking for courage. Surprisingly, it gave her some. Feeling his strength somehow made her feel stronger, more resilient.
“I see,” Bitsy breathed, taking in the sight before her. She turned to look at Frank, who didn’t seem the least bit surprised. “Well,” Bitsy said, looking back at the two of them. “It’s about damn time.”
17
“It’s about damn time?” Lila asked, later that afternoon, as she and Bitsy stood side by side in front of the kitchen stove. They were cooking up some quick burritos, the perfect road trip meal, on the six-burner gas range. Bitsy had a pan of vegetables sizzling on one grate, and Lila was working through five pounds of steak on another. The men of the house were in the living room watching sports. Frank had sat down on the couch opposite Chase, offered him a beer, and they’d been sipping away ever since. “That’s all you have to say about finding me alone in this house with your youngest grandson?”
Bitsy moved to the sink with a laugh, her shoulders shaking even as she washed her hands. “Lila, sometimes life doesn’t happen the way it supposed to, but this time…” Bitsy turned off the sink and shook the water from her hands, meeting her eyes. “It absolutely did.”
“I think you’re the only person alive who would say that about Chase and I.”
Bitsy came back up next to her with more supplies, the crackling pan screaming to life when she threw in more veggies.
Lila continued. “Our relationship is not exactly sensible.”
“When is love ever sensible?”
“It’s completely wrong in every way. It would put me in a delicate position at work if anyone were to find out.”
“This feels like a warning,” Bitsy tittered. “No need to warn this old bird. If I’ve learned anything in my old age, it’s to live and let live.”
“I can’t believe you’re so calm about this.”
“Would you rather I start bouncing off the walls in fury? Over something as obvious as you and Chase? It was never a question of if, darling, but only a question of when. I’ve always known it. I knew it before you knew it.” Bitsy laughed heartily, even as Lila’s face remained horrified. “Besides, my grandson is an adult, and Bitsy allows her adult grandsons to make their own adult decisions.”
“Even if that adult decision has already been involved with your other grandson?”
That seemed to sober Bitsy right up, and she placed most of her attention on the vegetables frying in the pan. She took her time holding on to that question, thinking it through, weighing her response. Finally, she looked to Lila. “I know my grandbabies. I know them both inside and out. And I think you do, too.”
Lila lowered her eyes when Bitsy pointed a wooden spoon her way.
“Make no mistake, I love them both deeply. If I were starving, I would give them the last piece of bread in my mouth.” Bitsy shoved the spoon through the air. “But Jack has always been competitive. It’s why he’s such a damn good lawyer. When it comes to winning, he has more zeal in his veins than blood. He gets that from his father. But Chase?” Bitsy went back to the pan, stirring calmly until the sizzles died down. “Chase has always been all about the love. He is his mother’s son, through and through.”
Lila couldn’t help but sigh at those words. “My mother was struggling back in New York City, a little while ago. My baby sister, Danni, committed suicide years ago, and my mother is still in agony over it.”
Bitsy straightened. If she could relate to anything, it was losing a child. Just thinking about the car crash that had taken Jack and Chase’s parents six years ago still broug
ht tears to her eyes in an instant. Thinking of the painful spiral it had sent her grandchildren flying through, one they were both still fighting against, nearly sent those tears tumbling over her eyes. Bitsy knew the dangerous potential a loss like that had. It had the power to spiral completely out of control. Brushing waves of sweltering pain on anyone who stood in its path during its retched, winding journey, corroding straight to the bone and leaving blisters that had the tenacity to linger for years to come.
“I’m sorry,” Bitsy said.
Lila shook her head. “It’s okay. I’m only telling you this because I want you to know what made me decide to take my relationship with Chase to another level. It was because of how he helped my mother. She was low. Really low. I was useless because I can’t stand to see her that way, but Chase was patient with her. He talked to her. He didn’t tell her to forget her pain but to face it. He even gave her…” Lila reached up and fingered her dove necklace. “He gave her that gold locket. The locket his mother gave him?”
Bitsy covered her heart with her hand. She knew the value of that necklace to Chase. He’d even given it to her a couple of times when she’d been on a few downward spirals of her own.
Lila slapped away embarrassing tears that hit her eyes. “I knew, right then, that I loved him. And that fighting that deep love for him, just because there’re ten years between us, was so stupid. He and I should understand, better than anybody, that we only have this one precious life to live--”
“Ain’t that the truth....” Bitsy moaned softly in agreement. “You have to live this life for you, dear. It’s far too short to live in any other way. Chase really does have so much love inside him, sometimes I fear he’ll suffocate himself with it. Especially when it comes to you. That doesn’t come knocking every day. Honestly? I believe it comes once. Once in a lifetime. The luckiest ones find it. The smart ones hold onto it for dear life.”
Lila sighed, blubbering when Bitsy left the wooden spoon in the pan to reach up and help wipe her tears.
“A lot of people will revel in playing judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to you two, but that person will never be me. And please use Frank and my beach house anytime you please. There’s always room here for pure, genuine, once in a lifetime love.” Bitsy wiped one last tear and then slapped Lila’s rear heartily.
Lila yelped.
“Just remember to wash the sheets,” Bitsy winked, and then exploded into giggles, going back to the veggies while shooting Lila a look from the corner of her eyes.
Lila swallowed heavily, happy tears still hitting her eyes. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting from Bitsy, but that wasn’t it. “I’m ten years older than him.”
Bitsy laughed harder. “You are just dead set on being the monster. The villain. I’m twenty years older than Frank. Beat that, sweetheart. If you’re a monster, then so am I. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and sold my soul.”
Lila’s eyes nearly bulged out of her skull, looking out into the living room where Frank sat, in shock. “Twenty years? You guys look the same age.”
“Thank you,” Bitsy said, accepting the compliment. “I’m always told I look twenty years younger, but yes… I robbed the cradle with my second husband. So, I have absolutely no room to judge any woman. Especially not a woman in love.”
Before Lila could stop herself, she wrapped her arms around Bitsy’s shoulders.
Bitsy whooped in surprise and then embraced Lila in return.
“Everything is going to be okay, sweetheart,” Bitsy said, her laughter softening as she patted Lila’s back. “As long as you’ve got the love, everything else will be okay. It’ll have no choice but to be.”
For the first time in a long time, Lila believed that.
--
Lila’s breasts bounced outside her bra, and the opening in her shirt, where Chase had ripped the buttons completely away. He thrust between her splayed legs blindly, nearly taking the table in the middle of the auditorium off its hinges, crying out into her shoulder as he finished.
Lila purred when he gave one final push, locking her legs around his waist until he was no longer panting and shuddering.
They lay embraced in the empty auditorium, clutching each other, fighting hard to catch their breath passed the smiles on their faces, and the euphoria in their hearts.
Her class had ended less than fifteen minutes ago. After an hour-long lecture, sharing heated looks and secret smiles, Lila barely managed to get the doors of the classroom locked before Chase had closed in behind her. He’d pressed his need into her backside, whispering filthy words in her ear.
In their haste to make love, they hadn’t even undressed, stopping their loving caresses only long enough to slip her panties out from under her skirt and his dick from his jeans.
He pulled out of her with regret, standing and tucking himself away.
She sat up in the middle of the table, chest heaving. With trembling fingers, she went to work on the buttons of her shirt, straightening it back into her skirt, which was still bunched up around her naked hips.
Their hot eyes locked as they pulled themselves together, ecstasy-fueled smiles pushing at both their lips.
“I can’t wait until we’re free to fuck on a classroom desk without repercussion,” Chase breathed, hardly able to achieve his joke through his pounding heart, and intense breathing.
Lila took his hand with a roll of her eyes, allowing him to help her down from the desk and onto shaky legs. She grabbed the skirt at her waist and pulled it down. It settled just below her wobbly knees.
Throwing both their bags over his shoulder, Chase took her hand and, with a heavy swallow, began pulling her up the stairs.
She stopped him, pulling back, waiting until he faced her to take her bag off his shoulder.
“I got it,” he resisted.
“No one can see you carrying it,” she reminded him. Her eyes remained hooded, screaming sex, filled with the same love he’d just filled her with on the table--and everything in between--as she gazed up at him.
A slave to her sensual eyes, her innate femininity, he reluctantly released the bag. “I can’t even hold my girlfriends bag.”
“Not yet.” Lila took his hand in hers and squeezed it, reminding him to be patient.
“We’ve only been back in Cambridge for a week, and I already can’t stand it.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind, following the slow path she made up the stairs. “Do you still need me to come over later? Help with that stuff around the house?”
“Please,” Lila moaned. She looked up at the door of the auditorium, dreading the idea of making it to the top. As soon as they made it to the top, they’d have to open that door and resume life in the real world. So wrapped up in their happiness, neither of them were terribly interested, not wanting much to do with what was happening on the other side of that door. “With the promotion, the dean, the provost, The Safe Space, and my broken house, I’m basically maxed out. I could really use the extra help.”
His lips pressed into the back of her neck.
“You’re insatiable,” she laughed. It was never clearer to Lila that, while mature for his age, she was definitely dealing with a nineteen-year-old. Chase was at his sexual peak, and he rarely let a precious second go by without reminding her of that. He made her feel like she was nineteen, again, because she was just as voracious in her need for him. Lila raised her eyes, thinking on that. Perhaps he made her feel forty, and not nineteen, since forty was when most women experienced their sexual peak. Looking over her shoulder and catching his eyes, Lila realized the decades they were born weren’t the reason they couldn’t get enough. They just couldn’t get enough. It was that simple.
His smiling eyes went to her lips. “Just have the garage open and ready for me, so I can swoop in quick without being seen.”
“I will,” she said, as they made it to the top.
They both stopped and stared at the large wooden door, neither making a move to open it.
Finally, Lila pulled her keys from her blazer pocket.
“Hate that sound,” Chase complained as her keys jingled to life. All week long they’d spent time after class, not just fucking, but also talking, learning, growing individually, and with each other. It had quickly become both their favorite time of the day, the one tiny sliver of time where they could just forget the world, the judgmental eyes, and the consequences. They could forget all of that, and just be.
The jingling of those keys had grown to signify the end of that precious sliver of time.
With a sigh, Lila unlocked the door just as his eager lips descended on her neck once more.
“The semester’s almost over,” she purred, reaching behind her and giving his hair a playful pull before stepping away and pulling the door open.
They weren’t touching, and his lips were no longer sucking relentlessly at the salty skin of her neck, but the sight of a young woman standing on the other side of the classroom door, primed to knock, the moment Lila opened it, was enough to steal a horrified scream from the deepest part of Lila’s body.
The young girl nearly jumped out of her shoes, alarmed at Lila’s alarm, her brown eyes going wide, fisted hand frozen high in the air.
Lila tried to recover, straightening her back while turning her body towards Chase. She didn’t look at him, keeping her eyes on the girl before her. How long had she been standing there? What had she heard? Were these walls even soundproof?
Lila’s eyes shot to the ceiling, the door, and the frame that held it. She looked for sound absorbing foam, door gaskets, anything that would reassure her that she and Chase’s irresponsibly loud lovemaking hadn’t seeped out to the other side.
Watching her with amusement, Chase circled around. “Thanks, Professor James,” he said, breaking Lila free from her frantic search. “That was… illuminating.”
Lila snapped to attention, looking at him with a stiff neck and back. “Good study session, Mr. Almeida,” she said, in her best just-another-teacher voice.
Thunder Rolls (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy Book 2) Page 25