by Lexi Hunter
His eyes were wet and I knew this meant as much to him as it did to me. He leaned into me and kissed my lips. It was like a fairy tale kiss, the kind where a sleeping princess awakens after years of neglect to find her prince waiting for her, eager to start their new life together.
And then, with one final push, Liam went as far as he could go. I felt him fill me, his heat rushing through my blood. The surge of electricity was too much and I couldn't control anything about my body any longer. Liam didn't want me to. I clenched my legs together around his waist, locking us together like I was a boa constrictor and he was my prey. My back arched and my legs trembled as the room went white then faded to dark. Liam and I became one in a trembling blur that shook the Earth, then we fell together exhausted, amazed at what had just happened.
CHAPTER 10
Forever
I LAY IN his arms for what felt like hours. The heat of his chest warmed my skin, which was cold with sweat now. I shivered and he wrapped himself tighter around me.
I waited for him to say something, then realized he was doing the same. "Amazing," was all I could whisper. I felt his head nod and shifted my arm so that it lay across his chest.
"I think..." he said, struggling for words, "You've changed me. Forever."
I smiled, wishing I could express myself as eloquently. "I never thought I could trust anyone again. I thought all men were dogs."
"Woof," Liam said. I giggled. "Seriously Jackie. I locked this part of my life away long ago. I thought I was okay with it. Tonight... tonight you showed me just how wrong I was."
I savored his words. They made me feel special. I knew that to Liam, I was special. "I don't want to leave," I told him, knowing that we should probably get dressed and get out before Grandfather got back. I hoped his date was going well so that Liam and I didn't have to rush.
"I..." Liam started, then paused, searching for the words. Finally, he settled for shaking his head and saying, "You've ruined me for other women." A smile played at the corners of his mouth and I couldn't help return it.
"Good," I said, wanting to find some way to tell him how much this had meant to me too. How, in one night, he'd given me everything that had been missing from my life. Even the things I hadn't known about.
"You'll always have me," was all I could say. I hoped it was enough. He turned on his side and kissed me. His lips were still warm and still tasted like red velvet cake. I was glad that wasn't something that would fade now that the sex was over. I reached out a hand, searching his body for the electric tingle I'd felt since first meeting him, relieved to find it was still there too, even sharper than before.
"Do you feel that?" I asked him.
"You mean that spark? It's been pulling me to you since I got here. I don't think it's going away."
"Good."
My body felt like it was glowing, and it was only when we heard the front door open that we let each other go and got dressed.
EPILOGUE
Love
MY COMMUNITY SERVICE ended with summer, but my parents were still angry. Seems I hadn't learned quite enough from my punishment. Also, I'd accidentally ruined the tile in Grandfather's kitchen the last time I was there by dropping a mallet on it—five times. I'd only gotten the mallet out from the garage because I was trying to fix a kitchen cabinet I saw hanging in a strange way. I thought if I banged on it a few times the hinges would straighten out. Too bad it fell off instead.
My Grandfather was livid. My parents were pissed. Luckily, Liam was a contractor. He could do all the repair work himself, he said, and wouldn't even have to hire out for help as long as I agreed to be his assistant. My parents threatened to kick me out if I didn't agree. I hemmed and hawed, but finally conceded to do the work with Liam.
It was too bad Grandfather hated construction work so much. He refused to be at the house while we were working. And seeing as how I was learning as I went, it was going to take quite a while before we were done. I was late getting home almost every night, but what could I do? My parents were happy I was learning a skill that might actually be useful. The other day, I mentioned to Liam that the faucet upstairs was leaking.
"When we're done in the kitchen, maybe we should take a look at it," he said.
"Why don't you hand me that mallet, and I'll go look at it now? Wouldn't want to leave anything to chance." I winked at him.
"Hurry back. I'm planning to make you do all the work today."
He smacked my butt as I turned away and giggled up the stairs. "Love you," he called after me. I froze on the steps for a moment, my breath coming in short erratic bursts. Did he just say...? He did!
Sound natural.
"Love you too," I called out. I stood a moment, waiting uncertainly, then heard Liam expel the breath he'd been holding.
I sailed up the stairs, humming an old love song I'd never understood till now. I was grateful for that day, three months ago, when Aaron had destroyed my heart. If he hadn't destroyed it then, Liam could never have built it back up. And this time, it was a steel frame structure.
EXCERPT: Still Living Hard: Caught by the Seal
PRELUDE
Confession
THE ANTIQUE SMELL of the tiny phone booth-like structure made me feel old and claustrophobic. I knelt down and made the sign I'd seen others do so many times in the movies. I hoped I was doing it right. In my twenty-one years, I'd never stepped foot inside a church. My parents didn't believe in religion. If it didn't make them money, then they weren't interested. A soft thud sounded from the adjoining booth and a small screen slid back to reveal patches of white skin and dim light.
I swished my dark hair behind my head and kept my eyes cast down as if this priest could see through walls. My porcelain skin almost glowed in the darkness of the booth where I knelt.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."
A deep voice responded, kind but perfunctory: "How long has it been since your last confession, my child?"
"Um... I've never confessed before."
"Never?" He could not hide his surprise.
"Well, I don't really go to church. My parents aren't very religious. A friend of mine goes here."
"I see." I could feel his eyes squinting through the screen, searching with renewed interest. Goosebumps broke out on my arms as a soft breeze blew past me. Why did I feel naked?
"How old are you my child?"
"I just turned twenty-one."
A soft chuckle sprung from the back of the priest's throat, driving a tinge of annoyance through my blood. Is he laughing at me?
"You're much too young to have done anything of serious consequence."
"Oh, Father... I wish that were true."
"Alright." I could hear the indulgent smile in his voice. "What is it that you would like to confess?"
I didn't know how to say it... I hadn't told anyone. No one would have understood. I took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled my confession:
"I seduced my father's best friend!"
CHAPTER 1
Milestones
I WOKE UP on my twenty-first birthday, hot and achy. Grandfather's guest room was much too warm (he kept the thermostat well above seventy-five) and the bed was more than uncomfortable. I still didn't understand why, at the age of twenty-one, my parents felt I needed a babysitter while they were on their cruise.
The thought of their untimely vacation still stung. Though I hadn't admitted it to anyone, my feelings had been deeply hurt by their absence on what most people considered a milestone birthday. That, coupled with their insistence that I stay with Grandfather, left me bitter when I should have been euphoric. I pictured my father's face as he told me that he and Mom wouldn't be here.
"I'm sorry Kaitlyn. We booked the trip without thinking." I knew he felt guilty but his eyes sparkled too much for genuine sorrow. He looked like a kid at Christmas. "Your mom found a great deal. Half price you know. That's really difficult to find these days." He spit the words out in a high-toned voice that betrayed ex
citement.
I tried to smile. "It's fine Dad." My lips gave me away, though. I turned my head a tad too slow to hide the tremble of my bottom lip. A thick lump rose in my throat.
I heard Dad inhale, deep and steady, then blow it back out. "If it's that important to you, Katie, maybe we can change—"
That's when Mom burst into the kitchen, her smile almost as dazzling as her bleached hair. She took one look at me and my father and assessed the situation.
"Kaitlyn, you're a grown girl now and don't need us to stay with you every second of the day. You're about to graduate college. You're twenty-one."
"Not yet," I interrupted. "That's kind of the point. How can you guys miss my birthday?"
She looked at me, her eyes growing red. "What can I do? Don't I deserve a vacation?" She could tell I wasn't buying it. "Half price, Kaitlyn," she said, trying a different approach. "They were half price!" There was an awkward pause while she tried to come up with a way to fix this that didn't involve too much exertion on her part. "Would a hundred bucks do anything for you?"
The idea to stay with Grandfather had also Mom's. Of course it had. I was more than old enough to stay alone at the house, but that didn't mean my mother trusted me there. She had too many highly breakable antiques. They were her babies. More precious than her own family. I was twenty-one, little better than an adolescent.
It was times like these I wished I'd gone away to school. So how did my mom get me to stay with grandfather during their trip? Easy. She guilted me into it, of course. Mom was an expert at manipulation.
"He's so old, Kaitlyn. He could fall at any time. What if he broke his hip and died? How would you feel then? Do you want your grandfather to die?"
I'd pointed out that people didn't die from broken hips, but that had only sent her into a flurry of fake tears designed to get me to do what she wanted. I was twenty-one and still falling for the same old shit.
Grandpa really was having a harder time getting around the closer he got to seventy-five, though, which for him marked the "point of no return," as he liked to call it. I could hear his voice inside my head, discounting his increasing age—Two more years Kaitlyn, two more. I ain't there yet, don't shortchange me—and most days it felt like I was babysitting him. But then that was the idea.
I rolled around grandpa's spare bed, trying to find a spot that didn't make my body sore. I couldn't blame Grandfather's rock hard bed alone for my aching back. I'd been tossing and turning all night thinking about him. Daxton Hunter. My dad's best friend and my only consolation prize for being stuck here at grandpa's. I knew I was bound to run into him while visiting.
Daxton was only forty, and he was everything my own father wasn't. I don’t know whether it was the years he'd spent as a Navy Seal that had kept his body chiseled and golden or the motorcycles he chose to ride—there was something so sensual about the swift flash of chrome as Daxton roared up our driveway—but where my father and grandfather seemed old and feeble, Daxton was young and vibrant. Where my dad pooped out long before nine o'clock, Dax could keep going until the wee small hours.
I'd often wondered how it was possible that two so seemingly different people could be friends, but then I'd remember that father had joined the Navy at the same time as Daxton. Father had barely made it through basic, though, while Daxton had been recruited to one of the most elite teams of soldiers ever created. Still, they'd spent a lot of time together in Afghanistan. Daxton had even saved my father's life when a tanker exploded. He'd been a part of the family ever since.
It wasn't just Daxton's masculinity that made my own body tingle whenever he was around—the man was a knockout. When other men looked at themselves in the mirror, it was Daxton they pictured. Whether or not they'd ever laid eyes on him before didn't matter, Daxton was simply the ideal man that all others aspired to be.
With rock hard abs that dipped in and out in wild waves of muscle, men in their twenties looked at Daxton with burning jealousy. Long, dark hair with fell from his head in lush ripples I longed to run my hands through. I just knew it would be soft and silky if I were to reach out and touch it. The perfect contrast to his hard, hot body.
Daxton was at our house all the time. He was at Grandfather's almost as often. Grandfather had a giant pool in his backyard which Daxton used frequently. My grandfather had a soft spot for him since he'd saved my dad's life, and Dax had free rein to use the pool as often as he wished. He even had a key to Grandfather's house.
The funny thing was, as often as Dax was over, he'd never get more than his feet into the pool. He'd sit on the edge of it, staring into the water with a faraway look that made my heart ache for him. Once, I'd asked my father about it, and he'd told me that Dax had some sort of "accident" when he was in the war. He didn't know the details, though, or if he did, he didn't share them with me.
My phone buzzed on my nightstand, breaking my fantasy. I cast an annoyed look in its direction, knowing it was Ethan. He hadn't stopped texting me since I'd left him in the parking lot of IHOP two weeks ago. I didn't know why he was still bothering with me, except that he was a control freak who couldn't take no for an answer. My hand instinctively went to the cheek which still bore the dark purple bruise from where he'd slammed my face into the car door
No girl in their right mind would have anything to do with Ethan. Especially not me. Especially not after catching him in the backseat of my Chevy with Brittany Meyers just before I turned twenty-one. Talk about a double whammy. First, my parents abandon me, then Ethan betrays me.
What was it that he'd said when I'd opened the door to my Cavalier and found them together? Oh yeah, "Fuck off, we're not through." When I'd refused to let him get away with that, he'd gotten out of the car and knocked my head into the door.
***
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EXCERPT: Mr. Bad Boy: Teacher's Pet
CHAPTER 1
Rites of Passage
I WAITED WITH my friends, searching the stands for my parents. I spotted my mother standing in the bleachers, waving like a bee had just flown up her shirt. Dad was next to her, shielding his eyes from the sun with the commencement program.
"Abigail Wilson," Principal Grady's voice called across the football stadium. My parents jumped up and down as I stood, walking up the red carpet path to accept my diploma. It wasn't my real diploma, of course. Just a few days before school had ended, I'd found out that my English grade had plummeted so much at the end of the semester that I'd have to do my senior year of English all over again—in summer school.
I had fought hard when Principal Grady called me into his office.
***
"Abbi," Principal Grady said, shaking his head. "I'm afraid I have bad news. Though after talking with Mr. Montoya, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise."
I'd known then what he was going to say. I pushed a stray strand of dark brown hair behind my ears and crossed my legs, fidgeting. I ran one hand over my curvy hips, wondering, for a moment, if Principal Grady could be induced into giving me extra credit for my voluptuous body and ocean blue eyes.
"I've already called your parents," he continued, skipping over the part where he officially informed me of my failing English grade. I guess he assumed my silence was acknowledgment enough.
"You called my parents?" I squealed. "But I'm eighteen!"
I thought that being an adult now meant my parents didn't get called for every stupid little thing, like failing your senior English class. It was a dumb class anyway. Mr. Montoya hated me.
Don't blame Mr. Montoya. Blame Connor. And that skank Tara.
Fine. It wasn't Mr. Montoya's fault that I'd skipped so many classes, but it wasn't mine either. How could anyone be expected to go to class when their boyfriend—I mean ex-boyfriend—was making out two seats over with your best friend—I mean ex-best friend.
If Principal Grady's ex-wife and her lover—a rumor that had started after Christmas break and been proven true when Pri
ncipal Grady started coming in to work with a five o'clock shadow and smelling of yesterday's trash—had both worked at the school, would people have expected him to come in to work every day and act as if nothing was wrong?
Perhaps it was my expression of that very sentiment that made him decide to cut me a break.
"Please Principal Grady," I begged, bursting into tears. "I thought you of all people would understand. Isn't it enough that Connor dumped me right before prom? I already missed the biggest social event of my entire life, are you really gonna make me miss graduation too?"
I knew that in the grand scheme of things like life, death, and marriage, high school prom was pretty low down the list. But it was still a critical rite of passage for high school kids. I had only turned eighteen two months ago. I wasn't used to thinking like an adult. And despite my new and improved age, my parents certainly didn't think of me as an adult.
My parents had told me to go to prom with my friends. Stag, my dad had called it. I'd rolled my eyes and questioned whether or not they'd ever been teenagers. Not having a date at prom was like not having a groom at your wedding.
Luckily for me, my break-up with Connor had been so disastrous that word had even gotten back to Principal Grady about it. That tends to happen when you walk in on your boyfriend and best friend having sex in your bed in your house at your eighteenth birthday party. Under such circumstances, word travels fast. Also lucky for me was the fact that my parents decided—after finding me asleep on the living room floor three nights in a row—that turning eighteen was such a big deal that I deserved one additional birthday present—a brand new bed.
It was almost certainly the combination of my often retold and now legendary party/break-up, as well as Principal Grady's own passing acquaintanceship with having been cheated on, that created a sort of kindred bond between us and saved me now.