Taken (Thornton Brothers Book 3)
Page 15
Tyler inched closer and drew back the hair from my shoulder, exposing my neck. “Flaunting it in her face?” he repeated, before placing a kiss right on the spot that he knew made me melt.
I sighed and tilted my head, allowing him better access. “I haven’t seen her in months. There has been zero flaunting. I just don’t understand her sometimes. She goes on about how I need to settle down, and even though she knows the truth about Derek and what he did, in her mind, I still belong with him.”
“You don’t belong with him,” he said, his voice less playful than it was before.
“Sometimes I just wish she would leave me alone. She has an opinion on everything. Even my photography of the casino. She says it’s a sin.” I knew I was rambling.
“A sin?” he mumbled. His mouth had found its way across my collarbone and was starting to dip between my breasts.
“Not the photography, the actual casino because of the gambling.”
Tyler lifted his head. “Are you done yet?”
I smiled. “Maybe.”
“There’s something extremely appealing when you get all flustered and annoyed like this.”
“There is?”
Tyler kissed my mouth, blocking the words that were about to fall. “Extremely,” he said. “But it’s time to kiss me now.”
Pushing me back onto the bed, he leaned over me and claimed my mouth as his own. His hand slid up the inside of my shirt, running over my flesh until he cupped my breast, massaging the soft flesh through the lace of my bra. My nipple hardened and his fingers toyed with the buttons of my shirt until it fell open, and his mouth dipped to take me. His tongue felt like velvet and the lace felt rough. When he lifted his head the white lace had turned translucent with moisture and Tyler groaned, reaching down to adjust the hardness straining against the material of his pants.
“We need to stop,” I said, even as I arched my chest towards his mouth again.
Tyler dipped his head to the other breast. “Ah, huh,” he agreed. “But I can’t leave you uneven. It would be unfair.” He sucked my flesh, eliciting a sharp breath of air that filled my lungs.
“There are people waiting for you to return to the card game.”
Tyler rolled away, throwing his arm over his eyes. “But I don’t want to. I’m all worked up now. Tell them to leave.”
“I can’t.” I whacked his arm playfully. “It’s rude.”
“I don’t care.” Tyler stretched into the air and then pulled himself off the bed. “No, you’re right. It’s rude getting you to tell them to leave. I will.”
“Tyler!” I dove after him, gripping onto the material of his shirt to hold him back. He swung the door open and poked his head into the lounge. “Game’s over,” he said. “Go home.”
I poked my head around the edge of the door. “He’s only joking.”
“I’m not. Go.”
Jake stretched into the air. “Anyone care to retire this to my level? It’s not quite at the same stage as this, yet, but at least we can play a few hands of poker without the fear of losing everything to Ty.”
Sadie pushed out her chair and stood. “I’m keen.”
“Seriously, you guys don’t have to leave,” I told them.
Sadie winked. “I think Tyler has other ideas.”
Tyler smirked. “I do.”
My phone started ringing in my bag and I hurriedly did up the buttons of my shirt before running to grab it. I stupidly pressed accept before checking who was calling.
“Hi Dad,” I said, rolling my eyes. Tyler shook his head, slicing across his throat—cut the line—as the others gathered their stuff and headed out the door with a wave.
“Your mother is rather upset,” Dad began.
“She told you, did she?”
“You know how she is. She’s certain that she’s losing you. She says you’ve been dating this man for a while now. We want to know why you didn’t tell us earlier.”
“We want to know, or she wants to know?”
Tyler came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, his hands massaging my flesh, moving further and further up me until they pressed against my breasts. I gave him a playful, warning look and pulled away.
Dad sighed. “Does it matter?”
“I’m thirty now, Dad, a little past the age where I need to call my parents if I date someone.” Tyler leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and a playful pout on his mouth. Once my gaze was directed his way, he uncrossed his arms and began to unbutton his shirt, moving his hips to unheard music and wiggling his brows in a comically sexy way. Even though he was just teasing, a wave of desire shot through me as his shirt fell to the floor. I shook my head and turned away, determined not to be distracted by him, and tuned back into my father’s voice.
“But not past the age of keeping your parents informed concerning your life. How did you think we felt after assuming you were still with that young man—” Dad paused, searching for his name.
“Gabe,” I said.
“Yes, Gabe,” Dad repeated. “And yet your sister informs us you’ve been with his brother for months. We need to meet him, Lauren. If he’s part of your life, he’s part of ours too.”
I sat down on the couch. Tyler had dropped to all fours, playfully crawling across the ground until he was so close, I had to stop him with my foot pressed against his shoulder.
“I know, Dad,” I said, though I was a little unsure of what I was admitting. “And you will get the chance to meet him, I promise.” Tyler grabbed my foot and tossed my shoe away, running his hands up my leg.
“When?” Dad asked.
As Tyler’s hand ran up the inside of my thigh, I let out a hiss of air. “Shit,” I panted down the phone.
“Lauren!” Dad exclaimed. I never swore in front of my parents.
“Sorry, Dad.” I widened my eyes and shook my head at Tyler. “That wasn’t meant for you.” I inwardly cursed as Tyler’s attention to the inside of my thigh continued. I placed my foot back on his shoulder and pushed him away. Tyler chuckled silently as he got to his feet, arms held up in surrender, and walked to the bedroom.
Mother’s voice sounded in the background and Dad spoke again. “So when are we going to get to meet this man?”
“Soon,” I replied.
Dad sighed and repeated my answer to Mother. I could hear her asking for the phone and Dad held it away as he answered but I still heard him. “I’m dealing with it, just like you asked, Clementine. She said soon.”
Tyler appeared back out of the bedroom dressed in the grey sweatpants I was such a fan of, and shirtless. Another thing I was a fan of. He flopped down on the couch beside me, lifted his laptop to his lap and placed his glasses over his nose. He was gorgeous all the time but I loved him most like this. Academia and sex. He winked at me before giving his attention to the screen.
“Look, Dad, I’ve got to go now, okay. But I’ll call again soon and arrange for us to get together.”
“We care about you, Lauren. We want to know what’s going on in your life.” His voice was weary.
“I know, Dad.”
I sighed deeply when I hung up. Talking to my parents drained me in a way that talking with no one else did. Needing to get out of my work clothes, I lifted myself from the couch and headed towards the bedroom. I needed a hot shower, clean pyjamas and a good TV show.
Tyler caught my wrist as I walked past, the pressure of my skin between his thumb and forefinger once again sending shivers through me. It scared me how easily Tyler turned me on. I was hungry for his touch. My body cried out for him and melted to a liquid when it got what it wanted. I felt vulnerable around him, knowing that I would succumb to his every whim.
“Come back here.” Tyler placed his laptop on the ground and sat up a little on the couch, creating more space for me to sit between his legs. His hands wrapped over my shoulders and his thumbs dug into my skin, creating circles as he massaged. The pent up anxiety began to seep from me, allowing me to sag against him
as his fingers worked magic on my neck, shoulders and back.
“Would it help if we went down for a visit?” Tyler asked.
Distracted by the movement of his hands, I barely heard what he said but I mumbled some sort of approval.
“Do you want to go this weekend? I’ve got a few meetings but I’ll see if I can get Sadie to reschedule them.”
Suddenly aware of what he said, I shook my head. “No,” I said quickly.
“You don’t want me to meet them?” He sounded a little surprised, and his voice tightened.
“Yes, of course,” I said, straightening my back and leaning forward as his hands massaged the lower portion. “I’m just not ready for it yet. I like where we are now. Meeting my parents would only ruin it.”
Tyler laughed. “I highly doubt that. Meeting the people that created you would be wonderful.”
I looked over my shoulder, smirking and lifting my eyebrows. “I bet you won’t say that after you meet them. Dad’s great, but Mother…” I let the words trail off, partly because there was no real way to finish the sentence and partly because I just wanted to get lost in what his hands were doing.
“Well, I would like to meet them at some stage,” Tyler said.
“Same,” I replied.
“You already have.”
“Not your mother. What’s she like?” The first wife of Hamish Thornton was rarely mentioned. “Does she live nearby?”
Tyler froze for an instant. He was silent, then his hands moved over my back once again, but his voice was robotic. “She lives over on the West Coast.”
I twisted around to look at him. “So I will get to meet her soon?”
Tyler’s hands kept moving but his voice was dead. “There are some issues we need to work through.”
“Issues?”
Tyler nodded, his attention firmly fixed on the knot he had suddenly found in my shoulder. I squirmed as his fingers dug in deeply, enjoying the painful pleasure.
“Issues,” he repeated.
“Hers or ours?”
“Mine,” Tyler said. The way he said it left no room for questions. I wasn’t ready for Tyler to meet my parents so I could understand why he might be hesitant for me to meet his mother. From what Jake had told me, I knew the woman had battled some demons in her life.
19
LAUREN
Six weeks turned into ten. The young couple renting my house down home were happy to continue to do so, although I packed Smudge into a carrier and brought him to the city. Each Friday I met Billie for lunch and I took photography jobs in the city that lined up one after the other until I wondered why I hadn’t done it sooner. We printed some business cards and Tyler even discussed building an office on the lower level of the building as a base to work from. They were small jobs, a day here, a week there, but they paid the bills and I enjoyed it far more than making coffee, though I missed the contact with Peta.
Tyler was more than happy to see me stay on, though stress at work had begun to eat away at him. He never discussed it with me, but more and more times he would leave the room to take a phone call and his raised voice would float through the walls.
One night his cell phone rang at three o’clock in the morning, and Tyler’s sleep drenched voice answered it quietly as he climbed out of bed, trying not to wake me, closing himself off in the bathroom. He didn’t quite close the door fully, so I tiptoed over and watched him through the crack. He paced the polished concrete floor, one hand tugging on the roots of his hair as he listened. He tried to talk on occasion but whoever was on the other end of the line clearly was in no mood for interruptions. Blowing an exasperated stream of air up his face, Tyler turned and caught me peering at him through the crack in the door. He smiled sweetly and sadly. His naked body shone in the light of the moon streaming in through the window. Unaroused, his member hung heavily between his thighs. My gaze travelled over his body unashamedly as he listened, dark eyes locked on mine. I usually wore one of his t-shirts to bed, one that his scent clung to, one that made me dream of him even as he lay beside me, and my nipples hardened against the white material. I opened the door a little more, allowing the light from the window to pool over me and Tyler’s eyes dropped to my chest and then slowly roamed over the rest of my body as he replied in short direct answers to the person on the phone. I took a step closer and his cock twitched and began to rise, growing with each step I took towards him. He reached out and brushed a finger over my nipple, watching as it hardened further and beaded beneath the flimsy material. Taking my nipple between his thumb and his finger he rolled it, pinching hard enough for me to draw in my breath sharply. His cock was now fully engorged and I took him in my hand, wrapped my fingers around his hardness, and stroked up and down as his eyes rolled back in his head before fixing back on my body. As he lifted the hem of the t-shirt, I raised my arms over my head and he peeled the material away. His free hand skimmed over my body while the other held his phone to his ear. The voice on the other end was slurred and broken. It sounded like his father, but a drunk Hamish, a messy and broken Hamish.
“I’ve got to go now,” Tyler said. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
The voice on the other end complained, but Tyler hung up.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Tyler lowered his head and took my mouth with his, crushing my lips as he kissed me passionately. His cock pushed into the base of my belly, and Tyler dipped until it slipped between my legs and slid along the slickness it found. I ran my hands over his shoulders and chest. Everything about him strained with tension and trembled under my touch.
“I’m worried about you,” I whispered into his ear. “You’re too tense. You need to relax. Maybe you should have some pot,” I suggested, laughing because of his reaction the time he found Jake, Gabe and I stoned in the basement of his parents’ house.
Tyler reeled back. “Seriously?” he spat. “Drugs?”
I blinked. “I was only kidding. Though from the way you just reacted, it might not do you any harm.”
Tyler turned away from me and strode over to the window, looking out over the lights of the city with the fullness of the moon above them. I followed and wrapped my arms around his waist, my hands falling to the hardness between his legs. But he grabbed my hands and removed them from his body. “Not now,” he said dismissively.
Resting my chin on his shoulder, I pressed my body against his but did not touch him in any other way. “Is it because of your mother?” Even though I didn’t think it possible, the tension in Tyler’s body tightened. “Jake mentioned something,” I continued. “He said something about her having a dependency.”
“It was years ago.”
“What happened?” I asked. I kept my voice as quiet as possible, trying not to break the spell of melancholy that had descended over him. As sad as it was to see, there was something so vulnerable and needy about him in that moment, a sadness that was hard to resist.
“When she and Dad were younger and just starting up the business, they were introduced to a world of high rollers, one that revolved around gambling and drinking, drugs and parties. Both of them indulged on occasion, but when Dad left, Mum’s affection for that ‘state of oblivion’ as she called it, became more of an addiction. It’s why we lived with Dad. Mum didn’t want to challenge him for custody because she didn’t want her dependency getting out. As I grew up, she attended countless rehabilitation facilities but it just never stuck. She would give up for weeks, sometimes even months, but then something would happen she couldn’t deal with and the cycle would start all over again. Jake doesn’t remember it like I do. Being a couple of years younger, his memories aren’t the same. Besides, I shielded him from most of it. He never once saw her in agony, never once held her hair back as she vomited, promising that she would never indulge again, only to find her in a similar state the next day. Drugs weren’t her only addiction.”
“So what happened? How did she finally beat it?”
“Go back to bed,” he said, pulling one of my hands to his mouth and kissing the back of it. “I’ll be there soon.”
I left him flooded in a pool of moonlight and climbed back into bed, my eyelids already drooping as I pulled the sheets to my chin. But even after Tyler slipped out the door, leaving me alone, I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept thinking of him so sad and lonely in the moonlight. I was torn by the desire to comfort him and his seeming want to be left alone.
At some stage, I must have fallen asleep because, when I woke a little while later, the moon had shifted its position in the sky, but Tyler’s side of the bed was still empty and cold. Pulling a dressing gown over my naked body, I padded across the floor and pulled open the door, but the loft was deserted.
“Tyler?” I called into the dimly lit room, the only light coming from the moon and the city lights. But no reply came. A slice of panic cut through my chest. I ran over to the elevator and pushed the buttons to stop on the second floor, the floor he had dedicated to his gym. Even before the doors opened I could hear weights crashing to the ground.
A single light shone over him. He crouched over a weight bar, no longer naked, but with only his grey pants covering him. Fingers white with chalk wrapped around the metal bar and sweat dripped from his forehead. He flexed, straightening his back, straining the muscles across his chest into position, and then let out a cry as he lifted the weight in one fluid motion and rested it on his shoulders. He took a few deep breaths, dipped, and lifted the weight over his head before lowering it back to his shoulders and then to the ground before repeating it again. I watched him do it over and over. Sweat poured from his body and his muscles trembled with the effort, but the only time he took a break was to add more weight and then he would repeat the process again. He added more and more until he could no longer lift it, although he continued to try, muscles quivering, face red with exertion. Frustrated with his inability to lift the weight, he cursed and let the bar fall to the ground, banging loudly as it bounced. With a heaving chest, he bent over, pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes and letting out a frustrated grunt before picking up a weighted ball and tossing it into the wall.