Chapter 22

22

Tripp

When I get out of the bathroom, my bed's freshly made, my phone's plugged in and charging on my nightstand, and there's a note that dinner's waiting for me downstairs.

It's been a long while since my cock's gotten any mouth action, and I'm both embarrassed at how quickly I came, and also relaxed in a way I haven't been in so long, I forgot my shoulders could unwind.

Lila .

She's not at all what I expected. And now that the adrenaline has left my system, I can acknowledge that finding a retirement-age dude sitting on my back porch making vague threats doesn't even hit the top ten list of most uncomfortable situations I've ever been in.

Davis would say I'm getting played.

Cash would vote for playing her right back.

Levi would tell me to keep the kids out of it, but have fun, because how many smart, sexy women are there in this world who'd want to put up with me?

Beck would take her at face value and tell me life's too short to second-guess a chance at real happiness. The hurt happens, man. But you have to risk it to be happy .

Not that he took much of his own advice before Sarah, and god knows I know about the hurt.

He'd also tell me that when you know, you know .

Probably shouldn't take advice from a guy who knew after the love of his life tasered him, but he has a point. I've known from the minute I bumped into Lila at that club in New York.

And she keeps coming back.

Until now.

She's not in the kitchen, but the grilled cheese sandwich she left out is still hot, so she can't have gone far. I text the security team, and they confirm she hasn't left the house.

Which means she's probably headed to bed.

My cock twitches.

I tell it to simmer down. We're going slow and easy.

After I eat, I check on my kids again, then head to the playroom.

My paranoia's better, but it still dies hard. And a man might be able to get around an electronic security system, but I know no one who can survive The Toys.

I'm scattering Duplos and Matchbox cars under the front windows when I hear a noise behind me.

Lila's watching me from the hallway to the guest room. Her eyes are guarded, and she has her arms tucked around her waist like she needs a hug. "Extra home security system?" she asks, eyeballing the foyer in addition to the windows.

I might've rigged a toybox to fall over and spill toy kitchen supplies if anyone opens the door.

"You've seen Home Alone ."

"I really am sorry," she whispers. "If there was a way I could prove to you that he won't do it again?—"

"It's okay."

Her exasperated look almost makes me smile, which isn't something I would've thought I could do an hour ago.

"It's not the first time any of us have had unexpected visitors, you know." Now that my panic is receding, I have a desperate need to assure her I have a handle on this. That it's not actually unusual, and that she shouldn't feel bad about me feeling the need to booby-trap my own house tonight. "Cash got home to two brothers having a poker game to win a camel in his living room once."

" What? "

I finish shaking out the box of Duplos in front of the window and cross the room to her. "And there was this time that Beck found six drunk baseball players playing hide-and-seek in his weekend house in the mountains."

"Fireballs players?"

"Nope."

"Tripp."

"I'm not protecting any of our players. It's the truth. They were Cooper Rock's former college teammates. He lives next door to Beck's place. Guys got the address confused."

"They didn't figure out their mistake when they got inside?"

"Well, yeah, but Beck has a game room that puts arcades to shame. You know any drunk twenty-something guys who'd voluntarily leave a house with unlimited Frogger and Ms. Pac-Man?"

"They don't have kids," she says quietly. "And those were random accidents where no one was potentially in real danger. And they don't spend two hours a day rubbing hand sanitizer all over themselves because they already have enough other paranoias."

My face gets warm at her calling out my habit, but I swallow back the embarrassment and I tip her chin up, so fucking glad to be touching her again. "You worry about my kids."

"They didn't ask for any of this. Neither did you."

"And you? Did you ask for weird relatives and your mom to work a job you couldn't talk about?"

"That's different."

"The only difference is you've been living with it for…what? Twenty years? A couple decades of keeping friends at a distance because the people who are supposed to love you the most are the people who fuck you up the most too? We're not supposed to be alone, Lila. And it's not your fault that you are."

"I'm a grown woman. That's on me if I'm alone."

"It's on the people who buried you in secrets that you shouldn't have to keep. You should've spent your entire life thinking your mom worked at a bank, and instead, you have to lie to everyone you meet because it was drilled into your head when you were a teenager that if people know who you are, you're not safe. That's not on you . And that's not your fault."

"Why do you believe me?"

"Because if you were just trying to get on my good side, you wouldn't be firing entire coaching staffs and ordering last-minute photo shoots with players and their pets for promotional calendars and dressing me in cat-leprechaun shirts."

Finally— finally —an amused spark comes back to her eyes, and she gently touches the design on my T-shirt. "You're not going to kick me out?"

"I missed you."

"But you didn't know me."

"You're faking being a hard-working, intelligent businesswoman who's been studying under a billionaire since college and who wants to turn her family's ball team around?"

"It's more complicated?—"

"You're faking being a woman who lost her parents too young?"

She blinks away the shine in her eyes. "I wouldn't be nearly as nice to me if I were in your shoes."

"You don't know what all goes into these shoes."

She studies me like she's waiting for the punchline.

But there's not a punchline, and it's bruising my heart to realize that for as alone as I've felt since Jessie died, I've got nothing on Lila.

My two years to her twenty.

"If I thought all you were was a woman who doesn't like to talk about where her mother worked and the interesting relatives she's picked up along the way, then I'd have to be nothing more than that former boy band guy whose famous wife died too young. But honestly? I prefer to think about you with a big glob of strawberry daiquiri in your hair, because you smiled at me that night. You smiled at me like I was just a man helping a gorgeous woman. You made me feel normal, and attractive in my own right, and aroused, and worthy of moving on with my life and finding something for me ."

"I thought you'd stepped out of the pages of a romance novel," she whispers.

" That's the Lila I know," I whisper back.

"I don't think talking about romance novels will go over so well at the league owners' meeting."

"Fuck 'em. They couldn't do what you're doing."

God, I love her smile. That spark of mischief coming back into her eyes. The feel of her body pressed against mine.

"You mean this?" She palms my hard-on, and all rational thought leaves my brain.

My lips clash with hers. My hands find her breasts. Her breathy moan makes me impossibly harder, and suddenly I'm backing her down the hallway to the guest suite, fumbling with the doorknob, falling to the bed, stroking and licking and suckling her skin while we tear each other's clothes off.

She's seen me naked.

It's my turn to see her.

To reassure her with my body of all the promises I'm making to her, that I accept she has her complications, but god knows I have my own.

Life isn't simple.

But it's a hell of a lot better when you have someone to share it with. And there's no one in the world who could appreciate that more than someone else who's been doing it alone for so long.

"I missed you too," she gasps as I finally get my hands on the bare skin on her belly. Her breasts are held in black lace, and if I thought I was hard before, I'm steel-plated iron now.

"When?" I ask as I lick a trail from her belly button to those two gorgeous mounds.

"Every time I tried to read a book."

"Was I your hero, Lila?" I blow on the wet trail I've left over her skin.

"Could only— oh, god, yes —think of you."

I tease her nipples through the lace. Fuck , she's beautiful. "Did you touch yourself?"

"And so much more."

Her legs loop around my waist, rubbing the soft, worn fabric of her jeans against my skin. "Did you say my name?"

"You ask too many questions."

"I already thought about you every time I was in the shower. Now—fuck, Lila, I'm never showering again without a hard-on."

She twists under me, and suddenly I'm pinned to the bed. She reaches around and pulls her ponytail out, and all that gorgeous hair cascades down her shoulders.

My already achingly hard cock strains into the cradle of her thighs, but she's not done.

Oh, no.

She pushes one bra strap off her shoulder. Then the other. Reaches behind herself again, arching her back and lifting her breasts until she unhooks the clasp and the lace falls away.

"So fucking gorgeous," I murmur while my hands go to her bare breasts, my thumbs brushing over the tight pink tips.

She gasps, arches her head back, and holds my hands to her chest. "More."

More .

Definitely more. More Lila. More kisses. More touching. More rocking my cock against her hot center.

More sucking on these sweet nipples.

More making her moan.

More slipping my hand under the waistband of those damn jeans to find her slick folds and her hidden, swollen clit.

" Tripp ," she gasps.

I slip one finger inside her, still suckling on her breast, and her walls clench and spasm around me, hard and fast, like maybe I'm not the only one with a hair-trigger here.

She strains into her climax, riding my hand and holding my head to her breast while she moans out a long, slow release.

And I bask in every minute of knowing that she wants me as badly as I want her.

"Tripp," she whispers as her body melts against me, the last spasms fading.

"You're fucking gorgeous." I'm hoarse. My cock is throbbing like she didn't coax an orgasm out of me herself barely an hour ago.

And I want to stay here, in this bed, with her, all night long.

All week long.

All damn month long.

Her mouth finds mine, and she kisses me hard and deep, our tongues gliding together, our arms tangling around each other. She scrapes her nails down my back. I push her pants lower and dig my fingers into her curvy ass.

She thrusts her center against my cock.

And all I can see is getting her completely naked.

Stripped bare.

Driving into her hot, wet pussy, and drowning in her.

I'm clumsy and sloppy and uncoordinated as I yank at her jeans. She reaches between us and pulls my cock out of my sweatpants, stroking me once, twice, until I have to stop her. "Want inside you," I grunt.

" Yes ." She kicks her pants off. Her eyes are wide and dark. Her cheeks are flushed. Her breasts are lifting quickly as her breath comes in fast bursts.

I get one sneak peek at that sweet pussy, and then she's pulling me on top of her, and I'm sliding inside her, and fuck , I'm home.

I moan.

She moans.

We both stop, for just a moment, while I adjust to being gripped by her body, and?—

"Condom," I gasp.

Jesus.

Jessie was pregnant, then uninterested, then sick, and—I didn't—it's been—I haven't needed?—

"I'm on birth control," Lila whispers while she rocks against me, taking me deeper inside her, making my world flash in Technicolor. "I'm clean."

"You're sure this is okay?" The words are rough, because I'm suddenly not sure of anything except for how badly I want to thrust into Lila until I can't think, can't move, can't breathe, can't exist without carrying a part of her with me.

"Make love to me, Tripp."

Yep.

I'm gone.

I drive deep, pull back, and drive in again, letting her pussy stroke me and squeeze me and her gasps and yes es and more s urge me on while she holds my gaze, those bright green eyes asking for pleasure, for acceptance, for forgiveness, for love .

Who does she have to love?

Her hair is tangled all over the pillow. Her lips parted, her eyelids drifting lower.

It's the vision I've jacked off to in the shower more than once, but better.

Because she's here .

Meeting me stroke for stroke.

Caressing my face. Holding me captive.

"God, yes, Tripp, there ."

I thrust once, twice more, and she's suddenly gripping my cock so tight my eyes cross and my own release spills out of me. I grind into her hard, holding myself steady while everything inside me erupts and her pussy spasms and clenches and her legs go straight in the air while she moans out that wheezy release that makes me want to get hard all over again before I'm even done coming.

Too soon, I'm collapsing on top of her, burying my face in her neck.

We're both panting.

Her legs curl around me again, holding me inside her while her arms snake around my ribs. Moisture touches my ear as she inhales a shaky breath.

I lift my head.

Her eyes are clenched shut tight. So's her mouth. Her nostrils are quivering, and a single trail of tears leaks out of the corner of her eye.

"Lila?"

"I'm going to deserve you, Tripp Wilson. Just wait."

"I'm no saint, sweetheart. You don't have to do much."

She shakes her head, then opens her eyes and meets my gaze head on.

"I'm going to deserve you," she repeats.

"Can we do this again in the meantime?"

I get a reluctant laugh and a smile. But what I'm really looking for is the nod that eventually comes.

"Good. Because I don't think I can ever get enough of you," I murmur.

"You know you'll be saying different as soon as you get back to the office."

"Yep."

She laughs again, and I drop a kiss to her forehead. "You're not alone, Lila. I've got you."