Badd Daddy (The Badd Brothers Book 12) Read online

  I leaned down, sliding my lips over hers, fitting them together like puzzle pieces. She breathed into my mouth, writhed her tongue on mine, palmed the back of my head and lowest part of my back. One hand braced on the bed, I cupped her cheek. Found the strap of her slip, drew it down over one shoulder, and then the other.

  As I tugged the silk down, I kissed her while she gasped against my lips. Her breasts popped out over the top of the bodice, and I reared back to look at her. I gazed at her, in awe at the sight her bare skin—the pale tan of her areolae and the thick plumpness of her nipples and the round swell of her breasts swaying as she gasped.

  She watched me, and my roving hand. I bit her lip as I ran my palm up her stomach. Her eyes slid closed for a moment, and then flew open as I caressed her breasts, first one and then the other.

  She whimpered.

  She gasped as I flicked her nipple, and rubbed it with my thumb. She became breathless as I lowered my mouth and kissed her chest, across her breastbone and down the valley between her breasts and then across one, suckling her nipple into my mouth and tasting its sweetness…moving on to the other side, circling around the underside with kisses, running the flat of my tongue over the hard, erect nub of flesh that was her nipple. She sucked in a sharp breath and held it.

  “Lucas…” she breathed. “Oh god…oh god.”

  I was hunger. I was need. It consumed me, then. A fire I didn’t know had been simmering inside me, a need I didn’t know had been building in me swelled, took over.

  I needed to see her—all of her. I needed to feel her flush against me. I needed…I needed things I’d not felt in so, so long. I needed them with her.

  I shifted my balance so I was on my knees above her, her tiny delicate but strong and gorgeous body beneath me. I leaned down over her and kissed her lips. She carved her hands all over me, cupping my buttocks over the khaki of my shorts, and then sought the waistline, the button under my navel.

  I let her.

  She freed the button, tugged the shorts down, and I kicked them away, kneeling over her in nothing but a pair of black briefs. Her hands slid over my waist, to my ass, up my back to my shoulders, all over. I couldn’t get enough. Feel enough.

  Need won, then.

  Impatient, ruled by an all-consuming need to have this perfect, beautiful creature bare in my hands and under my lips, I gripped the neckline of her slip in both hands and ripped it open—halfway down at first, with a growl. Liv shrieked in breathless surprise, and then I yanked again and the nightie was open, and her glorious, mouth-watering, heart-stopping body was utterly bare.

  “Holy shit, Lucas, you could’ve just taken it off,” she gasped, laughing.

  I ran my hands over her, belly to throat, breasts to hipbones. Her underwear was nothing but a tiny triangle of white, outlining her sex and leaving her hipbones bare.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Wasn’t sentimental, was it?”

  She laughed again, shaking her head even as her eyes betrayed a myriad of conflicting emotions. “No—I bought it a few months ago, thinking I’d do something indulgent for myself, but I just felt silly wearing it.” Despite the steadiness of her voice, her eyes shimmered and her breaths came short and quick, her flat stomach flexing in and out, her lower lip trembling.

  “You don’t look silly in it, that’s for goddamn sure,” I growled. “You’re fuckin’ perfect, Olivia.”

  I palmed her stomach, flattening my hand over her navel—my hand was so big and she was so small my hand nearly spanned her entire torso.

  “Lucas…” she breathed.

  I bent, touching my lips to her stomach, her diaphragm. The tender flesh on the underside of her breast. She gasped wordlessly, cupping the back of my head, one arm wrapped around my shoulders. I flicked my tongue over her nipple, and she whimpered, her entire body shaking.

  I kissed her gently, breast and nipple, throat and belly, and my fingers stole down to the waist of her underwear. This time, I restrained the urge to rip them off. I slid them downward, and her thighs pressed together.

  Her breath caught. “Lucas—” She slithered away, thighs trembling, pressed tight. “I—wait. Wait.” She swallowed hard, tangling her fingers in mine. “It’s too much, too fast.” Stung, feeling rejected, I pulled away, but she kept hold of me through our intertwined hands. “Lucas, I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t want…you, I just…”

  I let out a slow breath to steady myself, and then tugged the blanket over so she could cover herself; she let out a grateful sigh as she pressed the comforter to her chest.

  “It picked up heat pretty quick, I guess,” I said, sinking back to sit on the bed next to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push you into anything you ain’t ready for.”

  She slid her palm against mine, tucked her fingers between mine. “I came down dressed in a negligee, Lucas. I came down wanting to…explore things with you.” She hesitated. “I don’t know how to…how to navigate this. My feelings are so complicated, and—” Her eyes watered. “I don’t want you to think I’m rejecting you, that I don’t want to kiss you, that I didn’t enjoy…” she fluttered a hand at me, the bed, “…all that. I did. But I’m just—I’m confused. So confused.”

  I hopped off the bed, went to my dresser and got a T-shirt out of the top drawer, which I gave to Liv. She shrugged into it, laughing quietly as the garment hung on her like a dress ten sizes too big—it covered her, though, and she rolled up the sleeves past her elbows.

  “Talk to me, Liv.”

  She shook her head, swallowing hard. “I don’t know how.”

  I cradled her close. “Liv, if you want to just kiss, we just kiss. You want to sit here and talk about nothin’, we sit here and talk about nothin’. You want to try to tell me what’s on your mind, I’ll listen with an open mind. You want me to just take you home, I’ll take you home. This is whatever you need, sweetheart.” This time, it wasn’t just an idle word, that sweetheart—I meant it, deeply. “I just wanna understand.”

  She rubbed her face with both hands, and then rejoined our hands. “I’ll try.”

  14

  Liv

  God, where to start?

  I didn’t know what I was feeling myself, much less how to articulate it in a way that Lucas would understand. Why had I stopped? I’d been enjoying his touch, his kisses— quite possibly more than I’d ever enjoyed anything like this…ever.

  Ah, and there it is.

  That’s the reason behind my full-on anxiety attack. I was masking it, hiding it, but I was in a full anxiety attack at the moment, unable to breathe, trembling, head spinning and racing.

  I didn’t know how to calm down. I couldn’t catch my breath.

  I exhaled long and hard, and then breathed in for a slow count of four, held it for a slow four count, and then let it out for another slow four count. I repeated this…twice, three times, four, and it was helping, but I still couldn’t quite get a grip on myself.

  Lucas slid over to me, wrapped a thick, burly, strong arm around my shoulders, and tucked me against his massive chest. His bare skin was warm and soft, the muscle hard yet pliant. I could hear his heartbeat—whum-WHUMP-whum-WHUMP-whum-WHUMP. His embrace enveloped me; his scent subsumed me—the male woodsy scent that defined him.

  “Breathe, Liv. It’s okay.” His rough, rumbling voice hummed through me.

  I nodded, and after a few minutes of breathing and focusing on nothing but my breath and Lucas’s calming presence all around me, I was able to begin some kind of a start to the explanation Lucas deserved.

  “I was with Darren for thirty years—we met in middle school, started dating when I was sixteen, married when I was twenty-one.” I paused a moment, closed my eyes and continued; Lucas’s heartbeat thumped quietly and reassuringly under my ear. “He was my first—my everything. First hand I ever held, first kiss, first sexual experience—and I was his, too. My entire life, there had only been Darren. Until just now, I’ve never…felt anything with anyone but Darren. Never kissed
another man, never held another man’s hand, never snuggled in bed…nothing.” I felt myself getting emotional, but I knew there was no way to get through this without crying, and I didn’t try to hold it back; my eyes misted, my throat closed around a hot lump, but I kept going.

  “When he died, I… I can’t begin to explain how devastated I was. I didn’t get out of bed for a week. Cried nearly the entire time, barely ate or drank—I lost fifteen pounds, and had to be hospitalized for dehydration.”

  “Jesus, Liv.”

  “He was my whole world, my entire life. I’d not really even liked another boy, except for those stupid crushes you get in middle school. He was my first love.”

  “And then you lost him.”

  I nodded. “I had to learn how to live—and I had to learn things all over again. He paid the bills, got the oil changed, put gas in the cars, did most of the driving, except for when I was working. He even did a lot of the cooking, because he was such a foodie. I had to learn how to do everything all on my own. My girls helped, but I couldn’t lean on them too much, you know? They’d just lost their dad.” I sucked in a breath; held it, let it out slowly. “The point to all this is that I never dated. I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to…to even think about another man the way I—the way Darren had been for me. Where was I supposed to even start? He knew every single thing about me. Everything. He knew when my cycle was coming before I did, he knew my most obscure dislikes, and he knew my past, because he was my past. How I could even begin to let anyone else into my life?”

  Lucas was quiet, not breaking the silence that now fell over the room.

  But I’d started the flood, and now it all poured out. “I don’t have anything to compare it to, obviously, but I thought my sex life with Darren was…fulfilling. I don’t know if you want to hear about this, especially after you and I just—”

  “I want to understand, Liv,” Lucas said. “There’s nothing I don’t want to hear. Sure, hearing about your sex life with your husband may be a little uncomfortable, but I can’t understand you without understanding that.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it too much either, because it’s…I don’t want to say private, or sacred, but…it was ours, Darren’s and mine.”

  “I understand completely, Liv. Like I said, I just want to…” he sighed. “I want to know you. I want to understand you.”

  I nodded. “When you have a relationship with the same person for thirty years, there are a lot of layers and levels and nuances to it. It shifts and changes with time. At first, being just kids, it was clumsy and crazy and spontaneous, and…reckless, at times. Then as we grew closer and more comfortable with each other, it sort of evened out. We discovered what worked for us, and what didn’t. Then, as we started to age a little, post-forty and such, things…I don’t want to say cooled off, but slowed down some. It wasn’t as much of a priority for either of us.” I sighed. “I suppose to really make this worth the telling, I have to be truthful with myself, huh?”

  “Probably.”

  I wiped tears away. “The truth, then, is that the cooling off came more from Darren. I guess it was a symptom of his declining health. I thought it was a normal middle-aged male…thing, but I don’t know for sure. I just knew that he still loved me as much as ever, and was as attracted to me as ever, but the initiation of sex came more and more from me instead of him, and with teenaged girls to raise, and an exploding career as an interior designer to balance, my energy and time were…not always there. And then, about six months before he died, he threw out his back, and all sex stopped completely.”

  “Jeez. That’s rough.”

  I shifted and ran my hand over his chest, his shoulder, finding comfort in simply touching his skin. “I…I don’t know how to—how to encapsulate it all.” I blinked hard. “I loved Darren, and he loved me.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “But in the years since his death, and since meeting you, and now with what you and I just shared, I guess I’m realizing some things about my sexual relationship with Darren that I never knew before.”

  “Like?” Lucas prompted.

  “Like the fact that I was pretty unsatisfied, sexually, for the last…three, maybe even four years of my marriage with Darren. When we did have sex, it was…not perfunctory, but just…” I shook my head, dislodging tears that I didn’t wipe away. “I don’t know. I was left feeling like there was something I wanted, something I needed that I wasn’t getting. I used to get it from our relationship, but that wasn’t happening anymore. What that is, I’m still not sure. I don’t know. I just know it was…something.”

  “Passion?”

  I shook my head. “No…well, maybe. I mean, after thirty years, passion becomes something else I don’t know we have a word for. It’s not always…high-octane fire, you know?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t. I was never with anyone long enough to know about that. But if you’re passionate about someone, I guess I’d personally find it hard to believe that just goes away. But what do I know?”

  I blinked, tried to breathe normally—but couldn’t. “I don’t want to disrespect my memory of Darren. I loved our life together. I wasn’t unhappy.”

  “I don’t want to put anything negative on it either, Liv. You used the word sacred earlier, and I guess I think that would apply, you know?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but my point is that I have to be honest with myself, because I’m dealing with these feelings inside myself that I don’t know how to navigate.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the fact that with you just now, I felt more alive, and more…desired, than…than I have in a long, long, long time. That kind of hurts, because it means I wasn’t feeling that from the man I spent my entire life with, and I don’t know what to do with that fact. I can’t deny what I had with Darren, but I also can’t ignore what I feel with you.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Amazing. Passionate. Womanly. ” I swallowed hard, twisting my head to meet his eyes. “Desired…needy.”

  “Needy, huh?”

  I nodded. “I feel out of control. Since we met I felt like if I didn’t push down and hold back my attraction to you, I would just…lose all control over it, and I’m scared to do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because healing and learning to move on has been an exercise in learning to control my feelings. Learning to live through the grief, to let it just be there without letting it take over and stop me from living my life. I’ve had anxiety attacks pretty regularly, too, and I’ve had to learn to deal with those—life just overwhelms me sometimes and sometimes I feel like I’ll never be able to start again. It’s been about control.” I had to pause for a long time to figure out how to say the next part. “Since Darren died, I’ve been shut down, sexually. I just couldn’t think about myself as a sexual being anymore, because my identity as a woman, as a sexual being, had been so completely tied up in him, in us.”

  “And then suddenly you have these desires for someone else,” he guessed.

  I nodded. “Very, very powerful feelings,” I said, looking up at him. “Very, very, very powerful desires. It’s confusing and, as you can tell, it’s messing with my mind.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Being around you is confusing. It’s hard. And now that we’ve crossed over into a physical relationship, I’m even more confused. Because I…I want you. I need…what you were making me feel. It’s been so long since I’ve felt any kind of physical pleasure at all, and now that I’ve had a taste of it, I need more.”

  “So, a question.”

  I glanced at him. “Yes?”

  “You said any kind of physical pleasure.” He hesitated. “Does that mean even on your own?”

  I blushed, ducked my head, nodding. “Yeah.”

  “Damn.”

  “Well, you have to understand, that was never something I…did.” I swallowed hard. “I, um. From the very start of my body changing and discoverin
g sexual feelings as a young girl, it was tied up completely in my relationship with Darren. I didn’t…um…I never masturbated—ever. I didn’t need to, or want to—I had Darren. Sex meant Darren. Need, desire, release, all that, it was all about him.”

  He mused silently. “Literally, everything was wrapped up in your husband.”

  I nodded. “Yes. Entirely.”

  “And when he died, you lost…” he trailed off, unsure how to put it.

  “I lost sex as an aspect of my life. I don’t know how to…do that. How to go there, on my own. How to let myself feel things, want things, have things…that aren’t him. It’s not just habit, at this point, it’s the instincts developed as a part of my personality. And now there’s you, and my sexuality is…it’s…” I shook my head, trying to find the words and failing. “I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams, exploding from the inside out, like everything I know about myself is in question. I learned how to get my oil changed and how to pay bills and fill up the gas tank and live alone, how to take care of myself without needing anyone. But I don’t know how to relearn my sexuality. I don’t even know where to start.”

  Lucas was quiet for a long time, and I knew I had to give him the space to work through what I was saying. Shoot, I needed time myself, because I’d never put any of this in so many words, even with my therapists—this was a topic too deep and dark and difficult even for therapy.

  Yet somehow, I could talk about it with Lucas?

  “I think there’s a question in there somewhere, but I don’t know how to ask it.” He paused, scratched his goatee. “I ain’t gonna lie, I like you and want you in a way I didn’t know was possible. For the first time in forty years, I can heal from what happened with Lena. And that is you. Getting healthy, fixing myself and my relationship with the boys, that’s me, for myself. But getting over Lena? That’s you. She’s gone, Liam’s gone, it’s all years past, now. But for me, she was always present, because I didn’t know how to let her go. Then I met you, and I realized I was just fixed on her because no one could compare in my mind.” He looked down at me. “You put her to shame. You eclipse her, in every possible way. My feelings for you make what I felt for her, what I may or may not have had with her—what I thought I had with her—seem like a fart in a hurricane.” He laughed. “Sorry, that’s vulgar and gross. Point is, I can’t deny it, can’t pretend it isn’t as huge as it is. But I can say I’m willing to wait, willing to take this as slow as you need, and I’m sorry if I rushed you into things you weren’t ready for.”