Hot Blooded (26 page)

"I'm going to get my dick in all sorts of places, baby, but you're going to have to wait."

"What? Is the neck thing grossing you out?"

I chuckled at her North-Americanism. "No, it isn't 'grossing me out' at all, Lily. I'm just trying to take care of you here. Will you let me do that? I am capable of more things than fighting and fucking, you know."

She looked up at me, then, her eyes softening. "I know you are, idiot. Do you think I don't know that?"

I finished helping Lily wash, then I wrapped her in a big fluffy towel and carried her to the bedroom.

"That was nice," she said as I went about applying a new bandage to her neck. "That was actually really nice."

"What do you mean?"

I don't know why I asked her what she meant. I knew the answer. I just wanted to hear her say it, to confirm that I wasn't the only one surprised by the intimacy of helping her shower.

"I'm not sure. It's weird," she started, speaking very quietly, "sometimes I feel like I go to such a big effort to be strong for everyone else - and for myself, too. Like I have to conceal any weakness or vulnerability from men. I even feel that with you. Just now, in the shower, it felt strange to let you help me at first, but then... Callum, this is embarrassing..."

"Tell me." I said, kissing her shower-flushed cheek as I secured the bandages with surgical tape. Even fresh out of the shower she smelled so good, so herself. I could breathe in the scent of Lily's neck all day.

"Ugh, Callum," she said, smiling uncomfortably and not quite able to look me in the eye. "I just - I really liked it, OK? I mean, I
really
liked it. I liked feeling that you wanted to take care of me and you weren't just trying to get into my pants."

"To be fair, you weren't wearing any pants."

She grinned. "I know. It's hard for me to put this into words, but it didn't feel bad or wrong being like that with you. You know, being weak. All my life I've been pretty paranoid about that, even when I was a little kid. But that felt right. It felt like you were caring for me and I, oh God, Callum, it was just so nice."

She rolled over towards me and put her face on my chest, still self-conscious. I pulled her wet hair off her neck and ran my hand over her shoulders.

"You shouldn't be embarrassed about that, Lily. It's not embarrassing to want to be taken care of. I mean, this is kind of funny because I want to tell you something along the same lines, and now
I'm
all worried about sounding like a dickhead."

Lily pushed herself up on her arms and gave me a look. "Callum, you better goddamned tell me right now. I refuse to be the only person making personal revelations here."

I thought for a few seconds before I said anything. I'd been guilty of saying things I didn't mean before because the moment - or the person I was sharing the moment with - seemed to call for it or expect it somehow. Nothing too big, no declarations of undying love or anything like that, but I’d said plenty of things I didn’t really mean. I didn't want to do that with Lily. And that was precisely why it was making me squirm - because with her, I
did
mean it, I
did
feel it.

"Alright, Lily. I just feel the same thing you did - but in reverse. Something about you makes me want to protect you, take care of you - all that stuff I always knew men were supposed to feel for women and I never really did. Well, not until recently anyway."

"We're idiots," she said, smiling up at me, "aren't we?"

"Speak for yourself, woman," I deadpanned.

"No, I mean it. We're idiots. Why is this stuff so difficult? Why are we both blushing like a couple of teenagers?"

Shit. I was blushing? Shit. I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut and even then, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face.

"You're adorable, Callum. Do you have any idea how adorable you are? I love watching you trying to be all manly while you tell me this stuff."

Lily pulled my t-shirt up over my chest and kissed me slowly, using her tongue just a little. It felt hot and wet against my skin as she kept going, placing kisses all the way down to my abs and continuing on down to my belt.

"Lily." I said, torn between wanting her to go further and being worried about the fact that we were going to have to be very careful, for a little while anyway, until she healed.

I was hard, though, and it was obvious. I looked down and watched her undoing my belt, listening to the sound of the buckle jingling - a sound I had an almost Pavlovian reaction to. The feeling of her breath on the head of my cock made my muscles tighten in anticipation, but she just kept going, kissing all the way down either side of it without quite touching it.

"Lily."

She looked up - well, as far as she could look up without causing herself pain - her dark eyes sparkling devilishly.

"What, Callum?"

Instead of waiting for me to answer, she parted her lips and put her tongue on that spot, the one just on the underside of my head, slowly pushing it back and forth until I was exhaling heavily and my hips lifted off the bed.

"You know," she said, stopping only long enough to get the words out before lowering her head again, "you have a fucking beautiful cock, Callum. I think this-" she kissed me again, right there, "might be my favorite thing in the world."

She wasn't joking, either. I knew she meant what she was telling me. There's something about being given head, a feeling of being worshipped, a feeling of power, and watching Lily do what she was doing, watching her sweet little tongue dart in and out, teasing me, started to stir that lizard-brain aggression inside me. She was very good at doing that. She even commented on it as I helplessly wound my fingers into her damp hair.

"Not feeling so sweet and tender anymore, huh?"

She wasn't quite right, though. I was feeling those things, still, but what she was doing to me brought other things to the surface, pushing everything else to the side except for how fucking perfect her mouth felt. I tried to respond.

"No, uh, Lily, it's not...oh fuck, it's not, ohhh Christ that feels nice, baby."

She giggled. "It's OK, Callum. I love it when you're like this, it does things to me."

She shouldn't have said that. It was like getting a green light after sitting at the red revving your engine. As soon as she opened her lips again I pushed the head of my cock between them and thrust my hips up, moaning at the feeling of her mouth enveloping me. I saw her eyes widen and pulled back, worried I'd hurt her neck, but she immediately said otherwise.

"Don't, Callum. Don't hold back. I don't want you to."

Lily's eyes were dark, almost glazed over with lust, and the fact that she looked like that because she wanted to please me more than anything else was definitely too much. She lowered her lips onto me again, forcing herself down so far I saw her eyes start to water.Her need for me, and her willingness to push herself beyond the limits to do it, had me on the verge of coming so quickly it surprised even me.

"Shit! Lily, shit, wait!" She pulled away and smiled up at me, licking her lips like a cat.

"What, Callum? I want you to come. I want you to come in my mouth, I want you to watch me swallowing it."

And then I truly was done for. She took me again, so far I could feel the back of her throat against my head, and started moving her sweet mouth up and down until I was on the edge, panting and pulling her hair harder than I meant to.

I'd already told her I loved her. But as I looked down and watched her pretty face as I exploded in the back of her mouth, her brows knitting with effort while she swallowed and refused to pull away, I felt it then as the undeniable fact it was. She was perfect. I barely managed to stop myself from moaning those very words to her, over and over as I came.

She waited, too. She waited until every last sweet, aching twitch had seized my cock before she took her mouth away and looked up at me, smiling.

"I think that's the best thing I've ever seen," I told her. I ran my finger down her cheek and watched my own cum drip off her chin. "Fucking hell, Lily."

"Is it? The
best
thing? Well, you haven't seen Canada yet, Callum."

I knew she was being facetious and I was glad of it. Because I'd meant what I said, and on some level it was almost terrifying. If I'd had a ring in my pocket, I would have proposed. If she'd asked me for all my bank details, I would have happily handed them over. If she'd ordered me to slaughter her enemies, I would have done it with a smile on my face.

"That's true, I haven't seen Canada yet. But I'm not sure all those lakes and mountains, beautiful though I'm sure they are, would have anything on you."

She chuckled and rested her head on my bare stomach.

"You know what, Callum?"

"What?"

"I think I'm going to quit my job. I'm just going to do this for the rest of my life, OK? You'll need to buy me food every now and again but that's all that I need. Well, besides this. Do you think that's a good plan?"

"Yes. I think it's the perfect plan. But I don't want to do anything else, either. So we're going to have to move to the forest and live under a tree and just fuck all day, every day. Deal?"

"Deal." She kissed my belly and we were quiet for a few minutes, both of us listening to the sound of my breathing slowing back down to normal. I ran my hand lazily up and down her bare back and enjoyed the feeling of total, drained relaxation permeating my entire body.

I let Callum sleep. I knew that when he woke up, we were going to pick up where we'd left off, and there was a part of me that enjoyed the torture of waiting. Of lying beside him and examining him, every perfect masculine angle and burly muscle, working myself up more and more until I was almost breathless, tingling with anticipation. He didn't sleep for long, either. Twenty minutes. When he woke up he was confused, then he was embarrassed.

"Oh shit, Lily. I fell asleep, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, you horrible beast. How dare you." I laughed.

He made a face and covered his eyes with his hand. "Jesus, I can't believe I did that. I even told myself not to do it. I literally told myself that when I was lying there."

I hooked one of my legs over him and kissed his shoulders. "It's OK, Callum. I want you to sleep. I want you to do whatever the fuck you want, actually. Which is kind of a weird feeling to have about someone else."

He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed his way down my wrist to my palm and then kissed each fingertip, one after the other.

"Is it? I dunno, I kind of like it. I wish everyone felt that way."

It was still a little difficult to look right at Callum, to take in that straight, strong jawline and those deep-set, pale blue eyes. He was lucky I didn't start drooling all over my shirt every time he looked at me.

"I bet you do, pig."

"Pig, huh? You didn't think I was a pig a few minutes ago, did you?"

I moved to crawl onto him, but he must have seen the look on my face. He wrapped one arm around my waist and flipped me effortlessly over onto my back.

"You like that?" He whispered, leaning in close to me and kissing my mouth until my breath caught in my throat. I loved how needy he made me. I loved how easy it was for him.

"Yeah," I whispered, closing my eyes as he ran one of his big hands down my body, between my breasts and, palm-down, over my belly.

"Good," he replied. He kissed me again, harder, opening my mouth with his and sliding his hand down between my legs.

"Mm!" I made a little sound when he pushed two fingers into me, and he smiled in the middle of a kiss.

"Fuck, Lily. You're soaking. You should have woken me up, you needy little thing."

I let my legs fall open, tense with waiting for the feeling of Callum between them, and he obliged. He climbed on top of me and pushed my thighs apart with his body until I could feel him - completely hard, again - against my belly. I winced and bit my lip. I was getting impatient, and he knew it.

"Look at you, Lily. You look so nice underneath me. What do you want?"

He grinned and pushed a hand up under one of my breasts, running his tongue around the nipple, waiting for an answer.

"Callum. You know what I want," I moaned. I wrapped my good arm around his head and pulled him closer to me, desperate.

"Do I? Tell me, Lily. I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me what you want."

"I want you," I said, my voice rushed and my body squirming under him. "I want you inside me, Callum, please..."

"No.
Look
at me. Look at me when you tell me."

I used the last hanging threads of my self-control to focus on his eyes as he watched me, smiling that cocky little half-smile of his."Callum. I want you. I want you inside me."

"There," he said. He didn’t take his eyes off mine and he didn’t allow me to look away. "That's all you needed to say."

He reached down and guided his cock between my lips, sliding it up and down for a few seconds until my hips strained up off the bed. I dug the fingers of my good hand into his back and whimpered his name into his shoulder. And then, finally, he sunk all the way into me.

This time, Callum was the one in control, and I was the one under him. I wrapped my arms and legs as tightly around his body as I could, then let my limbs fall back on the bed, completely open, asking to be taken in whatever way he wanted to take me. He went slow and deep for a long time, pushing me close to the edge and then pulling back just enough whenever I got close. Then he grasped my hips and pinned me to the bed. I couldn't force myself up onto him any faster than he was willing to let me. I was completely helpless, at his mercy. He bit my earlobe gently and asked me if I wanted him to come again. I was almost beyond speaking - at least coherently, anyway - but I tried. I tried to tell him that that was all I wanted.

"Yes, Callum," I gasped."Yes. Please. I want you to-"

I listened to my own voice dissolve into a moan as he slammed himself into me again, as deep as he could go, and I could see the void approaching out of the corner of my eye.

"Good," he panted, his hot, quick breath on my neck, "because I'm not going to be able to keep this up for much - oh God-" I opened my mouth for his tongue as his words disappeared before he could finish them. "I - Lily, I can't, fuck, I can't keep this under control for much longer."

As usual, seeing him get there was the thing that got me there. I always wanted time to slow down when Callum was like that - when his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth fell open and I could feel every muscle in his body preparing for what was coming. I just wanted to take in every little detail of his expression and every deep, ragged groan coming out of his mouth.

The first pulse radiated out from deep inside, sending my body arching up off the bed. My legs forced themselves open even wider, every part of me desperate for the maximum amount of him.

"Callum - I -"

"Come, Lily. Come for me, baby. I love you."

I buried my face in Callum's neck and came, screaming his name as my sex twitched and pulsed around him. He was there a second later, hunching his shoulders up over me and moaning as his hips held me down, giving me the thing I needed so much. Every time I thought I was finished, another little shudder of ecstasy would tighten me around him again until finally the ripples of pleasure ebbed away and I lay there, panting, unable to move even if I wanted to.

Callum lay down beside me, but I didn't have time to turn to him before a thick wave of fatigue washed over me. My eyelids suddenly felt weighted down. I was asleep before I even had time to fight it.

It was nighttime when I woke up and the bedroom was dark. I was alone, but I could hear Callum in the kitchen. I awkwardly pulled on a long t-shirt, clamping my teeth together as I forced my injured hand through the sleeves. Callum looked up as I wandered barefoot into the kitchen, and I watched his thoughtful expression dissolve into a wide grin.

"Hello, sleeping beauty. I thought you may have slipped into a coma. It's not unheard of after a woman has had Callum Cross, you know."

"Is that so? Those poor women, Callum. Did they ever wake up?"

He was chopping vegetables. I was certain I hadn't bought vegetables.

"Did you go to the shops?"

"No. I got this delivered. You need to eat something better than takeaway pizza, Lily. You need to eat something healthy."

"OK, food police," I said, walking around behind him and wrapping my arms around his waist. "I'll do whatever you say."

"Food police. That's nothing, Lily. I'm the one in bed with the real police."

I head-butted him gently in the lower shoulder-blades and kissed him through his t-shirt. "Does that bother you?"

Callum kept chopping vegetables. "No. I mean, it doesn't bother me because it's you. It would bother me if it was anyone else. You met my mum. I wasn't raised in a family that saw coppers as a helpful, decent bunch of people, to put it mildly."

"I know. I just - you haven't really said much about my, well, my not being truthful with you about who I was at first. I'm worried you're going to wake up one day and realize you hate me."

I still had my arms tightly wrapped around him. He reached down and loosened my grip, then turned around to face me.

"I could never hate you, Lily. That's just not a thing I'm capable of. I don't think I could hate you if your hobby was punching me in the face a hundred times a day."

"Callum, I'm serious. I'm worried that - I don't know - I'm worried that you're being blinded by sex right now. Or something like that."

I knew he wasn't going to like that comment, but I had to say it, mostly because I
was
worried. I was worried about all sorts of things, not just the fact that I'd spent weeks misleading him about who I was. I was worried about our age difference. And the fact that our lines of work seemed to be fundamentally incompatible on more than a few levels. He hadn't been in a serious, long-term relationship before, so I worried that he didn't understand how the things you find charming and quirky in a person at first can sometimes morph into something else once you start to get too familiar, too settled into the routine of being with that person.

As I was going over all the reasons to worry in my head, Callum bent down and kissed the top of my head.

"Don't do that, Lily."

"What? What am I doing?"

"You're doing that thing you do - that thing women do. That thing where you calculate all the possible negative outcomes of a given scenario and ignore the positive ones. And then torture yourself with the what-ifs."

I stepped back, slightly surprised by the sudden and frighteningly accurate insight.

"How do you know so much about women if you've never been in a relationship?"

"I've never been in a ‘watching Netflix together every night and living together relationship,’ Lily. But I've been in a lot of, uh, shorter term relationships. If you could call them that. Plus I'm just pretty good at observing people."

Most of the time when someone claimed they were good at observing people I’d just smile and nod. Almost everyone I’d ever met thought they were good at it, the way everyone thinks they're good drivers and have above-average intelligence. But Callum - he was just right. He was good at watching people, reading between the lines, interpreting body language.

"You know what?" I asked him.

"What?"

"You’d probably be a really good cop."

He laughed. "I don't know about that."

"No, I mean it. You're really good at figuring people out. That's actually a big part of the job. I should ask Akin if you can join our team."

"Please don't."

He scraped the chopped vegetables into a sauté pan and asked me if I had any olive oil.

"Yeah, in the cupboard above the stove. What are you making, anyway?"

"Ratatouille," he said, smiling at the look on my face. "Impressed?"

"A little bit, yeah," I teased, "I can't even make toast. Not without burning it, anyway."

"Well I'm sure you'll think this is stupid, but I actually really like cooking. I'm not terrible at it, either, I'll have you know. There's something about being able to see what you've made, right there in front of you. It's oddly relaxing."

I hopped up onto one of the stools that faced the kitchen island so I could watch Callum stir the chopped vegetables.

"Why would I think that's stupid?" I asked."I think it's kind-of awesome. Good-looking, good in bed, good at cooking, is there nothing wrong with you, Callum?"

"Well, I might be going to prison. That's not exactly perfect man material, is it?"

He was facing away from me when he said this, but I felt the emotional temperature in the room get serious. "I don't think you're going to prison," I told him."Akin is on your side. I'm pretty sure he can help work out some kind of community service or probation deal."

Callum turned around. "And what if he can't?"

I looked down at the floor. "I don't know. Even if you do have to go to prison, I don't think it’ll be for long. If you testify against the Streatham guys, I mean. You're willing to do that, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm willing to testify. This isn't a fucking Hollywood movie and anyway, Gazza's dead. But I'm going to have to move, you know. Probably to somewhere else in London - maybe even outside of it. I've never lived anywhere else, and I never thought I'd have to. Don't get me wrong, I know I'm responsible for the choices I made, but it sucks, Lily."

"I know it does," I said, gently. "I know. But it's better than prison. You still have your mum and your brother. And your friends who weren't involved in the Streatham Club. And me."

"Do I? Do I 'have' you, Lily?"

I met Callum's eyes, examining them for signs of deception and seeing none. Was he really asking me that question? How could he not know?

"What do you think? Why are you even asking me that?"

"What? Lily, are you surprised? We haven't talked about any of this. About anything that happens after all of this is sorted out. I know how much your career means to you. And I'm not an idiot, I know being with someone like me might not be the most helpful thing when it comes to your work."

"You're right, we haven't talked about this. I haven't talked about it because I'm a coward. That's my reason."

"You're not a coward, Lily." He turned towards me and gave me a stern look."You're many things, but you're not a coward."