Necessary Restorations (The Walsh Series) (A) (26 page)

“Sofa,” she murmured against my lips. Her hand wrapped around my tie, she yanked me into the living room. She was a little fireball, all rowdy and starved for this brand of affection.

“Bedroom,” I growled, steering her toward the hallway.

“It’s like nine feet away,” she said. “Sofa’s right here.”

“I will be fucking you in the bedroom,” I said. “I will also be spanking the shit out of you in there, so unless you’d like to sit on the sofa alone, I recommend you take your sweet ass down that hallway.”

Tiel released my tie and broke out of my hold. I was certain this was the moment she’d be punching me in the face for being a prick, but she bit her bottom lip, gave me a wicked grin, and scampered down the hall while tossing her clothes off behind her.

Then I realized she wanted me like this, raw and demanding and prowling for her, and in that place I knew I wasn’t keeping anyone on the hook. I was all in for this girl, and every time her body bowed under my hands, I started to believe she was all in for me, too.

SOME ORGASMS WERE like fender benders. Quick, generally harmless, forgettable.

Others were more like backing into a bus. More damage, more memories.

And a select few were like a fucking train wreck. Blacked out, body-splitting. They turned you inside out and back again.

As I lay face down on my bed, Sam’s hand caressing my tender backside, I knew I’d never been so still before. There were tunes in my head—always—but I wasn’t fidgeting, nodding, tapping, fiddling, swaying. Just my breath, in and out, and the occasional shuddering aftershock from that train-wreck orgasm.

“What are you doing next week?” he asked.

Chewing my lip, I tried to remember my schedule. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Without calling up the calendar on my phone, I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to be at any point in time. Too many details.

“Oh, next week is the holiday. Yeah. The college closes at one on Wednesday, but of course I’m teaching at noon. I’ve been going back and forth on whether I let those poor souls off easy and cancel class.”

“And then?” he asked. “The rest of the week?”

“Um, I don’t know.” I wanted to melt into the mattress and sleep for at least four hundred years.

Ellie and I used to host a big Thanksgiving dinner and invite stray students from Berklee. We both knew how much it sucked to be too poor—or, in my case, too disowned—to get home for the holidays, and we didn’t want anyone feeling that way.

It wasn’t anything elaborate, given that neither of us grew up in homes where we celebrated the Norman Rockwell version of Thanksgiving. My family thought turkey was best accompanied by pastitsio, souvlaki with tzatziki, and rice-stuffed grape leaves, and on more than a few occasions, substituted lamb for turkey altogether. Nonetheless, Ellie and I DVR’d every holiday episode on the Food Network, watched them repeatedly, and cobbled together some semblance of dinner for our guests.

This year, we passed the torch to a married couple who joined the faculty before Ellie went on tour. That was a big improvement over wrangling a raw turkey into submission.

“Studio time. Grading papers. Nothing special,” I yawned.

“My brother and his wife—”

He paused, glancing at me purposefully, and I swore he did it to let the word ‘wife’ simmer between us. Either he wanted me to know he hadn’t touched this lady, or he really liked that terminology. Couldn’t be sure.

“They’re having a thing at their place. You could come with me, if you wanted.” Sam grabbed the satiny duvet from where it was bunched on the edge of the mattress, and pulled it over us. “Shannon won’t be there, though. Apparently she’s going to a spa in the Southwest which seems really fucking strange, even for her.”

Snuggling closer to Sam, I ran my fingers through his chest hair, and pressed my ear against his heart. “I probably should have said something a long time ago,” I sighed. “But I don’t do families.”

“That’s good to know,” he said. “I’m only interested in you doing me, and the more I think about it, I would actually break my brothers’ arms if they got anywhere near you.”

“Charming, perv. Real charming.”

“Don’t even pretend you don’t love me,” he said, slapping my backside.

It was a playful snap, but exactly what I needed. There was some relief associated with his hand cracking across my skin, a calm pleasure I’d never tapped into before. I didn’t understand why I liked half the things he did to me, but I didn’t care.

“So what do you mean, you don’t do families?”

“I can’t—” Edgy impatience started swirling in my stomach, and I dragged my hands through my hair. I pushed away from Sam and grabbed his tank, pulling it over my head. “I’m not good with it all. I’m not the girl you bring home to meet the parents.”

I knew my mistake the second those words slipped off my tongue but before I could backtrack, Sam said, “You don’t have to worry about that with me.”

He’d shared details of his mother’s death over the past months, and it was obvious it left a huge, gaping, ugly scar on him, but he’d never talked about his father. Anytime I asked, Sam responded with, “He’s dead” and wouldn’t elaborate.

“I’m sorry. It’s just . . .” I folded my legs beneath me, staring at Sam from the other end of the bed. He looked so cozy and precious against my pillows, like he belonged there. “I’m terrible with families. A walking disaster.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’re the person who seduces random people in elevators,” he said, pointing to himself. “You can convince otherwise polite, chaste men to get drunk and dance with you.” Another exaggerated gesture toward himself. “You know the life story of every barista in town. You persuade non-verbal children to play the piano, and play it well. You have more followers on your YouTube channel than the population of Wyoming. You aren’t terrible with anyone.”

“You wanted to be seduced,” I whispered. “It just took you two months to realize it.”

“You can bet your ass I wanted you seducing me,” he said. “Now get over here and tell me the real reason you don’t want to meet my deranged family.”

Sam tended toward slim, with long, lean muscles, but it never escaped my notice that he was strong, especially when he was dragging me across the bed like I was a doll. I kind of loved it.

Trapped beneath him with my hands pinned over my head, there was no easy out, and at this point, there was no reason to avoid his questions. “I’m not like you, Sam. I don’t understand big, involved families. I can’t even begin to explain my own.”

“Sunshine, I don’t understand them either. It’s more like love and tolerate,” he laughed.

“Well, that’s kind of the problem,” I said. “They’ve never tolerated me. Everything I do—moving away from home, going to Juilliard, getting married, getting divorced, being a ‘lowlife’ as my mother likes to put it—mortifies them. I’m a giant embarrassment, and unless I’m moving back to Jersey and waiting tables, they don’t want anything to do with me. I see them maybe once a year, and it’s only for funerals or weddings. I just don’t fit in with families.”

With my wrists locked in Sam’s grip, I couldn’t wipe the tears off my cheeks. I hadn’t cried about this in ages, but being there—vulnerable and exposed and completely safe—brought it all back to the surface.

“And what happens when you call them on that shit?” he asked, his thumb brushing my tears away.

An incredulous laugh burst from my throat. “That’s not how my family operates,” I said. “There’s plenty of the big, fat Greek family stereotype to go around, but we don’t have thoughtful conversations about feelings. They tell me they don’t approve, they make a lot of pained, pinched faces at me, and I do my own thing. That’s how it goes.”

His brows furrowed and he gave me a confused grimace. “You’ve never said ‘Mom, Dad, I’m really fucking talented and successful, and if you have a problem, that’s tough shit’?”

It was strange how he seemed much more comfortable vocalizing himself with his family than with me, and somehow the reverse was true for me. “No, Sam, not really.” I shrugged, my attention turning to the beautiful definition in his shoulders and biceps. “We sort of had that conversation when I decided to go to Juilliard and they weren’t digging that plan. They said it wouldn’t work out, that I wasn’t good enough for that level of study, that I was on my own. They didn’t see why I couldn’t go to the local college like everyone else. In their eyes, leaving was disrespectful to my family.”

“Oh that’s nothing,” Sam said, and my eyes flashed to him, stunned. “My father hated me until his final breath. I probably deserved some of that because the last thing I said to him was that the rapey demons in the eternal fires of hell were going to have a blast with him.”

“You’re too pretty to hate,” I said, aiming for some levity.

“While that is true,” he said, “it didn’t stop him from kicking me out of the house when I was seventeen because—according to him—I was a disgusting homosexual who shouldn’t have been born. If society was still roasting witches at the stake, I’m confident he would have put a dress on me, claimed I cast a spell on our dog, and moved me to the front of the line. He also found great pleasure in blaming me and my siblings for my mother’s death which is absolutely fucking illogical but he never trafficked in reality.”

Okay. So that was why Sam didn’t like talking about his father.

Fair enough.

“Families are really fucking complicated,” he said. “And that’s exactly why you should spend some time with mine. They’re the loudest motherfuckers I’ve ever met, and we give each other a lot of shit, but they’re already Team Tiel.” I gave him a skeptical look but he continued. “All I heard about this week was how much they wanted to meet you.”

“Have they met many of your other
friends?
”

“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice heavy with warning. “You know damn well they haven’t, just like you know
friend
isn’t even close to the right word for you.”

“Then what is?”

I still needed structure and definition. There was evidence suggesting that we were in a committed relationship but I required the words and I wanted them plain and clear, like the ink on his skin.

He shifted, bringing his knees to my hips and squeezing me tight. Leaning down, he pushed the tank aside and pulled my nipple into his mouth and oh, sweet jellybeans of joy, he could whip me into needy, breathless heat in no time at all. If the hard cock nudging my belly button was any indication, I wouldn’t be waiting long.

“All I want to call you is mine,” he said against my breast. “You’re mine, and I’m yours.”