Lila's Thunder: The Almeida Brothers, Book One (21 page)

“Chase, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying.  I know exactly what I’m feeling, Lila.”

“No, you don’t,” s
he said, with a shake of her head, “You don’t.”

“You thi
nk I don’t know what I feel?” he whispered, pulling her to him tighter as the bulge in his slacks grew hard and strong against her thigh. His breath had grown ragged as he took in Lila’s wide orbs. “I know what I feel.”

“Chase—“

Feeling the curve of her waist beneath his hands was almost too much to bear.  The thought of the beautiful peaks that lived underneath her small waist only made him lose even more of what little control he still had left.  “All this time I’ve let you pretend, but I’m not going to let you anymore.  You’ve always known how much I love you.  Haven’t you?”

Lila couldn’t speak.

“You’ve always known that I would die if it meant just one night with you.  Beside you.”  His voice lowered. “Inside you.”

Lila’s wet eyes met his.
  She barely recognized the green orbs she saw looking back at her with such raw, unabated hunger.

“You’ve always known,” h
e whispered.  “Haven’t you?”

Lila kept her hands pressed against his shoulders
, her fingers clawing into them against her will.

“I’m done letting you pretend.”
  His breathing grew shallow. “And I’m done pretending.  Tell me you don’t feel the same way, Lila.”  He swallowed hard and pulled her closer, feeling like he might explode at being so close to her, but so unable to do anything about it.  He yearned to have all of her, so badly that he was sure he could feel in coursing through his viens.  “Tell me you don’t love me and I swear to god I’ll leave you alone.”  He shook his head, exhaling.  “I swear to god I’ll never speak to you, again.”

Lila faltered.
  “It’s not that simple.” The last thing she ever wanted was to hurt him anymore than she already had.  Apart of her wasn’t even sure she knew how.

“I’m making it that simple.”
 Chase said. “Nothing you say right now will hurt any more than knowing that Jack has you… that he had you first…”

“Is that all this is about?
  About Jack having me before you?  You would have never had me, Chase. Okay?  Not ever.”

“Then it should be simple for you to tell me you don’t love me.
  Tell me right now.  Say it.”

“You’re just a kid.”

He’d always hated that word, but coming from her lips he downright despised it. “How many kids do you let rub their dick against your leg for this long, huh?”

Lila’s blood froze.
“I think you’d better let me go right now,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Is that how he talks
to you?” Chase’s voice deepened. “Is that what you like? Huh? Is that what it takes?”

“Chase
.”  Her voice barely squeaked out the plea, “please.” Lila wasn’t sure what she was begging for, and that scared her to death.

“Just give me tonight, Lila
.  I love you so much.  I know you love me, too.  Please just let me… let me make love to you.”

Lila
gasped softly when he took the back of her head in his hand, attempting to place his lips over hers.

“No.
Chase.” She turned her head away, jamming her eyes shut when she felt his soft lips brush her cheek right at the edge of her ear.  This was so wrong, she knew it, could feel it in the deepest part of her. She whimpered when he took her earlobe between his teeth gently, licking it, sucking it.

“I need you,” h
e begged, licking the side of her neck gently.  “God, Lila, I need you so fucking bad.”

“Chase.”
Lila pushed at him, “God damn it. Stop!”

“No, you stop,” h
e cried, releasing her waist and taking her wrists.  He pulled her to him until they were nose to nose. “Tell me you’re not wet for me right now.” His entire body shook. “Tell me that you don’t love me,” he whispered, passionately.  “Tell me you don’t, Lila… Say it and I’m gone…”

Lila’s wide eyes searched his frantically.

Chase licked his lips as his gaze fell to her mouth. “Say it,” he demanded, shaking her softly. “God dammit, say it.”

“
I can’t
,” Lila cried, her lips trembling. She clenched her hands into fists as tears fell from her eyes.  “Chase, I can’t,” she sputtered.

Chase’s face fell. “What?” h
e gasped, sure his mind was playing tricks on him.

“I can’t,” s
he said, again, snatching her wrists away, relieved when he allowed her to do so.

Chase was suddenly hit with a violent regret as he watched her slowly stumble away from him.
 His quivering hands went to the top of his head.  What had he done?  His brain raced for the right words to say, but he was out of his mind.  It was as if he’d just come back down to earth after watching the entire scene unfold from a distance.

“Oh Lila,” h
e breathed, as awareness caved in all around him. “Lila, please forgive me.”

He couldn’t move as she turned and ran away from him, f
alling to his knees in the sand.

---

Later that night in her hotel room Lila was startled by a knock at her door.  Taking her head, which she’d been currently holding in her clawed hands, out of her head she crossed the room to the door.  She hesitated.  There was only one person who could be on the other side.

The moment she opened it, she knew she shouldn’t have. 

“Chase, you have to go.”

Chase crossed the threshold of the door Lila held in he
r hand, gazing down at her.  His eyes explored her face openly, for longer than he’d ever dared, and when they met hers he was riveted. He swallowed in the night air, so thickly that he could hear it in his throat.

“Chase,” Lila whispered.

He stepped in closer to her, closer than he’d ever been.  Taking her dove necklace, he stroked it between his fingers before looking up at her, leaning down, and covering her lips with his.

Lila’s eyes jammed closed
, unable to handle the feeling that swept over her.  A soft whimper escaped her lips as she set her hands on his chest, pushing him firmly away. 

She placed the b
ack of her quivering hand over her lips, gaping at his.  Gently, her eyes rose. 

“I’ll wait for you for the
rest of my life,” he whispered.

“Chase,” Lila’
s unsteady hand went from her lips to her chest.  She covered it with her hand, feeling it pound like thunder under her rips. “You have to
go
.”

Chase stepped back and quietly left the room.

---

An hour later Lila
was face to face with a ticketing agent at the airport.

“I do
n’t mind waiting on standby,” she said, leaning over the chrome Delta Airlines counter with an entire flight worth of people standing behind her, “I don’t care how long it takes.  I’ll sleep in the terminal if I have to. I just need to get the hell out of this city as quickly as humanly possible.”

When she was finally sitting in a terminal what felt like ages later, Lila dialed Jack’s number.
  It went to voicemail.

“Jack.”
  Just saying his name brought tears to her eyes. “Um… I came to Cambridge for a job interview and… it went well.  Actually well might not be the right word but… I got offered the job on the spot.  I’m on my way back to New York and I really, really need to talk to you as soon as possible so...  So once I land I’ll probably just head over to the law firm, and if you’re not there I’ll try the brownstone.  I still have the key so I’ll just let myself in. I’ll uh… I’ll see you soon.  Bye.”

Lila hung up the phone, and told herself to be patient.

--
-

Jack didn’t notice the missed call from Lila until hours later.  Having been passed out in the terminal, he’d just gotten in line to board his plane when it occurred to him to check his phone one last time before boarding.

He brought the
phone to his ear, listened to her voicemail, and the color drained from his face.

Much to the alarm of all the people around him, Jack turned away from the gate and broke into a run.

---

“Jack?”
  Lila pushed the door to his bedroom open and her eyes fluttered shut as his smell—a mix of soap, a hint of cologne and something simply
Jack—
reached all the way out into the hallway and wrapped itself around her.  She found herself dropping the bag from her shoulder and breathing deep, disappearing into the door of his room. For the first time that day she realized how exhausted she was, and his rumpled, but Jack-smelling bed sheets seemed like just what the doctor ordered.

She climbed into his California King bed and tucked her head contentedly into his pillows, inhaling once more.
  Damn she missed him.  Just the smell of his sheets had her wanting him in every way a woman could want a man, right then and there.  For now, however, sleep seemed like the next best option.

She was seconds away from dozing off when she slid her hand under his pillow and poked her hand on something.
  The small stick was enough to startle her awake and, with a frown, she lifted the pillow and her mouth dropped at what she saw.

Dozens and dozens of photos of her and Jack.
  Sleeping, walking, eating, doing any number of things together.  Her heart pounded as she snatched up the photos and began frantically flipping through them until she came to the last few.  These were much more intimate, consisting mostly of her and Jack making love in her apartment.

Holding the photographs in her hand she slipped out of the bed and stood, the moonlight seeping through the curtains illuminating the photos as she flipped through them, one after the other.
  The first was a close up photo of Jack’s sculpted chest—so close that she could see the baby hairs dusted along his pecs.  The next photo was clearer, she could see his chest, his plaid boxers, a hint of his stubbled chin… and she could see herself.  Just in the distance Lila’s form was visible, lying naked in her bed.  She flipped to the next photo and it was one she recognized.  Her and Jack making love.  It was the same angle, the same lighting…

“Jack?” Shock stole Lila’s breath
, and as the photographs slipped from her trembling fingers the weight of the truth nearly crushed her.

Jack had taken those photos.

Chapter 10

Lila wasn’t ready to believe it.  Not even as the photos danced under her trembling fingers.  Not even when, an hour later, the sound of his engine roaring outside of the window rang in her ears.  Not even when she heard him bounding up the stairs.  She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him.  There was urgency behind the way his feet sounded stomping up the stairs.  He knew she was there--she’d left him a message saying so--and he was now getting up to his bedroom as fast as he could before she found something he didn’t want her to find.

Lila’s wet eyes fell to the photos she must have looked at a million times.
  A tear fell from her eyelid and splashed against the picture on top.  In it she was fast asleep on her stomach with Jack lying across her back.  He was fingering a lone curl that had popped free from her flat ironed hair during one of their sweatier sessions.  The smile on his face was one of a man in love, but now Lila knew better.

She blinked again, and another tear fell.

Perhaps she was jumping to conclusions and Jack had a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he had the very photos that had been terrifying her under his bed.

She swallowed heavily.
  That had to be it.  She couldn’t accept that a man who could look at her the way he was looking at her in that photo--hell, in most of them--could be capable of hurting her in any way.

So she stuffed the photos back under his pillow exactly as she found them--or as close to exact as she could get--and covered them back up, lying down on the bed just in time to hear the door to Jacks room open.
  Her body shot up and she attempted to feign surprise as she took in the sight of him barreling through the door with his black trench coat flowing haphazardly behind him.  The rain had made as much of a mess as Mother Nature could manage on a man as beautiful as him, leaving his hair a wet mess on top of his head and the white button down he wore underneath his coat soaked.  She could see every dip at curve of his torso.  His pecks, his abs, the same ones that contracted to alarming degrees just a second before he drove his body into hers, deeper, harder…

Lila blinked away the thought.
  If she was going to get to the bottom of this then thoughts of this man putting it down had to be completely off limits.  He was too dangerous to her psyche.

She loved him too much.

The thought hit her like a ton of bricks.  She’d never told him.  Taking in the sight of his soaking wet clothes, she was suddenly rocketed back to the night he’d shown up on her doorstep looking exactly as he did at that moment.  She’d loved him even then.  How had she not seen it?

How had she not seen any of this?

Maybe she was wrong on all of it, she thought, as her eyes scanned his body.  Maybe he would tell her what the hell those pictures were about before she had to ask him herself.  Maybe this was all a big misunderstanding.

That was a lot of maybes
, and if her past was any indication, a ‘maybe’ was always more dangerous than the truth itself.  ‘Maybe’ was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.  ‘Maybe’ she and Jack could pull off a casual fling, ‘maybe’ being with him once would be enough to get whatever weird tension they had between them completely out of their system, ‘maybe’ Chase would understand, somehow. In between all of those ‘maybes’ Jack had become anything but ‘maybe’ to her.

“Hey,”
 she said, pushing herself up into an indian style position in the middle of his bed. She watched his brown eyes pass her and lock onto the pillow that sat just behind her, the same pillow where the pictures she’d found were hidden away once more.

His eyes came back to her.
“Hey yourself.”

Lila stared at him.
  She hadn’t missed the panic in his eyes when they’d gone to his pillow.  He was looking to see if she’d found something she shouldn’t have.  Her stomach fell, and she yearned to turn around and make sure that she hadn’t left a photo or two peeking out but she didn’t have the courage to risk breaking her cover. “I’m sorry to just barge in on you like this, I just…”

“You look beautiful,
” Jack whispered, appearing somewhat relieved as he closed the door behind him.

Lila couldn’t think one single thought.
  It was now clear to her that he was deliberately keeping those photos from her.  If their mere existence was something he felt the need to share with her surely he would have done it by now. 

“I didn’t mean to barge in on you
like this,” she said once more. “I’m just--” Lila scooted to the end of the bed, stopping when she felt the tip of her toes digging into the carpet blow her.  “I just really needed to see you, Jack.”

“I was at the airport.
  I bought a ticket to Cambridge.”

Lila’s eyes searched his.
  “Why?”

“Ah, I see. So you’re the only one who’s allowed to show up someplace uninvited?”
  The tiniest hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, but Lila knew him too well.  He was only very faintly kidding, if at all.

“Is it just because Chase was there too?”

“It was
only
because Chase was there, Lila.”

“Are you so threatened by him that you can’t even trust me alone with him in the same state?”

“It’s not you I don’t trust.”

“Oh no?”

“No.  And for the record, I’m not threatened by anybody.”

“No?”

“
No
.  Like I said, it’s not you I don’t trust, Lila… it’s him.  With all of these fucking pictures floating around, and us having no idea whose taking them I couldn’t stand the idea of you being out of state with the main suspect.”

“The main suspect, huh?”

Jack’s eyes narrowed and he seemed deep in thought before finally looking back at her and answering, ever so softly, “yes.”

Lila’s blood pressure was quickly rising, so she took deep breaths to steady herself.
  Now he was throwing Chase under the bus for pictures that he had lying under the pillows of his own bed.  The thought of what a wreck Chase had been just hours earlier, spilling his soul out to her, splashed across her mind and an urge to protect him like she’d never experienced almost choked her out. It took every inch of will inside of her not to wring Jack’s neck right where he stood.  How dare he put the blame on Chase, knowing damn well that those pictures were his?

How had she never seen it before?
 She’d always taken him for a good liar but he wasn’t.  He was standing right there, lying to her face, and it was clear as day.

Jack was clearly too in his own head to notice the wheels turning in L
ila’s and he suddenly fired off. “Why exactly
did
the two of you end up in Cambridge together on the same day, at the exact same time and on the exact same plane might I add?”

“It was just a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Do you believe in anything?”
  Lila asked, tilting her head at him with a squint.

Jack smiled.
  It was such a beautiful sight even when it was laced with the irony that it was now.  “No. I’m a
monster
.  I’m dead inside, Lila, or haven’t you already figured that out?”

Lila stood from the bed an
d made her way over to him.  It was becoming clear to her that the path she was taking in this moment was not the one she’d need to take to get the truth out of him.  She needed to know that him having those photos under his bed was completely innocent.  If it was, she was sure that he would tell her the truth but she had to stroke him just right.  The fighting couldn’t continue.

“I’m sorry, okay?
  I’m sorry.  I didn’t come here to fight.”

Jack allowed her to take the cuffs of his jacket in her small hands, holding his breath when her scent immediately engulfed him in her closeness.
  His jaw instantly tensed when she pushed his coat off of his shoulders, leaving him in nothing but the white button down that still clung to him.  The tips of her nails played down the buttons, inch by inch, until they were lingering at his belt. 

“Then why did you come here, Lila?
  To continue to torture me?”  His eyes reluctantly softened with every second her hands were on him until he finally whispered, “did you see him while you were there?”

Lila stared down at his belt buckle before taking a handful
of his shirt and pulling it from the waistband of his pants.  She popped the bottom button open, then the next. 

“You know… I remember very vividly the la
st time I saw you like this,” she whispered, unbuttoning the shirt completely before tucking her hands underneath and wrapping her arms around his waist, her lips brushing against the sensitive peak between his pecks.

Jack had to take a moment when the feel of her lips on him had him instantly teetering on the edge.
  Whether it was the edge of bliss or insanity, he wasn’t quite sure. 

“Lila, did you see him?”

Lila kissed a trail up his chest and his neck, parting her lips to suck his tight skin between her teeth. The sound of his moans almost sent her over the edge.  Even now her body responded to him.  Even with the blatant betrayal that lay on the bed behind them, between his sheets.  The sheets they’d never made love on.  She looked up at him.  Was this why they’d never made love in his bed?  Because he was afraid of what she’d find?  Reaching a, now wet, hand up she took the back of his neck and pulled him with her. She fell backward onto the bed, gasping as he landed on top of her.  The weight of him was breathtaking and somehow, even after everything, she still felt safe underneath him, wet and ready for him. Curling her leg around his body she turned them so she was on top, straddling him and grinding her hips mindlessly into the warm bulge between them.

“Why did you really show up at my house that night, Jack?
  That night in the rain?”  It had been the most vulnerable she’d ever seen him, and she was convinced that--even if everything after that night had been fake--that was real.  It had to be.

Jack looked up at her, allowing her to lock his arms over his head, holding him captive below her.
  His breathing grew ragged. “Because I loved you then, long before then... I love you now… I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Couldn’t take what?”

“Looking you in the eye and lying about how I felt. I couldn’t do it anymore.” He was growing frustrated at the confusing need to push her away and fuck her senseless all at once.

“What about now, Jack? Would you still lie to me now?”

“No.”

“Never Jack?”

“Never.”

Lila’s eyes grew moist.
  His voice was so filled with passion that she almost believed him.  So why wouldn’t he just tell her what was going on?

Jack watched as her mind raced before him, yearning to touch her as she continued to hold his arms tight above his head.
 

“Please
tell me you didn’t see him,” he whispered.  This time his voice shook with the question.

Lila leaned down so her arms, her breasts, her thighs and what felt like her entire being were completely flush with his.
  “Why don’t you ask me what you really want to ask me?”

“I’m asking you if you saw Chase in Cambridge.”

“You mean did I fuck Chase in Cambridge?” she asked, licking his lips softly.  Jack didn’t respond, but she felt him hold his breath.  As she watched his eyes slowly grow closed beneath her, she released his wrist and reached under the pillow behind him, taking the photos in her hand.

Jack’s eyes flew open when the weight of her body
on top of his was suddenly gone--quickly replaced with dozens of photos falling across his damp stomach and scattering across the bed around him.  His heart seized in his chest at the sight—a sensation so extreme he was sure he was having a heart attack.  His eyes jumped to hers, wide with shock.

“Lila. I can explain this…I…”
  He jammed his eyes shut.  “I just can’t explain it right now.”

“I’m sure you can’t.
  It takes a lot of time to think up the kind of lies you’ve been firing off left and right.  Call me when you’ve got your story straight.  Actually, scratch that.
Lose my fucking number.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Lila stood before him with her arms crossed over her chest.   “You know what Jack? Fuck you,” she spat, before turning on her heel and barreling out of his room.

For the first time in his life, Jack Almeida was speechless.
  Watching her walk away from him for what might have been the last time threw a shockwave so deep into his bones, it jarred him out of his stupor almost instantly.  He leapt from the bed just as she turned the corner out of his room.

“Lila!” He barreled down the stairs behind her, watching her long curls fly after her as she raced towards the front door.

Jack threw himself in front of the door just in time, grabbing her hand as she reached for the handle.

Lila snatched her hand back like it was on fire.
  The feeling of him touching her in any way made her come undone with fury.