Behold the Stars (7 page)

Meanwhile, Lilli had collected the dishes from their meal of Cookie Crisp. She rinsed the bowls and set them in the sink. She was yawning hugely when she turned back around.

Isaac stood and pushed the chairs in. “Let’s go to bed, Sport. It’s been a hell of a day.”

“I need a shower. Since my last one, I worked out, sparred with you, worked in the yard, had a temper tantrum, took a run, and had another tantrum. I must smell like the Rams locker room on Sunday night.”

He grabbed her and pulled her close. She actually didn’t stink—or she didn’t smell bad, not to him. She smelled amazing, in fact. “You know I love the smell of you. Don’t wash on my account. I like you like this.”

She laughed. “Okay. You’re weird.”

They went to bed, but they didn’t have sex. By unspoken, mutual agreement, they undressed and settled in to sleep, Lilli curled snuggly inside the curve of his body, her hand linked with his at her belly. Isaac nestled into her hair and breathed deep of her, feeling the last of the day’s tension ease away. He sensed it when Lilli’s consciousness dropped off, and she slept. He hoped this night would be a night without bad dreams.

Isaac felt good. Happy. A few hours earlier, he’d been pretty sure he’d never be happy again.

~oOo~

It was light when Isaac woke; and as soon as he was awake, he rejoiced that he was not alone. He hadn’t lost her. He and Lilli were still curled together in the same position in which they’d fallen asleep. Almost the same position—Isaac’s humungous erection was a new player this morning.

She hadn’t dreamt. That was good. Her nightmares had been no more frequent since she’d been hurt, but they had been more intense. At least once, at least three nights a week, Lilli woke in a violent agitation. He figured it must be PTSD, from her combat tours in Afghanistan, made worse by what had happened in that deer blind, but she wouldn’t talk about it much. She had, once, told him that they were death dreams, that she dreamt she was being brutally, painfully murdered. It hurt his heart.

But she’d slept through. He checked the clock on the nightstand. Quarter to seven. Okay, well, they’d only slept a few hours. He should let her sleep, and go back to sleep himself. But his cock, thwarted last night, had other ideas this morning. He was severely turned on, so much that he was having trouble staying still. He shifted a little, like a spasm, and felt himself slide against the soft silk of her bare ass. Oh, fuck.

She must have felt him in her sleep, because she moaned prettily and shifted, drawing her top leg up. Oh, that only made her more enticing. Her sweet pussy was right there. He could slide his hand over her ass…reach between…and God, she was wet. She was so wet, and hot, and he couldn’t help himself. He slid his cock against her core, feeling her wet slide on him. It was just short of heaven. It felt so good, he almost didn’t feel guilty for disturbing her slumber.

“Baby, baby, wake up. I need—baby. Wake up, wake up.”

She moaned again and shifted, making a little stretch and doing amazing things to his cock. She was awake, and she looked over her shoulder at him. “Hey.” Her voice was sleepsexy. “What’s up? Oh—you are.” She smiled. “I love it when you wake me up to make me come.”

“So do I, Sport. So do I.” He positioned himself and pushed into her, bringing his hand around to her clit. She gasped and pushed against him, bringing him deeper.
God
, she felt good.

“Hey—condom.”

He wanted to tell her no. He wanted her to let him fill her with his seed, with his son or daughter, with his family. He knew it was irrational. He knew this was the wrong time—and not only because Lilli wasn’t ready. They were facing real, life-or-death danger any day. And he’d never wanted a family until a few months ago. It was crazy to want one now. But he did. It was taking over this thoughts, always occupying at least a corner of his mind. But he said none of that. She wasn’t ready. She was afraid she didn’t know how. She didn’t want to be like her mother. He knew she wouldn’t be, but she had to know it herself. So he kept his need to himself and said, “Right. Hold up,” and reached over her into the nightstand drawer.

He pulled a strip of condoms out and tore one off. Lilli turned to her back under him, and he shifted to kneel between her long legs, spread wide for him. She was long and lean, and he devoured her with his eyes as he rolled the latex over his cock. His eyes traveled up to her face and met hers, bright and full of heat and need. Still holding his cock in one hand, he leaned down, slid his arm under her back, and pulled her up onto his lap, and onto his cock, in a fluid, strong move. As he penetrated her fully and quickly, she gasped and bit her lip, her eyes flashing. Lilli was strong and wanted people to know it, but Isaac knew she liked him stronger. She liked a little manhandling; she liked to be moved around, and she wanted firm touch. She wanted intensity.

“Aw, yeah,” he growled, taking a moment of stillness to savor the feeling of her tight heat wrapped around him. She hooked her arms around his neck, and he felt her fingers lacing into his long hair, her blunt nails scratching gently at his scalp. She flexed on him, and he grunted. He could fuck her forever.

She leaned down and brushed her lips against his. “I love you inside me.” Her voice was rough and low, not much more than a hoarse breath tickling his mouth. Easing his hands down the firm, satiny skin of her back, he grabbed her tight hips and lifted off his knees, surging into her. She cried out, her fists clenching in his hair and her eyes rolling up. It was so good, so good, she felt so good. God, he loved her.

“Isaac, please.” He knew what she wanted. After the night they’d had, this was not the morning for slow, luxurious sex. At least not first. He came up on his knees and laid her back on the bed. Pushing her legs up high, he pressed his hands against the backs of her thighs and slammed into her, groaning violently, getting as deep as he could, moving as fast and hard as he could. He knew she could take it; he knew she wanted it. She was all the woman he could handle.

Every time he hit home, she cried out, almost a scream. Her hands were tangled in his hair and pulling painfully; he cared not at all. In fact, he loved it, her fierce abandon, the way her body overtook her head when they fucked.

She was clenched tight around his cock, like she didn’t want to let him go. His emotional overload was seeking its due, and he felt the familiar electric tension building in his gut. “Come on, baby,” he murmured, shifting his hands off her thighs so he could get closer to her. Leaning on his forearms, still moving with force and rhythm inside her, he took a breast into his mouth, sucking deep and thrilling at the feel of her skin tightening against his tongue.

“Oh, yes. Harder,” she whispered, her back arched, lifting her breast like an offering. “Harder.” He bit down on the tight nub in his mouth and sucked hard.

She screamed then, and he felt her orgasm rising as it milked his cock. She took over the rhythm of their thrusts, her hips keeping a staccato tempo. He tried to keep up with her and hold himself off while her release went on and on, but he couldn’t catch her rhythm. So he rolled and gave her the lead.

For the barest second, she looked surprised at the change, then, still deep in her throes, she smiled and leaned down, her hands clutching at his chest, and drilled down on him. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” she chanted.

Christ, she undid him. Everything about her was sex—her skin glistening sweat, her long, dark hair wild and tousled from sleep and exertion, her fingers pulling in his chest hair, her eyes unfocused with need, and her scent, sweet and real. The hot coil in his belly was too much to hold off anymore. He grabbed her hips. “Baby, I gotta go.”

“I’m there. Go. Go.” He sat up, and the shift of his cock inside her did it for them both. He grabbed her head and kissed her, and they came grunting savagely into each other’s mouths.

When it was over, they didn’t move. They sat in the middle of the bed in a hot, damp, heaving knot of afterglow, simply holding each other, silently but for the sounds of their spent breathing.

Isaac was the first to stir, pushing Lilli’s wet hair off her shoulders and kissing her neck. “You’re everything, Sport. Everything.” He meant it. When he was with her, when they were good, he didn’t give a shit about anything else. Sometimes, he wished they could just go. Go away.

She pulled back and combed her fingers through his hair, pulling it away from his face. “Don’t say that, love. It’s too much, and it’s not true. Love can’t be everything. It’ll devour itself.”

He didn’t believe that. He knew they couldn’t—and wouldn’t—just abandon their lives and the people who counted on them, but he needed her to know where she ranked. “You’re all I want, Lilli. A life with you. It’s all I want.”

“Isaac.” A cloud passed through her eyes. He didn’t want that.

“Okay. I just love the fuck out of you, Lilli Accardo.”

She smiled brightly. Her name was important to her, something she shared with the father she’d loved so much, and she didn’t get to hear it often. “And I love you.” She leaned her forehead on his.

CHAPTER SIX

“Now, I really, really,
really
need a shower.” Lilli leaned back and grinned at her man. She felt worlds better about things than she had last night. She’d let things fester. All of this—this life she was making, this relationship—it was all new, untraveled territory for her, and she wasn’t trusting herself the way she should. She wasn’t trusting Isaac the way she should. Or she hadn’t been.

It was him, too. He knew what he wanted; she was still fumbling. He was used to getting what he wanted, so as much as he was trying to stay out of her way, he was a willful man. She didn’t think everything would be rosy because they’d talked once. But she felt understood, and that was a start.

“You want company in that shower?” He wiggled his dark brows at her, his green eyes glinting.

“Nope. I think I’m doing this one solo, thanks.” It was a thing with them, this shower dance. She preferred to shower alone, unless the shower was intended to be strictly recreational. He preferred to be with her wherever she was naked. He gave her the space she wanted, but he always asked.

Now, he sighed. “Fine. Your loss. Hey—I have an idea for today. You want to go to Springfield, check out some furniture stores?”

That caught her off guard. “What?”

“You were saying last night that Lunden asses have been stinking up the furniture around here forever, and you’re right. Some of that stuff is eighty or a hundred years old. It’s not there because I like it, Sport. It’s there because I’m fuckin’ lazy. I’m sure we could sell it—hell, maybe I’ll just donate it to the Main Street shops. In fact, that’s what I’ll do. But you and I should pick out shit
we
like. What do you say? Wanna go shopping with me today?”

Lilli grinned. That actually sounded like fun. She’d never really been furniture shopping, and apparently, neither had Isaac. But the timing was terrible, she thought. “Can you leave town? With all this shit going down with Ellis and the Northsiders?”

“We’ve got scheduled patrols, and the town’s on alert. Springfield’s not all
that
far, and there’s some business I need to do there anyway. I was going to send Len, but I’ll go instead. Show will be in charge, and even if trouble comes up, we can get back to deal with it.”

“You sure? Isaac—”

He put his hands around her face. She loved the feel of them, big and rough, the hands of a man who used them. And he really knew how to use them. “Baby, we’ve been through hell. We’ll go through more before this is through. Let’s take a day.”

Lilli put her hands over his. The last time they’d gone away, to a weekend art show in Tulsa, where Isaac sold his woodworking, they’d grown closer.

And the day after they’d gotten back, Lilli had almost died.

“Okay, love. Let’s go shopping.”

~oOo~

Before they left, Lilli got in contact with Rick, her best hacker friend, who’d been instrumental in her dealing with Ray Hobson. She hooked him up with Bart, and, when she was satisfied that they were set up to work together on the Ellis problem, and Isaac had made the arrangements he needed to make to be gone for the day, they set off to shop for furniture.

They took his big, aging black and silver pickup into Springfield. It always soured Isaac’s mood to drive what he called a cage, and the ride was quieter than Lilli would have liked, considering that this was mainly supposed to be a day off for them. For about half an hour, the only voices in the car belonged to The Allman Brothers, wailing mournfully from the speakers. Lilli’s musical taste tended toward punk, so her patience with the music was short.

She looked over at him. He was lost in thought, his right wrist resting on the top of the steering wheel, his left arm propped on the door, his left hand rubbing over his beard. She knew he had a lot weighing him down—the responsibility for an entire town lay on his shoulders. Lilli hated that the town was saving itself by cooking and selling crystal. Isaac hated it, too. It was a nasty thing, and it made Isaac and the Horde, and Signal Bend itself, vulnerable to nasty men like this Lawrence Ellis. She wanted to help them find another way. She
knew
there had to be another way. But first, they had to turn Ellis away.

As Lilli watched, Isaac, still far off in his own head, sighed heavily. She almost said something to break his reverie, but then she had another idea. The truck was old enough that it had a bench front seat. She undid her seatbelt and slid closer to him, laying her hand on his thigh. Coming back to earth, he turned and smiled at her.

“Hey, Sport. What—did you miss me, all the way over on the other side of the cab?” Taking the wheel in his left hand, he hooked his right arm over her shoulder and pulled her close.

“Something like that. You look like a man in dire need of something to take his mind off it all.” He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt—he never did. She took hold of his belt buckle and popped it open. Then she unbuttoned his jeans and pulled his cock out. It was swelling before she’d gotten her hand on it, and it was full and huge and hard by the time she had it out and bent her head toward it.