Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3) (16 page)

I finished stripping off her jeans, taking her underwear with them until I had her completely naked in front of me.

Lifting my hips, I shoved my own jeans down, and she reached out with shaking hands to help, tugging them down to my ankles and pulling off my work boots before freeing me completely. I grabbed the worn denim, reaching into the back pocket to snag a condom, then tossed them aside.

Ilsa snagged the foil packet from my hand, ripping it open with a flash of her beautiful teeth. Then her hands were smoothing the latex over me, rolling it down with a slow torment. I gripped her hips, jerking her towards me, practically launching her onto me. I forcefully pulled her down hard and lost myself in her sweet warmth.

“Cody,” she gasped, “oh God… oh my God…”

She braced herself with my shoulders as she circled her hips, as she rose and fell, sliding up and down my dick.

I slipped my hands under her thighs, lifting, then slamming her down on me. Her breasts bounced before my eyes, and I looked down to see her wet pussy swallow my hard length, over and over, faster and faster. Every hard slap of her skin echoed in the quiet room and I gripped her thighs so hard I was sure I’d leave bruises which only seemed to turn her on even more. She rode my dick like a fucking porn star.

Feeling close to losing it, I lifted her off me, flipping her over to her stomach on the couch. With the guidance of my hands, her ass was in the air, the scent of her arousal thick around me, and I positioned myself at her pussy again. My fingers curled over her shoulders, yanking her back against me, plunging inside her again.

And I was a fucking machine. Her cries were muffled by the couch, every deep stroke causing her ass to tremble and her legs to shake. She practically screamed into the pillows when she came hard, her pussy pulsing around me in rhythmic squeezes that tested my stamina to the very limit.

Still, I kept going, through her orgasm, slowing my strokes a little to allow her to come back down, kissing her shoulder and whispering in her ear.

“God, it’s like fucking heaven in your pussy.”

I slowly stroked out and bit her neck as she moaned.

“The way you come all around my cock,” I growled. “So fucking hot.”

Her hips flexed, driving herself back against me. She lifted her arms, pushing against the end of the couch for leverage, circling her sweet pussy around my dick with every stroke.

“Oh, yeah… that’s it… fuck yourself against my dick. Slow and easy.”

Tortuously slow strokes, the slick slide of her around me as she moved. Her hips circled to increase the drag of skin on skin. As much as I wanted to revel in the moment, my body was already on the verge of ecstasy. I couldn’t wait anymore.

I started pumping into her again like mad, almost brutally, holding her steady with a bruising grip low on her waist and my other hand cupping her shoulder, pulling her back against me, driving her higher until she flew apart once more. Only then did I allow the molten heat to flow through me. Only then did I let it go, throwing back my head with the euphoria that burst through my consciousness.

Feeling boneless and weightless, I collapsed over her.

“Where’s his father?” I asked.

We lay wrapped in each other’s arms, a light, plushy throw pulled over us, just big enough to tuck around our torsos. Our legs, tangled together, stuck out beneath the blanket, and my fingertips traced a feathery pattern down her bare thigh.

“He’s gone,” she replied, tensing her shoulders and burying her face into my chest.

“So I don’t have to worry about some angry dude showing up?”

She didn’t move, just quietly whispered against my skin. “I don’t really want to talk about him.”

“Ils,” I started, but she interrupted me.

“There’s not much in the way of good memories there.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

I lifted my hand to run my fingers through her hair, combing through it gently, feeling her slowly relax against my body once again. I figured we were done talking, judging by her quiet reflection. Yet the moment wasn’t exactly awkward. It seemed warm and comfortable. A togetherness of our minds as well as our bodies.

I was surprised, then, when she spoke in a low voice.

“I feel so safe in your arms,” she whispered, “like nothing can hurt me when I’m here.”

“Nothing can,” I promised, pressing a gentle kiss on her forehead. “I won’t let it.”

“Why are you like this? You’re a veritable white knight.”

I chuckled a bit at that description. “Just call me Lancelot.”

“That didn’t end so well for him, you know.”

With a low and quiet laugh, I skated my hand down the blanket to rest at the bare skin peeking out just below her hip. “As long as I’m not going around sleeping with married women, I should be okay.”

We were silent a little longer, all the questions between us lingering in the air. I thought back to that night so long ago, the night that my neighbors fought and my lingering remorse for not acting fast enough.

“I've always felt a need to step in and help people, I guess, but a couple years ago, I realized what can happen when… well, when I don’t act. The guilt kinda eats me up inside, knowing I should have done more than I did.”

Ilsa pulled back and looked up at me with sad eyes, her brows drawn together in concern. “What happened?”

“A few years ago, Brannon and I were helping my brother set up and take down his band’s instruments for a wedding they were playing in the park. During the reception, we went out and got totally baked behind the pavilion. I got so stoned that I just wanted to go home and go to bed after a while.” I brushed my fingers along her cheek and smiled grimly. “My brother was so pissed, because we were both useless by the time they were done. They threw me in the van with the instruments, then threw me out on the front lawn. I still lived with my folks, so I think he was hoping my dad would find me and bust my ass for smoking weed.”

“Did he?”

“No, my parents were out for the night. They didn’t get back for a long time, so I laid there for a while and then crawled up into my room.”

“Well, that’s lucky,” she commented.

“Not really. I’d have rather gotten nailed by my dad than what really happened.”

She pulled back and looked up at me with concern, reaching up to cup my jaw in her hand. “What happened?”

“We had a neighbor who would get really drunk now and then. Mean fucker when he was hitting the sauce. He also had the tendency to start hitting his wife.”

I felt her body tense in my arms, as though she knew where this was going.

“I’d been in bed just a little while when I heard them starting up. It began with him shouting, I could hear her crying, and then more, things like breaking glass, loud thumps. The crack of his hand connecting with her skin.”

“What did you do?” she asked in a very small voice.

“I was so stoned that I couldn’t think straight. Generally, my dad would go over there, get the dude to stop while my mom called the cops.”

“But your parents weren’t home.”

I nodded. “Right, and, while I thought I might be able to take the guy, I was so scared I’d get in trouble for being stoned, like get thrown in jail or something. The more I thought about it, the more paranoid I got. I hesitated… I gave it a minute, hoping it would stop on its own, but it just got worse. I ended up calling nine-one-one.” Swallowing hard, I shook my head. “I should've gone over there.”

“You called, though. You got her help,” she said. “That’s what’s important.”

“They didn’t get there fast enough.”

I felt a tremor ripple through her body. “What do you mean?”

“He killed her. Bashed her head into the granite countertop. She was dead before she hit the floor.”

After all this time, even though the marijuana haze I’d been in at the time it happened, the pain still felt raw and jagged. The remorse I felt still choked me, clawing at my chest with a vicious grip.

I felt a soft touch combing through my hair in soothing, gentle strokes.

“It’s not your fault, Cody,” she whispered. “You did what you could do.”

“Not everything.”

“You did more than a lot of people would.”

“If I could go back, do it again… I would've gone in there. I would've stopped him. I would've saved her.”

Ilsa drew back and looked up in my eyes, wiping away the moisture that still threatened when I thought about this. I hadn’t talked about it with anyone in a long time. When it had happened, I hadn’t really opened up to my parents, and they made me see a counselor. I told the shrink very little, just enough to make her think I was fine. I haven’t said a word about it otherwise, to anyone. Not even to Brannon.

He knew about the altercation, and he knew I had called the cops. He saw the change in me after, my increased need to save the day whenever I saw trouble, no matter how it would blow back on me. He tried to ask me about it once, but I blew him off. I downplayed it and let the world around me think I was okay.

I wasn’t exactly sure why I was telling Ilsa about it now. Maybe it was the deep-set pain I saw so often in her eyes, like she could understand pain in a way so many others really couldn’t.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her slender body against mine. Trailing her hands over my skin, dusting light kisses over my chest and neck. Every touch conveyed emotion. It eased my guilt just a little, unburdening me ever so slightly.

My arms tightened around her and we lay there, awake but not saying anything, just holding each other in the night until sleep began to pull us under. Just before I faded into oblivion, I heard her faint, heartfelt whisper.

“You’re a good man, Cody.”

I woke up slowly, wondering what had brought me from sleep. The sky showed it was barely dawn, mostly dark outside the curtained window. Ilsa was still curled up against my chest, tucked between me and the back of the couch.

And then I heard it.

Coming from behind a closed door in that tiny apartment was the sound of a little voice.

Ilsa’s son.

Max.

He wasn’t crying or fussing, just babbling on quietly in some little kid language that I couldn’t remotely understand. I looked back down at Ilsa to see if she’d heard, if it was waking her up, but she was out cold. She appeared as though she could sleep through a nuclear war or a zombie apocalypse, which kind of surprised me since she was so on edge all the time.

Then it occurred to me that maybe she really needed the sleep, a single mother with a full-time job, no stability, and zero help.

Carefully pulling free from her arms and tucking the blanket around her naked body, I eased off the couch and pulled on my jeans. The pre-dawn air was a little cool, but not too bad and I really wasn’t sure where my shirt had ended up. I wanted to let Ilsa sleep as long as she could, too, so I didn’t give much thought to finding it before I cracked open the bedroom door to peek inside.

At first, I didn’t see anything. Just a large bed in the middle of the room with a bunch of blankets in a messy pile. I glanced around for a crib, but the bed was really the only furniture in there. I stepped in a little farther, and a little blond head popped up out of the blankets. Wide eyes watched me for a minute in the warm glow of the nightlight, and then a shy smile lit his face.