Tiger Lily Read online

  “I didn’t snub you!”

  “You sure did.”

  My lips parted in shock, or to scold him, but he kissed me again. As my fingers ran through his thick hair, holding his head still to mine, I let the argument drift away on the moon-flecked waves.

  His cock was still pressing between my thighs. My lips pressed against the hard, angular planes of his cheekbones, the dimple in his cheek, the quirk at the corner of his mouth. He kissed my throat as if he was trying to devour me, sucking and nibbling. I ground against him, trying to satisfy some of the wild ache between my thighs, but it only made me long for him more. He finally moaned into my ear as if he was losing control too.

  “I’m on birth control,” I murmured. “Just saying.”

  His hands tightened on my hips. “Lily, are you sure—”

  “Quite.” I sounded snappish as ever, but I was heated with desire, not anger, and he chuckled softly into my ear, as if he understood. As if he were delighted by that fire.

  The two of us bobbed in the water as the tip of his cock teased against me. I reached down, taking him in my hand, feeling his thick weight even though I couldn’t see him. He turned his face into my hair, inhaling, as I pressed him against me.

  His hands tightened on my thighs as he slid inside me, slowly, tentatively. My lips parted at the sense of him filling me, almost painfully so, but it was a good burn. I ran my hands over his powerful biceps, up to those shoulders, enjoying just being there in the water with him. My thighs were tight around his lean waist, and the two of us bobbed in the water. He held me up so easily.

  “You feel so goddamn good,” he murmured into my ear.

  “Worth waiting for?” I whispered.

  “I’d have waited as long as it took,” he whispered, before kissing me slowly. His cock was buried deep inside me, but he took his time kissing me properly, his lips soft and attentive.

  And I believed him.

  His fingertips rested on the curve of my ass as he pulled back and slammed home. I felt his biceps and shoulders ripple under my palms as he drove into me over and over, his cock sliding out and then hitting my g-spot as he pushed back in. When he slammed home, the base of his cock pressed against my clit, and my lips parted as my core turned to molten want. My thighs tightened around his lean waist, wanting even more of him.

  As waves of sensation tingled across my skin, my fingers tightened on his shoulders, my fingernails digging into his skin.

  My back arched, and the shining silver moon above us seemed to shatter, then rain down like stars falling to earth. He didn’t stop pounding into me as my orgasm rolled over me in waves of pleasure.

  I couldn’t hold back the cry that sprang from my lips. The sound of my orgasm broke the still of the lake, seeming to echo for miles, and I should’ve been embarrassed, but I didn’t give a damn right now. He kept moving, his lips parting, his fingers tightened on the curve of my ass as he came too, and he let out a roar as he shattered inside me.

  Then he clutched me tight in the sweetest hug, even though his cock was still buried deep in my throbbing core. I buried my face in his shoulder, enjoying the warmth of his body, the closeness of our damp skin pressed together.

  “Oh my god, I’m surprised the water isn’t boiling,” I muttered, and he laughed.

  Then a strange voice bellowed, “Who’s out there?”

  A flashlight beam ran across the water, heading our way.

  “Silver Springs PD! What’re you doing out there?”

  The two of us traded horrified looks, then dove into the water.

  19

  Dylan and I swam halfway through the springs, then climbed up on the bank. He grabbed my hand, and we ran down the road back toward main street Silver Springs. I was glad that was it was late enough that the road seemed abandoned. We’d had to abandon our clothes on the bank, so the two of us were quite the sight.

  Although Dylan was a pretty gorgeous sight naked.

  Dylan kept glancing over his shoulder, and when he ran, his cock—which was long and thick and overall pretty admirable for a dick—jiggled back and forth in a way that made me giggle.

  And my heart also just felt light and giddy, when he was holding my hand.

  He glanced at me sideways, and caught me giggling at his cock. He raised an eyebrow. “What exactly—”

  I dissolved into laughter before he could even finish, and I had to come to a stop, panting to catch my breath, my hands braced on my knees. “It’s just—we had to sneak away from the cops and run naked through Silver Springs—it’s funny…”

  He was still regarding me skeptically, and the look on his face made it impossible for me to catch my breath laughing. I wheezed, “It’s not that your penis looks hilarious when you run, I promise.”

  “I hate you,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he meant it at all.

  Headlights flared down the road as a car turned the corner. Dylan suddenly grabbed me, throwing me over his shoulder as he headed into the woods to one side of the road. He carried me into the trees, and the two of us hid there as the car’s headlights swept by.

  “This is definitely the most romantic date possible,” he said. “Sorry, Lily.”

  “It’s a night we’ll never forget,” I said.

  Maybe that was the kind of romantic that mattered most.

  We came across a house with a clothesline in the backyard. Quickly, the two of us stole some clothes off the line and got dressed. We were in the midst of promising ourselves we’d wash these clothes right away when we got home and return them before the residents woke in the morning when a dog began to bark at us insistently from inside the house.

  Dylan barked back, his voice deep and commanding. The dog yipped and fell silent.

  When he turned to me, I couldn’t help grinning.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Do you want to risk getting caught dressed like this—” he gestured at the Yes, Bob t-shirt and the pants that were ridiculously tight on his tall, chiseled body—“by your grandpa or by my brothers?”

  “My grandpa,” I said promptly. “He’s a sound sleeper.”

  We had snuck halfway back to my house before he stopped abruptly and groaned. “Lily…why didn’t we just shift?”

  I shrugged.

  “Did you think about it?” he accused, his eyes widening. “And you just wanted to laugh at my dick?”

  “Maaaaybe,” I said, stepping close to him, because I was pretty sure he couldn’t be too mad at me when we were close. “Maybe I just like having you naked around me, Dylan Frost.”

  He shook his head as he looked down at me, but he couldn’t hide the fond smile that crossed his lips. “Maybe you don’t have to scheme to keep me naked around you, Lily Maguire.”

  The two of us crept into my grandfather’s house; thankfully he’d left the front door unlocked. Hashtag Silver Springs Life, right there. I never would have left a door unlocked.

  I felt like a naughty teenager again as we snuck into the laundry room. Then one thing turned into another, and we started to make out like kids.

  He put me on the edge of the washing machine as it rumbled, and the two of us kept making out. There was nothing romantic about the laundry room, with its chipped linoleum floor and bright fluorescent lights overhead and my grandfather’s impressive flannel shirt collection in a basket by the door.

  And yet, when Dylan kissed me, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

  He braced his hands on either side of me, leaning down to kiss his way across my thighs. When he pressed a kiss to my center, my hips jerked against my will, my lips parting, and he smiled with his lips still against my mound.

  He slipped his tongue out and licked me, and I let out a yelp. He jerked away, laughing, but pressed a finger to his lips to shush me. I nodded, already aching for more of his tongue.

  But we couldn’t get caught.

  I wanted to remember this sweet night forever. For good reasons, not reasons of deep
and permanent embarrassment and traumatizing of the grandfather.

  He went to work, his eyes still on me. His tongue glided over my clit, through my folds, and when his tongue stroked inside me, the sensation was so amazing that my back arched and I grabbed his shoulders so hard my fingernails pressed into the hard muscles of his shoulders. But he didn’t seem to mind. Despite my best efforts to dent him with my death grip as sensation rippled through my body, he kept going, his mouth working on my clit, his tongue thrusting rhythmically against my g-spot.

  I bit my lip. “Jesus, Dylan, you are my favorite person in the universe…”

  He smiled with his mouth still against my clit, his big hands holding my thighs still as I began to writhe with the power of my orgasm. My fingernails scraped over his skin as I bit my lip, trying to keep from crying out his name. My heels kicked into the metal side of the washing machine, and the sound seemed to echo through the room.

  Then I sagged back, on my elbows against the dials. The washing machine let out a loud buzz as it finished its cycle, but I wasn’t sure it was any louder than I had been.

  He pressed a kiss to the inside of my thigh, then rose to his feet. “Want to go get dressed?” he asked. “I’m going to sneak home for my own clothes and then we can bring these back.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I still sounded breathless.

  My knees were weak as I climbed the stairs to my room. I could have sworn my childhood teddy bear looked at me reproachfully from on top of my dresser as I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I whispered. “Sex like that would even bring you to life.”

  I met him on the back porch with the freshly-washed clothes soaking my arm, and the two of us snuck back to hang them back on the line.

  Then he walked me back to my house.

  “Kissing you goodnight seems…small…after everything else we’ve done,” he said, a smile lingering on his lips as we faced each other on the porch.

  “Kiss me anyway,” I said. His kisses would never seem small to me.

  He pressed a tender kiss to my lips.

  “What does this mean?” I whispered as he was crossing the porch. It was as if I was coming out of a dream.

  I didn’t think I spoke loudly enough for him to hear. We should have that conversation, but truthfully, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want anything to break the beautiful haze I was in.

  He turned back, with something uncertain in his eyes but that usual confident smile on his lips.

  “It means whatever you want it to,” he told me. “I’m in for anything. When it comes to you, I always have been. Always will be.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, but Dylan had always been able to read me so well. He didn’t wait. He walked away then, jogging down the porch steps, and he never looked back as he headed down the street.

  I sagged against the front door.

  Could something so beautiful really last?

  20

  I worried the shop would feel weird the next day, but when I walked into the bays where Silver Springs’s own radio station blared from the speakers, the sunshine came through the open doors, and the guys teased me, I felt…at home.

  Dylan went back to acting like he was just my friend, which was perfect. Archer was quiet, but it was that comfortable silence of his, like we were old friends who didn’t have to say anything.

  He wasn’t rushing me. None of them were.

  For some reason, that made me think of that Cloak of Inevitability that Lupine had teased me about.

  And then the bells above the door jangled, and Juniper walked in while I was at the reception desk that morning.

  “Good morning,” I called, waving hello to the pretty dark haired witch. “What can I help you with?”

  There was a teasing glint in her eye. “I actually came here to help you.”

  Then she set my folded little black dress, Dylan’s jeans and button-down shirt on the table. She laid his cell phone and wallet and my slim purse on top of it.

  I bit my lip.

  “You guys seem to have lost some stuff by the springs,” she said innocently. “People drop things sometimes.”

  “Yes,” I managed. “We must have dropped these when we walked through.”

  A mischievous smile carved her lips. “I know how easy it is to lose your panties in the spring. They fall right off to all the…moisture down there…by the spring.”

  “How’d you find them?”

  “I was out for a walk when I saw this little black dress waving like a flag. A freak flag. Do you know Violet’s boyfriend, Liam?”

  I shook my head no, and she went on, “He’s a cop, so I tried to give them to him.” Her smile widened. “Quite the coincidence. He had a weird call the other day… some kelpies were very annoyed that someone was fucking in their living room. Splooshing it up. Jizzing on their couches—do kelpies have couches?”

  “I have no idea,” I managed.

  She was definitely laughing at me. She added, “I didn’t know trolls could blush, but he looked very uncomfortable. So I volunteered to bring your stuff back.”

  “Kelpies!” I said, shaking my head. I hadn’t even known there were kelpies in Silver Springs.

  “It must have been some amazing fucking for the kelpies to go through the trouble of leaving the water and finding a phone. Congratulations!”

  I closed my eyes. I wondered if the kelpies had watched our legs kicking around underwater as…nope. I was not going to muse on that one. That way lay madness.

  “The police are more amused than pissed. So you’re good!” She patted my shoulder comfortingly. I wondered if she had a spell for freakouts. Although from what I’d heard about Juniper, she would probably offer me something that vibrated as a solution for whatever ailed me.

  “Yes it is good,” I agreed. “For them. Whoever it was.”

  My cheeks were hot. Kelpies. I had wronged the Kelpies.

  And I had wronged my grandfather’s washing machine.

  Blake chose that moment to walk through the door. Of course he did. He took one look at my face, and I could tell he knew something was wrong even as I tried to smile. Actually, from the raised eyebrows he gave me, the smile was just more suspicious.

  His gaze fell on the clothes piled on the reception desk, and then he picked up Dylan’s cell phone.

  His jaw tensed, but all he said was, “Hello, Juniper. How’s the shop?”

  “Great!” she told him. “We have new flower underwear with leaves that tickle and stroke your cock and balls if you’re interested. It’s because of all that fuss about that Love Blooms book. I have a feeling that business is about to boom.”

  “Mm,” he said. “Maybe another time.”

  When she’d left, he regarded me seriously, his arms crossed. Tension seemed to ripple in the air between us.

  “If this were an I Love Lucy episode,” he said, “I’d say you had a lot of ‘splaining to do.”

  I shrugged with as much dignity as I could muster in the moment.

  It was a pretty minimal amount of dignity.

  “Let’s get to work,” I said, ignoring his commanding presence, his arms crossed over his chest, even though all of that sent a strange shiver of desire through me.

  “Let’s.” He swept his hand toward the door to the bay. “Apparently I need to keep you busy enough to stay out of trouble.”

  Every day, Blake had me help him with some project on my grandfather’s ancient, ailing convertible, too. I loved learning more about how to put a car together.

  And I loved doing it with him. It felt like our thing, Blake and I working on the car in the afternoon. Blake definitely had a bossy, protective side, but when he was teaching it just felt…nurturing. Like he was putting his powers to use for good for once.

  I stared at his sexy shoulders as he leaned over the engine and debated telling him just that, but I didn’t know how.

  Maybe I shouldn’t encourage Boss Man, either.
/>   On Sunday, the guys insisted on driving to the city with me. Blake had a pick-up truck, and we all piled into the cab for the trip. While we were insisting, I insisted we stop by Jewels Café.

  Dylan and Archer stayed outside while Blake and I went in.

  “You invited your brothers on our date?” I asked him skeptically. “I don’t think you’re good at this.”

  A smile played over his lips. “It’s a date. You admitted it.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Does that mean you might kiss me good night at the end of our date?” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, which hunched his shoulders in a way that was ridiculously sexy. We were standing so close together, I could see the golden flecks in his amber eyes. There was an increasingly-familiar throb between my thighs.

  “Probably not. You’ll be all sweaty from moving my stuff all day.”

  His smile widened. “Maybe I look good sweaty.”

  I was sure he looked good sweaty. I could just imagine that tall, powerful body, beaded with sweat. Little beads of sweat, trickling slowly down his hard pecs, the ridged abs I was willing to bet were hidden underneath his shirt.

  “Maybe you do,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean you’d taste good.”

  I said that louder than I meant to. The little old lady standing in front of us turned around and glared at me.

  He waved to her. Blake was unabashed. I punched him in the arm.

  “Don’t embarrass me,” I whispered.

  “Everyone needs a hobby,” he shot back.

  I was flustered when we reached the counter. Blake did that to me.

  “What can I get you?” Julian greeted us cheerfully from behind the counter.

  Blake started to say something, but I was desperate to get out of the cafe and into the relative safety of the backseat. I’m a cat—I’m not meant to spend this much time around people.

  “Four unicorn hot chocolates, please,” I said.

  Blake raised an eyebrow at me. “Pussy cat, I need some caffeine to deal with your smart mouth.”

  “I’ll add espresso shots,” Julian promised.