kissing her had his dick totally hard. He knew if he didn’t stop soon he wouldn’t be able to and he didn’t want to blow it with her. There was something about her that drew him unlike any other woman.
She was shy at times, bold at others and sexy all the time. He wanted to get to know her better and he didn’t want to scare her off by asking her if he could spend the night with her, although he wanted to so badly he felt like howling at the moon. He wanted to take that beautiful, curvy body of hers and do wonderful things to it.
But there was no way in hell she’d be willing to ask him in. No way. If he thought for one minute that she would…
“Josh, would you like to come inside?”
7
“Y our home is beautiful, Lilliana.” Josh looked around her small house and Lilliana was proud of how she’d pulled together her secondhand furniture and accessories and made them their own.
“Thank you, Josh. Can I get you anything to eat or drink?” she asked. The look in his eyes sent those chills racing down her spine again. She motioned for him to sit down and sat down next to him, after she’d turned on the small CD player and the low sounds of a sexy, bluesy sax filled the air as she sat near the arm of the sofa.
“No. But you can come closer. I won’t bite, not unless you want me to,” he laughed. She smiled and scooted her body closer to his along the sofa, and nervously placed her hands in her lap.
“So why did you leave Chicago when you were younger? Didn’t you say that you left as a teenager? You’ve only recently returned, right?” He casually placed his arm around her shoulder, turned his body and pulled her even closer so that she faced outward and was nestled in front of him. Lilliana allowed the intimacy, kicked off her sandals and curled her feet underneath her bottom before she answered.
“To be honest, I didn’t think much about it. I told you I was the oldest of four kids, right?” she asked. He nodded his head and feathered caresses over her exposed shoulder in the halter that she wore, raising goosebumps down her arm.
During their date she’d found it easy to tell him about her family. “Yes, you did,” he said and continued to caress her arm.
“I was tired of taking care of my brothers, cleaning the house, making beds, combing hair…there was no other alternative for me, I don’t think. It was leave or go insane. I mean, I felt guilty about it for a long time,” she said and paused.
“Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why did you feel guilty? You had nothing to feel guilty for. If anything, it sounds as though your mother should feel guilty,” he murmured.
“I don’t know. Our father wasn’t around. My mother needed me, depended on me. I should have stayed and helped her.”
“Lilliana, that wasn’t fair of your mother to expect you to take on the parent role for your brothers. From what you told me, it didn’t seem as though you ever had a childhood of your own. Please don’t get mad at me, but I think it was unfair—and that’s putting it mildly—for your mother to expect you to care for your brothers like they were your own children. To the point that you never went on a date, never participated in school events, never did anything that normal adolescents get to do. No, I’m sorry, I don’t think you have a damn thing to feel guilty for. Now your mother? That’s another matter,” he said grimly.
This man didn’t know her, didn’t know anything about her but the injustice of her childhood affected him. He nestled her closer to his body and she felt the unmistakable feeling of his mouth lightly kissing the top of her head, and the small gesture touched her deeply.
“She was a whole hell of a lot better than Marcus,” Lilliana sighed.
“The man you lived with before you returned to Chicago?”
The amber glow of the lamp, the low music, and the nearness of Joshua made it easier for her to open up about her time with Marcus and the way he constantly
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