Vivian's List (Vol. 1) (15 page)

And h
e stood gloriously naked without a tremor of self-consciousness.

I was so wet for him. Feverish breaths lifted my chest as m
y fingers continued working, rubbing my juices around my labia.

While I touched myself, I extended my free hand
and stroked his shaft, reveling in how it swelled even greater in my grasp.

H
eat flashed in his eyes as he watched me pleasuring myself while I pumped the length of his shaft, working it mercilessly.

His skin
was slick and smooth, and I noticed the steely line of his jaw as he fought to keep his desire in check.

T
hick droplets began seeping out. Using my thumb and forefinger, I spread the moisture around the broad head of his cock.

With
a low and guttural groan, he pulled back. “Viv,” he rasped. “I can’t hold it in much longer.”

In less than two seconds, h
e sheathed his rigid cock in a condom. Grasping me by the hips, he lifted me and half-stood, repositioning us as he lowered himself onto the backseat so my legs were astride and I was straddling him.

At his silent urging, I began
rolling my hips, rubbing my clit against his stiff shaft, coating the broad mushroom head with my juices.

The
wind picked up and the rush of the cool ocean breeze only emphasized the heat building between our bodies.

With another hoarse groan,
he guided my hips so that tip of his cock penetrated my sex.

Straightening my spine,
I stared into his eyes as I eased myself down the length of his thick shaft, clenching my inner muscles around his delicious length until I was fully seated.

Then I lifted my hips
, slowly, deliberately, all the way to the tip before I lowered myself all the way down to the root of his cock, deepening the connection, using my fingers to stroke his sac as our bodies joined.

H
e captured my mouth, crushing his lips to mine, his tongue plunging to meet each frenzied thrust of my hips.

Our kisses gained urgency, and Liam groaned
against my mouth as I rode him harder and harder, losing all control, losing all my inhibitions, trying to fight the tide that was pulling. Pulling.

Each
thrust drove me to even greater heights, pushing me closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, sending me over the precipice.

Clawing
my nails into his muscled arms, I pierced his skin as the carnal waves came crashing over me.

With a
quiet sob, I slumped forward and buried my face in his neck, shuddering in his arms as the waves pounded against the shore.

Sea foam surged across the sugar sand.

Frothy bubbles pooled and curdled before they were pulled back by the tide.

Chapter Seventeen

Liam

“So what did your grandmother say?” Vivian asked as soon as I’d hung up the phone.

I joined her on the couch and
reached for the remote.

She raised her eyes to mine, her expression cautiously hopeful. “Well?”

“She wants to see me before I leave for Iraq,” I said, flipping the channel over to CNN.  “And she’s arranging a little family get-together this Saturday.”

Her
eyes immediately lit up. “That’s great, Liam.”

Reluctant as I was to see my grandmother, I
couldn’t bring myself to disappoint Viv.

I couldn’t even begin to explain it, but I felt sensitive to her opinion of me.

She affected me so much that what she thought about me, it mattered.

It mattered
a
lot
.

“
Will you come with me?” I asked. “It’s not going to be anything fancy, just a regular ol’ backyard barbecue.”

“Of course.
” She met my gaze and smiled, and the affection on her face made me feel like the luckiest man in the world. “I’d love to come.”

I smiled, too,
absorbing her warmth. Then in the background I heard: Nine U.S soldiers were killed in a series of attacks in and around the Iraqi capital on Sunday. The latest violence stresses heightened sectarian tensions in the war-torn country.

T
hat was all that was said of it before the credits rolled and the next news segment came on. I stood corrected. I wouldn’t exactly call it a
news
segment. It was an hour-long full coverage of the Casey Anthony trial.

I narrowed my gaze, my eyes trained on the
ticker scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen that showed the number of soldiers killed and the current death toll.

A tight muscle pulled at my jaw.
I thought of the human cost of the war. All the men who were fighting, suffering and dying, both U.S and Iraqi, both soldiers and civilians … their stories, their lives had been reduced to a ticker that scrolled across the bottom of TV screens.

My heart clenched and
I felt a sharp twist of pain in my gut. I wondered how many people watching even noticed those tickers … those neat and clean little footnotes, and if they did, I wondered if it even penetrated their daily lives.

Meanwhile, the trial
of Casey Anthony took center stage. And it shocked me to the core. The crime she’d committed was indeed horrific, but what truly shocked me was how much it dominated the airwaves every hour of the day.

All this while
almost 4,500 U.S. troops had been killed in the Iraq war, with an estimated 600,000 Iraqi civilian fatalities. And that wasn’t even counting the severely wounded and displaced.

As I sat there
numbly, barely registering the Casey Anthony trial as it played out on live TV, I wondered if anything I did over in Iraq even mattered at all.

It was some time
before I even realized Vivian was calling my name.

“Liam,” she said softly
, concern etched on her face. “You okay?”

I
nodded before looking away.

“Is it true?” she asked. “That all U.S troops will be pulled out of Iraq by the end of this year?”

I nodded again.

In the silence, sh
e reached out and took my hand. “What’s bothering you?”

I
slid my fingers around hers without thinking. “Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I shrugged but she seemed to sense more behind the gesture than a casual dismissal for the next words out of her mouth were, “Talk to me.”

At last
I turned to her and gave a tired smile. “Don’t you need to leave for work soon?”

“I do.” She paused
and the little furrow of concentration between her eyebrows deepened. “Why don’t you come with me?”

“Nah.
” I moved a hand to my neck and began a steady massage. “I still need to skim the pool, check the chlorine levels, and make another stop at Home Depot.”

“C’mon,
” she coaxed, giving me an exaggerated look of reproach. “You’ve done enough around the house for the day.”

I reached for the remote and turned
off the TV. “There’s still so much more I need to do.”

S
he dismissed my words with a little wave of her hand. “You’ve already mowed the lawn, trimmed the trees, power washed the windows, cleaned the gutters, and I say that’s enough for today.”

“Well,”
I hedged.

“Don’t you remember what you said to
me,” she asked and reminded me anyway. “You said, and I quote: ‘Viv, I’m all yours for the week and you can do with me as you wish.’ ”

I
hauled her onto my lap and inhaled her lovely scent. “Do you know that you’re sexy as hell when you’re riled up and—”

S
he lowered her mouth to mine, stealing the laughter from my lips. “So are you coming or not?”

I laughed and kissed her
back lingeringly, sipping at her plump lower lip. “Yes, ma’am,” I rasped. She was draped over my thighs and my cock had nestled into the vee of her legs. My erection grew, swelling with need for her. “Just give me two minutes, okay?”

I
groaned somewhere deep in my chest as my hands roamed over her body, grasping her breasts, her hips, her thighs.

We had not yet made love on this sofa, and I intended to remedy that oversight.

For as long as I could remember, Vivian had been rescuing strays. Dogs, cats, birds with broken wings. It used to drive her parents bat shit crazy. And as soon as she’d turned sixteen, she started volunteering at three different animal shelters.

A commitment she had
n’t broken even to this day.

Most shelters operate on shoestring budgets, and volunteers
are an essential part of their daily operations. So, being an animal lover myself, I decided to lend my services the year before I’d left for Iraq.

What I discovered was that while most volunteers signed up with the best of intentions, even the most enthusiastic of volunteers sometimes found themselves surprised at some of the tasks, mostly due to the fact that not all of the ta
sks were nice, clean and ‘fun’.

Tasks like cleaning the cages and kennels, making them neat and sanitary for the animals, and helping with feeding, watering and grooming.

Still, I’d stuck with it for six months.

And here,
Viv had stuck with it for six years ... going on sixty.

“I can’t believe you’re still doing this.” I shook my head
in disbelief. “And I can’t believe you’re dragging me along.”

“Why not?
” she asked, tilting her head to one side. “Free dog kisses, wagging tails, puppies wriggling their bodies with excitement at the sight of me, I mean what more can I ask for?”

Viv
spoke so passionately that her words dispelled my earlier misgivings.

After circling the lot several times, I negotiated a rather tight parking spot between a van and a pickup truck. When
Viv got out of my Jeep, I tucked her arm in mine and we began walking toward the building. “So what do you have to do today? Walk the dogs? Socialize the cats? Clean the cages?”

“
Hmm.” She pondered. “Today it’s mostly administrative work and maybe some adoption counseling.”

After
Viv had checked in at the office, she gave me a quick walking tour so I could meet the furry residents. As we moved along their cages, she gave me a brief run down of their history and circumstances.

Most
of the dogs had ended up at the shelter because their owners had passed away, or had lost their jobs and subsequently their homes, forcing them to move into apartments that didn’t allow pets.

S
everal of the dogs had been found wandering the streets, left to fend for themselves by their previous owners.

A few were strays, and more than a handful
had been severely abused.

“This is Shasta.” Vivian
gestured to a scared looking greyhound and her words came out an exhale. “She was beaten with a metal pipe and her body was thrown in a trash compacter because she underperformed at the race track.”

Before I could react, s
he nodded her head in the direction of the pit bull housed in the cage next to the greyhound. “And that’s Daisy over there.” Her voice was firm, but her eyes looked shadowed. “Poor girl was doused with battery acid and fed ground glass to make her more aggressive. When she lost a fight, her gangbanger owner set her on fire. The Animal Cops found Daisy locked up in a closet, her body half burned, left to die a slow death.”

A sharp pain sliced into
me.

Then m
y breath left my lungs in a sigh as I suddenly remembered why I’d stopped volunteering.

This place used to
infect me with such bleak despair. And it made me so angry.

Vivian’s
smile looked sad around the edges. “Sometimes I think the lucky dogs are the ones that die during the fight.”

I sank to my knees in front of Daisy’s kennel. “Is she aggressive?”

“No.” Viv shook her head. “Not at all. When we first got her she was really scared, urinating when I touched her or if I even came too close to her. Thankfully, we have a behavior specialist on staff. He’s worked really hard to rehabilitate Daisy, and she’s actually been doing great. Now she’s comfortable around people and she’s starting to come out of her shell.”

“I can see that,” I said, smiling as D
aisy licked my fingers through the metal cage. Casting a quick glance over my shoulder, I asked, “What are her chances of being adopted?”

“A pit bull mix?” Vivian
exhaled slowly. “Slim to none.”

“That’s too bad,” I murmured. “She’s a sweetheart.”

“She seems to like you.” Vivian unlatched the cage and Daisy immediately bounded out and danced up to my ankles.

I stroked Daisy’s brick-like head.
“You know … I’ll never ever understand how these dogs can be so forgiving. I mean, some of them have been beaten, tortured, starved and abandoned, and yet they still love. I don’t think we could ever be so forgiving as a species. In fact.” I paused. “I
know
I could not.”

After spending some time with Daisy,
we made our way down the row of kennels. The excitement that most of the dogs exuded was almost palpable. They jumped onto their cages, barking and yelping, hoping to be chosen so they could get outside for some fresh air and exercise.

At last
, we stopped by a beautiful German Shepherd. “And this here is Atticus,” Vivian announced, and I heard the slight catch in her voice. “He was rescued a month ago and just yesterday the vet diagnosed him with terminal cancer.”

“How long does
he have to live?” I asked gently.

“
They don’t know exactly. Months.” Pain flashed across her face. “Maybe only weeks.” She looked at me for a moment, as if trying to determine if she really wanted to say what she was about to say. “It’s hard.” Her eyes were damp and she pressed her lips together as if to stop them from trembling. “It’s really hard, Liam, not bringing any of these dogs home. After losing Milo, then Mom and Dad, I can’t—I just can’t.”

I gave th
e smallest nod of understanding for I knew only too well that loving a dog meant losing a dog.

It was such a sad and cruel fact that their lives
were shorter than human lives.

Vivian
got down on her knees and opened his cage. Atticus greeted her exuberantly, swishing his tail from side to side, wagging his entire body as she buried her face in his dense and rugged coat.

Watching them interact, I had this distinct feeling that
Viv and the German Shepherd shared a deep friendship. An unbreakable bond.

Her words confirmed my hunch.
“I’ve thought about bringing him home. But it hurts too much.” She closed her eyes as if summoning the energy to continue. “It’s too painful to—”

“To
o painful to love again?” I finished her train of thought, and she fell into a ponderous silence. “But, Viv.” I waited until her eyes met mine. “You’re already in love with most of these dogs. And it’s clear to me you’re madly in love with Atticus.”

Though s
he smiled a little at my words, she said nothing.

A short while
later, Vivian headed off to the main office to take care of some administrative work and I stayed back at the kennels to spend more time with Atticus, Daisy, Shasta, and all the other furry residents.