Lily's Dream (Siren Publishing Classic) Read online

  Lily’s Dream

  As far back as she can remember, Lily Richards has always had a close relationship with her brother’s friends Derek and Jake. She kept Derek’s secret about his sexual orientation, making them the closest of friends, while secretly she dreamed about having Jake as her own.

  Returning home after ten years, Lily is thrilled when she finally gets Jake Mason’s attention. Not wanting his friends to interfere, Jake asks Lily to keep their relationship a secret. Added to the pressure of sneaking around, Lily discovers a kink that just might push Jake away.

  With everyone keeping secrets, it’s no wonder that relationships strain under the pressure. Secrets start to unravel. Truths are revealed, jeopardizing lifelong friendships. One major misunderstanding risks not only Jake and Lily’s budding relationship, but the friendship they have all shared since childhood. Can their friendship withstand the truth, or will Jake and Lily’s relationship become nothing more than a broken dream?

  Genre: BDSM, Contemporary

  Length: 37,776 words

  LILY’S DREAM

  Kiel Nichols

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  LILY’S DREAM

  Copyright © 2012 by Kiel Nichols

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62241-404-8

  First E-book Publication: September 2012

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Lily’s Dream by Kiel Nichols from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Kiel Nichols’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Nichols’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  This first one is for mom and dad. You taught me to dream big and to work like a dog to make my dreams real. You taught me to pick myself up when life knocks me down. Most importantly, you believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself.

  LILY’S DREAM

  KIEL NICHOLS

  Copyright © 2012

  Prologue

  Lily looked at herself in the mirror and frowned. Her brother Tom had just called to say he was coming over for some help with his English 101 paper. She was sure he’d be bringing his two best friends along, too. He always did.

  She loved the job of editor, and sometimes tutor, to her older brother and his friends. Helping them with homework meant she got to spend a lot of time with Tom, Derek, and Jake.

  Lily sighed. She’d woken up that morning sweaty, aching, nipples hard as stones. She’d been dreaming again—about Jake. Lately it seemed that was all she did at night, dream and fantasize really, about Jake. She didn’t have any practical experience to judge by, but her dream lover was amazing. She’d woken up one morning, a few months before, in the grip of an orgasm from the dream, her first orgasm. She’d enjoyed it enough to try to make it happen on her own. Although her success had been hit or miss, when she managed to rub herself just the right way, boy, did she like it.

  Unfortunately, she knew that her dreams of Jake would remain that, just dreams. It didn’t matter that he was only four years older than she was. He saw himself as a man and her as a kid. Being a “kid” didn’t stop the guys from calling on her editing skills though. Some things never changed.

  With a sigh she looked at herself in the bedroom mirror and realized that far too many things never changed. Lily had to use the mirror in her bedroom because the mirror in her bathroom was set too high for her to see more than her eyes and the top of her head. Standing only five foot one and one-third inches could be such a pain.

  Tilting her head from side to side, she tried to assess her face objectively. Her coloring was both too vivid and too washed out at the same time. Her eyes were a deep ocean-blue and a little too big for her face. She had recently traded in her thick glasses for contact lenses and thought she looked a little older because of it. Even though they didn’t match the rest of her face, her eyes were her best feature. Her hair was definitely her worst feature. Ginger red and riotously curly, it had earned her the nickname “Carrot Top” when she was a little girl. Unfortunately, the moniker had stuck. She tended to gather her hair back into a clip at the base of her neck, especially when it was rainy, windy, or humid, so that meant pretty much most of the time.

  Lily applied a light coating of blush to her cheeks. In contrast to her vivid hair and eyes, her skin was so white it was almost transparent, but she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. She supposed it could have been worse. She might have been like her brother, Tom, with so many freckles that when he went in the sun they ran together.

  Moving her assessment on from her face, Lily took a step back and looked down at her body. She thrust out her breasts beneath the mint-green sweater and frowned when it didn’t make much difference. When her breasts had finally started to grow a few years before, she’d been thrilled. Then, just as soon as they’d started growing, they seemed to stop. They were like little apples that had fallen off the tree too soon. She wouldn’t bother to wear a bra, except that every time there was the slightest breeze, her nipples beaded. It was embarrassing. In the winter she put Band-Aids over them when she went to school because her bra wasn’t enough padding.

  She turned her body sideways to look at her butt. There wasn’t much to that either. She could u
sually buy her jeans in the juniors’ section, but she always had to wash them so they would shrink a little before they fit right. The smallest size jeans were too big in some brands, requiring that she buy them in the children’s section, something she absolutely refused to do. Taking in the whole package, she sighed again. She wondered if she’d ever look her age.

  Lily heard the front door open, and the sound of raucous male laughter traveled up the stairs. With a thrill of anticipation, she turned and ran lightly down the stairs on stocking feet. She was still aware of her inadequacies, but she knew they didn’t really matter to these guys. She’d never been anything but “Tom’s smart little sister” to them.

  She was at the landing at the bottom of the stairs when she heard the refrigerator door open and Jake’s voice. Her heart seemed to catch at the sound.

  “I’m telling you, man, she had tits that would make a grown man beg. They had to be real, too. They say more than a handful’s a waste, but I don’t think so.”

  Lily sighed again hearing Jake’s comment. She took a quick look down at her less-than-a-handful and headed down the hallway.

  “So what happened?” Tom asked Jake.

  Jake must have made a face because the other boys laughed again.

  Derek asked, “Struck out, huh?”

  “Hey, don’t count me out yet. We have another date next week. I think I’ll be able to slide right into home plate.”

  Lily let the imp take over and stepped into the room. “You’re dating a girl who plays baseball?” she asked innocently, curious to see what Jake was going to say.

  The men, because at twenty they really couldn’t be called boys anymore, turned to look at her with faces in varying shades of pink. Tom, his redheaded coloring undoubtedly his biggest curse, was tomato red. Derek was also blushing furiously. He avoided her eye. Jake, however, only colored slightly and shrugged. “Baseball’s a great sport,” he said casually, as though they really had been talking about baseball.

  Lily rolled her eyes at Tom. He chuckled weakly. Jake was the only one of the three of them who seemed to have no clue that Lily had heard every word and was teasing. He still thought of her as a pig-tailed child. It was a standing joke between them all. Last Christmas, he had actually given her a stuffed animal! It had been Donkey from Shrek, but she’d changed its name to Jake.

  Tom changed the subject by mentioning why they were there. “Thanks a lot for your help. Professor Tyler’s a real stickler about grammar, and you know I was never good at any of that.”

  “I assume I’m doing a mass editing job today?” Lily asked, raising her eyebrow.

  Jake slung his arm over her shoulder, making her heart thump painfully. “Is that okay, Pippi?” Lily hated to be reminded of when she used to wear her hair like Pippi Longstocking.

  “Did you bring me hard copies this time?” Lily asked. The last time they had showed up with their papers on thumb drives, and she had to print them before she could edit them. Derek pulled his folded paper out of his pocket, but the other two pulled their drives out.

  She sighed, stepped away from Jake, and took Derek’s paper. As she headed toward the living room, she tossed over her shoulder, “You guys are going to have to print those. I’m not your secretary.”

  Lily sat on the couch with her red pen and began line editing Derek’s paper on the coffee table. It was a personal narrative about his family. Derek’s father had died when he was three years old, and the story was about growing up with just him and his mother. He was the best writer of the three, and his papers were always a fast edit. A few minutes later, Derek joined her while Jake and Tom went upstairs to print their papers.

  He sat across from her and looked at his knees while she finished editing. Lily read through the paper and tried to decide if she should say anything about what she’d seen the other day. By the time she finished the edit, she knew she couldn’t just ignore it. If she did, it would always be the invisible elephant in the room. She didn’t want Tom and Derek’s friendship to suffer because Derek started avoiding her.

  “Derek?” she said tentatively. He looked up at her briefly, turned pink again, and looked back down at his hands.

  When he didn’t say anything, she got up and sat on the arm of his chair. She put her small hand on his broad shoulder. “Do they know?” she asked, jerking her head toward the stairs.

  “There’s nothing to know,” Derek said in a low voice. “It was just a weird”—he paused—”thing. It didn’t mean anything. I like girls. It’s not like I’m”—he lowered his voice to a whisper—”gay or anything.”

  “They’re not going to care.” She rubbed his shoulder comfortingly. She didn’t believe his denial. A few days before, Lily had had a huge paper due and decided to use the college library for research. She’d pulled into the parking lot and saw Derek and another man in a passionate embrace. She honked a hello before her brain processed what she was seeing. When Derek realized it was she, he hurried away before she could talk to him.

  He looked up at Lily, his eyes stricken. “I can’t believe I did that in a public place. It doesn’t matter. I can’t tell them. We’ve been friends for more than ten years. We’ve done everything together, the Three Musketeers.” He laughed wryly. “Hell, we’ve showered together, slept in the same tent, made out with girls in the same car.”

  “They’re not going to care. They love you.” Lily put her arm around his shoulder and pulled him comfortingly close. He wrapped his around her back and put his face against her chest. She hugged him tightly. “Don’t underestimate them.”

  He shuddered and said, “Please, please don’t tell them.”

  “I promise,” she vowed, then laid her cheek on the top of his head.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Jake bellowed from the door. Tom stood in front of him, saying nothing but looking stricken.

  Derek stood up so fast that Lily fell off the arm of the chair and landed on her rump on the floor.

  He put up his hands beseechingly and looked right at Tom. “Nothing’s going on. I wasn’t hitting on her,” Derek spoke quickly.

  For one moment, nothing happened then Jake tried to push past Tom, his hands in fists. Tom turned to hold Jake back. Lily didn’t know what to do. She got up quickly and stood in front of Derek. Not wanting her to get hurt, Derek was trying to move her out of the way. Tom was shouting at Jake, trying to get through the anger.

  Even though Tom outweighed Jake by at least twenty pounds, it looked like Jake was going to be able to get past him. Tom shouted, “Look at his face, man.”

  Finally, Tom’s words broke through Jake’s anger, making him stop. He looked at Derek. Lily also glanced up at him. She hadn’t realized earlier that he had been crying. Now his face was wet and panicked.

  Jake took an angry step forward, and Tom once again blocked his way. “If you’re not hitting on her, what’s going on?”

  Lily thought fast. “His paper is about his father dying, you jerk,” she said to Jake, effectively stopping him from trying to get past Tom to rip Derek apart. She wasn’t exactly lying about the paper because Derek’s father was mentioned. Jake looked abashed. She heard Derek let out a long sigh behind her.

  “Sorry, man,” Jake said, stepping into the room. “It looked like you were…” He stopped, reaching for the right words. “Doing something else.” He finished on a sigh. “I should have known you’d never hit on a kid.”

  “Hey!” Lily protested. “I’m sixteen years old and a senior in high school. I’m hardly a kid.” She had skipped a grade and gone to summer school so that she could graduate early.

  All three of them looked at her with patronizing smiles. “Of course not, Carrot Top,” Jake said. He slung an arm over her shoulder and gave her a noogie, pulling a few curly strands out of the clip.

  Lily looked up at Jake, feeling exasperation and puppy love. When she looked around the room, she saw both Tom and Derek looking at her with concern. She pulled out from under Jake’s arm. She loved when he touc
hed her, but she didn’t want anyone to know how she felt about him.

  She held out her hands for the other two papers and said, “Why don’t you guys make yourself scarce?” she said. “It’s my turn to mow the lawn. If you do it for me, I’ll be able to give these my complete attention.” That’s how this editing thing worked. They would do some chore for her in exchange for her services.

  As one, they headed out of the room muttering. Derek was the last one out. He turned to her and mouthed, “Thank you.”

  Chapter 1

  Ten years later

  Lily got out of her Jeep, stretched, and looked at the slightly droopy porch of the cottage she had bought. She’d flown in from New York to close on the house two weeks before, the fourth trip she’d made from New York in the last two months. She had come home as soon as she’d gotten word of her mother’s diagnosis of breast cancer.

  Lily had to fly back three more times to get her life moved home. She’d thought she’d have to take a sabbatical from teaching, but a query letter to Jefferson University, her brother’s alma mater, had netted her an immediate interview. They were so thrilled to get a professor in their English department with such credentials they’d offered her a full professorship, a corner office, and a choice of the following semester’s classes. Lily, not wanting to create enemies before she even began, turned down the nice office in lieu of a small office on the main hallway, and chose to teach the two courses no one had claimed. Because she did have an amount of professional pride, she also chose to teach three other courses not previously offered at the school. Administration was thrilled because the courses increased Jefferson’s prestige in the academic community, which was why they’d hired her in the first place.