by Louise Hall
After she came again, Kian gently cleaned her up and then climbed back up her body. Sleepily, she rolled over on to her side and he fitted himself around her; his arm around her waist and his leg slung over both of hers. She pushed back against him, his cock nudging between her buttocks.
“Will you do something for me?” Kian asked, brushing his lips against her bare shoulder.
“Not right now,” Cate mumbled, “if it involves me moving. I’m too comfy.”
“I think…” Kian took courage from the beauty cradled in his arms. “I think maybe I need to talk to somebody about what happened to me?”
“I think,” she said softly. She didn’t want to spook him. It was a really big deal that a proud man like Kian was admitting that he might need some help. “That’s a really good idea.”
“Will you come with me?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve asked Bram to make sure that my name never goes public.”
Cate reached down and squeezed his hand, “you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about. I don’t want to have to explain any of this to the children. I don’t want them to know that there are sick bastards like Hunter out there. They’re too young.”
“OK.”
“I’ve done my best to try and make sure justice is served against Hunter and I’m going to get counselling or whatever to make sure that what he did doesn’t hurt you and the children ever again but apart from you and Bram, I don’t want anybody else to know about this, Cate.”
Cate rolled over so that she was facing him. “I won’t tell anybody, I promise.”
“I know our families already have questions about why we separated.”
“Screw them. What goes on in our marriage is between you and me, nobody else.”
“Are you sure? I hate forcing you to lie for me again.”
“It’s different this time because I’m not doing it because I have to; I’m doing it because I want to. I want to protect you.”
“It’s just I’ve worked so fucking hard to be seen as more than just a stupid footballer.”
“Hey,” she pushed him so he was lying on his back. “You’re not just a stupid anything. You are the strongest, bravest, most intelligent and handsome man I know.”
“Oh yeah?” Kian raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Cate said with absolute certainty. “Will you do something for me?”
“Anything,” Kian lifted her up so that she was lying on top of him. He reached down and gently squeezed her bottom. “You want me to give you a million dollars?”
“Ha,” Cate swatted his chest, “the only thing I buy is books and I’ve barely touched the Amazon gift card you got me for Christmas.”
“OK,” Kian smiled, “you want me to sign a contract stating that I’ll give you at least one orgasm every day for the rest of your life?”
She raised an eyebrow, “just the one? That’s not very ambitious.”
“Since when have I ever been satisfied with giving you just the one?”
“As much as I love orgasms, that’s not what I want you to do for me either.”
Kian held his hands up, “I give up. What do you want, angel?”
“I want you to check out of that hotel tomorrow morning and come home with me.”
Kian looked up at her, “that’s really what you want? I’ve told you everything now but I’m nowhere near fixed, Cate.”
“Yeah, well I’m done living without you. The way I see it, you’ve got a choice. You can either quit being so stubborn and come home with me tomorrow or I’m going to go and pick up the children and then we’re all going to move into the hotel with you. We’re a family, Kian and we should be together.”
“When you put it like that…” Kian teased. “Yes, I’ll check out of the hotel and come home with you tomorrow. There’s nothing I want more.”
Saturday March 16th
Still halfway between awake and dreaming, Cate reached out her hand, expecting to make contact with the hot, muscular and hopefully naked body of her husband but instead all she got was a fistful of cold sheet.
“No!” She quickly sat up, letting the cotton sheets pool at her waist. The curtains were still closed and the room was pitch-black but her other senses were on hyper-alert, desperately searching for any signs that after baring his soul so completely to her the previous night, Kian hadn’t left her again.
The bathroom door swung open. The warm, yellowish glow provided a pathway through the darkened room to the sanctuary of their bed.
Kian stood at the threshold and for a moment, neither one of them moved or spoke. Their harsh, choppy breaths sounded thunderous in the quiet room. Cate felt his dark, fiery gaze wash over her exposed flesh, making her skin feel all tight and prickly. She didn’t have to look down to know that her pink nipples were drawn taut as if desperately seeking his attention.
He was still there. Unlike that morning at the Chatsfield, he hadn’t left her to take a shower. He hadn’t been eager to wash away the physical remnants of their coupling the previous night. His black hair was still messed up from where she’d tugged on it. She knew that if he came closer, his beautiful, hot skin would still smell like her and him and sex.
Her eyes drifted down a body so perfect it could have been sculpted from the finest marble. He clenched his stomach muscles, making his abs look even more mouth-wateringly defined. When she reached his groin, she couldn’t stop the gurgle escaping from the back of her throat. His thick cock jutted upwards towards his stomach, the tip already shiny with pre-release.
“Angel,” he prowled towards the bed. Her hand was already reaching out to grasp him.
“I thought…” His fingers dug into her inky-black hair; his fingernails lightly scratching her scalp. When he did that, she was completely incapable of rational thought. She wrapped her hand around the base of his cock, her fingers not quite meeting.
She couldn’t hear what he said as his palms covered her ears. He stroked the calloused pads of his thumbs over her delicate cheekbones.
He tipped her backwards on to the bed and climbed above her. He hadn’t switched off the bathroom light and she was glad because it meant that she could see the pleasure twisting his handsome face as she stroked her hand up and down his turgid length.
He brushed his lips against hers once, twice, three times. His hands left her ears and she could hear his harsh grunts as she dragged him perilously close to the edge.
He dipped his head, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down her neck and then playfully nipped at her collarbone. He reached down and tugged away the sheet from around her legs.
“Fuck,” he gasped. He dragged his hot, velvety tongue up and over her nipple, making her cry out.
Kian reached down and removed her delicate hand from his swollen, throbbing cock. “I’m not going to come against your wrist, angel.”
He lifted her hands up above her head and pinned her wrists against the mattress.
“I thought you’d left me again,” Cate choked out. She arched her back, rubbing her heavy, aching breasts wantonly against his damp chest.
“Never,” Kian said darkly. He thought about just how close he’d come to fucking losing her.
“If you had,” Cate writhed beneath him, seeking out the hard jut of his erection. “I would have found you again. You can’t…” Her voice trailed off as he rubbed the underside of his erection against her clit.
“I can’t what, angel?” Kian chuckled.
“You can’t get rid of me.”
Kian moved his hips, the blunt head of his cock ghosting over her entrance. “I’ll never be good enough for you, Cate.”
“You will,” Cate shivered, completely wrecked by desire. “You are… Oh God!” she cried out, her head slamming back against the mattress as he worked just the head of his cock inside her entrance. “You’ve always been good enough for me, Kian. Always.”
She brought her legs up and wrapped them tightly around Kian’
s waist.
Kian was barely holding on. To know that this amazing woman still wanted to be his wife even after everything he’d done, he couldn’t have felt fucking luckier if he’d won the lottery.
He let go of her wrists and she reached up and tangled her fingers in his black hair. “Look at me, angel.” He wanted to look into those wonderful, forgiving black eyes as he fused them together again with one deep, penetrating thrust.
She tried so desperately to fight it but with that one, single thrust, her whole world shrank down until the only thing she was aware of was his thick cock between her legs, stretching her almost to the brink of pain, every inch of him throbbing with the most hypnotic beat.
“Kian!” The sound of his name spilling from her parted lips was the sweetest melody. He didn’t want to share her cries with the world but he couldn’t kiss her yet. He watched as her beautiful face twisted with the erotic pleasure that only he could give her. He’d caused her so much pain over the past few months, he’d done his absolute best to push her away and make her hate him but yet she was still here and she loved and accepted him. He forced his gaze away from her for a second and looked up at the ceiling. He silently thanked the heavens for Cate.
Afterwards, they lay curled up lengthways across the mattress, sweaty and spent. Cate lifted her head up from his chest for a moment. “I’ll tell them that I kissed someone else.”
Kian’s head jerked up, “what?”
“You know how nosy our families are. We’re going to need to give them a valid reason for why we were separated. It makes sense that you would have a hard time with that since they all know what a Neanderthal you can be sometimes.”
“No,” Kian shook his head. “I’m not going to have you lie for me, Cate.”
“I told you last night. I don’t mind.”
“No.”
Cate put her head back down on his chest, “just think about it, OK?”
“I’m not going to think about my wife kissing another man, no fucking way.”
“Hey, I didn’t actually kiss another man, you know.”
She thought he’d gone back to sleep. “After everything I’ve done to you these last couple of months, do you really think I’m going to let you take any of the blame for it?”
“I’m not exactly relishing the idea of being thought of as a loose-lipped slut-bag but it’s for the best, you know. This way, we can be like OK, I kissed some random guy, you found about it, got really angry and moved out, I grovelled at your feet and you took me back, end of story.”
“Except that you’re the very last person who should be fucking grovelling in all of this.”
“Please Kian,” Cate sounded weary. “Do it for me, OK?”
Kian rolled his eyes, “you know I can’t deny you anything, angel.”
“I know,” she smiled.
She suddenly sat up. Kian watched her bare breasts sway right in front of him and even though he was exhausted, he felt his cock perk up again.
“Hey,” Cate caught him, “quit looking at my boobs.”
“I can’t help it,” he chuckled, “they’re kind of right in front of me.”
She reached for one of the pillows and held it in front of her chest. “When I was driving across to see you yesterday, Ben called me. Actually, he called you because I still had your phone but he said he’d seen something on the news about Rovers and he wanted to ask you about it. He said he was going to call you at the office so I lied and said that we were meeting up to talk about making our trial separation more permanent. I bought you some time but he’s still going to ask you about it.”
Kian looked up at the ceiling. “When I think about it logically, I know that I was just a boy and what happened wasn’t my fault but… I’ve done what I can to make sure the bastard gets what’s coming to him. I’ve donated money to the charity set up to help other victims. I don’t know for sure but I think I’m one of the most high-profile players to be caught up in this so far. I don’t want to be the poster child, Cate.”
Cate squeezed his hand, “I understand. Just tell Ben that you spoke to the police a couple of weeks ago but you weren’t allowed to say anything because of the ongoing investigation. You didn’t know what was happening at the time.”
She tried to reassure him, “my brother can be a jerk sometimes but he’s not a gossip.”
“It feels like we’re tying ourselves up in knots here, angel.”
“I’ll support you 100% whatever you decide but I need you to know something. You didn’t have any control about what happened to you back then but you do now. The truth about what happened belongs solely to you. It’s completely up to you to decide who you want to tell it to and when, OK? Ben might be your best friend but he doesn’t have an automatic right to know anything you don’t want to tell him.”
Kian settled her back on his chest. “I don’t want anybody else to know, angel. But I also don’t want to lie about our marriage, it’s too important to me. I don’t want to blame you for our separation by saying that you kissed another man. I know our families are going to have questions but it’s our marriage, yours and mine. I think we should tell them a pared down version of the truth, which is that we had some problems but we’re working through them.”
As they drove to Liv’s later that morning to pick up the children, Kian reached across and put his hand on Cate’s jeans-clad knee.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
“I’m terrified,” Kian admitted. “Do you remember when we came back from Vegas and we had to tell your mum that we’d got married and you were pregnant? This feels just like that. Except this time there’s three of them.”
Cate looked up at him incredulously, “you were like the calmest person I’d ever met. I was the one freaking out. You kept telling me that it was going to be OK.”
“I was being a fucking duck,” Kian laughed.
“Huh?”
“You know how a duck looks really calm on the surface, gliding gently across the water but underneath its little, orange legs are paddling like crazy?”
“I guess it’s my turn to be the calm one then and tell you that it’s going to be OK. They’re your children, Kian. They’re not tyrannical little monsters all the time.”
He still shuddered at her use of the word “monster”.
“I’ve hurt them, Cate. Especially Lola. What if they can’t forgive me?”
“No,” she shook her head. “They love you, Kian. What hurt them the most was you not being there.”
“Is everything OK?” Liv pulled Cate to one side while Kian followed Jax into the kitchen where the children were just finishing up their breakfast.
Cate knew that just because Kian had been honest with her about what had happened to him at the Rovers Academy, it didn’t mean that their problems had miraculously all been solved but it was a start.
“We’re getting there.”
She gave her sister a hug, “thank you so much for looking after the children last night. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
“You actually did me a favour,” Liv chuckled, rubbing her belly. “Even though I’m still pregnant with this little one, Jax has already started talking about having more babies. He actually used the words “our own football team” the other day. I had to remind him that I’m a few years older than him and as much as I love being a mum, I don’t want to spend the next few years of my life just popping out his babies. I think having four little monsters in the house last night has definitely made him think twice.”
Cate giggled, “I’m glad we could be of service then. He’ll find out when my new niece or nephew’s born that it’s a whole different ball game when you’ve got two little ones to look after.”
“Seriously though,” Liv nudged Cate. “Are you sure that everything’s OK between you and Kian? I don’t want to pry but you’re my baby sister, I’m always going to worry about you. When you called yesterday and asked me to pick up the children, you sounded really freaked out.”
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br /> “I’m so sorry. The very last thing I want to do when you’re pregnant is make you worry about me. It’s just… Kian and I, we’ve been having some problems recently. I’m sure Ben told you that we’d been having a trial separation.”
“Is it because he was working too much? I thought you resolved all of that when you went up to Julian’s cabin for the weekend.”
“We did. It wasn’t about that.”
“Cate?” Kian was stood in the doorway. “Is everything OK, angel?”
He could tell from the way she was fidgeting that she wasn’t comfortable. He wrapped his arm around her slender waist, his thumb gently rubbing her hip.
“If you ever need to talk, I’m here,” Liv nodded at Cate.
She narrowed her eyes at Kian. “I’m watching you.”
“Liv,” Cate sighed. “It’s not like that, OK. Kian hasn’t done anything wrong.”
After Liv had stomped off towards the kitchen, Cate sagged against Kian. “I’m sorry she gave you such a hard time.”
“Hey,” he turned her around to face him. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, angel. I’m the one who should be apologising. I wish that I was strong enough and you could tell Liv the truth.”
“It’s not about being strong or otherwise. It’s your choice, Kian. You don’t owe anybody anything.”
“You’re wrong,” Kian murmured. “I owe you and the children everything.”
When they walked back into the kitchen, the children were just finishing up their breakfast. “Mommy,” Sierra squealed. “You’re back.” She got up from the table and ran towards Cate.
“I am,” Cate laughed, scooping her up. “Have you finished your breakfast, baby girl?”
Sierra nodded, “I’ve just got my orange juice left.”
“I thought you didn’t like orange juice?” Kian asked.
Sierra frowned at him, “I do now.”
Cate put her down and she went back to the table.
