by Vi Keeland, Penelope Ward, Lucy Score, Marie Force, Tijan, Kennedy Ryan
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***The SOUL Trilogy***
Two musicians chasing their dreams and catching each other?
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***ALL THE KING’S MEN WORLD***
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THE BENNETT SERIES
When You Are Mine (Bennett 1)
Loving You Always (Bennett 2)
Be Mine Forever (Bennett 3)
Until I’m Yours (Bennett 4)
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Maria
“I have to get home. There’s no way I can miss Nochebuena, the biggest and best night of the year in our family.” Literally translated, Nochebuena means good night, and it’s how the Cuban community celebrates Christmas Eve. Abuela pulls out all the stops to put on a feast of such epic proportions, we can’t move for days afterward. We look forward to it all year, and missing not only the party itself, but the day-long prep with my grandmothers, mother, aunts, sister and cousins is inconceivable to me.
Austin has had the patience of a saint as we grapple with weather delays on the way home from ten days in Hawaii, where we attended the wedding of one of his Miami Marlins teammates while enjoying the vacation of a lifetime.
Our honeymoon is going to have to work awfully hard to top this trip, which was perfect until we landed at LAX and learned we probably can’t get to Miami today due to a massive storm in the middle of the country. Tomorrow, which is Christmas Eve, is looking iffy, too.
He reaches for my hand and draws me down into the seat next to him. “Weather delays mean rough air, and you don’t like rough air any more than I do. I know it sucks to be stranded, especially at Christmas, but I’d rather spend the holiday in this airport than fly through that crap.”
He’s right. I know he is, especially since I totally freaked out on the flight to Hawaii when we flew through thirty minutes of pretty intense turbulence over the Pacific. I had visions of crashing into the ocean that had me on the verge of hyperventilating for the full half hour that the plane bounced through the sky.
I sag into the chair, feeling defeated.
“At least we have each other, right?” he asks with the cute grin that turns my insides to mush every time it’s directed my way, which is often.
My gorgeous man is even more so than usual after ten days of sunshine turned his skin a dark tan and made his blond hair even lighter. He’s unfairly beautiful, and I notice women looking at him everywhere we go. However, he never looks at anyone but me, which is one of many ways that loving him makes me a very lucky girl.
“What about poor Everly?” I ask of his three-year-old daughter, home with his parents and counting the days until Daddy and Rie get back from Hawaii. “We can’t miss Christmas with her.” I want to wail at the thought of missing our first Christmas as a family.
“Even if we can’t get there, she’ll still have a wonderful day thanks to everything we did to prepare before we left, and we’ll make it up to her with a trip to Disney or something when we get home.” He puts his arm around me and draws my head onto his shoulder. “What is it that Nona always says? We can plan everything except the weather.”
“That’s Abuela’s saying.”
“I knew it was one of them, the sources of more valuable wisdom than anyone I’ve ever met. They’d tell you the same thing I am—sit tight with your wonderful fiancé and stay safe for Christmas. What else can we do?”
“Nothing, I guess.” I can’t believe this is happening. I’ve been counting down to the first Nochebuena with Austin, Everly and Austin’s parents as part of my family. I couldn’t wait for them to experience the magnificence that is Christmas Eve with the Giordinos.
“I wanted to be there for Dee tomorrow, too. Wyatt is having his annual cardiac checkup, and she’s losing it.” My sister’s fiancé is a seventeen-year heart transplant survivor. With the average life expectancy after transplant right around eleven years, the annual checkups are a source of tremendous stress to everyone who loves Dr. Wyatt Blake, especially my sister, who is enduring it for the first time after falling for him this year.
“Why’s he having that done on Christmas Eve?”
“I guess it’s the one day no one wants to schedule surgery, so it’s a lighter day for him.”
Wyatt has parlayed his personal experiences into a successful career as a cardiothoracic surgeon.
Austin runs his fingers through my hair, which he knows soothes me when I’m wound up about something. “Can I ask a weird question?”
“Sure.”
“Why does your family celebrate Nochebuena? You guys aren’t even Cuban.”
That’s true. I’m not, but my cousin Carmen is, and her Cuban grandmother belongs to all of us, regardless of whether we’re related by blood. That’s how it works in our family. Christmas Eve has always belonged to Abuela, and it always will. I lift my head off Austin’s shoulder to look him in the eye. “Baby, on Nochebuena, we’re all Cuban.”
Dee
I tell myself to calm the hell down, but myself isn’t listening. Wyatt is fine and has told me repeatedly there’s no reason to worry about a routine cardiac checkup. Try telling that to my blood pressure, which must be sky-high as I’ve counted down to Christmas Eve and the only thing that truly matters to me on a day that’s usually full of family, food and fun. I’m the one who’s going to end up with a life-threatening cardiac condition unless I can find a way to chill.
Easier said than done.
I need him to be okay.
That is all I need to be okay myself, and it’s all I want for Christmas.
I’m so brittle with anxiety that I fear one wrong look from someone will break me, which is why I’m going with Wyatt to the hospital rather than helping with Nochebuena preparations tomorrow.
I’ve never once, in my entire life, missed that time with the women in my family, but I’ve also never had to deal with the possibility of losing the man I love to the heart condition that’s been at the center of his life since he was eight and diagnosed with cardiomyopathy.
Wyatt tried to save me fr
om days like tomorrow by attempting to talk me out of loving him. He failed miserably at that, thank goodness. Every other day I’ve spent with him has been pure bliss. Today—and tomorrow—are the only days on which his situation has invaded our happily ever after. I tell myself I can get through two days of hell to have the rest of the time with him, but I have to be honest. The worry is more debilitating than I expected it to be when I decided to fight for the life I want with him.
I’m so upset, I feel sick, which I’m going to have to hide from him when he comes to bed after a shower. I hear the water turn off and steel myself to be my usual chipper self when I’m with the man of my dreams. And everything about our life together is a dream come true.
Except for this one thing—the specter of his uncertain health that hangs over days like today when we’re forced to confront his reality. The rest of the time we do a pretty good job of pretending like we have nothing to worry about.
He jokes about having outlived his warranty.
I don’t think that’s funny, but I laugh so he doesn’t think I’m fretting over him.
He doesn’t like when I do that.
I’m wound tighter than a drum tonight, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to hide that from him. I need to remember this for next year and have my doctor fiancé prescribe me a sedative that’ll knock me out for two full days so I can wake up when it’s over to hear he’s fine. What do you suppose the ethics of something like that would be?
Before I can think of something I can do—immediately—to diffuse my stress, he’s coming out of the bathroom, naked as the day he was born with the gorgeous, elaborate chest tattoo that hides his surgical scars on full display.
“I love that freaking Peloton,” he announces. “Best workout I’ve ever had. Makes me sweat my balls off.”
I hate that freaking Peloton and hold my breath every minute he’s on it, pushing himself to extremes that cannot be good for his transplanted heart. Okay, I admit it, living with a man who’s outlived his warranty is harder than I thought it would be.
“Don’t sweat your balls off. I need them for procreation.” I try for a flip, nothing-on-my-mind tone that I think I pull off rather convincingly, since he laughs at my comment.
Here’s the truth—he was right, and I was wrong. But even knowing how hard it is to live with his potential medical challenges, I wouldn’t change a thing about days that end this way, with him curling that hot, muscular, perfectly healthy body around mine and setting me on fire with needs I never knew I had until Dr. Wyatt Blake showed me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, zeroing right in on the fact that my muscles are so tense they must feel like concrete to him.
“Nothing. What could be wrong two days before Christmas?”
He raises a dark brow that manages to call me out on my bullshit without him having to say a word. “You promised me you wouldn’t do this.”
“What am I doing?”
“Freaking out over what will be a perfectly routine annual check of the ticker.”
“I’m not freaking out about that.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m worried about how Abuela assigned the sweet plantains and yuca to me for the first time ever, and I want to get them right. She’ll never let me hear the end of it if the plantains aren’t sweet enough.”
“You did a trial run last week, and I ate every bite of what you made. I think you’ve got this, babe.”
“You’re hardly an impartial customer. You like everything I make for you.”
“Yes, I do.” He kisses the end of my nose and then my lips. “And your family will, too, so how about you stop feeding me sweet-plantain bullshit and tell me the truth about how you’re having a thermonuclear meltdown about this checkup I’m having tomorrow?”
“No, I’m not!” That my voice is a full octave higher than my usual tone doesn’t do much to make my case.
His soft laughter echoes off the walls of our huge bedroom in the house we bought to live happily ever after together. Except that won’t be possible unless he’s here with me for a very long time. “Let’s see what we can do to make you nice and relaxed so you can get some sleep.”
After months of nights just like this, he knows exactly how to kiss and touch me until I’m not thinking about anything other than how I can get more of his special brand of magic. His tongue is soft, persuasive and insistent when it encircles my nipple, making it stand up with attention and interest in what might come next.
Sometimes that might be teeth, other times it might be gentle suction that’s almost enough on its own to take me right over the edge into orgasm. He’s that good. Tonight, seeming to realize they’re needed, he brings out the big guns and has me quivering like a bowl full of jelly under him in no time at all.
What, me worry? Ha, who has the brain cells for that when Wyatt Blake has your legs on his shoulders and his face buried in your hoo-ha? Not me, that’s for sure. He’s found the natural sedative I needed in the form of multiple orgasms—and that’s before we get to the main event.
And you wonder why I was willing to risk epic heartbreak to have this with him?
“Dee.”
His voice pulls me out of my head to open my eyes, blinking his gorgeous face into focus.
He’s propped above me, watching over me with blue eyes gone fierce with love.
When he looks at me that way, he can have anything he wants.
“Are you with me?” he asks as he begins to press his hard cock into me.
“I’m with you.”
“I want you to repeat after me. Are you ready?”
He expects me to speak when he’s stretching me to my absolute limit? I lick my lips and nod.
“I, Dee Giordino…”
“I, um, Dee Giordino…”
“Do solemnly swear to stop worrying about Wyatt Blake…”
I don’t want to say those words, so I shake my head.
“Say it.”
Begrudgingly, I say the words.
“Because he swears to God on a stack of Bibles there’s nothing to worry about. If something was wrong, he would know it.”
My chin quivers as I battle emotions that want to suck me into a spiral from which I might never recover.
“Do you hear me, babe?” he asks in a soft but urgent tone. “I would know if there was something wrong. There’s nothing wrong, and they aren’t going to find anything tomorrow. You got me?”
I want so badly to believe that.
“Delores…”
He’s pulling out the biggest of guns now—in more ways than one as he withdraws completely from me.
I grasp his muscular ass cheeks and try to put him back where I want him. “Why did you stop?”
“Because you’re not hearing me.”
“I am!”
“Then why are you still all tense, and not in a good way?”
“Can’t help it. I love you, so I worry.”
“We had a deal about this. You promised if I let you fall in love with me, you wouldn’t be stressed all the time.”
“Haha, let me fall in love with you… As if I had any choice. I think I loved you the first time you turned those potent blue eyes my way at Carmen and Jason’s wedding and smiled.”
“That was all I had to do?” he asks with a small grin.
“I was that easy.”
“You were so beautiful that day in your bridesmaid gown.” He kisses me sweetly as he enters me once again, making me gasp from the pressure and the pleasure. “So happy for your cousin getting a second chance at love.”
“She deserves it.”
“She does, and so do you. I promised you I’d give you everything, and I intend to keep that promise. But you need to keep your promise to trust me that I’ll tell you if there’s anything to worry about. Right now, today, there’s nothing. I swear it, Dee.” He kisses me again, deeper this time, rubbing his tongue against mine before he retreats. He never stops moving in me, firing up my body even
as he touches my soul with his heartfelt words. “My heart has never been in better shape than since I found you.”
Swoon.
“But you have stop making yourself sick over me. What good will it do if I live to be a cranky old man, and you worry yourself into an early grave over me?”
He does make a good point.
His hands slide beneath me to grasp my ass as he picks up the pace. For several minutes, there’re no words, only sharp gasps and deep sighs of pleasure as we reach the peak together in a loud crescendo that makes me thankful we don’t have neighbors close by.
Wyatt comes down on top of me and wraps his arms around me.
I hold on tight to my one true love.
“Do you feel any better?” he asks after a long silence.
“I feel sublime, as I always do when I get to be with you like this.”
Bending his neck, he plants a kiss on my chest. “What about on the inside, where your freak-o-meter has been running on overtime?”
“I’m trying to find ways to cope with the worries.”
“And how’s that going?”
“Good days. Bad days. The day before your annual checkup? Not so great.”
“I think we need therapy about this.”
“You do? Really?”
“Yes, I do. I’m used to living with the uncertainty of it all, but you’re not, and you need some coping skills beyond my ability to sex you into relaxation.”
“Don’t underestimate your potent capabilities.” I smile at him. “I feel better than I have all day.”
“Which is great, but since I can’t keep you in bed for days at a time—although we really ought to do that sometime—we need extra help with this. Would you be willing to go?”
“If you think it would help, of course I would.”
“I do think it would help. I had a ton of therapy when I was younger and first dealing with my precarious health situation. It made a big difference for me. I want that for you, too.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve done a poor job of hiding my worries from you.”
