“Do you realize that they have this place stashed in case any of you invite the flavor of the day?” I ask Henry while we’re in his bathroom getting ready to go to bed.
“No one has a flavor of anything,” he argues, and asks, “Do you need a T-shirt?”
“T-shirt and a pair of boxers, please,” I request while I floss. “I’m just saying, the place is a semi-bachelor pad. Which makes me wonder why is it that you guys keep ignoring the women of the town?” I yawn.
“Personally? I’ve been ignoring women in general because I have you. Who cares about the rest when you’re in my life?” he says, and my heart flutters.
Who is this guy, and where is the asshole who used to occupy his body?
He moves the decorative pillows and folds the blanket while he continues explaining to me why it is that they are ignoring their admirers, “However, we all agreed that it’ll complicate our lives. If we talk to any of them, they are already wondering if we’ll propose. It’s a don’t crap where you eat kind of situation.”
“Because dating your assistant is…”
“Against everything I’ve been told, and yet, it feels so right,” he answers, taking my hand and pulling me onto the bed. “You feel right.”
“Slow,” I say, pushing myself against him and resting my head on the crook of his arm. “Even when you drive me crazy and I want to stab you, I do like you, Henry Aldridge—a lot.”
“You can tell me all the ways you’ve thought about killing me tomorrow. For now, close your eyes,” he mumbles against my hair and kisses the top of my head.
I fight the need to sleep because I want to be awake while I spend time with him, but it’s impossible. Being between his arms relaxes me so much that I’m fast asleep in only a couple of seconds.
Henry
When my grandfather used to sit me down in his office to talk to me about my future, I wasn’t paying much attention. Tell me which ten-year-old child would understand that someday he’d be inheriting an empire, and be excited about it?
As the years passed, I grasped more and more of what my role as Henry L. Merkel Aldridge would be once I took over my dominion. According to Cyril’s teachings, the only people I should be loyal to are him and myself. In this case, his memory. Love isn’t real, marriages always end, and children can deceive you. I never met my grandmother. No one ever talked about her.
Was he in love with her and she left him after realizing he was a bastard?
I loved my grandfather, but he wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t much different from William, but at least he had the decency to raise me and give me a morsel of attention.
I’ve spent most of the night holding Sophia in my arms and wondering about my future—our future. It’s not easy to think beyond this weekend, even harder to consider there’s more than the eighteen months we’re stuck here. Cyril wouldn’t approve of my relationship and the future I’m planning with her.
When I envision a future with her, I see two roads. The one where we stay together and create a family. And the one where she leaves because why would she bother with someone like me?
I slowly continue running my fingers along the smooth skin of her arm, watching her chest rising with each breath she takes and making a soft sound when she exhales. It’s soothing. The calm she always brings me keeps me sane, but this, listening to her breathing while she’s asleep, gives me a peace I’ve never experienced before. I even slept a couple of hours more than I usually do.
It’s hard not to kiss her. I’m dying to press my lips against her neck and run my mouth up and down her body while I nibble her. But I’m still unsure about the pace of this relationship. I don’t want to fuck it up.
This, waking up with a woman, is a first for me. There’s a lot more involved in this strange milestone. Usually, it happens to many men during their late teens. For a late bloomer, it’d be their early twenties. For me, it never happened.
My boarding school was technically all boys, however, there was an all-girl school only a mile away. By the time I was fifteen, I had fooled around with a few of them. No one should judge me. I was a normal horny teenager. At sixteen, I lost my virginity to a girl who was in her senior year and had enough experience to guide me into the next step. We were fuck buddies for about a month before she realized I wasn’t a senior.
Losing my virginity in the locker room wasn’t romantic. Once I graduated from high school, the dating contracts began. They included a clause where it states that there won’t be any sleepovers and I have control of the condoms all the time. Pretty anti-climactic. According to my grandfather, he heard of cases where the women inseminated themselves with the junk leftover inside them.
The guy was paranoid and old school. He had no idea that they sell condoms coated with spermicide, and I wasn’t going to go into health class 101 with the old guy. Until I came to live in Baker’s Creek, I hadn’t realized that even though he’s been dead for years, I still followed all the crap my grandfather fed me without questioning it. Even the one I didn’t pay attention to but is now forged in my cells.
Maybe I believed it was a penance I had to endure to make up for my mother’s mistake. For not fulfilling my purpose, as they had expected. I’m a successful man, yet, I feel like everything I have done for the past years hasn’t fulfilled my own expectation, because, in fact, I don’t have many.
This town has become my goal. This woman became my world. My vision of the future includes her and whatever happens. For the first time, I’m not obsessing with projections, fallback plans, or mergers. I don’t want what Hayes has with Blaire, but I definitely want a little family. My own version with Sophia that includes a kid, maybe more than one.
What would it be like to have a full house with children running around?
More exciting than those summers I used to spend in this house with my brothers. I would be watching my little ones running around the backyard, laughing without any worry, and knowing they are loved and cherished since the first moment we learned that they were finally coming to us.
These are strange thoughts for a man like me. Do I even deserve to wish for a future like that one?
Sophia stirs, molding herself closer to me, her leg pressing against my morning wood. When I look into her beautiful, sleepy face I see her big brown eyes watching me.
“Morning, beautiful,” I greet her, kissing her nose. For the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been asking myself why I haven’t done this before.
What stopped me from letting everything I feel for her come out and give myself to the emotions freely?
“Did you get any sleep?” she questions with a sleepy smile while tracing my jaw with her delicate hand.
“More than usual,” I answer, kissing her mouth and running the pads of my fingers under her shirt. “Maybe you’re the remedy I’ve been searching for.”
“I could remedy other things,” she says, sliding her hand over my erection. “Happy to see me?”
“Slow,” I warn her. “We said we’d take this slowly, remember?”
She licks her lips. “I can do, slow,” she stretches the word.
I gasp, as her fingers brush against my length and hold my breath when she tugs my boxers down, saying, “Slowly,” and releasing my shaft. My gut stirs up with the thoughts of having her mouth on me, envisioning touching the back of her throat as she takes me deep.
“Soph,” I warn her. “I promised…”
“What is it, Mr. Aldridge? Afraid of having a little fun before breakfast?”
I get more aroused as her small hand wraps around my length, and I shudder when she glides it down, almost touching my balls, and then all the way up. I had fantasized often about having her on her knees, fucking her sassy mouth. But I never thought about making it a reality.
I let out a low groan as her tongue touches the tip of my cock’s head. She then squeezes it gently between her fingers and thumb. She flips her body, placing herself on top of me and then sliding down, her hands moving across my torso.
She opens her mouth and closes her lips softly over the crown of my length, swirling her tongue around it as she slides her hand up and down.
“Fuck,” I growl as I feel her breath on my cock while she swallows it slowly.
She looks up at me. Her eyes hold mine as she takes me deep and then almost pulls out again. She repeats the motion a couple of times until I feel the back of her throat. I close my eyes as I rock my hips against her pouty, beautiful mouth. Her hands play with my balls, and she caresses my scrotum.
I interlace my fingers through her long hair, close my eyes as she continues. There’s a knot forming on my spine.
“Soph, I’m about to come, and I don’t want my first time to be in your mouth,” I warn her, and she smiles, releasing me and leaving the bed just to push down the boxer briefs she borrowed last night from me and the T-shirt. My jaw almost hits the floor when I finally look at her naked. She’s always been beautiful, but today she’s the most splendid woman in the world.
“Like what you see?”
“Not only like it, but I also adore it,” I say as she mounts me and her wet entrance rests on top of my crown. “Be mine, Sophie.”
“Wait, do you have a condom, because I left my purse downstairs.”
“I’m clean,” I tell her. “Never been with anyone without a condom.”
Sophia stares at me for a couple of beats. “No contract, no protection… This is so unlike you.”
“It’s you. I don’t want anything standing between us.”
She lowers herself as she stares down at me with complete adoration, mirroring just what I’m feeling. This wonderful woman is finally in my arms, giving herself to me boldly. The tension in the pit of my stomach increases. I want this to last, to be meaningful for both of us.
“I like you on top, but…” I flip her onto her back. “I want to love you slowly, deeply, and sweetly.”
I push myself deeper, filling her. And it’s as if suddenly my entire life makes sense. The doubts and fears I harbored about us disappeared. My existence has one purpose, her.
Our eyes meet wildly as I pull myself out and then sink myself inside her so slowly I’m teetering on the edge but not falling. Not yet because when I do, I want to do it with her.
Driving into her, surrendering myself, it hits me how scary life has become. For the first time, I have something worth loving, and I would die if I lose her. I swear in this moment, when my breath becomes shallow and she’s tightening around me milking my cock, that I know I’ll do anything and everything for her, for an ounce of her love, for her heart. For this miracle to stay right by my side.
Her manicured fingers dig in my back, and I drink her orgasm as I kiss her while I pulse inside her.
“I love you,” I declare with conviction.
“I love you too,” she says, claiming my mouth while my entire body explodes with love.
Sophia
If anyone had told me that I’d be waking up in the arms of Henry Aldridge for two days in a row, I’d have laughed. This man has a strict policy of no sleepovers. Yet, here I am, right beside him, observing him. Studying every inch of his skin.
I feel like a perv as I watch him sleep with the sheet barely covering his taut naked body. For the past three years, he’s being my constant. He’s a part of my life, and yet, being with him feels totally new.
I guess the difference is that now we can kiss each other whenever we want. I can reach out and touch the ridge of his muscles while he’s asleep, and it’s totally acceptable.
“Morning,” he says as he stretches and extends his arms, pulling me closer to him. “You’re so perfect. How did I get so lucky?”
“Lucky?”
“Of all the men that have come into your life, I’m the one allowed to kiss you,” he says, opening my legs with his knees and sliding his hand between them. “Already wet, Ms. Aragon. I think I like this arrangement.”
“We have an arrangement?”
He nuzzles my hair and exhales slowly. “Yes. You let me love you in exchange for unlimited fucking.”
I laugh. “Is that so?”
“Uh-huh,” he answers, finally opening his green piercing eyes which stare at me deeply as he guides his shaft right into my entrance. “I wish we could stay here forever. I don’t want to ever let you go.”
With that, he enters me gently, molding his body to mine. We move at the same slow rhythm, relishing each other. The five times we’ve made love he’s done it so slowly, gliding as if I was fragile and he’s afraid to break me. As I grind under him, I wonder more about us. I’ve been in love before. He’s not the first person I’ve felt something more than lust with, but with him, the feeling is so much more powerful.
I freeze when I think what if my “once in a lifetime, the man I’m destined to love forever” is him? But what if destiny won’t allow us to stay together forever? Or is this the right timing and that’s why this is happening?
I wish our love was real, possible, and limitless. But even when I’m leading with an open heart, I’m scared. I’ve been left behind one too many times.
“Don’t disappear on me, Soph,” he pleads. “What’s happening, gorgeous?”
“This feels surreal,” I confess. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but what if it’s just like a summer fling?”
“I can’t promise you more than giving you one day at a time for the next hundred years.”
He lowers his face, pressing his lips against mine. His warm breath caresses my neck while his mouth devours me. My heart pounds so hard in my chest as if trying to jump out of my body and become part of Henry. This is the first time since we’ve been together that he’s driving himself hard and deep with a force that makes me weak. This endless sensation—being overtaken by release and his grunts, being joined so completely, taken to a place where we become one person in a world where nobody exists—is the best feeling I’ve had in my entire life.
Our morning is going well up until we are reminded that it is Monday, and I have to go to the factory. Since all my working clothes are at home, I head there after our workout, skipping my daily breakfast with my parents. I send them a text telling them I am running late and have to be in Happy Springs. By the time I’m heading out the door, Henry is outside leaning against Pierce’s SUV holding a coffee and a paper bag from My Cookie Jar.
He snakes his free arm around my waist and pulls me to him. “I want to fuck you. Bend you over your desk wearing those shoes.”
“My parents are across the street watching,” I warn him.
“Fuck,” he says, and I laugh when he turns around and doesn’t see them. “I’ll get you next time, Ms. Aragon.”
“Let’s go, Mr. Aldridge. I might let you play while we’re at the office.”
When we arrive at the factory, I notice there are a few other cars. “Is everyone here?”
“Yes, we want to officially address the employees while announcing that you’re the boss.”
“I like the title, the boss. Should I order my business cards with that inscription?”
“Stop teasing me, woman,” he says with a warning voice. “This time I’ll fuck that sassy mouth if you piss me off.”
Biting my lip I say, “Promise?”
Right in front of the building entrance, he takes me into his arms, tips me over and kisses me like in one of those old, cheesy romantic movies.
“Stop!” Blaire, who is outside the factory next to the others says. “I’m happy for you, but you two are sickening.”
“I never complain about your PDA,” I protest, fixing my dress.
“Your man does, and it’s time for payback,” she says unapologetically. “I express my regrets if this inconveniences you, but he owes me.”
“No more complaints, PDA’s, or stuff. I didn’t put on this monkey suit to watch you behave like children,” Beacon complains and opens the door.
We all look at him because he’s usually more laid back.
“Well, I want to go back home
and change into my regular clothes. This is torture, I thought you loved me, Blaire.”
“I do, kid, but we want to look the part.”
“You raided Henry’s closet,” I comment as we walk toward the main hallway. “You clean up well.”
“I might keep it for other occasions.”
“Or I can get you a few suits like that, that’ll fit you better,” I suggest.
“You can do that?”
“Only because you’re one of my favorites,” I promise and then turn my attention to Henry who is at the top of the staircase facing the employees gathered by the lobby.
Henry explains that every change we’ve been implementing for the past few weeks are part of his five-year plan to ensure this company transcends into the future. He apologizes for what they had to go through while his father was sick and during the initial transition. However, they are under a new management that is committed to their employees.
“We want Aldry’s to be a well-known powerhouse in the candy industry. We’re in the business of making people’s lives sweeter—that includes our personnel. I come from a long line of businesspeople, and we pride ourselves on creating the best products, delivering the best services, and becoming the number one brand name in every household in the world. I don’t say these words lightly, and I believe that to become the best, we need the best leadership. This is why I asked Ms. Sophia Aragon to become the CEO of the company. We believe in her vision for this company and entrust the future of Aldry’s to her.”
I’m frozen and have goosebumps running up and down my arms. I’m about to cry because…did I hear him right? When he looks at me, his face is the same as usual, and I realize that he’s always looked at me with respect and pride. He extends his hand, as if calling me to stand right next to him.
When I do, he grabs it, squeezing it, and says, “Thank you for accepting our offer, Ms. Aragon.”
All eyes are on me, expectant. What am I supposed to say when I’m trying to understand what just happened? This was a project, not… Is he seriously giving me the position. C. E. O. The announcement feels surreal.
Love Me Like I Love You Page 128
