by Tarin Lex
Hesitation. Not because she’s never been with me before.
She’s never been with anyone.
I slide my fingers up and down her silky, showery petals, and murmur, “When were you planning on telling me you were a virgin?” I watch her mouth part in surprise. She thinks I haven’t been assessing her? In punishment I rub my cock right over where my fingers just were, and the guilty vixen bucks against me in greedy desire.
“I wasn’t,” she says. “I wasn’t planning on maintaining that…status, after tonight.”
Much as I would love to sink my dick inside of her and claim her card, I can’t will myself to do it now. My heart pounds a different beat. From mindless yen to something warm and engulfing. It fills my chest.
It’s… Love. Real and pure. Tender, sweet, protective. And new.
I lift the mask over Ariel’s eyes. Such inspiring hazel orbs. She opens them wide in humble flirtation. Her cheeks blush red as she grins. Does she know I’m falling in love with her?
I swipe a lock of light-brown hair away from her face. “But you were engaged. You lived with him.”
“In his parents’ house.” She circles her bound wrists over my neck as I lower down to be closer to her. “We wanted to wait until we could…consummate, in our own house…as husband and wife.”
“That’s not the reason.”
“It was our reason,” Ari defends, “it wasn’t mine.”
I only got a glimpse of Asher’s feral side before he shifts effortlessly back to his affectionate, attentive side. Still with a serious look on his face. Always so serious.
His mouth roams my chin and cheek. “And your reason?” Asher says.
“I didn’t want to,” I say. “I just simply didn’t want to.” James was handsome and smart and I thought I loved him. He doted on me. He came from a very affluent family who accepted me. Eventually I learned the distinction between protective and possessive. I learned what it’s like to be influenced by the influential. Abstaining from sex wasn’t difficult with him, it wasn’t an urge I needed to suppress. I thought I suffered from low sex drive. Now, naked under the warmth and weight of Asher Kostas, every one of my nerve endings torched by longing and the promise of more of his kisses and touch, I grasp how clever my body is. My real reason was intuition.
He lifts his face over mine. “What happened since then?”
“You,” I whisper, gathering his hair in my hands even as my wrists stay held together. “You happened.”
Asher growls his response so close to my ear I can feel his breath. It sends shivers down to my heels, leaving a pool of heat at the center of its wake.
He takes the mask all the way off my face. “I want you to look at me.” His eyes darken like the inky night sky.
He undoes the leather bondage. “I want you to touch me, Ariel.” My hands fall to his shoulders. “Good girl.”
He holds my jaw in one hand, his gaze sealing over mine. My heart goes manic. “I want you to feel every inch,” he breathes, “every measure of my love for you…while I make you mine.”
Six
Elsa
My experience at the birthing center defies everything I thought I deserved out of medical care. Monica Kostas, the midwife, waits on me hand and foot. Her attendant fills the birthing tub with lukewarm water. I amble into it and get as comfortable as I can, and both women rub my shoulders and my hair as I lean over the edge and groan through the intensifying contractions. Soft music plays, lavender and sandalwood diffuse above the fireplace that faces a big, comfortable bed, it’s perfect.
Except for the pain when it comes on strongest, lashing hardest against my lower back. And the fact Steele and Ariel aren’t with me. I sent him away to find my sister and bring her here. Now I have neither.
At least I’m not alone. I have two motherly women in my court—my own mother will fly in sometime after the baby’s born. But, in a way that feels both ethereal and tangible, I also have Leia. It’s hard work—now I know why they call it labor—but I’m not the only hustling here. Leia’s still cocooned, putting forth every effort her tiny body can muster to arrive earthside tonight.
We do make a feisty little team.
Monica checks me out after half an hour in the tub and the longest, most grueling contraction yet. She asks if I’d like to stay where I am or move to the bed, and I ask why.
“It’s time to push.”
Shit, this is it. My body feels whole and strong and somehow also annihilated. My mind keeps lolling back and forth, lucid and fixed, then shattered to dust. I put the pieces back together. I break apart. I do it again. I want to see Leia’s little face, hold her and feel her. And I want her to just… wait…
I endeavor to move to the bed, as if the transition itself can help protract the seconds.
“Now,” one of them says when I settle in bed, prompting me to do this with or without my loved ones here. It takes time to get into the rhythm of pushing and breathing and calling on strength I had no idea I had. But I do it.
Loudly.
Right as one of these guttural roars tapers to a low moan, I hear noises. Whispered voices. Footsteps. The birthing attendant leaves my side.
“So much hair,” Monica says.
“What?”
“Baby Leia.” She smiles at me, as if I have a clue what she’s trying to tell me. “She has so much hair, dark like her daddy’s.”
My heart flips out. “You see her?”
“She’s almost here. One more big push. You got this, mama. Ready?”
The sounds come closer.
I squeeze my eyelids shut.
An echo manifests in a deeper, masculine voice. “You got this.”
Steele.
My eyes fly open. It’s really him! He takes my hand.
“Impeccable timing,” Monica says, maintaining her serene composure. “We’re ready.”
A soft, warm hand slips over my shoulder then, and I’d know that hand anywhere. My chest tightens. I almost cry when I look at her.
“Ariel.”
“Hey.” She smiles in a way that’s…new. She’s going to be an aunt. But there’s something else about her…something…
I take my last big breath before meeting my baby girl. I use it to say to the two of them, “What on earth took you so long?”
Seven
Ariel – Two hours before
I feel him taking snapshots of me with his perfect touch and tortured gaze. I’m the center of his focus. I’m the one he’s surveying, memorizing, as he maintains the world’s most impressive erection. Me.
There’s a power I’ve never dreamed of having, rocking through me as he sheaths a condom over his cock, his gray eyes lingering over my skin and curves. I do that, to him?
I realize I’m staring. Asher’s muscular chest and rope-strong arms are the product of hard work, intention, and sweat. A perfect canvas for his many tattoos that send my gaze in a helix over his round shoulders and down his forearms. In one hand he holds his proud, heavy cock. Despite the exceptional size of it, I can’t help but smile. He seems to enjoy torturing me with the view of him.
Finally Asher dips down to hold me in his protective arms, flips us over so I’m on top, then sits up slightly so that I’m kneeling down over his lap. Our bodies create a single knot. Stripped of clothing and inhibition, face to face and held so close, the moment wraps me in something beyond erotic—more like, home. Safety. Friendship.
Love.
I don’t have to tell him. We don’t need words as we kiss and caress and fondle each other, vulnerably. I feel his shaft flex beneath me. When I become too slick and hot to prolong this a second longer, Asher lifts me up impressively by my ass with one hand, and with the other, slowly guides me onto his cock.
Pleasure ignites when I lower down over the head and we moan together. My walls expand, wrapping his width in wet, pulsating heat. A new expression comes over his face. Greedy and stricken. It wounds me with more desire than my body can relish as immediately as I need
it to. I want all of him inside of me, now.
I reach my hand down to bring my clit some satisfaction.
“Not so fast.” Asher draws my hand away, up to his chest.
I frown.
He smirks.
Committed, I drive my pussy down an inch deeper over his cock. But the rock-hard column meets a sharp resistance when he presses me even lower, and I yelp as my thighs squeeze over his.
He grips my ass. “Every…measure,” his voice a low growl rumbling through me.
I hitch a breath, wrap my hands around his neck, and try to relax my traitorous rose. My body descends into a full lotus facing him. He kisses me firmly, galvanizing my efforts again.
“You want this?”
“Yes,” I pant. Christ, I want it.
Past the pain, Asher’s cock fills me with pleasure, sweetness, and utter completion. My breasts bounce against his skin as we find and sustain a rhythm. Feeling emboldened, I lean back to proffer a view.
“Fuckin’ beautiful,” Asher groans, moving his hands up along my hips and waist to cup my globes with both hands. “Such heavenly tits,” he says, then cranks his gaze downward again, scowling as if he’s offended by the pleasure of it, the decadence of our burning crescendo.
“I love your dick.”
He grieves at that, moaning deeply, and holds me with more…dedication. One hand over my neck, the other captures my waist as I lean back, pressing my palms into his thighs.
“Fuck me, Asher.”
He grinds us harder, doing most of the work even with me on top.
“Let me feel you come inside me.”
With more fervor Asher cinches my hips and drives us higher, higher, until I feel his cock twinge and throb between my lips. He breathes, “Ari, Ari,” devotedly, and my own climax can no longer hold.
I shudder against the intensity of Asher’s sweet release. He holds me close as we catch our breaths. Our hearts pulse against each other’s. I wait for the searing sensation to abate. I sigh, contented for the very first time.
“I meant what I said,” Asher whispers into my neck, then drags his lips up to my ear. God how I love how his beard feels against my face. “I love you, Ariel.”
I pull back to meet his gaze. It took James six months to say the words, yet after such anticipation, it never felt like…this…to me.
“I know,” I reply. “And I know that I love you,” and Asher holds my face in both of his big, strong hands. He keeps them there when he kisses me.
Then at once, we topple back down to the bed.
#
I have the most lucid dream about driving a car. More precisely, racing a car. I know I’m dreaming so I really press into the gas and drive as fast as I can. Pretty sure I’m winning. Occasionally I start to fall asleep behind the wheel and in real life I think I’m about to wake up. The dream is fun, so I reach back into it. I can hear the roar of the engines, can smell the burn of gasoline, even as the strange loop of false awakenings carries me about.
Before I know it I’m no longer racing, I’m being chased. My heart convulses. I don’t know why I need to reach the end of the track to make my pursuer disappear, but that’s the science of the dream. I have to get there, I’m driving as fast as I can, but one thing after another is getting in my way. I’m slowed down. Why can’t I make it… who’s chasing me…
I’m out of time.
#
A loud bang on Asher’s door wakes me up definitively. My eyelids sail open as Asher bounds from the bed and slips on his boxers in one fluid movement. He retrieves a well-hidden pistol as he makes for the door.
My heart’s lodged in my throat as I get dressed on autopilot.
“Speak,” is all Asher says to the door.
“I’m here for Ari. Open the door.” It’s Steele’s voice. He found me? Why is he here?
“The fuck I will,” Asher booms. I hear Steele growl out a sigh—that is, right before he kicks open the front door and Asher dodges the assault to grab him from behind, holding the steel pistol against his back.
“Don’t!” I scream.
Steele frowns. “Not again.”
They are two burly men as imposing as mountains, yet both maintain a calm exterior. Calm, and dangerous.
Asher slides me a look. “You know each other?”
“Steele, Asher. Asher, Steele.” I point a look at Asher. “He’s my brother-in-law.”
Asher quirks an eyebrow at me as he slowly releases Steele, and Steele grouses again, and I think everyone is nice and settled down now ’til the dark-haired one stalks toward me and in one swoop lifts me up to haul me over his shoulder.
“Hey! I can walk!” I want to bear my fists down on him but I’m afraid to re-injure his right shoulder.
“Do all you Dean girls need to make retrieving you such a pain in my ass.” It’s more bellyaching than it is a question. Retrieving me?
“Why are you retrieving me, Steele?”
“Hey.” Asher’s deep voice echoes in the forest when Steele takes me outside. I look past Steele’s shoulder at Asher. With more of his clothing in his hands, he starts to get dressed. Which, even under the circumstances, is mildly depressing.
“Your sister’s in labor,” Steele grinds out. “Isn’t that obvious?”
My gut clenches. “Why didn’t you just say that?” Elsa’s in labor—oh my god. No-no-no. I can’t miss it. “Put me down!”
Steele does put me down—when he opens the door to his diesel truck and plants my ass right down in the passenger’s seat. My cheeks warm. Suddenly I wonder if I smell like sex.
“Steele.” I take in the sight of the dense, dark woods all around. “How did you even find me?” The cell signal is so spotty out here I hadn’t even bothered to bring my cell. It’s got to be the middle of the night, and it’s chilly outside. I start to shiver.
He stands with his big arms framed over the open truck door. “We got to the birthing center and Elsa had an epiphany. She knew where you’d go.”
Asher is standing as still and unyielding as solid oak in front of the truck, his equally big arms crossed over his chest. He’s not even a little bit cold? I catch his narrowed blue-gray eyes as Steele explains.
“When you weren’t at the ballroom, I asked around.” He pins me with a brotherly sort of admonishment that’s half-bemused. “The bride and groom had already left, but the party went on. Didn’t take much sleuthing to determine where you went from there.”
I hold back a smile. I’m certain my face is glowing a fierce shade of embarrassed-red.
He rounds the truck, pausing only to say to Asher, “We need to leave now.”
Asher turns back as Steele ambles into the truck and gives it life. The noise of the engine…the diesel smell…my dream.
I buckle in. I watch the only man I’ve ever really loved retrieve a jacket and close up the cabin, mount his wide black motorcycle, then indicate with a flick of his chin toward me and Steele what I’d been hoping was true this whole time.
Where you go, I go.
Epilogue
Asher
She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.
Monica Kostas, my mom and arguably the best midwife in Wylder Bluffs if not the world, transports the cooing bundle into my arms as the new mama falls asleep.
Some moments can’t be held by a four-by-six. Like the moonrise over a lake. Or the magnitude of love I feel when I cradle this girl. She’s small and fragile, but when I touch a finger to her little chest, she grips it like a vise with her whole hand. Such a mighty baby girl.
My baby girl.
I hear Steele and Hale shuffling downstairs, then the sound of the front door closing as they head outside to light cigars.
“Surprised they didn’t go out there sooner,” Mom quips. She smiles at me and her granddaughter swaddled against my chest, as she tidies the room, tucking away medical supplies so it looks more home than hospital.
My wife’s twin sister, the only other person Ari’s permitted
up here tonight, curls up next to Ari in bed, in solidarity. Two years ago, it was Elsa lying in that very bed, bringing new life into the world while I waited downstairs. Didn’t want to frighten the woman before I got to meet her, or worse, invade her privacy.
Tonight, her daughter, Leia, is staying home with my seventeen-year-old niece as watchful babysitter. The two-year-old captured my heart and Ariel’s and made us sure we wanted babies. The older one, Khadija, has grown up too fast, giving my heart conniption fits.
Stay little forever, baby Ambrosia.
She starts to fall asleep and I turn my wrist to peek at the time. It’s impulse, but this time I swear I feel the Omega’s face look back at me, even for one ephemeral second, and I know he’s here. Seeing this. Enduring. Proud of me.
Hey, Dad.
For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I feel complete. Everything I’ve ever needed or desired, is right here, with me. And unlike pictures that fade or tear or get lost, this memory held in my heart will last forever.
The End
3 | Hale
To all the single ladies.
One
Hope
I don’t need to prove the fact I’m a strong, independent woman, to anyone. At forty-two, no children, never married, and with the slimmest track record of dating in the history of dating, I’m nothing if not independent. Not entirely on purpose. I notice men, they just don’t seem to notice me. Maybe if I ever flaunted more than my wits. I’ve always been focused, dedicated, very serious about my work. Too fuckin’ serious, my best friend, Abby, would chide me now, if she were here and reading my thoughts and not back home in sunny South Florida.
She wouldn’t be wrong—my job as a bookkeeper is serious business—but cut me a little slack. I’ve gone on more dates since turning forty. All were fruitless. I’m still just learning, still re-training my type-A brain, to leap before I look. That’s the mindset that brought me here. And I’ve never done anything like this before.
