by Naima Simone
I always did.
All I had to do was glance behind me at the dry bones of my relationships littering my path to confirm that truth. My parents. Simon. Calliope. My ex, who’d only been the latest in a short but doomed list of exes.
This thing had no good ending, and if I’d stopped thinking with my dick for half a second, I’d end it right now.
“Earth to Axel.” She tips her head and studies me with the intensity of the hottest torch. “What’re you thinking?”
“Why’d you send that text?” The question barrels out of me before I can corner it and wrestle the fucker back into whatever emo hole it skulked free of. But shit, it’s out there now. And I want to know.
She sighs, shifting the nearly empty plate from her lap and handing both it and the mug toward me. I accept the dishes, not taking my gaze from her as I set them on the bedside table. Zenobia pulls her thighs to chest, tugging my T-shirt over her legs and crossing her arms over her knees.
“Honestly?” She scoffs, wrinkling her nose. “Don’t you hate when people say that? No, lie to me.”
She huffs out a laugh, rocking a little.
“I was drunk as hell.”
My gut clenches, and ice slides through my veins. “You didn’t mean any of that.”
Her mouth twists into a smile that isn’t quite a smile. “Oh, I meant it. Every word. Now did I mean to send is a different question.”
She thrusts a hand in her curls, closing her eyes, her lips soundlessly moving. “Alcohol gave me the courage to type out what I’d never have the lady balls to say to your face in real time. But it also had me hit send when I didn’t intend on going that far. This”—she flicks a hand back and forth between us—“isn’t the smartest of ideas, Axel.”
Seconds ago, I’d said the same thing to myself. But now, I keep my mouth shut. Because the idea of uttering anything that would keep me from getting inside her again has every primal instinct in me roaring in outrage and horror.
“Why were you wankered?”
A faint smile flirts with her mouth. “Wankered? God, I love you British.” All hints of amusement disappear from her lips and voice, and shadows enter her eyes, muting the gold.
I don’t think. Don’t question the wisdom of the gesture or the meaning she could assign to it. I just hold out my hand. “You need me?”
She stares at my palm, and just when I’m about to lower my arm back to my side, she lunges forward, grabbing ahold as if she’s a shipwreck victim grasping for a lone piece of driftwood. In a matter of seconds, she’s in my arms, her firm arse cradled against my thighs and cock, her head pressed to my chest. Those curls, which I’m beginning to suspect I have an unhealthy obsession with, graze my throat.
I don’t pressure her. We sit there, my arms wrapped around her, lending her whatever she requires to get through these next few minutes.
“After you left,” she finally begins, her words whispering over my skin, “Bethany’s mother found me. She…” Her breath hitches, and I stroke a hand up her back, cupping the back of her neck. “She knew who I was and ordered me to stay away from Bethany. That if I tried to contact her again, she’d have me slapped with a restraining order and fired.”
A tremble quakes through her body, and I absorb it, shelter her with my body, though I can’t protect her from the hurt already inflicted on her. This is a decades-old wound, and there’s nothing I can do to heal it.
Helplessness surges within me, anger quickly nipping at its heels. I want to fix this for her, and it’s gutting me that I can’t.
“Last week, I’d sent a request to the Mavises through my adoption counselor to meet Bethany. They’d turned me down. One of the terms of the semi-open adoption was that not only do I receive pictures and letters from them about Bethany, but that I would one day get to meet her at their discretion. Since she’s about to be a teenager, I thought it might be a good time. They didn’t. But now…” Her shoulders hunch, and she curls into me. “Now, they’ll probably never agree to let me meet her before she’s of age. I fucked that up and have nobody to blame but myself.”
“Stop,” I order in voice that’s far harsher than I intended.
She jolts a little, but my arm around her tightens, cradling her closer and squeezing her nape in assurance. Dragging in a breath, I try to slow the sudden thudding of my heart, realizing she can probably hear it with her ear pressed to my chest.
“Axel.”
I squeeze her again, gentler, but the message is clear. Hold on. Give me a minute.
After several moments, I try again, staring straight ahead at the wall. “We make do with what we have left.”
She stirs, and her head tips back—or she tries to tip it back, but I don’t allow her. I tuck it under my chin. I can’t say this and stare into those honeyed eyes too.
“When my brother Blake died, my life changed forever. The happy, idyllic life I’d known had been obliterated, like a bomb had been dropped on it and we were left with the wreckage, the rubble. Then we were tasked with scraping it together to form this new… existence.”
Her arms slide around me, hands hot on my back. Small, gentle kisses are brushed over my chest, directly over my still pounding heart.
“What I’m telling you is we make do with what we have left. I turned further into my art, took to metal.” There’s a magic, a sort of resurrecting power in taking the forgotten, the rubbish and, for all intents and purposes, the dead, and birthing new creations. “And you, having given up your child, maybe you poured that love to caring for others with your nursing. And when your child came into hospital, right or wrong, you made do with that moment of time you had with her. Let it go, pet. Not even God can change the past and let the future take care of itself. Especially since I’ve learned in the worse of ways that it’s not promised to us.”
This time, she doesn’t let me stop her from leaning back. Doesn’t prevent my arms from restricting her movement. Zenobia shifts on top of me, straddling my thighs, the heat from her sex pressing against my cock through my sweatpants. But I barely feel it as I grip her waist. Because she cups my face, tilting me head back, and stares into my eyes. And only the intensity, the beauty of that golden gaze can compete and win over the power of her pussy.
“I’m sorry about your brother, Axel.” She skims her fingertips over my eyebrows. The bridge of my nose. My cheekbones. My mouth. Then retraces those same paths with her lips. My work has been praised before, but I’ve never personally felt revered. I can no longer say that. “And I’m sorry that the only comfort you had was art and not family.”
Shock ripples through me, and my instinctive reaction is push her away. To reject her and that statement—no matter how accurate it is. It’s why I need away from her. Because the truth literally hurts.
“No,” she whispers, locking her arms around my neck, squeezing her thighs to my hips. Yes, I could remove her, but it would require force, and that I can’t do. And fuck. She knows it, takes advantage of it. Her lips graze the rim of my ear, her warm breath a sensual caress that, dammit, has a hard shudder passing over me. “I’m not going to let you push me away. Too many people have let you be alone in your head, in your art. I’m forcing my way in, Axel.”
She raises up, lowers an arm and reaches between us. In seconds, she has my cock freed from my pants and is sinking, sinking… Jesus, she’s taking me inside her liquid, tight heat and that shudder transforms into a quake. My grip on her hips must be bruising, but I can’t ease up, can’t let go.
“I’m so sorry you lost the brother you loved.”
She lifts over me, dragging her grasping pussy up my dick, then in an excruciating slow glide, slides back down, claiming me, embracing me. A groan rips from my throat, and I squeeze my eyes shut against the exquisite and punishing pleasure. I’m bare—the knowledge slams into me like a sledgehammer. With a condom, the kiss of her sex had been pure heaven. Without that barrier, it’s a blinding, brutal combination of beautiful heaven and fiery hell.
“And I’m sorry that you also lost the world you knew. You deserved more. This beautiful, gifted, broken heart deserved more.”
She places a sweet kiss below my ear. In direct contrast to the filthy caress her pussy delivers to my cock as she rides me. Breath catching, she cups my shoulders, gently pushing me back against the mattress and falling over me. Her curls are an enticement I can’t deny, and I bury my fingers in them, tangling, dragging her even closer to me. For moments, nothing but the sounds of our fractured moans, the slap of our damp skin and the wet suck of her pussy fill my room.
“I’m in, Axel,” she breathes, her gorgeous face twisted in a grimace of pleasure that makes her even more beautiful. “I’m in, and you won’t even be able to push me out.”
I grind my teeth together, trapping anything that would make a prison break from me without my permission. Least of all, a demand of a promise. That she swears to this even though the very nature of this relationship we’ve entered is temporary.
But I don’t say it. Still, her words snap the rapidly unraveling threads of my control. Wrapping one arm around her waist, I pump into her clenching sex and snake the other between us, easily finding her clit. I pinch the engorged flesh, rubbing it once, twice, and that’s all it takes to have that sweet, tight core clamp down on me, milking my cock, coaxing me to follow her over the edge.
And I give in.
Electric pulses race up and down my body, seizing the base of my spine, sizzling in the soles of my feet. But before I totally surrender to the siren’s call of oblivion, I wrench her off me, fist my dick, and stroke, cum spurting out of me. My back arches with the hot pour of it, and fuck, for a moment, I don’t think it’s going to stop. I don’t want it to stop. And as she collapses against me, I don’t want this to stop either.
Which is foolish wishful thinking, even for me.
Because as I told Zenobia, nothing is promised.
Everything has to come to an end.
Chapter Thirteen
Zenobia
“No.” I groan, slapping at Axel’s bedside table to shut off the alarm. “More sleep.”
The heavy, muscular arm around my waist tightens. Axel shifts behind me, but then stills again. Something I’ve learned about him over the past four days since we’ve started this little arrangement: once asleep, it takes a train roaring through the room to wake him up.
Another thing I’ve discovered?
He doesn’t have an alarm clock.
Confusion trickles through me, and one of my eyes peels open as the sound that penetrated my subconscious reaches me again. Is that…? No, couldn’t be…
Holy shit! It is.
“Dammit!” I jackknife up and scramble from under his weight and the blankets. “Axel,” I hiss while searching the floor of his apartment for my discarded shorts and shirt. “Axel!” I dare to whisper-shout as loud as I can. Tugging my clothes up my legs, I lean over the bed, cup his shoulder and shake his big frame. “Wake up.”
He blinks, his fuzzy blue eyes meeting mine.
“Simon and Bridget are home.”
Seconds after I drop that bomb on him, the sleep clears from his gaze, and he frowns, sitting up. “What?”
“Simon. Bridget. The people who are letting us stay under their roof?” I pull my shirt over my head. “They’re here. Back from vacation four days earlier than scheduled. Shit.”
I’m a fucking toddler trying to find the right holes in this thing. Heart pounding in my chest, I inhale a deep breath and waste precious seconds untangling the top and poking my arms through the correct sleeves.
“They can’t find me here.”
Here being in his apartment with him.
“Fuck.” He scrubs a hand over his face, the abrasion of skin skating over his beard echoing in the room.
“Exactly.”
I hurry across the floor and grasp the doorknob. Disappointment and a sudden ache blooms behind my sternum. Both drive me back to the bed. Diving on it, I crush my mouth to his for a quick, hard kiss. Fuck morning breath. We’re losing the idyllic haven from the world we created between us, for us. And I’m mourning it. Because with Simon, Bridget, and their family’s return, that’s coming to an end.
Pushing myself off the bed again, I retrace my steps and pull the door open before I can crawl back among those covers and submit to the urge to hide under them. “I’ll try to head them off in the kitchen. Give me a minute before you come out.”
Without waiting for his response, I slip out, closing the door behind me, not allowing myself one last glance. I’m too weak for that. Silently, I pad across the garage and pause in front of the kitchen entrance, hand on the doorknob. When I don’t hear voices on the other side, I gingerly twist the knob and push. Exhaling, I step in, quietly closing the door behind me and scurrying to the coffee maker as if I’d been there along about to mainline the first hit of caffeine. My pulse is racing like I already indulged in something stronger.
I grab a mug and K-cup, pop the pod in, and just as I hit the button to start the coffee brewing, Bridget appears in the kitchen.
“Z!” My friend rushes across the room and envelopes me in a hug. The weight in my chest hasn’t eased, but delight still fills me at seeing my girl. I’ve missed her something fierce at work. Off work, too. “I’ve missed you.”
She leans back, green eyes sparkling, her caramel-colored ponytail swinging. At thirty-eight, she’s a decade older than me, but I swear, she looks younger than me. That’s what being happy and confident in yourself, being in complete love and the mother of the best kids ever will do for a person.
“I’ve missed you too.” I grin, pulling her in for another hug. “You scared the shit out of me, though. What’re you guys doing home so early? Was the happiest place on earth not quite as happy?”
I twist and grab my coffee, glancing at her over my shoulder with an arched eyebrow.
She snorts. “Shut up and fix me one of those, please.”
Chuckling, I pass her mine and retrieve another mug and K-cup.
“We found out that Brendan has a science project coming up that he can’t miss, even though it wasn’t included on the list of assignments given to him before we left. It’s worth 50 percent of his grade, so we packed up and here we are.” She sighs and leaning forward whispers, “Can I be a bad mother and admit that I want to send his science teacher a big ass fruit basket? I was so ready to come home. If I had to go down Space Mountain one more time, Donald or Mickey was going to get junk punched.”
I laugh just as Simon strides into the kitchen. “I heard that, luv, and you should be ashamed. I don’t even know how I can stand to look at you right now,” he chides in his crisp accent, but the adoration that shines from his blue eyes as he gazes at his wife makes a lie of that statement. Even after five years together, four years of marriage, and twins, these two still appear seconds away from jumping each other.
I eye the kitchen table with suspicion. Yeah, I’d rather not know what secrets it has. I ate off of it, after all.
“Zenobia, my darling, have you missed me?” He spreads his arms wide, and yes, he’s my best friend’s husband, but still, I get why all the nurses call him Dr. Sexy Pants.
Tall, blond, piercing blue eyes, chiseled jaw, and a body that doesn’t quit, he’s movie star handsome. Yet, he does nothing for me. I mean, I’ve always looked at Simon as a friend. It has nothing to do with a recently discovered fascination for men who resemble Viking warriors with voices made of grit and whiskey.
“I sure did.” I go into his arms, hugging him tight. “But I have to admit without you around, the nurses have been more productive. No Dr. Sexy Pants to drool over.”
“God, I hate that name,” he grumbles as Bridget and I snicker.
“Pop, Ellie, and Lizzie won’t let me help them unpack. They said only you can do it.” Brendan, Bridget’s thirteen-year-old son from her first marriage, walks in, Simon and Bridget’s four-year-old twins Eleanor and Elizabeth trailing behind him. His world-weary to
ne belongs to someone who has suffered all the indignities of life and is seriously put out by them. “Hey, Z!”
I adore this kid, and though he’s approached that age where he’s too cool to hug, I don’t let that stop me from grabbing him close and smacking a kiss on top of his head. “Hey, B! You enjoy your trip?”
“It was cool.”
Oh yeah. Such a thirteen-year-old boy.
“I mean, it was al— Whoa! Thor!” he shouts, his teenage cool suddenly abandoning him.
I don’t need to glance toward the garage entrance to guess Axel had entered the room. His presence crackles and leaps over my skin like my body has been plugged into a wall socket.
Jesus Christ. Don’t scare the kids, I silently scold my nipples which threatened to bead under my shirt.
“Sorry to disappoint, but not Thor, son.” Simon coughs, covering a laugh. He affectionately tousles Brendan’s hair, who still stands, mouth hanging open, gaping at Axel. “Axel. Good to see you, mate.”
Simon strides over and grabs him up in a hug. For a moment, Axel doesn’t return the embrace—his huge, muscled arms remaining down at his sides—but then, almost awkwardly, he lifts them and pats Simon on the back. If Simon notices Axel’s discomfort, he doesn’t reveal it or comment. Instead, he shifts away, his hand remaining on one of Axel’s shoulders.
“Come on. I’d like you to meet my family. This starstruck guy over here is my son Brendan. These two little angels are my girls Eleanor and Elizabeth. And the tall angel is my wife Bridget. Everyone, this is my friend, Axel Wright.”
“Cheers,” Axel says, jerking his chin up.
Ellie and Lizzie stare up at him, eyes round, and poor Brendan. I’m stuck between wanting to pat him on the head and running for my phone and snapping his picture so I can torment him with a picture of his Cool Point Epic Fail for life.
