There was no stronger aphrodisiac for me than his adoration. I pushed on his chest until he rolled over and I could climb on top of him. Foreplay was great, it was hot. I didn’t need it. Not then. I wanted Maven inside of me. “Condoms?”
He nodded. “Drawer.”
I grabbed one fast and backed up just far enough that I could roll it onto him. He moaned, his hips jerking when I touched him. I let go so I could climb on top completely. “You’re mine?”
“All yours.”
I pressed down on him until he was deep inside of me. I’d never get over the feeling of being so full inside. I tried to take a second just to appreciate that we were both here. We were young, we were together, we loved each other, and we got to have moments like this. My mind felt like it had taken a step away from my body.
Pleasure surged through me, and even as I cried out, I couldn’t turn my brain off. This was happiness. I needed to hold onto it with both hands so I could recall it for the rest of my life. If I needed to find a moment to remember, this would be one of them.
Maven pressed a finger inside of me, finding my clit, and my musings stopped. Where I’d been in my head, now I was just in my body.
“That’s right, baby. You’re here with me.” His voice was low, demanding. I fucking loved it.
I moved fast, rubbing my clit hard against his finger and then when he let go, his cock. His hands were on my stomach. I raised my own fingers to hold my breasts. He bit down on his lower lip. I was close. He throbbed inside of me, growing incredibly long. Maven didn’t have long to last either.
“I love you, Giovanna. I’m going to love you my entire life.”
Maybe it was the words. Maybe it was the moment. What did it matter? I came so hard I saw colors in front of my eyes. Maven’s hips jerked up as he shouted his own release. I laughed, tears coming out of my eyes. There were so many emotions running through me that I couldn’t sort them out. Nor did I want to.
I was raw, open to any feelings coming my way, a situation I’d built walls against. I leaned down, wrapping my arms around Maven who rolled me quickly under him. His mouth was everywhere, pressing light kisses all over my face. Was I still crying? I hadn’t even realized.
“Sorry, I…”
He shook his head. “Sshh. I feel it, too. I do. I feel everything right now. I’ve got you. Everything will be okay.”
I believed him.
“Morning, Maven.”
He laughed against my shoulder where he laid another kiss. “Morning, Library.”
* * *
I was in my pajamas watching a documentary on children who played tackle football in Texas when the doorbell rang. I looked down at my phone that I’d laid on Chance’s chest and sighed. “Banyan’s mother.”
Having the phone tell me who was here was incredibly helpful.
Chance yawned. “Should I tell her he’s not here?”
Banyan had actually gone out half an hour earlier to get bagels and what he called the perfect cup of coffee for all of us. I didn’t know how he was going to carry all of it, but he’d insisted he was on it. Maven padded toward the door. He was shirtless, having been more active than the rest of us and had actually run on the treadmill. Apparently, he didn’t run outside until the temperature dropped below seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. Otherwise, he preferred to run in air conditioning. Chance had called him a wimp.
I couldn’t help but smile. I loved when they got silly with each other. It made this whole thing just feel… normal… and less like I’d stepped onto the island of happiness where I got to visit but never live.
“He’s not home yet, right?”
“Nope.” Chance and I both rose off the couch. I stifled a yawn. Maybe I needed to start running. I was getting downright lazy.
Maven rolled his eyes. “I’ll get rid of her.”
“She sees you without your shirt off and she’ll never leave.” I laughed. “You take yours off, too, Chance and she’ll move in.”
Chance tugged at his t-shirt. “As long as she’s here, this baby stays on.”
Maven groaned but swung open the door. I expected to hear Banyan’s mother’s voice, which was rapidly becoming the equivalent of a real life harpy, but nothing happened. Maven took a step outside, calling over his shoulder to us. “We’re about to have a confrontation on the street.”
It took me half a second to understand what he meant. Banyan must have arrived back with the bagels and coffee.
“Shit.” Chance ran after Maven, and I was close behind him. We all piled out onto the street.
“You.” She shoved her finger into Banyan’s shoulder which must have startled him, because he dropped the coffee holder he carried all over the front of his shirt. I gasped, rushing down the stairs toward Banyan before I could even think. I put myself between him and her wicked finger. She wasn’t going to touch him again.
He cried out, grabbing his shirt. It must have burned.
“Hey,” I yelled at her. “What the hell is your problem?”
Her eyes were red, bloodshot. I had a second to wonder if she was on something and decided she probably was. I knew next to nothing about drugs.
“My problem? You guys think you’re so special, doing whatever this is. You embarrassed me.” She yelled at Banyan again. “I did this for you.”
He threw his bag of bagels onto the ground. I stared at it, shocked. Was he going to throw down with his mother?
“You did it for you.” He wrapped an arm around me, bringing me slightly behind him. Did he think she was going to fight with me? “And, yeah, I embarrassed you by not showing up. But I’m not here for you to get your next… conquest from. But guess what? You embarrass me almost every time you open your mouth so maybe you got a taste of it.”
Wow. In all the time I’d spent with the guys, whenever they’d dealt with their parents, it had been with polite disdain. Banyan had just let her have it.
Her red eyes widened. She looked sort of pathetic. Her dyed blonde hair wild and everywhere, her eyes red, her clothes twisted like she’d put them on in a hurry. They might have been expensive, but I could never tell with club wear.
“I ruined you.” She sneered at him. “You’re here and so happy. You think that you have something here in this weird permanent orgy you’re living in? I told them. I told the press. Banyan’s son is going to ruin him once again. His stock will plummet, and he’ll cut you off. Then you’ll see. You’ll be begging me for help. I wish I had never had you. You’ve never been anything but…”
I grabbed her shirt. “I don’t believe in violence, but I will slap the hell out of you if you don’t close your mouth.”
I could see the second she recognized I wasn’t kidding. I would break my own rule, and I would slap the crap out of this woman if she said another word right then.
“I want you to go.” Banyan spoke in a low tone. “Never come back. I’m done with you.”
She pulled out of my hold, and with a fling of her dirty hair, she stomped down the street. I watched her leave, aware that we had an audience. I’d not really seen the security personnel before now, but they were out of their surveillance van. Maybe they’d read the signals right and realized there was about to be violence.
I couldn’t deal with them. I turned to Banyan. He stared at the bagels on the ground. “I made a mess.”
It was just a bag. And some coffee rolling around. I grabbed his wet shirt. “Banyan, no you didn’t.”
“I made such a fucking mess.” He met my gaze for a second before he sunk to his knees. “I always do.”
I wrapped my arms around him, sinking to the ground next to him. “No, you didn’t. You fix everything you touch.” I kissed his cheek, hard. “I love you. Fuck her.”
He didn’t cry. Didn’t shake. He just stayed like that until Chance came over. He knelt down next to us. “Vonni was about to slap the shit out of her.”
“I was.” He’d gotten that right.
Maven squatted down on the other side. �
�Looked like pretty good coffee.”
Banyan laughed, throwing his head back. “The best cup of coffee in the city.”
Chapter 9
Banyan stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “I want to go paint, but I also want all of you to go with me. Is that something you guys would be willing to do today?”
Maven looked up from where he read the news on his tablet. He set down the device. “Sure.”
Chance nodded, winking at me before he gave Banyan a grin. “Getting attacked on the street by one’s mother earns one the right to decide what we do today. Even if it’s hanging out in your ugly loft watching you paint.”
Banyan rolled his eyes. “Love you, brother, but there is nothing uglier than this house.”
Chance groaned. “I know. I’m hoping once Vonni has settled into the idea that she’s not leaving that she will help me redo it this summer. Or help me, the architect, the contractor, and whatever boards I have to get approval from to touch this sucker.”
I stared at him. “You’re serious.”
“It is not staying like this.” He motioned his hand. “I mean, I loved my grandmother deeply, but I don’t think I can live with her decorating more than another year. I keep expecting to hear her beckoning me from her bedroom to bring her up some tea.”
Maven sat back in his chair. “I am so going to do that to you on a regular basis now. Just for fun.”
Chance groaned. “Yes, Banyan, unless Vonni objects, I think we can all spend the day at your loft.”
I wasn’t going to object. “Sounds good. But I think we’d better bring some furniture.”
* * *
Banyan painted frantically. I’d never seen his hands move so fast on a canvas. We sat on beanbag chairs, and I guessed I was supposed to be watching the movie on the tablet that Chance had brought. That would have been fine if I could have taken my gaze off Banyan.
Chance and Maven hadn’t paid attention to what he was doing, but I saw what happened. I’d told him to include himself in the painting, and he actually had. I got to my feet. Maven looked up when I did, but Chance was totally transfixed in the action thriller we’d been watching. I approached Banyan slowly, not wanting to distract him.
I knew this moment he’d captured. It had been in January. We’d sat laughing around the breakfast table one morning. I had a cup of coffee in my hand. Maven’s head leaned against my own. Chance was about to take a bite of toast and Banyan was next to Maven, his hand drumming on the table. I’d forgotten this moment. How many of them were there? Simple easiness that passed, and maybe we forgot, but it made some kind of impression on the rest of our lives. I blinked. That was very deep and perhaps ridiculous, but it felt true. Banyan had remembered it.
I stared at how he created himself. He didn’t see how beautiful he was, that much was true, but all the features were close to right. This was a first attempt. I wasn’t going to criticize him. We were all there. That was the point.
Maven rose and made his way over to me. He whispered in my ear. “You know he’s going to be hugely successful, right? He’s so talented.”
I squeezed his hand. “I do know. And this is the first time he’s put himself in a picture with the rest of us.”
“That so?” He tilted his head to the side. “I like all the ones of you.”
“Thanks. It would be weird if it were anyone but Banyan painting me. And maybe it’ll be really off-putting when strangers have the paintings. But just standing here like this? It makes me feel like I’m getting a second to look through his eyes.”
Maven pointed at the one Banyan was doing. “We’re going to keep that one. Even if I have to buy it. Or ask Chance to, since I might be broke as of tomorrow.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Well then, we can be broke together.”
“You’re going to make it, too. I haven’t read it, but I see it in your eyes. You and Banyan, you have this passion to create and Chance is driven to be a doctor. He has a path and he’s not veering off it. You’re all incredibly focused, talented people.”
I didn’t know if that was true. I might have the drive, just not the talent. “What about you? You’re going to the best law school in the country. That’s drive.”
“It is.” He nodded.
I studied his profile. So handsome, so remote right now… “Maven, are you okay?”
“We’ll see.” He kissed my cheek. “I will be. I love you.”
Things were going to be better. We just had to get through the visit with his family.
* * *
I had no clue what to expect from Maven’s childhood home. I knew he’d been wealthy, they all had, but it seemed their upbringings had been quite different from one another even though they were all in Manhattan. Chance had always been on the Upper East Side, even when he hadn’t lived with his grandmother. Banyan said his childhood home had changed a lot, but he’d spent most of his time in a two bedroom converted loft on Mercer Street in the East Village. Every so often his mother would make his father buy them something new. She’d preferred the artist lifestyle, and it had been good for him to be around painters and sculptors before he’d been shipped off to boarding school. Chance had left, too, to be educated elsewhere.
Maven had not left Manhattan. He’d gone to private school and spent his entire childhood on West 76th street on the Upper West Side.
“Don’t be impressed. They inherited it,” Maven said as he stared out the window without blinking, watching the city pass as we made our way across the park to what had been Maven’s side of the city.
“So did I.” Chance shrugged, but Maven didn’t see the movement. He wasn’t watching us at all. Chance met my gaze, concern radiating in the way he kept looking back at Maven.
This was never going to be easy. The best thing we could do was just get it over with. Maybe it would go better than we thought it would.
I tried to watch my surroundings. If Manhattan was going to be my home, I had to start figuring out my locations and not feel lost all the time. Central Park was only a block away from where we stopped. The area was tree-lined, and if I was right, there were townhouses all over. Still, it seemed that they had the whole mansion to themselves.
Banyan grinned at me. “I love the smell of old money in the morning.”
Chance laughed, but Maven still didn’t respond. Was he going to be catatonic? I touched his arm, and he placed his hand on my fingers without looking at me.
We got out on the street. Chance walked up next to us, staring up at the house. “Amazing it’s still intact. How have you avoided selling it and turning it into apartments?”
Maven blinked. “If I ever inherit it, I’ll sell it to whoever wants to tear it apart.”
I grabbed his hand. “We don’t have to do this. Screw them. We’ll go home. Everyone will deal. If this is going to make you this upset I say let’s not do it.”
Just then the door swung open and Maven’s mother appeared. She worked for the district attorney’s office and she was mean as a snake. All of this was made worse by the fact that her husband was now an ex con and would be checking the box for felony charges on any applications he ever had to fill out again.
“Maven. You’re right on time. And you brought the whole gang.”
The whole gang? I wanted to roll my eyes and managed not to. Her voice dripped with sarcasm. I wasn’t surprised. I’d had a terrible lunch with her the last time I’d been in Manhattan that had only gotten better when Banyan had stepped in. She liked him. Maybe more than was appropriate. Maybe in a non-motherly way.
Chance put his hand on the small of my back, encouraging me to walk forward. I’d worn one of the outfits he’d picked out. I’d chosen a gray pencil skirt that had a black stripe up the side with a black tank top that tucked into it. My hair was done, my makeup minimal, and my shoes closed toed and strappy. I hoped I looked elegant, simple, and sophisticated, because I felt sort of ridiculous dressed like that. Maven’s mother was in a white pantsuit.
The guys were in various degrees of “I don’t care what I look like” clothes, including Maven, who I wasn’t sure had actually brushed his hair. Jeans. Shorts. Ripped khakis. I had been up way too early getting myself presentable. They hadn’t.
“I see you’re still dating Giovanna.”
I extended my hand. “Nice to see you again.”
“I’d hoped this would have moved on by now.” She still hadn’t spoken directly to me. I didn’t know what I’d done to be disliked but now I was certainly wishing I’d done more of an I don’t care attitude with my clothes, too.
Maven smiled at her, slowly. “Sure am. In love with her, actually.”
I didn’t know if he was going to explain the truth of our relationship to his mother or not. Not once had any of us ever discussed how we were going to handle this. It seemed to come up when it came up and then we just managed the moment. They had never denied I was dating all of them. I hadn’t either. But Maven wasn’t leading with that information, so I took my cue from him. I was his girlfriend. The ins and outs of our relationship were not his mother’s business.
Banyan slipped by me. “She’s dating all of us. It works.” He kissed Maven’s mom on the cheek. “Do I smell sauce cooking?”
Or we could just handle it that way. Chance snorted before he covered his mouth to stop the sound. He took my hand and dragged me in with him.
“Funny, Banyan,” she called after him.
“He’s not kidding.” I missed whatever else Maven said because we were suddenly in the living room.
Maven came from a big family on both sides. They were a mixture of Italian, Jewish, and all sorts of other things but those were the two he named the most frequently. If it was possible, the entire bunch were in the living room right then. For Manhattan, the space was huge—bigger than any individual room in Chance’s Upper East Side mansion. Other people might love the large family support system, but Maven had never said a good word about any of them.
Undeniable: Reverse Harem Story #3 Page 10
