by Penelope Sky
Her hands rested on top of mine as she took my length over and over again. She continued to bite her lip and moan for me, her breaths coming out deep and shaky. There wasn’t just desire in her eyes, but overwhelming love that could block out the sun. This woman loved me despite my imperfections. She loved me because of the man I was, not the size of my wallet or package.
I already wanted to come inside her wet cunt. Her pregnancy made my threshold even lower. Every time I was with her, it was the best sex I’d ever had. Now that she was my wife, I could barely control myself at all.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment, her mouth opening. “God…”
I shoved myself deeper inside her, plunging into the tight pussy that belonged exclusively to me. I’d been the only one to take her this way, to both fuck her and make love to her. My pure bride was my exclusive property, only touched by me.
She tightened around me, just the way my fingers tightened around my dick when I came. Musical moans erupted from her lips, high-pitched and beautiful. With closed eyes and a gaping mouth, she looked like a woman well pleased. She gripped my wrists and rocked with my movements, taking my dick deep and hard. “Con…”
I rubbed my thumb against her clit, making her writhe even more. I pushed her over the edge, made her orgasm last a lifetime. I watched her tits shake, watched her pant from the ecstasy. Focusing on her pleasure controlled mine. Like a good husband, I managed to wait until she was completely done before I allowed myself to finish. After a few pumps, my head exploded inside her, and I pumped her with my come, dumping a pile of it deep inside her. We’d agreed not to sleep together before the wedding, and now my body was catching up. I gripped her swollen tits with my palms as I finished, feeling my cock thicken as I released. When every drop was exactly where it should be, I started to soften. But the pleasure seemed to continue on after my dick lost its hardness, because the euphoria seemed to exist beyond the physical satisfaction of sex. It seemed to continue on indefinitely because of the connection between us, because of the bond between our souls. Intertwined and locked together, we were a single person. We made a life together, something that would carry on after we were dead and gone. My pleasure wouldn’t stop because I was happy, happier than I’d ever been my entire life. Finding Muse completed me, filled in the holes I never realized I had. She was my whole world, my reason for living. My purpose used to lie in my work, the success of my business and my designs. I used to work day and night, obsessing over my next piece and the world’s reaction to it. But once Muse was mine, she became my priority. Work didn’t seem important anymore, more like an afterthought.
Now my wife was my whole world.
And the baby we made together.
My family was everything to me.
They say at some point you turn into your parents. I always thought my father and I were distinctly different, despite our physical similarities. But now I realized I’d become just like him, walking away from a life I used to think was important because I’d found something so much more vital.
I found my family.
Seven
Bones
When I opened my eyes, I saw the broken glass everywhere.
My head was against the doorframe, and when I squinted my eyes, I could see the flickering lights from the police and the medics. Conversation erupted around me, men speaking over the radio. My safety belt cut into my chest and shoulder, but my weight was too heavy to keep me in place. The steering wheel was in front of me. Blood dripped down my face. My body was sore, like I’d just collided with a massive tree trunk.
I couldn’t remember what happened.
The men removed the passenger door from its hinges so they could get to me inside. My truck had been turned completely on its side, leaving me buried inside. I heard a man’s voice speak to me.
“Sir? Are you awake? Talk to me.”
“Hmm?” I could barely get the sound out of my mouth. I was too drunk to function. I’d never been this drunk in my life. I was so drunk I couldn’t even remember drinking.
“He’s awake,” the man said to the others. “We’re going to get you out. Stay still.”
Like I could move anyway.
I closed my eyes and felt myself slip away. The darkness descended, and then I was gone.
The next time I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital bed. The gentle beep of the monitor acted as a strange form of music. I was on my back, an IV in my arm, and my large body was fitted with a gown. I noticed the small TV on the wall, took in the white colors of the hospital room, and then spotted the man sitting at my bedside.
Max.
I opened my eyes farther, squinting against the harsh fluorescent lights, and focused on him. “Max?”
He didn’t look relieved to see me. In fact, he looked pissed. “Yeah. It’s me.”
I dragged my hand down my face and looked around, unsure what I was even looking for. I vaguely remembered the accident, remembered the men who yanked me out of the truck. The memory of the pole came back to me, when I hit it head on. “What’s going on?”
“You were an asshole,” he snapped. “That’s what’s going on.”
I turned back to Max, seeing the rage on his face that I heard in his voice.
“I knew you weren’t okay…”
I looked at the monitor with my vitals, but I didn’t understand any of the numbers, so I looked away. It took me a while to come back to myself, to remember where I was and how I got there.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” He stood up, his shoulders hunched with rage. “They had to pump your stomach because you had so much alcohol in your system they thought you might die. What the fuck, Bones?”
I remembered the bar. I remembered the second bar…and the third. I remembered being cut off by one bartender before I headed to another. Most of it was a blur, but I definitely remember losing my mind…and my control.
“You smashed into a pole. No one else was hurt.”
That was good news.
“You broke a few ribs, got a concussion, and you have a nasty cut in your forehead. But the doctors say you’re going to be fine…thankfully.”
Why didn’t that make me feel better? Why did I wish I was dead instead?
Max’s rage slowly drifted away as he stared at me. He must have seen the defeat in my gaze and knew yelling at me wouldn’t make any kind of difference. I’d already hit rock bottom. He couldn’t make me feel worse. “I didn’t know it was this bad, man.”
I looked away, unable to meet his gaze. The past five weeks had been spent in isolation. The only company I had was my booze. It seemed to blur my thoughts, so I kept drinking because it helped me think about nothing at all.
Helped me not think about her.
“Talk to me.” He came closer to the bed, standing over me. Now he looked like a concerned friend…a concerned brother.
“I’m fine.” My voice came out surprisingly strong for how weak I was. “I’m fine…”
“Cut the shit.” His eyes narrowed. “You aren’t fine. I’m not letting you out of here until you say otherwise. You have a serious problem, Bones. If you don’t get it fixed, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
I turned my head the other way, not wanting to see his disappointment. “I got carried away…didn’t realize how much I drank.”
“Bullshit. You knew exactly how much you drank.”
“Maybe at the beginning of the night…but not the end.”
“Were you trying to get yourself killed?” he demanded.
It didn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.
When I didn’t answer, he spoke again. “No more booze for you. I’m serious.”
I wanted to argue, but after all the damage I’d done, I knew he was right.
“You have a problem—a big one.”
I had no self-control. I had no purpose. I didn’t realize how much Vanessa meant to me until she was gone. I knew I loved her, would die for her, but I hadn’t realized just how much
she did for me…how she made me better. Now that she was gone…I had nothing to live for. “I know…”
“Until you get better, no more. Not a drop.”
I didn’t care if I lived or died, but I did care about Max and the guys. If something happened to me, they would never get over it. We were a family. It was the first time in my life I was embarrassed by something I’d done. It was the first time I felt like apologizing for a crime I’d committed.
“Understand me?”
I nodded. “Am I going to jail tonight?”
“No. No one is pressing charges.”
Looked like our arrangement with the police was still intact.
“If you hurt someone…it might have been a different story. Thankfully, you didn’t.”
“How’s my truck?”
“In worse shape than you are.”
I nodded even though I didn’t know why.
Max sighed before he pulled up a chair and sat down. “I didn’t call her…but do you want me to?”
There was nothing I wanted more than to see her walk through that door with tears in her eyes. Her love was the only thing that could make me better. Any other time I was down, I got lost in pussy. But I hadn’t done that because I wasn’t ready to be with another woman, to really say goodbye to the woman I loved. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
I nodded. “It’ll just make it harder…for both of us.” I hadn’t called her even though I almost did a few times. I hadn’t gone to Florence to check on her because I knew she didn’t need my protection anymore. I hadn’t given into my urges to be with her because nothing had changed. And if I saw that beautiful face, I would have to start all over…and these past five weeks had been hard enough. I didn’t want to think about how hard it’d been for her. It would just make me feel like shit.
Max didn’t press it. “Stay with me for a while.”
“I want to be alone.” I’d always been alone. I preferred solitude. But now that Vanessa was gone, the isolation was hollow. I missed the sound of her footsteps down the hallway. I missed seeing drops of paint on her clothes. I missed her smell on my sheets. I missed the way she clung to me in the middle of the night even when it wasn’t cold.
Max didn’t press that either. “I’ve got to make sure you stop drinking.”
“I will, Max,” I said coldly. “You don’t need to check on me.”
“You bet your ass I’m going to check on you. If you let it get this bad, it doesn’t give me much confidence that you can change it so easily.”
“I can. I’m not proud of what happened.”
“You shouldn’t be. The guys were worried…they were here a few hours ago.”
I knew Max had been there the entire time without even asking. “I’m sorry.”
Max’s eyes widened slightly, surprised by what I said.
Apologies didn’t come easily from me, if they ever came at all. Even if I were wrong, I would never admit it. But what I’d done was horrific. “I’m sorry for being so stupid. I’m sorry for being so weak. It won’t happen again.” I didn’t look at him when I spoke, unable to meet his gaze. Shame washed over me like a river. It stung at the time, but it also cleansed me.
Max gripped my shoulder and gave me a gentle squeeze. “I’m glad you’re alright, Bones. Wouldn’t know what to do without you…”
Max and the guys were all the family I had left, and I felt like an asshole for taking it for granted. If Vanessa knew what I did, she would shoot me again. But her disappointment would be far worse than a gunshot wound. “So, how long do I have to stay here?”
“A few days.”
I sighed under my breath.
He chuckled. “Don’t expect me to feel bad for you. You put yourself in here.”
“True.”
“But I’ll keep you company, man.”
“You don’t have to do that, Max. I know you’re busy.”
“I am busy,” he said with attitude. “But if we switched places, I know you would never leave my side. And even if that wasn’t true, I’m still not going anywhere. You’re my brother…and this is where I belong.”
Eight
Vanessa
Six weeks had come and gone, and it was the first time I started to feel a little better.
As in, I didn’t feel the urge to cry anymore.
The last conversation I had with my father gave me closure. It gave me acceptance. I knew Bones and I would never be together again, and that finality shut the door on the relationship for good. I did everything I possibly could to keep him, and now that I knew our love would never work, I could move on without wondering if there was something else I could have done.
That didn’t mean I was over him. It didn’t mean I stopped loving him. It just made me realize I had to move forward…without him. My close relationship with my father reminded me what was important in life. When Bones first told me he loved me, I rejected him because I knew it would never work.
That instinct had been right.
I should have listened to my gut.
My father claimed I would love someone else someday, that he would be everything I wanted. I had a hard time believing that, believing there was a man out there I’d want for the rest of my life. The only reason I might ever want anyone was because of the way he connected with my family. But other than that, I didn’t see much hope for a real and passionate relationship.
Bones would always be the one.
I kept busy at my gallery and painted in the apartment upstairs. My paintings were still moody and dark, but as time passed, they lightened in color and became more romantic. They weren’t as good as my original work, but I was making progress.
My artwork was therapeutic. It gave me something to focus my thoughts on, and it gave me a way to express myself. I stopped painting Bones as the weeks passed. He popped up in my paintings sometimes, but his appearance became rarer.
I focused on landscapes, particularly Florence. As I explored the city, I found more places I liked. I would take a picture on my phone of a bakery or a cobbled street with a bicycle leaning up against the wall then I would return to my apartment to paint it with my own style.
Those were the paintings that sold the most.
Throughout the day, I would get a handful of customers, but only a few of them would actually buy anything. As time passed, I seemed to get more interest, especially when the summer hit. Tourists came in looking for original artwork to take home and mount on their wall.
It was nice staying busy. Keeping myself occupied helped the throbbing pain in my heart. Carmen suggested I hook up with someone since it’d been almost two months since Bones left. Finding a new guy might help me forget about the old one.
But I still wasn’t ready, not even for meaningless sex.
I wondered if Bones had already been with someone else. Judging by his past promiscuity, he’d probably started screwing other people within two weeks of our breakup. Of course, the thought made me jealous and sad, but at the same time, I knew those women didn’t mean anything to him. They were just something to cure the loneliness, something to get off to. I was the only woman who would ever mean anything to him—forever.
I hung up a new painting in the gallery, an image of the city from the outside fields. It showed the beautiful church, the tall buildings, and a few pedestrians on the sidewalk. I took the picture early in the morning, right as the sun rose, and there were only a few cars parked against the curb. It was one of my favorites, a perfect view of the city.
The door to the gallery opened, and heavy footfalls sounded behind me.
I’d stopped hoping that Bones would stop by to check on me. Six weeks had come and gone, and I never heard from him. If he lasted this long without contacting me, then he would never contact me again.
I turned around to see a tall man standing in front of one of my paintings. He wasn’t my usual clientele because he was much younger than the people that came in here. He looked to be my brother’s age, possibly
a few years younger or older. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his dark jeans. The pants hugged his muscled thighs and his tight ass, and his olive green t-shirt stretched across his shoulder blades and over his muscular arms. He had dark skin like mine and black hair that reminded me of my father’s. Short and styled, it was simple. I couldn’t see his face because he was turned the other way.
For a second, I didn’t address him, unsure what I should say. It was rare to see a young man searching for artwork, especially when he was alone. Sometimes young couples came in looking for something to take home since they were on their honeymoon. But everyone else was much older. “Let me know if you need anything.” He seemed focused on looking at my paintings, so I didn’t want to intrude on his inspection. It was an image of my favorite bakery, a little place that had planters lined with colorful flowers everywhere. They had amazing coffee, but the unique architecture and lively garden made it a painter’s dream.
He turned my way slightly, showing his face for the first time. With a hard jawline, masculine cheekbones, and brilliant brown eyes, he was a beautiful Italian man. His expression was hard, like he’d been focused just a moment ago. His eyes settled on me, and slowly, a soft smile formed on his lips. “Thank you. This is the bakery I go to every morning. It’s even more stunning in the painting.” He turned back to the image, a picture I’d painted just a few days ago.
“It’s my favorite place too.” I came up to his side slowly, self-conscious that I’d skipped the makeup and threw my hair in a bun. My t-shirt was baggy because of the weight I’d lost, and my jeans started to feel loose too.
His eyes moved across the colors, settling on the planter box full of red geraniums. He appreciated every single inch, studied it like he was looking for something specific. “How much is it?”
I’d just hung it up, so I hadn’t had a chance to put up the price. “Nine hundred euro.”
