by Jennifer Ann
Every muscle in my body becomes unbearably tense. “What?”
“James is the only one I told. I had a fake ID…I made him give me a ride to the clinic…I didn’t think I could survive carrying a reminder of what happened.” Tears begin to stream down both of her cheeks. “I regretted my decision the minute they were done with the procedure. Not a single day goes by when I wonder what my baby would’ve looked like. When I saw Franklin…I couldn’t stop thinking about my baby.”
Something in my chest draws tight. As my thumb begins to trace a pattern on her jaw, I draw in slow, steady breaths as I imagine how it would feel to go a round in the ring with this Bobby fucker. More than anything, I want to make him pay for doing this to her, for forcing a teenage girl to make such life-altering decisions.
“I thought you deserved to know what I did,” she sniffs out, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I swear to you it’s not a decision I would ever make again. I want a family…with you…someday. I don’t know what I was thinking. Everyone in my family had their own shit they were dealing with. And my mom was going through treatments…it didn’t feel…I couldn’t bring a baby into this world when I knew she’d be gone by the time it was born.”
Unable to watch her struggle any longer, I draw her into my arms, wishing that holding her was enough to take the wretched memory and heartache away. She’s shaking when she fists my shirt and sobs into my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her after a few minutes have passed, squeezing her little body tight against me. “I love you so fucking much. If there was some way I could fix this…fuck. I’d do anything for you, Sof.”
“I know,” she answers in a small voice. Wiggling out from my hold, she gives me a sad, resolved smile. “I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me. I wanted you to know that’s part of the reason Shar wants me involved in her organization. And I wanted you to try to understand why I’m all messed up in the head when it comes to the idea of a long-term relationship. You’re nothing like Bobby or the jerks I slept with in college in an attempt to regain control of my body, and I know you won’t hurt me. It’s just…the idea of love leading to marriage and becoming pregnant again one day…”
As I wipe away her tears with the pads of my thumbs, she tells me, “I saw a counselor back in college and I’ve been thinking it would probably help to see someone again.” She slides her arms around my neck and brings me closer. “Because I don’t want to ever know what it would feel like to lose you.”
I kiss her mouth with a bruising hard force, slipping my tongue between her open lips and moaning in pleasure when she slips into my lap to grind against my sudden erection. Her hands tangle in my hair and I hold onto her hips, guiding them as we writhe together. My love for this woman grows by leaps and bounds knowing she was still able to hold her head high after everything she’s experienced in life. After hearing her story, I realize she’s even stronger than I had imagined.
We kiss each other until it feels like we’ve run out of air. Each of us pulls back to lock gazes as I stroke the skin on her back and her fingers twist locks of my hair. There’s no need for words the way her eyes are glossed over and her lips are slightly parted. I follow her up the steps into her bedroom where she slowly strips down until she’s standing in front of me wearing only a strappy black bra and matching panties.
There’s an urgent burn in my balls as I reach out to trail my fingers across the silky skin on her face, ending with her petal-soft lips. “So fucking soft and beautiful,” I say with a slight growl, wanting to throw her down on the bed to relieve the ache in my dick.
She tugs at the ends of my T-shirt, motioning for me to lift my arms, and pulls it over my head. “I’m sorry for making you think I didn’t want you,” she says in a quiet voice. Her pink lips part as she watches her little hands stroke my chest. “When I saw you holding Franklin, something clicked into place. For the first time, I saw a glimpse of what I’d be missing if I was too stubborn to realize what you were offering and had simply walked away.” Then her deft fingers go to work on releasing my jeans. “I realized how badly I don’t want to give up on us. Even though I have some issues to sort through, I don’t want to do it alone.”
Once my jeans are on the floor, I step out of them, and her hands settle on my boxer-clad hips as she looks into my eyes. I hold my breath as she continues explaining herself, afraid if I smell her jasmine scent I won’t be able to fight the urge to attack her any longer.
“I need you, Nolan. In so many ways. And I know for certain that I want you in my life. You mean more to me than you could ever comprehend. I don’t exactly know why I fought it for so long, but I started to suspect since the last time we left for Vegas that I might be in love with you.” Wrapping herself around me so we’re nearly skin-to-skin, she matches my hopeful gaze with tears welling in her eyes. “And I really do love you. So much that it almost hurts.”
Her greedy, hot little mouth returns to ravage mine. She claws at my back, straddling my dick and moaning with pleasure. I wasn’t fucking around when I told her self-confidence in a woman is the biggest turn on. The way she’s taking control has me the hardest I’ve ever been for her, and the need to fuck her has made me dizzy as shit.
Without breaking the kiss, I lift her off her feet and deposit her little ass back on the bed, leaning over her as my hands expertly unhook her bra and pull it down her arms. I leave her mouth to tend to her nipples that are already hard with desire even before I flick them between my fingers and swirl my tongue around one of the velvety centers. She arches into me, again tangling her fingers through my wild hair as I give her beautiful breasts the tender-loving attention they deserve.
Although I want to kiss her again, I’m dying for another taste of the first woman I’ve truly loved. She begins to squeal when I wrap my arms around her and toss her further back on the bed, but the sound is stuck in her throat when I nudge her down to her back and tug her panties off her legs. Still holding her heated gaze over her heaving chest, I hook my arms behind her thighs and push them open on either side of me for a grand view of her ripe center, pink and swollen, already glistening with moisture as she waits for me.
The idea that I’ll have access to this visual for as long as she’ll have me is the biggest mind fuck of them all, testing my ability to last long enough to feel her clenched around me. I bend in for a taste, savoring the tart scent and her sweet flavor. She wriggles beneath me with a breathy moan, lifting her hips off the bed as I lap in more of her flavor and bring a thumb up to toy with her clit.
Fucking hell, I could do this to her for days so long as she continued making those sexy noises. But her hips move with urgency before long and her breaths become tight as she nears climax, releasing my name along with a string of curses before collapsing against the mattress.
I slip out of my boxers as she’s recovering, taking pleasure in the way her cheeks are rosy red and she’s breathing erratically with her eyes closed, all because I gave her a fan-fucking-tastic orgasm. Grinning, I crawl up beside her and bring her back around with little kisses to her face before she pulls me in for another searing kiss.
Everything about being with Sofia feels so right. But when I push myself inside her and she clenches around me, moving her body in perfect rhythm with mine, it’s a connection that’s more than a feeling. We just…fit together somehow. She makes me feel more fucking alive than ever before. The lonely void I once felt has been filed with her love.
Our bodies move together, promising the words that no longer need to be said. Though she’s taken a big step in admitting she loves me, I know there’s still a long way to go before she agrees to be my wife.
But I’m confident we’ll get there.
Eventually.
Epilogue
SEVEN MONTHS LATER
NOLAN
Everything about being in Vegas feels different the third time around. Thank fuck.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to convince Sofia to return consider
ing every other time we visited Sin City together it turned into a fucking disaster, so it blew my mind when she emphatically bobbed her head, grinning from ear to ear, and came at me for a fire-hot kiss. Maybe there is something to the saying about the third time being a charm.
Four months ago, we purchased three side-by-side carriage houses in Brooklyn Heights a mere six blocks from the bar. As construction on the other two houses began, we moved into the third house and fell into a comfortable routine.
Friday nights are spent at Leona’s with our friends, taking in whatever band I’ve hired. Saturdays are a free day, reserved for us to hang out alone—though most of the time we don’t even make it out of the bedroom, and we’re both perfectly content.
Sunday-Fundays still end with the adults playing games and getting hammered once my godson is down for the night, but it has evolved into a family day that starts earlier and is focused around little Franklin. I’m fairly certain Sofia has caught the fever after becoming inseparable with her nephew, but she claims she needs a little more time despite the twinkle she gets in her eye when he’s near. There’s no way I’d ever push her, but I can’t fucking wait until she’s ready to start filling the spare rooms in our new place.
As for the weekdays, they’re never the same. There are times Sofia becomes so deeply invested in Sharlo’s non-profit organization that I don’t see her outside of our office for days and have to bring her meals and pleasure her against the bookshelves.
And ever since James beat Dick “The Pick” D’Arggo in a rescheduled match a few months back, I’m usually the one who is so busy scheduling upcoming fights that Sofia has to drag me and her brother from the gym at all hours of the night. And then there was the clusterfuck with one of my old Recon buddies that forced me to leave her alone for a few painstakingly long—though completely necessary—days.
But the best days involve us day-drinking on the couch, binge-watching Netflix, and making love before calling out for pizza delivery.
Once Sofia and I stand at the base of where Grams’s namesake casino will one day be constructed, I’m grateful as shit to have her at my side. It’s not the same property I tried to acquire when Sofia was my attorney because that fell through in the end, but it’s a better location and I was able to purchase it for almost half the cost once I utilized Grams’s family connections. I kept telling Sofia everything went down the way it did because something better was meant to be, and this deal proved I was right.
I look down at the small box with my grandmother’s ashes, secure in my hands. It feels heavy, but not nearly heavy enough to contain her spirit. In the past few months I’ve come to accept that she’s truly gone and can talk about her with a smile, though I don’t know that it would’ve happened so easily if Sofia wasn’t by my side.
My smart, beautiful girl had insisted that we each wear concert T-shirts from Grams’s favorite bands in her honor for the occasion. She looks especially hot with the Rolling Stones’s well-known lip logo stretched out across her breasts, skin-tight jeans with several holes, and Evelyn’s thin leather coat hugging the curves of her torso.
“Do you want to say something first?” Sofia asks, squeezing my hand.
Gesturing to the bottle of Midleton in her hand, I grin. “I think we both know a toast using her favorite drink would be more appropriate, and I’m sure she’d want you to do the honor.”
Sofia shakes her head and laughs as she unscrews the bottle. “Why am I not surprised that woman’s favorite drink was whiskey?”
I remove the top of the box as she’s holding the bottle upright in a salute, watching me with the kind of bright smile that reminds me how much I’m in love with her.
“To a beautiful soul who loved as hard as she rocked,” Sofia sings. “May she rest in peace as she’s reunited with her true love and the musicians she adored who have gone before her.”
My throat tightens with the perfect words. “Love you, Grams,” I whisper as a gust of wind catches her ashes and they scatter across the desert ground.
As Sofia is sputtering from a pull of the whiskey, she hands me the bottle and I suck the amber liquid down, grateful when the warm glow spreads through my gut. I sigh deeply when she snuggles into my side, watching along as the ashes continue to dance around in the fall breeze. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect send-off.
Later, after we’ve checked into our penthouse for the night, Sofia sidles up beside me, grinning mischievously. “Nolan, baby, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Wrapping her in my arms, I sigh and wait for her to continue. Too often when she prefaces a conversation by saying she has to tell me something, it’s never anything good.
“Well, I figure since we’ll be spending a lot of time in Vegas from now on, it’s time we start making happy memories to cancel out the other trips.”
I grunt, tightening my grip on her. “Agreed one hundred fucking percent.”
“So unless you sold Leona’s gorgeous diamond when you were pissed at me for giving it back to you the last time we were here, I’d like to respectfully rescind my answer to your proposal.”
With a sharp breath, I pull her back so I can meet her gaze. “Counselor, are you asking me to marry you?”
“Not asking,” she says with a sexy purr, grinning as she pushes herself up against me. “Consider it a dare, playboy.” Then her lips nuzzle my neck. “I dare you to marry me.” She licks the skin over my Adam’s apple and my dick bobs from inside my jeans. Reaching inside my jeans and cupping my junk in her hand, she adds, “Tonight.”
Glancing down at my watch, I’m only half aware of her ridiculous idea as I focus on her fingers coaxing me into agreement. She’s able to make me hard just with the sound of her voice. “You can’t be fucking serious.”
Her soft hand strokes my shaft as her lips brush with mine. “I’m definitely serious.”
Groaning, I tilt my head back. “Shar would kill us both.”
“She’ll get over it when we agree to let her throw us a fabulous party.”
When I’m not able to verbalize my resonating yes with anything more than a garbled noise inside my throat, she giggles. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Without warning, she shoves me back so I fall onto the couch and comes at me, stripping me of all my clothes and kneeling down between my legs. With her little fingers wrapped around my cock, she grins up at me. “Can’t have a wedding without a quick bachelor party.”
I could marry this woman in a ditch and it’d still be the best day of my life.
SOFIA
Life simply does not get any better.
This has become my new mantra ever since my nephew was born and I opened my heart to Nolan. But then we picked out three carriage houses with a plan to covert them into one gorgeous house, and ever since then we became the kind of inseparable couple that can never get enough of each other whether in or out of the bedroom. We hardly ever fight, but on the rare occasion we do, there’s always great make up sex to follow.
The thing about us is that we never hold each other to certain expectations. We both have forgiving hearts and a desire to live life to the fullest, surrounded by loved ones and good music. We even started catching several concerts a month at Madison Square Garden where Nolan often gets back stage passes and we end up partying with the band. Sometimes Evelyn and Charlie join us, and often we run into Chloe and her charming Irish boyfriend.
I didn’t know it would mean so much to have my siblings back in my life, and can’t imagine having stayed in Texas and missed out on this. Especially Franklin’s birth. God, I love that baby with all my heart, and I can’t wait to have one with Nolan. In fact, now that we’re going to be husband and wife, I wouldn’t mind working on that right after the ceremony.
All of my sisters will go postal when they hear we eloped without them, but with James and Sharlo’s wedding coming at the end of next month and Evelyn and Charlie’s little one due around Valentine’s Day, there’s already enough drama going roun
d. Honestly, I think they’d all be happy if I planned a little party at Leona’s one of these next weekends.
Clutching a bouquet of gardenias, Leona’s favorite flower, I cross the small chapel to where Nolan waits, still clad in his designer jeans and Aerosmith T-shirt in honor of Leona’s obsession with Stephen Tyler—another rockstar she claims to have once known on an intimate level.
Nolan’s hungry eyes drag up and down my body like I’m wearing a revealing dress instead of the Stones shirt and ripped jeans that I insisted on wearing to channel Leona’s spirit.
“When I was a kid I’d jerk off to posters of women who looked exactly like you do now,” Nolan whispers once I’m standing beside him.
“You’re so romantic,” I tease.
“Just wait until later, baby.”
All at once I feel giddy when facing the officiant. Although I’ve known for awhile that I wanted to marry Nolan, after many grueling weeks of therapy with a psychologist in Manhattan, it’s beyond surreal that it’s happening. And if someone had told me three years ago that I would beg a billionaire’s grandson to marry me in a tacky little Vegas chapel with a large man wearing an ugly wig and a white bedazzled jumpsuit that’s splitting at the seams…well, I don’t know that I ever would’ve stopped laughing.
But after scattering Leona’s ashes and knowing this day would forever be important to Nolan, it just seemed this was the perfect way to remember it with fondness.
“Are y’all ready to do this?” Overweight Elvis asks.
It’s still hard to hold back the occasional giggle as our private ceremony begins. As far as I’m concerned, I committed myself to Nolan months ago and this is just a legality. But when Overweight Elvis asks for the rings and Nolan produces Leona’s stone on the setting he had made just for me, my eyes fill with tears.
