A Beautiful Kind of Hope (A Beautiful Kind of Series Book 1)

by Cathy Johns

  I trail my eyes up his body and that’s when I see it, the tattoo on his arm… where the hell was I looking when I asked him to join me in the shower last night. Was I so emotionally drained to the point that I didn’t notice it or even when he walked into the kitchen with his bare chest? I need to pay more attention to things like this even when it’s impossible to think when he’s around me.

  The tattoo on his arm is a rose flower with a name written below it. Maria. God, the man has tattooed a woman’s name on his body and now he wants to make love to me? That has me all worked up and my thoughts scattered everywhere, thinking, feeling sorry for myself, for trusting him, for believing he was different and I feel his hand wrap at the back of my neck, his other hand moving the stray hairs off my face as his thumb wipes the tears running down at the corner of my eyes, tears I didn’t know were there.

  I try to push away from him but his built-up body hovering over mine makes it hard for someone my size to maneuver, so I lay there, looking at his eyes, wondering and…

  “Baby, what’s wrong?” he whispers his eyes looking concerned and because I can’t bring myself to utter a word, I drag my eyes towards his forearm and look at the tattoo and then back to his eyes and he gets it.

  “Maria.” He chuckles before kissing my temple and lifting himself up from my body then pulling me up to a sitting position so that he’s kneeling between my legs, our torsos inches away from each other as he softly says. “Hope, Maria was my mother.” Was? She’s the piece that has been missing in his life, my head goes back to one of our conversations sometime back when he said he lost someone who meant the world to him. We didn’t talk much about it since he received a phone call that had him leaving for the office after dropping me at home.

  “How long has it been?” I can’t help but ask.

  “Thirteen years next month.” He says, and without thinking, I wrap my arms around him and hug him tightly as if I was to let go, he would disappear. We stay like that for what feels like forever before he lays us back on the bed and his lips find mine where he kisses me with passion, letting me feel everything that his words couldn’t tell me, turning the kiss into something else.

  He nips on my lower lip, tugging on it and then licking and soothing it. His kiss runs deep inside my body, everything going south as I arch my body up, wanting more and he gets it because he starts kissing me all over, his mouth searching a sensitive spot I didn’t know of beneath my earlobe as he nips on it, whispering things I can’t wait for him to do to me.

  His mouth trails down my neck, across my collarbone, his lips on my body has me writhing beneath him, turning my body on fire, consuming every inch of me as he trails more kisses along my breasts and finally landing on one hard nipple. He brushes his stubble around my hard peak and I moan, whimpering as my fingers find their way to his back, digging into his flesh.

  He sucks on my nipple, taking it between his teeth, tugging slowly.

  “Taylor, please, don’t stop,” I beg.

  He doesn’t stop, just continues with his suckling until I can’t take it anymore he mirrors the same attention and torture to my other nipple as my nails dig into his lower back and I can bet my life I’ve left some serious marks there.

  Leaving my nipple, he trails his tongue down my body, tasting, planting kisses, marking me in places and ways I never knew. God, I am his. I get the message, Taylor. I think to myself.

  He reaches to my navel and licks the spot before dropping further down, ignoring where I want him to go as he kisses my body, worshipping it with his mouth and before I know it, he’s kneeling on the bed, one of my legs is up as he takes my big toe in his mouth and sucks on it.

  Fuck.

  That’s so ticklish and intimate to a point I feel it all over my body. I open my eyes and watch him take each toe one after the other in his mouth, worshipping, sucking, nipping before taking my other leg and doing the same after resting my foot on his chest just slightly below his left nipple. I reach the nipple with my toes and tug on it and a guttural sound leaves his mouth before he gazes down at me with that look that clearly says; “I’ll get you for that” and I giggle.

  Once done with my toes, he trails kisses up between my legs before reaching between my legs where I’m already soaked he rubs his nose on my pussy inhaling my scent.

  “God, everything about you is intoxicating, just like the first time” he says.

  The first time was almost three months ago when his friends paid for a private show since it was his birthday, that’s also the first time he saw my face, the first client to ever see the real me and after that…

  He swipes his tongue between my folds snapping me out of my thoughts and I scream. That is… fucking Christ. This man will be the end of me. He repeats the move a few more times before leaning in and taking control, alternating between sucking, licking, and dipping his tongue inside my opening. I’m a lost cause by the time he spreads my folds with his fingers, pulling the hood back and swirling his tongue on my already throbbing, hard and sensitive engorged clit. His tongue on my exposed clit does things to me, things that I can’t explain.

  One moment I’m there, waiting to fall on the other side, fighting not to fall but just hanging in the moment, feeling his tongue swirl bringing me closer, making me climb Mt. Everest within minutes but never gets me to reach the peak, he turns the Everest into something else when he thrusts a finger inside me before curling it and rubbing on that one spot that has my eyes rolling at the back of my head. He teases me as his tongue continues with the torture on my clit, licking on it, and I’m there, climbing, chasing after something I can’t understand, pushing myself towards his mouth as he swipes his tongue one more time I come so hard, trembling like a leaf, speaking all manner of incoherent things that I can’t understand and it feels like forever before I hit the ground and my heart beats normal again as my breathing goes back to normal.

  I open my eyes when I feel him withdraw his finger and his mouth leaves me and our eyes meet, his mouth coated with my cream and he smiles, that sexy smile of his is my undoing, twisting me into knots and I smile back at him.

  God, I think I love him already. I’m in love with Taylor Smith. How did it happen?

  My phone rings somewhere across the room snapping both of us back to now. Before I can get up so I can get the phone, Taylor gets off the bed and gets the phone for me mouthing Nelly and I panic. The first time I think I can have some time alone and just be me… I take the phone from Taylor with worry in my eyes as I press the receive button.

  “Hello” I say, pushing myself up so my back is leaning on the headboard my free hand fists on the comforter.

  “Mama” I smile when I hear that sweet voice that I had missed. Michael.

  “Hi baby” I say, looking up to find Taylor staring at me, his hands across his chest as he kneels on the bed, still naked,

  “Mama, I can’t sleep.” Michael cries.

  I pull the phone from my ears and look at the clock and see it’s already 9.00pm. Time for him to go to bed but he’s so used to hearing me tell him a bedtime story before he goes to sleep.

  Taylor doesn’t know about Michael and I’m not sure how to go about it but like I said, I’m not going to have one of those relationships where you keep things to yourself and it later comes to bite you in the ass. Tonight, he’ll know what my life is all about.

  “Mama is going to tell you a story.” I look at Taylor again and this time I see the confused look on his face. He wasn’t expecting me to call myself ‘mama’ and I know it changes everything he was feeling towards me, but when he mouths mama and I nod my head, he gets off the bed and grabs his boxers from the floor, pulls them up his legs and comes back to bed only this time, he positions himself next to me as I start telling Michael a story.

  It feels strange to have him listen to my story telling time but I don’t let it bother me since I can’t say no to my son, this is what makes him happy and being away from him for two days is hard enough.

  Tom
orrow seems to be like a century for me to see his pretty little face and tiny small hands caressing my face, and his tiny little body lying next to mine.

  “I love you mama” Michael whispers over the phone his voice giving away how sleepy he is.

  “To the moon and back” I tell him and I hear movements in the background before Nelly comes to the phone.

  “I believe he misses you” Nelly says and I can’t argue on that because I miss him too.

  “I miss him too. I really do.”

  “And your mother was good today though she looked sad” Nelly says and that’s enough to break my heart. My mother seems to be doing good at times but other times, I feel like I’m losing her and not sure how I’ll ever get her back.

  “Thanks Nelly, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” I say before disconnecting the phone my thoughts on my family, I don’t notice it when Taylor pulls me in his arms like he senses I needed his arms around me, he pulls the covers and holds me closer than I was before, his lips on my temple and I try to relax as I close my eyes, the sadness around me consuming me to a point I feel like my heart is about to get ripped off my chest.

  Taylor

  Not all that glitters is gold. I think to myself.

  This woman in my arms has a lot going on in her life. The minute I heard the words ‘mama’ I almost went into shock. I could have pegged her for anything else but not a mother and the fact that she had told me she was a virgin… nothing seemed to make sense at all and after her call, she ended up looking so withdrawn and in deep thought, nothing like the woman I had come to know. But that will have to be sorted later after my meetings with the boys.

  I look at her as I drive her home, her storytelling moment from last night comes to mind as I listened to her tell the story and I can’t help it but think of her with my children, a full house if she’ll even allow me to have that but I know she will make a good mother, I have no doubt about it. She’s perfect in every possible way but I want to understand her pain, I want to know her story as much as I want to know her. I never want to see her sad or that face that tore me apart last night.

  She deserves to be happy and whatever she’s holding back, I want to know it all. There’s no room for secrets between us. If she’s mine, I’m having her anyway that I can, just the way she is, it doesn’t matter how broken she is because she’s all mine.

  “Want to talk about it?” I find myself asking not sure which part I want us to talk about.

  She inhales deeply before puffing out slowly and then clenching her hands tight making me feel sorry for the material she’s tightly gripping in her hands and from the corner of my eye, I can see she’s struggling to let it out.

  “Can we talk about it later… maybe after your meeting?” Her voice is soft and sad and I want to take her in my arms and make it all better but I have other things I need to sort out and this meeting is important to me, to the boys, to the people who look up to me. The ones I promised to never disappoint, to Kelly and above all, this is for my mother. She may not be around to see me conquer the world but I know she’s watching me from wherever she is.

  “Okay.” I murmur feeling disappointed. “Will you come by my office then?” I ask.

  “Just tell me what time and I’ll be there.” She says.

  “How about one o’clock and we can have lunch in my office, I’ll have Cecilia order for us” I suggest.

  “Just don’t order something that has a lot of spices.” She says and I want to laugh. She has a way of snapping out of her bad moment to a good one in nanoseconds, how she does that…I guess I’ll never know.

  “I promise” I say, reaching out for her hand and linking our fingers together before lifting that same hand and bringing it to my lips for a kiss.

  I drive her home promising to see her in a few hours, I watch her get out of the car and start walking towards her gate before turning back to look at me and blowing me a kiss and I can’t help myself but smile as I blow her a kiss. When did I become this mushy kind of a man, if my brothers were here to see me… I’ll never get to hear the end of it. What is she turning me into? I know I’m not a weak man, hell no, if I was to be defined, men like me don’t get to where I am because they are weak but they get there because they happen to have their head in the game and they walk into a situation knowing what they want out of it just like when I first met Hope. I knew what I wanted from her, she may not be every man’s it but she is it for me.

  Social circle my foot. The women don’t even have a clue of who I really am. To them, I’m just this man who’s supposed to give them a name and continue rubbing shoulders with their fathers and God knows who else. That’s not me.

  The problem is, the women in my social circle are not what I’m looking for, don’t get me wrong here because they are beautiful women, women with class, women who want to be associated with men like me but they don’t know me, they don’t know my story, they don’t know my secrets… they see me as Taylor, the youngest billionaire and that’s not who I am. The last woman I had in my life, did shred my heart into tiny pieces that I thought I would never recover but I did, all on my own and at times she calls me, apologizing for God knows what and I have a good feeling that it all has to do with my new title.

  But that’s not what I want, I want a woman who will understand where I’m coming from and seeing Hope taking it all in the other day, rubbing shoulders with women from the favela, I knew I was right. I knew it had to be her, not to mention how my brother Leo got so concerned later when she fell apart after learning about Kelly. Of all the people in my life, Leo has been there for me, he never allows anyone to take me for granted he has never allowed me to start a project without proper legal documentation. I don’t know where or what I’d be if it wasn’t for him and his father. A man who played a role he never should have in the first place but he did it, wholeheartedly. He gave me a home, a name, a woman who became my mother, and a sister I never asked for.

  I shake my head from the memories and just look above and thank my maker as I head to my office ready to tackle the day as I count minutes and hours before I get to see that beautiful face again.