Never Did Say

by C. M. Stunich

  And he's doing it shirtless.

  I count the number of days it's been since … that day and prod at the wounds on my belly. I won't be running any triathlons anytime soon, but a quickie with my husband? I think I can manage that. I bite my lip and stare at the water droplets on his smooth chest, the way they run down the grooves in his abs and soak into the waistband of his pants. Holy fuck. I clench my thighs together and swallow hard, trying to clear my mind of the exceptionally dirty thoughts that are running through it before Beth moves over to stand next to me, cigarette safely distinguished.

  “He really is beautiful,” she admits, and I can hear the longing in her voice. Not for Ty, not for my soul mate, because I know that Beth would never hurt me like that, even if I had a partner who was willing. No, she's just lonely, in love with the idea of love and trying so hard for it that she's failing miserably. Like our mother. Like I once did. Like Zella is doing now. “And he's brave, and strong, and he loves you so much.” Beth pauses and looks down at her white ballet flats. Today she goes back to work at the Closing Case. I know it's already paining her to leave Darla, but Beth has a lot of pride and I know that taking money from Noah Scott is the last thing she wants to do. Unfortunately, she has been doing it because the legal issues my mother left in her wake are a fucking nightmare.

  My mother's will does not specify a guardian for her underage children.

  That means Beth has to go to court and argue for custody over my sisters. India, Lettie, Lorri, and Darla are all floating in this cosmic unknown right now. It's not a good feeling. Beth already has two young children and no partner, and we live in a conservative state. Frankly, I'm terrified for her, for them, for us.

  “You take the room,” she says again, and I raise an eyebrow at her. But only for a moment, of course, because Ty laughs and the sound draws my attention like nothing else. He's so fucking beautiful with his rainbow of tattoos, that sultry smile, that confidence in his eyes that I know will never shatter. “You and Ty, you're the strongest part of this family right now.”

  Beth's voice hitches a little when she says this.

  “God, I should've married Danny when I had the chance.”

  My eyes snap over to hers, and I give her a look like what the fuck are you talking about?

  “If I'd married him, we'd have money, stability.” She sighs. I know she's thinking about the custody hearing again. “Maybe you should petition to be their guardians? You and Ty?”

  “Me?” I ask, pointing at myself. “I'm twenty-two.”

  “Just take the room,” Beth says, because I know right now she's wishing that twenty wasn't in either of our age descriptions. If she were thirty, married, successful, getting custody would be no big deal.

  “Hey, there's a phone call from your work,” Zella says, popping her head out the screen door. Beth looks at her for a moment and then nods before moving inside and leaving me alone with the only blonde woman in our family.

  Zella steps outside and leans against the wall.

  “Shouldn't you two be putting aside your differences right about now?” Zella shrugs. “With Darla and Mom and everything, this doesn't seem like it should be so important.”

  “I'm not going back to school,” Zella blurts and my blood goes cold.

  “Why the hell not?” I ask, standing up suddenly. My head spins a little and I have to force myself to take a deep breath. Zella doesn't look at me, her eyes getting caught on Ty before she turns away.

  “Tobias was right. His dad cleaned up the whole mess, wiped it away like it was never there.” She laughs, but the sound is off, like a bell ringing underwater or something. “And he wants me back. Again. Even after everything I said to him, all the things we've done to each other.”

  “And you told him to fuck off, right?” I ask, hoping Zella isn't destined to travel the same path as the rest of us Regalis.

  “I just can't go back to Texas right now. I don't want to be anywhere near him. I know he's bad for me, but I … I don't know.” Zella kicks at the dirty cement of the back patio with her foot. “And I can't leave the family, not when everything is so up in the air like this. With Mom dead … and … I'm glad Darla's back, but I can't go.”

  “You should marry Noah and run off to Australia or some shit,” Ty says, wiping water off his chest with the dog's towel, suddenly standing within hearing distance of us. I didn't even see him move, the sneaky fuck. Angelica is shaking her wet fur out and panting happily, gray and white coat gleaming in the weak sunshine. “Go, like, hang with koalas and whatever, eat some Tim Tams.”

  “What the fuck is a Tim Tam?” Zella asks, but Ty just shrugs, tossing the towel over his shoulder.

  “You and Noah kiss and make up?” Ty asks point blank, voicing the question I've been dying to ask ever since I got out of the hospital.

  Zella's turn to shrug.

  I narrow my eyes on her.

  “That means what?” I ask and she shrugs again. She's been staying at his house almost exclusively since we got Darla back, so I had kind of assumed things were going okay. Based on her expression, I realize that might not entirely be the case.

  “We haven't fucked again if that's what you're asking,” she snaps, rubbing at tired, puffy eyes with the backs of her hands.

  “It wasn't,” I say and Ty raises an eyebrow at me.

  “Speak for yourself,” he mutters and I poke him in the chest teasingly. That small skin to skin touch ignites a fire inside of me and I find my mouth suddenly dry. He makes eye contact with me and inhales sharply. Need hits me like a freight train out of nowhere, and I'm left standing dumfounded on the tracks. Suddenly, I'm not so concerned with Zella and Noah and all of their problems. If they don't want this, this thing that Ty and I have, then screw 'em.

  “We're taking things slowly,” Zella says. I'd roll my eyes at her if they weren't already locked on Ty Ross-McCabe's. I can see the same recognition brewing in his gaze that must be rampant in mine, something that tells me I just might be able to crack him open this time. These past few weeks, he's been so careful, almost too careful. It's killing us both. We were designed to fuck, me and Ty. But hell, maybe he planned the whole 'bathing the dog' thing, just so he could be shirtless and wet and warm. Maybe he knows how good I feel today, how ready. It's the first day I've actually thought beyond this could happen and have settled on this better damn well happen. Don't know why. Don't care much either. Maybe the stars have just aligned themselves in our favor? Or maybe I'm just so sex starved at this point that I don't give a crap anymore?

  I swallow hard and Ty watches my throat move like a man mesmerized.

  “Go back to fucking school,” he tells Zella, reaching down to grab my hand and drag me inside. As soon as the screen door slams shut, he presses me into the wall with his warm, damp body.

  “How long has it been?” he whispers as I squirm, letting him pin my arms on either side of my body. “Forever and a day?”

  “Feels like it,” I whisper back, leaning forward for a kiss, certain that today is the day we get to break our dry spell. I'm half mad for it, for him. I want to be close, to meld our bodies together, to wash away everything that's happened with a sea of kisses, a flutter of fingers, the exquisite torture of his body moving inside of mine.

  Ty barely brushes my mouth before pulling back with a cocky grin on his face. It's that look that's gotten us into this situation in the first place.

  “Were you checking my ass out while I bathed the dog?”

  I nod, then decide to add, “I was checking your everything out.”

  Ty chuckles, warm and deep, vibrating my body with the sound as he leans in close and captures my mouth. He tastes like sunshine and darkness both, like a dichotomy of flavors so raw they defy definition. I can't help myself, moaning against his lips even though I know Zella's just a few feet away. If she's learned her lesson like the rest of my family, she won't bother to come in here when she knows Ty and I are alone together.

  I struggle to pull my arms
from his grip, but he won't let me, kissing me deep and slow, like a molasses drenched summer in the middle of winter. This kiss right here, right now, it's different from his others, from his hot as fuck, curl the spine, soak the panties bad boy kisses. He can still do those, of course, when he wants to, but now he can also do this, melt my heart like butter, make my knees go weak. He can kiss me like he loves me inside and out, like he's confident that'll never change. Ty kisses me like he knows he's finally come home.

  I groan again and collapse back against the wall, letting him take charge, run his tongue along my teeth before drawing back just enough to nibble at my bottom lip.

  “Fuck me, Ty,” I groan before he can cut me off with another scalding press of his mouth. He pauses then, loosing his fingers on my wrists. I don't waste even a second in going for the button on his jeans, but Ty stops me by leaning forward and whispering in my ear.

  “Come with me first, on a little outing?” he asks and I give him a look that says you have got to be shitting me right now. “It won't take long, and I'll make it worth your while, I swear it.” Ty nips my earlobe and sends a shiver down my spine. I nod then because I'm too frustrated to speak. Fuck a duck. I might be pregnant, but that doesn't mean I'm not still a red-blooded woman with needs. I should pull the whole husbandly duties clause and see if that works.

  Ty reaches down and wraps his left hand around mine. The bandage is gone, his burns mostly healed, but I can still see the faintest edge of raised pink, a scar that will always remind me of my mother and that horrible, awful side of her. For the other half, the part of her that was good, I have the napkin buried in my dresser drawer upstairs. Was my mother a villain like I thought? No, maybe not. No, no, I'm sure she wasn't. Life isn't that cut and dry. My mother wasn't a good guy or a bad guy, just a woman with faults. All I can really do is try to make sure that at the end of the day, I don't make the same mistakes she did.

  Ty drags me upstairs and into our room, shutting the door behind us.

  “Give me a sec to change, 'kay?” he says, and shoves his wet pants down his hips before I can even take a breath and ask him to stop. No, seriously, we've stopped undressing in front of one another because um, yeah, remember how we were both sex addicts? We haven't fucked in four weeks. Four weeks. I haven't gone this long without sex since … I reach my hand up to touch the chip earring.

  Holy crap.

  Ty pauses, buck freaking naked, damp with warm water, and looks back at me. He sees me holding the chip earring and whatever reasons he had in his head for waiting seem to go right out the window. See, when we joined SOG, we were supposed to wait six months to have sex. We didn't. When I had baby Noah, we were supposed to wait, and we didn't. Now, we're not quite at that six week mark, but … fuck it. It's my body; I get to decide when and how and where.

  I decide now.

  “Six weeks,” Ty whispers, but I shake my head and lift my dress, showing him the healed pinkish scars on my belly – and the blue and white polka dot panties underneath. His hands clench into fists by his sides. “I … I have news … ”

  “Good or bad?” I ask.

  “Good,” he says, voice a husky drawl, like he's absorbed some of the deep south dialect that slithers around here like a snake through grass.

  “It can wait,” I tell him with a sharp intake of breath. “I'm wearing a dress.”

  Ty moves over to me suddenly, like some sort of muscled predator, body moving like a well-oiled machine. I can't find my breath then, standing there stone still until he gets to me. He lifts his suddenly shaking hands and hovers them over my shoulders, the not quite touch of his fingers against my skin makes me bite my lip in desperation.

  “I'm trying to be respectful,” he chokes, even though I can see his eyes burning with heat. That, and he's fully erect and ready for me. Dear God, his heart might be telling him to wait, but his body wants to throw me over the dresser and screw me right here, doctor's instructions be damned. “I don't want to hurt you,” he says, gritting his teeth and sliding his hands down my arms. I suck in a massive breath as he curls our fingers together.

  “Ty, I'm fine. I feel fine. My last checkup went great.” I drop his hands, curl my arms around his neck, and he growls, seriously grows a little. I shiver at the sound as I lean into him. “Don't tell me you don't want this. You forget how many times I've caught you taking care of yourself in the shower.”

  “Oh, that's where you're wrong,” he says, putting his hands on either side of my waist; he doesn't bother to deny the accusations because they're true. “I do want this. I'm just trying to be respectful. Truthfully, I want to slam you into this wall and fuck you so hard you scream.”

  I lose whatever words I'd been about to say. Who needs words when there's … this.

  In response, I pull back and reach down, wrapping my fingers around the hard, needy length of him. This is the first time he's let me touch him since the surgery. Holy shit, but it feels good, almost new, like I'm a virgin all over again. I tell Ty that and he groans, taking my wrist in tight fingers and drawing my knuckles up to his lips for a kiss.

  “Don't say things like that or I'm not gonna be able to control myself. Fuck, babe, we shouldn't be doing this.” I kiss the side of his neck and he releases my hand, giving me a chance to reach down again, slide my fingers along his shaft.

  “That's kind of the point,” I whisper. Ty's eyelids flicker like a butterfly's wings as he struggles to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head. Who knew I was so good at hand jobs?

  “Well, shit, if you're going to keep insisting.”

  I grin as Ty draws me forward by the wrist and scoops me up in his arms. I love when he does this, so I don't complain, letting my body go limp as I try to release some of the unbearable tension in my muscles.

  “But we're going to take it slow, even if it kills me.” Ty lays me down on the bed, hooking his fingers under the waistband of my panties as he pulls back and takes them with him. He drags the fabric down and over my dusty toes, coated with the brown midwestern earth that makes up my home. Home. I have a home again. Ty is my home. That whole home is where the heart is bit, it's true, so very, very true. “I'm going to be gentle, so gentle it tears my body into bits with the effort of holding back.”

  Ty makes a noise low in his throat and gets all my lady parts in a tizzy.

  Fuck, I forgot how good this feels. I wonder if Ty's conservative attitude these past few weeks was all a front, just to get me worked up into a frenzy like this. He wouldn't let me give him a hand job, a blow job, nothing.

  The anticipation has built to a crescendo, and I can hardly catch my breath.

  Ty pushes my knees back, opening me up for him, kneeling off the edge of the bed and breathing his hot breath against my most sensitive spot.

  “Shit.” I struggle a little, try to scoot back, but Ty grips my hips with his strong fingers and tugs me closer. “I can't take it,” I moan, already halfway off the edge of orgasm without even a touch from my beloved. Did I mention that I haven't been masturbating either? There hasn't really been time, not with all the shit we've been going through. I don't think my poor clit even remembers what it's like to be caressed, teased, tasted.

  “You want this, baby,” he tells me and then pauses. “I need this.”

  Ty breathes out, using his breath as a weapon, drawing it across my aching flesh, moving from thigh to thigh, up towards my belly, and then hovering back over my clit. When he lowers his lips to my cunt, I almost scream, even though he's not using tongue, kissing me as gently and as chastely as I now kiss Noah Scott on the cheek.

  Jesus.

  Ty kisses up and down my sensitive skin, pressing his lips to any bit of flesh he can get ahold of. When he surprises me with a small nip to my inner thigh, I jump and try to pull away. I want his cock inside of me now.

  I tell him this and even though I can't see him, my gaze directed up at the ceiling as I struggle to hold back screams of pleasure, I know he's smirking at me.

 
“In due time, my dear. All in due time.”

  Then he's kissing me again, focusing all of his attention on my poor, neglected pussy, tasting me with a flicker of tongue. I bite my lip and squeeze my eyes shut, letting the pleasure wash over me in waves. He's good at this, too good almost.

  Ty moves his tongue back to my clit, teasing with the barest flush of pleasure, convincing my body to drop all its guards, let go and give into him. It's not that hard, honestly. I gave into Ty a long, long time ago. I'm his; he's mine. That's about all there is to it.

  “This is agony,” I whisper, barely even able to get those words to brush past my lips. “Torture. I wish you would've slammed me into that wall.” Ty laughs and the sound flutters against me like a butterfly's wings, tightening the muscles in my belly. I reach down and curl my fingers in Ty's dark hair, taking a handful of it and pulling hard as he increases the pressure of his mouth. My control withered away to nothing, I buck my hips against his face as he tightens his grip on me, ringed fingers bruising my flesh in the best possible way.

  When he finally lets go, slides a hand over my belly and down, I cry out and don't care if anyone can hear me. Most of my sisters are in school right now, and the babies are all asleep in Beth's room, taking a nap. Zella has the baby monitor, so I don't let myself even worry about it. Worry is the best medicine against an orgasm, and I refuse to take a single sip.

  Ty slides the fingers of his left hand into me and grunts like it's his cock instead.

  “You are so tight right now, so fucking tight. Holy shit. I would've lasted, like, three seconds with this. You really are like a virgin again, aren't you?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I mumble, tugging harder on his hair, bringing his face back down for another round of tongue. It's a near godlike combination, something I've experienced very few times in my life, all of them with Ty. Quickie ruts against dumpsters or in bathrooms were more my thing before. What kind of guy wants to just go down on some random chick and get nothing in return? Not the dark, tortured kind I usually went for.