by Cat Porter
“You Tania?” he asked.
“Yes, I am. Spank her if you have to.” Tania marched out of Pete’s, the door swinging behind her.
I took in a breath and wiped a hand across my mouth. Heavy booted footsteps drew closer, and my breath caught. His chest rubbed against my back, fusing his body heat with mine, as his long arms framed me, his hands planted on the bar top. His warm breath was like steam on the side of my face.
“Babe, what are you doing?”
“Hanging out. Bumped into Tania.”
“Who was the dick hanging over you? Took everything I had not to bust in that pretty face of his.”
“Old boyfriend from Texas. Passing through with some of his friends.”
Miller picked up my beer glass and drained it before slamming it on the bar and pressing his chest into my back. “Oh, yeah? He didn’t know you were living here?”
“How would he know that?”
He tilted his head. “Long as he’s not passing through you on his way out of town.”
My ribs squeezed together. “Is that what you thought?”
I finally turned to face him and was met by his simmering dark eyes. Wounded eyes. Of course they were. Instead of going to the movies or meeting a friend for lunch or going shopping for clothes, a new lipstick, a wok, another surrogate, I had instead chosen to sit at a bar in the middle of the day to drink, to wallow, to think and rethink the same old groove line. Alone. I’d been disappearing every afternoon for the past two weeks after putting in a few dutiful hours at the shop. And today, I’d let myself be entertained by a former lay, and Miller had gotten to witness it.
Dizziness erupted in my head. My heartbeat turned sluggish, transforming my once happy buzz into some sort of numbing potion, weighing down every limb. I lowered my head. A grown woman yet I was flailing. A disappointment.
Add it to the fucking list.
“Randy, what do I owe you?” asked Miller.
“Nothing. That Texan paid the tab.”
Miller let out a harsh exhale. “Let’s go,” he muttered against my hair.
I nodded, and he pushed back away from me.
I pulled myself up from my stool as I shot Randy an it’s-been-fun-but-it’s-time-to-pay-the-piper smirk, much to his horror. I strode out of Pete’s with Miller behind me. Our black GMC truck was double-parked out front, the hazard lights clacking on and off. The locks blipped, and I opened the door and climbed in. The truck rocked as Miller dived into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and shoved the truck in gear.
Tania stood outside Pete’s, her hands at her waist, watching me. I turned my head and stared straight ahead as we sped off.
Miller unlocked the front door of our house, and I dumped my bag in the hall as I kicked off my boots. He shoved the door closed.
“This has been going on for days now. I call, and you don’t answer. Or when you do, your voice is flat. That evil flat tone that I despise because it means you’re shutting down, not functioning on all optimum levels. That you’re somewhere else, dragging yourself through the mud.”
His sharp tone made me stiffen as I headed into our bedroom. I opened a drawer and grabbed a pair of yoga pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt.
“That you are choosing—you hear me, Grace? You’re choosing to deliberately blow me off. Some girlfriend of yours I don’t know calls me on your phone and insists I get my ass over to Pete’s because you need saving from yourself. And I find you there, laughing and getting up close with some asshole ex-hook-up of yours.”
“Uh, no. He is an ex-boyfriend. You are the ex-hook-up.”
Miller stilled, his eyes tightening, his rigid body emitting powerful gamma rays. “Let me make this real simple for you.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, glanced up at him and waited, my insides churning.
“What the fuck?”
I ripped off my blouse. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Sorry I’ve been uncommunicative. Sorry—”
“You going to go down a list of the obvious now? Save it.”
My face heated. I tossed my blouse in the wicker basket in the corner.
“What is it, Grace? You gonna tell me what’s eating you, or you gonna keep walking around in a daze?”
“Daze? I’m not in a daze.”
“Bottom line, I want to be here for you, but you’re not fucking interested.”
“I am interested. I’m just…off.” I didn’t bother with the T-shirt. I took off my bra and threw on one of Miller’s zipper hoodies that had been lying on a chair by the bed.
“You’re full of shit.”
“Aw, thank you, honey.”
He folded his arms across his chest, his jaw harsh, his eyes flashing. “What do you want me to say? I can’t believe you would’ve done anything with that guy, or am I way off?” He stood still, his chest rising and falling.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He scowled. “You sure as hell haven’t been open to me the past two weeks. You think I don’t know when you’re pretending to be asleep?”
I clenched my jaw as I unbuttoned my jeans, teetering. I pressed a hand on the bed.
“Because even when you’re asleep”—his deep voice wound around me, squeezing me—“with one touch from me, you’re taking me in your arms, kissing me, opening your legs for me.”
My head shot up. “Uh, I’m so sorry for that, too. Let’s go.” I kicked off my jeans with ferocity. “Come on, let it not be said that I don’t fulfill my wifely duties.” I climbed over the bed on my knees, and I unbuckled his belt and undid his jeans.
“Who was that fuck at Pete’s?” he said through gritted teeth, staring down at me.
I slid my hand over his erection. His jaw clenched as I tugged his black underwear down.
“That was a guy I dated for a few months in Dallas.”
His cock stood erect against his abs, and I wrapped a hand around his hard shaft.
“And so there aren’t any unanswered questions hanging in the air, yes, we’ve slept together. He’s on a bike trip to Wyoming with friends and happened to stop in at Pete’s for a drink on his way through town.”
“Did you enjoy your chat?” His voice was low, jagged.
I cupped his balls with one hand and stroked his dick with the other, squeezing tightly. “Sure did.” I took his cock in my mouth and sucked hard—no niceties, no preludes to victory.
“Grace”—a scowl darkened his face—“stop.”
My eyes met his burning ones as my teeth grazed his rock-hard length, and he let out a long hiss, his face tightening. Both his hands fisted in my hair as I fucked him with my mouth, faster, deeper. Cold sharp need built inside me as his hips began to shove against my face. My fingers tightened around his balls, and he grunted louder.
“This what you want, baby? This what you want?” he muttered through short breaths.
My gaze flicked up at him. Yes, this was what I wanted. Not emotional gazes, not understanding hugs or sweet words. Just this raw, base—
“Get over here!” Miller hoisted me up and flipped my body over on the mattress.
He pulled my legs down so that my feet touched the floor, and I collapsed onto my forearms. Raising my hips and ass high, he drove his cock inside me, and I gasped loudly at the shock of his harsh entry, my body jerking in his hold.
“I’ll give it to you. You like that?” He pounded inside my slickness. His one hand held down my hip, the other gripping a shoulder, as he rammed his body into mine. “This what you want? Fucking take it,” he grunted. “Take it.”
“Yes. This is what I want.” I gasped loudly in between each forceful slam of his body into mine.
“He had his hand on you.”
“He’s nothing.”
“What were you gonna say to him, huh? Before I spoiled your fun,” he bit out through gritted teeth.
“I was going to say, ‘thanks for the offer, but only my husband makes me come.’” I squeeze
d my eyes shut at the building wall of burning mind-stuttering pleasure and groaned loudly as it towered over me and shattered all at once.
Miller groaned loudly, his fingers biting into my hips. He pulled his slick cock out of me. The wet slap of its exit was so anticlimactic, so mundane, signaling the return to our unhappy reality. My insides hollowed out at its loss, and that vibrant throbbing of my body evaporated. He flipped me over. His hands fisted in my hair as he leaned over me, one knee on the bed.
“That what you wanted? You feel better now?” A shadow drifted across his features.
I turned my face away.
He released my hair, his breathing choppy. “You got to say it, Grace. Just say it. Say you blame me. Say you hate me.”
My heart sped up in my chest as I raised my face from the soft fabric of the deep-purple comforter. “What?”
“You’re going through this again, this loss, because of me.”
I raised my head. “No, no, Miller. No—”
“You’re trying to bury it, to relieve me of it, but you can’t. So, you end up at a fucking bar, drinking alone. Been doing that the whole time now?” He stood up over me.
I raised myself up on my shaky arms. “Miller, I made us do this, and it failed.”
“For God’s sake, Grace. You didn’t make me. And you had nothing to do with that miscarriage! Nothing. Did you not hear the doctor? Our embryo didn’t have any genetic problems. Maybe the doctor didn’t implant it right. Maybe Laura’s cycle was off, or her insides reacted funny. Maybe…who the hell knows?” He raked a hand through his black hair. “Hell, it could’ve been a combination of maybes. We don’t fucking know!”
He pulled up his underwear. His boxer waistband snapped loudly against his firm flesh, and I flinched.
I curled up on the bed, squeezing my damp thighs together, my hands tucked under my head.
“Grace?”
“You just came inside me, and all that spunk has got nowhere to go, nowhere to be contained, nowhere to attach itself to. I’m all scooped out inside.”
His hand froze on his zipper.
“I brought an idea to the table, but I still can’t deliver. I made your heart jump with hope, but I couldn’t make good on it. I let you down, dragged you down. I couldn’t leave well enough alone, and now I’ve marked you, marked us, in a new way.”
My breath caught at the strained look on his face. His mouth hung open. He was unwilling to utter the denial that hung on his lips, for it would be a lie, wouldn’t it? His brows had transformed into a ridge, a dam straining against the hurt.
I averted my gaze. “I’ve disappointed you. And I hate that,” I whispered.
“Babe, we’re trying. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a process. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Of course I have to worry about you! I’m your wife.”
“Okay, you want to worry about me. Here goes.” His hands hung on his hips. “This isn’t just about you. I lost that baby, too. It might not have been in your belly. It might have been hundreds of miles away from us, but goddamn it, that was my sperm in there with your egg that helped create that baby.”
“It was a girl!”
The lines of his tan face tensed. “What?” His shaky voice shrunk.
My heart stabbed.
“Laura called me a couple of days after the miscarriage, after the tests came back.” My hands tugged through my hair. “Turns out our baby was a girl. She thought we’d like to know.”
Laura’s call had put a different spin on my raw but controlled grief. Once her words had penetrated my brain, suddenly, I had known I was kidding myself. That embryo had had an identity. It had been real, a being bursting with my and Miller’s DNA. But that bursting forth had ceased. I had hung up the phone and plunged into a black pit of mourning for the three of us all over again.
I had been trying not to think about the baby as an actual baby too much until we’d hit the four-month mark, but that desperate notion had been crushed.
Miller swept the hair from my face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because it would’ve destroyed a little piece of you.
My finger traced a line down his chest.
“Tell me.”
“We would’ve given her your grandmother’s name like we wanted to.”
“Grace—”
I dug my finger in his chest, trembling. “We lost our Kim.”
He swept me in his embrace, holding me, cradling me. “Shh.”
All I wanted to do was scream. I stiffened in his arms, nausea swirling in my gut. My body shivered as I inhaled his earthy scent mixed with the musky heat of his skin. I didn’t deserve Miller’s exquisite understanding or his quiet strength, no matter how badly I wanted it. I pushed against him like a savage animal clawing free from a trap, my hair catching in my eyes, my mouth.
He shook me. “Stop it.”
I gritted my teeth. “Don’t tell me how to feel.”
He pulled my face back, his one hand gripping my skull, his eyes blazing into mine. “I wouldn’t dare. But that shit’s not what I feel, not what I see. This isn’t over yet, Grace. It doesn’t have to be. It’s fixable.”
I squirmed in his arms, our choppy breaths mingling. “Fixable?”
“Ugly, isn’t it? Just plain mean. But that’s the dinner being served. It’s sour, and it doesn’t taste good, but there’s no menu for us to choose from. We deal. We fucking deal. But we can’t deal if you’re determined to flip out and push me away. It only works if we’re together on this.”
“Fixable?”
“Yeah.”
“Men always want to fix things.”
“That’s right. We do. This one’s a bitch though. Yeah, Laura lives so far away, and we weren’t there to witness it or help her or our kid. That was a part of us inside somebody else who was out there in the world, far away. I don’t know what to do with that. Honestly, I don’t. But I am trying. Grace, losing our daughter does not make me mad at you. It makes me mad but not at you. Frustrated but, again, not at you.” He let out an exhale and released his grip on my head. “Did you start looking for another surrogate?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?” He brushed the hair from my face.
“Is that what you want?”
“Don’t you? You just gonna give up?” He stared at me, his fingers lingering on my lower lip. “You’re giving up, aren’t you?” He released me and stood up. “Oh, man. Okay.” His gaze shifted, his lips curling in.
Was it disappointment? Dismay? In me or the situation?
God, I hated this.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “This is too much. This is the second time for you,” he said. “Going through it once was bad enough, but twice? No. I just wish you had come out and told me how you were feeling rather than all this hiding, this jerking away.”
“I’m not jerking.”
“Oh, yeah?” He stared at me, his lips in a firm line, his jaw set. “It’s getting a little difficult for me to breathe with the bullshit in the air. I think I’d better go. My lungs will thank me. They’ve gotten sensitive since I quit smoking.”
He turned his back on me, and my heartbeat kicked into overdrive. I jumped up and grabbed a long sinewy arm.
“No, don’t go. Miller, please.”
He released a long breath, his eyes holding mine. “You’ve been drinking every day this week, haven’t you?”
Found out. I chewed on the inside of my cheek and didn’t reply.
“I know you have. Haven’t said a word. But it’s been two weeks. Two fucking weeks. This is what’s frustrating me, making me angry, Grace. And now I’m concerned. You need to think about what you want and how you want it. Don’t ever forget you’re your mother’s daughter and Ruby’s sister.”
My face heated. “I’m not them!”
“No, you’re not. But you gotta be vigilant about your inherited tendencies. All I’m asking is, you take it down a notch, starting now.”
&nb
sp; “And if I don’t want to?”
His dark eyes pierced mine, and his body stiffened, towering over me. “We got three weeks until Jake comes back to us. You need to come up with a better answer before then.”
My shoulders sank. He was right, so very right. My depression, my negativity stank.
“You need another prescription, then let’s get one.”
“No. After all those hormones, I don’t want any more pills in my life, and—”
He gripped my jaw. “You need me to tie you to the bed until you decide what to do?”
I didn’t move a muscle.
“Yeah, I’m thinking you do. You’ve been disrespecting yourself and your cunt all this time, and I’m gonna make you regret it.”
Icy needles tracked up my spine at the iron tone in his voice, and I jerked against his hold on me but his grasp only tightened. A warning. A dare. A push.
“I thought you were leaving,” I said.
“No. This is a much better idea.” He yanked the zipper down the hoodie, revealing my bare breasts, and I let out a gasp. “If my words haven’t gotten through to you, woman, my cock and my tongue will take over.” His hard gaze held mine. “Take it off.”
I tugged the hoodie off my shoulders and arms. It dropped to the bed at my side. He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me close to his body. His fingers sank into my pussy, swirling through the sensitive, wet flesh.
My chest constricted at the menacing look in his eyes, growing more intense with every harsh stroke.
“I’m gonna suck and fuck every ounce of negativity right out of this pussy,” he rasped.
The sticky wet sounds of his fingers working me filled the space between us. I groaned, my legs wobbling.
“You been keeping it from me, and your pussy likes my mouth and my cock, doesn’t it, Grace?”
I nodded, my breathing choppy. “Uh-huh.” My eyes were pinned to his.
He kissed me, a demanding kiss, a this-is-what-I-want-and-you’re-going-to-give-it-to-me-right-the-fuck-now kiss. His lips detached from mine, snatching any fragments of resolve I had been clinging to.
“Your pussy needs my mouth and my cock, doesn’t it, Grace?” The hard line of his jaw grazed my forehead.
