Oh, the irony.
Now his lungs heaved, desperate for just one molecule of air. Now his sharp gasps bounced off the walls. Now he grabbed her head to hold her close, his fingers buried in the hair at her nape, determined to keep her there until the pleasure made him collapse and die.
She didn’t wait to hear his protestations about being on the razor’s edge and this being a terrible idea if she wanted him to last for the actual lovemaking. She didn’t seem to care that the sight of her flexing ass stuck in the air was making him unravel. She didn’t ask if her throaty hums intensified his sensations beyond all human endurance.
She just kept going, flicking and sucking his sensitive head, squeezing his balls and then, with no warning, plunging him deep into her throat with a bob of her head.
It was so freaking good…she was so amazing. He’d never… Man, he was going to come—
“Stop, Arianna.”
Yeah, he was undone. Unmanned, unraveled and unworthy. Wrenching her away—and she seemed very reluctant to go, by the way—he reached for those condoms again and eyed her with new respect, his Arianna. She had a trick or two waiting for him, and he was going to grow old and then die a happy man discovering them all.
Ready at last, he climbed over her and grabbed her hips to flatten her on her back. The look on her face had been unvarnished female smugness, but now, at the crucial moment, she cocked her hips and stared up at him again. God, she was intense. Sweat dampened her face and beaded down between her breasts, and he intended to lick it off in a minute and then make her sweatier.
For now, he just wanted to pause and enjoy.
His woman. This amazing creature was his. And, whether she knew it or not, after tonight, she always would be. She’d said she was crazy about him, so maybe she knew it. God knew he was already so far around the bend over her, he’d never come back.
He tried to smile, she tried to smile back, but they both failed spectacularly.
“I missed you,” he told her.
“I missed you, too,” she answered.
Then he hooked one of his elbows under one of her knees, and spreading her wide, plunged as deep inside her as he could go.
Ecstasy gestured a hand at him, inviting him closer, and thrusting his hips, he went. A second thrust made her come. Amidst all the sweet sucking pleasure of her inner muscles as they convulsed around him, another feeling washed over him. It was a deep, relieved breath, a bottomless peace and the kind of belonging he’d never thought he’d find.
Deep inside his head, a voice spoke for the first time ever.
I’m home.
Later, after they’d made love two more times and lay twined together in a drowsing tangle of arms and legs, she stroked the side of his neck. “I’ve been meaning to ask about your tattoo.”
“It’s an Adinkra peace symbol. From the darkest days of my wild past.”
“Hmm.” She traced the shape, which was an intricate black tic-tac-toe board with rounded ends. “No offense, but—peace? You? Didn’t they have a bitter, screw-the-world tattoo available that day? Maybe an exploding peace dove or something?”
“Funny. My anger-management issues are why I got the thing. It’s supposed to remind me to search for peace.”
She raised her head just long enough to shoot him a dubious look, brows arched. “How’s that working for you?”
“It’s aspirational,” he said. “Let’s leave it at that, okay?”
“If you say so,” she said, grinning and snuggling down again.
His turn for a question. “Where should we live?”
Against his chest, he felt the apple of her cheek swell with a smile. “Are we going to live together?”
“Yes.”
“What are our choices?”
“Anywhere with a bed.”
She laughed, the sound low and rusty, and it was the warmth his soul needed. “Can you be more specific?”
“I can work anywhere, Ari. What would you like?”
“Would I be pushing my luck if I suggested the possibility of us thinking about the outside chance of us living in Columbus, so we can be near Heather Hill?”
“Yes,” he said flatly, rolling his eyes, but he’d suspected she’d say that. “You just took the New York bar, remember?”
“Well, yeah. I can take the Ohio one, too.”
“Another bar exam. Fun.”
“Can we talk about it?”
“I’m in a pretty good mood tonight, so, yeah, we can talk about it.”
“Good.”
They’d talk about other stuff, too, but he wasn’t planning to mention that now. He didn’t want to scare her off, not when her trust in him was still fragile and new.
But he’d been doing a lot of thinking. About the emotional wounds he was still working through and the progress he’d made. About the things he’d expected from his life and the unexpected turns it’d taken since he met Arianna.
He’d learned something funny: his heart could heal. It didn’t have to be so hard. Old relationships with his family could be renewed and strengthened, and this new relationship with Arianna could be nurtured until it grew into the strongest redwood sequoia, able to withstand just about anything life threw at it.
As far as he was concerned, there was a big word lurking in their future. It didn’t scare him shitless, much to his surprise, and he didn’t want to run screaming in the other direction. He wanted to sprint for it and catch it in his hands.
Marriage.
With this one woman, he could feel at home and trust that things really were what they seemed. He could be himself with her, because she saw and understood him the way he did her. They fit together, and she awakened parts of him that’d been presumed dead for years. With her in his life, it wasn’t such a stretch to imagine a happiness that would last past tomorrow and the next day, nor did it strain his brain too much to imagine—he did a small mental gulp—children. They made a good team, the two of them. And he’d make sure that their kids never knew the kind of turmoil he’d experienced growing up.
Her breathing evened out and she snuggled closer in her sleep, finding the exact right spot against his side. Deep inside him, something swelled to the size of a hot-air balloon, threatening to burst free and shower little bits of him all around the room.
In his entire life, he’d never felt anything this fiercely, not even bitterness.
There in the darkness, with the slow rise and fall of her ribs beneath his fingers, he made two promises to himself.
One: he was going to marry this amazing woman.
Two: he’d never voluntarily spend another night without her warm and snug in his arms, exactly like this.
Chapter 13
They returned to Heather Hill the next day, where they resumed their routine, with one delicious modification: he spent his nights with her at the cottage. This morning, as he headed up the hall toward the library, where he’d made plans to meet Arianna after he showered and changed up in his room, Joshua gave his mental to-do list a silent run-through. First thing on the list: checking in with the old man to see how he was doing so far, and if he’d managed to feed himself any grits off that spoon today. And then—and this was the crazy part, but what the hell—he wanted to tell Pop about his relationship with Ari. They’d been back for a week, and it was—
The sound of an angry voice nearby hit his ears, a note as discordant on this lush summer morning as hip-hop dancers in the middle of Swan Lake.
He froze, that ugly prickle of foreboding crawling up his spine the way it used to do when he was in the pen. Another burst of ugly helped him zero in on the sound: the library, dead ahead.
An energy boost kicked in, especially when a woman’s sharp voice climbed over a man’s urgent rumble. Arianna. A fanged creature sprang to life inside him and propelled him the last several feet. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but his role was clear as the glasses on his nose. If someone was giving his woman shit, it was time for him to take someone of
f at the knees. Period.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Arianna cried on the other side of the door. “It’s all settled—”
“Not to me, it’s not.” The man’s desperation was palpable, like black exhaust fumes heavy in the air. “I still love you. We can make it work. I know we can.”
That was when the ugly inside Joshua got fierce, threatening to gnaw its way through his flesh until there was nothing left except a few scraps of skin. The possessive creature was still there, too, demanding that he sort everything else out later, for sure, but protect his woman now.
NOW.
Hot and icy at the same time, a roiling combination of fury that should be locked in a subterranean cave away from people, he banged through the door and into the library.
He didn’t like what he saw, but then he’d known he wouldn’t.
Arianna wheeled around, her already stricken face turning distraught at the sight of him. Guilty color in her cheeks and a whole lot of let me explain in her eyes. A terrible rawness in her voice as she reached out a hand to him.
“Joshua…”
Next to her was the sight that really did him in and kicked the air right out of his gut. The dude, a Wellington Bentley Smithson IV type, with his polo shirt, khakis and loafers, stood there looking princely and as possessive as Joshua felt.
A quick glance took in the guy’s wavy black hair, arrogant chin and to-the-manor-born entitlement, and told Joshua everything he needed to know. Dude here hadn’t grown up in the caretaker’s cottage with his face pressed up against the window of the big house. Dude here hadn’t wondered about his place in the world or why his real daddy denied him and his adoptive father hadn’t wanted him. Dude here had never spent time behind prison bars, wrongfully or otherwise.
Bottom line? Dude here, who was as different from Joshua as a brick was from a bar of gold bullion, was exactly the kind of man who belonged with a princess like Arianna. Exactly the kind of man Joshua could never be.
For this reason, if nothing else, Joshua wanted to scrape the guy’s face off his skull with a teaspoon.
“Joshua,” Arianna said again, agonized, but he ignored her for now because he only had eyes for the guy.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, fully aware that the low menace in his voice was like the rasp of a blade against a sharpening stone.
“Arianna’s husband,” the guy said.
The H word was still reverberating in Joshua’s head, clanging around like bowling balls in a metal trash can, when Arianna sprang into action. “Ex-husband,” she told Joshua, barely meeting his eyes. “He’s my ex—”
“Barely,” said the guy. “And I want to change that—”
“We’ve been separated for eighteen months.” Now Arianna divided her wild-eyed glances between the two of them, gesturing with her arms for emphasis. “We tried counseling and it didn’t work. We tried a trial separation and that didn’t work, either. The divorce was final at the beginning of the summer. That’s that—”
“You were married to this guy?” Joshua questioned, staring at the woman who’d meant so much to him and was only, he now realized, the latest in a long line of people in his life who weren’t what they’d seemed. Another pretender, another betrayer. He should’ve known. Should’ve freaking known. “Did you think you should mention that?”
To her credit, pretty little lying Arianna didn’t dissolve into a fit of tears. Blinking furiously to hold back the wetness in her eyes, she kept her chin up and her voice firm. Well, he’d known she was strong, hadn’t he? That much about her, at least, was the truth.
“My marriage is over,” she said flatly. “I should have told you, yeah, but it has nothing to do with us, and what happened before I met you is really none of your business.”
He almost laughed, it was all so ridiculous—especially the pulsating wreckage of what had been his heart. What had the Tin Man said in The Wizard of Oz? Now I know I have a heart because it’s breaking, or some shit like that? Yeah. That worked for him.
“Really, Ari? Is that how we’re playing it now?” To his fierce satisfaction, her lower lip quivered and a single tear traced a path down her beautiful face. It felt good, her pain. It felt nice to dish her up a millionth of the agony she’d just served him on a silver platter. But then another tear fell and it hurt too much to look at her, so he turned to the guy. “Do you have a name, Mr. Ex-Husband?”
The man stared, his attention swinging between Arianna and Joshua. Apparently he was getting the picture in full high-def, because his face kept darkening by the second. Finally he zeroed in on Joshua, and his jaw all but solidified to concrete. “Carter Smith,” he said, low. “And you are…?”
This time a burst of laughter did escape from Joshua’s throat, and it was so bitter it twisted and stretched his lips like a gargoyle’s. “Well, Carter, you can take your pick. You can either call me Joshua Bishop or, depending on your mood, you can call me Dawson Reynolds. It’s up to you.”
He pivoted, keeping Arianna in his sights, because God knew he had to keep an eye on her lest she try another bait-and-switch routine on him when he least expected it. The raw pain in his chest drove him on, pushing him to hurt her more, harder.
“As for you, sweet little Arianna, don’t you think it’s a little—what’s the word?—hypocritical? Ironic? I like hypocritical, so I think I’ll go with that. Don’t you think it’s a little hypocritical for you to make such a big deal about my real name, when you never bothered to tell me that Arianna Smith was your married name? Doesn’t that strike you as funny?”
After a quick swipe at her eyes, Arianna addressed her husband. Ex-husband. “Carter, we had our chance. It didn’t work. We blew it a thousand times, and you know it. We’ve been through all this—”
Old Carter seemed to hit his limit, if the spectacular purple color of his face was any indication. “Who is this guy, Arianna?” he roared.
“It’s none of your business anymore!”
“Are you in love with him?”
“Yes.” She said it simply and quietly, with no shame and even less ambivalence. “I’m in love with him, and it’s past time for us both to move on.”
The dude’s face crumpled and quickly reformed, all except a muscle in his jaw, which flexed convulsively. Joshua watched the scene, strangely unmoved. A man and his ex-wife, the woman he still loved. Nothing new at all; so banal it was practically a yawn-fest. What else wasn’t new? The betrayal in Joshua’s life. Guess what, Joshua? Someone else in your life isn’t who he or she seems to be. Oh, really? Yawn.
It was all the same; it would never change. He’d been a fool to think it would.
“That’s how it is, then?” Carter asked Arianna.
“Yes,” she told him. “That’s how it is. I’m sorry.”
Carter snorted. “Yeah. So am I.” Dropping his head, he stared at the floor for a minute, maybe to give this whole mess a minute to settle. He rubbed his hand over his scalp once or twice and then looked up, his eyes such a hard glitter that they might have been diamonds frozen in ice cubes lodged inside the heart of a North Atlantic glacier. “Well, Joshua or Dawson or whatever the hell your name is…she’s all yours. I hope that works out better for you than it did for me.”
Joshua wanted to knock the fool’s teeth in, but he’d spent too much time trying to get out of prison to do something stupid enough to send him back in.
Carter started to go, but Arianna, in another of her presto-chango surprises for the day, reached out to stop him with her hand on his arm. He froze, rigid as one of Michelangelo’s statues, and the snarling beast inside Joshua wanted to rip that arm out of its socket as a punishment for receiving one of Arianna’s touches.
“Carter,” she said, all beseeching urgency, as though she couldn’t live one more goddamn minute without making up with her ex-husband. “I don’t want to leave it like this. Please. We loved each other once, didn’t we?”
Carter wavered.
Joshua watch
ed the touching little scene, bitterly wishing he could kick his own ass for stupidity. Arianna claimed she loved Joshua now, but she’d loved this other guy once, enough to marry him. So much for forever, eh? And here was her ex-husband, the man who’d once been the center of her existence, and Joshua hadn’t even known the guy existed until five minutes ago.
Staring at the two of them together, Joshua imagined it all: a wedding, the blushing bride, the looks between them, the kisses and the touches. Bile rose in his throat, thick enough to choke him to death.
Married. Arianna had been married. To someone else. And he’d stupidly thought that he was the only man she’d ever loved.
Can you say chump?
Carter, meanwhile, softened like a taffy chew under the hopeful earnestness in Arianna’s face. The punk. Joshua watched, disbelieving, as Arianna eased into the guy’s arms and then—
Ain’t that some shit?
They hugged, one of those lengthy, end-of-the-world embraces that said everything while saying nothing. It went on long enough for Joshua to die several excruciating deaths, and then suddenly it was over, and Carter the Noble was letting Arianna go, something Joshua knew he himself would never be man enough to do, no matter the circumstances.
“Take care of yourself,” Carter told her.
“You, too,” she said.
Joshua wanted to curse them both to hell for eternity, but all that came out of his mouth was an incoherent sound of disgust.
Carter peeled his riveted gaze away from Arianna, flashed Joshua a final killing glare and strode out. Arianna watched him go and then turned slowly to Joshua, taking forever to meet his eyes.
There was nothing to say, nothing that could possibly be said. So he let his eyes do the talking and didn’t try to hide any of it: the sharp and bewildering sense of betrayal, the mistrust, the bleeding pain.
Let this be a lesson to him: no one was ever what he or she seemed.
Sensing the way the wind was blowing, she hurried forward, tears sparkling again, and tried to put her hand on his arm—that same hand that had just been on another man’s arm.
Redemption's Touch (Kimani Romance) Page 16
