“This t-shirt thing is getting in my way.”
I try to catch my breath but say, “Take it off.”
He shakes his head, looking surprised. “No, I didn’t mean that. I was just joking around.”
“Take it off.”
“We don’t have to. I was trying to take the pressure off.”
I grind against him, moaning. “Just take it off. Please.”
He leans back, sitting on his shins, looking like he’s struggling for breath.
I lift up to my elbows, glancing at him. I’m moving too fast. He’s trying to slow things down, and I should listen to him. But I can’t seem to.
As a consolation, I say, “We don’t have to have sex.”
He glances up, his eyes glassy and unsure. “What?” He sounds drunk, and I love it. But still…
I sit up, desperately thinking of what to say. “You’re right. We don’t have to.”
He blinks. “Did I really say that? That sounds like something an idiot would say, so, yeah, maybe it was me.”
I smile. “I was getting carried away.”
He reaches down, along my thighs, to where the bottom hem of my nightshirt is. “I want to get carried away.” He hikes up the fabric a couple inches.
“Maybe we should.”
He moans and hikes up the fabric a little more. “Only if you want to.”
“I—I do. Do you?”
He lifts the fabric until I feel a whisper of air touch my sex. I’m not wearing panties. His face contorts into misery as he looks down at me, between my legs. He moans again. “I really want to.”
In a quick move he removes the large nightshirt and flings it to the side. I feel so…open. And I am. My legs are spread around him, my knees bent, making me feel like he can see all of me. He places a hand on my shoulder and guides me back to lay flat against bed.
“Let me look at you.”
So I do. My nipples contract as he gazes at them. He licks his lips, but he doesn’t move. He swallows and glances at my stomach and down.
“Now I know why the Greeks and Romans wrote of when the goddesses were jealous of mortal women.”
I cover my breasts, laughing, feeling embarrassed of such a giant compliment. “Stop it.”
He pulls my hands away then smooths his palm between my breasts. “No. I won’t. You’re so fucking beautiful, Moira.” He smiles and before I can even think of saying something, he glides his hand around my breastbone. “Freckles. You have freckles here.”
“Yes.”
“You have freckles on the top of your thighs.” He holds both of my upper legs in his hands.
“Yes.”
“I love every single one.”
I smile.
He reaches down and kisses the very center of my chest, still holding my thighs. “I love this freckle. And this one.” He keeps kissing me, and I run my fingers through his longish hair. He breathes on my nipple, making it contract even more. He moans and suckles in the hard bud.
I arch into his mouth and pull his head down with my hands. “Shane…”
He’s licking my nipple and sucking it and making me wish his pelvis was back, nestling against my aching sex. He switches to the other breast and I react much the same, just with bigger motions. He kisses from one breast to the other, taking his hands and holding onto my waist.
“Moira…Jesus, I’ve wanted this for so long.”
My sex is so warm, so liquid. I moan because words are getting harder and harder to come by.
He kisses down my stomach, slowly, licking around my bellybutton. When his hands move from my waist to the inside my thighs, I twitch, my need for him too strong.
“Shane, I—” Sitting up, I take hold of his face, pulling it up to kiss my lips.
He lifts me to straddle him. “Tell me what you want, baby.” He kisses me again.
“You, I need you.”
“You got me.”
I grind against him. “I need you…inside me. Is it too fast?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Reaching down between us, I pull his jeans top button through the hole. He kisses me again as I unzip him and try to tug his jeans and boxers down. The way we’re sitting gets me nowhere fast, so he lifts me again, placing me back on the bed. He braces himself with one arm to my left side, pulling his jeans down a little more.
“You sure, Moira?”
I nod excitedly, glancing down at him. His lowered pants reveal a tuft of dark pubic hair that’s glossy. I reach out and touch it. He closes his eyes as I sweep up and down his hair, surprised at how soft it is, how firm he is. After another breath, he pulls his pants and boxers over his erection. It springs out, pointing upwards. I touch his cock as soon as I can, making him moan and shudder. Slipping my fingers almost around him, I’m amazed. He’s wide so I can’t quite close my grip. But I stroke him up and down. Up and down. His body starts moving in opposition to my rhythm, pumping his length into my fist.
But he stops and pulls my hands away from him, then tugs his jeans and boxers off all the way, flinging them to the side of my bed. He looks down at his body then to mine. Blinking, he swallows, slowly placing his hands on my thighs.
“I need you, Shane.”
He nods but doesn’t move.
Reaching down, I take one of his hands and glide it to my folds. He releases a burst of a breath, his brows furrow.
“I’m wet for you.”
He nods, looking down at the apex of my legs.
I run his fingers up and down my pussy, circling around my clitoris. “This is all for you.”
He moans.
Holding one of his fingers, I run it around my opening. “Do you want to be inside me?”
“Yes.” His voice cracks. Then he glances up. “But you’re so beautiful. So…little.”
I pull his hand up my body, so he braces his arms beside me, hovering over me. Eye to eye. “I won’t break, Shane. I’m not fragile.”
He’s trembling, looking down at my body. “You look so fragile. I’m scared I’ll hurt you. I’m scared I want you too much.”
Running my fingertips down his body, I shake my head. “You won’t hurt me. I want this so much.” My fingers go bump, bump, bump down the muscles of his contracted stomach. When I find his erection again, he hisses and closes his eyes. That’s when I say, “I won’t break.”
I’m pretty sure that’s only a small portion of his problem though. This is a man whose own mother made him accept her affairs; the woman he first loved and loved for years cheated on him god knows how many times. This is a man who is scared to love a woman, and it’s no wonder why. They all leave him bruised and bleeding, hurting so deeply.
I want to prove to him that he can trust me. That I will do everything in my power to never hurt him. After placing my hands over his heart, making sure he’s looking at me, I promise, “And I’ll never break you.”
He thrusts inside of me, bending his arms and kissing me in a frenzy. “I love you.” He kisses me more. “I love you.” Another set of kisses. “I love you so much.”
“I love you.”
He pulls out then pumps into me again. “Oh, Moira.”
“Shane.”
He lifts and finds a rhythm with his hips, while he looks down at me. “I love this.”
“Me too…baby.”
He smiles at the endearment. His endearment for me. “This is so good.”
I caress his face and he captures one of my fingers, sucking it in. It’s only then that I remember that we’d forgotten something. I suck in a breath. “Condom.”
He stops, looking at me with wide yet unfocused eyes. “What?”
“Well, I guess the birth control is supposed to be working by now.”
“Jesus, I forgot.”
I cradle his face, smiling. “Me too.”
He grins but then grunts as he pulls out of me and jumps off the bed. Finding his jeans, he holds them up to me as if that answers why he left my body. He fetches his wallet and
pulls out one condom.
In so many ways, he reminds me of Joe, but he’s his own man. However, I can’t help but notice the similarities and love them, especially when he climbs back up on the bed, scooting to me on his knees, his enormous cock bobbing with every movement.
I roll both my lips in to keep from grinning too widely. I’m a lucky, lucky girl.
He rips the foil wrapper with his teeth and I sit up to watch him roll on the condom. I’ve slicked his member, which makes putting on the condom a bit slippery at first. After a few frustrated growls, I help and within a couple seconds he’s sheathed.
I lay back, smiling, reaching out for him, but he freezes. As if he wasn’t just inside me. He’s swallowing and looking at me, my pussy, as if he really, really wants to be inside me, but he’s scared of something. Again.
I sit up and hold onto his shoulders. “What do you need, baby?”
He grabs me around my waist, pulling me up his body while he adjusts his legs. After some wiggling, he has me on top and astride him as he leans back. But he’s holding me still by my hips. My sex pressed against his.
“Tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”
He caresses my cheek, licking his lips. “I really do love you, Moira.”
“I really do too, Shane.”
“I want to marry you. Joe and I looked at rings. I know he wants to marry you too.”
I blink, unsure what to say to that.
“I know this is all kinds of crazy, but we both want you. And we’re both okay with that.”
I nod, not sure why we’re rehashing things, especially when I want him back inside me so badly.
“I want you to live with us.”
“I—”
“Just give me a minute, please. I’m working up to saying what I’m scared to say.”
I nod, holding still.
“I want you to know that…I lost a lot of faith in people. My brother has been and is the one person I’ve always trusted. And that’s all I wanted from life. That’s all I thought I could trust. Then you walk in and…Moira, I don’t just love you. You made everything different. You made everything new and pretty and—and good when all I knew of this world was cynicism and bitterness. But you broke my vision. You didn’t even know you did it, but you mended my heart. I’m a better man just because—”
I reach down and kiss him, interrupting him, but I can’t help it. I’m crying by the time my lips touch his. “You mended my heart. You and—”
“You can say it,” he whispers. “You can talk about him. I want you to be honest.”
“Joe,” I whisper. “I didn’t think there were noble knights like the two of you. Not in this world. But you both proved me wrong.”
He smiles at my reference, but I continue.
“Joe somehow snuck through all my defenses, but you stole my heart. I wasn’t open until you. I wasn’t ready for anything like this because I didn’t believe there could be men who were so kind. You made me a better—”
He reaches up and kisses me. His lips linger and I’m melting on top of him. He pushes his tongue inside my mouth and adjusts my hips, finding my opening and timing his tongue and his cock to penetrate me at the same time. He’s pumping into me, and I can only hold still, savoring this feeling of him inside me. So inside me.
Tilting my head back, I feel him kissing down my neck, my chest, to one of my breasts. I cradle his face with one of my hands, the other I place on his chest as leverage as I begin to rock against him. He moves from one breast to the other, spending long moments plucking the internal string from my nipple to my clitoris. Then he leans back and fits his hand between us, one of his fingers circling around the hard little nub at the base of my legs.
I moan and kiss him. We kiss and kiss and kiss.
An orgasm threatens, and I try to push it away, moaning, sighing, and humming. I’m making too many sounds and can’t seem to help myself.
“Shane…I’m going to come.”
I feel him smile against my lips. “Me too.”
We kiss again. But my orgasm isn’t asking nicely. It’s sweeping down my body, even as I try so hard to stop it.
“Shane…”
“Yes, Moira. Yes, baby.”
“You’re making me…”
“God, yes.”
He kisses me again, and my orgasm takes over, contracting my stomach muscles and my thighs and every space between. I can actually feel my internal walls clutch at him. He moans. He knows I’m coming. Then he comes too. His tongue is in my mouth when he wraps his arms around me even more, grabbing me in a tight hold. He thrusts into me and holds still as he’s buried so deep. Spasming, he grunts and thrusts again.
Our mouths are glued to each other’s, and we’re still kissing as we’re coming. The kiss slows eventually, especially as his shudders subside.
I pull away, smiling down at him briefly before I rest my head on his chest.
His breath is fast, and I love the feel of his chest moving me up and down.
I think of Joe and I don’t feel like a traitor. I invite him into my thoughts. With him in my mind, remembering what he’d said after we’d made love, I hold onto Shane as tightly as I can, saying, “Don’t let me go.”
He holds me just as fiercely. “Never.”
33
Six months later…
I’m nervous as I watch Eva come closer, but I stand my ground, even if I am standing on my ice-covered sidewalk, snow covering the landscape. In the post-sunset light, the snow looks purple, like a lavender fantasy land.
I’m not sure what Joe or Shane will do when they see her. They haven’t spoken to their mother since they found out she slapped me. And I hate that. I never wanted to be the catalyst to send them to the other side of not even returning their mother’s phone calls. Tony told me she’s nearly out of her head about her boys.
Because she assumed I would tell Tony, she confessed to him about the slap. He told me that he’d forbidden her from ever seeing him again, but she “coincidentally” kept running into him. He worried he needed a restraining order and asked if I’d come down to the courthouse if needed. It was a huge mess, made a little bigger when Eva had told him that she would call Social Services on me for not being a good mother, since she believed both of her sons were involved with me.
Tony and I had a good talk about Joe and Shane. I didn’t have to admit to anything because Tony didn’t want to know. I admitted that we’re very close, but anything more than that Tony refused to hear. He just asked if I was going to marry either one. Since the law forbids I marry both of them, I told him honestly no. But I was thinking of moving in with them, that I wanted the money from the house to buy Betty and Glen’s store.
The next day he came over with a manila envelope full of cash. More than three-hundred thousand dollars.
I shook my head, looking up at Tony. “I can’t—I can’t accept this.”
Tony shrugged, giving a small mischievous smile. “I’m not going to take it back. So there.”
He made me laugh, which surprised me and I think he was too. “Seriously, Tony, I can’t—”
“Moira, honey, you helped me start my business. Your mom paid our bills the first years we were married and during…when Ben…” He straightened and gave me a wide smile. “Keep the house. Buy the grocery store. If you want to move in with those two boys, I guess there’s nothing I can do about that. I know Jamie and Liv love them. And I don’t want to know much more than that. I don’t want to know which one…if one of them…I like it better not knowing. If you do get married, I’d want to know. That’s it, though.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll ever get married again.”
He looked down and softly kicked my toe. “Me either.” He looked like he was going to reach in for a hug but then sniffed, tensing. “And I told Eva that if she dared called Child Protective Services on you, I would end her career. I said some other things too, but I think she took the hint.”
“Hint, huh?” I ch
uckled. “You’re so subtle what with telling her you’d end her career.”
“That’s me, subtle.”
Tony and I…I’m not sure if we’re friends. I wouldn’t call it that, but I’m not sure what else to call it. Friendly. We’re friendly exes. And sometimes, that’s the best thing out of an ugly situation.
Tony and I talked about my mother, and how, now that I’m making money, I can pay for some of her services. Her health hasn’t been great this winter and my kids haven’t been allowed to see her for a few months because she had pneumonia and is only now recovering. My ex-husband held my hand through it all and offered to keep giving me money. That’s when I realized that besides Tony’s unwavering faith in me and being a good mother, he’ll give me, financially, as much as he can. It’s his way of giving me love. Again, sometimes that’s the best we can get out of a situation.
Bit and I have become great friends. She and Lona broke up in November, but then got back together again by December. So, she was a mess during that month, and I was so glad to be there for her, as she had been for me. I held her hand and then held her as she cried and cried. I helped her stay away from booze and drugs. She didn’t need to call her own sponsor because, I could help give her the strength to do something other than find that numb we all long for.
And for the last few months, even though Tony gave me the money to buy the grocery store so I don’t have to sell the house, I’ve been slowly moving in to the farmhouse anyway. It’s too hard to spend time away from Joe and Shane. Besides, whether I made up my mind about the move or not, it was decided for me when I realized all my underwear were at their place.
Right now, Joe and Shane are in my house with my kids, taking apart Liv’s bed because she doesn’t want a different one at the farmhouse. And they’re more than accommodating to the little princess. We’ve had numerous Frozen parties where Liv braids Shane’s hair—Joe’s is still too short—eating ice-cream and singing emphatically, “The cold never bothered me anyway.” After that, we play GI Joe and kill each other multiple times.
Awake: Book 3 of the Wild Love Series Page 33
