MURPHY
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Taos asked. “Is this why you aren’t coming to workout anymore?”
I carefully lifted the green oxygen bottle and rested it against the headers. “I’m dying.”
Taos rolled his eyes. “No, really. What did you do? Have something fall on you and you have a collapsed lung? Is this why my fiancée is going around whining because she can’t get ahold of her sister?”
I pressed my hand against my heart just before saying, “I’m sleeping with, and have fallen in love with Mavis.”
Taos blinked and barked out a laugh a half second later. “I thought you two hated each other’s guts?”
I grinned faintly. That grin all but disappeared off of my face as I said, “I didn’t want her to fall in love with me.”
Taos shifted so that his hip was leaning against his car, then he stared at me with confusion. “What?”
I sighed. “I’ve had cardiac problems since I was a child. Then, when I was seventeen, I suffered a heart attack from a dietary imbalance.”
Taos’ eyes widened.
“From then on, I had heart trauma that later turned into heart failure.” I paused. “I’m in stage four now. I’m on a donor list for a new one, but for the time being…I need this.”
Taos’ eyes went to the oxygen bottle I was patting, then back to my face. “Fuck.”
Fuck was right.
“I did some book research on getting on a donor list for a transplant. It’s not…” he hesitated.
“It’s not likely I’ll get one, correct,” he confirmed. “Most likely, I’ll die while still on it.”
Taos grumbled. “And you went and fell in love with her even though you were trying to make her hate you, so she’d stay away?”
I didn’t say anything to that, but the burn in my heart might as well have been enough.
I’d gone and done the unthinkable. I’d made her fall in love with me. And I was leaving her shortly.
I knew it. She knew it.
Everybody would soon know it.
“Dammit, man.” Taos paused. “I’m really fuckin sorry to hear that. Does everyone else know?”
I leaned against the truck feeling my breaths come faster and faster just from the simple exertion of holding myself in a standing position.
“I’m going to tell them tonight.” I shrugged.
The front door slammed, and I looked to it to see Fran coming out with Vlad on her hip.
She took one look at me, and I knew she knew.
“Where’s Mavis?” I asked quietly.
Fran cleared her throat. “She’s in the bathroom getting cleaned up.”
I closed my eyes and felt a wave of something fierce hit me.
“This is why I should’ve stayed away,” I admitted. “I wish I’d never come back.”
Fran sucked in a breath at my words. “You would take away some of the happiest days I’ve ever seen Mavis experience because you’re upset that she’s going to be heart-broken?”
I didn’t know what to reply to that, so I just didn’t.
“Let me tell you something about my sister,” Fran came closer.
Of course, the little boy in her arms immediately leaned over for me, but I knew with me standing and holding him, my exertion level would go up, and it would tire me out quicker. And with a full night ahead of me, I needed to reserve my strength.
What little of it remained, that is.
“Can you keep him?” I asked Fran, lifting my hand to catch Vlad’s with my own.
He settled for the handholding despite wanting more.
He always did.
“Yes,” she whispered.
She sounded pissed, and I grinned. “You Pope women and your anger.” I shook my head.
“Us Pope women don’t leave when the going gets tough,” Fran snapped back.
I felt a piercing sensation in the vicinity of my heart, and I didn’t know whether it was real or imagined because of the blows I kept taking when it came to Mavis Pope.
“Do you honestly feel that I should’ve done this?” I asked honestly. “Because, the more I see her break down, the more I realize that I’m a stupid, selfish son of a bitch.”
Fran snorted. “You are if you want to deprive her of this. Do you honestly think that Mavis has ever chosen the easier road?” She hitched Vlad up higher on her hip, and Vlad’s hand slipped from mine. He reached forward and caught mine up again in response. I studied Vlad’s fingernails as Fran continued giving me a dressing down. “The day that you were kicked out of our property was the day that Mavis started to really hate our grandmother.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“She looked for you,” Fran continued. “But everywhere she looked, she could never find you. She paid private investigators to look for you. I finally convinced her to stop when she was entering school to become a nurse anesthetist. Do you know how many thousands and thousands of dollars that she lost because of that?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Then you come back and treat her like utter shit.” Fran shook her head. “She’s been dealing with people treating her like shit since she was young. Do you know what it’s like to buck the system? Because Mavis does. She spent her entire youth trying to find better ways to spend the money that she was given in her trust fund. She fed homeless. She clothed orphans. She bought out Angel Trees every Christmas. Honest to God, she did everything she could to spend her money wisely. Then, when she actually needed it when she became pregnant with Vlad, my grandmother took it away from her. She wasn’t working at that time. She was going to school full-time. She hated working there because of me, so she’d quit. Then, a few weeks after finding out about Vlad, and my grandmother all but banishing her, she has to go eat crow and beg for her job back.”
The pain in my chest grew.
I rubbed my chest as a feeling of dread started to take root in my heart.
I didn’t think these pains were my imagination.
But I didn’t want this night to end so soon.
I wanted more time with Mavis.
“Then she found you. And even with you treating her like crap, I’ve never seen her so alive.” Fran paused. “The day that you delivered Vlad, she told me that she thought she was going to die on the side of the road. That she thought she was going to have that baby, and then die. And then I’d have to find her body when I finally came looking for her. But you showed up and saved the day,” she continued.
A sound like a wounded animal left my throat.
“Each day since you delivered Vlad, I’ve had a sister I didn’t realize that I was missing,” she pressed. “Don’t take this away from her. Even if you’re leaving her eventually, give her the choice to be whole for just a little while longer while you’re here.”
I cleared my throat, and the pains in my chest finally subsided.
I blew out a breath. “I can’t leave, even if I’d wanted to. I don’t have the strength or the courage to leave this Earth anymore without her by my side. I love her.”
Fran smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Then go get her so we can go eat. And we’ll tell our friends what’s going on, since I assume that’s what you’re doing tonight.”
My lips turned up into a half smile. “That’s what I’m doing.”
Fran nodded once, then caught Vlad’s hand. “You can make it up the stairs?”
I dropped my arm to the bottle of oxygen and nodded. “Not dead quite yet.”
With that parting comment, I headed into the house looking for the woman I didn’t know had become such a big part of my life.
A woman that I knew would be broken when I was gone.
I heard the sniffling before I arrived at the door to the bathroom.
I’d never been in Taos’ house before, but it was a simple design plan.
That, and the quiet crying coming from the woman that was slowly breaking what remained good in my heart helped lead the way.
/> I found her in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, with her face in her hands.
I moved forward until I was standing in front of her, and then caught a lock of hair between my two large fingers and twirled it around them.
She looked up with her swollen eyes and her heart-wrenching tears and stared at me.
“I don’t want you to cry,” I told her.
CHAPTER 16
If you are not yelling at your kids, you’re not spending enough time with them.
-Mavis to Murphy
MURPHY
She smiled. “Sadly for you, you got the weepy Pope. I cry at almost everything.”
I hadn’t seen her cry often. The worst time had been when she was delivering Vlad, and that’d been because of the pain.
So I wasn’t sure what to think of her words.
“Is it time to go?” she asked, breaking into my silence.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “If we want to make it on time.”
She sighed and stood up, which put our bodies into closer contact.
She pressed her hands to the wall of my chest, and the normal stirring that always hit me when she was close did.
She snorted out a laugh. “Dying and you still want me.”
“Dying. Dead. I’ll want you until I’m no longer able to breathe air,” I told her honestly.
She sighed, then leaned forward to press her forehead against my chest.
Unfortunately, the reaction to her didn’t abate, and despite the tender moment, my dick had to ruin it.
She shifted and accidentally rubbed it just right, making a groan fall from my throat.
The last few weeks had been a lot of nothing.
I couldn’t exert myself because I tired easily.
And, taking the doctor’s words to heart, Mavis had gone out of her way to make my exertion as little as possible.
That also meant we hadn’t ‘done it’ all that much.
Which sucked.
On one level I knew they were right. Sex, no matter who was doing the work, was a strain on the body.
But goddamn did I miss her.
I hadn’t even had her that long before she’d pulled the plug on anything sex related.
But tonight? We had fifteen minutes to spare, and I was no longer going to take no for an answer. Not when we both wanted it.
And, according to the studies, you only lived once.
Reaching my arm around her back, I set the oxygen tank on the bathroom shelf behind the toilet.
Then reached for the cannula that was in my nose.
She frowned when she saw me take them off, her hand automatically going up to replace it where she wanted it—because, again, she couldn’t stop herself from mother-henning me.
But I stilled her hand and then pulled her closer, pressing my erection into her.
The denial that I knew she was about to cry out was smothered against her lips as I took her mouth with my own.
She sighed, and then her body went lax as she gave in to the feelings that were coursing through her.
I wasn’t dumb.
I knew she was just as turned on as I was.
There was no way to deny it.
Not with her labored breathing, or the way her eyes went glassy.
Not to mention she kept giving my lips and my dick area surreptitious glances when she thought I wasn’t looking.
Her hands went down my sides, her fingers digging in slightly to the ever-widening area of my waist, and I had a moment of self-consciousness hit me before she completely obliterated my every thought.
“God, you’re so hot,” she breathed, her fingers moving to the front of my sweatpants where she proceeded to pull me in closer. “I want you.”
I knew she did.
I wanted her, too.
“But only if you’ll allow me to do all the work,” she ordered.
I could do that.
I could also give her exactly what she wanted, when she wanted it, as long as it didn’t involve me stopping.
Because not only couldn’t I stop, but I wouldn’t.
I was tired of wanting it and being denied.
Well, there was only so much denying I could do.
“And later, when you’re still out of breath, I want you to remember this moment right here, and think about why we can’t keep doing this. Eventually, we’ll have to stop,” she persisted.
It was the same thing she said every single time I convinced her to ride my cock.
And I replied with the same thing that I always did but added a new three words toward the end that she never saw coming.
“When you’re old and gray, I want you to remember this moment right here,” I told her. “Because I want you to remember that I lived like I was dying until my last breath.” I waited until her breath hitched before saying, “I love you.”
Her head whipped up, and I had to jerk back to avoid getting heat butted.
“What?”
Instead of answering her, I showed her.
I lavished her mouth with my every word and feeling. I ran my hands lovingly up the length of her spine, down the small of her back, around to her slightly rounded belly, then to the most beautiful thighs in the world.
Right when she would’ve moved, would’ve shifted those legs to allow me access, I twisted us around until I was on the counter, sitting on my ass beside a shit ton of feminine wares, and she was straddling my hips.
The dress she was wearing—the one that drove me wild from the moment she walked out in it over an hour before—rode up until it exposed her beautiful ass to my roaming hands.
She was wearing a thong, so when I easily slid it to the side, and then ran two fingers through her slit from front to back, she cried out.
“Have I told you how much I fuckin’ like when you wear a thong?” I asked curiously.
My eyes went over her shoulder as she buried her face into my neck, and I had a half-second’s thought to get up and close the door but decided to hell with it.
“You’ve told me multiple times,” she whispered against my throat.
She started to reach between us, pulling my cock out of my sweatpants.
At first, the thought of wearing sweatpants anywhere was abhorrent to me.
I was always—always—dressed appropriately.
Having years where the only thing you could wear—let alone afford—was a pair of four-dollar sweats from the Dollar Store, I’d had my share of wearing sweatpants out in public.
Except, beggars couldn’t be choosers when the only thing you could fit onto your ass any longer was the stretchy shit seeing as your weight fluctuated by ten pounds every single day thanks to your water retention.
Meaning, I didn’t complain anymore about where I wore the sweats.
But it was instances like this, the ease in which she was able to pull me out over the elastic waistband, that I realized that wearing the slouchy pants did have their benefits.
Especially when the woman that I loved used them to her best advantage.
With one breath, she had me out of my pants, and inside of her.
I hadn’t even had time to move my hands or guide her where I wanted to go.
She did all the work, sheathing me inside of her until there wasn’t a single inch separating our pelvises.
“Goddamn,” I breathed, resting my forehead along the length of her collar bone.
She didn’t say anything after that, and neither did I, as we both got lost in the sensations she was evoking from the both of us.
A fast punishing rhythm was enough to even take her breath away.
And when I was coming about three seconds after she’d hopped on my cock—okay, it was more like four and a half minutes—she laughed.
“You’re kind of quick on the draw, aren’t you?” she teased as she licked my Adam’s apple.
I growled and reached between us, circling her clit with the pad of my thumb.
Her hips jerked in response, and I grinned as I leaned forward and suc
ked the sensitive skin of her neck between my lips.
“Everyone’s gonna know what I did to you,” I breathed after I let that skin go. “They’re going to read it in every single line of your body.”
She moaned, her body moving against my cock that was still hard for her.
Even dying, there was no way for that to go down.
I’d probably literally be on the brink of death, and as long as she was near, my cock would be hard.
Her breasts jerked against my chest, and then I felt the tell-tale sign of her pussy tightening on my cock.
Long seconds later, she pressed her forehead to my lips and said, “I love you, too.”
“Are y’all done or do we need to tell everyone we’ll be another ten minutes?” Taos yelled.
Giggling, Mavis reached for my oxygen and replaced it on my face.
I hated to admit that I needed it.
“Coming!” she cried out.
While she cleaned herself up, I used that time to catch my breath, grinning wickedly when I watched her get ready to go.
When she came to wash her hands at my side, I slipped off the counter. “I’m gonna start heading that way.”
She winked at me, and I smoothed my hand down her ass in a light caress before making my way out of Taos’ house—something I was now very much aware of when I made my way.
I blinked, surprised to find Taos leaning against the door waiting for us.
Together we all got outside and made our way to the van that I hated.
“Next time, close the door,” Taos grumbled as he stood there waiting for me to get inside.
I shrugged. “That was an exertion I wasn’t willing to make.”
Taos’ laughter was cut off by his car door shutting.
I moved to the front seat and got in, grinning like the loon that I was.
“What was that last comment?” Mavis asked as she got into the driver’s seat. “I didn’t hear.”
“He said to be careful,” I lied.
Mavis frowned but nonetheless drove us to the restaurant where we would be having dinner.
The moment we arrived, a wave of uncertainty hit me.
“This is going to cast a pall on the night,” I admitted.
“It is,” she confirmed. “But it’s going to be even harder if they’re hit with this out of the blue. For some reason the gym likes you.”
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