The car journey is quiet for the most part. I get a call from Grayson telling me Dad’s been taken to the hospital.
The perpetual silence that follows is more burdening than anything I’ve ever felt. It allows fear to sink right in and wreak havoc with all my foundations. But she’s there with me, and it’s impossible not to let her into all the places I’ve tried to keep her out of.
The hospital is quiet, it’s nothing like the New York modern giant Dad was taken to when he had the stroke. But the staff are kind and quick to point us in the right direction.
Grayson’s pacing up and down the long white and gray hall as we walk in, and Fran is sitting on a chair that’s clearly been put outside Dad’s hospital room for her. Eyes red and face tear-streaked, she’s impassive.
“You can wait with me,” Grayson tells Ava. Reluctantly, she releases my hand with one of her lip-biting smiles.
All I want is to bring her with me. I just want to hold on to her. Instead, I hold on to Fran. We stand outside Dad’s room and watch as the doctors talk to him and Mom.
The only relief is that Dad is awake and he’s talking. He’s okay, and the world finally stops spinning too fast for me to gather myself. I can breathe.
“See?” I draw Fran into my side. “I told you, it’s okay.”
She nods, pushing away from me. “You didn’t see it. You didn’t see him.”
“Francesca…”
Walking back the way I just came, she looks exhausted. I don’t bother arguing with her over her pessimism. I let her go, because she will come back. Like Fran always does.
The doctors leave, and Mom settles Dad. I sit with them for while listening to what happened and why.
“So, it’s just low blood pressure?”
“Yes.” Mom pats my knee. “The meds he’s taking were too strong, but the specialist is coming to see your father tomorrow morning to review everything.”
“Honestly, I’m fine. I’m just sorry I scared Francesca.” He winks at the door.
“You’re not funny!” she growls from the doorway.
“Bring it in, kid.” He pats the bed beside me, and with a sulk she ambles over, sitting next to him.
He wraps his arm around her shoulders, and in spite of looking frail, he comforts her. Like he would Mom and me.
“You’re really okay?”
“Yes,” he tells her.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I grumble, my heart still trying to slow to its normal rhythm.
“Yeah,” Mom sighs, standing. “Apparently assholism runs in the family.”
“That’s not a word,” I tell her as she shoos us off the bed and pulls the covers over Dad.
“Out with both of you.” Mom walks us out of the room. “You—” She points at Fran. “—go home and put those feet up. Stooge one—” Pinching my chin, she winks. “—you make sure she does as she’s told, and stop worrying. Okay?”
“Mom…”
“He’s fine. It was a dizzy spell.” She takes a deep breath. “We’re staying so the specialist can see him first thing. Now go on, get out of here.”
“I can’t leave you here on your own.”
“I’m with your father.”
“And you’ve got your hands full.” He nods at the open double doorway.
Ava’s standing behind Grayson with a tray of drinks in her hand. Her mouth tips up softly, and my world pauses, tilting on its axis.
“Go on…” Mom presses a kiss to my cheek. “I’ll call you if anything changes. But we’re good here.”
Fran and I trudge out of the room, and as we’re about to disappear, Mom calls, “I love you. Both of you.”
“Love you too.” Fran blows her a kiss.
Always the kiss-ass.
Grayson takes the drinks from Ava, taking them to Mom, and a quiet second with her is all I need to relax.
“He’s okay,” I breathe the minute Ava wraps her arms around my waist.
“Good.” She presses a kiss to the top of my chest. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.” My heart finally begins to settle, but I keep holding on to her. “Thank you for being here.”
She smiles in response, looking up at me with heavy-lidded doe eyes that are all affection and speak of so many feelings. Too many feelings that are impossible to hide.
And I could love her. Maybe. Probably…
“You want to show me your room?” she trills, her head tipped back, and azure eyes creased with affection.
…Definitely.
Chapter Seventeen
AVA
Damon drops our bags on the floor by his bedroom door. Taking my heels from me, he throws them beside our things, followed by his jacket and then mine. His boots join the pile, and before I get a good look around the moonlit room, his hands are cupping my jaw, drawing me into his body.
“My beautiful Ava…” I swallow at the low rumble of my name from his lips. “Little mouse…”
The pounding of my heart blurs my vision, and my breathless pants burn my lungs.
“Thank you,” he whispers into my slightly gaping mouth.
I touch my fingertip to the light freckle just visible above the stubble running along his top lip. “Stop thanking me.”
I didn’t do anything except accompany him. There wasn’t anything for me to do, so I don’t get why he’s so thankful. I did nothing.
Damon lowers himself to my height, his eyes meeting mine. In the silver light of the moon, they look a relucent charcoal gray. So intense and magnetic. In spite of all he does, I don’t think he knows how powerful he is. Because with one look he can change everything I’ve ever wanted.
His mouth lowers to my lips, skimming over them until they trail up my jaw, depositing kiss after kiss after kiss punctuated by his hums and groans and sharp inhales. The higher his lips roam—over my ear to my temple, tracing my hairline until they stop with a hard press to my forehead—the taller he stands over me.
With my head tilted back, he pulls my messy knot loose, running his fingers through it and working out the tangles with gentle tugs that send frissons of need to my core, until I’m molten desire in his hands.
Grabbing my ass, he hoists me up his body until my feet are hooked over his butt. My hands fist the open collar of his shirt, pulling him to me as I take his lips with mine. His tongue pushes into my mouth, and God, he tastes so damn good. He’s all sensual masculinity and overwhelming need. Strong and overpowering, gentle and caring all the same.
Trailing kisses down my neck, he sits me on the edge of the bed, slipping to the plush carpet on his knees. Kneeling between my legs, he unbuttons my shirt—button by button, slow and quiet. My every pore is aching and every limb so heavy with want for him that I can barely sit upright.
My hands coil around the comforter as Damon slips the shirt over my shoulders. His face nuzzles into the crease of my breasts, and he pulls at the cups, his tongue traces the engorged curves, thumbs rounding my tightly furled nipples until I’m squirming on the bed, incapable of catching my breath.
Oh Lord.
Every moan is cut short by his purposeful touches. Every pull of air into my lungs is stilted by the lust swelling in my throat.
Holy shit.
My hand winds into his hair, holding him to me as he pulls my nipple into his mouth, his tongue laving around the turgid point in between grazes of his teeth. And when I think I might just explode from Damon’s attention to my breasts and the way his hands roam the curve of my waist to the heavy swell of my chest and down to the tops of my thighs, he stops.
Standing, he removes his shirt without ceremony. Every chiseled line of his body is shadowed, making him look lethal in every possible way. He pulls my shirt from me, discarding it with his. Then his hand is coiling into my loose lengths, tugging my face up to his. And while he cups the side of my face with his other hand, skimming his thumb over my lips again and again, I trace the light trail of hair from his navel, to the top of his jeans.
“I could
look at you all day,” he rumbles, with blazing eyes raking over me. “And I would never tire.”
I work his belt and pants open, leaving the top of his thick bulge exposed with his underwear barely containing it. As I begin to tug everything down at once, he pushes me onto my back, bracing himself over me on one hand as the other works the buttons on my jeans open. Slipping his hand under my butt, he grasps my pants and underwear, and in one swift motion he yanks them down my thighs to my knees, leaving me exposed when he stands to fully discard them.
Dear God.
Impossibly, my body heats further. Every part of me is pulsing and clenching. And as I watch him strip off his pants, it hits me that we’ve never been intimate like this. He’s seeing all of me and I’m seeing all of him and somehow it doesn’t seem enough. I want to feel all of him. I want to be besieged by all his virility and completely overtaken by everything that makes him.
Straddling my thighs, he rids me of my bra, his weeping dick trailing over the base of my belly. And I really can’t take any more, not with how fucking hot I am and with the way my pussy is so wet that my arousal is coating the swell of my thighs and spreading down the crease of my ass with every grind of my hips on the bed.
Cupping the belly of my tits, he shifts me up the bed, and lifting my legs, he spreads me open with a groan.
“I fucking love the sight of your cunt all wet for me,” he growls, fisting his cock as he strokes it up and down my folds, barely dipping it into my pussy. With my ass resting on his thighs, he hooks my leg over his shoulder while pushing the other up to my chest.
And without another word he slams into me, so deep, so big, so hard, and I’m left so full and yet with my moans and through my cries, I beg for more. Faster. Deeper. Harder.
“Fuck, little mouse, I might break you.”
“Please,” I rasp, my hands clawing at his sides and the hand pushing my thigh as high as my body will allow.
With every blunt thrust, my body coils tighter. With every stroke that bottoms out inside me, I want more of him. I want everything he has, the parts he wants to part with, the depths he wants to share, and all the secrets he keeps. I want them all. I want all of him.
DAMON
“Oh God, Damon…oh fuck,” she chants hoarsely.
With her body bowing off the bed and the sound of our flesh slapping together surrounding us, I can’t think of a more perfect moment. And her hair is all tangled around her like a thorny halo. And her tits are bouncing. And God, I can’t get enough of her.
I’ve never wanted to live in something so much as I want to be a part of her. And I want her to be a part of me. I want her to be mine because it’s the only possible ending. Call it fate, call it love, call it whatever the fuck it is…so long as she’s mine, I don’t care.
Lowering her legs to the side, I sink over her. “Who do you belong to, little mouse?”
A muffled reply is distorted by her cry as I push deeper, her pussy clenching tightly around me.
“Who do you belong to, Ava?” I pull her legs wider, my chest bearing down on hers until she’s visibly unable to draw air into her lungs. And I’m so deep that her eyes water with her cries. “You. Damon. You.”
“Why are you mine?” I give her room to drag in her breath, and her arms wrap around my shoulders as I lick into her mouth. She’s all ragged pants and breathless moans as I brace myself over her. “Why, my beautiful Ava?”
“Because,” she whines with my throbbing cock stroking up and down her walls.
“Because?” I pull out and her eyes flit from where we’re joined to my eyes.
“Just because.” Her eyes round in the way they do when she’s overwhelmed and still trying to work shit out in her head. But she knows just as I do why she’s mine.
Because I love you, I tell her silently as I thrust back into her.
I love that she fights the urge to close her eyes. That she loves watching the way our bodies meld together. That she’s so fucking desperate for me that she can’t get enough. No matter how deep I go, it’s not deep enough. Not even when her groans are pained and her temples are tracked with tears. She wants more, and she isn’t afraid to ask or take it.
With her body trembling beneath me, I lower myself over her, bracing on my forearms. “Fuck, baby, you feel so fucking good.”
“Yeah?” she pants.
“Yeah, and I’m going to fill you up until you can’t take any more. Until there’s no part of you I haven’t marked as mine.”
“Yours.” Ava lifts her arms over her head, finding my hands, and she pushes hers beneath them until our fingers are laced together.
“Mine.”
She nods frantically, her heels pressing to my ass as I fuck her without pause, driving into her until she’s gasping for her release and the need isn’t physical anymore. Her nails are clawing at the back of my hands, and she’s kissing and holding like she wants me inside all the places no one’s been, the ones where you can’t be erased from, not even in death.
And when I think I can’t get any deeper, any more inside her if I tried, she shatters beneath me. Her body pulls me in until I bottom out, and my hot cum spurts inside her tight cunt. We’re both a sweaty, breathless, clenching and pulsing and throbbing mess.
Her hold doesn’t lax on my hands as she gasps into my chest in between kisses and soft bites. “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God…”
When she stills beneath me, her body soft and her breaths a low murmur, I roll onto my side, tucking her into my chest as I tell her, “All mine.”
Chapter Eighteen
AVA
Three weeks later
I’m getting too used to these late nights and Damon’s warm bed. I hate leaving him, especially when it’s obvious he’s frustrated. Which in Damon land means he’s pissed. But I did things wrong with Marsh; I let him blind me, and in the end it was meaningless.
“I should go,” I sigh, disappointment tightening my chest as his trailing fingers over my naked body halt and his hand drops to the mattress between us. “Damon…”
“What?” Rolling onto his back, he tucks his hands under his head. His body coils tight with everything he’s holding in, which for him is hard work.
I hate that I’m the one causing him grief, because with everything with the lawsuit and how he’s handled it all so coolly—maybe I am being unreasonable. But I don’t want to be let down again. Damon has the potential to obliterate me, and I can’t lose sight of that.
Straddling his hips, I trace the grooves of his chest, enjoying the way the muscles flex beneath my touch.
“My clothes are at my apartment.” I peer up at him. “And I have a meeting with Lacie tomorrow about Warner. I know she’s going to be difficult and grill me about every little thing, and I need to be prepared because she’s tricky. And if she knew about us…it would be another thing for her to hold against me and to get in the way of things. You want Warner, don’t you?”
Damon nods almost unnoticeably and without warning flips me onto my back. His arms braced either side of my head as his hips settle between my thighs.
He doesn’t answer the question, but it’s why he wanted me in the first place. Because my friendship with Lacie should’ve made Warner a sure thing. And I don’t want to disappoint him.
Skimming the side of my face with the tip of his nose, he asks, “Who do you belong to?”
“You.” I grin back at him because I know what follows this question, and it always makes heart swell.
“And why are you mine, Ava?”
“Because,” I reply in lieu of telling him that I’m his because…well, because.
He skims the other side of my face, his nose rounding my brow before stroking down the bridge of mine. “Because?”
God, there’s so much in his eyes right now that my heart races at all the possibilities.
“Just because.”
The corner of his mouth tips up wonkily, and I hold on to his strong arms as he kisses me. And every one of his kisses is be
tter than the last, better than anything I’ve ever had.
“You better bring Warner in stat,” he quips when he pulls away, his hand brushing down my side to my thigh. He hooks it over his hip, and with a teasing scowl he tickles me right behind the knee. I don’t even know how he found that out, but it’s become his thing now, and in spite of hating it…I love it too.
“Stop it!”
“Are you going to bring Warner in?” He continues his playful torture.
“Yes!”
“You better do because if you don’t, I might have to show up at that meeting and who knows what I’ll do…”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
“You promised…”
“I promised I wouldn’t go easy on you.” His laugh is too light for him to be serious. It’s something I’ve learned about him. His laugh fades, and with the friction of our bodies, he’s more than ready for another round of a different kind of fun.
Of course, just as Damon said, his driver is waiting for me outside my building. He’s pushing. It’s what he does when things aren’t exactly how he wants them: he nudges them in his direction. It honestly doesn’t bother me anywhere near as much as it should.
“Good morning, Miss Monroe.” The driver opens the door for me, and before I get in, I pause. “I’m sorry, I feel so rude…I don’t know your name.”
“Gerry, ma’am.”
“Good morning, Gerry.” I lower into the car, pushing my shades up onto my head.
“Morning, little mouse.” A steaming cup of coffee appears right under my nose. “Figured you could use the extra caffeine this morning.”
“And whose fault is that?” Taking the coffee, I turn to face him. His starched white shirt is stretched taut across his chest. The top two buttons are undone, and he looks so fresh and inviting that I can’t help but scoot closer to him and breathe in his cologne mixed with the soapy scent of his clothes and body wash.
Forbidden: A Romance Anthology Page 36
