by Shay Savage
The hidden truth was both beautiful and sad at the same time.
Aiden knelt over me, kissing down the center of my body and brushing sand from my skin as he moved toward my stomach. His tongue circled my navel, and then moved down as he took both my legs in his hands and lifted them over his shoulders.
I groaned shamelessly as his tongue met my sensitive flesh. He covered me with his mouth, teased me with his tongue, and nipped at me with his lips. I clenched my ass, reflexively raising my hips off the sand to increase the pressure as Aiden’s grip around my thighs intensified, holding me to his mouth.
With a gasp, I tossed my head back and stretched down to grasp his shoulders. I couldn’t quite reach him, and had to sit up slightly to feel his skin on my palms as my body started to convulse, sending waves of pleasure from the point where his tongue circled, outward down my legs and up my torso.
I felt a moan begin in the back of my throat, and I held my lips together to keep from screaming out loud as my body shuddered. I dropped back into the sand, unable to hold myself up any longer as my breath exited in short pants into the air.
Aiden lowered my legs and crawled back over me, covering my mouth with his. I could taste myself on his smooth lips and tongue as he parted my legs with one of his knees. He poised himself over me as he kissed down my throat. He stopped at my shoulder and turned his head toward the water.
“Look at that,” Aiden whispered in my ear.
I turned my head in the sand and watched as the sun rose over the horizon, igniting the water and sand in brilliant rays of red, orange, and yellow. A group of seagulls took flight with their raucous morning calls, announcing the sun’s reappearance to the world. The whitecaps on top of the waves sparkled in the light; the sand glistened, and a new day began.
Aiden’s hand brushed over my cheek.
“Do you see that, Chloe? Do you realize what it is? The sun over the ocean, the beach, the gulls flying over the waves…and you and me, like this. That’s life, Chloe. That’s living.”
He kissed my mouth and then made a trail down my neck to my chest. Each of my nipples received the attention of his lips and tongue in turn. He sucked briefly, licked, and then sucked again. I moved my hands down his sides to grip his toned ass as he entered me slowly, allowing me to feel every inch slide into my depths.
He held himself buried inside of me, not moving. I touched his cheek with my hand, and he opened his eyes to stare down at me, the glow of the sunrise lighting up the side of his face.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, his eyes wide as he stared down at me, “every part of you bathed in the red morning sun. You’re like a painting in brilliant light and color. I want to capture you like this, keep you exactly as you are right here and now.”
I swallowed as his words poured over me. I could see what he was imagining, reflected in his eyes, and the image transformed in my head until I saw myself captured in ink on his skin—forever part of him, forever part of his story.
He shifted then, pulling out only slightly before tilting his hips to bury himself again. He wrapped one arm under my shoulders, and I raised my legs to lock them behind his back as me began to move inside of me.
All the roughness was gone. The fast, hard strokes I had come to expect were replaced with unhurried, deep, and methodical penetrations. He kissed me with every movement, his hand caressing me softly from my neck to my breast as I let my hands memorize the feeling of his back against my fingertips.
“Oh, Chloe…Chloe…Oh, God! I don’t want this to end…”
My body began to tense. Sensations from my breasts down to the pit of my stomach and then focusing between my legs caused me to shudder as I pushed up against him with my hips and dug my ankles into his back. I bit down on my lip, not wanting my screams to be heard down at the beach, and let go.
My body relaxed into the sand, and I wrapped my arms around his head.
“Aiden,” I whispered. “Oh, Aiden…”
“You feel so good,” he moaned. “So good, oh, baby…”
Aiden squeezed his eyes shut and held himself against me as he let out a muted gasp. I tightened my legs around his waist as I felt him fill me, holding on to him as tightly as possible.
I didn’t want to let go. I never wanted to let go.
“All good things,” I mumbled to myself in the bathroom mirror. I took a deep breath and blinked back tears, not wanting Aiden to notice how upset I was about going home.
The past week with Aiden had been both thrilling and terrifying. There were so many things I never would have considered doing in the past and still hardly believed I had done—riding on the back of a motorcycle, skydiving, sex in the back of a car and on the beach. If anyone had told me a week ago that this was what I’d be doing, I would have laughed at them. I didn’t do those things.
Now, I wouldn’t have traded my experiences for the world.
The idea of returning home to my steady job and lackluster life was downright depressing. I could hardly imagine myself returning to my office and sitting at my desk all day, dealing with Chia Head’s ridiculous demands and spending my evenings with my collection of superheroines.
Routine had lost its appeal.
If Aiden had ended our beach encounter by asking me to stay with him, I would have agreed immediately. In that moment, I would have ditched my entire existence back in Ohio and stayed in Florida to experience life, real life, with him here on the beach.
But he didn’t ask, and I hadn’t suggested it.
With my bag packed, I walked to the front door and glanced around for Aiden. At first, I didn’t see him, but then noticed movement out on the patio and went to find him. He was standing at the edge of the sand, looking out over the water.
“You had a good time, right?” he asked. He fiddled with the edge of his cap nervously.
“I did,” I confirmed. “It was the best.”
“I should have booked your flight back for Sunday,” Aiden said as he looked at me sadly.
“It’s all right,” I said. It wasn’t. It wasn’t all right at all, but I was willing to make excuses. “I kind of need a day to recuperate.”
He chuckled and then glanced at his watch. He sighed.
“I guess it’s time to head to the airport,” he said.
“I guess it is.”
We piled in the jeep, and Aiden drove slowly out of the driveway. I kept my purse with my driver’s license and boarding pass, wrapped around my right wrist. I was always a little paranoid about losing important documents when traveling and kept checking to make sure they were in there with my credit cards and a little cash.
Aiden didn’t say much, just stared at the traffic as he followed signs to the airport. I alternated between looking out the window to glancing at his profile but didn’t have any more words than he did.
We’d talked about making plans to see each other in three weeks, when Aiden would be back in Ohio. He didn’t have an exact date but promised to let me know as soon as his flight was booked. It seemed like a lifetime away.
I reached over and placed my hand on his thigh. Aiden glanced down, smiled slightly, and covered my hand with his. I watched him move his fingers over my knuckles, trying to burn into my mind the image of the intricate flower on the back of his hand and the tribal marks covering his fingers. Memories of his hands on my breasts, my legs, and holding my face as he kissed me invaded my mind and threatened to cause me to break out in a flood of tears.
I was trying to be strong.
I wasn’t ready to go. I wanted more time. There were still so many things about him I didn’t know and desperately wanted to learn. I had no idea what would happen after we parted ways, and something deep in the pit of my stomach warned me that long-distance relationships rarely worked.
Sure, we’d keep up over the phone for a while, but that wouldn’t last. We both had lives outside of the week we had spent with each other, and those were going to take precedence. Phone calls would change to text mess
ages, and even those would eventually decrease and end.
This could be the last time I see him.
What could I do? My friends were in Ohio, and Aiden’s in Florida. Despite my post-coital thoughts, it wasn’t like I was in the position to just pack up and move to Miami, and I wouldn’t dream of asking him to move closer to me. I had my career to think about, and he had his…well, whatever it was.
Despite everything I felt, I knew he was hiding something big.
I had to come out and ask him. I had to bite the bullet, as it were, and demand he tell me exactly what he did for a living. Without knowing for sure, I couldn’t even begin to think about what the future might hold. If my initial suspicions were right, and he was a criminal, it would make any decision easier.
Just as I had gathered up enough courage to open my mouth, Aiden’s phone rang. He released my hand and grabbed the phone from the center console.
“Yo, Mo,” Aiden said in monotone.
I pulled my hand back from his leg and placed it in my lap. Outside the window, tall, white birds poked their long necks into puddles in the roadside ditches, looking for their breakfast. I swallowed hard, thinking about the grilled tomatoes Aiden had made to go with our omelets that morning.
“Fuck!” Aiden screeched.
I jumped in my seat, looking around quickly to see if we were about to hit another car or if he had possibly just avoided a collision, but there were no other cars near us. I looked back to see his face contorted with fury.
“You found them? Where?” Aiden was practically shouting into the phone. “You stay on them! Do not let them out of your sight! I’m heading that way right now.”
Aiden tossed the phone into a little cubby on the dashboard and then quickly changed lanes, darting for the closest exit as the tires squealed.
I was flung into the door of the jeep as he turned swiftly and pressed his foot to the gas. He barreled around another car, nearly hitting it.
“Aiden!” I cried. “What are you doing?”
“Sorry, babe,” he said without looking at me. “I really, really hate to do this to you, but this is the best chance I’ve had for months, and I can’t let it slip.”
“Can’t let what slip?”
He ignored me. He held the wheel with one hand and jammed his finger at the GPS with the other, entering an address.
“Route confirmed. In four hundred feet, turn right.”
He barely slowed down to make the turn.
“Shit!” I grabbed onto the handle of the door, holding on tightly.
“I’m sorry, Chloe. I really am.”
“Sorry for what?”
He didn’t answer. His fingers were turning white as he gripped the steering wheel with one hand and the gearshift with the other. His arms were shaking.
I had no idea what was happening, and his driving was terrifying me. I could barely hold on as he sped down busy roads, dodging traffic and ignoring traffic signals.
“Aiden, please! You’re scaring me!”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Shit, I’m really sorry! I didn’t know this was going to happen…not now.”
“I don’t know what this is!” I cried again.
Aiden swerved, barely missing a bicyclist in the intersection. He slammed the jeep into second gear, slowed just enough to make a U-turn, and then veered into a parking lot. He pulled into a space in front of a strip mall and slammed on the brakes, throwing us both forward and causing my seatbelt to lock.
“You aren’t going to make that flight,” Aiden said. “I’ll get you another one.”
“Aiden, what the hell is going on?” I stared at his face, barely recognizable from the boyish grins I was used to seeing.
“You know those secrets we talked about?” He turned, and he stared at me with intense and frightening eyes.
My heart stopped, and my throat started to close up so I couldn’t take a breath. My head began to pound as I looked into his face. His eyes were wide and wild. Every muscle in his body was tense, and I could see the tightness of his jaw as he clenched his teeth.
“What secrets?”
Aiden switched off the car, pulled the key from the ignition, and turned to unlock the center storage unit. He reached in and drew out a sleek, black revolver. He reached in again and pulled out a clip, sliding it with a loud click into the handle of the gun.
Alarm! Alarm, alarm, ALARM!
“You said I was hiding something,” Aiden said, “and you were right—I am. You are about to find out what that is.”
And with that, I went from suspicious to terrified.
FOURTEEN
“Stay here,” Aiden commanded. His fingers tensed around the grip of his weapon. “Don’t get out of this fucking car for any reason, you hear me?”
I couldn’t answer. I still couldn’t breathe, much less speak. I’d never so much as seen a gun in real life unless it was holstered on a police officer’s belt, let alone been so close to one. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the gleaming black metal.
Aiden opened the driver’s side door and started to get out, the gun clasped tightly in his hand.
“Aiden?” I managed to croak as I tore my eyes away from his hand and back to his face.
He paused, halfway out the door.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he said again.
“What are you doing with a gun?” I whispered. I felt like my body was trying to shut down, and I wondered what going into shock felt like. For a second, the phone call from my mother informing me of Dad’s heart attack filled my head. At this moment, the feeling of all my blood leaving my veins was similar to how I had felt when she had told me he was gone.
I focused on Aiden again and couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
Everything my subconscious had been warning me about Aiden Hunter began to fill my head. All this time, I’d been telling myself not to judge him. All this time, I’d been convincing myself that everything was fine, that he was fine. Since the moment I had met him, I’d been trying to convince myself that the only danger was in my head.
But it wasn’t.
The Aiden in front of me wasn’t the man I had known the past week. His face was barely recognizable. His eyes were dark and full of hatred. His jaw was locked, his teeth clenched. He had gripped his hands into fists, one of which held a deadly weapon. This man was not the one who cooked breakfast for me. This was a man consumed with raw fury.
Echoed words from Lance’s girlfriend flowed through my head: “I have never seen him mad, personally, but I hear it’s not pretty.”
No, it was not pretty. It was not pretty at all.
“Aiden.” It seemed to be the only word I could utter.
“Stay here,” Aiden commanded once again, and he slammed the door.
I looked out through the windshield, and I tried to make sense of the scene in front of me. Mo was outside, standing on the sidewalk near the strip mall. Aiden walked up to him, spoke to him quickly, and Mo glanced in my direction before tapping his ear and speaking into a Bluetooth device.
I sat there, frozen, as Aiden marched away from Mo and up to one of the doors of the strip mall, gun still plainly visible, and disappeared inside. Over the door was a sign for a Cuban restaurant, promising the best pulled-pork sandwiches in Dade County.
Mo yelled something, but I couldn’t hear his words through the windows of the jeep. He had his hand on his hip, resting on another gun. He took off after Aiden just as I heard a noise to my right, and the passenger side door of the jeep opened.
I screamed and tried to push away the hands that came at me. The seatbelt was still locked from the sudden stop, and I could barely move. I screamed again, but then I recognized Lo’s voice as he told me to relax—everything was all right.
“It is not all right!” I screamed back at him. “Aiden has a gun, Lo! He’s got a gun!”
“I know, babe,” Lo said calmly as he reached over to unlatch the belt and bodily remove me from the vehicle despite my struggles. “Ju
st come with me. I gotta get you out of the way.”
“Get off of me!” I cried. I swung my arm and smacked his meaty shoulder with the purse still attached to my wrist. I wasn’t even sure why I was struggling, only that I felt like I should be in the jeep, and I wanted to stay there. It was familiar. It was safe.
It had a gun in it the whole time.
“Don’t argue with me, Chloe!” Lo tightened his grip on me. “Not about this!”
I shuddered. My eyes burned, but tears wouldn’t come. I couldn’t get a good enough grasp on the situation to understand what I was feeling. I only knew I didn’t want to leave where I was. Aiden told me to stay in the car. He said not to leave—not for any reason.
Was I really still listening to his instructions?
I heard gunshots followed by screams. Two young men barreled their way out of the restaurant, grasping at each other and yelling in Spanish as they ran across the parking lot and into the street.
“What’s happening?” I yelled at Lo.
“I am getting you out of here!” he yelled back. He grabbed me and pinned my arms to my sides before lifting me up and off my feet. I kicked uselessly as he dragged me away from the jeep and into the back of a dark Chrysler.
More gunshots.
“Get down!” Lo screamed as he shoved me inside and slammed the door.
I pushed myself up on my hands and looked out the window of the back door. Lo was crouched beside the car door with his shoulder pressed against it and yet another gun in his hand. With a shaky hand, I pulled at the door handle, but the child locks were engaged, and I couldn’t get out. A glass partition separated the front and the back seats, blocking any exit that way.
“Lo!” I screamed.
“Get down, Chloe!” he snapped back.
I didn’t listen. I pulled at the door handle again, still shaking. Movement caught my eye, and I watched a man and woman come out of the side door of the restaurant. The man also carried a gun and ran backwards, shooting toward the building as the woman pulled at his arm. They jumped into a red sedan at the end of the parking lot, and the tires squealed as the couple sped from the area.
