Happily Ever After: A Contemporary Romance Boxed Set

by Piper Rayne

  “Completely disappear,” Hawk adds, reading my appraising look correctly. “Not a speck of paint on these cars can ever lead back to us. It’d probably be best if you melted them down, or something.”

  “Gotcha,” I say. “Consider it done.”

  I could explain to him again, as I’ve done at least ten times before, that there’s no way to trace where a particular carburetor or rearview mirror came from. But he didn’t listen those times, and he’s not gonna now.

  “Good,” he says. “Call me when you’re done.”

  I tell him I will and he rides off. And I’m glad for the job. It’ll make the hours before I see Mia tonight shorter.

  16

  Mia

  Soft, pale yellow light illuminates his home as I park at the curb at two minutes to seven. The white curtains diffuse the light, making the house look both eerie and fairytale-like.

  I still don’t know if going in there tonight is a good idea. But I know I want to very much. And I know I’m going to, so there’s no use thinking about it anymore.

  This time when I knock, he opens the door right away. He must’ve seen me pull up then take my time sitting in the car, while I went through the last few reasons why I shouldn’t go knock. I discarded them all.

  I smile wide, wide enough for his eyes to light up too. They were dull and sad when he opened the door.

  “I’m not late, am I?” I ask as I squeeze past him through the narrow entryway and into the even narrower hallway. It’s a very tight squeeze and rewards me with a million tiny pricks of desire and comfort and everything in between as I brush against his solid, warm, hard body.

  Drab brown carpeting used to cover the floor and stairs in this part of the house, but it’s gone, revealing a very nice, dark hardwood floor beneath it. The living room, which is just to the side of where I’m standing at the foot of the narrow wooden stairs leading up is new too, but looks just as comfortable as it always did, with a couple of dark grey sofas, a huge TV and three standing lamps which are emitting most of that diffuse, fantasy light I admired from outside. It’s a comfortable home. And for some reason, I can imagine myself in it the way I never could before.

  But it’s too late for all that. I know that as well as I know that I had no choice in coming here tonight.

  “Through here,” he says, and it’s him squeezing past me this time, the touch close enough, long enough, and charged enough to make me gasp.

  He chuckles softly, but that’s all the indication that he noticed my reaction. It’s enough to turn my cheeks really hot though, and more than likely completely red.

  The kitchen is new too. Nothing over the top, just clean, sensible, wooden cabinets, probably made by some local, mom and pop type of builder because you can’t get craftsmanship like this in stores.

  The back door is standing open, revealing just the edge of a pool of light to the side.

  “What would you like to drink?” he asks. “I have beer. And a coke, maybe.”

  “A beer would be great,” I say and smile, then glance at the stove and empty, clean white countertops.

  “You didn’t cook then,” I say. Not that I expected him to.

  “While I can prepare a couple of things, none of them are vegetarian,” he says.

  There’s tension between us that wasn’t there last night. I want it gone, and I know it can be no other way. I also know it’s not just angry tension. It’s mostly the other kind. The kind that can only be relieved in the bedroom.

  I walk with him to the fridge and stand right behind him as he reaches in to pull out two beers. I’m so close he startles as he straightens and turns to hand me mine. He doesn’t move though, and neither do I. That sharp edge in his eyes as he looks into mine tells me we’re both very aware of the tension. And the solution to it.

  “What do you want, Mia?” he asks hoarsely. Harshly, too.

  “The same thing you do, Axle,” I answer coyly. I haven’t been this aroused in ages. And certainly not while stone cold sober.

  “You throwing yourself at me?” he snaps. “You want me to fuck you like some random slut before you disappear for the next twenty years?”

  He would too. And a part of me, the part that thinks only with my clit, wants that very much. It’s been a long time since I’ve had good sex. Let alone amazing sex, as it always was with him.

  “No,” I whisper anyway, not breaking eye contact.

  “Liar,” he counters, the edge of his lips curling up into a smile, the first I’ve seen on his face tonight.

  “I want you to make love to me like you used to,” I say.

  His eyes widen in surprise for a split second, before that mocking grin returns.

  “What makes you think I want to?”

  I shrug and smile coyly. “Well, don’t you?”

  He doesn’t answer, not in words.

  Instead, he grabs the back of my head, leans in and kisses me. And for all the lust and tension in it, all the passion, all the roughness, the kiss is soft and lasting and nothing short of the best kiss I’ve had this side of the decade. Or longer.

  I kiss him back, let his tongue into my mouth, play with it, ecstatic that I remember it all, that it’s just like it was. Better.

  One of his hands is gripping my ass, the other caressing my breasts. I missed his strong hands on me, missed his tongue in my mouth, missed his smell and his taste. I missed it so much, but didn’t even know it.

  This is no time to think of the past. Of the could have beens and might have beens.

  This is something to enjoy in full and always remember.

  I kiss him harder, running my hands down his wide strong biceps, the touch of his hot skin under my fingers electric.

  His cock is rock hard, pressing against my hip, making my pussy wet and my brain foggy and fuzzy.

  “Upstairs,” he says coarsely at one point, but then kisses me passionately for a couple of more minutes before grabbing my hand and pulling me after him out of the kitchen and up the narrow stairs to his bedroom.

  He flips on the light and gazes so deep into my eyes I feel like I’m naked already. Then he uses his large, calloused fingers to undo the tiny buttons of my shirt. Slowly, one by one, not breaking eye contact. The passion with which he kissed me downstairs isn’t gone, it’s just banked for the moment. This magical moment.

  Once the buttons are undone, he slides my shirt down off my shoulders and caresses my breasts, pinching my nipples just hard enough to make me gasp and moan.

  “Still like that, then?” he asks quietly and I nod. He wastes no time unhooking my bra, his hands still as skilled at that task as ever. I don’t want to think about how much practice he’s had over the years, so I won’t.

  My jeans are next to go, and I kick off my shoes and help him slide them off. He holds me at arm’s length once I’m standing before him in just my lacy champagne panties. I kinda wish he kept the light off. And kinda love looking at him looking at me.

  “You’re still a gorgeous woman, Mia,” he says hoarsely.

  I smile and he pulls me to him, kisses me again with all the urgency and thirst of a man just come from the desert. This kiss ends with me fumbling to get his shirt off with one hand and unbuckling his belt with the other. I need to feel his hot skin against mine, I can’t wait any longer.

  He stops the kiss and removes his shirt, ripping instead of unbuttoning the last two buttons, then unbuckles his belt and unzips jeans, shedding them as he guides me backwards to the bed.

  I kiss him as the back of my knees touch the cool wooden frame then pull him down on top of me as I sit and then lie down on my back. His smell is all around me now, under me, over me, and his presence is everywhere too, battering at me to let him in all the way. That’s the only thing I want, but instead of obliging his lips slide off mine to kiss my chin, then my neck, my chest and my breasts, his teeth nipping at my nipples just hard enough, just rough enough, to awaken moans in my throat and send electric shocks of desire straight to my clit and m
y brain and everywhere else my body can feel.

  By the time his lips reach my clit, I’m swimming in the electric current, my mind lost in the sparkling, charged flood of lust and desire and love and everything in between. His tongue is as skilled as ever—more so—as his licks and nips, and burrows me to the edge of an orgasm that makes me gasp and moan and nearly scream just in anticipation.

  “Please,” I moan, as once again that reward is snatched away from me by whatever he does so well.

  “You want to come?” he asks wryly.

  “Yes, please,” I moan, missing his lips on my pussy with a physical pang.

  But they don’t return. Instead, it’s his calloused thumb that rubs my clit, making me shiver and moan and writhe on the bed. But not as hard as when he slips his finger into me. It’s soon followed by another. And before I know it, the slow, sensual penetration reaches that spot inside me, the one only he can find on the first try. He starts pumping his fingers into my pussy, pushing that button, his thumb rubbing my clit and it takes mere seconds before the orgasm I’ve begged for erupts and keeps erupting, making the room spin before me, turning my whole body and mind into a single current of pleasure and bliss as he gives me exactly what I asked for. And more. As always.

  Eventually, slowly, the shocks of pleasure subside. He pulls his fingers from me slowly and is grinning at me as I open my eyes to see where he went.

  “Is that what you wanted?” he asks.

  I smile and nod, and motion him closer. “Come here.”

  He wastes no time covering my still shivering body with his weight and kissing me deeply. I taste myself on him, and I taste him, and it’s such a heady combination. I’m transport right back to how it was all those years ago, when our love was fresh and new. When it was everything and I didn’t know where he ended and I began as we lay like this, kissing, making love. When we were as close as two people can be.

  All that is reality once again.

  His presence, his soul, is still battering at me to let him in all the way. He groans into the kiss as my hands find his rock hard cock and guide it to my pussy.

  He takes over once he knows what I want. What we both want.

  I gasp as his cock slides into my pussy. It’s as wide as I remember, wider than I’ve had since, and longer, yet still fits like it was made just for me.

  His thrusts are steady and slow at first, not too deep, not too shallow, just right, just perfect, just what I needed and wanted. What we both did.

  Soon I’m again floating on that sea of pleasure, thick and dense and rich, yet softer than anything ever was. There are vast depths to this sea, ones he’ll pull me down into soon, but for now, his kiss and his slow thrusts are all I need. All I ever needed.

  Soon he starts thrusting into me faster, harder, matching my moans and whimpers with his groans. We’re ready to dive.

  And dive we do, all the way to that place where I don’t know myself, don’t know color or sound, words or voice. All I know is this pleasure only he can give. This pleasure only us two can create together, as one.

  And as the currents of this pleasure finally take me under, explode inside me into another mind-shattering orgasm or the kind that only he can give me, I know only one thing.

  Coming here tonight was not a mistake. Everything else was, but this is the only right thing I’ve done in the last twenty years.

  He lays down next to me once we recover enough to move, pulls the covers over us and holds me close. His eyes are closed as he kisses my neck one last time.

  “I’m afraid I’m still very much in love with you, Mia,” he slurs.

  The words send a jolt through me, stronger and more electric than any he’s given me tonight. But when I look at him to check if he’s being serious, he’s already asleep.

  “I’m afraid it’s the same for me,” I whisper anyway, and I have no idea what to do with that knowing. That rock hard truth.

  17

  Axle

  I wake up with a start, the room so dark I’m not even sure my eyes are open until a couple more moments pass and my eyes adjust. It’s definitely past three AM since the streetlamp outside is off and not shining into the far left corner of my bedroom. I’m very familiar with that light. I usually get up before it goes out. I haven’t slept this deeply and this long in months.

  Mia?

  I can still taste her, still feel her, still smell her everywhere around me. But she’s not here.

  Of course she’s not.

  Why would she stay, she got what she wanted?

  And I went and told her that crap about still loving her. That probably propelled her out the door as soon as I closed my eyes and started snoring.

  I’m the biggest fucking idiot I know.

  But I won’t even think about it. I’ll just pretend it never happened. None of it. I’ve gotten real good at that over the years.

  I also have to piss something awful, so I stumble off the bed, waking more of her smell from the sheets, which doesn’t even bother me.

  Without even bothering with the light, I cross the room, and tread on something sharp as fuck halfway there.

  Her stiletto. And the rest of her clothes are still in a heap next to it where I took them off her. She didn’t leave. Unless she went naked.

  Only then do I realize someone’s downstairs in the kitchen and the house smells of eggs and toast.

  I’m downstairs in what seems less than three steps and grinning at her from the kitchen doorway in four.

  She’s by the stove, wearing one of my white, Three Stars Garage T-shirts, which is so large on her it comes down almost to her knees. That’s a shame. But I like looking at her any which way. It’s just that more is better.

  “Good morning,” she says, grinning at me over her shoulder, like she knew I was here all along. “I borrowed one of your shirts, I hope you don’t mind. Though it looks like you need it. Should I take it off?”

  “I wish you would,” I say, as I walk over to her, naked.

  She takes the pan off the heat and leans towards me, accepting my kiss. She tastes like all the mornings we’ve missed.

  “Let’s eat, I’m starving,” she says, breaking away from the kiss much too soon.

  “What are we having?” I ask, looking at the mess of scrambled eggs, tomatoes, onions, peppers and I don’t know what else in the pan.

  “It’s called Satarash,” she says. “It’s an old Romani dish. I really like it. You will too.”

  “What now?” I say. “I have a fridge full of perfectly good sandwich materials and you decide to make fancy scrambled eggs in the middle of the night.”

  “Just try some,” she says, scooping a bit onto the spatula and holding it up to my mouth.

  I eat it like she wants me to, and miraculously it doesn’t scald my mouth.

  “It’s good,” I say, and it’s not even a little bit of a lie.

  “Told you,” she says. “Now let’s eat.”

  I grab the pan and wrap my free arm around her waist, and she gets the toast on the way to the table, where I set her down in my lap where she belongs.

  She proceeds to feed us both, straight out of the pan, using the clumsy, big wooden spatula, but it’s perfect nonetheless. Exactly like it was. Exactly as though no time ever passed between us and no distance ever separated us. Until I’m not even entirely sure I did open my eyes when I jerked awake earlier. Maybe I’m still dreaming. Not that it matters much. Dream or real, this is how it should be.

  The first blinding rays of the sun are shining through my bedroom widow as I watch her perfect body disappear under her clothes. Her hair is wet from the shower we just took, glistening like freshly applied copper spray paint.

  “Stay a little longer,” I say, walking to her and pulling her into a lose embrace.

  “I can’t,” she says and gives me a peck on the lips, which I turn into a full-on kiss she gladly accepts.

  But she pulls away again.

  “Mom and I have to finish packing up t
he salon,” she says. “She’s waiting for me. And you have my car to fix.”

  She tries to extricate herself from my arms, but I don’t let her go.

  Her amber eyes are serious as she fixes them on me—kinda watery and soft, but serious nonetheless.

  “I’m not going forever, Axle,” she says, answering the question my pride would never let me ask. “Somehow, some way, we’ll make it work this time. I promise you.”

  Her eyes sure are serious enough to make me believe she’s telling the truth. But I grin anyway. “Yeah, we’ll see.”

  “I mean—“ I interrupt her by kissing her, and hugging her tight as I do.

  She’s never lied to me, and I don’t want her to start now. We both know what’s holding us apart, and it’s as huge a chasm as it ever was.

  “I mean it,” she finishes breathlessly once I break away from the kiss and let her go.

  I nod, smooth down her hair and watch her put her shoes on.

  And then, after she promises she’ll come by the garage tonight, I watch her leave my house. And I don’t think much else other than that I want her to stay.

  18

  Mia

  Mom is sitting on the top step of the front porch of her home, looking off into the distance, her eyes unfocused. She doesn’t even see me pull up, recognizes neither her car nor me. For a moment, I consider honking to get her attention, but there’s something so sad and lost in her gaze I don’t dare yank her out of it.

  So instead, I get out of the car and traverse the lawn. Mom’s house—my former home—is very similar to Axel’s house. A white paneled house with a light blue roof, a front porch that wraps around the front, and a small enclosed backyard, which you can’t really see from the front. Before we moved here, we lived in a tiny apartment just off Main Street above one of the three clothes shops in town. Once Mom’s salon finally took off and we could afford to move, we came here. I was seven or eight at the time, and one of the first things we did after moving in was plant the rosebushes along the porch. Most of them are blooming now. Huge, delicate flowers in every hue from yellow, red, orange, white and more, are scenting the air with their enticing aroma. For all their delicate petals, roses are some of the most hardy plants around, impossible to destroy once they take root. They’ve always reminded me of my mom. Especially the rich, dark red ones, which also smell the nicest.