by Eva LeNoir
It was like he’d slapped me in the face and then punched me in the gut. We just stared at each other, me trying to process the words he’d just thrown in my face, him looking as guilty as kid with a hand inside the cookie jar.
“What did you say to me?”
“I said,” he looked up about to repeat those incriminating words, but I couldn’t bear to hear them again. Couldn’t imagine having to listen to those lies, lies, lies.
“You know what? Never mind. I need to go to the bathroom,” I bolted up from my first-class seat and tried to make my way to the bathroom without losing my balance or worse falling to my knees from the weight of my dad’s confessions.
Once inside the tiny, claustrophobia inducing restroom, I braced myself on the counter and hung my head between arms, trying to breathe.
In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
In through the nose.
Out through…Motherfucker.
My tears came suddenly and ardently. Like a river had shattered whatever was left of the dam and gushed through me with a vengeance. My entire body shook with the sobs, with the pain and the betrayal. The last thing I wanted was to have a plane full of people hearing me lose my complete and utter shit, so I clamped my hand over my mouth and slid down the wall as I allowed myself that moment to break down.
As I allowed myself a moment to jump back six years, looking for clues, trying to remember something, anything, that would prove he was lying to me.
Because that would be the only thing that could possibly make sense.
He was lying. Putting all the guilt on himself knowing that no matter what he did, I could never hate him or worse, abandon him.
He knew me too well. I would never, no matter the circumstances, leave him alone.
That was when I remembered, shortly after she’d left, that our home phone would often ring and when my father or nanny answered, they would quickly hang up and say it was a wrong number. Soon after, my father had changed the number altogether. I hadn’t thought much about it, at the time, but maybe it had something to do with her.
I had been in there awhile, getting my composure back, soaking up paper towels to put over my red-rimmed eyes which, by the way, never worked, when someone knocked on the door.
“Be right out,” I answered, trying to sound normal and not at all like someone whose whole world had just been annihilated.
“Please hurry, your father,” the flight attendant did not have time to finish that phrase that I was already sliding the lock to the right and opening the door so I could rush to my father’s side.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, already sprinting to my seat to find him spilling his water all over the place from his uncontrollable hands.
“Oh Dad,” I said on a sigh, sliding back into my seat and taking the glass from his hands before bringing the straw to his mouth. He took a good gulp and that’s when I noticed his eyes were as tear swollen as mine.
“I d-didn’t mean to h-hurt you, baby doll,” he whispered, shaking his head, his chorea taking control of his facial muscles.
“I know, Daddy, I know.” I didn’t, not really, but that wasn’t the point. It simply wasn’t the time nor the place to talk about decisions made a nearly a decade earlier.
“No, you don’t, but I will explain it to you. If you want to hear it.”
What I really wanted was to have a gin and tonic in one hand and Marlon’s arms around me telling me he’d make it all okay.
“I do but not here. Please, Daddy. Not here,” I begged, buckling myself back in my seat.
He nodded his understanding and I gave him his medication, bringing the glass back up to his mouth.
Soon after he was asleep, I was lost in thoughts that were breaking my heart every time his words repeated themselves over and over again in an interminable loop.
She wrote every week for a year, asking about you.
She wrote every week for a year, asking about you.
She wrote every week for a year, asking about you.
We both startled out of our headspace when the wheels of the plane touched down on the tarmac, the brakes making a whooshing sound that was almost disorienting. I should have been used to it considering the amount of air travel we’d been on, but I couldn’t, sometimes it still terrified me. The landing. The flying. The uncertainty of air travel. And yes, the rational part of my brain knew it was the safest type of transportation. That wasn’t the point.
Gathering our things and waiting for the flight attendant to lead us off where a wheelchair was awaiting us, we were mere minutes away from Marlon and that was the only thing I could possibly look forward to.
Chapter 48
Jaidyn
It was only two more days until Christmas and being in this winter wonderland gave me an unexpected feeling of joy. Despite the state of Dad’s health, despite the bomb he dropped on the flight over, despite the uncertainty of everything in my life. My family, my education, my future…Marlon. Despite it all, when we’d first arrived at the winter resort, I’d felt like a little girl all over again. Christmas under the snow, every kid’s dream. But what had my emotions bursting from inside of me had been the tall, steady frame of the man standing at the front desk, waiting for me with a grin so bright and so wide it had made all the difficult moments seem meaningless. He’d barely acknowledged my father and made his way straight to me, his gaze fixed on mine, his entire being homed in on my presence alone. With only my name as a hushed prayer on his lips, he’d framed his hands on either side of my face and kissed me like I was his next breath. It wasn’t passionate or filled with lust, instead, it was filled with a sense of comfort, like he’d lost his path and I was his North.
And I kissed him back, breathing in his woody scent so potent it made my knees almost buckle beneath me. Placing my hands on his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his powerful heartbeat, I felt like maybe he was my compass. Like following him would inevitably lead me home, to happiness.
The moment was broken when my father had chuckled, “Great to see you too, Marlon, although I’ll pass on that kiss.”
Two hours later, and after eating lunch at the resort and walking around the snow-covered grounds, my mouth dropping open with the beauty laid out before me, Marlon and I were finally alone.
“I can’t believe you did all of this,” I said, taking in the decorations of the cabin, a deep lungful of cedar and spices tickling my nose. It was perfect. Even the red dolly on the dresser had “Hyvää Joulua” written across it in white cursive lettering. I was willing to guess that meant Merry Christmas in Finnish since I’d seen it all over the place since we’d arrived.
“I had to make up for bolting so quickly back in Melbourne,” he said, stepping up behind me and caging me against the sturdy wooden dresser, “I was also hoping you’d be so impressed your clothes would magically disappear.” Marlon quirked a brow that said, it obviously hadn’t worked out that way. It was even sexier seen through the mirror in front of me. The humor in his voice was tinged with the lust that matched the bulge currently nudging me at the base of my spine.
“As if I weren’t a sure thing,” I laughed, turning in his safety of his arms, needing to lose myself in him, in his care and protection. In his honesty and his attention. In his unrestrained desire.
“Is that so?” he asked, his eyes dark pools of want with only one possible ending to this conversation.
Thankfully, I’d met Marjatta, Dad’s nurse, almost immediately after our arrival and I liked her right away. She’d had to pronounce her name a couple of times before I’d understood, the “j” having an “e” sound and the “a” more of an “ah”. The woman was as pretty as her name, with her blond hair that bordered on white and her eyes a blue so light it reminded me of an icy lake, yet they harbored only fire and warmth.
For now, I could let myself go and not have to worry about a single thing except the man currently undressing under the blue of the Finnish sky. As he pulled his fores
t green sweater over his head, I could only stand there, watching every one of his muscles, ripple with his fluid movements. I should have been ripping my own clothes off, aiming for naked and panting sooner rather than later but I was rooted into place. Without taking his intense gaze off me, he unbuttoned his pants and slid down his zipper. We were completely silent, watching each other, our increasingly labored breaths the only music around us. The soothing scent of Christmas suffusing all around us.
With the sound of the lowering zipper something in me sparked back into action. Needy, I reached out and yanked him to me then pushed his hands away, staring into eyes filled with promise, watching him watch me. When his cock sprang free, all hard and veiny, precum begging to be licked, the pad of my thumb slid across his tiny slit and I heard Marlon’s heavy intake of breath.
“I know we haven’t had ‘the talk’,” I said, my voice unrecognizable, all sultry and wanton, “but to be clear, this,” I squeezed his cock at the base and reached up on my tiptoes to bite the lip he’d trapped between his own teeth only moments before, “is mine.”
Falling to my knees and taking his jeans and briefs down with me, I licked a path from root to head with my tongue. The taste of him powerful and all man. The feel like warm silk caressing my palm. But with a deep inhale, his woodsy, spicy scent sent my libido straight into next level lust.
With a long, lingering lick around his head, I reached behind him, filling my hands with his firm ass cheeks and swallowed his dick right to the back of my throat.
The move had him gripping the dresser behind me and I wondered if he could see himself. If he could see through the mirror the effect I had on him. When I dared glance up, his clenched jaw and tightly closed eyes spurred me on. I was doing this to him. I was responsible for this man’s imminent loss of control.
Pulling him to me, I bobbed my head up and down, saliva pooling at the corners of my mouth making it easier to slide, my own natural lubrication.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are with my dick in your mouth, little bird?” I couldn’t answer and he didn’t need me to.
“You look like a dream, like an apparition. Like every wish I ever made,” he continued, one hand releasing the dresser and burying in my hair, fingers curling into a tight grip.
Every word was an encouragement, a plea for me to suck him hard and deep.
“Goddamn, you feel so fucking good,” he gritted out, his fingers digging into my scalp and I loved every single ounce of pain he gave me.
“Fuck, Jaidyn, fuck.”
Suddenly, I was pulled off his cock.
Marlon helped me up to my feet and besieged my mouth with a hunger that rivaled any wild animal. Because that was what we were, wild and unforgiving. Servants to this need within us to be close, feel each other, skin on skin. Own each other, body and soul. His hands fumbled, almost ripping my clothes off me. I shimmied out of my jeans, taking my panties along with them and kicked them to the side. I had no idea where my bra went but one second it was on me the next it was gone.
His tongue demanded access, tasting every inch, grunting like he just couldn’t get close enough, taste enough, own enough. I knew how he felt, my nails digging into his bare chest, needing to be closer, craving the feel of him inside me.
Both naked, standing in a wooden cabin out in the Lapland forest, we frantically made our way to the bed, our mouths kissing and licking, our hands touching and squeezing. My nipples hardening at the pinch of his fingers, my pussy weeping with the deep-rooted ache to have his cock pounding inside me.
“Jaidyn, fuck, I…” Marlon fell onto the bed taking me with him so I was lying on top, my hands pressed against his chest, our eyes frantic with greed and hunger, “Slide up here, little bird, let me taste your pussy,” he almost growled the words out, pulling me to his mouth when I stopped him.
“No, god, please just,” I didn’t wait, I didn’t warn him, I just raised up on my knees with my hand at the base of his cock and sunk down until I could feel him at the hilt. We both froze, the feeling finally dissipating the electric fervor that ran through my veins.
“Yesss,” I hissed out, closing my eyes at the decadent feel of him buried inside me, filling me everywhere. My pussy, my body, my mind.
My soul.
He was so deep inside my soul that I couldn’t bear the thought of not having this. Him. Us.
“Fucking Christ, Jaidyn,” Marlon gritted out, his hips instinctively rising from the bed, his hands on my waist pulling down further onto his cock.
“I needed this, Marlon. So much. Please, please, fuck me,” I bent to kiss him, marvelling at the fullness of him but our bodies were hard wired for fucking. Muscle memory working its magic.
“Take it all, little bird, take all of me.”
His words empowered me, gave me the confidence to demand and to take. Gave me the power to please myself, think of myself, my needs, my wants. All of them were inexplicably centered around Marlon.
With desire coursing through every vein, I began to fuck him in earnest, pulling myself up and down his velvety cock as Marlon praised me, sang words of adoration.
I was beautiful.
I was free.
I was everything he never knew he needed.
I was his and he was mine.
Poising one hand where we were joined, his thumb giving me the pressure and friction I needed, he reached around and ran another finger between the cheeks of my ass. I shook with the sensation. It was all new to me and, if at first it was shocking, it immediately roused up my desire. Making me wetter, more frantic.
Control was a distant memory. My body acting from pure carnal craving.
When his finger dipped around my pussy gathering my juices where his dick was fucking me into blissful nothingness, he slid back up to my puckered hole and breached the tiny ring of muscle.
I was gone.
The pleasure, the ounce of pain, the erotic overload of his every move. The sounds of our skin crashing together and the unmistakeable scent of sex. It was too much. It was everything.
“Let me see you, little bird,” he whispered and when I opened my eyes to see the plethora of emotions dancing around his eyes, I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
My dam broke.
My fears.
My hurt.
My anger and my frustrations.
They broke.
They escaped through my mouth as I screamed out Marlon’s name like a promise. Like a reverence.
“Yes, yes, oh my god, Marlon!”
“Give it to me, little bird, all of it,” his jaw was clamped down, his eyes wild with everything he was feeling. It was a direct reflection of myself.
It was love.
It was forever.
He could see it in me, just as I could see it in him.
“Give me your love, little bird,” he growled out, his fingers stilling, one on my clit, the other buried to the first knuckle into my ass, as he let himself go.
And I came again, a second wave of pleasure as I felt his orgasm spill inside me, filling me with his essence, his life force. Filling me with the purest form of him.
“Marlon?”
“Yeah, little bird, I felt it, too.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds before he pulled me into him, his hand at the nape of my head, his mouth demanding a kiss.
“What was that?” I asked, panting, my breaths coming in erratically.
“That was us making love,” he whispered against my lips, our bodies skin on sweaty skin, our lips gliding from one kiss to the next. Our hearts beating in one steady, common beat.
“Love?”
“Yes, Jaidyn, with everything I am, that was me making love for the first time in my life.”
Marlon cradled me in his arms as we regained an iota of strength after the physical and emotional awakening of the last hour.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I said, giving him one last kiss before I rose from the perfection that was his body. Immediately,
I knew something was weird. Different. Wrong, even.
I should have registered the problem when I felt the thick liquid sliding down my thighs. Instead I squeezed his cock as I slid off, making him flinch.
“Sensitive, little bird,” he shuddered, and then his eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open.
That’s when realization hit me.
“Oh, my fucking god,” I started, but Marlon finished my phrase.
“We didn’t use a condom.”
Chapter 49
Marlon
“We didn’t use a condom.”
I waited for the thought to send me running through the woods, hauling ass on Santa Claus’ reindeer led sled, and yes, it was an actual thing here at the resort.
I concentrated on the immobilizing fear that was surely about to make its appearance, pushing Jaidyn off me and hiding in the bathroom where I would rock in a foetal position on the floor.
None of that came. I didn’t understand it, I should be shitting bricks right about now.
However, what I did feel was worry for Jaidyn. I was set, I was old enough, financially stable enough to be a responsible adult but Jaidyn wasn’t even twenty-two yet, still had med school to think about and this would ruin everything, or at the very least push it back a few years.
But the idea of us having a child together, especially from this moment where something inexplicable passed between us, would be perfection. The story to tell our grandkids.
Holy shit, when I go boyfriend, I double down and stick to my status.
Ethan and Luca would be busting my balls from morning until night if they saw me now.
Thinking about a kid, a baby girl with Jaidyn’s lush curls and pouty lips, her generosity and selflessness. A tiny human I would protect and love more than myself and nothing like my parents. A little me or a little Jaybird…
“I’m on the pill, so that’s not a problem,” Jaydin said, shattering my daydream, “but Calvin cheated on me so I don’t know…” I must have been staring into space while my dream family portrait was building in my mind when Jaidyn spoke, and it all vanished in the pop of a bubble.