Forbidden: A Ward Sisters Sisters Novel

by Sorensen , Karla

  Despite her inexperience, Isabel would take everything from me that I’d give her, and already, I knew I’d serve myself up on a platter just to keep her like this for the rest of my life.

  “I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” I whispered against her mouth, and her eyelids fluttered open. One of her hands cupped the side of my face while I pulled one of her thighs close to my side. “To deserve you.”

  “It’s not about deserving, Aiden.” She kissed me. “It’s not about being worthy or perfect. It’s about finding the right person and choosing them.”

  Isabel moved under me impatiently, but I kissed her again, gathering her body to mine until there was no space, no room for a single breath between us.

  “I am falling in love with you,” I told her because I couldn’t not tell her. “And I choose you, every stubborn,” I pushed forward, and she gasped, “frustrating,” forward, “sexy,” more, “smart inch of you,” with a final snap, I let my forehead rest on hers as I tried to catch my breath.

  Isabel’s breath escaped in a sob. Then she gripped my hips, fingernails digging into my skin.

  “Are you okay?”

  She grinned, looking more than a little drunk. “Yes. And just remember who fell in love with who first.”

  I exhaled a laugh, pulling at her lips with a kiss. It slid into something deeper, something that had her shifting, tugging at my back. But I held there, allowing both of us to settle into the feeling.

  “More, please,” she begged.

  “I’m just getting started,” I whispered against her mouth.

  As I moved, slowly at first, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t hurting her. Then she bit down on my earlobe, sucking it into her mouth, and the tether on my control snapped in a ragged, messy burst.

  There was no thought of finesse or rhythm, no thought of anything other than our mutual pleasure.

  Mine started before hers, and I fought to stay with her until the end, even as my chest heaved, my back arched helplessly when heat curled through my veins.

  I smothered the sounds coming from my mouth into the curve of her sweat-shiny neck, and when she snapped her thighs against my hips, back curving, my name on her lips, we toppled over the edge together.

  I slumped over her. The strength of a hundred men couldn’t haven’t moved me for how lethargic I felt.

  She kissed me softly, running her hands over my back and up into my hair. I rolled to my side, keeping her anchored against me, our legs intertwined as we luxuriated in the taste of each other, the sweet sipping of her mouth against mine.

  “I knew you’d wreck me.” She sighed happily. I kissed along her jaw, which she tipped so I could reach more of her skin.

  “Did you?”

  Isabel’s fingers traced the features on my face as she nodded. “The day I met you, I think I knew.”

  The lithe line of her back was damp with sweat, and I touched as much of her as I could manage with long sweeps of my palm. “You’ve always been smarter than me about this.”

  She laughed. “Not smarter,” she corrected. “More aware, maybe.”

  I pushed some of her mussed hair out of her face. “If I’d had any idea, I probably never would’ve walked in the door.”

  Just like I hoped she would, Isabel smiled at my honesty. “I know.”

  Even though we were fully enmeshed, as many body parts wound together as humanly possible, I curled myself around her and breathed her in. It was cheesy and poetic, the types of thoughts I was never prone to, but Isabel smelled like the peace that I’d been seeking, that I thought she wasn’t capable of bringing. Ironic, given that she blew my life up, resetting it into something that would only work with her presence inside of it.

  “I’m glad you did, though,” she whispered. “This is where I’m meant to be.”

  I closed my eyes and held her against me. It was easy to imagine that every step of my life had led to this moment. Not just the moment, but to her.

  “Me too,” I told her.

  Eventually, we pulled the blankets up over us, whispering to each other as the night wore on. I decided, after sweet, gentle touches for the entire time, we were done being in bed.

  “You owe me a bath,” I told her.

  Her smile was wide and happy. “Do I?”

  I nuzzled into her neck and decided she smelled best right there. “Yeah. Do you have any idea of how hard it was knowing you were in there?”

  Her hand slid down between my legs, and I breathed out a pained laugh. “Tell me.”

  Pecking a hard kiss against her lips, I extracted her hand and got out of bed. “I’ll tell you in there.”

  Once we were under the water, the deep soaker tub filled with a lather of clean-smelling bubbles, Isabel turned and faced me, folding her long legs around my back so she was situated in my lap. I smoothed her wet hair off her face.

  “This is what I pictured,” I told her.

  She swept some bubbles off my shoulder. “Yeah?”

  My hand moved under the water, and she gave me a mock-glare when I merely traced circles just to the side of her chest. “Maybe I pictured something a little more X-rated.”

  “I think I was too frustrated with you to picture anything dirty,” she said.

  I swallowed, choosing my words carefully. Before I spoke, I pressed my palm against the skin over her heart, nothing sexual in the touch, despite the warm weight of her that I was now intimately familiar with. “I’m so sorry I kept pulling away. I didn’t know how”—I paused with a slight shake of my head—“how to make peace with you. With what you made me feel,” I amended.

  Isabel wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me, and we sat like that for a quiet minute, the water lapping gently at our skin.

  “Moving on isn’t easy,” she said, pressing a soft kiss to my shoulder, then setting her chin there.

  “It’s not.”

  She pulled back, and her face was so open, so sweet, I had to kiss her again. But when I pulled away, intent on deepening it, she laid a gentle finger on my mouth.

  “I think you and I held onto the things that hurt us because it seemed … easier, somehow.” She gave me a soft smile. “Yours was your grief, the thing you lost. And mine was”—she screwed up her lips—“sort of the same. I lost something too, but gained something really great in return. But I know I kept a tight rein on the things I could control so that I’d never feel that way again.”

  I nodded. “No one can hurt you again if you don’t let them in.” My heart pinched at the understanding I saw in her midnight eyes. For so long and for so many reasons, I’d written her off as wrong, but she was exactly right.

  “You have the power to hurt me, Aiden Hennessy,” she admitted. Isabel slid a hand over my cheek. “And I’m trusting you not to.”

  My arms curled around her back, and I sighed contentedly at the strength in our embrace.

  When she finally pulled away, her eyes looked a little red, but I knew better than to comment on it.

  “You know what you owe me?” she said.

  “Hmm?”

  She leaned in, whispering some of the X-rated things I’d imagined when she’d been in my own tub, and by the time we left the bathroom, wrapped in plush towels and skin wrinkled, I’d delivered every single one.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Isabel

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I set my chin on his chest the next morning before the sun had risen in the sky and grinned happily. “It’s true.”

  “You’ve never tried sushi?”

  With a shake of my head, I let my fingers walk up his abdomen. “Nothing could sound worse to me than slimy uncooked fish.”

  “That is a crime,” he muttered, snatching up my fingers to kiss the tips.

  “Your turn.”

  He sighed. “I’ve never baked a cake.”

  “I’ve never baked one well,” I said. “Add it to the list.”

  Aiden’s hand swept over my lower back. “What else do we h
ave?”

  We’d spent the last hour trying to figure out firsts we could experience together, Aiden’s attempt at trying to wrap his mind around the fact that I’d never slept with anyone before him. In his mind, he owed me a few of those, and the idea of it made me so warm and melty inside that I was not arguing. I’d just experienced the most perfect night of my entire life, even if I would limp out of this hotel, wearing my bridesmaid dress from the night before.

  “Never ran a marathon,” I started. “Never successfully baked a cake. We’ve never worn roller skates. And we’ve never slept out under the stars.”

  His face took on a thoughtful expression. “I probably shouldn’t admit this one.”

  “Tell me.”

  Aiden’s fingers slid through my hair, and I closed my eyes at the feel of it, soaking in the affection like a dried-out sponge. It felt so good that I almost missed what he said.

  “I’ve never bought flowers for someone.”

  My eyes popped open. “Really?”

  He shook his head. “Flowers made Beth sneeze like crazy, so I never got her any.”

  It was the first he’d mentioned her since we left the reception, and I spread my hand out over his chest, laying a soft kiss onto his skin. “What was she like?”

  Aiden closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Funny. She was always smiling. It was the first thing I noticed about her. Smart. Kind. She did everything easily, it seemed like.”

  It wasn’t the time to talk, just to listen.

  He wedged a hand under his head and stared down at me. “And she made the best gingersnaps in the world.”

  I smiled. “Does Anya talk about her a lot?”

  “Not as much since we’ve moved here. I think being in our own house has made a big difference. Being around family. In California, it was just the three of us,” he said. “I think … I think she felt the loss of her more there.”

  Resting my cheek on his chest, I thought about her bright blue eyes, her gap-toothed smile, and found myself smiling too.

  He felt it. “What?”

  “Just thinking about Anya. She’s a great kid, Aiden.”

  There was a brief pause before he spoke again. “You ready to take that on? When we tell her, I mean.”

  We’d decided earlier in our conversation to hold off on announcing anything to her just yet. Gain our footing as a couple first. But this was a question I could answer easily.

  I rolled up onto my side and scooted higher up on the bed so that I could kiss him. There was no time to deepen it because we both needed to leave soon—him to pick up Anya and me to have a family brunch at Logan and Paige’s while Molly and Noah opened some presents before they left on their mini-honeymoon.

  “I already love Anya,” I told him. “I don’t fall out of trees for just anyone, you know.”

  He laughed. “I hope not.”

  “That’s the thing about my family,” I said. Setting my head in my hand, I snuggled up next to him again. “Blood ties don’t mean anything in the end, not when it comes down to it. Logan and Paige, my sisters, Emmett … they are my family because we fight for each other every single day. It was us against the world.” I smiled. “We’ve got a few more bodies now, Noah, Jude, Bauer, and little Gabriel. You and Anya,” I said quietly. “She may not know it yet, but she just gained a whole lot of people in her corner.”

  Aiden tugged me closer for a kiss. “I like the sound of that,” he murmured.

  I found myself tearing up as he folded me into his arms again. “I do too.” I sniffed quietly, but he heard me.

  “What is it?”

  I shook my head, swiping at my face. “Anytime something big happened to me, I never really understood why. Even if I knew it was coming, even if I hated how I felt, I didn’t realize each piece had to happen exactly the way it did”—I pulled my head back so I could see his face—“so I could be here with you. Even the hard things.”

  Aiden slid his thumb across my cheek.

  We didn’t have the time for it. I wasn’t even sure that physically I could handle more, but he moved over me, gently rocking between my legs, sharing my breath, stealing my heart, and making me fall even more in love with him than I already was.

  In my ear, he whispered all sorts of things that pushed me higher and higher, even as he kept his movements slow and steady. It was the relaxed speed and the inexorable strength of his reserve that finally broke me open in a warm wave.

  It wasn’t fireworks and explosions, but something even better.

  It was forever.

  We dressed quietly. He hooked up the back of my dress, and I buttoned his shirt, stretching on my toes to kiss the edge of his jaw when I was done. And because I could, I slid his jacket over my bridesmaid dress. We entered the elevator hand in hand, trading smiles in the shining reflection on the door as we rode down to the lobby.

  At my car, Aiden gave me a deep kiss goodbye, and it took us a few minutes to separate.

  “I’ll call you later,” he told me. “Maybe we can figure out something tomorrow if one of my brothers can help with Anya.”

  I nodded. “I guess we’ll have to be careful at work too, huh?”

  He hummed, sliding my hair off my shoulder to drop a kiss onto my neck. “Oh, no. The first day we work together, the second everyone is gone, I have a whole other first to take care of in my office.”

  My smile was massive. “What’s that?”

  Aiden lifted his head and pinned me with those green eyes. “You on my desk.”

  “Okay,” I answered breathlessly. “Can we work together tomorrow maybe?”

  “Maybe we can both accidentally show up an hour early.”

  “I love showing up to work an hour early.”

  His laughter was a happy booming sound, and if I was being honest, I felt a little drugged at the sound of it. We finally said goodbye, and I hurried to my apartment to whip on some clean clothes and slick my hair back into a ponytail. Snatching a Pop-Tarts from my pantry cabinet, I was back in the car and on my way to Logan and Paige’s less than fifteen minutes later.

  And I knew I was in bad shape when the newlyweds beat me there.

  When I walked into the kitchen, the entire family went dead silent.

  My face must’ve been bright red. “Morning.”

  Molly was grinning like a lunatic. Lia tried to hide her smile behind her coffee. Claire, on the couch with Gabriel, rolled her lips between her teeth.

  Paige approached, wearing a deceptively sweet smile on her face, and handed me a massive mug. “Need some coffee, sweetcheeks? You must be tired.”

  Logan mumbled something from the table, and Emmett held out his hand. My brother dug into his wallet and handed him a dollar.

  I took the mug. “I slept just fine, thank you.”

  Lia snorted.

  “Are we opening presents or what?” I asked.

  Molly set a box aside. “We already started.”

  “Aiden didn’t want to come over with you?” Paige asked, completely undeterred.

  I took a slow sip of the coffee and held her eyes.

  “He wasn’t hungry?”

  “Paige,” Logan said in a warning tone.

  She blinked innocently. “Yes, husband?”

  He gave her a look. “If she doesn’t want to talk about it, she doesn’t have to.”

  “You can tell me later,” she whispered.

  Emmett shook his head. “This family is crazy. I’m going outside.”

  “Coming with you, dude.” Bauer stood from the couch with kisses to Gabriel’s cheek and Claire’s upturned mouth. “Jude, you wanted to show me that thing?”

  The big Brit stood with a nod, snagging a soccer ball from the floor. “Be right out.” He kissed Lia.

  “Geez,” I muttered. “I sure know how to clear a room.”

  “It’s probably all the just-had-sex pheromones,” Lia added helpfully.

  “That’s it!” Logan shouted. “I’m outta here.”

  My brother stalk
ed out of the house, my sisters’ laughter following him as he tugged open the slider.

  Noah grimaced at the giant pile of unwrapped boxes, then gave Paige and Lia a look. “Can you please stop while I have to be in here?”

  Paige patted his cheek. “For my favorite son-in-law? Of course.”

  “Now you stop?” I asked.

  Paige sent me a wink, then gestured to Molly and Noah. “Proceed.”

  Molly started unwrapping a small box but gave me a warm smile. “We’re just happy for you.”

  “I know,” I told her. I took a seat on the couch by Claire and held my arms out for the baby. She handed him over with a tiny smile. His warm body cuddled close, I inhaled the top of his head. “Gawd, we should bottle this smell. We’d make a fortune.”

  I held my nephew away from me, laughing when he gave me a coy little smile.

  Claire nudged me with her foot. “How was it?” she whispered.

  I blew gently in Gabriel’s face, grinning when his eyes widened, his gummy mouth opening in happy surprise. “The wedding was great,” I answered. “Which you know, because you were there.”

  She rolled her eyes at my evasion.

  “What is that?” Noah asked.

  Molly studied something in her hand, but I couldn’t make out what it was. “It’s a ring, but I can’t tell what the design is.”

  “Is there a card?” Paige asked.

  Noah snatched up a small white envelope and ripped it open, tugging out a card. His gaze darted to Molly. “I think you should read this one.”

  Molly took the card, and her eyes widened. She handed the ring to Noah, then looked at each one of us.

  She let out a deep breath and started reading.

  “In Spain, you can find orange blossom trees everywhere you look. It’s why they’re the flower most traditionally used in weddings here. For Spaniards, or those of us who have made this place home, the orange blossom represents joy and happiness, especially for a newly married couple.” She paused, and Noah moved his chair closer so he could wrap an arm around her shoulder. “This ring was given to me by my husband’s mother on the day we got married, and I asked her blessing to send it to you. I’ve found happiness in this path of my life, and I hope you have too, Molly. Thank you for your invitation. I know I didn’t deserve it. Beyond my wish that you experience the same joy that this flower represents, I think the best gift I can give you is to let you and your sisters live on the path that you’ve created since I left.”