Finding Peace

by Emilia Finn

  “I wanna talk.”

  “I really don’t. Sorry.”

  “That’s too bad then, aint it?” Her soft chest bounces against my back, a small chuckle escaping her lips. “Can you come out to the living room? I don’t want to wake Evie.”

  “I’d really like to be alone right now.”

  “What if I put on my booty shorts?”

  The booty shorts are life. They’re amazing. I’d do about anything for those booty shorts. “What are you talking about?”

  “If I put them on, will you follow me to the living room?”

  I’d follow her anywhere. I just can’t right this second; my heart hurts. “Can’t we do this tomorrow?”

  “Nope.” She tugs on my shirt, the same shirt I threw on after training. I probably stink. “Come on. I got some stuff I gotta say.”

  “I need to shower.” I need to get away from you.

  She huffs loudly. “Alright, donkey. No booty shorts. I’ll shower with you.”

  “I really don’t think this is a good time.” Fuck no, it’s not a good time. It’s always a good time to shower with her, but right this second, I think it might hurt whatever threads of a relationship we may or may not have left.

  I don’t want to make this worse.

  I release my breath when she steps back from me, her hands leaving my hips and I feel her move away.

  Despite the instant loneliness I feel, this is best. I might go for a run or something. Get the hell out of here and run away. It seems to work for her, and maybe if I get out, she’ll be less inclined to do so.

  I need space right now, but I don’t need it permanently. I want her here when I get back.

  I hear the rustle of clothes behind me and curiously, I turn. She’s standing in a sexy black bra, her top already on the floor, then pushing her slacks down her legs, I watch as she shimmies them over her luscious hips and kicks them off with her toes. Down to a matching bra and panty set, my mouth waters even as my heart thumps in my chest.

  Why didn’t she say it back?

  “I’m going to have a shower.” She turns, giving me a front row seat to her sexy, arched back, her almost dainty shoulder blades, the long blonde silk hair as it almost touches her ass dimples. “I definitely suggest you join me.”

  “Peaches. I can’t--”

  “If you’re about to break up with me, or run away, or go pummel someone at the gym, I definitely suggest you shower with me first.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve got shit to say. I don’t want to wake Evie, and I want your undivided attention. Maybe if we’re both naked, I’ll get that.”

  “If we’re both naked, you probably won’t get to speak at all.”

  “It’s a risk I guess we’ll have to take,” she smirks arrogantly, flipping her hair over her shoulder then walks away.

  Strangely she walks by the upstairs bathroom and makes her way downstairs, and I figure she must be going to use the guest bathroom.

  Despite my reluctance to follow, my feet take me, my eyes scouring her creamy skin, tracing the way her hips roll with each step, the way her shoulder blades pop just a bit with the swing of her arms. The way her hair sways, tickling her lower back, the way her cute panties cup her ass.

  She’s so beautiful.

  Her arms stretch back, her delicate fingers finding the clasp in the middle of her back, and halfway down my staircase she flips her bra off, holding it in one finger above her head then dropping it so it hits the floor just by my feet.

  I smile at it, even as I wonder how I got so close behind her. I thought I was avoiding her? I thought I was going for a run?

  Her hands come down to her hips and I gulp. Placing her thumbs in the side of her panties she starts slowly lowering them.

  Fuck. Me.

  Please.

  We hit the main foyer as she lowers her panties, exposing an inch of her ass. I follow her like an obedient, well trained dog, and I’m not even bitter about it. I’d follow her anywhere.

  Perhaps I can keep her, even if she doesn’t say it back?

  Fuck. No. I can’t do that. I would eventually demand it, then when she doesn’t deliver, we’ll end up right back here. But it’d probably hurt even more the next time round.

  “Peaches.” I turn toward the front door, a subtle turning away from her body, my last defense. “I can’t do this.”

  “If you walk out that door Aiden Kincaid, especially when I’m naked and waiting for you, expect serious retribution. I’ll make your life hell.”

  “What are you talking ab--”

  “Expect shit food for dinner. No clean socks.”

  I turn back in her direction, working to look into her baby blues and not her tits that are bare and daring me to glance. “I don’t ask you to cook or clean--”

  “No, you don’t.” She lowers her panties another inch. “But I’ll start, just so I can do it badly. Expect no sex. No hummers. Expect me to walk around naked almost always.”

  “Well that last one wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “And you’ll never get to touch.” She takes her thumbs from her panties and cups her breasts instead, lifting them, hiding her pretty nipples from me. “No touching at all. It’ll be like a boring museum exhibition. You can look, but never touch. But it won’t be boring. I happen to think my tits are pretty nice. You don’t wanna miss out on this.”

  No, I really don’t.

  “Expect me to tell Jim about your erectile dysfunction.”

  My eyes snap up from her sneaky hands and latch onto hers again. “I don’t have erectile dysfunction!”

  “No. But it’s fun to say, and Jim will roll with it.”

  “You’re shaking me down?”

  “Yep. And I’m okay with that. So, you gonna run away? Or are you going to man up and follow my peach ass to the shower?”

  Slowly dropping her breasts again, her thumbs seek out her panties and she peels them down, exposing herself to me completely.

  Fuck.

  Manning up.

  That’s my choice. Definitely not running away. I’m not going anywhere, not for the next hour at least.

  I follow her to the guest bathroom, insanely pleased that my new house has fancy bathrooms on both levels, and the shower down here is large and just as nice as the master upstairs.

  I don’t take my eyes off Tina’s ass and her swaying hair as I follow, except for the second it takes to get my shirt over my head.

  My dick springs free when I lower my training shorts, the gray sweat material falling to the tiles as I step into the steaming hot spray that Tina is already waiting under.

  “Good choice.” She steps toward me confidently and I groan as my dick presses against her stomach. Her soft hands come up to cup my face, her blue eyes searching mine. “Let’s just be together for a minute, in case this is the last time we have. Let’s enjoy this for a minute then we’ll talk.”

  In case this is the last time?

  Goddammit. She’s going to kill me.

  She pulls my face down to hers then kisses me softly, chastely on the lips, not opening hers and not telling me she loves me.

  “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m alright.” I’m fucking not alright.

  She nods, studying me a moment longer, then she lowers her face, although she keeps her hands on mine, and she takes my nipple between her lips.

  “Peaches.” I groan deeply as my hips jump at the contact. No matter how hurt I am, instinct demands I mate with her. She’s mine. My mate.

  “Make love to me, Aiden.”

  Make love. Or fuck?

  Her hand comes around the back of my neck, holding me to her, and her right leg lifts around my hip, forcing me to hold it or risk it going away. I’ll always hold her.

  “Lift me up.”

  “Peaches.”

  “Catch me,” she murmurs, then lifts her second leg, hitching it around my hip and forcing my hand to take it or risk dropping her.

  I’ll never drop h
er.

  I’ll never let her down.

  I love her.

  “Tina. I can’t--”

  “Make love to me.” She grinds her hot core against me, the slickness sliding along my shaft, up and down. “Fill me up. Now, Aiden. Do it now.”

  I continue holding her weight easily as she lowers one hand, bringing it between us, the tip of her fingers brushing over the tip of my dick, forcing my eyes closed and a deep groan drags up my throat.

  “I don’t want to. I can’t.”

  Her face moves away from mine, her Caribbean eyes studying mine. “You don’t want to?”

  “I do want to.” But I want more.

  Fuck! When did I turn into the girl in this relationship?

  “Okay.” Her hand fists my dick and my hips jerk again, instinct trying to override my brain. There’s only so long a man can resist when the woman he loves is holding his dick.

  She lifts her weight against me, using my shoulder to hold herself up, then lining me up, she swallows me whole in one fast plunge.

  “Fuck, Peaches.” I squeeze her ass, bruising the skin but I can’t help it. She feels so fucking good.

  “That’s better,” she groans, rolling her hips against me since I haven’t moved.

  This is too much; I want to come, I want to get her off me because this hurts my heart too damn much.

  “Aiden?”

  “What?” I ask, but my eyes remain closed. I can’t look at her, I can’t do anything. Every breath I take hurts. Every beat of my heart sends a painful flash through my chest.

  I can’t do this. I can’t have a loveless relationship. Not anymore. Not with Tina.

  “Look at me, baby.”

  “I don’t wanna.”

  She must squeeze her vagina or some shit, because I feel an insane delicious pressure around my dick and I groan again. “Look at me.”

  I pop one eye open, immediately focusing on her smiling face and my brow furrows. Opening my other eye, her smile grows and I glare at her. “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because your dick feels good?”

  “Is that a question?”

  “Nope, that’s a damn fact.” She squeezes again.

  “How are you doing that?”

  “Girl secrets.” She shrugs her shoulder, that sassy smirk filling her face. She’s going to break me. She’s going to make me smile. Then she’s going to break my heart.

  “But now that I have your attention…” She squeezes again and I bite down on a groan. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “You wanna talk? Now? With my dick inside you?”

  “Yep, this is exactly when I want to talk. You see, this is exactly right, Aiden. We’re joined, one person, so we can talk and understand each other better. I want you to understand.”

  Here it comes. Her explanations for not loving me. Yippee.

  “Thank you,” she says simply. My eyes snap to hers again, taking in her serious face, no longer smirking at me. “For everything. For everything you’ve ever done for me, for Evie. For loving her.”

  Yeah, but she doesn’t mention loving her.

  “For loving me.”

  Fuck.

  “Peaches.”

  “Is this a forever thing, Aiden? Is this real love, like you could imagine seeing me every day for the rest of your life? You’d touch only my boobs forever, even when they’re saggy.”

  “What are you t--”

  “You’d never want someone else? Never drop me and Evie when something better came along?” She hitches herself higher on me, getting comfortable and squeezing my dick again.

  Of all the ways to have this kind of chat, she chooses this way, now? Pretty fucking typical of her sassy ass.

  “You’d be happy to settle for this; the scarred, spooked chick and her illegitimate daughter?”

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “Yes, it’s a very serious question. Possibly the most important question I’ve ever asked in my life.”

  I hold her up with one arm, pressing her against the steam warmed wall tiles and pinning her with my hips and I bring my spare hand up to her face. I use my thumb to trace her biggest scar, the deepest, the one running across the top of her nose, across her brow and over her temple.

  Cherishing her, cherishing the fact she could have died but didn’t, or she could have been wounded so much worse but wasn’t. She’s here with me instead. “I wouldn’t be settling, Tina. Not even a little. It would be my honor to be able to keep you. And Evie. It’d be my honor to keep her, give her my name, revoke that illegitimate bullshit. I wouldn’t be settling, I’d be given the highest honor possible, and I’d never take it for granted. I’d live every single day knowing that I get to come home to the most beautiful, most precious girls in the whole world.”

  “But is it forever?” She squeezes my face, begging for my truth. “Because I don’t want something fun. I want you, all of you. I love you too, you big stupid dummy, and it would kill me if you decided in a week, a month, a year that you were done. I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t handle that kind of heart ache. To know you had your fun and left, to picture you having your fun elsewhere, with other girls. I just--”

  “You love me too?”

  Tina stops, pouting adorably. “Is that all you heard?”

  “I heard it all, baby, but I really wanna go back to the stupid dummy bit.”

  She squeezes me again and I fight the urge to slam her against the wall. “Yeah, so I love you too. I didn’t not say it before because I didn’t love you back, I guess I was just taken aback by the whole shouting at me and saying it like it was a true hardship on your part.”

  “Yeah.” I squirm awkwardly. I’m an ass. “I did kind of shout at you. Sorry. And for the record, it is a hardship, trust me on that. I’ve never worked so fucking hard in my life to keep my shit under control before you.”

  “But is it too hard?” she asks worriedly, her eyes almost swimming again. “Will it be too hard to maintain forever, because I don’t want a quitter in my life. You’re all in or you’re…” she swallows hard, “or you’re all out.”

  I begin rolling my hips against her, suddenly very much in the mood to make love to her now. I can’t believe I almost went for a run instead.

  “Aiden,” she murmurs, moaning as I lower my face and begin nibbling along her collarbone. “You need to answer me. I need to know.”

  “I’m all in, babe. I’m so fucking in I’m taking you to the casinos tomorrow and we’re making it official.”

  We both groan in sync when she spasms around me, but it’s not the purposely pleasurable spasm, but a wide eyed, panicked face as she stares into my eyes again.

  “We can’t.”

  “The fuck we can’t, Peaches. You’re all in or you’re all out.” I push into her again, slamming her against the tile and she maintains her facial expression even as she moans in pleasure. “I’m not Sean. I won’t demand you marry me, not like he did, but… well yeah, I will demand. All in or all out.”

  “No, I can’t,” she repeats, her breath whooshing out of her body as I slam into her again. “I can’t use my real name.”

  I continue pushing into her, fighting the urge to lean in and bite her shoulder just for some relief. She feels fucking amazing, and I’m in her bareback. It’s better than I ever imagined it would be.

  “Aiden,” she takes my face in her hands. “Stop for a sec.”

  I shake my head. Not stopping, not not marrying her. All in.

  “Aiden, it’s not the same as before,” she begins to explain but groans again. She can try to fight the pleasure, but it’ll win every time. She’s mine, fundamentally, to the core, mine. We belong to each other. The whole world was made around our existence. There’s no point fighting it. I’ll come back to her every time, and I’ll claim her, again and again.

  “I would marry you.” She kisses my cheek softly. “I would. We can even have an unofficial ceremony or something. But it can’t be legal. And you can’t off
icially adopt Evie. You can’t give us your name. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s happening, Tina. I’ll make you safe. I’ll make you both safe if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Yeah,” she groans as I push against her again. Her hands squeeze my shoulders, her nails digging in in the most delicious way. “That’s what scares me the most. I won’t allow you to be hurt by him. And he will. He’ll come, as soon as we file any papers. He’ll come.”

  “Trust me, Peaches. You trust me.” I slam into her again and again, feeling my balls draw up, ready to fill her. “You trust me to make you safe.”

  I won’t let her slip through my fingers. I’ll make her safe and I’ll keep them both forever. But for right this second, I’ll make love to her. I’ll prove my love, my devotion, my promise. She’s safe and in my arms right now; I’ll figure the rest out tomorrow.

  Twenty Two

  Tina

  Planning

  “Evie bug!” Jack rushes through to the main foyer as soon as we walk through Kit and Bobby’s front door. He picks her up gently, careful not to hurt her and she goes willingly. She loves the attention. “Are you okay? How are you feeling?”

  Evie’s smile is large and excited; she thinks her new cast is the bees knees. She woke up a little whiney this morning, but after her coffee and Advil and some snuggle time while watching the Disney channel, she was all set to come show her new accessory off to the guys.

  “Evie hurt.”

  “I know, baby. I saw. Are you all better now?”

  “Evie.” Kit walks into the front room, rushing toward our small group, then Bobby follows. Only a minute later the room is crowded. Jim and Iz and Bean, Jon and Tink, Bobby, Kit, and Jack, all crowded around us, with Evie firmly in the center of the fray and smiling at the attention.

  Eventually we make our way to the kitchen and take a seat at the table where Jack promptly pulls out a packet of sharpies. “Can I draw?”

  “Don’t you dare draw any d--”

  “Ding dongs.” Kit interrupts Aiden as Jack eagerly takes out a blue marker and lays Evie’s arm out gently.

  “I won’t,” he mumbles, already drawing, his tongue poking out while he concentrates and I lean closer, just to keep an eye on him. I know Jack, and I know he wouldn’t hesitate to draw a dick on a cast. Even if that cast belongs to a three year old girl.