“It’s Cole, isn’t it?”
One by one, they all nodded slowly. Yup, my cousin who had menophobia—a phobia of menstruation—was here.
Slow footsteps made their way closer to the door and, as they stepped aside, a pale looking Cole walked into the office.
With a weak wave, he smiled at both of us.
“Surprise?”
I absolutely adored my cousin. Granted, I loved all of them, but Cole was the one I was closest to, followed by Tom. He had a heart of gold, was the biggest dork without meaning to be, and he just made the world a better place through his existence alone. And his wife and kids were exactly the same.
Speaking of....
“Is Ebru with you? Did you bring the kids?”
“No, Louis broke his arm a couple weeks ago doing... uh, something,” he fidgeted. “Ebru kept them at home because he keeps bumping it.”
“How did he break it?”
Gramps snorted while Cole looked up at the ceiling.
“The dipshit put the kids' mattresses on the stairs and was showing them how to surf down it while Ebru was out. Louis took a running start and shot off like a rocket into the wall at the bend in the staircase halfway down.”
“Holy shit!” I gasped, seeing Cole wince.
“That’s not the best bit. No, it took three of Piersville Fire Department to remove him from the wall. The kid’s arm was all broken, and he’s yelling how he wanted to go again.”
Before Cole could defend himself—not that it was possible—there was a clattering tapping noise, and Sadie came storming in.
“I don’t want to hear any more about it, period!” she snapped, making Cole’s face go pale again. Stopping in the room, she pulled out a tampon and held it up to me. “I knew it had to be something like this, so I went hunting, and I found one.”
Walking weakly around us, Cole sat down heavily in the chair behind the desk. This time, Sadie and I winced and with good reason.
“Sadie, this is Cole. Cole, Sadie,” I introduced.
“Nice to meet you, Cole. Oh, wait, this is your cousin,” she snapped her fingers. “The one who’s... oh,” she drawled, her eyes moving to the tampon she was still holding in the air. “You know, I thought the stories were just you being silly, but now that I see how pale you are,” she said as she gestured at him with the tampon, making him sink deeper into the chair and gulp. “Phobias are strange, aren’t they? My mate has a phobia of blood, like a big one. One spec of blood and he’s—" the whole time she’d been talking, she’d continued to wave the tampon until it looked like Cole was going to faint. So, leaning in, I grabbed her arm to stop her. “Oh, you need this. Sorry, here you go.”
Then, glancing at Cole, she tried to slip it to me, like no one around us had a clue it existed.
Leaning back, Cole covered his face and shuddered. When that didn’t work, he slipped off the chair and squashed his face into the seat of it.
Now it was me who was shuddering. We’d been discussing earlier how long Tate and Lily had spent in here yesterday, then how crumpled they’d been when they’d come out. I wasn’t even going to touch the desk anymore. Hell, maybe even the walls.
“Uh, Cole?” Sadie called. “You might not want to do that, mate.”
Not wanting to explain why she snapped her mouth shut and moved behind me.
“Can someone explain why Cole’s here while he focuses on getting his shit together?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at the other men.
“He wanted to check up on you to make sure you’re okay,” Gramps told me as Cole lifted his head weakly.
I was touched by it. We’d spoken on the phone and video called after it all, but knowing he’d left Ebru with the kids to do it? “Really? You came all this way to check on me?”
“Of course I did,” he huffed, glaring at me. “You’re a pecker head, but you’re still my favorite cousin.”
“Hey!” came a chorus of shouts from the doorway, but he didn’t even look in its direction.
“Aw,” Sadie sighed, leaning into my side. “Family comes first, period.”
“Stop!” Came Cole’s muffled yell, dropping his face back into the chair.
Oh, if he only knew!
Later that night…
“Well, we can’t do the nasty,” I sighed, cursing my uterus again and wondering why I hadn’t gone with the pill instead of the implant last year. After ‘kidnapgate,’ we’d discussed contraception and decided to ditch condoms, and it felt like it’d taken us to a different level of commitment now. But with my period here, it put the kibosh on sex because it’s not like I could skip it like I could if I were on the pill. “How do you feel about watching a movie?”
Rolling into me on my bed, the goats, dogs, and Jerry all curled up at the bottom of it, Parker rested his head on his hand. “I want to talk to you about something.”
When he just stopped talking and didn’t say anything else, I looked around to see if one of my family or Dale had appeared behind me. Seeing the coast was clear from shitheads, I arched an eyebrow and poked him in the chest. “It drives me crazy when people just stop when they should finish their freaking sentence.”
His evil grin said it all. “I know!”
When he still didn’t say what he wanted to talk about, I burst out laughing and rolled so that my face was pressed against his chest. “If I didn’t like your penis so much, I’d do what Dale taught me.”
“What did he teach you?”
“Bow to your master.” It didn’t need any more explanation than that, I was sure.
His growl proved me right. “He’s such a fucking pain in the ass. I swear I thought I was dying when he caught me with that shit earlier.”
I couldn’t help it. I tried to keep the laughter silent, but because my nose was pressed against him, he not only felt the puffs of air coming out of me, but he also heard the snort that happened because I was trying to get oxygen into my lungs.
“Nice, Ari,” he muttered. “My balls ended up in my neck, and you’re snorting.” If he’d sounded serious, I might have felt bad. Waiting for me to settle back down again, he tipped my head back and moved my hair off my face. “I sometimes wish I was only a year older than you, you know.”
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, and a bizarre one. “What?”
With a soft expression on his face, he swept his thumb across my hairline, his eyes following it the whole way. “Because of what happened to me, I had a cut-off switch for anyone younger than me until I hit about twenty or twenty-one. They had to be the same age or older because the thought of even looking at someone and finding them attractive if they were younger than me made me feel like her.”
The explanation made sense, but it made me feel sick and angry all over again. If Chantal hadn’t been dead and cremated the week before, I would’ve gone and kicked her ass and popped her boobs.
“So, if we’d been around the same age, you’d have been interested?”
“Absolutely,” he murmured. “Then, once you came to help out with Tom’s shit, I wish I’d had the balls to go with what I was starting to feel for you. Even if I just got to know you better, that would’ve been enough for me to begin with. Instead, I wasted a year arguing with myself and making small changes to my life.”
“Necessary changes to help you get to where you are today,” I pointed out.
His lips twitched, but he nodded. “You’re right, they were necessary. Now I can’t imagine my life without you in it, and I love the way it feels now.”
“Even with Hanky, Panky, Sneezy, Gaynor, and Jerry hogging the bottom of the bed every night, and the dogs farting?”
“Eh,” he moved his head like he was thinking about it. “The farting I could live without, but the rest? No, I’m selfish. I want to keep all of it.”
My head felt like it was going to explode as I rubbed his chest slowly, needing to have contact with more than one small patch of him. “We want all of you, too.”
“Good,” h
e whispered, moving my hand over to the left side of his chest. “Because you’ve got all of me, even this.”
Was he saying…
“I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time, but I know I’m going to do everything to keep you happy, and I’m going to show you every day how much I love you.”
It felt like my head was going to explode. “Holy shit, you love me?”
“Those two words aren’t enough for what I feel for you, but, yes, I do.”
I was staring wide-eyed at where his heart would be now, almost like I was trying to see it.
“Holy shit.”
Giving me a moment to get my head around it, he rolled me to my back and moved so he was now resting between my legs, his weight braced on his arms on either side of me. “What are you thinking about, baby?”
Blinking up at him, I said the first thought my brain stopped on. “I’m going to give you the best blow job of your life.”
This time it was Parker who was stunned. “What?”
Using his confusion to my benefit, I pushed him off me and onto his back and then pulled my tank top over my head. “Well, we can’t have sex because I don’t do the nasty when I’ve got the nasty going on, but I can show you how much I love you with my mouth.”
His mouth slowly lifted into a grin as he watched me crawl down the bed until I was level with his hard length, now visible through the fabric of his jockey shorts. “You could just say the words, Ari.”
Eyeing him over the bulge, I raised my eyebrows at him. “You don’t want me to do this?”
“Oh, I want it, but I’m just saying the words would’ve done.”
Tugging one side down and then the other, I waited for him to raise his ass slightly and then pulled them down his legs. “I’ll give you those, too, then. Parker Knight, I think it’s probably just as well you didn’t show any interest in me because I was too young to appreciate what I’d have when I got you. I’m also going to send Tom and Sonya a hamper to thank them for having their troubles two years ago because it meant I got you, too.”
Dropping his head, he burst out laughing. “You’re sending them a hamper?”
“Of course, I am. Thanks to them, I got you.”
He was still laughing when I wrapped my hand around his hard length and then licked the tip. It was like an off switch because he stopped laughing, and his head popped back up as he watched me swirl my tongue around it this time.
“I’m not sure if I should be excited or scared. The look in your eyes means this could go both ways.”
Smiling sweetly at him, I ran the tip of my tongue from his piercing all the way up to the top, going as slowly as I could.
“See, I read this article online about how to give the best blow job in the world,” I told him, moving my hand up and down his length now. “I’ve wanted to try out the tips and tricks they shared for the last week, but you’ve been treating me like I’m fragile. You also never let me take control, so I haven’t been able to see if they’re right.”
“That was totally a mistake on my part,” he rasped. “I take full responsibility for my stupidity.”
“I should hope so. Now lie back and let me get on with it.”
I don’t know if it’s what I did next that made him comply, but the only noises he made after it was when he was moaning or groaning.
Opening my mouth slightly, I loosely surrounded the head with my lips, then started sucking as I slowly took more of him in my mouth, deliberately keeping my hand still. The trick was to get him to focus on only one area instead of confusing him by working all of his length, so that’s what I was doing.
Every time I moved back up, I’d suck even harder and flutter my tongue along the underside of it until we got to the band of flesh under the head. Apparently it was super sensitive, so I worked my tongue harder on it, smiling to myself when his dick jumped slightly.
I knew I had him where the article had said he needed to be when his hips started to shift slightly, and that’s when I swooped down, taking as much of him into my mouth as I could. They’d also included some advice on how to stop yourself gagging, so I bent my thumb inward so that it was touching my palm and then squeezed my hand into a fist. Sure enough, when he hit the back of my throat on the next downward plunge, I didn’t gag. Using this new skill, I swallowed around the tip twice, then withdrew, sucking hard as I did it.
I wasn’t expecting the hand in my hair, gently grabbing a fistful of its length, but it just added to the thrill of what I was doing to him at that moment. When I moved downward, the slight pressure made me smirk, but what was even better was when I took more of him or used my tongue and it would spasm.
Remembering something they’d stressed was important, I used the hand that wasn’t stopping me from gagging to cup his testicles and then gently massaged them while rubbing the tip of my ring finger over the soft flesh underneath it. This was a good move because he thrust upward as I did it, and I took even more of him than I had before.
“Ari, you gotta do something,” he moaned, his hand now massaging the back of my head. “I’ll admit defeat, whatever you need.”
Pfffbt, like I needed him to admit defeat.
Employing the full arsenal of tips and tricks, I started working his length, sucking hard, using pulsing sucks, swallowing as often as I could, making him go crazy.
Knowing how close to the edge he was, I sped up the movement of my finger and sucked as hard as I could and swallowed as much as I could of him without either killing myself or pushing the gag trick past what it was possible to do. With one final hard swallow around the tip of him, he let out a yell and started coming in hard pulses. In the past, I’d have begun to stop what I was doing and back away, but they’d said that you should continue and gentle your movements even after he finished, so that’s what I did.
Well, until the hand in my hair tightened again, and he croaked, “I can’t take anymore!”
And that, ladies, is what we call the definition of feeling smug. I’d reduced a normally tightly strung man to limp, overcooked spaghetti, just by sucking him off. And he loved me enough that he’d conceded control for me.
Rising onto my knees, I trailed my hand from his hip up to his abdomen and stopped where I could feel his heart pounding as he tried to catch his breath.
“That’s my version of bow to your master,” I snickered, thinking I was being smart until he glared at me. “And you can have your control back now.”
“The second I know you’re good to go again, I’ll show you who’s the master.”
Well, shit!
Epilogue
Ariana
Six years later…
This was bad. This was so bad. I had a suspicion I knew the answer, but I really didn’t want to know what it was for real.
Which was kind of how I’d ended up being brought into the ER by my family after I did the math as Tate passed me a beer and I freaked and dropped the bottle. Of course, it couldn’t do what happened in the movies and just break and splash beer on my legs. Oh, no, this one had shattered glass shrapnel everywhere, and now I had little shards stuck in my foot and ankle and a honking big cut where the two met.
And as if that wasn’t torture enough, the beer had gotten inside them. I can’t even begin to describe how painful that was.
Using my engagement and wedding rings as fidget spinners, I stared at a mark on the ceiling and tried to figure out what the shape looked like. A duck? No, there was an extra bulge at the bottom, so it couldn’t be that… Unless it was a duck with an erection? Could they get one?
“Be careful with my baby,” Grams snapped at Chris as he removed a couple of shards on the opposite side of my foot to where Parker was working.
Amazing how five words could make you want to shit yourself, isn’t it?
“I need to get all of these out, Mrs. Townsend,” he snickered. “I’m watching out for your baby, I promise.”
Why did they keep saying the ‘b’ word? Wasn’t I suffering enough?<
br />
Then, it hit me again, the same thing I’d been suffering for five days now. “I’m going to be sick,” I gasped, reaching for the nearest thing to me and rolling onto my side to throw up into it.
“That’s my cap!” Gramps snapped as he jumped away from me to avoid the mess.
Yeah, it was his cap that had a big old hole in the back and mesh on the top to keep his head cool in the sun. Basically, I’d just used a colander to catch my puke.
“I’ll get someone in to clean it up,” Parker sighed, eyeing me carefully. “Did you eat anything you’d cooked today?”
There was my get out of jail free card, so I used it and lied out of my ass, nodding while I finished emptying the contents of my stomach into the flipping useless cap.
When I was done, I held it out. “You can have it back now.”
“I’ll pass,” Gramps muttered but took it out of my hand anyway. The thump of the lid of the trashcan followed it, and I can’t say I blamed him for throwing it out.
When Chris and Parker were done, they sat back and looked at their work. Apparently a lot of the wounds hadn’t needed stitches, but two had needed one to close them up, another one had taken three, and the big one had required nine. Awesome!
Standing up, Chris patted me on my shin. “At least when you do something, you do it properly, Ari. I’m giving you an A for effort.”
“We’ll go and let the family know she’s not going to lose her leg,” Grams sighed, grabbing Gramps by the arm and tugging him to the door. “Chris, want to come with?”
Waving bye, he followed them out, but I caught the look Grams gave me just as the door closed. She knew! I didn’t even know for sure, so I don’t know how she did, but she fucking knew.
Fuck my fucking life.
Lowering my head with a soft thud onto the mattress, I went through what I was going to do.
Get a test. Without the results, I didn’t know how much panicking I needed to do.
If it said yes, I needed to get a second test just to make sure.
Find a spot somewhere no one would find me and scream.
Forbidden Gold (Providence Gold Book 5) Page 28