Cocktales

by The Cocky Collective

  Her smile grew. “You have. And I felt the same way. Like the world—no, the universe—wouldn’t be right if we weren’t together.”

  “I never knew I could love someone again. You’re my whole world. I hate leaving you and the kids for work.”

  Charli shook her head. “I understand. I’m pretty busy here, and I’m all right with that.” She took a step back. “Are you?”

  “Am I all right with your being here with the kids and working in legal? Of course. I’m all right with your doing whatever makes you happy. I would just like to be the one doing it with you.”

  “And you are.” She reached for my hand and placed it on her flat stomach. “I wasn’t sure how to tell you...”

  My eyes widened as I fell to my knees on the floor of our shower. After peppering her stomach with soft kisses, I looked up. “You’re...?”

  She nodded as her eyes grew glassy. “We’re.”

  I tugged her toward me, caressing and kissing. It was as her head fell backward that I stood. “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “I am. I went to the doctor today.”

  “I love you.”

  She wrapped her arms around my waist. “I love you, too.”

  My grin quirked upward. “Maybe we should keep trying? I mean, I want to be confident.”

  “Oh, Nox. I’m good with continuing to try, but lack of confidence has never been your problem.”

  Some call it cocky.

  As my wife and I became one in the warm shower and again in our large bed, I didn’t care what it was called. I was home with my family, the moon shining outside, and the stars perfectly aligned.

  * * *

  If you haven’t read the Infidelity series, I promise you many twists and turns in this six-book saga before reaching this point. Don’t miss the “...sexy suspense saga that will leave you hot, bothered, and begging for more.” ~ Redbook magazine.

  About the Author

  Aleatha Romig is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author who lives in Indiana, USA. She grew up in Mishawaka, graduated from Indiana University, and is currently living south of Indianapolis. Aleatha has raised three children with her high school sweetheart and husband of over thirty years. Before she became a full-time author, she worked days as a dental hygienist and spent her nights writing. Now, when she's not imagining mind-blowing twists and turns, she likes to spend her time a with her family and friends. Her other pastimes include reading and creating heroes/anti-heroes who haunt your dreams!

  * * *

  Aleatha released her first novel, CONSEQUENCES, in August of 2011. CONSEQUENCES became a bestselling series with five novels and two companions released from 2011 through 2015. The compelling and epic story of Anthony and Claire Rawlings has graced more than half a million e-readers. Aleatha released the first of her series TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE, INSIDIOUS, in the fall of 2014. These stand-alone thrillers continue Aleatha's twisted style with an increase in heat.

  * * *

  In the fall of 2015, Aleatha moved headfirst into the world of dark romantic suspense saga with the release of BETRAYAL, the first of her five-novel INFIDELITY series that has taken the reading world by storm. She also began her traditional publishing career with Thomas and Mercer. Her books INTO THE LIGHT and AWAY FROM THE DARK were published through this mystery/thriller publisher in 2016.

  * * *

  In the spring of 2017, Aleatha released her first stand-alone, fun, and sexy romantic comedy PLUS ONE, followed by ONE NIGHT, A SECRET ONE, and ANOTHER ONE.

  * * *

  Aleatha is a "Published Author's Network" member of the Romance Writers of America and PEN America. She is represented by Kevan Lyon of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

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  Also by Aleatha Romig

  ALEATHA’S LIGHTER ONES

  Stand-alone “lighter” romances

  PLUS ONE

  A SECRET ONE

  ONE NIGHT

  INFIDELITY SERIES:

  BETRAYAL

  Book #1

  (October 2015)

  CUNNING

  Book #2

  (January 2016)

  DECEPTION

  Book #3

  (May 2016)

  ENTRAPMENT

  Book #4

  (September 2016)

  * * *

  FIDELITY

  Book #5

  (January 2017)

  RESPECT:

  A stand-alone Infidelity novel

  (January 2018)

  THE CONSEQUENCES SERIES:

  CONSEQUENCES

  (Book #1)

  Released August 2011

  TRUTH

  (Book #2)

  Released October 2012

  CONVICTED

  (Book #3)

  Released October 2013

  REVEALED

  (Book #4)

  Previously titled: Behind His Eyes Convicted: The Missing Years

  Re-released June 2014

  BEYOND THE CONSEQUENCES

  (Book #5)

  Released January 2015

  RIPPLES

  A Consequences stand-alone novel

  Released October 2017

  COMPANION READS:

  BEHIND HIS EYES—CONSEQUENCES: (Book #1.5)

  Released January 2014

  BEHIND HIS EYES—TRUTH

  (Book #2.5)

  Released March 2014

  THE LIGHT SERIES:

  Published through Thomas and Mercer

  INTO THE LIGHT

  (June 14, 2016)

  AWAY FROM THE DARK

  (October 2016)

  TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE SERIES:

  INSIDIOUS

  (All books in this series are stand-alone erotic thrillers)

  Released October 2014

  * * *

  DUPLICITY

  (Completely unrelated to book #1)

  Release TBA

  THE VAULT

  Sexy, fun stand-alone novellas showcasing the hot and steamy side of Aleatha.

  UNCONVENTIONAL

  (January 2018)

  (Originally appeared in THE VAULT anthology)

  UNEXPECTED

  (Coming August of 2018)

  All: A Grip & Bris Story

  Kennedy Ryan

  Dear Reader:

  If you have not read the GRIP Series—FLOW, GRIP & STILL—this story contains spoilers.

  * * *

  Please consider starting the series for FREE with FLOW.

  Grip, a prominent musician and social activist, and his manager-wife Bristol, navigate the life that's all they ever wanted, and more than they bargained for.

  Copyright © 2018 by Kennedy Ryan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  One

  Grip

  I hate waking up to an empty bed.

  Scratch that.

  I hate waking up without my wife. I draw that distinction because there was a time when I loved stretching from one corner of a California king to the other. After growing up in tiny, cramped spaces—which were sometimes shared with various family members, depending on their “situation” at the time—when I had my own space, my own bed, I luxuriated in it. But it only took sleeping with Bristol once to make any bed she’s not in feel just . . . empty.

  It isn’t even light outside yet. Shadows cloak our bedroom. I press the little light on the cheap ass watch Bristol won for me so many years ago. This thing has been to the shop a lot, but it’s still ticking enough to show me it’s four in the morning. I’ve only been asleep two hours after a long night at the studio.

  With the drapes drawn, barely a sliver of moonlight penetrates the darkness. I caress the rumpled, stil
l-warm spot where Bristol should be and stare up at the ceiling. What my eyes can’t see, my memory paints on the dark canvas overhead. A Ferris wheel with us at the top sharing our first kiss, Bristol’s short, sweet breaths and urgent hands intoxicating me. I see Bristol, gorgeous against a backdrop of scarlet sand in the Dubai desert. Bristol under a night sky spilling snowflakes like secrets, and me on my knees, asking her—shit, begging her—to marry me. I see her standing in a mountaintop chapel with majestic, white-capped peaks outdone by the devotion shining from her eyes as I lay my heart at her feet, verse by verse in the vows I wrote for her. I see her weeping, broken, devastated on the hardest day of our lives. And I see her joy-lit face when she gave birth to our children

  Our life together is panoramic, stretched wide in ugliness and pain, vast in love and passion. I wouldn’t trade one minute of it and I savor every day we have together. Not everyone gets to spend this life with their soul mate. Some walk all their days with half a heart, with the ache of something missing. I know what that feels like, and I hope to never feel it again.

  Despite the exhaustion weighing me down, I swing my legs over the side of the bed, scrubbing a weary hand over my face. Not bothering to grab sweatpants, I walk from our bedroom and down the hall in my briefs. First stop is Nina’s room. Our little girl sleeps like a log. She zips all over this house with boundless energy, a two-year-old tornado, leaving a trail of toys, soiled clothes, and hair bows in her wake. Every night it’s a fight to get her to bed. Once she’s asleep, though, not a peep.

  Her nightlight illuminates the plump curve of her cheeks and the soft cloud of dark, curly hair fanned out on her pillow. I draw a sharp breath through the emotion tightening my chest. What I had with Bristol was all-encompassing before, but having Nina added another dimension to our love, to our lives, that I couldn’t have conceived before my daughter. Words are my creative currency, but this feeling defies words, goes beyond the scope of what I can articulate. It didn’t exist until this little girl did. It was born with her. Family has always been important to me, but this is another level. The people under this roof are my whole world. Not the Grammys or the fame or the money—none of it counts for shit without them.

  I’m still smiling about my daughter’s out-like-a-light state when I pad down the hall to find Bristol. She’s in the nursery feeding our five-month-old son Martin. I hope I never get used to this, to the way my heart contracts when I see her breastfeeding. Or cooking dinner. Doing Nina’s hair. Brushing her teeth. Putting on makeup. Practicing yoga poses. Bristol doesn’t have to be doing anything monumental to make my heart stop. Just the fact that she’s in my life, the center of my world, makes me count my blessings.

  She looks up from her seat in the glider and smiles at me as I lean one shoulder against the doorframe.

  “Hi,” she says, her voice and eyes warm and soft. I smile back but don’t speak. I just take her in. She recently cut her hair to just above her shoulders, and it halos around her face in dark waves and coppery streaks. Martin has fallen asleep at her breast, idly suckling every few seconds even though he isn’t awake to enjoy it.

  But I’m enjoying it.

  Bris wore one of my shirts to bed, which she does on purpose because she knows how damn sexy I think it is. The buttons open to her navel, and one panel of the shirt covers her left side, but the other falls away to bare her right shoulder and breast where Martin’s lucky little mouth wraps around a nipple.

  “Hi,” I finally reply, my voice a little hoarse and my dick stiff in my briefs.

  “I tried to stay awake,” she whispers. “But I was too tired. How’d the recording session go?”

  “Not great.” I push out a frustrated breath. “Everything feels forced.”

  I walk deeper into the room until I reach them, bending to take Martin from her, careful not to wake him. Her nipple, distended, shiny and wet, pops from his mouth. I lean down to her ear, sucking the lobe between my lips.

  “Grip.” Bristol’s breath stutters and her eyes drift closed.

  Holding Martin to my chest, I trail kisses over her jaw and down to her collarbone.

  “Go wait for me,” I say, my voice low and lust-rough. “I got him.”

  She stands and quickly leaves the room while I lay my son in his crib.

  He squirms and twists as soon as his little body hits the mattress.

  “Missed you today, handsome boy,” I say softly, pushing thick curls off his round face.

  His eyes, dark like mine where Nina’s are gray like Bristol’s, snap open. I catch a curse, hoping he goes right back to sleep so I can go fuck his mother. Our gazes lock in the lamplight for a few seconds before his long lashes flutter, his head lolls to the side, and he falls back asleep.

  Who would believe such a little person would require so much work? So much vigilance? Bristol is back in the office for half days, but the rest of the time she’s here with Nina and Martin. I’m here when I can be, and a nanny, whom Bristol vetted like the FBI, helps for a few hours a week. Sarah, Bristol’s assistant, is at our house all the time working. Bris is constantly in Zoom meetings and on teleconference calls. She works harder than ever.

  I help, of course, but I’m preparing for the next album and a tour. I’ve been more absent than I like to be. On the surface, everything is working, but there’s a restlessness I’ve been trying to ignore so I can go through the motions of managing this complicated life of ours. I miss my time with Bris. I need more of her. If I sound like a whiny, needy wuss, I don’t really care. If there is one thing I’m in tune with, it’s my most base needs. And there is nothing more essential, more fundamental to my happiness, than my wife.

  When I make it to our bedroom, I’m still considering her heavy workload, the time she devotes to our kids, and most of all—most selfishly of all—how little time I’ve had with her since Martin was born.

  Those thoughts fly away on a horny breeze when I see Bristol naked in Lotus pose in the middle of our bed. Her breasts are bigger. Ass is fuller. She’s always been slim, and still is, but there’s a ripeness to her body after Martin that is sexy as fuck. She keeps trying to Pilate it away and yoga it off, but I love it.

  “Did Martin wake up?” she asks.

  Our bedside lamps casts light over the supple lines of her body, showing me the wide, sensual curve of her mouth. The thick, rosy lips exposed between her legs. The delicately muscled plane of her stomach. The small scar from the C-section she had with our first child.

  “He’s asleep, yeah.” I stand at the side of the bed and brush my thumb under her eyes, evidence of just how hard she’s been working and how little rest she’s getting. “Which is what you need to do.”

  I should let her sleep. Guilt reaches every part of me . . . except my dick, which obstinately remains erect, undaunted and unsoftened by guilt.

  “What I need to do,” she says, eyes locked with mine while her hand latches on to the pole poking through my briefs, “is take care of my husband.”

  I haul air through my nostrils and expel it harshly through my mouth at her touch. I train my eyes above tit level because, if I look any lower, I’ll be all over her, all up in her, ramming from behind, from the side, from any angle I can get it.

  Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

  I mentally repeat the mantra like I’m walking a tightrope.

  “I’m all right, babe.” I lie through gritted teeth. “Really. Get some sleep.”

  Disappointment flashes across her pretty features, quickly followed by determination. She leans back on one elbow and spreads her legs, slipping a hand between them.

  “You go on to sleep, Grip,” she says, dropping her head back and moaning. “I’m just gonna come at least once before I turn in.”

  Motherfucker.

  Literally.

  Without acknowledging her dirty trick, I grab behind her knees and drag her to the edge of the bed. Her husky laugh floats around us in the dimly lit room.

  “Changed your mind?” Her eyelids
fall to half-mast over smoky gray eyes.

  “You changed it for me,” I reply, tipping one side of my mouth. “Touching my pussy.”

  “Your pussy?” A lift of her brows challenges my possessiveness.

  I shrug and drop to my knees, putting my face on level with the pussy in question.

  “You be the judge,” I say before lowering my head, widening her thighs with a press of my hands, then spreading her lips with my fingers and burying my tongue in her wetness.

  We both groan.

  There is nothing like this pussy. I run my nose along the slick slit before swiping my tongue through her juices.

  “Oh, good Lord,” Bristol breathes, rolling her hips into my greedy mouth. “Fuck, yes, Grip. Don’t stop.”

  To quote GRiZMATiK . . . as we proceed.

  Two fingers plunge inside, and I suck on her clit. She bucks against my face and loops her long legs over my shoulders, digging her heels into my back. I tug until her ass hangs just off the bed and she’s supported by the grip I have on her thighs. I devour her, table manners discarded. Grunting, slurping. She comes once, and I want seconds.

  “Grip, stop!” She gasps. “I can’t take . . . please.”

  “Whose pussy is it, Bris?” I ask, biting one plump lip and then the other.

  Silence. Stubborn woman makes this so much damn fun.