by Imani King
I know that will come in time, that it has to. But for now, it’s off my mind.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“This is pretty good, for a thrown together Christmas meal,” she says, sitting on the hearth by the fire. I lugged in fifty pounds of firewood so we could keep the fire going all of today and tomorrow, but hell, it was worth it to see the smile on her face after we decorated our very basic Christmas tree and started a fire.
“Oh honey, this is Christmas Eve dinner. We barely got a thing to eat tomorrow. I think we’ll have to live on eggs and potatoes.”
She rolls her eyes and laughs as she stuffs a bite of turkey into her mouth and nibbles at the macaroni and cheese I made instead of stuffing. Turns out, neither of us likes stuffing a damn bit, and I always have six different kinds of cheese lying around. Like just about everything with us, that coincidence turned out real good. Everything except for that thing about her leaving. That I can’t wrap my head around. It seems like she’s been here for years, but maybe it’s just that my mind wants to see her that way.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe we both need the time.
We sit in a comfortable silence and polish off the eggnog. In the light of a good buzz with the fire roaring on beside us, the tree looks almost professional save for the lack of ornaments. It was a damn fine pine, and I thought of her every moment when I was cutting it down and bringing it back up to the house. For her, just for her. The turmoil and torment of the last few days made me realize that our plan for having no Christmas at all was a terrible idea.
There are so many things I want to say to her. I want to tell her that I don’t give a damn that she can’t have babies. That I’d go to the ends of the earth to be with her, that I’d sit through a thousand more fertility treatments, adopt ten foster children, talk to all the damn surrogates in the area, or bring home every dog and cat at the animal shelter. Because whatever configuration we’re in, I know we’re family.
But I don’t say anything because I’ve already pushed her too hard, brought her in too quick, never once stopping to ask a damn thing about her past, about what she wanted in her future. I saw it all too quick--her staying her permanently, waking up next to me each morning, her body fitting into mine. And hell, without even forming the thought, I jumped to building a family with her without her consent.
For a moment, I wonder if there’s a chance with all the fooling around we’ve done. But no. Her body has told her again and again that there aren’t any chances, in the rudest and most inconsiderate way possible. A piercing sadness fills my chest. It’s a shame that a body I love so well could bring so much heavy sadness to the woman sitting next to me.
After we’re done eating, we remain silent, and she tugs me down to the rug in front of the fireplace, kissing me and straddling my lap like a woman desperate, possessed. I know this habit. We’ve fallen into it over and over again since we first met, clutching at each other’s bodies until we meet that cascade of pleasure, lost in each other’s skin.
She leans back and starts taking off her button-down shirt, releasing one button at a time until she reaches the last one and the shirt falls to the floor. I put my finger under the strap of her bra and pull it down as she reaches around and drops her bra to the floor. Cadence draws in a breath, the sound sharp and sudden. That one sound makes my cock instantly hard beneath my jeans, and my eyes search over her body, taking in every inch of her. Acting on pure instinct, I throw her to the floor in front of me and rip off her jeans, sticky and sappy from decorating the pine tree, throwing them aside so that they land right next to the hearth.
I pull down her panties and crumple the silky material in my hand, thinking about where they’ve been all day, about what I’ve wanted since the first moment I laid eyes on her. Cadence reaches for me and tugs at my shirt, but I push her back to the floor again and spread her legs.
“You’re not getting away with that right now, city princess. You’re what I want, and I’ll have you exactly how I please.” Taking her hips in my hands, I pull her toward me and spread her thighs, kneeling down until I’m tasting her skin, flicking my tongue over her thighs, and deeper, my tongue slipping against her wetness. Sucking, nibbling, pulling her closer, I plunge my tongue inside of her until she screams out my name and writhes against me. I wait until I feel her muscles tensing against me and releasing, over and over, in the distinct pattern I’ve come to know over the past weeks. When I release her, she’s glowing with her release, arms and legs akimbo on the rug.
“You’re the prettiest damn woman I’ve ever seen, Cadence.”
“Stand up,” she sighs, so soft I barely hear her. “Stand up.” She pulls herself up to her knees and takes my hands in hers, pushing me to my feet.
“What’s all this?”
She looks up at me with her rich, deep brown eyes, fluttering with the lust she holds inside. “This is just how I want you.”
She kneels in front of me, completely naked, her round breasts high and soft and inviting, her hips a perfect reflection of the curves that I see there. There’s no denying it. I’m already hard, my cock aching for release, balls tense and at the ready. My cock twitches again as I think about her riding me the other morning, poised over me and slipping my length inside of her completely bare. She’s the first woman I’ve taken totally bare, and everything about it feels more real when I take her. My hard cock, swelling inside of her, skin against skin, heat against heat. And god, when I come deep inside that pussy, the pleasure of it is uncontrollable. Like I’ll never recover. Like I don’t ever want to.
We’ve fucked so much in the last week while we’ve been celebrating and saying goodbye that I shouldn’t be this ready. But damn, when it comes to this woman and her deep brown eyes, that round ass, her sweet dark nipples against my tongue... my cock doesn’t remember how much it’s been used. It just wants her again--her lips, her hot, tight wetness milking me dry. Her sweet voice when she begs for more, the taste of her essence when I dive between her legs and make her come.
Kneeling before me now, she unbuttons my jeans and lets them fall to the floor.
“I thought we were watching movies or doing something wholesome tonight, Cadence.”
“Can’t resist,” she murmurs, taking my already hard cock in her hand and stroking me with expert speed and rhythm. I look down at her and think about how lucky I am to have had this woman in my life for even a moment. She looks like a pure, sweet princess.
Her lips fall open, and for the first time today, I notice that she’s wearing red lip gloss that brings out the shape and softness of her mouth. She wraps her lips around the head of my cock, leaving a tiny smear of lip gloss at the base of my shaft. For some reason, that makes me even harder, gives me the reflex of pushing forward just a bit so that the underside of my shaft makes contact with her tongue.
She looks up at me, locking her eyes with mine as she licks me slowly, her movements slow and graceful. Her pink tongue darts out as she tastes the head of my cock, licking around out while her hand remains solid at the base of my shaft. She envelops me with that mouth again, wet and perfect and hot against my skin.
I groan when she takes me in further, and gently, I place my hand at the back of her head. If I didn’t, I think I might fall over with the pleasure of it. The sounds she makes while she works me, sliding my cock in and out of her mouth, are like sex itself--subtle and erotic and completely and purely her own. Her eyelids flutter closed in pleasure as she sucks me, and I watch as she moves that free hand down to the dark thatch that leads to her pussy. And she touches herself there, moaning as she increases her speed, the vibrations of her voice nearly throwing me over the edge into oblivion.
At the last moment, just before I’m about to come in her beautiful mouth, I pull her away and kneel down next to her in front of the fire.
“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?” She looks at me with hooded eyes, desire written all over her face.
“I just want to come inside of you as often as I can, a
s much as I can. Before you leave.” Even though my words are gentle, my actions are frenzied, almost desperate. I rip my shirt off and push her to the floor as she gasps, the sound delicate and lovely.
My cock throbs insistently as I bring her to her hands and knees on the sheepskin rug. She turns and looks at me, eyes locking with mine. “Come on, baby,” she sighs. “I want you to come inside of me too. Now.”
There’s a begging whine in her voice, and it makes me want her even more. I move toward her and take her by the hips, pressing my cock between her thighs and rubbing it over her slit until she cries out with pleasure. She’s dripping wet, and I thrust myself against her, the head of my cock meeting her clit. She whimpers, needy, desperate, and I’m unable to hold back any longer.
Her fingers clutch against the fabric of the sheepskin, and I slide myself inside of her, filling her fully, without hesitation. My hands slide over her hips and grip her there as I start to ride her, slowly at first but then with building speed.
“We were made to fit together, baby,” I say, filling her again and again and listening to that perfect whine her voice makes when I thrust all the way inside. I can feel that I’m hitting her inside just how I should, that she’s getting closer and closer, the muscles of her pussy gripping me as I push deep inside.
“Yes, Rowan, yes,” she mumbles. I relish the sound of my name on her lips, and I slam into her harder, my hips meeting hers with rhythmic consistency. I think she’s saying my name over and over again, but everything starts to fade out around me again, and I might be making anything up in my mind. Beneath my hands, Cadence’s body starts to shiver and tense, the muscles in her perfect ass visibly tightening as she starts to come hard, pussy clenching against my cock.
She cries out, low and long, and she throbs, wet and hot, around my length. I think her orgasm might be fading, but another one seems to follow suit, and I continue to thrust inside of her until my body starts to tense and then let go. My own muscles begin to tense, and I pump deep inside until the tension threatens to take my whole body over. After a drawn out moment that seems like eternity, I thrust in her one final time and come deep inside, shaking and shuddering against her.
Sweeping my hands up under her body, I cup her perfect breasts and run my thumbs over her nipples as I push inside of her one last time, filling her totally with my come. I let my body fall against hers, and she pulls me to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. The fire crackles on beside us, a soundtrack to the desperate need of our two bodies.
Lying like that, we fell asleep together as the fire crackled and sputtered, finally dying down sometime in the night. I think of the dinner we cobbled together, the tree we put up with its half-assed tangle of lights.
And I wonder if there’s a man alive who had a Christmas Eve as perfect as mine. I’d be willing to bet not, at least not in New Mexico.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I’ll see if I can get you scheduled for the 31st if you want to go,” he says.
“There’s no if. I need to go. Everything in me wishes I could stay, wishes I could repeat yesterday over and over again.”
We’re sitting by the fire again, listening to it crackle on, some of the logs wet from the snow popping and hissing as they burn. It’s Christmas morning, and Rowan is drinking whiskey, and we’re eating bread slathered with hand churned butter from down the road.
A girl could get used to this. The peaceful, quiet days. No cars, no subways, no sirens wailing at four in the morning.
I want to open my mouth to say all of this, but I know it’s not right, not right now. Maybe Rowan *will come to New York in February, as he’s said he will. Maybe he’ll show up, and we’ll have the best weekend we’ve ever had. And maybe he’ll ship me back out here and wine and dine me like he’s been doing, make me fall deeper and deeper in love with him. But that’s a lot of maybes. And New York is waiting for me, with its bills and loose ends, with Anna, who’s been texting me and freaking out about the art studio. There’s a whole life there, and the life here doesn’t quite seem real, not yet.
And it’s a lot of maybes, for someone I barely even know.
I watch Rowan as he eats the bread, crumbs falling on his plaid shirt that shows off his sense of cowboy style.
Funny how even billionaires spill crumbs on their shirts. Seems like he should be crumb proof, but underneath the big paychecks and guest houses and companies he owns, he’s a man like any other. A man who can cook, but a man nonetheless. And I’m expecting a lot from a man I barely know.
“I wish for that too.” He looks down into his whiskey and swirls it, then takes a drink.
It’s been so long since either of us has said anything that I’ve almost forgotten what we were talking about, so lost I am in my thoughts. “But this isn’t normally how people get together. You don’t *know me--“
“I know enough to know that I love you.” His gaze turns to me, and he finishes off the last of the whiskey. “I know enough that I want to convince you to stay with me, to see where this goes.” He takes my hand in his and traces his fingers over my palm. “Maybe if the necklace didn’t work—and I see that was silly now--you’re not so much a necklace girl, are you?”
I shake my head, trying to pry the words out of my mind to respond. But instead, I’m silent, my mouth ever so slightly.
“I was thinking of turning the guest house into an art studio. I could get skylights put in, and we can put in a polished concrete floor that could take a lot of paint. The whole front wall, we could knock that thing out and put floor-to-ceiling windows and—”
“Rowan.”
“And, I think we could probably put in an office where the bedroom is, keep the kitchenette. You could work with Star on some of the projects she’s lined up with the art collaborative. And I’ve got some connections in El Paso, and in Austin. We could get you a show with some of those big-canvass paintings you do--“
“Rowan,” I say again, holding his hand in mine so that I can almost feel his excitement. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever offered me. Really. But--“
“I know. Maybe I’ll keep the idea on the back burner. That okay?” He smiles and he butters another slice of bread. “I guess I’ll go check on the drive and see if any of the plowing I did yesterday has helped the snow melt. I nod and lie back on the sofa, lost in the thoughts of the art studio and how it might feel to go there every day. I smile and pet Eliza, who stretches out in a blissful sleep on the top of the couch cushions. As soon as I start petting her, Eliza’s head pops up, and she lets out a low growl, looking toward the foyer. I hear the door opening and closing, and then Rowan talking in a low voice.
“No need to get bent out of shape, Eliza,” I say, stifling a yawn. But Eliza keeps on growling, her ears perking up like she hears something strange. “It’s probably just the horse guy. Rowan cleared the road enough for him to get through, and the highways should be fine--“
Eliza gets up and slinks toward the door. I get up and follow her, my heart beating harder than it should. Because it probably is just one of the workers that come to Rowan’s house. It’s probably just that. But I hear Rowan’s voice rumbling on, rising and falling in angry, frustrated tones. By the time I reach the front door, Eliza is barking angrily, and I can see Rowan moving his hands in broad gestures through the glass of the front door.
And as I stand there in my paint stained jeans and the purple tunic I wore when I came here, I can see the person Rowan is talking to. There’s a care parked by the path that leads up to the door, despite the ice that still sits on the ground.
It’s not one of Rowan’s staff. It’s not Star or any one of his friends from the Foundation. No, the woman that Rowan is talking to is long and lanky, and skinny as a rail. She’s wearing an impractical but sleek leather jacket, jeans that probably cost $500, and her hair falls in perfect blond waves over her shoulders. I’ve never seen a picture before, but I don’t need to see one to know that this is Joanna, the woman that held Rowan down
for two years, promising him marriage and a family, and hurting him at every turn.
The worst part of my brain speaks to me as soon as I see her cold green eyes staring at Rowan.