by Imani King
“You’re mine,” he growls. “Say it.”
“I’m yours, Saint.”
“Damn right you are.” He’s still standing there, stroking himself, and I lick my lips, pulling myself off of the bed and up onto my knees. I have the impulse, almost uncontrollable, to taste him right now. I take his cock in my hands and look up at him, stroking him until there’s a small bead of precum at his tip. I lick it away, savoring his taste and then taking his head into my mouth, flicking my tongue over it and listening to his groans, like music.
His groans are like music to my ears, his fingers tangling in my hair like he’s desperate for me. “Your mouth is so good, beautiful. So goddamn good.”
Gently, he pulls my face toward him, the head of his cock pushed to the back of his throat. I swallow, and he shudders in response, his grip on my hair growing tighter.
As much as I want him to come inside of me, I want to taste him in my mouth too. Acting on instinct, I bring my hand to his shaft and move it up and down at a steady pace, until he’s groaning and shaking. I can feel how hard he is, how close he is to exploding in my mouth.
And then he does, his cock jerking and letting go all at once in my mouth, filling me with the salty-sweet taste of him. I moan softly and swallow it, the action somehow bringing me closer to the edge, my sex pulsing, dripping with wetness.
When he pulls away, I notice he’s still hard. “I’m not done with you,” he mutters.
He growls and steps up to the bed, pulling my legs tight around him, bending over me and putting his mouth to my breasts at once. His tongue flicks over my nipples until my back arches up from the bed, and words pour out of my mouth, all of them begging him to take me then and there.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Helena. What made you think for a second that I’d want to be with anyone but you?” He whispers the words in my ear then takes my earlobe into his mouth, biting down gently. Before I can respond, his lips are trailing down to my stomach, his tongue traces a line down to my stomach and then lower. But I lift his head up, those sparkling blue eyes on mine.
“There’s time for that later. Right now, I want to feel you inside of me.”
He groans in response and reaches his fingers between my legs, feeling my slickness. “Shit, you weren’t kidding. You’re so wet.”
Moaning, I pull him closer into me, guiding his cock closer to my sex. “I want you inside me now.” I take his cock in my hand and guide it between my legs, pressing the head against my entrance.
“So wet, so sweet.” He groans and pushes himself inside of me in one swift motion, filling me so quickly he takes my breath away. As long as I live, I might not get used to this man’s size. But I think I can at least try—every day from now until forever. It’s at that moment I realize I’ve been holding onto an idea of myself that was never truly real. I thought I was meant to be alone, that I’d grow old without anyone who would love me. I had Trixie, and that was enough. But when this man takes me in his arms, I’m overcome with need—even when I thought we were done, I still needed him. With him, it feels like my life is complete.
My sex throbs around him, pain mixed with pleasure. He pauses, brushing my hair away from my face, kissing my forehead and taking me in his arms. “Don’t stop,” I whisper. Make me numb, make everything else disappear.”
Saint sighs in pleasure and takes my legs around his waist, wrapping me tight around his body. “You feel so good, so tight. It’s all I can do not to come inside of you...” He pauses, moving his cock back to my entrance and plunging inside of me again, the top of his hips grinding against my clit as he slams into me. “Right... fucking... now.”
I cry out, pulsing arousal sweeping through my body. I can’t form a complete thought, can’t quite comprehend anything but the sensation of being completely filled.
This man—who I love—burying himself inside of me, making me feel things I’ve never felt with anyone else.
His mouth on my lips and neck.
The rhythm of his body thrusting into mine, growing quicker and quicker as he loses control and loses himself deep inside of me.
“You’re so tight, my love. My sweet love. I want you to come for me, baby.”
I whimper. He’s doing that thing where he angles his body to come in contact with my clit each time. Combined with the feeling of him entering me again and again, stretching me to my limits with each movement, I’m close, so close.
I open my mouth to speak, but instead, I moan, the sound of it low and guttural, like the sound of a feral animal. I wonder if it’s my mating call—and I’d told him to be quiet. Realizing how loud I’ve been, I clamp my hand over my mouth as he pushes into me again and again, making missionary position on my bed in my apartment feel like the dirtiest thing I’ve ever done.
My body starts to reach its height, light and energy exploding through my veins, reaching out to every pore and cell. My orgasm explodes through me with an intensity it hasn’t before—because before, I hadn’t let go. I hadn’t fully submitted to the idea that I was in love with this man. I might have said it, but now I’m sure it’s returned. I’m sure it’s forever. In that instant, I let go, and the room spins out around us so that there’s nothing left but me and him. He keeps pushing into me, groaning as he rides me through my climax. Saint Corbett kisses me long and hard, groaning into my mouth, his body tensing against mine. There’s a sweet rush of heat inside of me when he comes deep inside.
He kisses me again and pulls me next to him. Later we close our eyes, and we wake in a tangle of body parts and bedsheets, just before we hear any echoes of movement from Trixie’s room.
And I can’t help thinking that we’ll wake up like this forever, each day better than the last.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Two and a Half Months Later
“Oh here, take a look at this.” Helena gives me the side eye as she slips a piece of paper across the table. The marble surface of the damn thing seems out of place with Helena and Trixie sitting here. I make a mental note to get Stacy to buy something that Trixie and any other kids can do homework on without feeling like they’re sitting in a museum. Marble isn’t my style anyway. My daddy might have made money somewhere along the way, but I grew up in Texas with a bigass farmhouse table. We need one of those.
“Hold on one sec, Hel.” I make a note of the table in my phone and click it off. Trixie is kicking her legs under the table and absentmindedly eating cereal with tiny bits of milk dribbling down her chin. There are boxes just about everywhere in the dining room, and it’s driving all three of us insane. But there’s a house in Santa Barbara waiting for us—not her apartment, not my penthouse, but a real house with a giant backyard and a big swimming pool and windows that look out all the way to wine country. I take the paper and smile, thinking about it. Trixie had danced and danced that day we saw it.
That was the first day Trixie called me Dad, and I cried, more than just a little. We all did when we found that place.
And this morning—well, this morning, we’re getting married.
Helena just smiles as I pick up the paper. She looks coy as all hell, which is pretty much how she looked when she signed the marriage certificate on Thursday and handed it back to me. So whatever is on this paper must be pretty good.
When she looks at me, she puts one finger up to her lips and very quietly whispers, “Shhh.” Trixie doesn’t look up, but Helena cocks her head Trixie’s way.
Hands shaking, I look at the paper.
Female, 34 years, 3 weeks and 5 days pregnant (estimated.) HCG result Wednesday: 343. HCG result Friday: 750. HCG WNL. Schedule dating ultrasound for eight weeks.
Pregnant.
Helena?
My heart races, and I look over to the little girl who just started calling me Dad. It was far more natural for her than it was for either of us, but hell, all of this stuff is still shocking as anything I’ve ever known. Not shocking like, I don’t want this kind of thing to be happening, but s
hocking like, Holy damn, ain’t life different all of a sudden?
“Pregnant?” I whisper. Helena makes a cutting motion across her throat and gestures to Trixie.
I nod, chest clenching tight, and look back down at the paper. “Uh, what does WNL mean, Hel?”
“That doesn’t spell anything,” Trixie says, finally looking up. “There aren’t any vowels.”
Helena bursts out laughing, and she laughs so hard that I finally see tears coming out of her eyes. “It means—Oh God—I just can’t with this kid sometimes.”
“Hel, come on. I’m over here with my fists clenched up, holding my breath. What does this damn medical abbreviation mean?”
“Darn, Dad. You need to say darn. Even ‘darn’ is a word we should only use at home.”
I reach over and put my hand on my daughter’s. “I’m sorry, honey. You’re right. I’m not very good at controlling my mouth when your mother can’t stop laughing. You’re just so darn smart, little lady.”
Helena snorts again. “It means ‘within normal limits.’ I had to look it up. I looked the numbers up, too. They’re normal.” She throws her hands up. “Normal.”
“Can I get up now?” Trixie looks between us, clearly sensing this is an adult conversation she doesn’t care for.
“If you ask nicely, you can certainly get up. But not before then.” Helena reaches out and runs her fingers through one of Trixie’s golden-brown curls. There’s blond all along the top of her head from being out in the sun all spring, and I bet it’ll just get blonder this summer. Something about that makes me want to swoon. I never knew what it was like to see yourself in someone else, but Trixie made all that possible in one beautiful heartbeat.
“May I please be excused?” Trixie chirps, and Helena nods.
The girl darts off to her bedroom here, and Helena calls after her. “Put on your bridesmaid dress! And call me if you need help.” There’s a long pause, and we hear Trixie’s half-hearted “Okay!” from the back of the penthouse.
“Normal,” I repeat.
“Normal as anything going,” Helena says. “But I’m not even sick yet, so don’t get your hopes up. It’ll be February before I’m actually going to have a real live baby. A lot can happen between now and then...”
I wave my hand at her and put the paper down gingerly on the table, like it’s a thing that could possibly break. “Ain’t nothin’ happenin’ to a healthy-as-hell Corbett baby,” I say with a Texas twang. “Look at that girl right back there. She’s about as healthy as the day is long, and she looks just like me—”
“She does not.” Helena pauses. “She looks like both of us.”
My throat tightens again. Maybe it’s because I caught myself swooning over my daughter earlier, or maybe it’s because the most beautiful woman in the world is sitting across from me in a basically unused formal dining room, surrounded by boxes of my stuff. And I’m marrying her. She’s giving this stupid-as-a-fool, playboy-type, foot-in-mouth kind of man a chance at being the happiest person on the planet because she has some confounded notion that she loves me.
“And this baby, well, this baby might too,” I mutter. “Like a family. A real one.”
“We were already that, Saint. But I’m glad I get to do it with you this time.” She walks around the table and sits on my lap. I can’t help but get a little turned on because here’s this gorgeous woman who doesn’t know just how pretty she is, and I’ve gotten her pregnant twice. And in a few seconds, she’s going to go get on a silky white dress she thinks I haven’t snuck a glance at, and I’ll be taking her off to Maui for a month. I only hope she doesn’t get so sick she can’t enjoy it. Like she’s reading my mind, she leans in and whispers in my ear. “Don’t think because I’m pregnant now, I don’t want any more of you. Because I always will.”
I’d have my way with her right now, except I’d really like to be on time to the courthouse I had emptied out for us, and I’d really rather not miss out on the chance to turn Helena Landon into Mrs. Helena Corbett. So I settle for a kiss and lay one on her right good before she goes and puts on that slinky dress that doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
***
Later, when we’re leaving Los Angeles—for what I hope is the last time in a very long time—Helena and Trixie are sitting in the back of a separate limo, and we’re all speeding up to the Santa Barbara courthouse, the loveliest place to get married in all of California. The highway is somehow clear and clean at this time of day, even though it’s usually loaded with cars and people headed to the beach and other parts north.
My life feels like it’s expanding out before me, like it’s bigger than it ever has been. Even though my company just took off and my life is full of all the things that money could by me, the things that money could never buy me have filled my life with far greater riches than I could acquire from any investors.
When we arrive at the courthouse, the fog has started to wear off, and the sun is shining, beating down on the stucco walls and the fountains that surround the building. The photographer Stacy hired meets us there and takes pictures of Helena in her slinky dress that hugs each curve and somehow still looks incredibly classy. Trixie twirls and tells her mother she looks like Cinderella, and my heart fills to the brim, almost exploding.
Everything seems to pass in a haze. Nothing in my life has ever felt this way before, but this is different. Inside, the minister greets us.
“You all ready to get hitched?” He looks at us with kind eyes and flips through the basic vows we sent him. Even though many people in my family have decided on big weddings costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, Helena and I know that’s not us.
“We are,” Helena says, grasping my hand. “We’ve been ready for a while.” She glances at me. “And we’ll be together for the rest of our lives.”
“We’re ready,” I repeat. It’s all I can say, and I know for certain those words are the absolute truth.
Hand in hand, Trixie walking beside us, we head into the empty courthouse. Light filters through the tall windows and reflects off the painted tile, making everything around us look like a dream. Before we know it, our vows are being exchanged, and I’m promised to this woman for the rest of my life.
In the shortest amount of time, my life has changed the most it ever has, and I’m walking from the courthouse holding hands with my wife and our beautiful daughter. And for the second time in one year, she’ll make me a father again. This time, I’ll be there to hold her hand. This time, I’ll be there to hold our baby, make sure she’s fed and cherished and loved by two parents. Trixie would have been lucky no matter what—one of Helena is worth far more than most sets of parents in the world. I’m the lucky one here, the one who gets to do all of these things I would have missed out on in my life.
We walk out into the day and make it to my private jet in time for lunch. Beatrix and her mother are changed into their vacation clothes, and we’re in the air to Hawaii within twenty minutes. All we have to do is wait out the next months for the baby to arrive.
And I’m certain nothing could go wrong before then.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Late January, 2017
“There’s too much baby stuff,” Saint says, wading through the living room of our new house in Santa Barbara. There are some artifacts from his bachelor days, but the white couches and white carpets are still back in his Los Angeles penthouse that we keep saying we’re going to visit—but we haven’t needed or wanted to for two months now. And I’m far too big to be going anywhere at this point. “Did cavemen need newborn snuzzlers or swaddles? Or this—whatever this thing is?”
He points to the jumparoo that his mother sent, the one with all the bells and whistles we probably don’t need. Next to it is the expensive, solid wood high chair and the equally expensive deluxe play yard. It is a bit crowded, but he’s just walking through all of the stuff, laughing. I look toward the window and say a silent prayer of thanks that my first child is six now, and she can play by hers
elf in the fenced back yard. Today, she’s planting seeds for a spring garden—the tomatoes and carrots and peppers will probably all come up in random ways, too close together or too far apart. But as anyone might guess, I’m far too huge to care.
“Nope,” I say. “I don’t think cavemen needed any of that. And that’s a jumparoo. It’s out so your mom can admire it when she gets here. And the high chair is out so Nicholas and his family can check it out when he arrives. And the play yard Christian’s wife sent—”
“I get it. I get it.” Saint starts folding the large mound of clean baby clothes, nervously shoving each piece into a basket.
“Matilda can get that when she comes this afternoon. No one is showing up until tomorrow morning, Saint. Relax. I’m relaxing.”
“You’re thirty-seven weeks pregnant, and my entire family is coming to California tomorrow. They’ve never visited me. Not once. Not all at once like this.” Saint’s hair seems even messier than usual, but I know by now that there’s not even a little chance he’ll get a haircut before everyone starts coming in from out of town. “I’m the one that didn’t go to Nick’s wedding, the one that left home at seventeen and got into trouble with—well everyone I encountered. My father had to come bail me out of jail before I went to college. It’s a wonder they still took me. I’m the one who—”
“You’re the one who took your sweet time figuring out what you wanted.” I lean back on the new blue couch we had made for the family room, and I kick my feet up on Saint’s coffee table. It has rings of water stains on it, and a trace of pink crayon down the side. “That’s all.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted until it was right in front of me.” He’s still folding the baby clothes, though he’s slowed down some at this point. So many people have bought us clothes, even though Saint has enough money to get Stacy to go out and buy an entire life’s wardrobe for the newest Corbett baby. It seems that each of Saint’s brothers was waiting for him to get his act together and settle down and that everyone in my life had been waiting for the same. There’s so much happiness and love surrounding this child, I can’t see any negatives coming our way. And that’s not like me.