We hadn’t even told them yet. Given my stepfather’s transgressions, it seemed best to hold off until we knew what we were going up against. Slade had saved Kellan’s life and saved me in a way no one else ever could. But was it enough to mend fences between him and the rest of the family? I honestly didn’t know.
I looked up at him through my lashes, smiling as I caught him staring into the distance, his eyes narrowed, brows knitting in a pensive frown. I liked watching Slade think—he was good at it. Though I’d never admit it to him out loud, he was absolutely brilliant. I marveled at the things he could do, the amount of knowledge he held in his big, sexy brain.
I knew how to make him stop thinking, though. And that was even more fun than making his face scrunch up all thoughtful like that.
I slowly wound my way down his body until my head rested on his hip, then stroked my fingers along his thighs. Slade gave a little grunt of approval and moved his hand lower to caress my shoulders, still lost in thought even as I nuzzled ever closer to his groin. “What’s on your mind?” I asked him, letting my warm breath tease at the tip of his spent cock, and Slade squirmed, filling me with giddiness right down to the tips of my toes.
“I was thinking about the future,” he said, sighing as I very lightly ran my nails over the seam of his balls. “And about the past. But mostly, what’s next for us.” When I nuzzled the tawny thatch of his pubic hair, he raised a brow and smiled. “I’m talking about you and me, Iris.”
“Mmhm,” I said, easing myself between his legs as he parted them for me. “Go on.”
“I want to stay,” Slade said, sucking a sudden breath in through his teeth as I covered the tip of his cock with my mouth. I flicked my tongue all along his very sensitive ridge, moving slow, savoring the flavor of my pussy still clinging to his shaft. “I want to stay in this town, with you, for the rest of my life, if that suits you.” He wound his fingers into my hair and gave a little tug, forcing me to meet his eyes even with his dick hardening in my mouth. “Because a lifetime with you, Iris? That’d suit me just fine.”
I smiled around his cock, batting my lashes at Slade as I swirled the flat of my tongue around his reddening tip. He swelled in my mouth, pulsing weakly as his manhood filled up once again, lengthening along the slick surface of my tongue.
“Me too,” I told him, gripping his base once he’d hardened enough to do so. I watched his face slacken, his eyes glaze, and his teeth sink into his lower lip. “I want you to stay here, Slade. Having you here just…” I dragged my wet lips across his spongy flesh. “…makes everything better. You know?”
“No, I don’t,” Slade said, pulling my hair back from my face. “I suppose you’ll just have to show me.” Then he flashed me a lazy grin while I doubled down on his cock, sucking the whole length of him into my mouth.
Slade’s shaft pulsed a heavy beat on my tongue as I bobbed up and down, urging him slowly, steadily toward climax. The low purr of his voice grew louder with each passing minute, his piercing gaze fixated on my face as I worshiped my stepbrother’s massive, and oh-so-satisfying, dick. It had been too long since I’d tasted him, since I’d held this much power over him and his pleasure. Slade was the kind of guy who liked to be in charge, both in and out of the bedroom, but blowjobs? Those were a happy exception.
I knew how he liked it. He liked the tease. He liked the anticipation. It drove him wild. So I took my time with him, one hand gently massaging his low, weighty balls while the other firmly grasped his base, heightening his pleasure with quick, short strokes.
“Oh, fuck,” he murmured, a twitch rolling through his hips. His dick spasmed in kind, warning me that things were heating up, that soon I’d have him spilling his seed into my throat if I didn’t stop. “Iris, baby. That feels so good…”
I relished the strained timbre of his voice and the way his toes curled. Meeting Slade’s eyes, I sank down until his tip was jammed into the back of my throat, then bobbed mercilessly, laving him with my tongue as best I could in the meantime.
His grip on my hair tightened and his eyes rolled into his skull. “Shit. Iris. I’m not gonna be able to hold back, baby. That’s too much…”
I popped off his dick, earning a frustrated grunt before I climbed up his body again, licking my lips. Slade took hold of my waist as I positioned myself over his throbbing member, so eager to penetrate me and spend its load that it sprang desirously against my tantalizingly close entrance.
“You’ll really stay?” I asked him, spreading my thighs and placing my hands on his shoulders. Slade grimaced and whined as I took his cock into my body inch by torturous inch, leaning back so he could watch his mast disappear into my dripping, succulent folds. “You won’t take off on me again?”
“Not if you keep doing that,” he said, angling his hips so he could thrust up to close the distance between us.
I moaned as Slade bottomed out inside me, his girth stretching me once again. I wasn’t worried about my own orgasm this time. This time, I wanted to feel Slade cum, wanted him to fill me so completely I’d never be without him ever again. I knew, with that first rock of my hips, that wouldn’t take long to accomplish. Slade was teetering on the edge, the fire inside him already stoked by the slow tease of my tongue and lips.
He grabbed onto my breasts, rolling my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers as I swayed on his dick, pushing it deep inside me with every move. Slade was growing impatient, snarling as he lifted his hips to meet me, desperate to breach the barrier between pleasure and mindless ecstasy. I knew how much he liked to fill me, how that primal part of his brain jumped for joy every time he left his cum dripping out of me. That was a need I could easily fulfill, and happily, since he was fulfilling mine.
I needed him to want me. To need me. Most of all, to love me. Slade was willing to do that now, and better still, he was capable. Like everything else he did, he handled me with perfect care, providing me with everything I could have asked for—everything I never knew I needed so damn badly.
“I’m cumming, Iris,” he grunted, and I felt his dick tremble in warning. “I can’t stop now. I’m gonna cum inside you, baby.”
I only bounced harder, grinning as I looked down at his face twisted in rapture. “I know.”
Slade grasped my ass as he unloaded inside me, filling me to the brim with thick, long ropes of his passion. I accepted them gratefully, cooing as I watched him writhe, riding out the exquisite sensation of truly becoming one with me. Skin against skin. Lust mingling with lust. Slade and I weren’t just fucking anymore—we were making love.
He cupped my face in his hands and brought me down to him for a long, tender kiss. With his dick still inside me, I relaxed against his frame, letting his muscular arms envelop me as he whispered against my lips.
“I love you, Iris Walker. And I’m staying. For you. For Kellan. But most of all, for me.” I looked into his eyes. They were glimmering with emotion, even though he plastered that cocky smirk on his face to cover it up. “I need you. I’ve always needed you. But there’s something else I need, too.”
I tilted my head, frowning down at him. “What’s that?”
Slade’s smile faded, and his eyes grew distant once again. “To make amends,” he said.
~ EIGHTEEN ~
Slade
It had been years since I’d gone to see my mother’s grave, more than I even cared to count. The clouds hung low, casting everything in a steely gray light—which seemed appropriate, if depressing. It made me think of how sunny my childhood had always seemed, back when my mother was alive and part of it. I remembered it had rained on the day of her funeral. Yeah, gloomy weather was definitely fitting.
I led the way up the gravel path clutching a bouquet of lilies, making my way toward the oak that my mother had been buried beneath—a spot my dad had paid a pretty penny for. Following behind me were Iris, my father, and Evelyn, each of them silent as the graves surrounding us as we made our way through the valley of the dead.
My mo
ther’s stone was nothing fancy, just a dark marble marker set beneath the shade of the large oak looming over it. Its boughs sprawled out to protect its charges from the rain that threatened to fall soon enough, while also attesting to its age. This thing was ancient, towering above the cemetery like some kind of graveyard guardian. I liked to think it was, especially when I was a kid. Some things just never changed.
I stopped in front of the oak, toe-to-toe with its collection of gnarled roots. In large, elegant letters, my mother’s stone read:
ELIZABETH JARVIS
LOVING WIFE & MOTHER
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not here; I do not sleep.
I looked down at the simple, black rectangle sitting in the field of bluish green grass, reading my mother’s name. It’s been so long since I’d been to see her—to talk to her—that I hardly knew what to say to her after all this time.
How to start? With an apology? Yeah, that was probably best. I’d been doing a lot of that lately, which was completely warranted. Given all the shit I’d done, all the people I’d hurt, Mom might’ve actually been the person I needed to apologize to the most. After all, she’d raised me better than this.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, my voice quavering as I felt my emotions flow over me like a river. My eyes stung, and I blinked a few tears back and cleared my throat. “Sorry I haven’t come by in so long.”
I knelt down by the stone, setting the flowers down over where she’d been lain to rest. She had always loved lilies, for a variety of reasons. The first was that their stark, white color had always appealed to her. Mom liked a lot of color, sure, but she liked simple things, too. Lilies weren’t too flashy, and neither was she. The second reason was that she always felt they brought great comfort to the people who often needed it the most. And the third, and probably biggest, reason was that my father would always buy them for her whenever he’d done something wrong.
I closed my eyes, momentarily allowing myself to relive some of those memories. If I concentrated hard enough, I could almost see her standing in our kitchen, arranging those lilies in a pale vase, her blue eyes glittering like sapphires in the snow.
“I brought your favorites,” I told her, keeping my voice quiet so that only I and my mother’s grave could hear. “I know it’s not much compensation for all the time I stayed away, but I thought you’d like them. I wanted you to know I didn’t forget.” I cleared a few leaves away, tidying up and fidgeting while I tried to loosen my throat a little. I knew it would be hard coming back here and having this conversation, even if I didn’t really know that she could hear me, but until now, I hadn’t realized just how hard it would be.
“I’ve got a lot to apologize for,” I said at last, “and not just to you, either. I haven’t lived up to what you imagined for me, I’m afraid. But I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I didn’t come to see you today.
“I know I told you last time that dad got married again. In fact, I said a few other words about it, but now I don’t think that was very fair of me. I was just so mad at him for so many things. I blamed him for your death, for finding somebody else to marry… For a long time, it felt like he’d forgotten about you—like I was the only one who remembered all the years you spent taking care of us, or what happened to you that day. I’m so sorry for all of the things that I said to him—and to you. I hated him for moving on when I still wanted you back every day.”
Shit. Tears were welling in my eyes again. I closed my eyes to keep them and bay as I laid my hand gently down on my mother’s gravestone. It wasn’t the same as being able to touch her, but it was close enough to at least offer me a little bit of comfort.
“I ran away, Mom. You would have been so upset at me, disappointed at the things I’ve done… I’m so sorry. I was horrible to my stepmother, too. I treated her like she was trying to take your place, and that was so unfair of me, Mom. Because she never wanted that. She just wanted to love me, wanted to make sure she did right by your son. And I wouldn’t let her. And then I blamed her for failing, when I never even gave her a chance to succeed.
“She’s here today,” I added, a faint smile crossing my lips. “I brought her here because I think you ought to meet her… and that I know that she deserves an apology for the things I’ve done just as much as you or Dad do.”
I stood up and turned, waving for my stepmother to come closer. She looked nervous, even apprehensive at the thought of standing beside her stepson and speaking to his dead birth-mother.
“This is her,” I said, putting my arm around my stepmother’s shoulders to usher her closer. “Evelyn, this is my mom. Mom, this is Evelyn. My other mom, I guess…”
“Hello,” Evelyn said, smiling tentatively down at the grave marker. “I’ve heard so many things about you the last few years… and I was honestly afraid I’d never fill your shoes.”
I smiled a bit, gently resting my hand on my stepmother’s shoulder, trying to silently assure her. After a moment, Evelyn looked up at me. She looked grateful that I’d brought her here, but she also looked like she wasn’t sure what else to do.
“I wanted to talk with you about the way I’ve treated you,” I began, swallowing hard. “I’ve treated you terribly. More than terribly—I acted like you were this villain who’d come into my life to take my mother’s place.
“But I know that wasn’t why you were there—deep down, I always knew that you weren’t there to become my mother. You weren’t even there because of me… I was twenty years old. I was about to go to college and leave home. I was hardly going to be in your life—but I decided that my father’s happiness was something that I couldn’t let happen, not if it meant him forgetting about my mother.”
“Slade,” Evelyn said, gently putting her hand over mine. “I could never replace a woman like your mother. She loved you from the moment you were born, and so did your father. I could never have taken him from you.”
“You’re right,” I said, nodding as I took her hand. “And I know that now. I should have actually thought of how my mother would have wanted things instead of how I wished she were still around. Mom would have been ashamed of the things I did to you, to Iris, to Kellan, and my Dad… all of you deserved so much more than what I gave to you. I could have learned to know you as a person instead of seeing you as the enemy. I thought that maybe, somehow, if me and my dad missed her enough, that she would be back. I think that after she died, I stopped thinking like the adult I was supposed to be, and instead just acted like a scared little child.
“You deserved to be treated like you were a person, someone who I could learn to like and maybe even see as part of my family. You certainly didn’t deserve the things I said to you or the way that I behaved. I really am sorry, Evelyn.”
I turned toward her then, noting the tears in her eyes. I squeezed her shoulder tighter and brought her into an embrace, the first one I’d ever given her. She hugged me back, the tension in her body slipping away, replaced by a sigh of comfort that made my heart warm to hear.
“I heaped a lot of blame onto you, Evelyn,” I said, casting my eyes down to my mother’s grave again, “blame that you never once deserved. I was angry and desperately wanted someone to pin all of my feelings on. You were the unlucky victim of my own blind hatred. And worst of all, I dragged your daughter into my plans. I understand if you hated me from the moment you met me—I would have deserved every bit of that anger from you.”
“I was never really angry with you, Slade,” Evelyn said, looking into my eyes. “Even after what happened with Iris. She came to me and she told me everything, that you and her had done what you did as two adults, and that was enough for me. I didn’t expect you to think of one another as brother and sister after only knowing one another for such a short time. I don’t blame you for loving her—not at all.”
I smiled and pulled her into another gentle hug. Even though I knew that Iris and I would be together no matter what anyone said, it meant so much that someone supp
orted us. It had been hard to let go of so much aggression and anger after years of stewing in my own emotions, but now that I had begun to work through everything, I knew that I’d at least have the support of my family, including my stepmother.
“I’d like it if we could spend some time together—I know it seems weird for your stepson to ask you to hang out with him, but I’d really like to get to know you better. You only wanted to make my father happy, and that should have been enough for me. You deserve my acceptance. And I’d like to get to know you.”
“Thank you, Slade,” Evelyn said, smiling as she pulled me into another hug. “It means the world to me to hear you say that. All I’ve ever wanted was to be there for your father, and now I can be there for you, too, if you’ll have me.”
“I’d be honored,” I said. “And I hope someday, you’ll forgive me. Not now, after everything that’s happened, and not when I haven’t had time to really make up for it. But I’d like it if you’d accept my apology. That seems like a good place for both of us to start.”
My stepmother looked deep into my eyes for what seemed like an eternity, and I felt almost like I was exposed—left open for her to read like a book. I remembered why I hated doing things like this, opening my soul and asking for penance… it was what I had tried to avoid for all these years—being vulnerable.
“I accept your apology, Slade,” she said at last, squeezing my hand. “And believe it or not, I do forgive you. I understand how loss can change a person, how it can make them see the world differently—even incorrectly. What’s important is that you came to realize where you went wrong and that you had the courage to come here today and say all of this to me. That you would share this moment. I appreciate that you did all of this for me, and it means more than you could possibly imagine.”
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