by K. L. Kreig
“Okay, then. Hurry up.”
Kael chuckles softly in my ear. “You heard the man. We best hurry up.”
We can still hear my father’s footfalls when Kael slams his mouth to mine and starts fucking me ruthlessly, taking me like he owns me. And he does. I feel like I’m becoming his, piece by broken piece. My mind isn’t anywhere else but on him and the sinful things he’s doing to me, making me feel.
“My dirty girl,” he mutters. “Letting me eat you, fuck you right under our families’ noses. That makes you hot, doesn’t it?”
Yes. God, yes. A million fucking times yes.
I nod, unable to find my vocal cords at the moment, let alone use them.
Kael’s breaths pick up; his grip tightens. He’s close. I know the signs. I feel the swell of his cock. Hear the hitch in his exhales. “You like it when I talk like this to you, Swan.”
Not a question, but I answer, “Yes,” anyway.
“I know,” he breathes in my ear. “Your hot little pussy tightens deliciously around me.”
My inner walls react and he groans, low and wolflike. God almighty that sound is hot.
Seconds later, we’re both at the top looking down. Kael’s grip is bruising. His thumb works that bundle of nerves furiously, relentlessly. Expertly. All while he fucks me like there’s only us in this big house.
“You’re getting close, Swan.” So close. So fucking close I can taste it. “Come for me. Come with me, Mavs. Right fucking now.”
His intense gaze coaxes. But his cock, his touch, sells it. Scorching fire builds until it bursts. Then I’m falling. Tipping over first with him right behind. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open and on him as wave after sharp wave of euphoria races through me.
With a chiseled jawbone and full lips, my husband is more than handsome. He’s magnificent. I’m the envy of most of the single—and some of the married—women in Dusty Falls, but at this singular moment when he throws his head back and groans his blissful release, he is absolutely breathtaking.
And he belongs to me.
And when he opens his hooded eyes, pinning me with a sated, wicked, joyful grin that tells me wordlessly I’m his everything, I see an entirely different man.
One I’ve always known but never let in all the way.
One who gives me all of him while I hold back.
One I can’t bear the thought of losing. Ever.
He’s the one who has always walked beside me. Selflessly. Silently. Steadfastly. Without exception. Without expectations.
Still catching his breath, he confesses, “I love you, Swan.” He presses red, full lips to my forehead, wrapping me up tight in his embrace. “I don’t think you comprehend how deep my love for you runs.”
“I think I do,” I whisper into his sweaty chest, finally understanding.
There was no mistaking what he walked in on in the kitchen. Two people who still care far too much for each other, given the fact they’re both married to others. This coupling was my offering to him. My selflessness. Yet once again, I wasn’t. It was as much for me as for him. Maybe more so. It was another way I was trying to eradicate this poison infecting our relationship, our future. To make space for our own love. He gave me what I had no right to ask of him. He gave it freely. And I love him so damn much for it.
“I love you, Kael.”
I mean it. I really do love him. And while I have said these words to him countless times over the years, the way I just said them now is unlike how I’ve ever uttered them before.
By Kael’s reaction, he knows it.
“Christ, Maverick.” His voice breaks. His arms squeeze me until it’s hard to draw air. I swear his body is trembling.
“I—” I want to say I’m sorry. For everything. For all these years wasted. For hurting him. For loving Killian. For all my failures and shortcomings as a friend, as a wife. But I don’t want to ruin a tender moment we’ve not yet experienced as a true couple, so I settle for another “I love you” and hope he hears the lame implicit apology I’m giving him instead.
As Kael draws back, cups my face, and lowers his mouth to mine, I see everything he wants me to see.
Understanding.
Devotion.
Forgiveness.
Us: Forever.
The way it’s always been.
With his lips melded to mine, there is little doubt in my mind what’s beating wildly in the center of my chest. In the depth of my belly.
I am falling for my husband.
At any one point in my life, I have been infatuated, in lust, in love, or just plain obsessed with Killian Shepard. It’s hard to explain how difficult it is to shut off feelings you’ve had for the same person for twenty-some years. It’s not like a spigot you can flip closed. And even if you try, there’s still that slow trickle you can’t seem to shut off. It’s there, constantly in the background. Eventually I guess you just learn to tune out the slow, annoying drip. For the most part, at least. But sometimes that drip is all you hear. All you can concentrate on. It’s all consuming until it makes you neurotic.
Like now.
Kael is out of town on business for the night and I’m left alone to stew and reminisce. And for some reason, I find myself drifting back to the time Killian found me in the bed of Robbie Reams’ truck. As far as I know Kael never found out and for that, I’m grateful. Wasn’t my finest hour.
It was my seventeenth birthday. Kael was away at college, but Killian was working for my father as a sales assistant. Two weeks before school started my friends, in their infinite wisdom, decided they were going to throw me a kegger to celebrate not only my birthday but the start of our senior year.
As her father was a farmer, Kimmy Reams had access to not only a few rural abandoned grain bins but also an older brother, Robbie, who was all too happy to get a bunch of underagers set up with thirteen gallons of the cheapest beer known to man. Especially since he had a crush on me.
“What are you majoring in next year?” Robbie asks innocently enough, handing me a bottle of water. I open it and take a swig before answering.
“Dual major. Business and finance.”
He wipes off a few stray droplets that fell on my leg. His thumb lingers. I let it, parting my lips to grab some air. It creeps up toward my short line and traces the flesh just under the hem. I shiver when it edges toward my inner thigh.
Eyes lidded, he takes my water, caps it, and sets it aside. We lie back in the grass. The sky is dark. The stars are starting to pop, one by one. And Robbie Reams just tucked his hand in mine. My head is buzzing. My mind fuzzy and bland from all the beer I’ve drank. I hear his head turn toward mine. I do the same. His eyes glitter in the moonlight. They’re pretty.
“I always knew you were smart, Maverick.”
I let a smile out. “Thanks, Robbie.”
Time passes. We drink more. Talk. Flirt. Couples start pairing off, disappearing. The crowd thins. My stomach feels woozy. My ears ring. Then Robbie’s lips are grazing mine and I’m kissing him back. His hand cups my breast and I let him. Next thing I know I’m in Robbie’s truck. Shorts unbuttoned. Bra unclasped and pushed up. His hungry mouth indulging in my breasts as eager fingers move between my legs.
I’m not sure what the fuck I’m doing, but I know it shouldn’t be this. Why does it feel as if I’m headed down a one-way street with no exits for miles?
I’m on the precipice of indecision but hesitate only seconds before my brain fogs over with the incredible pleasure Robbie’s making me feel. I’m sinking into it when one minute Robbie’s there, driving my body to new heights, and the next he’s gone.
Then I’m being lifted into a pair of strong arms. I notice Robbie Reams is on the ground, blood trickling from his nose and mouth. Stunned. Angry. But he doesn’t make a move to get me. Shithead.
I swear a voice mutters, “I’ve got you.”
I’m dumped gently into a car. Leather and testosterone drift up to meet me. I feel my shorts being rebuttoned, my blouse yanked back
down. A seatbelt buckles across my lap. It takes me a couple more seconds to shake off the haze of lust and alcohol, but the minute we’re driving down the dark, dusty road, I know.
“What the fuck, Killian.”
“Do. Not. Talk. Right. Now.” His command is level, deliberate. Uncompromising and full of turmoil. I open my mouth to say something else, but when he whips his head toward me and pins me with a glare that’s nothing short of rage, I clamp it shut. Now is not the time, I guess.
Twenty minutes later, we slow and turn into the elementary school parking lot. It’s dark. Deserted. Eerie.
“What are we doing here?”
“I’m asking the questions,” he grits.
“How did you find me?” He ignores me all day—my birthday of all days—but conveniently shows up when I’m with another guy? What the hell?
“I said”—he turns in his seat—“I am asking the questions.”
“You’re not my fucking father, Killian. I can take care of myself.”
“By getting pregnant?” he roars. His eyes are wild. His jaw set hard. I have never seen him so angry. Ever. About anything.
Shame assaults me and my buzz starts to wane. A headache sets in. My stomach roils. I can’t possibly tell him why I let Robbie Reams go to no-man’s-land. That I was hurt, acting out because he hadn’t called me yet today. That the whole time I was picturing it was him instead.
I reach for the door handle, done with him. Done with this conversation. I’ll walk the half mile home, even if it is dark and scary and animals may rush me from the ditch. Half of me is outside the car, half still inside when I’m propelled backward and being yanked over the console of his interior. My hip smarts where it jams the gearshift. Then I’m on his lap, straddling him, his erection prodding my center.
“Tell me what the fuck you think you were doing,” he demands, chest heaving, tone hard, eyes…I don’t know. Wanting, maybe?
We’re so close, we’re breathing each other’s air. Maybe thinking the same thoughts. Killian has held me before, but never like this. Never possessively, like I’m his.
I can’t help myself. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or the pheromones coming off him, but I shift my pelvis back and forth, rubbing it against what I know is thick and long. He groans. His eyes close as if in pain. He takes a deep breath and holds it before blowing it back out. When his palms land on my hips, they’re firm, but they don’t stop me so I keep on going.
Then his eyes open, snag mine. And when they do, I know I’ve not imagined anything. He wants me. Hasius Crepes, Killian Shepard wants me. And when he breathes my name, like he’s offering up a prayer during Sunday mass, I come completely undone. All my teenage hormones come out to play.
I slam my mouth to his. He lets me. Moaning, he lets his tongue get to know mine. Intimately. Thoroughly. He tastes sweet. Like my daddy’s brandy. A warm hand cups my cheek and I’m lost. I think he’s lost with me because I’m not mistaken his pelvis is moving with mine. I’m zooming toward an orgasm already, the real so much better than the imagined. But then his mouth slows. And he’s pulling away. He looks torn. Wrecked. Remorseful, maybe. The hand burning my hip squeezes, signaling for me to stop.
I’m panting. So is he.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. More like squeak.
His arms go around me and pull tight so I’m forced to either put my face in the crook of his neck or suffocate it in the headrest. It’s an obvious choice. “What’s wrong?” I mumble again, confused at why my clothes aren’t halfway off already.
Without saying a word, he opens the door and swings his legs out. He stands and I cling to him, not ready for this to end. He walks around the car, opens the door, and slides me into the passenger seat. After he buckles me in and closes the door, he stands there for probably a whole minute before he slams his fist into the steel above me, making me jump.
Then he’s back inside. He starts the car while I sit there, dumbfounded. He drives slow, careful. In complete contrast to the tension I now feel crashing over me from his side of the car. When he pulls into my driveway, he leaves the engine running and says evenly, “Take some aspirin and drink a glass of water before bed. Gatorade in the morning. I already talked to your dad. He’ll cover—”
“You did what?” I breathe. It tastes of beer and fire.
“Maverick,” he chastises. “You have no fucking idea…”
“You had no right, Killian.”
“I have every right!” His roar scares me and I shrink to the corner of my seat, terrified of him for the first time in my life. “You almost let that motherfucker…” He stops, composes himself before rasping, “You’re seven-fucking-teen years old, Maverick. You’re emotionally immature and you have no idea what you want.”
He’s breathing fast. His knuckles are white, wrapped around the steering wheel like wax melted in the sun.
“You’re wrong,” I tell him softly. “I know exactly what I want.” When he doesn’t say anything, I add, “It’s you, Killian. I want you.”
He doesn’t look at me. For the longest time, he stares straight ahead, blinking slowly as if his lids are on a timer. His chest expands and collapses, but his breathing has changed. It’s still fast, though it’s no longer from anger. It’s from desire. I may be only seven-fucking-teen years old, but even I know the difference. That’s what he sounded like just minutes ago with his tongue down my throat.
Finally he faces me. We just stare at each other. I wait for him to do something, say anything, but he just swallows. When he opens his mouth, it’s to crush me. “You’re too young, Maverick.”
I flick my challenging gaze to his jeans, which are still straining. “You want me.”
He moves a hand from the wheel to his lap, covering up the evidence. “Go to bed,” he replies plainly as if only his opinion matters. Our face-off lasts so many beats I lose count. And I know I’ve lost him before I even had him.
“You should have left me with Robbie Reams. At least he had the balls to take what he wanted.”
Then I open the door and don’t look back, even when he calls, “Robbie Reams lays another fucking finger on you, he’s dead. Remember that next time you get drunk and want to act out like a child.”
I almost made the worst decision of my life that night, letting Robbie take something from me I desperately wanted to gift to Killian instead. But I was drunk. Robbie wanted me. Killian didn’t. At least that’s what I thought at the time.
But I realized the next morning as I nursed my hangover that as mad, humiliated, and confused as I was that night, Killian saved me from making a huge mistake.
Killian was supposed to be my first. My only. Instead, after that night he refused to barely even acknowledge I existed—until we became too big to ignore years later.
The goddamned drip that’s his constant echo gets louder and more annoying and before I know what I’m doing, I’m kneeling in my closet, the carpet fibers digging into my bare knees. The box I swore never to touch again is in my hand. The lid is off. The contents of yesterdays stare up at me.
Birthday cards. A get-well drawing when I broke my leg. A lone drumstick from our DeSheps days, signed by all four of us.
Peeking out from under a Hallmark moment is a plain, smooth black rock he gave me after my gerbil died. He told me he didn’t want to see me cry over another lost pet. He made me name it Wilson, after that stupid volleyball in Cast Away. I kept it by my bedside until the day he announced his engagement to Jilly.
I lightly finger the dandelion crown lying on top, all withered and brittle. Dried, blackened stems, roots, and leaves break off, scattering everywhere. Killian’s voice echoes from across the years, as if the moment were happening all over again in real time.
“For you, Small Fry.” His deep voice slicks over me, making my tummy feel weird.
“What’s this?” I turn over the woven crown in my hands. It leaves that pungent weed smell behind on my fingers that most people hate. Not me. I love it.
&nbs
p; “Your birthday present, of course.”
That was my thirteenth birthday. I remember initially being upset he made me a dandelion crown. It was a child’s gift, not one for a now teenager, but somehow the fact he made it with his own hands, with me in mind because he knew how much I loved dandelions, took that sting away.
A yellowing, curled slip of paper catches my eye. I gingerly move aside the contents to snag the tip of a fortune Killian gave me right before he left for college: “The one you love is closer than you think.”
At the time, I thought that was a sign we were meant to be, he and I. That he loved me as much as I loved him but he just couldn’t tell me yet. Now, I wonder if it was prophetic in an entirely weird way. That the one I was truly meant to love was always hiding in plain sight. Closer than you think.
Kael.
I look down at the square box holding ancient history of another man. Memories fall around me like black rain. Part of me mourns the many plans lost now in this minuscule six-by-twelve-by-three-inch cardboard resting place. The rest of me is almost apathetic, finally accepting that future was never really ours for the taking.
The chime of my cell drags me kicking and screaming from past to present. It’s my husband. The man I should be thinking about instead of the one who continues to torment me.
Drip.
Drip.
Fucking drip.
On the second ring, I shove the top back on, wondering why I can’t just let these painful memories go. I know I need to. Doing so will dissolve another thread that binds Killian and me together. But the thought of permanently letting go of remnants of our history—times that were good—hurts my heart to the point of actual pain. So I stash my ghosts back in the wall, wedge the board back into place, and rush to grab my phone in the nick of time.
“You sound out of breath,” Kael’s gravelly voice rings from the other end.
“Yeah, ah, I was in the bathroom. Sorry.” My conscience chews me out for the white lie. One of the reasons I wasn’t keen on Kael going out of town is because too much alone time is not a good place for me to be right now. It leaves me to think too much…to remember things I should be forgetting instead.