by BJ Harvey
Watching her leave the kitchen, I can’t wipe the smile off my face. This evening started with a surprise reception and Faith’s panic attack. Having wedding cake smeared all over my face and making out with my wife against the counter is definitely a good way to end the night.
I set out to clean the mess, ignoring the imagery of Faith naked in the shower, and the knowledge that we’ll be sharing a bed tonight for the first time in twelve years.
Now I just need her to hurry up because all of that thinking has my dick imagining things neither Faith or I am ready for.
Somehow I think there are going to be a lot of long showers in my immediate future.
I’ve waited this long. What’s a little bit longer?
It has to be right—for her and for us.
But making out—with or without foodstuffs involved—that’s definitely going to be happening again.
And soon.
Blue balls be damned.
It’s not until the next night that Faith and I enter the maternity wing of Northwestern Hospital and walk into Abi’s room to meet my two new nieces.
“Hey,” I say, letting Faith go and crossing the room and kiss my sister’s cheek. I shift back and meet Abi’s eyes. “How are you doing, mama?”
She smiles and looks over at Cade and his twin brother, Cameron, who are both cradling our new family members in their arms. “They’re the perfect end to our family.”
“So no more?” I ask with a smirk.
Her eyes widen. “Oh hell no. No more. My vagina is shutting up shop. No way, no how,” she announces, pointing her finger at her husband who walks over toward us. I sneak a quick glance at Faith holding the baby close to her chest and looking down with amazed wonder. Fuck, she looks good with a baby.
Damn. Where did that thought come from? Years ago, we would lie in bed with tangled limbs, imagining our future out loud to each other. The plan was always to settle back in Chicago, buy a house, make it our own, and when the time was right, start a family.
Obviously, that plan went out the window with a rejected marriage proposal and a plane ticket for her, and a broken heart for me.
But now, seeing Faith so enamored with one of Abi and Cade’s new daughters, I’m wondering whether she remembers our plans. Has she been thinking about the what-ifs when she’s been living her life in Australia, as far away as possible from the us we were meant to be?
“You still with us, Bry?” Cade asks. “You spaced out there. I thought you might want to say hello to Annalise here.”
I turn to face him, then glance down at the cherubic face of one of his daughters. He carefully shifts her into my arms, and when Abi moves over in the bed, I rest a hip on the mattress and marvel at the beauty I’m holding.
Abi leans into my side, reaching out to stroke the soft, downy skin of her new daughter’s cheek. I tilt my head. “She’s perfect, Abs. Job well done,” I say quietly.
“And I made two of them,” she says, a smile playing on her lips. “How good is that?”
Cade chuckles and leaves us to join Cam, Cam’s wife, Sarah, and Faith over near the window.
“How’s it going?” Abi whispers, looking over to Faith then back to me.
“This could’ve been us,” I reply and she nods.
“Yeah, but something tells me life had a plan for the two of you, and maybe that plan was not to have any of this until now.” She rubs my arm. “Maybe she needed to go away in order to come back to you as the person she always wanted to be.”
My breath catches because I never thought of it like that. In my crushed, rejected state years ago, all I could focus on was the loss of the love of my life and the confusion as to why she felt the need to leave.
Over the years, I would run through our last night together, the last week, month… hell, I even went all the way back to the four years we’d been at college. There was no sign whatsoever that Faith felt trapped, suffocated, or—most importantly—that she wasn’t happy.
It was perfect, until it wasn’t.
And now, she’s back in my life and back in my bed—albeit, we only slept last night, and on separate sides of the mattress like there was an exclusion zone right down the middle of the mattress—and those plans we had for the future are at the forefront of my mind.
A stirring in my arms gets me looking down to meet the big blue eyes of Annalise Carsen. “She’s probably hungry,” Abi murmurs from beside me.
“Oh, I guess you better feed her then,” I say with a grin, handing the baby back to her mother. “You know how us Cooks are with our food.”
“Hangry for days,” she says with a laugh, leaning back into the bed and placing her new daughter in her lap. “Do you know what life was like as the only girl in a family of boys? I’m lucky Mom used to squirrel food away for me to eat in case I missed out at dinner.”
I chuckle, shaking my head as I stand, not wanting to see my sister’s bare chest as she prepares to feed the baby. “Were we really that bad?” I ask with a smile.
“Yep.”
“Damn, well lucky you’ve got a few more girls now to have your back.”
Abi’s gentle eyes look up at me. “And they’ll have a big brother to look out for them just like you always looked after me.”
“You mean, warning all the high school boys away from you and Delilah?”
“That too,” she says with a wink and a giggle. She nods over to the rest of the visitors. “Go meet Anya. She’s got the Cook nose and the Carsen dimple.”
“So she’s beautiful like her mama,” I add, watching Abi’s eyes mist over.
She waves her arm in the air. “Go. You’re making me cry. Damn hormones,” she mutters. I hold my hands up in surrender but my smile is filled with pride. “Love you, Abi Jane.”
“Love you too, big brother. Now go save your wife from getting clucky,” she whispers.
“Maybe I want her clucky,” I reply, for my sister’s ears only.
“All in good time, Bry. All in good time.”
It’s late by the time we get home, having stopped at a Thai restaurant down the road for a quick dinner. I’m amped up though because tonight, that invisible barrier between us is getting knocked down.
Faith tells me she’s going to take a shower and hop into bed, and I make myself busy until I hear her rummaging around in the bedroom. I give her ten minutes leeway to get dressed and under the covers, watching a baseball game replay on my tablet to pass the time. As much as I want to see her body and memorize every single part of it all over again, I’m playing the long game.
I knock on the door and slowly open it, finding a soft smile on the face of the most beautiful girl in the world as she lies in bed with a book in her hand. I swear, Faith screws with my head and turns me into a sap.
“I’ve locked up, so I’m just going to grab a quick shower, then we can turn in for the night.”
“Okay. I’ll just be here. Reading,” she says, a teasing lilt to her voice.
“What are you reading?” I ask, opening a drawer and pulling out a clean pair of boxer shorts. I turn to look over my shoulder at her. “Is it dirty?” I ask, waggling my eyebrows, not missing her eyes on my ass.
She giggles, and her cheeks turn red. “Oh yeah, definitely dirty.”
I grin. “Maybe you can tell me all about it when I come to bed. We can call it Dirty Bedtime Stories with Faith.”
She grabs a pillow and throws it my way as I walk from the bedroom into the bathroom, closing the door but not shutting it.
Ten minutes later, I catch a sliver of light coming through the door when I’m relieving the pressure of having Faith near me, laughing with me, looking at me when she doesn’t think I can see her. Knowing she’s watching me now turns me on even more, my cock throbbing in my hand as I fist myself up and down in long, tight strokes. My climax rams into me like a freight train at full speed, and I don’t even try to stop Faith’s name escaping my lips in a deep, guttural groan.
Once my post-orgasm haze has cleare
d, she’s gone, and the door is closed again.
I can’t wipe the smile off my face as I step out of the shower and dry myself off, slipping on my boxers. The smile’s still there even after I brush my teeth.
I wanted to take this slow, but every single sign I’m getting from Faith is that she wants this as much as I do.
Lucky for me, that makes my job a heck of a lot easier. Lucky for her, she’s going to be getting more of my A-game while I get us back to where we’re supposed to be.
The one thing now running through my head is what Abi said in the hospital.
Maybe she needed to go away in order to come back to you as the person she always wanted to be.
I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, my hands braced on the vanity. I wonder why I never realized it before. Maybe Abi’s right. If that’s the case, then it’s time to let Faith be Faith and show her how good we can be now that we’re older and wiser.
It’s time to stop focusing on the past and time to look forward to the future.
Step one—operation get rid of the damn exclusion zone.
13
Faith
It took every single ounce of control in my body not to slam open that bathroom door and join Bryant in the shower. After getting me all pent up the night before with wedding cake of all things, I was the very definition of being on the edge. Patience and self-restraint be damned. I loved seeing that man naked, water streaming down on his skin, his big hand fisting his cock, his arm braced on the shower wall as he stroked and squeezed, moaned and groaned, and grunted out his climax with my name escaping his lips.
What kind of woman could resist a scene like that? I almost snuck away to one of the empty rooms in the house so I could shove my hand down my underwear and quell the ache that has been stoked and fed since I kissed Bryant.
When he comes to bed, his hair still damp, heat radiating off his shirtless body, I have to bite my lip and turn my head away. When he slides under the covers, lies flat on his back, reaches his arm underneath my pillow and hauls my body back against his, I wonder why I didn’t move closer of my own volition.
Then I stop overthinking and just follow my gut, rolling over to face him and burrowing my face in his neck. I take my fill of his body heat, that freshly showered, clean smell that I’ve always wanted to bottle for future use. For those non-creepy times when I miss him and just need a hit of Bryant in the middle of the day.
Maybe that’s just the sexually frustrated, forcing-myself-into-repression Faith talking. I probably wouldn’t be rubbing my cheek against his neck like a cat in heat if it hadn’t been a week since my last orgasm.
“You okay there?” he asks, a deep rumbling chuckle vibrating through his chest.
“You’re warm, and you smell good.”
His other arm curls around me, pulling me closer, and I marvel at his quick recovery time, given it was just ten minutes since his self-help shower. He always did have the ability to ‘bounce back’ quickly, so it’s good to know he hasn’t lost that over the years.
I sniff rather obviously, breathing him in and telling myself I’ll pull away in just a few more moments.
“You do know I can hear you smelling me, right?”
I shrug and try to move away, but his hold tightens. I jerk my head back onto my pillow, my body still wedged tightly against his. “Bry, what are you—?”
He dips his chin and locks eyes with mine, his lips twitching. “If you wanna smell me, have at it. It’s not exactly a hardship having you pressed against me if you can’t tell.”
“‘Hard’ being the operative word?” I say, arching a brow.
My hands slip to his shoulders as they shrug against the bed. “I’m a man lying in bed next to his half-naked wife whose body is even better than it was twelve years ago, and it was fucking fantastic then. My dick has an opinion on that, and it’s simply making its appreciation clear.”
“Very clear,” I say with a giggle, my heart and other body parts warming at his compliment. “I can move away, Bry. I mean, so you can get some sleep.”
He leans in so his cheek is resting on my pillow, his nose touching mine, his lips not that far off doing the same. “I can sleep with a hard-on, babycakes. You forget the self-control I had to learn before we left for college. That hasn’t gone away just because my ring is finally on your finger and we’re grown adults who can do whatever we want to each other, whenever we like.”
I open my mouth, but he touches his lips to mine, silencing me.
“At a mutually agreeable time. So turn around or don’t; snuggle into me or don’t. But I will be touching you somehow because I like the feel of you, and I like being close to you, and I’m ever hopeful that we’re on the path to showing that to each other in grown adult ways. Until then, I’m going to touch, feel and kiss you every chance I get unless you say otherwise. Okay?” he murmurs against my lips, his tongue touching the tip of mine before pulling back.
“Okay, hubby.”
I feel his mouth smile against mine and then and there, I decide it’s my new mission to feel that every day.
Six days later, we’re still sleeping that way. It’s so damn nice. I hadn’t realized before now that I’ve never woken up feeling so well-rested and happy. This past week, I’ve had a smile on my face every morning. It’s slowly sinking in that the piece of myself I’ve been searching for might be within my grasp.
And if he keeps bringing me coffee in bed and kissing the crap out of me every morning, then I might just have to start showing him how grateful I am in other more enjoyable ways for both of us.
Now, though, I’m amping myself up to kick some Cook brother ass at the driving range.
I’m getting ready in the bathroom when Bryant appears in the doorway behind me. His eyes are full of appreciation as he looks me up and down before meeting my gaze in the mirror.
“You ready to go?” he asks, his voice rough and all kinds of delicious. It’s how he sounded groaning my name with his cock in his hand. Also known as my favorite sound in the world.
“Yeah. It’s time the Cooks’ stranglehold on the tightly contested driving range championship of Chicago finally comes to an end,” I say with a smirk, earning me narrowed eyes and twitching lips. Another favorite look on him. I turn around to face him. “I’ll just grab my keys and we can—”
My words get stuck in my throat when I see he’s holding a motorcycle jacket in one hand, and a helmet in the other.
“Ah… Betsy isn’t that scary.”
“Depends who’s behind the wheel.”
I gasp at his insinuation, popping a hip and glaring at him, pointing my finger at him for good measure. “Excuse me, mister. You drove her this morning, and I was holding on for dear life.”
He doesn’t answer; he just looks at the ground and chuckles, shaking his head at me. “I thought we’d ride in since it’s a nice night.”
I open my mouth to argue but then I remember that riding on a motorcycle means plastering my body to Bryant’s back, holding on tight. I’ve never ridden before, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn down this opportunity.
His eyes are full of amusement as he steps forward and cages me in against the vanity, dipping his face close to mine. “I like seeing that smile on your face. It’s the same one you get when you’re reading a particularly dirty part in one of your books.” My mouth drops open, but again, I’ve lost the ability to speak. “I can also see how excited you are.”
I narrow my eyes at him, part subterfuge, part self-preservation. “How?”
“You’re almost vibrating. If I weren’t seeing it for myself, I’d swear you were bouncing up and down.”
“Thirty-four-year-old women don’t bounce with excitement.”
His eyes flare with heat, dipping to my chest and back again. “I’d pay to see it if they did.”
I gasp and give him a playful whack on the arm as he straightens and steps back.
“What? I’m a guy; you’ve got boobs. Bouncing boobs are
something any guy likes to see.”
“Maybe, if you’re sixteen,” I mutter, subconsciously crossing my arms over said chest. He notes the move and chuckles again before turning to leave.
“Wait! I don’t have any gear or whatever,” I say, waving my hand in the air.
“All taken care of, babycakes. All I need is your sweet ass out the front, ready to jump on.”
“What am I riding?” I ask, unable to help myself.
He stumbles but quickly recovers and looks over his shoulder with a salacious smile. “It’s big and hard and full of power. That’s all you need to know.” He winks and starts to walk out of the room, my gaze locked on his ass, and the low-slung jeans clinging to his hips. It’s still one of his best—and my favorite—assets.
“You do know you’re more like Jax than you realize,” I say, which just makes him laugh again.
“Hurry up, Baker. I’m feeling rather confident tonight,” he calls out.
“The Cooks are going down!” I yell before I can think better of it.
Moments later, his head pops out of the doorway, a wicked smirk and his one dimple out in full effect. “That can be arranged. You name the bet, and I’m sure I’ll rise to the challenge.”
Then he’s gone, and I’m left standing there, warring between chasing him down and jumping him, and having a cold shower.
Bryant has always been flirtatious, but it seems future Bryant now has an even dirtier mind and the ability to appeal to my very active imagination.
A bet could definitely make tonight a lot more interesting, I take one last look in the mirror and smooth my hair before spinning around and making my way out to wait for my ride.
The question now is who will end up going down at the end of the night?
We don’t get more than a few steps in the door of the driving range before my name is shouted out across the large lower floor of the building.
Taking me by surprise, the owner, Gabe, scoops me up in his arms and swings me around. “Faith Baker, as I live and breathe.”