by Ella Fields
“Always so impatient for me,” he muttered, grinning around my nipple.
I growled and pulled his cheeks, forcing our lips together while he reached between us. With his eyes hard on mine, I saw every trace of humor leave. “I love you.”
He impaled me, cursing when my eyes fluttered. He licked at my lips until I gathered my bearings and whispered on a harsh breath, “I love you, too.”
“Tell me, Red.” He moved hard and fast. “Do I measure up to your dream Jude, yet?”
A breathless laugh suffocated on his lips, my fingers sinking into his hair. “You’re my favorite type of nightmare.”
He paused and pouted.
Smiling, I gently bit the tip of his nose, then his lower lip. “And I don’t ever want to wake up.”
Jude
Seven years later
“Hands! You can’t play soccer with your hands, Mil,” I hollered between my own.
Parents surrounding the field laughed while others stepped back as I ran, still in my suit pants and dress shirt from a business meeting, down the field.
“Millie,” I said, followed by, “Shit,” when I nearly went face-first onto someone’s picnic blanket.
Finally, the little thing with bouncing dark brown curls stopped, hands on her hips as she glared my way. “Daddy, leave me—”
“Behind you, oh, bloody…” I couldn’t help it. It just happened.
“Daddy, why?” Millie cried when I kicked the ball toward the goal. And scored. “Not again.”
“What have I told you about attending games?” my wife said ten minutes later in the car, handing Millie her juice box, but only after she’d downed half her water bottle.
She’d ushered us off the field, apologizing profusely to the other parents, and straight to the car. I didn’t know why she cared. They wouldn’t say a word even if they wanted to. It was more comical than annoying.
Okay, so the coach was a little pissed—but even she wouldn’t dare say too much.
“I know,” I said with feigned self-disappointment. “I know, and here I thought wearing all this shit would help curb the urge.”
Millie giggled.
Fern shot me that squinty look of hers that meant she wasn’t pissed, but she would be soon if I didn’t watch myself.
Sometimes, I didn’t heed her warning just to see her get mad. It was a thing of beauty. Plus, she never beat me up, so that was a win. I got to watch that gorgeous face turn as red as that stunning hair of hers—of which she now kept a little below her shoulders.
Fern was a sight to behold when in a rage. She didn’t even talk, she just stood there, cussing up a storm while opening and closing her tiny as fuck hands.
“Jude,” she warned now.
I bit my tongue, taking the main road home, and made a sound of compliance. I didn’t trust myself to speak without laughing.
We still lived right near campus. Alone, thank fuck. We’d tossed the idea around of moving to someplace bigger, but just because we could didn’t mean we wanted to.
We’d both agreed that for right now, we wanted to remain in the same place that brought us together.
“I don’t know what you want me to say here other than the whole truth and nothing but the truth—the ball came to me.” I slapped a hand against my chest. “I’m the chosen one, right, Mil?”
She giggled again. “You’re the embarrassing one, Daddy.”
“Hey,” I said, turning to make a face at her. “I’m hardly old enough to be called embarrassing.”
She wasn’t even five years old yet, and she was already thinking this? Unbelievable.
As though she could read my mind, my wife sighed and placed her hand on my thigh.
My balls instantly tightened. “Too high, darling.”
“Don’t you tell me what to do.”
“I’m just saying.” I cleared my throat. “We wouldn’t want to embarrass our lovely little girl anymore today, now would we?”
“How?” Millie asked at the same time as Fern said, “Stop talking, Jude.”
I forced a mock-gasp. “Am I about to be objectified again?”
“What’s obnextified?” Millie asked.
“Never mind, Mil. And yes,” Fern said in that husky voice that told me she was daydreaming and that I really should shut up if I wanted playtime when we got home and could escape from our child. “You most definitely are. It’s already begun.”
I mimed zipping my lips, then waggled my brows, already raging hard as we waited for the drawbridge to lower.
Fern laughed. “Don’t ruin it.”
“Impossible,” I muttered. “You’ve said so yourself.”
“You guys say things I don’t understand,” Millie said. “Can we just make sure Daddy doesn’t steal the ball again? Maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to come, Mommy.” She made a huffing sound. “I mean, maybe never.”
Fern and I both laughed.
“But won’t you miss me, Mil? I would’ve loved for my dad to watch all my football games growing up.”
“No,” she said, no hesitation or humor whatsoever. “Pa can come, but not you.”
Fern’s hand squeezed my thigh, and then she doubled over, laughing into her lap.
Sighing, I made to loosen my tie, then remembered I’d already taken it off.
I was Peridot’s new mayor in training, and I couldn’t say I hated it. Not one bit. Dad hadn’t retired yet—and so we kind of ran this crazy place together—but he would be in the next few years, and he wanted to make sure I was ready. He was still alpha of Nightingale here on Peridot Island. I wasn’t sure when he planned to step down—alphas could step down at any time if they had an initiated successor—but he’d been making more changes, especially since Millie came along.
Staring into my daughter’s eyes for the very first time, I’d known I had to find a way out of the compulsory initiation for the children of our members. And when Elijah met Millie, he’d taken one wet-eyed glimpse at her before nodding at me, as if he too would ensure that specific changes were made.
We couldn’t go back.
But we could always go forward, and the journey didn’t seem nearly as dark with sunshine in my life. In fact, I was dreading that the journey wouldn’t be long enough.
Dad never remarried, and my mother still hadn’t left the institution. But with the new additions to our family coming to visit her, I could see the longing return to her eyes when it came time for us to leave. She’d ask more questions about our lives—what we were up to and where we might see ourselves in the future.
I no longer pressured her to come back. I trusted that she knew with every hug and smile exchanged that she was wanted, and that we’d be ready whenever she was.
Millie was asleep before the clock in the kitchen reached eight, her head lolling on the side of the couch as her beloved TV show played for no one in the background.
Fern had been on and off the phone since we’d gotten home with some type of launch drama. Thanks to Nightingale and her mother, she was now co-owner of the island’s newest and only publishing house.
I left the last of the dishes and carried Millie upstairs to bed.
Fern found me in her room, messing with her sun-shaped night-light. She’d told me she didn’t need it, but I wanted her to have it, and old habits forever died hard.
Fern bent down to sweep some rogue curls from her face. She kissed the cleared space of smooth skin, then whispered, “Quit fussing. I’ve been waiting.”
Midnight, our dark gray rescue cat, lay curled up in the corner of the bed. Fern gave his chin a scratch when he lifted his head, blinking sleepily at us.
Out in the hall with Millie’s door cracked open behind me, I said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I told you I was taking a shower,” she said with a roll of her eyes, traipsing down the hall to our room.
Over time, we’d moved into the spare room. The same one I’d made her mine in. After sleeping in there the night after I’d proposed to her fro
m my bedroom balcony at Dad’s, we just kept coming back. Eventually, so much of our stuff had ended up in here with us that we decided to finally overhaul our deserted rooms months later and make it official.
We’d both laughed when we realized how stupid that had been, all things considered.
I closed our bedroom door. “I didn’t know shower was our new code.”
She turned at the end of the bed and opened her robe to reveal nothing but beautiful skin. “It’s not, but I winked.”
“I didn’t see you wink.” I stared at her tits, which had done what I’d thought impossible and had only gotten better since Millie came along. I moved closer, my eyes still pinned on them, and squeezed.
“You nodded,” she said.
“Okay, all right.” I lifted my hands to her shoulders, my fingers sliding down her arms until the robe hit the floor. “I failed, and you’re probably soaking wet after waiting so long, happy?”
She laughed, then grabbed my cheeks in one hand, squeezing them. “Undress and I will be.”
“On it.” I stripped in record time, then chased her onto the bed.
My body glided over hers, pressing her into the bedding. Our mouths touched, whispering without words, and I rocked into her, teasing, watching her eyelashes flutter. “Let me see if I’m right.”
I slipped my hand between us, my fingers finding her cunt just as I’d expected to—soaked and needy.
Fern moaned.
And then her phone rang again.
“Ignore it,” I murmured to her neck, kissing a path to her tits. It rang out, and I flipped us. “Sit on me.”
About to, she froze when her phone rang once more. With one look from those blue eyes, I knew I was about to die a slow death. “It’s Mom.”
“Fuck no.”
Fern laughed, reaching over to silence her phone. Her mom still wasn’t my biggest fan, but I didn’t give a shit. At times, she was just as fun to rile up as her daughter.
“Red,” I snarled, gripping her hips when her phone lit up again.
“It’s a text, just wait a minute.” She scanned the screen, then fell to my chest, her hair spilling over my mouth. “She’s pissed at you.”
“What else is new?” I muttered. “No more talk of this. Time to sit on my—”
“She must have heard.” Fern laughed. “She said to tell you that if you show up to another soccer match again, she will be forced to show up, too.”
If there was one thing January disliked more than men, it was sports.
I snort-laughed. “Tell her I’m shaking in my fucking soccer boots, born ready.”
Fern gasped, her eyes shining with mirth and lust. “I will not.”
I snatched her phone and smacked out a reply while she howled behind me.
Then I switched it off and tossed it onto her nightstand. It missed and hit the floor, but it didn’t matter. I lifted my wife over my body, waiting to be inserted inside hers.
Slowly, with her lip stuck between her teeth, she did.
Heaven. Every damn time. Pure heaven.
I sat up, brushing her hair back over her shoulders, and kissed her chin. “Legs.”
She wrapped them behind me, and her arms around my neck, her hips rolling side to side, shivers coasting up and down my spine. “Kiss me.”
Her lips rubbed over mine, once, twice, and then I grabbed the back of her head and tilted it for my tongue to mate with hers. “Fuck me.”
She moaned down my throat, and my other arm smoothed up her back to her shoulder to hold her down, taking me as deep as I could get.
Fern squirmed, panting, but I wouldn’t release her, and I wouldn’t release her lips. “I don’t want to… not yet.”
I didn’t care. “Come.”
She tried to push off me, but then, with a flutter of her eyes, they met mine, and she let go.
I held her tight to me, moving that glorious body over mine as she splintered, and then I rolled her to her back and threw her leg over my shoulder. “I can still feel you clenching…” Her face was flushed, tight spasms around my cock making me still. I didn’t want to come yet. “Kiss me,” I said, voice ragged.
Breathing heavily, she cupped my face, pressing her lips gently to mine before nipping them.
“Touch me,” I choked out, my blood heating to dizzying levels.
Her fingers dragged up my spine, sank into my hair, and her leg left my shoulder to climb up my back with the other.
I lowered until my chest pushed into hers. As per usual, she took my weight without complaint. If anything, it seemed like it wasn’t enough.
Never. I could never get enough. Get close enough to quench my thirst for her, this bone-deep desperation for more.
We’d stained our souls with one another as surely as the ink upon our backs had stained our skin—forever. And though we might not have known how to handle it, what to do with something as volatile and irreversible as this love, we could never wipe ourselves clean.
We were eternity, and nothing, not even our past transgressions or future failures could ever change that.
I’d never allow it anyway, and I knew Fern wouldn’t either.
I’d made mistakes—plenty of them—yet staring down at my wife, her lips red from mine, her eyes heated for me, and her body hungry for more, I was reminded yet again that she was the best mistake I’d ever made. The only regret she’d allow me to keep was that I should’ve made it sooner.
She’d always been there, my little orb of light. I just hadn’t been able to see her until it had grown completely dark.
And now, she was the only woman I was capable of seeing.
I pressed my forehead into hers and pushed deep inside. “Love me.”
She whispered my favorite words. “All through the night.” Her lips brushed over mine. “And every second of daylight.”
THE END
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