by Mia Madison
Trent nodded slowly, his eyes lingering on the bike for another moment before he looked back to the building.
“Tell him thanks for me.”
“I will. What floor do you live on?”
“The sixth.”
I stopped walking altogether, my jaw falling open in shock. “Sixth? Are you kidding?”
His grin gave him away before his words did. “Yes. There are only four floors in the building, doll. I’m on the second.”
“You jerk. If you weren’t injured, I’d smack you.”
“Hey. At least the second floor sounds a hell of a lot better after hearing sixth. Right?”
I grumbled to myself, but he had a point. One flight of stairs seemed ridiculously easy after trying to imagine him leaning on me through six of them.
The trip upstairs went pretty smoothly. Trent held tightly on to the railing and took it one step at a time, though he complained about dizziness and feeling like an invalid. But he accepted the fact that he needed to take it slow.
Everything was good until we made it upstairs and he started bitching again.
“Two weeks,” he muttered. “That’s what he told me. ‘You’ll probably want to avoid strenuous activities—including sex—for two weeks.’ I might die.”
“Stop being a drama queen. You can survive without sex for two weeks.”
“But baby—”
“I know, I know. You hurt all over,” I mockingly said, grinning when I felt him slap my ass.
“I wonder if it counts as strenuous if you’re on top.”
“With the way you move—I’m guessing yes,” I said, memories of him pounding up into me coming into my head unbidden.
I watched him unlock his door and push it open, making a sweeping gesture for me to enter first. After resetting the locks, his good shoulder sagged as he turned around and leaned against the door.
I looked around his apartment curiously, noting the barrenness of it and frowning. Was it barren because he couldn’t afford more or because he wasn’t here often enough to need more?
“I’m not poor if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said when he noticed the way I was looking around. “I’m just used to not having much. A leftover from my military days.”
That made sense. I nodded as I turned to face him again, cocking my head to the side at the way he was smiling at me.
“What?” He shook his head which only intrigued me more. “What? Tell me.”
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
He walked closer and put his hand on my hip, grinning as he said, “I like the way you look in my place.”
I stood up on my tip-toes to kiss him, moaning when he thrust his tongue into my mouth and deepened it. My mind was repeating the doctor’s words about sex, but my body was crying out for more.
Ultimately, a dizzy spell broke the kiss. Trent’s hand went up and landed on my shoulder, his eyes shutting as he cleared his throat.
“You want to sit down?” I asked, waiting until he nodded before slowly walking backward into his small living room. He eased himself onto the recliner while I said, “I’ll get you a glass of water.”
His kitchen was easy to find and the glasses were even easier considering the sparseness of his cabinets. When I returned to the living room, he gratefully took the water and chugged some of it down, giving me a nod of thanks before sitting it on the table beside him.
“You want some of the pain meds?” I asked as I opened my purse and began to dig around. “The doctor said you can have them three times a day and—”
“No thanks. I’m good.”
I paused in my search, looking up at him with a raised brow as I asked, “What happened to hurting all over?”
“Now that I’m sitting, the pain is pretty localized.”
At first I thought he meant in his chest, but his free hand covered his crotch and I rolled my eyes. While the walk up the stairs had taken some of the wind out of his sails—apparently the kiss had ramped him right back up.
“Take care of me, nurse,” he begged with a pout, though the whole facade was ruined by his smirk.
“Will you stop whining if I do?”
“For today. Maybe.”
“Better than nothing,” I mumbled as I sank to my knees and crawled toward him.
His eyes widened when my hands landed on the fly of his jeans and I smiled at the fact that he obviously hadn’t expected me to play along. I undid his pants quickly and he let out a sigh of relief when his cock was finally freed from its confines.
“Oh my,” I said, trying to make my tone as serious as possible without bursting into laughter. I wrapped my fingers around his shaft, reveling in his sharp intake of breath. “This does look serious.”
“It is,” he said, his throat bobbing from a rough swallow. “It hurts, nurse.”
“I bet it does.” When he attempted to thrust up, I placed my hand on his navel and pressed down. “If you can’t stay still—I can’t help you.”
The warning was clear. Stop moving or prepare to go two weeks without an orgasm. We stared at each other for a long moment before he gave a jerky nod and his good hand gripped the armrest of the chair. He seemed confident that he could control himself, so I slipped back into my role.
“Does this make it feel better?” I asked with a sultry voice as I started to lightly stroke him.
“Not enough. I need more. It really hurts.”
“Oh? How about this?”
I stilled my hand and leaned forward, running my tongue around the ridge of his head before flattening it and licking the tip.
“Fuck,” he choked out. I saw his hand clench down harder on the armrest before he groaned, “More.”
My lips wrapped around the head and I swirled my tongue around to make it wet before I sucked. He moaned beautifully, his head tipping back as his jaw fell open.
“Ohhhh, Ava. Suck me.”
I tucked my hair behind my ears and slid my lips down, taking as much into my mouth as I could before sliding back up for air. I repeated the action a few more times before I popped off and used my hand to spread some of the slickness down to his base, stroking him in the places I knew I couldn’t reach with my mouth.
“How’s that?” I asked with a cocky smirk as I used my other hand to knead his balls. “Do these hurt too?”
“God yes,” he groaned, his head falling forward and his eyes opening to slits. “Hurts so bad.”
“I’ll make it better,” I assured him before sucking one into my mouth and rolling it around on my tongue before moving to the other.
His hand moved to my hair as his balls drew closer to his body and he tugged me back up and redirected my lips to his cock. I parted them immediately and stared up into his eyes as I took him as far as I could.
I could feel him swelling even more in my mouth as I bobbed up and down, increasing my speed until I could feel his entire body starting to tense as he resisted the urge to thrust.
“I’m so close, Ava. So close. Suck harder. Swallow me,” he urged, pushing and pulling at my hair faster as he began to lose control.
I moaned around his cock and it pushed him over the edge—his body freezing as he shouted my name up to the ceiling and exploded into my mouth. I hastily swallowed the spurts as they came, amazed by the seemingly endless amount of seed he released.
When his fingers began to shake in my hair and his cock stopped pulsing, I gently eased myself up and looked at him. He was panting and sweating with a deliriously happy smile on his lips. Even though I was pretty worked up myself, I couldn’t help but feel satisfied by how pleased he appeared to be.
“Just so you know… you really didn’t have to do that,” Trent said softly as I smoothed down my hair. “But in two weeks—I plan to spend a ridiculous amount of time showing you just how grateful I am to have such a loving nurse.”
“It was my pleasure.”
“No, it was definitely mine,” he protested with a laugh, his eyes shining as he l
ooked at me. “Fuck, you’re beautiful. You know that, right?”
I blushed as he combed through my hair with his fingers, tucking his softening cock back into his jeans and buttoning them up as I said, “That’s the pain meds talking.”
“Bullshit. Those wore off hours ago. I wouldn’t have been hard if they hadn’t.”
There really wasn’t any way I could argue with him there, especially not with his heated tone. The only thing I could really do was give him a pitiful shrug and a small smile.
“Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure,” he parroted back at me before he shifted around on the recliner and made room on his good side. “Now get up here.”
Though I was hesitant to cause any kind of strain to his injured body, his expression left me no room to argue. I sighed and carefully deposited myself on his lap, waiting for a sign that he was all right before I squirmed around until I found a comfortable position.
“You good now?” he asked when I finally stopped wriggling. I nodded and he let out a breath of relief. “Good. If you kept that up much longer I was bound to get hard again.”
“I’m sure you’ll be hard in twenty minutes anyways.”
“Sounds about right,” he agreed even though I could feel his body beginning to go slack from exhaustion.
All joking aside—I was certain he was going to fall asleep soon. His arm wrapped around my body and held me to him and I melted into the embrace I had missed so much.
I hadn’t forgotten that we had yet to actually sleep together and it was looking like our first time doing it was going to be in a recliner chair. Not that I really minded—it was a very Trent-like way to do it—but I longed to stretch out beside him and burrow into his warmth for a full night.
Back at my parents’ house, he would only hold me until I was deep enough in sleep that he wouldn’t rouse me when he crept out of bed and snuck across the hall to his own bedroom.
“What are you thinking about?”
I startled a little at his groggy voice, surprised he was still awake. His breathing had all but evened out—though I supposed that could have simply been a result of his orgasm.
“Sleeping with you for a whole night.”
“It’ll be a first,” he said happily, his eyes popping open and roaming over my face before his expression morphed into a frown. “We should move to the bedroom. More comfortable.”
“I should go downstairs and get my bags first.”
“I’ll bring them up in the morning.”
“No, you won’t,” I argued, slapping his hand away as he tried to stop me from standing up. “Nothing strenuous, remember? You could barely make it up the stairs empty-handed.”
Trent accepted my hand and eased himself off the recliner, wincing with pain when he was upright. Or at least I thought it was pain until he shook his head to himself and muttered, “I hate this.”
“It’s only for two weeks,” I gently reminded him, struggling to find something to say that’d make him feel better. A lightbulb went off and I said, “Two weeks of me taking care of you and then you can spend as long as you’d like taking care of me.”
Trent cocked his head to the side as he thought about it, eventually nodding to himself. His eyes snapped to mine and they narrowed, a slow smile spreading across his lips.
“It is my job to take care of you, but I suppose I can deal with two weeks in reverse in exchange for the rest of our lives.”
I blinked a few times, trying to figure out if he meant what I thought he meant or if I was reading too much into it.
“Was that a—”
“No,” he quickly denied, his eyes widening when he saw my frown deepen. “Not that I’m against it, baby. But I’m not going to propose to you without a ring or the ability to fuck you senseless after you say yes.”
“You seem awfully sure about my answer.”
“You haven’t given me a reason to doubt your feelings for me,” Trent pointed out. “So at least until I’m recovered… what would say to me asking you to move in with me?”
“Here?” I asked, glancing around with an uncertain smile. “Don’t get me wrong—I do like your place. It’s very you. But—”
“There isn’t enough space for you as well, I know. But this place has always been temporary for me. Just a cheap apartment to store my shit in while I ran jobs. I’ve got more than enough money saved up to buy a bigger place for us.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Of me buying a house?”
I shook my head, smiling at his look of confusion.
“No. Of buying a house for us.”
As it clicked in his head, Trent slowly smiled. “So you’re up for it? Think you’ll be able to stand living with me full-time?”
“I had you breathing down my neck as my bodyguard for months, Trent. I’m positive I can handle living with you as your girlfriend.”
Trent grinned, but it faded when he walked over to hug me and found himself once again limited by his injury. I curled my hand behind his neck and pulled him down to kiss me—silencing his irritated muttering. As I deepened the kiss and his hand wove into my hair, I sneakily reached into his pocket and snagged his keys.
I pulled away and jangled them in the air, laughing as he blinked a few times with confusion.
“I’m going to get my bags. Get in bed and I’ll be up in a few.”
He looked ready to argue, so I spun around and headed for the door before he had a chance to do so. I practically skipped down the stairs and over to my car, popping open the trunk and pausing when I felt someone’s eyes on me.
After a brief moment of panic, I turned around and looked up. Trent’s silhouette was visible in the open window and I smiled. It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if he was holding his gun in his good hand, ready to fire and protect me if anyone dared to approach.
Thankfully, the danger I had been in was over. The guys Trent had taken down had all recovered enough to speak to the police and they practically tripped over each other to talk in an attempt to save themselves from incarceration. The remainder of Callahan’s men had been arrested after their names had been given up, leaving no one left to carry out the threats. The need for security had diminished within a few short days.
But Trent’s imposing figure in the window held a message, one that wasn’t lost on me.
Whether he was injured or not—Trent would always be there to protect me.
15
Two months later…
“That everything?” Trent asked as he stepped into my old bedroom and glanced around.
“Everything I plan to take,” I confirmed with a nod. “The rest is staying.”
“Thank fuck. Never was a fan of this furniture,” he said distastefully as he ran a hand over the off-white dresser he leaned against. “You ready to head out?”
“Almost. Let me say bye to my dad first.”
Trent nodded and walked over to kiss my cheek. As he exited the room, he called, “Meet you at the truck!”
After taking a final look around at the room I lived in for twenty years, now barren of everything but the furniture, I slowly backed out and pulled the door shut.
There was a brief moment of sadness as I closed the door on my old life, but it diminished as I thought about the new life that awaited me with Trent at the house we had chosen and bought together.
“Ava.”
I snapped out of my thoughts at the sound of my mother’s voice and I turned toward where she was glaring at me down the hall with her arms crossed over her chest and her lips pursed together in anger.
“Mom. I—”
She held up a single manicured finger to cut me off before she coldly stated, “If you leave now—you will never be welcome back. This is your last chance to put an end to this-this joke of a relationship.”
“The only joke here is our relationship.”
She flinched as I said the words and I felt a weird mixture of pride and sadness. She would always be
my mother, but that didn’t mean we had to have any kind of relationship. It wasn’t an easy thing to accept, but I had managed to do it.
“And you’re right. This is the end of it,” I said as I stepped forward to brush past her. She grabbed my arm and sneered, but I spoke before she had a chance. “I won’t become you. I’m done. And if you aren’t careful—Dad will be, too.”
The threat shocked her into letting me go and I ducked down the hallway and raced down the stairs before she gathered her bearings and started firing back. I rushed into my father’s study and shut the door behind me, hoping she wouldn’t follow.
“Hiding from your mother?” Dad asked from his desk, the suddenness of his voice startling me.
“As usual,” I admitted as I faced him. “I was just coming to say bye.”
He nodded and stood up, coming over to give me a hug as he asked, “Are we still on for dinner Saturday evening?”
“As long as you promise not to bring her,” I said, laughing when he chuckled.
“I swear.” He let go of me and leaned back, giving me a sad smile as he studied me. “You look different. Happier.”
“I am,” I told him honestly. “Speaking of being happy… Finley told me you and Charles have started making up?”
Though she had given me enough details to know that they had pretty much repaired their relationship back to normal, I still wanted to hear it from Dad himself. He nodded to confirm it and I smiled from ear-to-ear.
“Yes, we’ve made up. After everything that’s happened, it felt silly to hang on to my anger at him. Besides, now that Finley isn’t working for us, it feels far less inappropriate.”
“So you wouldn’t mind if I invited them over for dinner as well?”
Dad smiled and shook his head. “I’d like that. Charles did say there was something he needed to speak to me about privately. Perhaps dinner would be a good time.”
I nodded, keeping it to myself that I knew exactly what Uncle Chuck needed to talk to him about. Finley confided in me that she was pregnant and after her and Charles visited her parents to tell them about their relationship—Charles planned to ask Dad to be the godfather of their child.