Lei looked down to the floor. “I’m sure. I love Mommy, but . . .”
Her words trailed off, and Quint felt a chill to his core as a tear fell from his daughter’s face. He jumped to his feet and came around the desk to pull her to her feet and hug her close.
“Your mother loves you,” he assured her, not wanting her to feel pain from Vita’s actions. “But I’ll fix it. Okay? I’ll fix it.”
One week later
Kaitlyn knocked on Quint’s front door and then fidgeted as she waited for him to open it. When he did, she pushed the box she was holding into his hand.
“Your things that you left at my apartment,” she said, not even looking at him as she turned away.
She turned back in surprise when she felt his hand lightly grasp her waist. She eyed his hand and then lifted her head to eye him.
“Yes?” she asked coolly.
Quint looked down at her. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry things didn’t work out. I’m not mad. I still care about you, but we just see the world different,” he said.
Kaitlyn hated that she still had such a strong reaction to him. And it all was so familiar. The vibe. Her pounding heart. Racing pulse. Energy. Chemistry. She missed him.
“Is that it?” she asked, wanting to get the hell away from him just as strongly as she wanted to kiss him.
Quint looked exasperated. “I’m trying to apologize, Kaitlyn.”
“For what?” she asked, fighting hard to keep it cool.
It had been a week—a dang-on week—since they even spoke hi or bye to one another. His apology was late. Real late.
“Whatever, Kaitlyn,” he said.
“See if all your judgment keeps your bed warm,” she snapped.
Quint turned with the box still in his hands. “So sex is all you think is important to me,” he said, his voice hard.
She felt all her emotions rev up and forced herself to stay composed, while her insides shattered at the change in them.
“It’s the only damn thing you never complained about,” Kaitlyn retorted.
Quint looked down at her with those intense eyes of his. “You really seem to be enjoying the single life.”
Kaitlyn had been hanging out with Tandy and Anola more. He noticed. Why did the thought of that excite her?
“You thought I was going to sit home and cry about you ending things? Never,” she stressed. “Life goes on. Don’t be mad.”
“Grow up, Kaitlyn,” Quint muttered.
She watched his back as he turned on her. “And you have to learn how to love unconditionally!” she shouted.
Again he turned back and eyed her.
“Because if I ever was the woman you loved—and you said last week—then you don’t love with limits,” Kaitlyn told him. “I didn’t.”
“Oh, so you did hear me?” Quint asked.
“Oh, so you do remember saying it?” Kaitlyn shot back.
Quint looked at her in disbelief. “Does every damn thing have to be a tug of war with you, Kaitlyn?”
A sharp come-back rose to her lips but Kaitlyn swallowed that back. “I just admitted that I love you,” she said softly as if the moment was small when in fact it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all.
Quint’s eyes searched hers even as he said, “Sometimes love ain’t enough.”
Kaitlyn laughed bitterly. “Real love is always enough, but don’t worry. You don’t have to put up with oh-so-horrible Kaitlyn anymore. I’m out of here. Tell Lei to call me sometime, if that’s okay with you—”
“Kaitlyn.”
“Good-bye, Quin-ton.”
Kaitlyn rushed into her car before the tears fell. She pulled out with a slight squeal of her tires as she got the hell away from the complex and her complex relationship with Quinton Wells.
Two weeks later
Quint sat across from the conference table and eyed Vita as she read over the documents that would legally revise their custody agreement. She looked up at him before she flipped her hair over her shoulder and twisted her own rhinestone-covered pen between her fingers.
Never once did Quint shift in his chair or flinch from her somewhat hostile stare. He sat there, looking professional in a pin-striped suit, being all about the business of taking care of his child, once and for all. The papers stated that he would receive full custody and she was allotted liberal visitation on weekends and some holidays. It was a complete reversal of roles from the arrangements that were agreed upon via their divorce.
Quint never wanted it to come to this, but he couldn’t allow Vita to doctor her level of competency as a parent based on whether or not she was in a relationship. It wasn’t fair to Lei for her mother to swoop in and out of her life on a whim.
Vita continued to flip leisurely through the papers as both of their attorneys looked on, in what had to be feigned patience.
“Vita, we both know you’re going to sign the papers, so why this performance?” he asked, his voice cool as he deliberately patted the breast pocket of his suit jacket.
Her lips thinned into a straight line and her eyes glittered like wet glass as she finally placed the pen to the papers and signed them before sliding them over to her attorney.
Quint felt relief wash over him. Even though he offered her the hard-earned $5,000 from his savings to allow Lei to stay with him, things were never a done deal with a complicated woman like Vita.
Never.
One week later
Kaitlyn looked down at her phone on the floor as she stroked her chin while lying on the couch in her parents’ den. Her hand literally itched to call Quinton and ask him why he threw their relationship away so easily. Why would he, and how could he?
“I have a problem with them taking the woman I love and turning her back into the spoiled little rich girl I couldn’t stand.”
A huge revelation and a backhanded insult all at once. Only Quint.
Had. Does. Had. Does.
She didn’t know about his feelings but she was very clear about her own. She loved him. She told him that. He rejected her feelings.
Sometimes love ain’t enough.
As if him picking the worst possible moment to reveal his feelings hadn’t been bad enough.
She reached down and picked her phone up from the floor, using her thumb to scroll through her contacts until she came to his name. She flopped over onto her back on the couch as she looked at the shirtless photo of him that she saved in his contact info. She hadn’t had the nerve to delete it yet.
Just like he wasn’t deleted from her heart.
Being with Quint made her think of kids and love and forever. Maybe not in their immediate future, but definitely as part of their future together. Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them away.
She hadn’t seen him since the night she dropped off the box of things he left at her house. That had led to another round of insults between them, and she had decided in that moment to get away. To not fight for him or fight with him.
She moved back in with her parents that very night, until she could find a new place. Kaitlyn hadn’t been back at the complex since then. Her mother and sisters-in-law packed her things up and called a moving company to deliver everything to the ranch. Kaitlyn had called work to decline going in and spent the day crying for everything she had and felt with Quinton, as well as for everything they could have had.
He ended it. He said the words and wrote the check.
Kaitlyn refused to give in and call him. With a heavy breath she let the phone slide back to the floor before she draped her forearm over her closed eyes.
“You okay, kid?”
She looked up as her father walked into the den and smiled at her before he lifted her feet and sat on the sofa beneath them.
“I’m good,” Kaitlyn answered.
“How’s the house hunting going?” Kael asked as he tapped her for the remote—his remote.
Kaitlyn shrugged as she handed it to him. “I haven’t really been looking,” she admitted.
“Oh. Okay,” Kael said slowly as he flipped through the channels.
Kaitlyn shifted onto her side. “I might go with my friends to Vegas next week,” she said as she frowned at the television. “Daddy, I know you not about to watch bull riding. Like, really? Really, Daddy?”
Kael easily picked up his remote just as Kaitlyn reached out for it. He set it on the wooden end table on the other side of him.
“Really,” he assured her.
Kaitlyn arched her eyebrows and rolled off the chair to her feet, scooping up her phone. “I don’t have a TV in my room,” she reminded him. “All of my stuff is still in one of the sheds outside.”
Kael immediately turned and swung his feet up onto the sofa as he settled in for comfort, with an obvious sigh of contentment. “Is that a weekend trip to Vegas?” he asked.
Kaitlyn paused on her way out the door and turned.
“No, the whole week. We making memories,” she stressed with a sassy snap of her fingers before continuing on her way to get dressed for a movie night with her friends.
Kael frowned deeply as he stumbled to sit up and watch his daughter leave the room. Since her return home Kaitlyn had been basically hit-or-miss with going to work. She had taken to hanging out with her friends again. She admitted she wasn’t looking that hard for a house. She was shopping up a storm.
He let it slide so far, because he knew she was hurting over her breakup with Quint—something she had yet to explain. But how much more would he tolerate before he put his foot down again? And how much longer would he and his wife have to share their home and give up their privacy?
Kael frowned deeply. He couldn’t remember the last time he could chase Lisha or walk around the house butt naked, if he wanted. And just last night, Kaitlyn came busting through the door just as he reached his hand over to lift the hem of Lisha’s dress as they watched a movie.
Kaitlyn was ruining his retirement.
“Houston, we have a problem,” Kael muttered.
One week later
Quint knocked on Lei’s door.
“Come in.”
He opened the door to find Lei lying on the middle of her bed with her legs extended up as she rotated her feet in the gold flats Kaitlyn had given her. He set the flat boxes he carried by her dresser.
“I thought you were packing,” Quint said, smiling down at her and still amazed by the overall change from before Kaitlyn had come into their lives.
Lei’s ponytail was gone, and she wore her thick, chin-length hair in a bob, which Kaitlyn had taught her how to shampoo and wrap in between her trips to the salon for her perms and trims. She wore the jewelry she received for her birthday and Christmas—small gold hoops, a puffed gold heart on a twisted chain, a charm bracelet, and a heart-shaped ring. She looked like a little lady.
Lei glanced over at him. “I texted Kaitlyn last night,” she said.
An image of her face immediately flooded his mind. “Oh yeah? How is she?” he asked, licking his lips.
“Sad and pretending not to be . . . just like you,” she said with another twirl of her ankle as she continued to eye him.
Quint said nothing.
“Well, anyway”—Lei stressed her conversation with a shake of her head, which was mature beyond her thirteen years—“she said she missed me, and if it was okay with you, she still wanted to keep in touch . . . with me.”
“We’ll see,” Quint said, turning to head out of the room.
And there was his reluctance to introduce a woman to his child, because he didn’t want Lei to feel the loss of another woman in her life. Just because he shut Kaitlyn out of his life, though, didn’t mean he had to do the same for Lei. He stopped and turned around.
“It’s okay with me,” Quint told her.
Lei smiled and scooped up her cell phone. “Thanks, Daddy,” she said, sitting up on the bed to cross her legs as her thumbs flew over the keyboard.
Quint left the room and walked into his bedroom to finish packing his things for their move back to their home next week. His replacement as the apartment complex manager was scheduled to move in a week after that, and Quint wanted to be out and to have the apartment cleaned for her. She was an older woman, who appeared to be a little rough around the edges, and seemed not to be in the mood for any bull.
All he could do was wish them well.
Quint sat on the bed and opened the drawer to one of his nightstands. He reached in and pulled out the photo frame cushioned on top of a pile of scarves. The picture was of himself and Kaitlyn smiling as they cuddled on the couch for one of their movie nights. Lei had taken the picture and surprised them each with a framed copy for Christmas.
I wonder if she still has hers.
Quint looked from the box at his feet to the wastepaper basket near the bathroom door.
Why am I holding on to the picture when I let go of the real thing?
He rose to his feet and stood over the wastepaper basket with the photo in his hands.
We look good together.
Quint lowered his arm, but he couldn’t let the picture go. He couldn’t do it. Turning away, he released a heavy breath as he dropped the photo and frame in the box on the floor. He reached in the drawer again and pulled out the silk scarves. Picking them up, he let his curiosity win and pressed the soft material to his face. The subtle and sexy scent of Kaitlyn’s perfume still clung to it.
They used the scarves the very last time they made love. . . .
Quinton scooped Kaitlyn’s nude silken body up from the middle of his bed and into his arms to stand her on her feet at the foot of his four-poster bed.
Kaitlyn smiled as she let her eyes roam from his bald head, down the length of his sculpted body, with a leisurely stop at his condom-covered hard dick. She licked her lips and bit them softly as she reached to wrap both of her hands around his hot thickness. She gently massaged his dick in different directions with each of her hands as she pulled upward on it.
Quinton looked down at her hands and his dick between them. “That feels good,” he told her, his voice thick with pleasure.
Kaitlyn leaned forward to bite his chin hotly before she licked it. “It’ll feel better inside me,” she whispered against his chocolate skin.
Quinton turned, with his dick still in her hands, to grab one of the scarves from the pile atop the dresser. He saw the curiosity in her eyes before he raised his hands and tied the scarf around her eyes and head like a band.
Kaitlyn smiled. “Okay, this some new shit,” she said in a soft voice, which was filled with excitement and a little trepidation.
Quinton kissed her lips fully. “Let go of my dick,” he whispered against her lips.
Kaitlyn did. She held both of her hands up in the air.
“Perfect.”
Quinton grabbed the scarves, one by one, and tied her wrists to the posts of the bed until she was spread-eagle as she stood before him. He studied her body as he massaged the length of himself. She was gorgeous as she stood there with pride and sexiness and vulnerability.
He grabbed her hips and took one plump breast into his mouth to suckle deeply as he twirled his tongue around her hard nipple.
She shivered and moaned, flinging her head back.
He shifted to her other nipple as he eased his hand around her to squeeze her fleshy ass before gliding down the crease to play in the slick folds of her pussy. He eased his other hand down the front of her body to palm her pussy before he used his agile thumb to press deeply against her swollen clit; and his other hand, meanwhile, continued its onslaught.
“Ahh!” she cried out.
Quint buried his face against her cleavage as he stroked his finger inside her, enjoying the feel of her ridges. “Shit,” he swore, feeling the slight drizzle of his own release as his dick hardened.
“Now, Quint,” she begged.
“I’ma give you this dick,” he promised, easing his fingers from her body to lift her legs onto his muscled thighs as he bent his legs and lifted onto his
toes to glide his dick up inside her. Inch by delicious inch his thickness spread her and pressed against her walls.
They both cried out roughly.
“Damn, you tight,” he swore, letting his head fall forward as he struggled for control as his entire body tensed and the muscles in his buttocks and shoulders flexed.
Slowly—finally—he began to rock his hips as he gripped her buttocks and brought their groins together. And then apart. And then together.
Each slide of his dick rubbed against her clit and Kaitlyn felt goose bumps race over her as every pulse in her body raced crazily. The silk stretched against her wrists as she fought the natural urge to touch him, to feel him.
To be deprived of such an essential sense as sight—while her other senses were overloaded by his touch, his kisses, his words, and the stroke of his dick—Kaitlyn felt like she truly walked the edge of the line between pleasure and insanity.
She felt her climax coming on strongly as a fine sheen of sweat coated her body.
“I’m coming,” she gasped hotly as she felt her pussy walls spasm against his tool.
Quinton bit onto her neck as his own release filled her as he fought the urge to cry out a soprano note and stop his upward thrusts as his climax made the thick tip of his dick extra sensitive.
Unable to hold him as he continued to stroke her to one explosive nut after another, she let her body go slack against her ties and his body and surrendered to the ride.
“Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn?”
She shook herself from her thoughts of the last time Quint had sexed her. She looked up to see Tandy and Anola staring at her over the rims of their shades as they all lounged poolside at the Mirage Hotel in Vegas.
“Huh?”
“Why your nipples all hard?” Tandy asked, tossing a towel over Kaitlyn’s bikini-clad body.
Anola raised her margarita in toast. “I don’t know what the hell you was just thinking about, but damn ain’t no fun if your friends can’t get some.”
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