218 First Hugs

by E. L. Todd

  “Thanks.”

  “You could have a dance party out here.”

  “Do you like to dance?”

  “All women love to dance. What about you?” she finished her slice then wiped her fingers on her napkin.

  “I like to get down,” I said with a smile.

  She smiled back. “You look like someone who has good moves on the dance floor.”

  I shrugged, trying to be humble. “I’ve dominated a few raves.”

  She laughed when she knew I was joking. “I didn’t know there were a lot of raves here.”

  “You have to know where to look.” I pulled out my phone and pulled a song from my music streaming service. I picked something slow and romantic, something classic and from a different time. The song played through my speakers, and I turned up the volume on my phone.

  She eyed me, unsure what I was doing.

  “Dance with me?” I stood up and extended my hand.

  Her smile dropped instantly, the playful mood between us evaporating like drops of water on a rose petal in the summer sun. She eyed my hand, not with hesitancy, but something else. She eventually placed her hand in mine and rose to her feet.

  I took her into the center of the patio, right under the white lights, and I held her directly against me. I took her hand in mine and guided her back and forth, my face just inches from hers. I wanted to bury my face in her neck because I loved the smell of her hair. I wanted to brush my lips against her smooth skin and taste her.

  But I wanted to look at her more.

  Her red painted lips and bright eyes were the images I saw in my dreams. I wondered if I’d seen Celeste before I met her, encountering her during my adventures in sleep. She seemed too perfect not to be celestial. She seemed too radiant to be real. When I first laid eyes on her, I actually forgot to breathe.

  I still remembered it.

  At first, she looked away, unable to meet my gaze. Normally, she was fierce like a lion, looking into my eyes without a hint of fear. But now, she looked down, uncomfortable with the intensity of my gaze.

  I didn’t want her to look away. If she chose him and I lost her forever, I didn’t want to miss a single moment with her. As far as I was concerned, she was mine. She was mine right now. I lifted her chin and forced her to look at me, to make her eyes level with mine.

  She cooperated, but her eyes were softer than usual. She was pained in a way I’d never seen before. The look was different. She didn’t mirror my appearance or my affection. Something else was on her mind. “What is it, baby?” I pressed my forehead to hers and swayed with her, my hand resting on the prominent curve in the small of her back. Every inch of her body was perfect, beautiful, and sexy. Sometimes she looked airbrushed—even in person.

  When her head was pressed to mine, she looked down. But I could feel the change in her breathing as her breaths drifted down my neck. I could feel her rib cage swell as every breath expanded her petite body.

  I didn’t know if something was wrong or right. But something was different.

  She pressed her lips tightly together before she answered. “I love you…”

  My feet stopped moving, and my body halted in mid-sway. My hand gripped hers a little more tightly, and just as I’d lost my breath when I first looked at her, it happened again. My chest flattened and my lungs halted. Like a supernatural being, I no longer needed air.

  I just needed her.

  Those words sank into my skin, entered my bloodstream, and circled to every organ and nerve in my body. Each word was a spike of excitement, a burst of adrenaline. I’d never told her I loved her because I didn’t need to. My heart was beating on my sleeve, contracting every time she laid a single finger on me.

  But her words were a direct contradiction to her sadness.

  “I’m in love with you…but I’m in love with him too.”

  I didn’t want to hear about Henry. Until she stepped on that plane, it was just the two of us. That idiot didn’t exist. “You love me more.”

  She pulled away and looked into my face, her eyes shifting back and forth to look into mine. We were so close together that I was breathing her breaths and she was breathing mine.

  “It’s been three months, and you’re already a part of me. I’m already a part of you. You’re my world, the only woman I’ve ever loved…” I finally told her how I felt, and it felt good to say it. It felt good to actually care about someone, to ignore every other woman on the planet because she was the only one who mattered. My eyes never strayed. My fantasies never shifted from her. Like a confession I’d been meaning to get off my chest, I was relieved I told her the truth. “My family adores you. My friends think the world of you. This is your home now. I’ll be your home.”

  She stared at me, and a thin film of moisture appeared on the surface of her eyes. They weren’t tears, just gleams of emotions. A battle carried on behind her eyes, a rage between the two sides of her heart.

  I didn’t want her to pick me. I needed her to pick me.

  “I would do anything in the world to keep you. If my job required me to be away from you, I would quit. I wouldn’t desire other women, not when I could have you instead. And I would die at the thought of you being with another man. Real men don’t share their women, and I certainly wouldn’t share you.” I’d just insulted her boyfriend, but I didn’t care. He didn’t truly love her if he was okay with this upside-down relationship. It wasn’t a relationship at all, just a long-lasting fling. She claimed she loved him, but I wasn’t sure how that was possible. They may have friendship, have respect. But they certainly didn’t have love.

  She stared at me with the same expression, her thoughts hidden behind those beautiful eyes.

  I started to move with her again, even though the song changed to something else. I brought her into my body so she could rest her face against my chest. My arms circled her waist, and instead of dancing, we just held each other under the shining lights. I felt her breathe, and she felt me.

  And we stayed like that for a long time.

  * * *

  I flicked my tongue over her nipple, feeling the hard tip as her tits firmed at my touch. My hands pinned hers back to the mattress, and I sprinkled kisses between her breasts, lapping at the soft skin over her hard sternum.

  My mouth migrated down her small abs and the luscious skin around her belly button. I kissed the area, sweeping my tongue over everything I could taste.

  She arched and twisted underneath me, her hands squeezing mine as moans escaped her lips.

  I kissed both of her hips, loving the way they curved in contrast to her petite waist. I moved farther down until I was between her legs, tasting the pussy my cock was obsessed with. I didn’t need to wet her with my mouth because her folds were already soaked. Her entrance was swollen from the blood that burned between her legs. I slipped my tongue inside her wet pussy then circled her clit, applying the perfect amount of pressure to make her knees part even more.

  I released her hands and crawled back up her body, a drop of semen sitting at the head of my cock. I wanted to be inside her so much that I quit the foreplay, placed my hips between her thighs, and slid right inside.

  Fucking heaven.

  She gripped my biceps and inhaled deeply when she felt my big cock stretch her. It was the same reaction she gave every single time, never fully prepared for how well I could stretch her, how I could make her feel like such a woman—completely and utterly.

  That other guy had nothing on me.

  I rocked into her on my bed, the sheets rustling with our movements. The slick sounds our bodies made were amplified in the bedroom. She was so wet and I was so big that it was natural. It turned me on even more, knowing I could feel how wet she was and listen to it too.

  She was the kind of woman who liked to be in control most of the time, so she usually rode me, dropped to her knees and sucked me off, or pushed me onto the bed when she was ready to fuck me.

  But she let me do everything tonight. She lay back
and enjoyed me, parting her legs and taking all of me. She let me dominate her, let me own her. She didn’t have to tell me she loved me for me to be able to see it.

  She showed it to me right then.

  She pressed her face against mine and panted underneath me. “Deeper…”

  I gave her my entire length, shoving it inside that tight little pussy.

  “God…yes.”

  I didn’t want to make love to anyone else. How could she not feel the same way? Look at us. We were perfect together. Fucking was hot, but making love like this, nice and slow, was even better.

  I buried all of my desire inside her, showing her love in the most physical way possible. My body was streaked with sweat, and when her nails scraped against my skin, she cut me slightly, making the salt from the sweat burn my tiny wounds.

  I liked it.

  My cock was hard as steel and anxious. I wanted to fill my woman with all of my seed, to give her all of my come and watch it seep from her opening. The orgasm wasn’t the best part; claiming her forever was.

  But I would let her go first, because I was a gentleman.

  She gripped my arms as she came around me, squeezing my cock just as I gripped myself when I jerked off. “Blade…Blade…”

  She was hot when she said my name. “I love you, baby.” I came before I even finished the words, filling her with as much come as I could stuff into her channel.

  She gripped my ass and pulled me deeper inside her. “I love you…”

  This was what life was about. Two people in love. Two people enjoying each other. Two people living in the moment.

  Just us.

  * * *

  “She’s definitely going to pick you.” Ace sat at the picnic table in the backyard with a beer resting in front of him. “If you’re dropping the L word, it’s a done deal.”

  “How did you know Amelia was going to pick you?” Cypress asked.

  Ace shrugged. “I didn’t. I just hoped she would.”

  “Have you guys…been together since she left Evan?” I asked. So far, Ace was always with us. It didn’t seem like he was spending any time with Amelia.

  “No,” Ace answered. “I know it was hard for her to walk away from Evan. I can tell she’s sad and feels guilty about it so I’m giving her some space. She’ll come to me when she’s ready. She texted me and told me she didn’t feel like talking.”

  “Wow, you have a lot of patience,” Cypress said. “I couldn’t be that patient for anything.”

  “Coming from the guy who lived next door to his wife for two years…” It wasn’t a jab, but a subtle reminder that Cypress sacrificed just as much to make his relationship work.

  Cypress shrugged before he drank his beer.

  “I’d rather be with her when she’s not thinking about him anyway,” Ace said. “Let her accept that her marriage is really over before we start our relationship. I know we’re gonna last forever, so I can wait a little longer.”

  “You’re gonna last forever?” I raised an eyebrow because I’d never heard Ace say something like that.

  “Whoa,” Cypress teased. “I didn’t realize you were so romantic.”

  Ace didn’t react or seem even slightly embarrassed. “I love her. So what?”

  I shared a look with Cypress, surprised Ace had so blatantly told us his feelings. He normally behaved like a caveman, having very little to say and very little emotion. But he just put his heart on display, totally vulnerable to jokes.

  But neither one of us did that.

  “Good for you, man,” Cypress said. “You guys are both lucky to have each other.”

  “Thanks,” Ace said.

  “Yeah,” I said in agreement. “That’s awesome.”

  “Hey.” Cypress turned to him. “Maybe one day we’ll be brothers-in-law.”

  Ace smiled. “Yeah, true. But we’re already brothers, so there won’t be a big difference there.”

  Cypress’s eyes softened, and he patted Ace on the back.

  I had to admit, I was a little jealous. “I’m a brother too, right…?”

  “Obviously,” Ace said.

  “The little brother we like to pick on,” Cypress teased.

  “I’m older than both of you,” I countered.

  “But Ace is bigger than both of us combined,” Cypress said.

  Good point. “You got me there.”

  Ace finished his beer then grabbed another from the fridge before he came back. We’d just had pizza like I did with Celeste the other night, and Ace ate a whole one by himself. “So what’s next for you and the French babe?”

  “I don’t know. She’s supposed to leave in two weeks.” But I hoped she never would.

  “When is she supposed to give you her final answer?” Cypress asked.

  “She just said at the end of the summer,” I said. “So she still has some time.”

  “She’s not gonna go back to the other guy,” Ace said as he shook his head. “Wouldn’t make any sense. Sounds like there’s no passion there. She seems like a woman who wants passion.”

  “All women do,” Cypress said. “They want a man who’s obsessed with them to the point of insanity.”

  I drank my beer. “That’s definitely me.”

  “Why would she go back to being with a guy who likes an open relationship?” Ace asked incredulously. “What kind of relationship is that?”

  “A boring one,” Cypress said. “And an unhealthy one.”

  When my friends said these things to me, I was more convinced things were going to work out. “You’re probably right…she will pick me.”

  “The only problem is, she’s leaving her country for you,” Cypress said. “That might be the difficult part.”

  “They can always go back and forth,” Ace said. “There’s five of us, so we can cover for him.”

  “True,” I said. “And if we get married, we can add her bakery to our roster so you guys can take care of it while we’re gone.”

  “See?” Ace said. “It wouldn’t be much different from how it is now.”

  “True.” The knot in my stomach loosened further when I considered everything they said. Not only did Celeste and I have a powerful connection, but I was the better man. I was the safe choice. She may have been with him longer, but I really loved her.

  So her decision should be easy.

  * * *

  I’d just gotten out of the shower when Celeste called me. I was about to pick her up and take her to dinner at The Grill, getting both of us out of the house so we would take a break from making love all the time and spend time in public. “Hey, baby.”

  “Hey…” Her voice was heavy with sadness. I recognized it right away.

  “What is it?”

  She breathed into the phone before she finally spoke.

  I was on edge.

  “I talked to Henry last night.”

  I didn’t like where this was going.

  “We’re always honest with each other, so I told him how I felt about you…that it wasn’t just some fling. I told him I’d fallen in love with you…and now I don’t know what I want anymore.”

  This sounded like good news, but I knew there was going to be a twist. She wouldn’t be on the verge of crying if this was a good phone call.

  “So he got on the first flight he could catch…he’s landing within the hour.”

  Fuck. This was definitely bad news.

  “He wants to talk this out. He said he doesn’t want to lose me…”

  Too fucking bad. “If he didn’t want to lose you, he should have kept you close. He shouldn’t have fucked other women and let you fuck other men.” The muscles in my neck convulsed because I clenched my jaw too tightly. “And you agreed you wouldn’t see him until the summer is over.”

  “I know,” she said breathlessly. “But what was I supposed to do? Tell him not to get on the plane? If he wants to come here, there’s nothing I can do to stop him.”

  I knew she was right. My demands were unrealistic. “He’s j
ust going to confuse you, Celeste. You should be with me, and we both know it.”

  “Either way, I have to talk to him about it.”

  “Are you going to tell him you want to be with me?” I paused in my bedroom, buck naked and still slightly wet.

  Silence.

  “Celeste.”

  She breathed into the phone. “Blade, I don’t know. I’ve never been so confused in my life.”

  “The choice is obvious, Celeste. Pick me for love. Don’t pick him for convenience.”

  “I never said I didn’t love him, Blade.”

  “But you don’t,” I pressed. “You would never be with me if you loved him. It’s that simple.”

  Silence again.

  Fuck, what should I do? If Henry got into her brain, he could take her back to France tomorrow. “I’m not letting you pick him.”

  “Blade—”

  “I don’t accept that. You can’t be in love with two people at once. You always love one more than the other.”

  “You don’t understand, Blade. I wish the answer was simple, but nothing is ever that simple.”

  “What can he offer you that I can’t?”

  She was quiet.

  “Answer the question.” I grabbed my jeans and t-shirt from the closet and stayed on the phone while I pulled everything on. I forgot about my boxers, but that didn’t matter right now. I was careful with the fly.

  “I’ve known him for a lot longer…”

  “And you fell in love with me a lot quicker.”

  “He’s ambitious—”

  “I own five restaurants. I have a beautiful house by the beach. You wanna talk ambitious? I’d put that asshole to rest.” Spit flew out of my mouth as I spoke because I was so livid. I wanted to punch this guy in the face for coming anywhere near her. She was mine—end of story.

  “He’ll be a great father—”

  “I take care of Lily and Rose all the time. I’ll be the best damn father in the world. I want a family—I said that before.”