Pulling me into him, he kissed the top of my head. “We’ve got a lot of history, baby, and I love every single memory, except for—”
I moved quickly to put my hand over his mouth to stop him from finishing the sentence, not realizing how close my hand was to his face until I heard the slap and felt the sting in my palm. Yanking my hand away again, I stared wide-eyed at where he was now rubbing.
“Oops, I didn’t mean to do that. I was just trying to get you to shut up.”
“Ever considered just saying shut up instead of hitting a police officer?”
Oh, shit, I’d assaulted a law enforcement officer. That was illegal. Wait, could I be tried for assaulting one if it happened while we were in bed and was a total accident? Could my defense be: “Because he was going to say something stupid, your honor, and I didn’t want to hear it”?
A good defense is a counter-argument, right? So that’s what I was going to do. “I’m certain if I explained how many times we’d hashed out that one blip—”
“Blip? It lasted seven years and took you away from your family,” he snapped. “A blip is a week, not seven years of weeks.”
“I was away at college for, like, five of those years, Logan.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t come home unless I was away, or you could hide being here from me.”
“Still,” I huffed, rolling my eyes, “five years needs to be deducted because I wouldn’t have lived here during it anyway.”
“Fine,” he growled, throwing a hand in the air, “the blip lasted two years. Happy?”
Holding a finger up, I shook it at him. “Ah, but that can be disputed, too.”
“Did we suddenly end up in a trial?” he mumbled, looking confused by our situation.
“Well, yes!” I wanted to avoid getting a record for hitting a police officer. “The position I just got at the school wouldn’t have been vacant after I graduated, so I probably would have moved anyway to get a job. I couldn’t be home for those two years because I wouldn’t have employment and money to survive. Ergo, I wouldn’t have been here for the remaining two years of the seven year term.”
Logan was staring at me, but when I finished my argument, he blinked and said nothing.
“So, you see?” I pressed, proud of myself for my reasoning skills. “Man, I should’ve been a lawyer. I’m totally awesome at it.”
“Did—“ he started, tilting his head and still looking dazed. “Did you just say ergo?”
“Well, yeah? I’m legalizing the shit out of this case.”
“Legalizing the shit out of the case? What case are we even disputing?”
“The fact that I wouldn’t have even been able to live in Piersville for those seven years I was away.” As his eyebrows went from confused to making a butt between them with his frown, I jumped up onto my knees and pointed at him. “Ah ha, you can’t handle the truth!”
Groaning, he dropped his head back and covered his face with his hands. “Now you’re quoting movies.”
“No,” I said slowly, “I’m pointing out that you can’t handle the truth about me not being able to live here. Yes, I had a reason to stay away, but I also couldn’t afford to live without my job. My family has a furniture business, but my heart’s in teaching, and that’s where I chose to go.”
Dropping his hands, he glared at me. “Yeah, but you could’ve found a job closer than Boston.”
“I’ll give you that,” I agreed. “But, bruh, I’ve let go of it, and it’s time you did the same.”
“So is the case over?” he asked, still glaring at me.
Shrugging, I dropped down onto a hip and smiled at him. “Yup, and I won it.”
With a growl, he launched himself at me and started tickling me. “If you’re not careful, I’m going to get shit with spiders on it for the house.”
He could tickle me all he wanted, I wasn’t going to laugh. He just broke out a serious war. “If you do that, I’ll get those solar-powered butterflies and stick them everywhere so you can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake.”
The smile he’d been watching me with faded, making me feel smug. Well, that was until he said softly, “I know what’s real—how I feel about you. How I’ve felt about you for as long as I can remember.” I wasn’t expecting it, so I didn’t know how to reply. “I used to wake up every morning, excited about seeing you. When school finished, I’d drag my heels leaving if we weren’t doing something together after it because it meant I wouldn’t see you until the next day. I used to bug my parents constantly to arrange something with yours at the weekends and during the school breaks. Then things changed—” he’d told me recently about his dream and why he’d changed, so I understood this “—and I still wanted them, even though I tried not to.”
Feeling tears starting to build, I licked my dry lips and decided to give him some beauty back. “I did the same with my family, even getting Pops to make plans with your grandpa so that it didn’t look so obvious. Whenever I came home from college and Boston, I’d stare at your house, the police department, your parents’ house… so that I could see you. I’d make sure you weren’t home when I came, but I also wanted your plans to change so you were.”
“I wish you’d come home for a different reason, baby.” He looked around the room to show what he meant, but I already knew.
“Me, too,” I rasped, feeling the tears trailing down the sides of my face. “Coming home to say goodbye and then the funeral… was just so hard. I didn’t see how I could stay when he wasn’t here for me to see every day. I didn’t want to be here without him.”
Lying down and pulling me on top of him, he stroked my hair. “I know, baby. But I like to think that he’s arranged everything that’s happened for you.”
Wiping my face on his chest and laughing at the groan it got from him, I thought about what he’d said. “You’re probably right about all of that. The pieces just seem to have slotted together for most of it—”
“Don’t tempt fate on that,” he warned, tapping me on the ass. “If you put that out there, bad shit will happen.”
“I said most of it, not all of it.”
“Still, we don’t want to tempt bad fate.”
“Technically, you walking into an apartment swamped with sewage was bad fate,” I pointed out, screwing my face up at the thought of it. “Jesus, that’s nasty.”
“It was,” he murmured. “All I could picture was the bacteria crawling everywhere and then wondering how old the shit was that was in my living room.”
I went to sit up excitedly, but his arms tightened, preventing me from moving and making clear he was happy with me where I was. “Oh my God, I wanted to talk to you about this when I first read it—it’s the kind of thing we used to discuss. But, did you read about that fatberg they found in a sewer in London? They said it went back to Victorian times, and it was full of poop, fat, condoms, diapers, tampons, and all sorts of nasty shit. Hell, they even found watches and rings in it.”
His eyes were dancing when I looked at him. I wasn’t lying, we’d have searched the internet like crazy people when we were younger if they’d found it then.
Apparently things hadn’t changed there either.
“I saw it on the news, and there’s a video online from the camera they used to search the drain. I think there’s a chunk of it in a museum, too.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed, plans starting to form for us. “We need to go and see it. Can’t we?”
Bursting out laughing, all of the melancholy feelings from only minutes before lifted. I’d never be totally free from them, but I could live with them still being there. If you miss someone you’ve lost, your heart doesn’t heal, and those feelings are proof that the person was part of you. So, yeah, I could live with them.
But I could also live for moments like these with Logan Richards.
“Some couple’s dreams include romantic destinations, climbing a mountain, or visiting a volcano. Ours is to go and see Victorian fat and poop.”
&nb
sp; “It’s good to stand out in the crowd,” I snickered, tracing my finger up and down his sides and smiling when I skimmed over his sensitive spot, getting a grunt and shudder out of him.
“That we do, baby. We’ll do normal things, but we’ll also do stuff that not a lot of couples would want to do, but they’re the definition of who we’ve always been.”
Staring across his stomach at the mattress, I realized he was right. “I like that.”
The feeling that grew inside me was also unique. I wanted— No, I needed to taste him. It was like everything depended on it, and I didn’t know why.
My gag reflex truly was shit. If I went to the dentist, they usually had to give me something to relax my muscles so that it didn’t happen and he could check my teeth. When I got strep throat or tonsillitis, it was a nightmare when the doctor put the tongue depressor in to take a closer look. I even loved bananas, but I had to cut them into tiny pieces to eat them.
But I needed to do this. I was desperate to taste him.
Surprising both of us, I sat up quickly and moved between his thighs.
“What are you doing, bab— Oh, shit,” he groaned when I pushed my hand under the waistband of his shorts and closed my fingers around him. When he was soft, it wasn’t an issue, but I knew that they’d only just touch each other when he was hard. Yeah, I was fucking lucky.
Using my other hand so that I didn’t have to let him go, I tugged down the shorts until they were just under his balls.
I could do this. I’d read enough about it in books and magazines to know what I had to do to make it fantastic for him. I just had to have control over my throat and breathing.
So, leaning in, I swiped my tongue over the head, smiling when I heard the deep groan that came out of him.
“You don’t have to do this, Bex. I know you— Aw, shit,” he growled as I sucked on the very tip of it, flicking my tongue across the hole in the top.
This wasn’t the part I had issues with. That happened when it got to about an inch down my tongue. I don’t know why, but it was an automatic response. But, no blowjob would be complete with just the tip in your mouth, so I needed to do more.
I’d spent years working on getting my toothbrush back there to clean my tongue and could do it now, so maybe if I pretended it was that—without the bristles—I’d be able to do it?
Closing my eyes, I imagined I was brushing my teeth and very slowly moved farther down him. I wasn’t going to do magic tricks with my tongue until I knew how far I could take it, so all I did was suck and then breathe over it, making sure he was always feeling something from me.
“I don’t know what to do with my hands,” he rasped as they thudded on the mattress. “I want to put them in your hair, but if I do that, I just know I’ll lose control and push you down.”
Yeah, probably best not to do that, seeing as how I was getting that familiar blow job foe—the warning of an incoming wretch in my throat, signaling I’d taken a bit too much for now.
Sucking hard as I pulled back up to the top, I let my breath out to relax my throat and tried again. This time I was able to take a little bit more, so I went about repeating the motion as I held onto the base of him, determined to at least make it down his length to my where my hand was with my eyes shut.
The fact I couldn’t see anything was why I jerked when his finger touched my lips, tracing over the top one. “Look at me.”
The tone of his voice, like he needed me to do this, made me do just that. He didn’t look like a guy getting a blowjob, he was looking at me tenderly because he understood what it was taking for me to do this for him, and it meant everything to him.
“If it gets too much, stop, Bex. We’ve got all the time in the world to work on this, and I’m looking forward to every second.”
I’d just pulled up to the tip again when he said it, and I was so moved by what he’d said that my mouth opened, and I lost his penis from it. “I want all of those seconds with you.”
Smiling gently, he traced his finger over my bottom lip this time. “Ditto, baby, so we’re going to take them and make them beautiful.”
Ah, to hell with it.
Swooping down, I sucked hard as I slid my mouth farther down him, determined I was going to meet my hand and blow his mind. Unfortunately, my gag reflex had other ideas as it kicked in just then.
The noise that came out of him was a mixture between a laugh and an agonized groan. “Is it wrong to let you know how good that felt?”
Maybe to him it did.
Remembering the advice I’d read online about how to stop yourself gagging, I turned my thumb in towards my palm and wrapped my fingers around it, squeezing the ever-loving shit out of it.
This had to work.
Moving the hand that was holding him all the way to the base, I pressed down harder…
And fucking gagged again.
I was determined, but each time I got to where the dangly bit in my throat was, the gag hit me, and tears were starting to roll down my face from the force of it. A new sense of determination hit me as I sucked and flicked the head, but then he reared up, knocking me away from his cock, and moved until I was lying on my back with him between my legs this time.
“What are you doing? I was in the z— Oh, my God!” It was my turn to groan it as he pulled my panties to the side and latched onto my clit without even needing to search for it.
I faintly registered the noise of tearing material but didn’t think anything of it as he plunged his tongue inside me. Someone could knock the walls down, and I wouldn’t care at that moment.
Swapping his finger for his tongue, he gently pushed it inside me as he moved back up to my clit, flicking and sucking it until I was on the edge. I was also taking notes on how he moved his mouth and hand. We might have different parts, but if it felt this good on me, maybe it’d feel right on him, too?
As I came, I reached down and grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling his face into me as I cried out. I wasn’t intending to smother him, I just didn’t want him to pull away. Plus, his hair was so soft that I couldn’t help it.
With two fingers still inside me, he gently rubbed against a spot that had me clamping my legs together without volition, trapping his hand in place as he kissed and licked his way up to my breasts, stopping when my t-shirt was above them.
“Every day with you is even better than anything I’d ever imagined they’d be, and I imagined a lot. Never in my life did I think I’d get all of my hopes and dreams, but here you are lying under me.”
Those words.
With the little cognitive functions I had given how hard I’d just come and the fact his fingers were pushing me back up the cliff, I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him into me. Eyes locked, he removed his hand from me and used it to move his cock into place, then slid slowly inside me.
“Your hopes and dreams were the same as mine,” I whispered, making him jerk slightly. “The problem was, I felt empty because that’s all they were. We can dream and hope for things we’ll never have, but few people get to live them out in real life. I get to do that every day, and I’m so full of happiness that it’s hard to breathe sometimes.”
At that moment, I was also full of him, and I didn’t ever want him to stop what he was doing.
As he pulled his hips back, dragging his length over areas and nerves that made me moan, he nodded his head. “This is us,” he told me as he pushed agonizingly slowly back inside. “All of you from your head to your toes, inside and out,”—he ground down into me—“is mine.”
Reaching down, I grabbed his ass with my hands, pushing him impossibly deeper inside. “The same goes for you.”
His lips tipped up on one side in a smile. “Don’t you know, baby, I’ve always been yours.”
Then, kissing me, he went about blowing my mind. Sex with Logan was always great, but what’d happened and come to light tonight made it even better, like we had a deeper connection.
And, when I fell asleep afterward, one leg
over his hips and tucked under his arm, I did it knowing that I’d lost one of the most important people in my life to get back one I’d lost seven years ago. It wasn’t fair, it wouldn’t ever be fair, but I’d found my place in the world.
I’d also found my future, and that’s what every day was working toward now.
Our future’s together.
And, just in case you were wondering—I didn’t give us food poisoning, either.
Chapter Seventeen
Logan
After the night when we’d bared ourselves, it felt like the world changed. For years I’d been so focused on my job and little details, now it was like I was seeing the world with new eyes. I hated that I had to sound so cliché about it, but when I discussed it with DB, Raul, and Garrett, they’d all agreed and said, “Love will do that to ya.”
So far, after a lot of man hours invested in the case, we hadn’t found Lord Kirkwood. King had lawyered up before we’d even been to see him, and Dirk was doing his best to act like a concerned parent, even going so far as to get his young wife to join him in front of camera crews while they stuck missing posters around the town.
Lying scum!
Interestingly, Judge Ingleston had taken some vacation time from his job and had then given a press conference on behalf of the Kirkwood family, asking for people with information and security camera footage to come forward.
Do you want to know what we saw when we watched them during it? Lies. Ingleston was agitated, jerky, it was like he was reciting something they’d scribbled out minutes before it.
Dirk was behind him, scanning the area like he was looking for something, but his expression was vacant and bored, while his wife just stared at her feet.
And King, the smarmy fuck, was tapping the screen of his phone next to her, not interested in what was going on around him.
Cinder was alive but still in the ICU. They’d managed to release the pressure in her skull, and the initial tests for brain function were looking promising. She might never lead a life, walking, talking, living like I did, but she’d at least survived.
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