Mixtape: A Love Song Anthology

by Nikki Sloane, Elle Kennedy, KL Kreig, Leslie McAdam, Lynda Aicher, Mara White, Marni Mann, Rebecca Shea, Saffron Kent, Sierra Simone, Veronica Larsen, Xio Axelrod

  It’s surreal, this gift she is giving me.

  “Maverick,” I whisper tenderly, completely enraptured by her. Her skin glitters as if made of stardust or crushed diamonds. My gaze treks back up her body until I reconnect with her. Her entreaty is silent, desperate. A reflection of mine.

  Making quick work of my own clothes, I never look away. As I discard each article, I envision a home filled to the brim with kids who have green eyes and dark hair like their mother’s. How I long to make that a reality. To see her belly swell with our children. I don’t dare take that chance, though. Not yet. We have a lot to work through, so I push that dream to the side, don a condom, and relish in the way she’s now exploring me with her hands while searching my soul with her own.

  This woman. She is so much, a vision of beauty. Infused with divinity. Setting my lips to hers, I take her breath as mine, literally breathing her in as I whisper, “The first time I come with you, it will be together.” Reaching between us, I find her opening, wet and eager, and I begin to sink inside.

  And fuck . . . my eyes roll.

  “Oh shit, Killian,” she pants.

  She’s tight. So goddamned tight, I wonder for a second or two if I’ll be able to get all the way seated. I’ve never felt anything so damn good in my entire life. I can’t imagine the way she’d feel with no barrier between us.

  I pull out and drive back in, keeping my movements gentle and rhythmic. It’s agony, holding back, but I worry I’m hurting her, so I stay tuned in to her, making sure she’s with me every step of the way. With the way her lids are at half-mast and her face is drawn up in rapture, there is no doubt she is lockstep.

  “Goddamn, you feel good. So good, Maverick. So wet, so tight. So . . . fuck.” I can hardly breathe for wanting her, but I keep the pace methodical, holding myself in check.

  “Fuck me. Hard,” she begs. I almost lose it then and there. After all these years of denying her, I want to give her whatever makes her happy. Instead, I root myself and still.

  “I’m not fucking you, Maverick.”

  “But—”

  Leveraging myself on my elbows, I cup her cheeks and lay a thumb over her mouth, quieting her. This is not a quick fuck in the bed of my truck. I want to make love to the only woman I’ve ever been in love with.

  “I’m going to make love to you slowly, Small Fry. I’ve waited too long to take you like it’s a meaningless act.” I was an idiot. “This means more to me than you can possibly know.” You’re my light. My universe. “I’m going to worship your body, love your heart, own your soul, and make sure you remember this night for the rest of your life.” Correction, the rest of our lives.

  She remains quiet when I remove my thumb. Her pussy pulses around me. I ache to move, bringing us both to euphoria, but I know my Small Fry. She has something to say.

  It doesn’t take long. Between a blink and the next breath, she murmurs, “I love you, Killian,” and I hate that a sob accompanies the declaration I’ve waited to hear again for the last five years.

  I’ve done this to her. Though it was with honorable intent, my continued rejections have caused her pain, and I need to make it right. I don’t want her to fear telling me she loves me ever again.

  I picture the rest of my life. Mountains I’ve yet to climb. Valleys I’ve yet to sink into. I can’t imagine anyone I want by my side for the highest of highs, the lowest of lows, and all the mundane days traversed in between.

  “I love you, Maverick. I have always loved you.” I should have told you long ago.

  Her eyes fill with tears. I wipe each one away as I love her the way she was meant to be loved. With awe and reverence and gratitude. And when she reaches her peak only seconds before I do, her sounds of ecstasy in time with my own, I know I am holding the last woman I will ever make love to.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Dinner was delicious as always. Thank you.” I pick up my mother’s plate on the way by, heading to the kitchen to rinse both of ours.

  “I’m glad you could make it.”

  I should be working, but when my mother asks you to dinner, you don’t refuse. I wouldn’t anyway. I love spending time with her. “You know I’d never turn down an invitation for Eilish Shepard’s famous Irish stew.”

  Her laughter follows me to the sink. I eye the fusee clock hanging on the wall above me. It was a gift from my father for Christmas last year. He had it commissioned and shipped from Ireland, my mother’s homeland. She cried. I may have teared up. The love my parents share is something I aspire to. I know with Mavs I can have the same thing.

  “Where’s Pops?” I ask, loading the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. I remember having to wash dishes by hand because my mother refused to own a dishwasher. She didn’t believe a machine could outperform a human. She still doesn’t.

  “Oh, you know your father. He’s still at the office as you generally are at this hour.”

  I frown. I don’t recall seeing his light on when I left a bit ago. I must have been mistaken.

  “Would you care for a brandy?” my mother asks, already heading to the cupboard housing the liquor.

  “I don’t know.” I shouldn’t. I have an early morning flight to Pensacola that she doesn’t know about.

  “Come now. Humor an old woman.”

  I decide one won’t hurt, wanting a few more minutes with her, knowing they’re likely going to be fewer and farther between soon. “Sure. And you are far from old,” I mutter against her forehead before pressing my lips to her cool skin.

  Under her protests, I finish clearing the table and settle into the oversized armchair in the sitting room generally reserved for my father when he’s home.

  “So, are you going to tell me or do I have to pull it out of you?”

  “Tell you what?” I sip the Courvoisier my mother handed me, silently cursing her special power. Eilish Shepard is many things. Loving. Giving. Fierce. Direct. And all-knowing. Her intuition is a gift. Or a curse, depending on how you look at it.

  Today it would be the latter.

  “Killian.”

  My mother’s firm tone says it all.

  Fuck. This is the last thing I need. My parents don’t keep secrets from each other. If she knows, my father knows and my father is a worse liar than Maverick if that’s possible. That means it’s only a matter of time before Richard knows. And Kael, well, his suspicions grow daily. He asked me to meet him for a drink last night. Two invitations since Mavs has been back. That is no coincidence.

  “What?” I reply plainly. I’m not giving her anything. She gets the slightest inkling of a lie and your proverbial goose is cooked. That lesson was learned a long time ago.

  “Your father told me Maverick is working at DSC.”

  I smirk and shake my head. Here we go. “She is.”

  Short. Simple. Answer what’s asked. No more. No less.

  “How’s that going?” My mother pours herself her own drink. Unusual, though I don’t comment.

  One shoulder creeps up to my ear then falls back down. “Fine.”

  “Fine?” She sits across from me and crosses one leg over the other.

  “Fine,” I reiterate.

  It’s been a month now that Maverick and I have been “together.” Four weeks of secrets and lies and sneaking around. Attempting to treat her like she’s just another employee at work has proven a challenge. And the kicker is I am happy—happier than I have ever been. Most days my heart is bursting with possibilities and plans for the future, and I have no one to share them with besides Mavs. I have to hide my contentment as though it doesn’t exist. I’m tired of the subterfuge. It’s exhausting.

  “Why are you looking at me that way?” Mother’s intuition sucks.

  “What way would that be?” she asks, tipping her head a couple of degrees to the left, feigning confusion.

  “Like . . .” I twirl my finger in her direction, trying to come up with the right description. “I don’t know. Like tha
t.” Like you know that I’m in love with her and about to make the biggest decision of my life.

  Her laughter breaks me down, makes those tight muscles relax slightly. “You’re generally far more articulate than that, Killian.”

  “I know. I just . . .” I’m discombobulated. I need my mother.

  An unusual thought for a twenty-seven-year-old man, but my mother and I have a bond she doesn’t have with Kael. That she doesn’t have with anyone. She knows me inside and out. And she is the best advice giver I know. I don’t know a better woman besides Maverick. Having to cut her out of this huge piece of my life has been like carving a hole in the center of me.

  “Maverick . . . she . . . I . . .” I stumble over my words, unsure what to say, how to say it, if I should say anything at all.

  But my mother, man, she doesn’t miss a beat. And her question, “How can I help?” which brims with the utmost sincerity, brings a steady sting to the backs of my eyes.

  She knows. Of course she knows.

  “I’m in love with her,” I confess on a whim. Part of me wants to eat those words; the other is glad they are out in the universe. It makes them more real, somehow.

  “Of course you are,” is her answer, so matter-of-fact, it’s like it has always been so. And it has, I suppose. “The question is, my son, what are you going to do about it?”

  She has to know Kael feels the same way I do. Yet there is no judgment, no derision, no taking of sides. If there were, I’m not sure how I’d have handled it. But to have her blessing . . .

  To have her blessing lightens this burden I’ve been carrying like a cross strapped to my back.

  What am I going to do?

  “Funny you should ask.” I swallow the rest of my drink and, leaning forward with my elbows glued to my knees, I lay out the grand plan I’ve been working on since the moment I asked Maverick to meet me in Harbor Park.

  For the next hour my mother listens to me vomit every worry, each fear. She is supportive. Encouraging, even. I tell her my concern for Pops and Kael, for those “unintended consequences” which may roll downhill. She assures me she’ll handle things on the home front, leveraging Vivian’s sway over her husband. I’m sorry I didn’t trust her with this from the beginning.

  “It won’t be easy,” she tells me. We stand with the front door open, bathing in the warm evening air. The cicadas are loud tonight. Their buzz vibrates in my bones.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Hmmm, what?”

  Her reply is quick. “Nothing.”

  Oh no. It’s not nothing. “It’s something,” I prod.

  Several beats pass before she speaks again. “You care, Killian. That’s why you’re about to undertake these extraordinary measures. In an attempt to protect everyone you love.”

  My eyes burn. She knows me so well. “I’m trying.”

  “Yet someone will get hurt.”

  Kael.

  My heart is heavy. I am quite sure hers is as well. Son pitted against son. Friend against friend. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.

  “I know.” My sigh is long and weighs a thousand pounds.

  We walk onto the porch and down the three front steps, neither of us saying a word. As it always does, my gaze is drawn to the DeSoto’s. Maverick’s car is in the driveway. How I long to see it in front of our home instead.

  “And think not you can direct the course of love, for love directs your course,” my mother says quietly.

  “What?” I ask, looking down at her, brows drawn.

  My mother, small but mighty, smiles up at me, all five foot one of her aglow. She sets her hands on both my cheeks, shaking them like she did when I was a child. “‘Love leads us, not the other way around. The quote is a favorite of mine. Appropriate in this situation, don’t you think?”

  I digest my mother’s wisdom, profound, steeped in experience. And always on point.

  My love for Maverick most decidedly set me on a path I had could not deviate from even if I wanted to.

  “Thank you, Mother. For everything,” I whisper, hugging her one last time. Next to Maverick, there is not a woman on this Earth I love more than my mother. She made me the man I am today. I would move mountains for her.

  “You are most welcome, Killian.” I get a kiss on the cheek. “Good luck, my son,” she adds as I’m walking to my truck.

  Good luck. Hmm. Definitely going to need it.

  Heading toward my house in town, I take my time, listening to a Keith Urban tune about not giving up on a lifetime love while I replay the conversation I had with my mother. And as I do this peaceful serenity I haven’t felt before settles in my bones.

  While I know challenges lie ahead, I feel good. More than good.

  I feel alive.

  Rejuvenated.

  And for the first time . . . I feel truly hopeful that all I want is at last within my grasp.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No. You’re not,” I gruff.

  “I make my own decisions, you know.”

  To the man upstairs, grant me patience please. A lifetime of it, as long as I’m putting in my order. “This is only temporary, Mavs.”

  She huffs and grows quiet. That doesn’t last long. “I don’t understand why you have to do this.”

  The pattern she’s drawing with her fingertip on my chest is driving me out of my ever-loving mind. I can’t take it.

  Rolling her over to her back, I wedge a knee between her thighs and spread them open, simultaneously pinning her hands above her head. She sets her heels on my lower back and pushes her pelvis up, fitting us together as if we’ve always been one. My stomach falls as I plummet into her atmosphere once again.

  Dark, mussed hair contrasts against the white of my pillowcase. Satiation swims in her eyes from our last hour of lovemaking. I’m spent, yet she makes me want to dive back in. She is every man’s dream, including mine. Yet somehow, someway, she has become my reality.

  How have I been so blessed?

  “We’ve already been through this, Small Fry,” I groan.

  Her lids narrow, her temples tick, both ever so slight to someone who knows no better. Only I do. Over the years I’ve mastered reading every emotion that emanates from Mavs. I’ve seen them all. Unfettered joy. Crushing heartbreak. Brutal anger. She feels deeply and doesn’t attempt to hide it. At times I could tell you what she’s feeling before she even could.

  Right now, she is madder than a hornet whose nest was swatted. And I’m about to get stung. But this is the only way. In time, she will realize it too.

  “Then go through it once more,” she snaps. Sage irises smolder now.

  “Maverick.” I bend to kiss her lips, but they’re stiff as a board. I don’t let that deter me. “I need to make my own way.” I move to her ear, biting her lobe. A hot breath rushes out, warming my cheek. “I don’t want this any more than you do, but it’s only temporary.” Her throat tastes like candy tonight. Last night it was berries, tart and ripe. She’s a mystery, a symphony for the senses.

  “How long?” She’s tempering, though her tone is still piqued.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her honestly.

  Last week I accepted a job at Molloy Holdings, a company that, like DSC, is in the transportation infrastructure industry, but their niche is in canal work in the Gulf. They are half the size of DSC, but they managed to beat my salary by nearly 20 percent and even threw in a few stock options that may be worth something someday. Most importantly, though, it set the second part of my plan into motion. To dismantle myself from Richard DeSoto and his interference. If I stay, I’ll be fired anyway, though Mavs doesn’t need to know that. She’d go to bat for me and I need to lead this battle, not her.

  “A year? Longer?”

  “I don’t know, baby.” My lips trek across the fullness of her cleavage. I stop and suck hard, knowing I’ll leave a mark. Wanting
them all over her as some sort of caveman reminder of who she belongs to.

  I’m mapping out where I’ll leave the next one when she screeches, “A year?” Her hands fly to my shoulders to push me away.

  I blow out a long breath and lever on my elbows. “I didn’t say a year. I said I don’t know.” I want to make love, not quarrel. I want to take advantage of every second we have left together before I have to board that plane for Pensacola in three days’ time. “I hate the thought more than you do, Mavs.”

  “Well, you mustn’t because you’re leaving me.”

  What is it about a woman’s tears that brings a man to his knees? “Mavs, baby.” I brush my index finger to her hairline, catching a falling drop. “Please, don’t cry.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “And I don’t want to sneak around anymore.”

  Parks. Grain bins. Gravel roads. Hidden cars. Sneaking through back doors. Blinds pulled. I’m sick of all of it. I’m a successful twenty-seven-year-old man with a career and a home and everything to offer the woman I am in love with. To hide us this way is madness.

  There is a part of me that wants to march into Richard’s office and simply tell him how it’s going to be. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it undermines my manhood that I don’t. But I also know Richard, and I will earn his respect far more this way. So, no. This is the way it needs to be.

  “That will be hard to do when you’re not here.” She attempts to wiggle from my hold. I tighten it. She huffs and sinks back into the pillows in feigned submission. She’s still angry. It’s adorable. “This is about my father, isn’t it?”

  Yes. And . . . yes.

  “Why don’t you talk to him, Killian?” she asks when I don’t answer.

  It’s not that easy, Small Fry.

  “Fine. If you won’t, I will.”

  Stubborn as the night is dark.