by Sabre Rose
Grabbing my chin between his finger and thumb, he roughly jerked my head down, forcing me to look into his eyes as he continued his slow torture. I whimpered, needing to move, to writhe under him, but he let his weight press my body into the mattress and held my head in place with the grip of his fingers, demanding that I look at him, demanding that my body stay still under his.
He rocked back and forth, watching as the pleasure trembled over my body until it erupted and I came, panting and crying out his name. Only then did he release me. He let go of the grip on my chin, lifted the weight of his body and withdrew to sit on the edge of the bed, his hard cock protruding proudly between his legs, hands left trailing over my stomach.
“Tyler?” I said, sitting up and moving beside him. I reached between his legs and wrapped my hands around his hardness but he took my wrist and pulled my hand away.
“You should have told me,” he said finally.
“I know.” I dropped my gaze to the floor as Tyler lay back. “You shouldn’t have said what you did.”
“I know,” he replied. “I’m sorry.”
“How are we going to move past this? Gabe is always going to be part of your life, more so now with his involvement in the company, and there will always be that knowledge of me being with him.”
Tyler didn’t reply. The muscles of his jaw worked back and forth as he stared at the ceiling.
“Tell me about your past. Surely you’ve got some baggage that you could share, even the load a little. It’s not fair that I’ve got an ex-fiancé and, well, and Gabe.”
Tyler shook his head. “There isn’t anyone really.”
“So you had no one before me? I find that hard to believe.” I lay back on the bed, mimicking Tyler’s position, and stared at the ceiling lined with dark rafters.
“I suppose there was this one girl.”
“Just the one?”
Tyler turned to his side, propping his head on his hand with his elbow digging into the mattress. “I didn’t really have anyone before you. There were women, women like Molly and Amanda, but they were dates to functions. They had no place in the rest of my life.”
“So tell me about this one girl.”
Tyler reached over and traced circles around my belly button with his finger. “It was nothing really. I was sixteen and Jake and I were spending the summer holidays with our mother. She lived in this little town. I didn’t want to go. But I discovered that living with Mum was a lot different than living with Dad. We had freedom. We roamed the streets and attended all the small town parties we could. I got drunk for the first time, and I got stoned for the first time, all under the supervision of good old Gloria. Anyway, I met this girl at one of the parties. She was a few years older than me, and I thought she was gorgeous. She was my first. I was young and naïve and thought I was in love. She was everything exciting and forbidden. Or so I thought.”
“What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“How did it end?” I prompted.
Tyler flopped onto his back again. “A few days before I was due to come back home, she changed. I walked over to her house and she refused to let me in. She just stood there, shouting through the closed door for me to go away. I did. And then I went back later on but she still refused to see me. I didn’t know what I had done wrong. And, of course, me being the naïve kid that I was, it never occurred to me that there was more going on in her life than just me. Anyway, after refusing to move from her door on the day I was supposed to leave, she finally let me in and told me what was going on. She was pregnant. It wasn’t mine, but I didn’t know that when the words first came out of her mouth and I literally froze. I was only sixteen. I was in no way ready to be a father. But then I couldn’t stand the thought of not being with her. I was prepared to give up everything to be with her, even if it meant raising some other guy’s kid.” He spoke with a twinkle in his eye, rolling his bottom lip over his teeth almost as if he was daring me to jealousy.
“So what happened to her? Did she go back to the father of the baby?”
Tyler shook his head against the duvet. “Didn’t see her again after that. Mum called Dad to come and pick me up because she was worried I was getting too attached. I snuck out late one night and caught a bus all the way back there but when I arrived, Mum was in a state and the things she said about me, about Claudia…” He sighed heavily. “I’ve barely seen Mum since.”
I moved across the bed and lay my head on his chest. “That’s a rather sad story.”
He shrugged and my head shifted on his chest. “It is what it is.”
“When was the last time you saw your Mum?”
Tyler tensed under me. “Clark’s funeral.”
“And there’ve been no other girls since?” I asked, sensing the need to change the subject away from his mother.
A smile creased Tyler’s face. “Of course there have been women, just none that I’ve felt a connection to. Not that there weren’t plenty who tried.”
“Oh really?” I teased.
“Really.” He laughed and it rumbled around his chest. “At one stage I was thinking of hiring security just to keep them away.”
I rolled my eyes and shoved him playfully. “So with all these women chasing you, what made you want me?” I shifted the tilt of my chin so I could look up at him.
“That’s easy,” he said and pressed a kiss to my head. “You’re smart, you’re talented, and you make me laugh as well as drive me insane. And, you’re incredibly beautiful. No matter how much I get to know you, I always want to know more.”
Tyler silenced any further questions with his mouth, his hands gripping each side of my face. He kissed me until I forgot what we had been talking about, until I forgot the argument we had had, until I forgot we had spent the night apart. He kissed me until everything else melted away and there was nothing but him and me. Nothing else existed.
Suddenly he pulled away and grinned. “Another reason I like you.” He pulled his lip between his teeth, trying to smother a smirk.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“You fuck incredibly well.”
He kissed me again and I mumbled against his mouth, “Do I now?”
“Yes,” he said and his hands slid between us until they found the wetness between my legs. “I like the way you fuck very, very much.”
25
LAUREN
In the dim light of the bedroom, our fight the night before seemed trivial. His jealousy of Gabe had no basis, as the way I felt about Gabe paled in comparison to how I felt about Tyler. I was in awe of him.
Tyler’s mouth toyed with my nipples as his fingers teased. His hardness pressed into my stomach and I longed for him to be inside me again. But our feverish fumbling was interrupted by Tyler’s phone vibrating and starting to ring incessantly. Each time it stopped, only seconds would pass before it started again. Distracted, I lifted my eyes to find where it lay on the floor, brightly lit.
“Just ignore it,” Tyler said, his words mumbled by my flesh.
“It’s your father,” I replied, noticing the capital letters angrily displayed across the screen. It was still ringing.
Tyler’s head flopped to my chest and he groaned. Not the sort of groan I was used to hearing in this situation, one of frustration. “I don’t want to talk to him.” His hands fondled my breasts but the moment was lost to the ringing phone. Sighing exaggeratedly, Tyler dragged himself from the bed and picked up the still ringing phone.
“What?” he demanded. He listened for a moment. His eyebrows shot high and his eyes shifted to mine.
“What?” I mouthed.
Tyler nodded, making affirmative grunts and noises before saying, “We’ll be there soon.”
“Is everything okay?” I asked as soon as he ended the call.
“Billie’s in hospital.”
I reached into the bedside cabinet and pulled out a pair of underwear, threading them over my feet and sliding them up my legs. “Is she okay?
Is the baby okay?”
“She’s in labour. I said we’d go straight there. She’s asking for you.”
“For me?” A slice of panic cut through me. I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I didn’t want to sit there and wait, my mind unwillingly stuck on memories of the past.
Dressing quickly, we drove to the hospital on the outskirts of the city. Hamish Thornton stood outside the entrance, phone pressed to his ear, anger emanating from his tone. When he saw us, he quickly ended the call.
“About time,” he said.
“We got here as quickly as we could,” Tyler replied.
“I called forty minutes ago. Both your brothers are already here.” Hamish’s eyes moved to me. “Lauren,” he said and nodded.
“Hamish,” I replied, lifting my chin a little.
We followed him through the hallways of the hospital until we reached a waiting room where Gabe and Jake were sitting. Gabe sat with his head in his hands. He drew his face upwards to look at me with bloodshot eyes. He was hung over.
Just above Jake’s left cheekbone, the skin was swollen and shiny and there was a little dried blood beneath his nose.
“What happened to you?” Tyler took a seat opposite his brother, casting a wary glance over at Gabe.
“It’s nothing,” Jake replied gruffly.
“It looks as though you had the shit kicked out of you.”
“I didn’t,” was all Jake said.
Sitting down next to Tyler, I threaded my arm through his. Gabe followed the movement with his eyes before sitting up, then slouching back in the seat.
“Are you okay?” he asked me.
“Of course,” I replied.
“You left awfully early last night.”
“It wasn’t early.” I chose not to elaborate any further.
“It was earlier than when Tyler left. How you feeling today, brother? Worn off some of the anger?”
I turned to look at Tyler. Annoyance burned in his eyes. “Enough,” he said to Gabe.
Gabe leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees and grinned. “Enough what?”
“Enough talking,” Tyler growled.
“Really? Enough talking? Are you going to grab me by the throat to stop me?”
“What’s he talking about?” I asked Tyler who still glared at Gabe, muscles tensing as though he wanted to leap from his chair and do the very thing Gabe taunted him about.
“And you’re okay being here and all?” Gabe asked, turning to me again. There was genuine concern in his eyes this time. He wasn’t merely saying it to wind up Tyler.
“I’m fine,” I said quietly. I shook my head with the slightest movement, trying to relay to Gabe not to keep talking. Nervously, I flicked a glance at Tyler, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy glaring at Gabe.
The door swung open and Hamish walked in, running his hands through his thick grey hair. “She wants to see you.”
“Who?” Tyler asked.
“Her,” Hamish replied, jerking his head in my direction.
“You mean Lauren?” Gabe said.
“Yes, I fucking mean Lauren,” Hamish shouted. He let out a breath of air. “Sorry, it’s just rather intense in there.”
A nurse poked her head through the door.
Hamish took a seat, his head jerking towards the nurse. “She’ll show you the way.”
I followed the clipped steps of the nurse down the hall, concentrating on the noises her shoes made on the linoleum rather than the memories that were threatening to rise to the surface. The problem with hospitals was that they all looked the same. Wide corridors, muted colours, sterile simplicity. Flashes of Derek’s hand in mine as they wheeled me to the operating theatre bolted through my mind. And the memory of the pressure of the pillow as I hugged it when they injected the epidural into my back almost made me frozen with fear.
The nurse stopped at a door. “She’s in here,” she said and then walked off, leaving me facing the blue door, standing just out of sight from the glass panel.
Taking a deep breath, I squared my shoulders. I may have lost a child but Billie was just about to bring hers into the world. I needed to concentrate on the joy, not the pain. Plastering a smile on my face, I pushed the door open.
“About fucking time,” Billie wailed. She paced the floor, fists balled into the small of her back, feet splayed wide and tummy protruding from a pale green gown.
“We got here as soon as we could.” I walked over to embrace her and she clung to me, leaning on me for support.
“I don’t want to do this,” she whispered in my ear.
I hugged her tighter, well, as tightly as I could with her belly creating distance that couldn’t be reduced. “I don’t think you have a choice at this point.”
Billie laughed but it was unsettled, unhinged, and she let go of me to resume her pacing back and forth over the patch of linoleum in front of the window. “It’s not supposed to happen like this.” Her usually perfectly groomed hair was plastered to the sides of her face. Smears of mascara stained the skin under her eyes. “I was booked in for a C-section in two weeks. I wasn’t supposed to go into labour. I wasn’t planning on doing it this way. The ‘natural’ way.” She put air quotes around the word before crying out and clutching her lower back again. She grimaced and started panting with short, sharp breaths.
“Should I get Hamish?”
“No!” she shouted. “No,” she said again, this time more quietly. “He’s useless. Just sort of stands there with this look on his face like he’d prefer to be anywhere but here.”
“I’m sure he’s excited.”
“Yeah.” Billie rolled her eyes. “Really excited for his fifth son.”
“I’m sure that—”
But Billie was panting again. “Shut up,” she said. “Just shut up, okay?”
I held my hands up in surrender. The room was large, larger than the one I had been in, but the curtains were almost identical. Some hideous striped pattern in blue, orange and green. I ran my fingers over the material and squeezed my eyes shut as the memory flooded through my mind of the knife running along my stomach. I never felt pain, the epidural made sure of that, but I still felt the slice of the blade, the invasion as they pulled her from my body.
“Hold my hand,” Billie demanded, bringing my attention back to the present. She clutched on hard. The knuckles of her fingers turned white as she crushed my bones together. “Oh god,” she panted. “I think you’re going to have to go and get Hamish.”
I was glad to leave the confined space of that room. I didn’t feel like I could breathe in there. It was too hot, too stuffy. Gulping in deep breaths of what I considered to be fresh air, even though I knew there was no difference between it and what had been in the room, I started down the corridor. Hamish was already storming towards me, coffee in hand. He didn’t speak as he brushed past and entered the room.
I wandered back down to the waiting room and flopped in the chair beside Tyler. He lifted his arm, and I settled back into the curve it created. I was shattered. I had gotten very little sleep the night before, and with the tension of the drive back to the city and the intensity of what happened afterwards, my body was left drained. I tilted my head onto his shoulder and decided to close my eyes for just a moment.
When I woke, my head was in Tyler’s lap and he was brushing the hair away from my face. I sat up, startled that I had fallen asleep and looked around the room. Jake was sitting with his ankle hooked over his knee, glaring at it as though it were responsible for all the pain in the world. Gabe was sleeping with his head bent at an awkward angle, hair hanging over his eyes.
“Any news?” I asked.
Tyler shook his head and rested his hand on my shoulder to guide my head back to his lap. “Go back to sleep,” he said. “I’ll wake you if anything happens.”
Needing little encouragement, I nestled back, tucking my hands under my cheek. But I couldn’t fall back to sleep. Suddenly the hospital seemed too loud. The swinging doors clan
ged as they shut. The wheels of the hospital beds squeaked and groaned as they were rolled down the corridors. Even the television hanging in the corner of the room seemed too loud, even though I could barely make out the words spoken.
Tyler ran his hand over my hair again, pushing it behind my ear. The repetitive moment was soothing. Leaning down, he pressed a kiss to my cheek and whispered in my ear. “I love you, Lauren Green. I don’t care who you dated in the past, even if I have to see him every day. The only thing I care about is that you are with me now and that you will choose to be with me in the future.”
Words not fulfilling the emotions I felt, I reached up and pulled his face close, relishing in the wave of desire and contentment that flowed through me when his lips pressed to mine.
“I love you too, Tyler Thornton.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Gabe, now awake, got to his feet and paced the floor, running his hands through his hair like his father had done earlier. “Get a room,” he hissed.
Rather than rising to the jibe, Tyler simply laughed. “You want a coffee?” he asked. I nodded and he collected orders. As soon as he left, Gabe slumped to the vacant chair beside me.
“Are you okay?”
I lifted my eyebrows questioningly. “I’m not the one pushing a baby out.”
Gabe shook his head. “Don’t,” he said. “I don’t need the visual.” He turned, twisting his body towards mine and hooked one knee over the side of the chair. “I meant, are you okay with all this?” He made a circle with his hand, encompassing the entire hospital, and my stomach.
I shifted uncomfortably. “I’m fine,” I said tersely.
“You sure?” he asked, concerned.
“Quite sure.” I held my stance straight, determined not to let my true feelings show, but at Gabe’s soft eyes, I melted a little and put my hand on his knee. “Thanks for asking though.”
Gabe swallowed. His eyes locked on my hand. I took it away just as Tyler walked through the swinging doors, four cups of coffee perfectly balanced in his hands. Gabe flew from the seat, flashing Tyler a mischievous smile and took one of the cups.