Ever After Always (Bergman Brothers Book 3)

by Chloe Liese

  How often Aiden gave but didn’t ask, how frequently he gently redirected me when I reached for him. How many times I was given three incredible orgasms, and as I was drifting off in his arms, I sleepily noticed he hadn’t had one. And the seed of doubt had burrowed inside me, painful and foreign. What if he wasn’t attracted to me anymore? What if he wanted someone else? What if he didn’t want me, but he was…placating me?

  Now I understand that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.

  I hold him in stunned silence, my ears ringing so loudly, I’m shocked I can hear him when he whispers, “I’m sorry, Freya. I’m sorry I kept it from you. I’m sorry it’s my reality right now. But I already saw a doctor, and it’s not physical. It’s psychological. I mean you saw what happened the other night, what we were able to share when we were on vacation. It’s possible, but more often than not it takes some time and relaxing and—” He sighs heavily, pressing a soft kiss to my stomach. “I won’t let this stop us from having a family, I promise—”

  “Aiden.” I lower to my knees and cup his face, holding his eyes. “I love you.”

  He blinks down, and I grip his face harder.

  “Look at me,” I whisper. Slowly, he meets my eyes. “We’ll find our way through this. As lovers. As a family. Please, please know, my only sadness right now is that you’ve held this in, all on your own, when I could have held it with you.”

  “I want a family with you, Freya. I promise.”

  I smile. “You already have a family with me.”

  “You know what I mean,” he says. “I didn’t want to disappoint you, because I knew what you would have done. You would have said we could wait for a baby, even when I knew how badly you wanted a baby—I wanted a baby. It was so confusing. Sometimes I just felt numb, like I couldn’t respond, even when I wanted you, even when all I wanted was to be close. Other times, I’d start and then some shitty thought would hijack my thoughts. And sometimes, I just couldn’t…finish.”

  He buries his face in his hands. “And all of that made the possibility of a baby impossible. So I focused on doing everything else that would have us ready for a baby, and I hoped I’d find some way to fix it. I couldn’t figure out how to tell you the truth and protect you from how it hurt you.”

  I wrap my arms around him, and press a kiss to his cheek, wet from my tears, from his. “I’m so sorry, Aiden.”

  “Why?” he says roughly. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Aiden, we did this, both of us. This twisted dance of always trying to fix ourselves and protecting each other from the parts that we couldn’t. We both did that. You hid your anxiety, your frustration with your body. I numbed myself, kept my pain from you. It takes two to play that game, and we did. But not anymore.”

  His eyes hold mine. “I wish it wasn’t like this.”

  “I know. But we’ll find our way through it together.” I press our foreheads together. “Promise.”

  I don’t tell him we’ll fix it. Or that it doesn’t matter. Because I won’t make promises or diminish what this means for him or for us. Because I know better now. I’ve learned that’s not how love works.

  I’ve learned that the measure of your love isn’t how “okay” you both are or how quickly you hit the curveballs that life throws at you. Love’s true test, the measure of its strength, is its bravery to be honest, its willingness to face the hardest moments and say, Even though there’s nothing to be done, at least I have you.

  “Come here.” I interlace my fingers with his and get up from my knees. Aiden stands with me, looking uncertain and so beautiful—his wild, dark hair, fathomless ocean-blue eyes; the strong line of his nose and a soft, full mouth hidden by his beard.

  Eyes locked with his, I grip the hem of his shirt and lift it up, smoothing my hands along his chest. Stopping at his pecs, I rub my thumbs over his nipples, earning a rush of air from his lungs. Aiden’s hand dives into my hair and brings our mouths a whisper apart. Tipping my head, he nudges my nose with his, then whispers, “Freya…I want you so badly, but I don’t know…” He sighs roughly. “I don’t know what will happen.”

  “Neither do I,” I whisper. “I just know that I want you. Only you, that’s all. Just like you want me.”

  “But if I can’t…”

  “If you can’t?” I say quietly. “We’ll enjoy everything that can happen. Then we’ll figure out the rest together.”

  He stares into my eyes. “I love you.”

  I smile softly and kiss him—a faint brush of lips. His grip in my hair tightens, and I lean into him, wrapping my arms around his waist, gentling the hard planes of his back, that smooth warm skin. “I love you, too, Aiden.”

  Groaning, he leans out of my arms, yanks his shirt over his head, and drops it behind him.

  I gape. “You just threw an article of clothing. Not a fold in sight. Not even placed on the bed.”

  “Stop it.” He grins. “I can prioritize passion over tidiness…sometimes.”

  My smile echoes Aiden’s as he tugs at my shirt and I help him, lifting it over my head. Aiden’s eyes darken as he drinks me in, then, before I can reach back, his good hand finds my bra and unsnaps it in one effortless flick of his fingers.

  “Impressive.”

  “Oh, trust me,” he mutters against my lips. “There’s lots I can do one-handed.”

  His kiss is deep and long as he tucks me against him, as I unbuckle his belt and slip my hands inside his jeans, tracing his hips, the firm curve of his backside.

  “Undressed,” he says between kisses. “Please.”

  We clumsily strip each other, tripping on clothes, stumbling into the bathroom through messy kisses and desperate hugs. Skin to skin feels like heaven, like coming home and the first sign of spring after a long, cold winter. I plant soft open-mouthed kisses over his chest. Aiden kisses my neck, my jaw, the corner of my mouth, the tip of my nose.

  “I love you,” he whispers. “I can’t stop saying it.”

  I kiss him again and stare into his eyes. “I love you, too.”

  Backing away, I lean into the shower and turn on the water. Aiden steps behind me, his hand gliding up my back, gentling the curve of my spine. Faint kisses travel my vertebrae, until he nips my neck, then my earlobe. I shiver as I straighten and turn toward him.

  Guiding him to the sink, I set up my supplies and quickly wrap his arm. When I’m satisfied with my handiwork, I touch his bicep, above the plastic and tape, curling my hand along the rounded muscle. I kiss his shoulder, his collarbone, the hollow at the base of his throat.

  Our bodies touch intimately, and we jolt, Aiden angling his head and meeting my mouth hungrily, a kiss that feels like the first spark of a bone-melting blaze. Backing into the shower, he slides the glass shut behind us and presses me against the tiles. Steam floats around us, curling a lock of his hair against his forehead. I look into his eyes, feeling us, close—not just our bodies, but us—and soak it up like rain after a drought.

  “You’re so beautiful, Freya.” Aiden weighs my breast in his hand, thumbing my nipple until it’s hard and so sensitive, sparks dance through me, hot and warm between my thighs, in my belly, deep within me. His mouth teases my other breast, soft rolls of his tongue, nips of his teeth that make my moans echo around us.

  I touch him, everywhere—the curve of his strong back, his hard backside flexing as he moves against me instinctively, his powerful thighs bracketing my body. Our tongues tangle, hotter, faster, until Aiden pins me against the shower.

  “The night you saw me,” he whispers. “When I came home.”

  “Yes?”

  He parts my legs, his hand wandering up my thigh, before he slowly sinks to his knees. “This was what I touched myself to the thought of. Kissing you, feeling you, tasting you until you were begging to come.”

  I exhale shakily as his hand parts me gently, finally strokes me—there—so perfectly, so tenderly I could cry.

  “I love teasing you, but tonight I can’t make you wait, Freya.” He
plants a soft kiss to my hip, before one finger, then two ease inside.

  “Oh, God.” My hands dive into his hair as he lifts one of my legs and guides it over his shoulder. I’m exposed so intimately, spread before him as his kisses brand my skin, trailing up and down my thigh, everywhere except where I’m dying for him as each thrust of his fingers unravels me.

  Aiden peers up, eyes hooded, breath coming in jagged pulls of air. “I missed this so much. I missed you.”

  Then his mouth closes on me, decadent sweeps and swirls of his tongue that make me gasp and rock against him.

  There are men who go down on a woman because they know it gets her off. Then there are men who use their mouth like it’s worship, like every single moment that their face is buried between her thighs is their idea of heaven. Aiden is like that, and he’s always made me feel like a goddess when he does this.

  I watch him, the soft rhythmic thrust of his mouth, his hand gentling my body, slipping around my hip and caressing my every curve. He traces the stretch marks at my hips, the dimples of my thighs, his grip tightening, betraying his desperation just as much as the hard jut of his erection shows me how much he loves making me come this way.

  My heel digs into his back, my hands clutching his hair, as I pant, barely able to breathe against the need to come. Molten heat smolders through my limbs and breasts, pooling deep inside my body as Aiden groans against me.

  I close my eyes, lost to the expert stroke of his tongue, the growing desperation building inside me. Suddenly he stands and crushes my mouth with a kiss. I taste him and me as my arms wrap around him, and my knees nearly buckle.

  “Freya. Touch me. Touch me, please.”

  He grabs my hand and wraps it around his length, throbbing and thick. I stroke him, velvet soft, every hot, rigid inch pulsing under my hand.

  “I want you,” he says, low and quiet against my ear. “I want you, wet and begging for it. I want you writhing on my cock.”

  His words unfurl a new depth of need, a hot desperation to be as close to him as I can.

  “Freya,” he whispers. With the grip of his uninjured hand, he lifts my leg and sets it on the built-in bench, rubbing me as he grinds against my hips. “Tell me.”

  “I want your cock,” I gasp, my hands whispering down his chest, his length, the tightness of his balls, earning his breathless groan.

  “Take it, then,” he says, easing himself inside me, painstakingly slow. I claw at his shoulders, tortured, so ready for all of him.

  Air rushes out of me as he draws back, then thrusts deeper. As he lowers his mouth to my breasts, Aiden gives them tender, singular focus, making my nipples peak and throb.

  He’s so hard, and I’m so desperately close already. I slip my hand down my stomach and rub my clit, feeling the first whisper of release.

  “I feel you,” he whispers. “God, I feel you, Freya. Come, baby. Come all over me.”

  Our mouths crash together. Deep, slow plunges of his tongue that keep pace with the steady drive of his hips. I pant against his mouth. My toes curl. My veins simmer, liquid gold, dazzling. Release builds, hot and weighty, an ache so sweet and harsh, I hear myself crying out, echoing around us as I beg him for everything.

  “Everything,” I gasp.

  “You have it, Freya.” As Aiden holds my eyes and thrusts deep, I come on a gasping sob. A sob that doesn’t end with one pent-up cry of release. A sob that becomes weeping, weeping for joy and relief and bittersweet feelings that don’t have names, only the shape and shadow of what we’ve missed and what we’ve gained as we’ve battled our way to this place. A place in which water pours over us and I don’t hide my tears. A place in which I trust my husband, who kisses my tears—every single one—and holds me tight.

  26

  Aiden

  Playlist: “Stoned on You,” Jaymes Young

  Freya lies in my arms, damp from the shower, her breath soft and even. “I’m not sleeping,” she murmurs.

  I press a kiss to her hair, running my hand down her back. “It would be okay if you were.”

  “I don’t want to sleep,” she whispers. Her hand drifts down my body, wrapping appreciatively around my length. “I want to touch you.”

  I didn’t come after she did. I didn’t hide it. Part of it was because she was sobbing, and there’s always something about Freya crying that sends adrenaline flooding my body. At first I was afraid, for just a moment, that somehow I’d hurt her or upset her, but I realized she was just…feeling. And I loved that the woman who’d walked in on me in that shower just a month ago, eyes cold, body closed off, a thousand unspoken words between us, felt safe to cry in my arms simply because she needed to.

  After that, every trace of my body’s response was gone. Freya kissed me, whispered she loved me. Then we washed each other, stole kisses, and held each other until the hot water ran out.

  I knew this might happen, that we’d climb into bed and she’d try to pick up where we left off. As I contemplated that, the fears and worries of what might go wrong grew loud and noisier in my head.

  As her hand strokes me, I don’t know what to do. I just know that a cold wave of anxiety washes through me, like our second morning in Hawaii when I forgot the number one rule—never stand with your back to the ocean—and got slammed to the sand. And like swimming against a riptide, each second I try to fight the building power of my thoughts, my panic just pulls me farther from her.

  Freya’s touch shifts, roaming lovingly across my body, but the crush of defeat drags me down, a vicious undertow I can’t escape.

  She bends over me and presses soft kisses to my mouth. “Stay with me.”

  “It’s…” I scrunch my eyes shut. “I’m trying.”

  “Aiden.”

  Slowly, I open my eyes and meet hers.

  “You know how sometimes I don’t come?” she whispers.

  I narrow my eyes, hating where she’s going with this. “Yes.”

  She smiles softly. “What do you tell me when that happens?”

  “‘It’s okay, baby,’” I tell her through the thickness in my voice. “‘Just let me hold you.’”

  “That’s right,” she says, before a gentle kiss to my lips. “Do you know how safe that made me feel? For my partner to normalize that and make me feel loved? Because it is normal.”

  A rough sigh leaves me. “Yes.”

  Freya tucks herself tight against my body, her thigh draped over mine, and wanders her hand along my stomach and chest. Her lips meet mine in a soft, long kiss. “Just stay with me. We’ll find our way, Aiden. Together, okay?”

  Our eyes meet as I turn toward her, tucking her close to me. Skin to skin. Quiet in the darkness. I wade into the unfamiliar waters of acceptance as she touches me, kisses me. I bathe in the weight of Freya’s love as I kiss her back.

  Her kisses fade. Her touch slows. I hold her tight long after she’s fast asleep.

  I can’t sleep. And when Freya rolls off of me, warm with sweat and sighing, I watch her, so beautiful, so desirable to me. Tired but wide awake in that awful way adrenaline has of fucking with my brain, I pick up the romance from Viggo that I’ve been working through. I haven’t read since we got back from Hawaii, and things were about to get steamy.

  Could be a nice way to make my eyes tired.

  A quiet, optimistic voice inside me whispers, Or get a “book boner.”

  Yeah. Not getting my hopes up after that train wreck earlier.

  I open to where I was, locating the small clip-on book light I’ve had for years. Freya’s one of those heavy sleepers for whom light isn’t a problem, a gift I wish I had. The plus is that it’s made my insomniac bouts less of a wedge between us. I’ve always just read in bed, listening to the comforting sounds of her breathing. I flick on the tiny lamp, settling in beneath the sheets and the coziness of our room, dark but for the light’s faint yellow glow.

  The story gets hot. Fast.

  The guy finally, finally bares his soul to her, and holy shit, it’s explos
ive. Tongue. Taste. Thrust. Wet. Desire. Heat. It’s a sea of words that builds to a sensual tsunami, each line a concerted step toward such an incredibly subtle yet hot climax—in every sense of the word—that when it ends, my hand is white-knuckling the page, my breath tight and ragged.

  I close my eyes, clumsily shutting off the light and setting it on the nightstand. I stare up at the ceiling, stunned. This is…

  Madness.

  Really fucking magical madness.

  Holy shit, I’m reading romance forever.

  Not because I’m actually deluding myself it will always work like this—and by “this” I mean, make me rock-fucking-hard—or because it guarantees anything, but because that was…beautiful. The vulnerability, the tenderness, the give and receive. I’ve spent so little of my adult life thinking about it, and why is that? Because I was raised to think men shouldn’t?

  Shit, are men missing out, and it doesn’t just hurt us—it hurts our partners. At least men like me are missing out, and I think there’s a lot of us, unfortunately. Men who don’t spend time, digging into how we want to be close to our partners. It leaves us despicably unprepared.

  Why would I expect myself to just be able to flip on a switch for this space inside myself when I’ve barely cultivated it? For years, I relied on my marriage’s emotional ease to pave the way for our sexual intimacy. But when things became difficult, I had no roadmap for how to move forward, how to stay close with Freya, even while I was struggling.

  Yes, I love my wife. Yes, I’m deeply attracted to her. But that doesn’t mean I miraculously knew how to find intimacy with her when the landscape around us shifted so drastically, when we changed, and life became much more complicated than working hard and chasing our dreams together.

  Like the projects I’ve developed, the lectures I’ve taught, the physical exercises I do, I need to learn and practice this. And yes, maybe I’ll need a little bit more help being comfortable with sex when it dredges up difficult emotions, compared with someone who doesn’t have anxiety or a past like mine, but so the fuck what? There’s no shame in it. Freya loves me for exactly who I am. She’ll be patient with me, believe in me, desire me, in all my imperfection. She’s shown me that, time and again. Now I get to show her I trust that.