Forbidden Lust: 3 (Lust for Life)

by Jayne Kingston

  “What the fuck could you possibly have meant?” she screamed, tears streaming down her bright red cheeks. “I get it, Oscar. You did your part and now this is my fucking problem. Get the fuck out of my goddamn motherfucking house and I will decide what I want to do about it.”

  He crossed the room to her in two strides, caught her by the arms and drew her up so they were face-to-face so quickly she gasped. Her eyes were so big he could see the whites all the way around her irises.

  “The night of Jamie’s wedding you stood outside of the reception hall and told me you were nowhere near ready for marriage and babies yet, Eva,” he reminded her.

  He loosened his hold and she sank slowly back onto her heels.

  “Remember?” he asked gently, smoothing his hands over her arms. “We didn’t plan this. We took precautions against this that didn’t work, but when it comes down to it, Eva, it’s you who has to decide whether you want to have the baby.” It was going to kill him to say what needed to be said. “It’s your body, sweetheart.”

  Her eyes softened and filled with tears and her chin puckered.

  “I need you to tell me what you want,” she said in a small, trembling voice. “Because I have no fucking idea what I want to do.”

  It was a bad idea to try to sway her decision no matter how much he wanted to.

  “I want you,” he assured her. “No matter what.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a pussy,” she said in a tone that sounded much more like Eva than he’d heard since he’d arrived. “Tell me if you want the baby or not.”

  He forced himself to be still, to not drop to his knees and beg her to keep it.

  “I want the baby,” he told her, his heart knocking hopefully in his chest. “I want you and me and the child we made to be a family, Eva. Call me greedy, but I fucking want all of it.”

  She pressed her lips into a thin line nodded gravely as two tears rolled from the corners of her eyes and down the sides of her face.

  He took her face in his hands and wiped them away. “What does that mean?”

  She put her hands flat on his chest. “It means we’re going to have a baby.”

  Saying the words and making it real only brought up a thousand other questions—about Chicago, having a baby away from her family, her father’s reaction and whether a baby would change his mind—but Eva knew the moment tears rose in Oscar’s beautiful dark eyes that she’d made the right decision.

  Because if anyone deserved to have it all when it came to family, it was Oscar.

  She was scared out of her ever-loving mind, but he would be there right alongside her every step of the way. She had no doubt about that.

  “I love you,” he told her quietly, still cradling her face gently.

  Eva nodded. It was all she could do with her throat tight with emotion.

  “And you love me,” he said, that dimple appearing along with the smallest, sweetest of smiles. Christ, she loved him so much her heart was going to burst with it.

  Tears rose to her tired, burning eyes and she nodded a second time.

  He reached into his jeans pocket and his hand came back up holding a small black box. “I thought it was going to be so easy, that I’d talk to your mom and dad and then come back here and propose, but it didn’t quite work out the way I planned.”

  Her hands dropped away from his chest and her vision narrowed until all she could see was the box sitting upside down in his palm. “I need to sit down,” she whispered.

  Two steps backward and she felt the edge of her bed on the backs of her legs, so she sat. He sat next to her and the hinges creaked as he opened the small, black velvet cube. Sitting inside was a large, deep-red stone in a simple but gorgeous platinum setting.

  “It’s not a diamond,” he started.

  She shook her head in a tight, nervous movement. “I’m not a diamond girl.”

  “A few weeks ago I went to see the jeweler who made Leni’s ring for Jamie. He started showing me stones, diamonds, and we were talking about having a setting custom made.” He took the ring out of the box and held it between thumb and finger. “And then I saw this one sitting in a case, and I knew it was supposed to be yours.

  “It’s my heart,” he told her quietly. “It’s actually been yours for a very long time, Eva.” He took her shaking hand and slipped the ring on her finger.

  It was a little loose but it looked perfect on her hand. The perfect ring from the most wonderful, most frustrating, most perfect man.

  She managed to rip her gaze away from it and looked into his eyes.

  “You fucker,” she whispered, close to full-on bawling again.

  His beautiful mouth pursed, amused. “Is that a yes?”

  “I would have to be some kind of dumb bitch to say no to a proposal like that, now wouldn’t I?”

  “You are definitely not some kind of dumb bitch,” he conceded matter-of-factly. “A little hot-headed, and possibly crazy, but not stupid.”

  Eva managed to get her legs under her long enough to turn and straddle his lap. She pressed her body to his chest to crotch and ran her hands over his silky black hair.

  “I love you,” she told him, all the fear and frustration from a few moments earlier starting to drift away.

  Whatever new complications they had to face could wait a little while.

  “Say the words ‘yes I will marry you, Oscar’,” he prompted, running his hands down her back, then slipping them under her shirt and smoothing them over her skin.

  “Yes, I will marry you, Oscar.” She ran her hands over his hair and squeezed his hips with her thighs. She could feel his dick starting to get hard. “Yes, I will have your little french fry. And yes, I will let you fuck me senseless to seal the deal.”

  That must have been all the prompting he needed, because her shirt came up and over her head the instant the words were out of her mouth. She rose and his mouth covered her already tight nipple, his eyes on hers. His cheeks caved in slightly as he sucked and then she couldn’t see straight from the pleasure coursing through her.

  She grabbed handfuls of his shirt and pulled it off a lot less gracefully, his cross and St. Christopher medallion getting caught in the bunched-up fabric and then hitting him in the face as they came free. He didn’t seem to mind. He got his arms under her ass, lifted and turned quickly and easily so she ended up on her back, pressed into the mattress by his weight.

  The deep plunge of his tongue into her mouth and the feel of his warm, naked chest on hers was pure heaven. God, she was desperate for him, her man.

  Her fucking fiancé.

  She reached between them to unbutton her shorts and let him know she was ready—really, really goddamn ready—without wanting to break the kiss that was making her go fever hot from head to toe. He balanced his weight on one arm and helped her open the zipper, then slid his hand around her hip to palm her ass. When he gripped a handful of her flesh roughly and ground his cock against her pussy, still through their clothes, she shivered with the thrill it gave her.

  Eva dug her heel into the mattress, rolled him onto his back and scrambled off him and to her feet. She dropped her shorts to the floor and went for his boots, laughing as she fought the first one, then quickly got rid of the second. He’d already mostly gotten out of his jeans by the time she tossed the second boot aside, and she made quick work of getting him all the way naked.

  He sat up on the side of the bed and she straddled his lap, gripped his cock in her hand and took him all the way inside her on a quick downward thrust. His eyes closed and his mouth opened. The rush of hot breath as he exhaled sharply—as if it had been weeks or months, not two days, since they’d last fucked—mixed with hers.

  Oscar wrapped his arms around her, held her close and kissed her in that slow, deep way that scrambled her thoughts and zinged through her body as if she was being touched by a live electrical wire.

  “Is it…always going to…be like this?” The pulsing that was radiating from her clit through her
nipples and down her thighs to her toes was making it hard for her to fully catch her breath. “This fucking good, this fast?”

  He brought one hand up to touch her face, his fingers tracing the line of her cheekbone lightly, his eyes intense. “If it ever isn’t, all you have to do is tell me and I’ll make it this way for you again. I promise.”

  “You say, as if I would let you get away with boring the shit out of me in bed.”

  His dimple appeared a split second before he grinned, then laughed. “Stop talking and fuck me, Eva,” he told her through clenched teeth. He put both hands on her hips and dug his fingers into her flesh with a delicious amount of pressure.

  “Yes sir,” she whispered before she kissed him long and hard, rolling her hips in small, tight circles, rubbing her clit where their bodies connected.

  When she couldn’t take it any longer, she braced her hands on his shoulders and rode him hard. Both of them watched the fast-paced in-and-out of his cock into her pussy until she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

  Her head rolled back as her pace grew frenzied. The gorgeous ache in her cunt spread through her body and became all-consuming. She was only vaguely aware that he was holding her up, his hands on her hips, and when his hot mouth closed down over her nipple, his teeth biting down gently, she came with a long, unearthly moan.

  “More,” he demanded before she’d started to come down. “I’m so close, baby.”

  Her legs were shaky and her cunt was still throbbing, but she managed to straighten and get her arms around him for leverage. He helped her ride him hard, the muscles in his arms and chest standing out against his skin as he lifted and pushed, controlling the speed. He stayed with her for several long, amazing minutes before he brought her down and held her in place as he came, teeth bared and breathing ragged.

  A raw wave of emotion hit her and tears rose to her eyes. She smoothed his hair back and kissed his closed eyelids, his mouth when he offered it to her.

  “Christ, I fucking love you, Oscar,” she whispered, her throat tight with emotion. “Tell me we’re going to be all right.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and rolled so they ended up mostly on the bed, his body over hers. He was still hard, and when he pushed himself deep within her she gasped and then let it out on a breathy laugh.

  God love him, he wasn’t finished sealing the deal just yet.

  He held his weight on his arms and kissed her lips lightly. “We have each other, Eva,” he murmured, kissed her neck. “Everything is absolutely right with the world.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Eva’s mother had mostly talked some reason into her father by the time Eva went to speak with her parents the next day. He cried harder than her mother when she told them about the baby, but they weren’t tears of anger. The man was a huge sap when it came to his grandchildren, and his baby having a baby was enough to help him put aside his initial anger with Oscar for good.

  Once Oscar and Eva decided they were going to stick with the plan of moving to Chicago to open the new Lust for Life, every single member of her family volunteered to take turns staying with them after the baby came. Even Diego, who’d initially been wary about whether Eva was ready for marriage and a family just yet.

  Eva still wasn’t sure she was ready for a baby, but she was completely sure about her love for Oscar. And she was sure that whatever she may or may not be able to handle when their kid arrived, he would know what to do. One of the most beautiful things about her man was that he was always the calm center in every storm that arose, no matter what the situation.

  Things moved quickly once Jamie, Leo and Oscar decided to rent the storefront on Clark Street in Chicago. The space was narrow but long with enough room for a small piercing room in the back, a roomy reception area in the front and four open tattoo stations in the middle. She loved the creek of the old wood floors and the antique pressed-tin ceiling, which she learned was worth a fortune.

  As soon as word got out that a new tattoo shop was going up in the neighborhood they had to put in a phone line and hire a receptionist to take appointments. All four tattoo artists—Oscar, Eva, Munson and a guy named Kirkland they were borrowing from the guys’ friend Dover Marks’ shop—were booked a month out from the date of the shop’s opening before construction was finished.

  Eva fell hard for the city once she’d been there a few weeks. Staying with Joy, Leo and Norma Jean in their fancy Lakeshore Drive condo was a lot of fun. She also found a family away from home in Joy’s musician parents and her sisters, Sunny and Love. On top of that, Oscar already had a really big group of friends who lived nearby.

  It was snowing a fat, lazy, snow-globe kind of snow when Oscar came to her at the end of a busy work day and asked if she was up for taking a walk with him. She was the kind of exhausted that made her understand the phrase bone-weary, but there was something about the look in his eye that made her say yes.

  Bundled up in coats, hats and scarves, they walked down two blocks and over three into a neighborhood off the main strip and stopped in front of one of the many row houses on the street. It had a gray stone face, cobalt blue shutters and a tiny patch of yard fenced in by old wrought iron. The plants had gone brown since it was early winter, but she could see it was very well tended.

  “Who lives here?” she asked as they climbed the wide front stoop.

  He took a key out of his pocket and slipped it into the lock. “If you like it, we will.”

  She stared at him as he pushed the door inward and gestured for her to enter first.

  “Us?” she asked, stunned frozen to the spot. “Here?”

  He gave her a patient look. “You have to come inside and look at it first, babe.”

  When she hesitated another moment, he reached around her and gently guided her inside with a hand on the small of her back.

  “I thought we were going to wait until spring to start looking for a house,” she commented as she looked around the front foyer.

  Just to her left a small nook was carved out of the wall below a small window that looked out onto the street. The floors were rich, gleaming wood and the archways leading to rooms that all came off the left of the long hallway were beautifully carved. To the right, a wide set of stairs led to the second floor.

  “I had a guy in my chair last week who told me about this place.” Oscar followed as she stepped into a room so long it opened to the hall through two archways.

  It was wider than she’d expected based on her initial impression from the street.

  “He was telling me his grandparents are selling it and only asking for their original purchase price,” he went on as he loosened his scarf and looked up at a light fixture on the ceiling. “From nineteen-fifty-five.”

  “Of course they are,” she said, shaking her head. “How do these kinds of deals always seem to fall into your lap, Oscar?”

  He simply smiled. “It’s not on the market yet. We get the first look at it.”

  “Dude just handed you the keys and said, ‘Hey, go have a look’.”

  “I might have told him I could pay the full asking price in cash if we want it.”

  After a moment Eva realized she should not have been surprised by that bit of information, so she closed her gaping mouth and went back to looking around.

  On the end of the wall that faced the street, two tall windows framed a small fireplace made from the same smooth, round stones as the façade of the house. Since the ceilings had to be at least twelve feet high, they let a whole lot of light into the room.

  “There’s a half bath down here, three bedrooms and a full bath on the second floor and another two bedrooms, a full bath and a big, open living room kind of space on the third,” he told her, watching as she made her way around the room, stopped to take in the small details carved into a built-in bookcase along one wall.

  “Why would two people and a baby need this much house?” she asked as she turned to face him, even though she was already desperately in love with the place bas
ed on the living room alone.

  It didn’t take much to imagine the shelves full of their books, a fire burning warmly and a tall Christmas tree standing in front of one of the front windows. She could practically hear their toddler giggling like crazy as one or both of them chased him or her around and around through those archways.

  “We could live on the first two floors, keep the third for family when they come to visit.” He took his hands out of his pockets and strolled toward her. “We could have Christmas here if they all wanted to make the drive out every few years or so,” he said as if he’d read her mind. He moved behind her and slid his arms around her waist, holding her close as they looked over the room together. “There’s a deck on the roof where we could all sit and watch fireworks on the Fourth of July.”

  She leaned back against chest. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”

  He slid his hand under the hem of her coat to hold her rounded belly, touched his nose and mouth to her temple and breathed in. “I think I see my family being happy here,” he murmured.

  Eva turned her face toward his and he kissed her for a long moment.

  “I’ll live here on the condition we hire someone to help us clean it,” she told him when he stopped. “Because, seriously, this is a lot of fucking house.”

  He graced her with one of his smiles, which had become less rare recently.

  “I can live with that,” he said, taking her hand as he moved around her. “Let’s go check out the rest of the place.”

  She stood her ground and tugged on his arm, stopping him.

  “Can we christen the stairs after the grand tour?” she asked, her body starting to warm and tingle in all the right places. If she’d thought she’d craved him before she’d become pregnant, it was nothing compared to the way she craved him with all the hormones rushing through her.

  His black eyes glittered as he gave her mouth a long look, then met her gaze.

  “It’s not ours yet,” he reminded her, but she could see his answer was not no.