by K. L. Kreig
My cock throbs against her pale thigh. Her hips are undulating now, along with mine, her need mirroring mine exactly. “I can wait.”
“Are you sore?”
She smiles, and I feel temporarily taken back in time to when I asked her that during our only night together. “A little, but I’m good.”
Every encounter with every single woman has been hollow, lonely. Except for her. With Nora, I felt connected to another human being in a way I’ve not been able to replicate again. And that intimate connection right now is more vital than breath or food. I shift, lining up my shaft with her opening and drop my forehead to hers. “God, I’m sorry. I need you again, Nora.”
Small fingers delve into my hair and tighten. Her warm, sweet breath scatters over my face when she whispers, “Don’t be sorry. I need you, too.”
That’s the only green light I need. Just as I have for countless times over the past two days, I slip easily inside her inviting wetness and warmth and begin rocking slow and steady.
The fluid writhing of her body under mine does me in, though, and I break. I kiss. I bite. I mark. I suck and lave and hold her hips tight in my grasp, fucking her fast and furious until she’s coming all around me.
I destroy her for anyone else.
I would fuck this woman all the way to my grave if I could, but I can’t possibly halt the orgasm that her spasming walls violently rip from the depths of my very being. As the rush of fire shoots up my spine and through my limbs, I feel almost reborn. It’s the most cleansing climax I have had in my thirty years.
Minutes later when we’ve caught our breaths and her luscious curves are pressed against me in a sated puddle, the confession she makes covers me in an agonizing spray of whys, reminding me that as much as I want to, outrunning the past can only ever result in exhaustion.
“There’s never been anyone else. In my heart, I mean.”
I let my fingers drift up and down her arm, taking in a deep lungful of her heady unique scent, memorizing it. “For me either,” I tell her truthfully.
Tilting her head up she catches my stare. I see mysteries begging to be unraveled, threatening to wreck us. “I have things I need to tell you.”
But here’s the thing about running…it’s really mind over matter. Sheer, raw will over brute physicality. And I am famous for my sheer, raw grit.
“I know. Let’s wait until we get home, yeah?”
She smiles, but it’s thin and doesn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
“I love you, Nora. You should know that I’m never letting go.”
“Promise?” Even her tone holds thin filaments of secrets. Perhaps even fear.
I press a kiss to her forehead and hug her tighter, trying like hell to meld her flesh into my flesh and her bones into mine so she becomes a part of me I would die without. “Yes. I promise.”
* * *
Promises. They’re like bull’s-eyes. A big fat fucking black mark square between your eyes, just waiting for something or someone to come along and take you out. They are slippery, tricky fuckers that are hard to hold on to, even for those with the best of intentions. When you make them, you are 100 percent certain there is nothing that will or can make you break your oath, the vow you swore above all other things you’d honor.
But then something completely unforeseen, wholly unimaginable comes out of left field that tests your pledge, stretches your commitment. Makes you reevaluate where your loyalties lie and whom you can trust.
That “thing” will undermine everything you believed in, will dissolve the trust behind the promise in the first place, and sometimes that “thing” is just a misunderstanding.
More often than not, though, that “thing” is betrayal.
Chapter 19
Conn
Ella: have a pkg 4 u
Me: that a euphemism for something?
Ella: god, do u always think w/ur dick?
I laugh, feeling in a pretty good fucking mood. Better than I have in weeks. I tried to bribe Nora to come home with me so we could spend the rest of the weekend lounging in bed, nude, binge watching The Little Mermaid, to which she laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes. But she said she had things to do and needed to get home. We agreed to have lunch tomorrow, though and to talk. But not before I get her naked and twisted in my sheets. Hell, I may just tie her up so she has no choice but to stay this time.
Me: last time I checked, I’m a guy
Ella: that’s always ur excuse
Me: b over in 10
A few minutes later, I’m knocking on Ella’s door. It’s early, still not quite ten in the morning. Nora and I landed just shy of an hour ago. I miss her like hell already. After our marathon bout of sex, we cleaned up and rushed to the airport. This flight went better for her. While we didn’t make the mile-high club again, between talking about my brothers and their newfound women, we made out like a couple of horny teenagers, especially on takeoff and touchdown, when she was most scared. It was fucking heaven, actually.
“Hey, come on in.” Ella bounds back through the condo toward the kitchen, calling behind her, “Just be quiet.”
“Be quiet? Why?” My eyes shift down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Your Coyote Ugly sleeping it off?”
“God, you are such a dick.” She hands me a soft golden package containing a Grease T-Birds T-shirt I happened across on eBay. Nice gag gift for Asher. “No, my niece is still sleeping.”
“Your niece is here? The one you bought that design thing for?”
“One and the same.”
Remembering she said she had to mail the gift, I ask, “She visiting?”
“She lives here now.” She shrugs and I know that’s all I’ll get from her tight lips.
Ella’s phone rings. She swears under her breath before she puts it to her ear. “Hey, sorry,” she says without even so much as a “hello.”
I hear a loud female voice coming through the speaker. I can’t make out what she’s saying. I try not to eavesdrop but my ears perk at Ella’s response.
“I know. Sorry, change of plans. I took her to The Little Mermaid last night at the Shakes and then we hung out on the pier for a while. We were both beat. I planned to bring her home when she woke up, but she’s still sleeping.”
More noise comes from the other side before Ella laughs.
“For Christ’s sake, she’s fine. Unharmed. Unpierced. Unmarred. Totally sober. What kind of aunt do you think I am?”
Pause.
Ella scowls. “There is this thing called the Internet. I used it. Plus a colleague has a nine-year-old.”
I hear laughter and Ella’s frown disappears.
“Are you sure? I can bring her over, no problem.” She pauses. “Okay, see you in a few.”
“Your sister?”
“Yes. She thinks she’ll come home to a tatted, hungover child. I may have tatted her, but it’s just a henna. Coffee?”
“Uh…sure. Got nothing better to do.” Although I do. I have a shitload of e-mails to catch up on and quarterly financials to review, but for the entire last two days, I’ve done nothing but spend time inside of Nora. I should spend the whole day working, only for the first time in my career, I find I’m not hell-bent on getting back to the grind.
“Don’t you want to shoo me out before your gorgeous sister arrives?” I tease, taking a tentative sip of the hot, strong brew. Not that I give a shit about anyone else besides Nora, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to needle Ella.
Gazing at me, she replies, “No.”
“No? Not that long ago I could have sworn you’d gouge my eyes out if I so much as looked at her.”
“I did not. Besides, you look…I don’t know.” She tilts her head and narrows her eyes like she’s just noticing something about me she hasn’t seen before. “Different. You look relaxed. Dare I even say…happy? Someone special perhaps?”
If you told me smiling would trigger a stampede of wild boars that would crush me to death, I still couldn’t have stopp
ed it. “Yeah.” I laugh. She’s something special all right.
Before she can ask another probing question, which I’d willingly answer, I hear a small voice call from behind me, “Hi, Aunt Mira.”
“Mira?” I ask, confused as hell.
She shrugs. “My full name is Mirabella, but my father always called me Mira. At work I go by Ella,” she tells me as she quickly rushes around the kitchen island toward the child behind me. When I swivel in my stool all I can see is Ella’s back and small hands around Ella’s waist.
“How did you sleep, Ladybird?” Ella/Mira croons while hugging her niece.
In an instant, that nickname sucks me back in time.
“Morning, Ladybird,” I tease, leaning close to smell her perfume.
“Ladybird?”
I wag my eyebrows. “Yeah, I did some research on ladybugs, princess. Do you know in Europe they call them ladybirds?”
She smiles. It’s brilliant and mind stealing. “You researched ladybugs? Why?”
“Because they interest you, and I’m interested in what interests you.”
Her mouth softens and for the first time I see our future in her eyes, not just my own.
Have you ever had a heartbeat, just a single second in time, that seemed to completely stop? It’s frozen, and as much as you want to press that damn fast-forward button so you can skip this point in time because you know it will change everything, you can’t. You can’t, because that’s your life-altering moment. The one that’s meant specifically for you to live.
I thought I’d had one of those already. The night Nora broke up with me over the phone.
But now I know I was wrong. This is that moment for me.
This is my game changer.
Had Ella not used that nickname, I probably would have missed it. I would have given the child a cursory glance and ran for the door, kids not really being my thing. But the second Ella mentioned “ladybird” my entire world came to a grinding, thunderous, fucked-up halt when I zeroed in on what circles the little girl’s wrist.
A ladybug bracelet.
And not just any ladybug bracelet. It’s the exact replica of the one I gave Nora the last night I saw her.
Random snippets of memories and conversations, completely out of order, pummel me so fast my head buzzes. It sounds as if a hundred thousand bees were just let loose to torment me. Puzzle pieces snap together. Ice crawls up my spine. My limbs feel cold, numb. My breathing labored.
It’s for my niece. Really has an eye for that stuff.
Dinner? No. I can’t. I have other responsibilities, Connelly.
We should talk.
Someday you’re going to marry me, Nora.
I have things I need to tell you.
There’s never been anyone else. In my heart, I mean.
What are you sorry for, princess?
It’s beautiful. I love it. I’ll never take it off.
Everything. I’m sorry for everything.
You’re mine now. You realize that, right?
“Conn? Connelly? Hey…” I feel a sting on my cheek, but it barely registers as I now stare into the most angelic face I’ve ever seen.
She’s small, no more than four and a half feet.
Her hair is a stunning hue of coppery brown.
Her lips are full and pink.
Her cheekbones high and sharp.
Her nose is small, pert, a perfect size for her tiny round face.
But it’s the eyes…her unusual hazel eyes that truly do me in.
They are mine, only a hundred times more beautiful.
There is no mistake. No doubt.
She is a perfect combination of her mother and father.
Nora.
Me.
She is mine.
Fuuuuuuck.
I have things I need to tell you.
…things I need to tell you.
…we need to talk.
If I wasn’t sure that this beautiful little creature in front of me was mine, the next words out of her mouth solidified it for me, another memory almost knocking me over.
Holding her hand out ever so politely, the child’s hazels—my hazels—never waver from mine. “Hi, I’m Hazel. But my friends call me Zel.”
“I love your eyes,” Nora says, running a finger down my cheek.
Hazel.
Jesus Christ.
I have a daughter.
I have a daughter and her name is Hazel.
Chapter 20
Nora
I stand in the living room of Mira’s downtown Chicago condo in absolute horror and utter confusion. I can hardly catch a speck of air as I watch my daughter put her hand in her father’s for the very first time. I see the thrall and confusion on Connelly’s face as he blindly takes it. And I’m well aware of my sister taking in the entire scene as if she’s just stepped into the Twilight Zone.
Welcome to the fifth dimension, because there is no fucking possible way I can be witnessing what I am unless I’m lost inside of its unknown vastness. It’s like I’m watching a movie in the weightlessness of space, the scene before me unfolding so slowly my heart races. The way she’s looking at him, I wonder if Hazel is putting things together just like Connelly is. She’s a very intuitive little girl, a trait she clearly inherited from her father.
I had tried twice over the last twenty-four hours to tell Connelly about her. Both times he put me off. I should have tried harder. I needed to have control over the situation, over my words. I had to frame the message just right to minimize the fallout and make him understand I did what I thought best at the time. This is the worst possible way he could have found out because the only way this can end is…
…utter annihilation.
And just like that, the spell is broken as Zel realizes I’m here and runs across the room to throw herself into my arms. But I can’t look at her. I can’t even listen to her as she starts babbling a hundred miles an hour about what she and her aunt Mira did while I was out of town.
All I can do is watch Connelly as he sits there, dumbfounded, staring blankly at the spot where Hazel just stood. His brows are creased. He blinks slowly as if trying to convince himself he just saw a hallucination.
But he didn’t.
In slow motion, his head pivots my way, yet he still doesn’t look at me. His eyes never leave Hazel. He’s watching her talk, her little hands flailing everywhere, but like me, I’m sure he’s not hearing anything she’s saying. Seconds drag on like days while I wait for the other shoe to drop, all the while wondering why the hell I’m in my sister’s condo gaping at Connelly.
“Uhhh, what’s going on here?” Mira whispers.
I can’t. I just…can’t. My voice is ice covered, like my heart.
The only reason I can come up with for Connelly being here is...but…my sister? The thought of Connelly stroking or kissing or thoroughly dominating my sister’s body the way he did mine for the past couple of days almost buckles my knees with unimaginable agony.
I can’t fill my lungs with enough life-giving oxygen.
And he’s here a mere hour after he left me.
Anger stirs and once again, I harden the walls he effectively managed to tear down over the past few weeks. I knew he wasn’t trustworthy. I knew it was an impossibility for him to commit to one woman. I knew I shouldn’t have opened up to him, let him into my heart again.
Now I remember why.
When his eyes finally rise to mine, they are full of confusion and disbelief. And hurt. Which quickly morphs into a fiery rage I’ve never seen in him before.
With the utmost control, he rises from the kitchen stool and stalks in my direction. A stealthy panther on the hunt. Out of my periphery, I see Mira volley back and forth between us and I hear her ask again what’s happening. I ignore her.
“Mommy, this is Aunt Mira’s friend, Connelly. Isn’t he pretty?” She whispers the last part as Connelly comes to a stop in front of us. Zel is constantly trying to hook me up with men, always pointing o
ut the “pretty” ones at the grocery store or the movies or the Humane Society. She has no idea that the only “pretty” man I would ever want is now full of loathing and hatred for her mother.
“Hazel, I need a moment with your mother.” Connelly’s jaw is plank tight, which, other than his eyes, is the one indication of how hard he’s working to control himself right now. But he surprises me when he looks down at her and softens his voice considerably. “If that’s okay with you?”
“Sure. Take all the time you need,” she singsongs traipsing off into the kitchen, leaving the three of us standing there in a little semicircle.
“Okay, somebody better tell me what the hell is going on,” Mira sneers on a low whisper.
“None of your business,” we both answer at the same time, our eyes locked on the other.
“Aunt Mira, will you make me pancakes?” Zel yells from the kitchen. That little shit knows exactly what she’s doing, but little does she know it will never work with this man. Not now. Not ever again. Unable to stand the condemnation in Connelly’s eyes any longer, I turn to see she’s already poured a glass of orange juice, making herself right at home.
“Sure will, buttercup.”
I look at Mira, knowing she doesn’t cook a thing that doesn’t come out of the microwave. She even burns toast. “You know how to make pancakes?” I ask with doubt.
Her shoulders rise and fall. “No, but it can’t be that hard, can it?”
“How about some instant oatmeal? You have that?”
“Nora, I got this. Go…do…whatever it is you two need to do.”
Before the words even leave Mira’s mouth, my elbow is in Connelly’s painful grip and he’s ushering me to the front door.
“Where are we—?”
“Do. Not. Speak.” His growl is low. Terrifying.
He leads me down the narrow corridor, the elevator to my right mocking my escape. About now, I’m wishing I’d taken Mira up on her offer to bring Hazel home. As much as I’ve tried to prepare myself for this moment, I know I can never fully be ready.