My hips sway and my belly contracts, muscles sliding around, their memory better than my own. They know how to dance, and they're angry at me for denying them. Soon I'm spinning around and my hands are sweeping out before me, drawing back while my hips undulate in a slow circle.
I open my eyes and see Ty McCabe naked on our bed, legs crossed at the ankles, butterfly tattoos melting onto his shoulders. With the dim lighting and the flickering candles, I can almost imagine that they're alive, moving over his skin and inviting me over.
A breeze from the open window sneaks through and teases my heated flesh, draws goose bumps over my body. I imagine that it's Ty that's touching me with his calloused hands and his rings, holding me, possessing me.
I move for him.
My eyes close again, so I can reconnect with the music, feel the power of a hundred women, a thousand, a million, coursing through the earth, rising into the foundation of the house and finding its way to my bare feet. I feel powerful dancing there, my heart in my throat, my pulse wild. I feel real and organic and female. And I feel Ty's masculinity calling to me from across the room, from the bed where his hand's just dropped to his cock and he's stroking and pleasuring himself to thoughts of me and my heated warmth.
It's obvious to me then why I haven't danced for so long. To dance, to really show the world the sound of your soul through your body, you have to be whole. Where before, I was empty, I am now complete. Where before, I was barren, I am now full.
I open my eyes again and take a step closer, my skirt flowing free, teasing my calves, the bells on my waist jangling in tune with my bangles, with Ty's bracelets as he slides his hand up and down the length of his shaft, wishes for me with every part of his being. His moans join the drone of the music as I turn and my fingers move outwards, beckon him close. I tuck them against my chest and let my head fall back. Vaguely, I'm aware of my hair falling out of its bun, flowing free behind me as I spin in a tight circle so fast that I get dizzy.
“Come to me, baby,” Ty says after awhile, voice husky, the sound colored with charcoal heat, like a fire long since left burning, still hot but not flaming. Now, it's sizzling. Now, although it isn't raging, it's at its hottest, its most sensual point.
But I don't go to him, not yet. I want to be possessed by him, but I'm also in control, and he knows that. The music asks me to show him with my hips what I'm feeling, so I dip the right side, then the left. I rise to my toes, and I tip my pelvis back and forth, sinking back down into a crouch and exploding out of it into yet another turn. I can't seem to stop making them, feeling that rush of blood to my head.
Ty starts forward, crawling across the bed, but I come to a sudden stop and lock my gaze on his, forcing him back against the pillows where he begins to beat at his cock with a ferocity that's almost frightening. A wicked smirk eats at my lips as a shimmy builds up from below, teases my body with small vibrations.
The song slows.
The tabla trails away.
I pause there in the pregnant silence, watching Ty, listening to him growling in his throat, waiting for me, wanting me.
Another song begins, slower this time, building momentum as it carries out the artists' wishes, twirling around the room and teasing the spirit the way good art always does. Whether it's a book, a painting, or a symphony, art is the dictation of the soul, the piece of beautiful blackness inside of all of us, and when it comes out, truly shows its face and breathes life into the beautiful air, there is nothing in this world that can compare.
“Babe, I need you,” Ty says and this, this I can go to.
So I pad across the floor towards him, light as air, the vibrant, beautiful butterfly wings that are attached to my soul keeping me afloat.
Ty watches me hungrily, eyes sparkling dark, mouth twisted into an expression to match mine. We're just two little wickeds, me and him, just two nasty little wickeds.
I climb onto the bed and press my hands to his sweaty flesh, straddling him, pushing my bare cunt against his erection. His hand finds my hair, his lips my lips. He holds me in place while he kisses the fuck out of me. His tongue and mine dance to the music, pressing into each other hard, trying to blur that line between us, so that we're just one. Just one, fucking, twisted bit of soul in love.
Ty's other hand unhooks the vest in the front, unties the choli in the back. My tender breasts spill free and he drops his mouth to them hungrily, like he can't wait even a second longer or he'll explode. I wiggle into place and he helps guide me, dropping his hand from my hair to my hip, positioning me, so that my heat presses against his cock, invites him into soft wetness.
Ty enters me with a guttural groan, forcing me to grab his hair and hold him back. I'm afraid he's going to come too quick. I need him to wait for me, to feel every part of my body, taste every bit of my heart.
My slickness glides along him, teasing him, capturing him with that essential womanliness that is my fucking right, that bit of me that I betrayed by jumping from partner to partner. I abused her, stuffed her full but forgot to please her, and she's angry with me. Ty soothes this side of me.
While he kisses my breasts, bites my nipples, sucks them into his mouth, I spill words for him. I don't know what I say exactly, but I know I tell him I love him and his hands clamp tight on either side of my hips, guiding me, grinding me into him. When he pulls away from them, leaving them sore and wanting, he looks up into my face and breathes against my mouth, gazes at me with that careful tenderness I have to look away from. This time though, he grabs my chin and pulls me back.
“You deserve to be loved,” he says which is so unexpected that I pause in our dancing rhythm. Our push and pull grinds to a halt with Ty buried inside of me, my skirt flowing around us like a flower. “You deserve it,” he repeats. “And I'm going to be the man to prove that to you.”
Ty pushes us over gently, falls against me and presses me into the bed with hot heat. My legs go around his back and cross at the ankles while he moves slowly, sweetly, carefully. Ty and I make a different kind of music that lasts long into the night, past the moment when the stereo goes quiet and into the early hours when the sun rises outside the window, kisses our bare flesh.
Like dancers in a choreography, we switch positions and taste each other, find solace in one another's flesh, keep the memory of our love alive and floating in the air like the incense that's long since burned out.
Ty spills himself inside of me again and again, and I drench him with my heat, and we mix saliva and sweat until we're just covered in each other, until the sheets are damp and the room is humid with the scent of our lovemaking. We go until we can't go anymore, until we fall to pieces together and glue ourselves back together in a tangled heap with his body still inside of mine, my hands around his neck, his forehead against my throat.
We stay that way until our baby calls out to us with a gurgle, brings us up and out of each other with a smile and a breath of fresh air that beckons in the new day.
20
The morning before we're supposed to load up and make the three hour drive to the cabin, Ty convinces me that I should tell my family about the baby. I'm not very far along in the pregnancy, so I don't know how great of an idea that is, but Ty seems pretty adamant about it. I wonder if it's because things are … different now. That night, that dance, seems to have woven a spell around our family, and I don't feel so afraid of Noah anymore. I have a long way to go, sure, but I notice that I kiss his face more, hold him tighter, love him deeper. It's amazing how that works, isn't it? You think you can't love someone anymore because you love them an infinite amount of times more than you love your own soul, but then it happens. Miraculously, spontaneously, it happens and it's so fucking perfect that it makes you want to cry. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Love is an all consuming thing, a well of infinite possibilities that stretches the limits of our own, individual universes and carries our spirits farther than we ever expected to go.
So, Ty wants me to tell my family about the new baby, okay
. I'll do it. But I'm still Never Fontaine Regali-Ross-McCabe, and I'm a little bit of a bitch and ornery as fuck.
“What are you up to?” I ask him, eyes narrowed as he shifts his sweatshirt from one arm to the other. There's obviously something else wrapped up in there, and it's just a matter of time until I figure out what it is. “Is this about the doctor again?” Ty pauses and runs his tongue over his sexy lower lip. He won't stop on the whole doctor thing, but I haven't passed out again, and the spotting is minimal. I looked it up on my phone and it seems pretty common, so I'm not worried about it, but Ty is. It bothers him a lot, I think.
“No, but would you please reconsider going? This is really stressing me out, Nev, and remember, it's not just your body anymore – it's mine now, too.” He tries to make this sound sexy, but there's this thread of fear woven into his words, this horrible nightmare of a thought that his love, his seed, his baby could somehow be responsible for something horrible, for threatening my life, for separating us when it should be bringing us together. I understand, but I still don't want to go.
“After Christmas?” I ask. He gives me a look and then sighs, nibbling at his lip ring and shaking his head. I've noticed that he's taken to wearing one of my bracelets at all times. My heart flutters in my chest, but I don't let him see it, maintaining my facade of stubborn unruliness. I can't let him know he makes me giddy and lightheaded or I'll never win another argument.
“You're so fucking stubborn,” he says, but we both know that he is, too. Neither of us is going to get our way here, so compromises have to be made. The fact that we're coming to this conclusion together and without strife, is just further proof that we're meant to be. “If something happened to you, my soul would shatter.” How the fuck am I supposed to say no to that? “But I guess there's no time, so … you have to swear on my dick that you'll go as soon as we get back.” I raise an eyebrow.
“Your dick?” Ty grins.
“I just picked the thing you love most in the world is all.” I throw a pretzel at him and wish that it was a Marlboro. I'm kind of getting to the point where I wish and hope and pray that everything becomes a cigarette, just so I can stare at it and smell it. Addictions suck and mine is freshly revived, denied during Noah's pregnancy, rekindled in that brief period between, and laid dormant again. It's the worst fucking torture I've ever experienced. Fortunately, my other vice, my sexual addiction, gets to be fed full and often. Very, very often. I'm going to end up with thirty fucking kids, aren't I? Aren't I? When you're making constant, wild love to a fucking stallion like Ty McCabe, you sort of forget the basics. He's goddamn intoxicating, poisoning me with his presence, and I'm loving every damn minute of it.
“As fucking stupid as that is, fine. I swear on your big, hairy cock that I will go to the doctor after Christmas and have a strange man with latex gloves stick his hand up my vagina. Happy?” Ty grins and digs into his front pocket, pulling out a long, thin white piece of heaven, sliding it between his lips and lighting up with a merry jingle of bracelets.
India pops her head into the kitchen for a moment.
“First of all, you two are disgusting. Second of all, Beth says if she catches Never smoking, in the house especially, she's going to go ballistic.” Ty laughs and scoots his way out the back door, abandoning me in my quest to 'quit'. At least for now. Once whoever this is comes out, I'll probably be right back at it again. I could ask Ty to stop with me for real, to give up smoking altogether, but I'm kind of living vicariously through the scent on his clothes and the ripe burst of flavor I get when I kiss his lips. Plus, I'm old school as fuck. Ty with a cigarette in his mouth turns me on. Sorry, antismoking ads. It probably shouldn't, but it does.
He only stays outside for a moment before coming back in and dropping his sweater to the table. As I'd suspected, there's something folded up underneath.
“Here,” he tells me, smiling wickedly, pushing the black square of fabric towards me. “I got you a fucking present. I was going to wait until later to give it to you, but screw it. I want to see it on.” I take the fabric in my hands and unfold it, finding myself face to face with the world's most fucking amazing T-shirt. My hormones try to get the better of me, filling my eyes with tears, but by sheer force of will, I push them back.
On the front of the shirt is a spinal cord and a ribcage with a tiny heart in the center, and down below, a baby skeleton curled up in the womb. It's so perfect, so Ty, so me. I clutch it to my chest.
“You know me too well,” I whisper, voice so quiet it's almost impossible to hear. Ty steps forward and leans across the table, brushing my hair away from my forehead. He can hear me no matter how softly I speak or how loud I scream, and he will always be there. I know that now without a doubt. Somewhere deep, down inside of me, my heart continues to heal.
“No, I don't think so. I think we've got it just fucking right,” he tells me, kissing me, promising me that all of these changes are good ones, that we're making the right decisions, that our life can only get better from this point forward. My phone rings and I glance at the screen.
“It's Zella,” I say, slightly disappointed that the moment is over, but unable to hold back a smile when Ty presses his hot lips to my forehead. There will be more moments, more slices of tenderness and pleasure and passion. That's the beauty of being in love. I answer it. “You on your way?” I ask her, squeezing my shirt in my left hand, determined that after this call I'm going to go upstairs and slip it on. Ty watches me through half-lidded eyes and smiles.
I hear the worry in her breathing, know that something's wrong before she even speaks.
Just when you think everything else is under control, that you've got your shit together and your life in check, something else has to go wrong. Fortunately, it hasn't nothing to do with me this time.
“Never,” Zella says, voice low and full of shame. “I think I'm in trouble.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
Never too Late #2: Never Let Go
Zella's Story
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Books by C.M. Stunich
The Seven Wicked Series
First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
Seventh
Houses Novels
The House of Gray and Graves
The House of Hands and Hearts and Hair
The House of Sticks and Bones
The Huntswomen Trilogy
The Feed
The Hunt
The Throne
Indigo Lewis Novels
Indigo & Iris
Indigo & The Colonel
Indigo & Lynx
Never say Never Trilogy & Never too Late Series
Tasting Never
Finding Never
Keeping Never
Never Can Tell
Triple M Series
Losing Me, Finding You
Loving Me, Trusting You
A Duet
Paint Me Beautiful
Color Me Pretty
Hard Rock Roots
Real Ugly
Get Bent
Stand Alone Novels
She Lies Twisted
Hell Inc.
A Werewolf Christmas (A Short Story)
Fuck Valentine's Day (A Short Story)
Clan of the Griffin Riders: Chryer's Crest
DeadBorn
Broken Pasts
About the Author
C.M. Stunich was raised under a cover of fog in the area known simply as Eureka, CA. A mysterious place, this strange, arboreal land nursed Caitlin's (yes, that's her name!) desire to write strange fiction novels about wicked monsters, magical trains, and Nemean Lions (Google it!). She currently enjoys drag queens, having too many cats, and tribal bellydance.
She can be reached at [email protected], and loves to hear from her readers. Ms. Stunich also wrote this biography and has no idea why she dec
ided to refer to herself in the third person.
Happy reading and carpe diem!
www.cmstunich.com
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Enjoyed This?
More Books By
About the Author
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Never Can Tell Page 12