by V. Theia
He’d watched her for more than hour before approaching her.
That’s all it had taken to bring his heart alive.
And the moment she’d gotten near to him it was flint scraping up against metal in his veins.
One hello from him, a smile and lashes flutter from her and that was his life set.
She’d stolen the very breath from his body that day and she still hadn’t given it back. He’d wanted to kiss her so badly in those first few minutes, to reassure himself she was actually real, and he wasn’t still drunk from the night before. But he didn’t. They talked for hours. She was as animated in conversation as she was dancing in the street.
He’d been a tourist all the way from New Zealand, intent on traveling around the states for six weeks, experiencing life, having adventures, fucking as many woman as he could before he returned home to join his dad’s business, Renner and Sons Auto. Tennessee was only his second stop.
“I’m only visiting.” He’d whispered against her lips right after he’d gotten that first, perfect kiss. And against his mouth his girl had laughed and wound her arms around his shoulders, pulling him in tighter and replied with absolute clarity. “Nope, you’re staying right here, Judson.”
He’d taken one look at his girl and never went home. At twenty-two, Jud found a job with a garage, he applied to stay in the states and then he married his eighteen-year-old soulmate six-weeks to the day after they’d met.
“Get down, bug, before you fall.” Shifting around the tree, he squinted and watched her start to move. She was small with willowy dancer limbs and each step was practiced and beautiful. Still, his heart was in his mouth until he was in reaching distance and grabbed her around the waist, hauling her into his body, making her squeal with laughter.
“Bossy.” She accused wrapping both arms around his neck, her legs followed suit with his waist.
“I hope you had fun with your little stunt, ladybug, I’m about to make it impossible for you to sit down for a month.”
It was no threat because her eyes turned dreamy and she smiled, getting in closer to his face, her hands tangled in his growing hair. She wanted him to have it longer, so he was fucking growing it out like a chia pet.
“Promise, baby?”
God, his woman. She took all the air out of his lungs and pushed the blood to his cock until he was left feeling feral and caveman-like to rut and satisfy.
No matter how many times he had her, the hunger sat in the background, snarling and waiting to pounce.
Twice that morning before they’d left the house, so as much as he wanted her again, he wouldn’t take her for fear of hurting her little body.
It didn’t stop him from nuzzling her neck as he carried her back over to where they’d left their picnic, he set her down on the blanket.
“Has my dare-devil had enough to eat?” They’d brought all her favorite foods; cheese crackers and birthday cake, she favored the Funfetti flavor with extra frosting as thick as a slab of concrete. Jud laid back on the blanket and watched her lick the colorful sugar from her thumb and grew increasingly, insanely hard.
Now he was on his knees ready to pack up and take his girl home to get ready to visit with her family, if they’d even remembered it was her birthday.
He could give a fuck if her shit family liked him. He didn’t like them one bit, but he hated the way they treated her.
“I’ve had enough food,” she crawled into his lap, wrapping around him, both arms and legs held him tight and Jud sighed into her neck. She smelled so good. Sunshine and black licorice which he knew was from the fragrance she dabbed on every day.
He licked behind her ear and felt her snuggle in deeper. “Need something else, do you?”
“I am the birthday girl for a few more hours,” her voice didn’t stifle her grin.
Palming her butt he squeezed and rubbed her where she needed. “Tell me, bug.”
She waited until he had a finger shoved inside her, testing her tightness before she dropped her demand with whimpers falling like the desperate siren she was.
With his face in her hands, and her mouth nuzzling his she whispered. “I want a baby, Judson.”
What? His heart stalled. It didn’t come as a massive surprise, they’d talked about kids on their third date, she wanted them, he wanted them. Just tell me when you want them, bug, and I’ll give you all the babies. He’d told her that on their wedding night, tipsy, insanely in love and fucking on an unsanitary motel room floor on their way back from Atlantic City. He just didn’t expect the command to come in a meadow surrounded in wildflowers with his fingers jammed up against his wife’s G-spot while she gushed down his hand.
Fucks sake, his cock was about to snap in two.
She at all times knew the words to say to make him insane, to turn him into a knuckle dragging caveman. Because where his ladybug was concerned, his modern-day ethics fell by the wayside. If she wanted something, then he broke his back to get it to her.
Giving her a baby was no exception when she laid out on the blanket, glazed pleasure in her eyes, beckoning him to her and her welcoming legs open for him, everything in his life narrowed down to this and her.
“Please, Judson, please, please, baby. I want everything.” she whispered softly, and he covered her body in seconds. Shaking with love and lust rattling his fucking bones and hardening his cock to titanium. Her pleading hit him dead center of his chest. He’d never loved anyone before her, not like this. It consumed him, filled every crevice of his body, made him be better, work harder, strive to make this gorgeous creature of his happy.
He loved her so much, he ached.
“I’ll give you anything you want. You only have to tell your man and I’ll get it for you. My birthday girl wants my baby inside her. Fucking done. Open those gorgeous legs wider and invite me in.”
“Do you hear that?” She asked. “It’s my biological clock ticking out of control.”
Because she said it so dramatically with her arms spread and her slim neck arched back, Jud grinned and rolled on top of her, nuzzling his mouth into the hollow of her throat.
“Hear that?” He offered his own puzzle and pushed his hips down hard into her softness. “It’s my dick wanting to fuck.”
She mewled so sexily he nearly lost all his come on her inner thighs, but now he had a higher purpose. Not a drop would go anywhere else but deep, so fucking deep in her womb until he’d filled it with what his girl wanted.
They were gonna have a baby.
They tried so hard. Morning, noon and night, Jud was on his mission until his dick begged for a time out. Months ticked by and nothing happened. No pee stick came up positive. They spent so much on those things. Weeks slid into another, they had the practicing down to a fine art. They fucked everywhere and Jud read a woman needed to elevate her hips afterward so he would always prop her up with pillows and bring her snacks and then rub her sore little overused pussy with the flat of his hand and talk to it like their baby was already swimming to the promised land. He made his wife come and come and come and he emptied so often inside her that he joked she’d be sloshing when she walked. They fucked at his job, at her job, in her parents bathroom, in the restrooms in bars and restaurants. Not to mention in every room in their apartment. It was as if he’d had a fire lit under him and he couldn’t get enough of her, knowing what she needed from him.
Jud became wholly focused on the pleasurable task.
As the year slipped towards the end he watched his ladybug. She was showing signs of feeling defeated, she tried to act tough and strong, but he knew her inside and out. It just focused him like a motherfucker to get the job done. It was when he found his ladybug sobbing on the bathroom floor holding another negative test that Jud said enough. “We have to either stop trying, baby, or we see a doctor.”
Fucking doctors, after a battery of tests they said nothing was wrong with either of them. Not one goddamn thing. There was nothing for him to fix. His wife was healthy, fertile. His sw
immers were in good shape. Keep trying, was the advice.
She lay in his arms that night, slicked with sweat, her hips propped with four pillows, and her eyes lowered, dazed. He’d given his all to his wife. She looked like a goddess and his spent cock jerked a little bit. He loved her so fucking much.
“I was thinking…”
“That’s always dangerous, bug.” She jammed her skinny fingers into his ribs.
“Judson Renner, I’m being serious.” She wound his hair around a finger and traced his eyebrows, across his lips, down his neck. He just watched her, in awe.
“If we can’t have a baby…”
His heart flatlined, pain slicing him down the middle. He felt like a failure that he couldn’t give her what she wanted. Gathering her in, he kissed her forehead. “Bug, you heard the doctors, there’s no physical reason why we can’t. We just have to relax. It’s been a shit few months.”
Her family weren’t helping their stress levels. He hated the freeloaders. Especially her stepbrother. That creepy jackass looked at bug in a way that made Jud’s skin crawl. If he had to stand back and watch it once more he was gonna kill him.
“Having babies won’t define us, Jud. I realized and I know you and I are enough. I love our family of two already and if a baby comes along to join us that will be the happiest day of my life, after marrying you.” She followed this statement by nuzzling his nose with hers. “We are enough, Jud. I love you so much, so very much and I love our life. We’ll get puppies. So many puppies.”
Goddamn, she was killing him. All Jud could do in that moment was hold her close, kiss her neck, her lips, her forehead and love her even more.
His wife was incredible. Resilient. A fighter.
So damn strong, she was the glue to their family, and he prayed to a God he didn’t fully believe in that he could give her all the babies, because any kid would be lucky to run into her arms and call her momma. “I love when we can walk down the street to have pancakes at 6 am and that you don’t mind watching re-runs of Friends even though you hate Ross and I love that we plan fantasy vacations late at night and we can talk about nothing and everything. We are so enough as we are.”
This was his woman, his bliss and everything. He’d always known he’d move heaven and earth for his ladybug, would fight anyone, kill anyone who tried to harm her. Her smile was his currency and her heart only beat for him just like his thumped for her.
He might not be worth much, but to her … he was king, she was his queen.
“I fucking love you,” he rumbled thickly into her neck.
“I think we should save for that motorcycle you want. We could go on long rides, even travel across country like we talked about, Jud.”
“Sounds like a good plan, ladybug.” He enveloped her in his arms and hung on for dear fucking life.
She was his life and he’d be ash without her.
“I love you. I love you. I love you.” She kissed all over his face until they were rolling around the bed, laughing and attacking each other with tickles.
She always won, she knew his weak points, like a lucky man, he let himself be pinned by her and the beauty looking down at him, with all her hair falling in his face dragged the very air from his chest.
He kissed her deep, he kissed her long until he was saturated in her taste.
“Love you more, bug.”
Love you more.
Love you more.
Love you more.
Now
The words rang like clanging bells in his ears as Reaper came out of sleep like he’d been cattle-prodded, his feet touched the floor, unsteadily he raked both hands around his neck, if he had pain still he couldn’t feel it.
Not when all he tasted in his mind, his mouth, his chest was her.
Love you more.
Three words, forever to torture him.
How he’d proven them correct.
Across the room he caught sight of prospects and other members going about whatever shit they had going on. Uncle Jed looked up from his position behind the bar and gave him a cursory brow lift as if to ask if everything was okay. Reaper nodded to the older guy and strode through without talking to anyone.
He gulped a 20-ounce cup of cold water, boiled himself in a shower and then fell naked into the bed he kept at the club, the pills still had him drowsy.
Loving hurt, he thought with a wry twist to his lips.
Resentment slipped in, so did his anger.
Everything had gone wrong in one day.
He’d lost his wife. Lost their unborn baby. And lost their life together. All within minutes. Gone.
Love you more. Yeah, that was about fucking right.
Reaper shoved the past out of his mind, it served no purpose other than to torture him of things that would never be.
His life had crashed off course, now he had the choice to live it again in a different way.
Having everything that could ever mean anything to a man ripped out of his hands profoundly changed a person. Reaper had lived it; he wore the fucking t-shirt and had a lifetime membership to that club.
He wasn’t the same person.
Not after killing his brother in law.
Not after running away.
Not after seeing and doing the things he had in the MC world.
Not after losing the only thing he’d ever called his own.
All those events made Reaper who he was today.
The quiet man. The patient one. The ghost no one truly knew.
The one they named Reaper, not because of the one adorned to his club cut, but because of the way he ghosted through life like death himself. No one expected Reaper… until he was there.
He let his eyes close and coiled himself in thoughts of Paige until he felt dizzy.
She warmed him instantly, soaking his cock in hardness against his belly.
Groaning, he rolled onto his front and pressed it into the bed, rolling his hips just a little before he settled with a sigh and forced his muscles to relax.
Sleep came fast and he didn’t dream this time.
CHAPTER SIX
“Fuck this, I didn’t swipe right for a threesome with a pissed off Hells Angel wannabe.” – The guy sitting opposite Paige.
Once again Paige tugged at the hem of her skirt, flattening the silvery-white material against her thighs, wondering if she made the right choice to wear a dress tonight and not the skinny jeans she’d laid across the bed.
It was Winter over FaceTime who told her to go with a dress and heels.
She was more comfortable in tennis shoes and sweats and licking the chips dust from her fingers. Not sitting at a middle table surrounded by people in Otis’ bar and grill waiting for her date to show up. All she knew was what was on his bio and the little text conversation they’d shared on the app. This one was called Carson; he was a small animal vet with his own practice a few counties away. 5’8, brown hair and athletic. And he spelled all the words correctly without stupid text talk. That was about the sum total of what she knew about veterinarian Carson.
Feeling a little more nervous than usual because, Brody, her very first date didn’t even show up.
She didn’t want to be here. It hit her all at once, a slap of truth that she was going through the motions of something she didn’t want. Not with vet Carson, even if he turned out to be the nicest guy on earth.
Maybe she wasn’t his type. Maybe he hated pink hair or cardigans. What if she wasn’t attracted to him in person? What if he chewed with his mouth open and told racist jokes?
Stop it, Paige, she chastised. It was just nerves trying to make her run home. She was putting herself officially on the dating scene for a reason, she was sick of being alone, for one. And if she bought any more batteries for her sex toys she was about to go bankrupt.
She needed sex.
God, did she.
She was starting to eat her sexual feelings and there was only so much cheesecake in the world before she had to replace it with a nice ha
rd man between her thighs.
Reaper. Reaper. Reaper.
No! She inhaled and pushed any thought of him from her mind. With no indication he wanted more than a friendship she had to engage self-preservation and move on from hopes and dreams, or she’d still be stuffing cheesecake balls in her mouth at 2 am and mass bulk ordering batteries from Amazon when she was in her sixties.
Maybe she could get a few cats.
Hey, maybe veterinarian Carson would give her free cat check-ups. She’d have to ask him. She giggled to herself and right then a shadow crossed the table and she looked up at a pair of cobalt eyes and a straight white smile.
She was not disappointed in what she saw.
“Hi, Paige?”
Wow, he looked exactly like his profile pic. She wasn’t nervous at all when she smiled and nodded. “Hi, Carson, nice to meet you,” mainly because she was not attracted to the guy taking his seat. Like at all. He was all get out kinds of handsome and big, she just bet he played sports because he had a really nice strong build. But there was not a flicker of wanting to climb on his face. If she found a moment to use her phone she’d have to text and let Winter know she was gonna be sexless forever. Thank god for overnight shipping.
Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. As the time dripped away and their conversation built, her mind wandered, she felt so bad about it. She should be concentrating on the cute guy telling her a story about trying to catch a darling teacup pig at work the other day. And though she laughed, Paige’s mind was elsewhere.
Drip.
Drip.
The man who she shouldn’t be thinking about went on dripping himself all over her mind, poking his gorgeous face in and letting her see imaginary Reaper was not pleased she was out on a date.
She was an excellent judge of character and this felt all wrong.
Oh, my god, Paige. Get a grip. Now she was fabricating how angry he’d be? Too far. Too far down that crush rabbit hole.
The only thing she could do was push one man out of her mind to make room for another.