Always My Forever
1. Gemma
ONE
GEMMA
I’m having a great fucking dream when I’m woken up to a situation that’s even better than the one in my head.
I realize the sharp prodding in my lower back is very real, and not at all in my imagination. So is the heat pooling between my legs, telling me I am very ready for the rest of my dream to come to life ASAP, if not sooner.
How often is it that our realities are better than our reveries? For me? Almost never.
But right now? At this exact moment? I’m one lucky bitch.
The man of my dreams is lying behind me, the owner of that deathly stiff rod poking me just above my rear. The man who has been by my side, and I by his, through everything life has thrown at us for years now. The one who I know I was made for, who was made for me.
Inseparable.
A team.
That’s us.
Aaron and Gemma.
Gemma and Aaron.
People have rarely found us one without the other for the better part of the last twelve years, and that’s the way we like it.
I try not to alter my breathing pattern as I wake up a little faster than usual, thanks to the excitement pulsing between my legs at the sensations this man is generating in me through this incredible point of contact. I don’t think there’s a world where I could ever get tired of touching him, of feeling him touching me.
Taking stock of my situation pretty slowly—I am still waking up, ffs—I realize we’ve passed out on the couch, and that’s the first time we’ve done that in a while . We must’ve been exhausted after our… session last night. Our “ weekly ritual.” The first one in too many weeks. It’s been too long, and I’ve missed him. The feeling doesn’t appear to be one-sided.
His arm is loosely draped over my waist, and I can feel some skin-to-skin contact on my midriff, so I’m pretty sure my T-shirt has ridden up. His palm is all but flat on my stomach, fingertips grazing the delicate, hyperaware skin there.
Before I can help myself, I find my hips shifting backward, operating on a mind of their own, seeking out some of that delicious friction I wish I was feeling between us right now, sans sweats.
Sure enough, that does it. I can practically hear Aaron’s eyes pop open behind me and some sort of far-too-sensual groan leaves his lips. His hand withdraws from my stomach, and he lightly slaps my hip, ushering me to get out of his way so he can move. Moment officially broken.
“Up.” His voice is gritty from sleep, and he sounds even sexier than usual first thing in the morning.
Frozen completely solid, I still haven’t moved after a few seconds, and his palm claps down on my hip a bit firmer. His hand strikes a hip bone that’s jutting out, not enough padding on my lanky form to protect it—or to make me look as womanly as I’d like, like the gorgeous women who surround him day in and day out.
“Come on, Gem. Up. I gotta take a piss.”
Not sure how he even knows I’m awake, to be honest; it’s not like he can see my face. My hips could’ve been grinding on him in my sleep; he doesn’t know otherwise, right? I close my eyes, trying to accept the fact that my lady parts will not be getting any of the action they’re screaming for right now, and I mentally prepare myself to get up.
I’m not a morning person, and to be honest, this is the best feeling I’ve woken up to in so long , and forgive me if it’s taking me a few extra moments to abandon my oh-so-comfortable position.
My hips rotate once more, trying to convince him to let me stay here another minute or sixty. “Aaron?” I call out his name in a near whisper that does little to hide my desire for him, at least not to my own ears. Faintly, an alarm sounds in the back of my head, a mechanical voice instructing me to abort . Self-preservation, and all that.
“Now’s not a good time, Gem.” His voice tells me this piss is urgent, more urgent than anything else between us right now.
Apparently I’m not fast enough for Mr. Impatient, and he’s done waiting, as I’m quite literally chucked off the couch, shoved onto the floor in his haste, far from gracefully.
His couch is super low to the floor, one of those insanely expensive, comfortable creations that’s perfect for lounging, screwing—I’m sure that pretty much anything would feel like heaven on this thing. But still. Did he have to shove me to the ground?
I can barely bring myself to open my eyes, lying on my back, trying to squint to make out his form above me. At least my desire is quickly cooling after that incredibly romantic move.
He peeks his head over the couch to take in my surely disheveled appearance, snorts a laugh at what he finds there, and hops over me to get to his destination faster.
The slap of his bare footsteps fades away down the very long hallway, and I hear the muffled sounds of running water, drawers opening and closing, and a door shutting.
Okay, I guess he’s just going to shower, then.
After a satisfyingly dramatic stretch, I manage to pull myself up off the floor and shuffle into the spacious chef’s kitchen to start making our coffees and breakfast. Once the fancy espresso machine is doing its thing and the pan is heating up on the stove, I grab a cup of water and attempt to rinse away my morning breath before Aaron makes it back out here. Just in case things pick up where they left off.
I make the usual: scrambled eggs, overnight oats with a handful of blueberries, one piece of dry Ezekiel toast, and slice up a piece of fresh fruit for us to share. Today, it’s a mango.
Even if I wasn’t his assistant by day, I’ve been making our breakfasts for so many years, this is a mindless activity that basically runs on autopilot by now, no conscious input from me needed. His chef preps the overnight oats for us every few days, and all I have to do is make the eggs and toast, pick a fruit, and plate it all.
Unless he’s on a cutting or bulking cycle for a role, or if the current producer he’s reporting to has him seeing a different trainer, this is his breakfast every day of the week.
Since he’s just over halfway through this season of Midnight Empire , and his next role is a tortured artist for an indie film being shot in Romania in a few months, he doesn’t currently have to worry about looking like Thor. Not that he’s remotely built like Chris Hemsworth, but they did share a trainer for some time for a role Aaron had to get jacked for a while back.
For lunch, he’ll usually eat at craft services on set, I’ll run out and grab him a protein smoothie mid-afternoon most days, and then his fridge is full of gourmet selections for his dinners that fit his nutritional requirements, courtesy of, you guessed it, his chef. It’s a well-oiled routine that keeps him camera-ready year-round.
By the time Aaron meanders back into the kitchen, my morning alarm has gone off and been turned off, the coffees are ready, I’ve plated our breakfasts, and there is no tent in sight— sigh —but he is looking refreshed, awake, and absolutely gorgeous. His soft brown hair is casually styled, parted on the left side, and combed back, still wet from his shower. He almost never worries about styling it properly, as hair and makeup will take care of that when he’s on set. His uniquely—unconventionally—handsome face is clean-shaven, and his dark blue eyes shine bright, like twin gems of tanzanite, even this early in the morning. My eyes roam the sharp lines of his face, the curve of his mouth, before dropping south. He’s paired dark jeans with a short-sleeved navy button-down that’s patterned with little pink flamingos and daiquiris, a shirt I got him as a joke when he told me he could pull off any look (after he was cast in a role that particularly surprised me) and I took it as a challenge. A shirt that currently has the top three buttons undone, showing off that chest that has become much more appealing over the years. The glimpse of it now makes me absentmindedly wet my lips. Okay, so joke’s on me, because he’s somehow pulling this shirt off, even though I thought he never would.
“What’s for breakfast?”
It’s a joke he makes almost daily. It started out as a way to lighten the mood when he was depressed about the strict food regimen his trainer put him on, but it’s become yet another one of our countless things .
“Eggs Benedict with salmon, homemade potato pancakes, and brioche toast with Nutella.”
He wrinkles his nose as he finally makes eye contact with me for the first time since his reappearance. “Ew, you paired salmon with Nutella? You can do better than that, Gem.”
I hold my hands up in defense. “I was under pressure.”
It’s true. My mind is definitely not on breakfast right now, and I was not prepared to come up with a different decadent dish of the day for his silly question. I was still imagining what could’ve happened on that couch if he hadn’t had to pee so badly.
Rookie mistake, Gemma. Don’t get distracted by his D.
Like I haven’t been getting distracted by him for half our lives.
I silently chastise myself as he grabs the two lattes from the counter and hands me mine, where I stand at the smaller of the two islands in the center of the room, before taking a deep sip of his and looking about three times more awake for that one gulp.
He gives me that sweet, endearing smile that used to be just for me, but now half of the American youth swoons for on the daily. See, to me, he’s not Aaron Stone of Midnight Empire or Rough and Tumble .
He’s Aaron, the boy who turned down the most popular girl in seventh grade to take me to our first middle school dance so I wouldn’t be embarrassed going alone, because no one else had asked little ole awkward and gangly me. He brought me peonies before the dance, because they were all out of roses at the shop he went to, and to this day they’re still my favorite flower. He’s the boy I spent every afternoon huddled up with in my backyard treehouse, playing made-up games and dreaming of our future together.
He’s also the man I’ve watched follow his dream, turning small acting roles into major ones. The man I’ve supported with all of my being throughout every phase of his life. I would follow him to the ends of the earth, and I have. Quite literally. His last film was shot in Tasmania, and the one before that was in Greenland.
We’re a pair that’s always been better together than apart. Unlike salmon and Nutella.
He takes a seat at one of the barstools behind the island we use for eating, not the one for food prep and cooking, and picks up his fork, poking at his eggs.
“So, Gem, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Hmm?” I try to appear disinterested and follow his lead, taking a casual drag of my coffee, except I start choking when his next words leave his ridiculously gorgeous mouth.
“I want to introduce you to my girlfriend today. I think she might be the one.”