Chapter Six #2
She flinches like I meant to hurt her. I didn’t.
Not really. But I can’t help the bite in my words.
I’m tired of being seen as the villain when I’m cut, too.
By memory, by the encroaching challenge of fatherhood and the doubt as to whether I’ll measure up.
Whether what I had with my father can be replicated because something occurred to me last night, as I prowled, restless, down another hallway in another sprawling residence.
He’d had me. But he’d had my mother too. Whereas I have a wife who can’t bear to look at me.
She turns to walk away, but I catch her wrist. ‘Wait.’ She does. And that infernal crack gives, just a little bit more.
‘I’ve been trying to win his approval my entire life, my grandfather,’ I say. ‘Juilliard. Hollywood. Every red carpet was supposed to prove something. It still wasn’t enough.’
I shouldn’t be telling her this. But then her face softens and it strikes me then that that’s why I’m doing this. For just this look that started the night after I buried my mother. In that kitchen in Bel Air. She gave me this same look and somehow, I’m growing…addicted to it. Yesu.
‘My father was different. He never called it “artistic nonsense”. He backed me. Even when it cost him. Especially when it cost him.’ I pause. I should stop. Seriously. ‘This isn’t about the Biney name. It’s about honouring the only man who ever believed in me.’
I look out at the sea, let the silence swallow the confession I’ll never say out loud: that losing my father was the day my compass broke. But something about the way she’s continuing to look at me now—like I’m more than my money or my sins—undoes me.
And that’s when I give in.
I drag her to me.
And I kiss her.
Hard and merciless. It’s the only language I still speak well. It’s won me awards, after all. And sometimes tried and true win wars.
‘Hate me if you must,’ I whisper, voice raw against her lips, ‘but you’ve been driving me fucking crazy.’
Cilla
I freeze.
No, I burn.
My first instinct is to push him away, to remind him of everything this isn’t.
But my mouth doesn’t listen. My body doesn’t either.
I’m kissing him back before I even realise it.
Open-mouthed. Hot-headed. And sweet heaven, against my better judgement, open-hearted.
The kind of kiss that makes your spine tingle and your mind blank.
God, I’ve missed this. Him.
His taste is familiar, warm and dark, tinged with longing and grief and regret. His hands slide to my waist, pulling me closer, and I let him. I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. But I do.
Because I’m tired of fighting this. Of pretending that this isn’t the most alive I’ve felt in weeks. Months, even.
His lips coax mine open and everything tilts.
For one long, dangerous moment, I forget the terms of our arrangement. I forget his sharp tongue and my sharper righteous truths. I forget the contract. The lie that doesn’t feel like a lie any more. The family legacy pulsing in the foundation of all of this.
His hands are reverent and rough at once, fingers pressing into my hips, like he’s grounding himself with my body. And mine? Mine are in his hair. Tangling. Gripping. Losing myself in something that’s not fake at all.
Then too soon, but not soon enough, I remember.
I remember the morning after. The silence. The cold shut out. The bruising distance he put between us after I dare to run, to protect myself from yet another Biney.
But even now, there’s heat behind that distance. Still smouldering when I pull back just enough to breathe. Because it turns out, pulling back didn’t equate to pulling away, so our foreheads remain touching. Our breaths still mingling.
‘This doesn’t mean anything,’ I whisper, my voice trembling.
His eyes meet mine. Hungry. Haunted. ‘Sure,’ he mocks a little hoarsely, but there’s the tiniest hesitation, the tiniest crack.
And I don’t say it out loud, but I know it, even as I pretend I don’t. Where this is headed? It’s going to ruin me. But for good or ill, I’m not ready to stop. Not yet.
‘We’re still pretending,’ I insist, my voice trembling.
His mouth curves in that devastating way that makes my stomach dip and heave. ‘Then stop me. Now, Cilla, because if you don’t I will take more.’
He waits. Watches. The ferocious predator waiting to pounce.
I don’t. Because I can’t.
He swoops back in and his kiss is a furnace, igniting everything I’ve worked so hard to keep cold.
The wind tugs at my hair as his hands spread across my back, pulling me flush against the solid heat of his chest. Somewhere, the Mediterranean sighs against the yacht’s hull.
Somewhere, the sun slides low over the horizon.
But here—here it’s only us. And this fire we can’t seem to douse.
My hands—traitorous things—slip beneath his linen shirt, tracing the ridges of his abs, the fine line of hair trailing downward. His body jerks, a hiss escaping between clenched teeth. He lifts me with maddening ease, setting me down on one of the wide cushioned lounges.
‘Cilla,’ he breathes, like it’s a prayer and a curse all at once. ‘I mean it. Tell me to stop.’
I look up at him, chest heaving, lips tingling, every cell in my body wired and wild. ‘I still can,’ I whisper. ‘And maybe I will. At any time.’
But I still don’t.
Because even now, even when his mouth finds the hollow of my throat, when his hands slide down my hips and back up beneath the thin fabric of my cover-up, I don’t want to stop. I want to feel. To take. To burn again, just this once.
His name escapes my lips in a breathy plea as he coaxes reactions from my body with devastating precision. Fingers trailing up my thigh, down my spine. Mouth everywhere. Worshipping. Claiming. Undoing.
He drags his lips down the curve of my shoulder, then lower, until I’m arching off the cushions with a gasp. My fingers dig into his back. My toes curl into the soft throw beneath me. I’ve never been touched like this. Never felt so wanted. So consumed.
‘This doesn’t mean anything,’ I lie again, trembling against him.
He growls something into my skin, something rough and primal, and his hands tighten on my hips.
Then Ashon shuts me up, lies and all, the best way he knows how.
By parting my thighs and feasting on me.
Me plucking my pebbled nipples, him tonguing me and fingering me and tasting me until I see beyond skies into heaven.
I shatter with his name on my lips, my body shuddering as pleasure rips through me like a wave crashing on the shore.
For a moment, the world disappears. It’s just sensation and heat and the throb of my pulse.
But then—
Then it crashes back.
My breath catches. Shame, sharp and bright, slices through the haze. What have I done?
I shove gently at his chest. He stills, blinking down at me like he’s just surfaced from the same deep tide.
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘We can’t.’
His jaw flexes. ‘We already did.’
‘I can’t do this. Not again.’
I scramble upright, tugging the edge of my kaftan back into place, heat rising in my cheeks for an entirely different reason now. I don’t look at him. I can’t. Because if I do, I’ll lose every shred of control I just clawed back.
I move for the steps but his voice stops me.
Mocking. Low. Possessive.
‘Running off again, I see. Remember, you won’t get very far this time, wife. Not with my ring on your finger and my baby in your belly.’
I freeze.
Then keep walking, even though my legs feel like they’ll give out at any moment.
Because the worst part isn’t that he’s right.
It’s that I want to go back, beg for more. More than I want my next breath.