25. Gage
CHAPTER 25
Gage
One week later…
I ’ve been running the circuit of the park near The étoile for the past half an hour now, listening to music.
A song on a loop, actually.
It seems I’ve caught the bug from my little doll.
She explained to me that she does it because it helps to focus her thoughts without getting her too distracted by having to listen to the lyrics since she always picks a favorite song that she knows by heart. So, by the time she's into the third round of listening to it, her mind completely clears, and she can really see her characters coming to life.
I have to admit it really works for me as well, even if I don’t have a creative purpose for listening to a loop.
Right now, I'm listening to Crazy . By Aerosmith, of course.
A more apt song to describe my state of mind could not be running through my ears and brain right now as my legs pump and my eyes watch the trees go by, my mind entirely on something else, or rather, someone else.
My baby doll.
She’s all that I can think about.
She totally drives me up the wall. Not in a bad way, and not at all like the chick in the song does with her man by playing tricks on the poor bastard and telling lies to him.
No. Piper does that with the truth, with my feelings for her and hers for me. She drives me crazy for all the right reasons.
She makes me lose control. She makes me lose my fucking mind.
I'm pretty much sure after twenty days spent completely wrapped up in her —well, twenty-three counting today, actually— that I'm never going to go back to the way I was before I met her.
Not that I would want to.
Being with her may feel like being on a merry-go-round that someone cranked up to hyper-speed, but I love every moment of it.
I would never want to come off it.
I would never give her up, never go back to my boring old life where the highest of my joy or excitement was a multi-million dollar deal.
Not that I don't still enjoy that stuff, but being in love with my woman has taught me that there's so much more to life. No more doldrums for me. No more straight-laced gray business-as-usual bullshit. No more one-track mind all focused on my company, and no more all work all the time.
I run faster. I'm on my last loop now and can afford to give it my all.
Steven Tyler's voice croons about losing his mind while I try to keep mine from wandering off task and back to my girl.
I was supposed to use this time to go over my never-ending to-do list of work-related matters and tasks to try and give myself a break from the unrelenting distraction that my relationship with Piper presents, but it seems I just can’t do that.
It’s not a big deal, though. After all, everything with the new headquarters is right on track, and my company, in general, is killing it as always and keeps growing.
In fact, as of an hour ago, when I checked the market before hitting the gym to work off some of my tremendous sexual frustration –to no avail, I might add– I’m 1.2 million dollars richer than I was twenty-four hours ago.
Right now, my biggest worry is that I’m basically constantly hard, and that’s becoming a problem.
With as much naked time Piper and I get and how many times I’ve come in the past few weeks, I shouldn’t feel so aroused and on edge.
I mean, I’ve gotten more action since I met her than I’ve had in months, possibly years even, and yet here I am, hard up for it.
Maybe it’s because we haven’t gone all the way yet.
Maybe I’ll stay this fucking hard 24/7 until I finally bury myself inside her tightness.
Maybe nothing else can really turn me off anymore because I want her so much, and I love her so much.
And I’m not telling her this shit, no matter how much not taking her makes me ache.
I don't want to pressure her.
I want her to want it as much as I want it and come around to fully let me fuck her in her own time and only when she's really ready. I don’t want her to do things she’s not up to yet just because she loves me.
I'm old enough and wise enough to know that first times are big deals to women.
In fact, I've wised up to the fact that maybe they should be more of a big deal to men, too.
I can’t wait to make her mine, to show her with my body how much I love her, to worship every inch of her, but she’s been holding on to her virginity for a reason, and I want her to be sure that reason is really that she was waiting for me to come around, just as she said.
But giving her time is not easy, especially since we’re so very much attracted to each other and can’t do anything but get naked as soon as we are within touching distance, and every time we get together, we take things a little further, make it a little dirtier.
Hence, I’ve needed to up the stakes in the gym, to run three times per day instead of my usual single morning daily jog, and to take so many cold showers that my muscles are starting to complain.
Sometimes, getting exhausted works, but most of the time it doesn’t because my woman is too fucking hot for her own good and my own. So, in hindsight, it was kind of stupid of me to believe that trying to make mental to-do lists was going to keep me off topic for long, Steven Tyler or not Steven Tyler in my ears.
I feel a stirring down south and an elastic band snap around my heart as her face pops into my mind yet again.
No matter how many times I try to think about work to distract myself or how fast and far I run, thoughts of her always come through the static as the only clear thing my brain can focus on.
I mean, she’s just too damn… everything !
Too damn smart, too damn cute, too damn loving, too damn funny, and of course, the real crux of the matter here, she’s just too damn sexy, to the point I’m still in shock that a being as sensual as her could have managed to keep her virginity for so long.
I’m a lucky son of a bitch, and I know that –even if my balls are only one single shade away from true-blue right about now.
Steven Tyler picks that moment to sing that he feels like the color blue.
I’m with you on that score, man, even if you didn’t mean it like that for once.
I mean, my brain is so damn deep down in the gutter that I can turn anything I hear into raunchy stuff, not that the Aerosmith need much help in that department, but this part of the song really was meant to be innocent enough, I guess.
I take a sharp turn and almost trip on my own damn feet.
I roll my eyes as I recover my balance.
Boy, if my brother could see me now, he would have a field day!
About a week ago, I called him and told him about Piper –we talk through texts daily, but I felt that was a phone-call-worthy subject– and he was so shocked he remained speechless for so long I thought the call had gotten disconnected. I was about to hit the red button and redial when I heard a bark of laughter.
The little bastard has been having fun at my expense ever since, sending me teddy bear GIFs and little hearts every chance he gets.
I told him I’ll have my revenge when he meets the woman that’s gonna be meant for him. After all, if someone like me could find love, there’s little hope he’s going to escape the same fate for too long.
Parker recovered pretty quickly from that jab as well, saying since he’s so much younger than me, he’ll try and not get caught before he hits my age, and that will give him a good number of years of laughing his ass off at me before he hangs it up.
I look down at my smartwatch and see it’s almost six p.m.
I’m nearing the park entrance again, so it looks like this is really going to be the last loop for today.
Piper will be home soon.
She needed to go out for a walk in the business district to do some research and snap a few more pictures since she decided that the new book she’s working on will also be set in Phoenix.
Knowing how little she likes to exert herself, I figured she wouldn’t be in the mood to go out for dinner tonight and proposed we’d stay in instead.
She agreed and said we could order some takeout, but I want to surprise her and cook for her, so I’d better get going.
I let myself think about her again, and an image of her immediately manifests in my mind. I see her beautiful smile as clear as if she were right here in front of me and nearly run into a damn tree.
I really should focus on where the fuck I’m going, but there she is at the forefront of my thoughts. She’s a total danger to my sanity!
Shit, I’m so fucking gone over her!
We were together only a couple of hours ago, and still, I miss her as if I’ve had to go without seeing her for days.
I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with all the traveling I've got to do for my company if a few hours missing her makes me feel like I lost a fucking limb and can seat so heavily on my heart.
I guess I'm just going to have to drag her with me wherever I go, then.
It's a good thing that she's a writer and can work from anywhere in the world, or we'd be in trouble!
I can’t wait to see her. I miss the fuck out feeling her curvy little body up against mine as I hold her in my arms.
As I run, my brain keeps playing pictures of her like a never-ending mind reel that I can’t turn off —not that I would want to do that.
I see her sitting on the sofa in my apartment, looking cute as hell in her writing uniform of leggings and a tank top –color-coordinated, of course. I see the way she scrunches up her shoulders when I tell her she’s beautiful.
I see the adorable way she blushes when I slide her glasses back over her nose.
A wave of longing and happiness wafts through me.
I’ve never been this happy in my life. With Piper in the picture, I feel over the moon.
I can call to mind every little detail of her, even the softness of her skin and the warmth of it under my hands when she’s cradled against my chest as we sleep, and the way her sweet smell of strawberry and mint affects me when I press my face in the place where her neck meets her shoulder making me feel like coming home.
I hear the sound of her laughter and see the little quirky look she gets on her face when she’s teasing me.
The way her blonde-purple hair sticks in twenty different directions and curls a little at the ends after she’s played too much with her strands while she’s plotting her story, chewing on her pencil. She’s a total paper and real pens and pencils kinda girl when it comes to drafting her stories and hardly ever uses devices to do this part of her work.
I see the little wrinkle she gets between her big gray eyes when she thinks too hard and her sweet little smile when I reach over to smooth it away with my finger, and she looks up at me.
I see the way she lights up when I walk into the room, the way she always stops whatever she’s doing to run up to me and throw herself in my arms.
I hear the gentle sound of her breathing against my neck when we’re in bed together, and I see the way she tosses and turns when she’s not in my arms and steals the sheets when she’s dreaming, rolling them around her legs.
And the way she sometimes sits up in bed, ramrod straight, in the middle of the night, with her eyes half-closed and starts to scramble for her phone on her nightstand to jot down some obscure story idea.
I see her crack herself up in the morning when she goes through her phone and sees whatever she scribbled down and always shares the little tidbit of craziness that her subconscious mind came up with that she thought was a totally cool idea in the dark of night, but it’s actually stuff that hardly ever makes sense in the light of day.
I feel my heart squeeze in my chest as I think about her, my mind a jumble of feelings, emotions, images, colors, and sounds of us together as I keep on running.
God, I love her.
I love her like fire, like I didn’t know I was even capable of loving someone.
I love the way she talks about her job so devotedly, like it’s a mission in life to her, rather than simply a job, and maybe it really is.
I love how she tears up or smiles big when she gets an email from one of her readers, and they thank her for giving them the means to escape their reality when they need it.
I love that she’s so passionate about it.
I love that she writes an empowering kind of romance and that she’s not afraid to make it steamy, and that she’s totally on board with sharing that stuff with the whole world, but she’s still too shy to let me read a single page, no matter how I beg her to.
Not that I’m a romance reader, normally.
I’m more of a Stephen King or John Grisham kinda guy when it comes to books, but this is her stuff, a little window into her soul, into how she sees love and relationships, so I can’t wait to get a peek.
I love how funny and sassy she can be.
I love how hot she is and how hot she makes me for her.
I love her openness and her intensity.
I love the obsession that she’s developed for wearing stuff that she regularly filches from my drawers and how sometimes she burrows her nose into the collars of my shirts to get a whiff of my scent when she thinks I’m not looking while I’m working away at my laptop and she’s doing the same on hers and so we’re not close enough and she starts to miss me.
I love that she, most of the time, wears nothing under my stuff, and I love how fucking hard it makes me, and how happy it makes me to know that she wants to feel fabric that has touched my skin against hers with nothing in between.
I love the way my shirts are too damn big on her little soft frame and how they keep on sliding off one of her creamy shoulders.
I love the feel of said shoulder under my lips when I reach to cover her back up but can’t help stealing a kiss of her supple skin first.
I love every little thing about her, even the things that annoy me and the things she hates about herself.
That cheesy line that people hear so many times in movies or read in books, that line that when a character says it or thinks it, it makes you feel like punching their faces right in, the line about how a person makes them feel whole, how they complete them, that’s true for me.
She’s it for me.
She’s my best friend, my lover, my girlfriend, my woman, my future.
She’s all these things and so much more.
She’s everything to me. Everything I didn’t know I missed. Everything I didn’t know I needed in my life.
So, basically, I’m so totally in love with her that it’s a hopeless matter by now, and I’m so happy about it that it’s insane. I don’t care that it’s been less than a month since I first saw her and even less since I first actually talked to her.
I know it might be too soon for someone, not that I’m the type of man who gives a fuck about other people’s timetables on anything, let alone love life, and I know that we haven’t even fully had sex yet, but I still know what I want.
I want her. Always. And I want to marry her.
I’ve got a Harry Winston velvet navy-blue box with her name on it already in my possession with an empress cut diamond mounted on a platinum band that my woman’s best friend helped me get designed nestled in it.
I don’t know when I’m going to give it to her.
Could be tomorrow, could be a month for now.
I’m not sure, but I know it’s going to be soon.
I’m just waiting for something. For a sign from her. For the perfect moment to arrive.
I guess I’ll know when the time is right.
I leave the park behind and walk the rest of the way to our building.
I switch off the music just as I enter the elevator, but as soon as there's silence around me, I find myself humming Pink .
I make myself stop, shaking my head as I smile.
At this point, I don't know if I hate or love the damn song anymore, I just know it's permanently stuck in my head and I don’t think it’s going to leave the premises any time soon.
Once I’m in my apartment, I head straight for the shower, taking off my running gear as I go.
I close my eyes under the warm spray as I soap up, trying to think about what I should make us for dinner.
I already have dessert in the fridge.
I made an espresso coffee kind of sorbet with almond milk and whipped cream that Piper just loves and some waffles 'cause my girl loves breakfast food when it's not breakfast time.
I'm not sure what to cook for our actual meal, but it's gotta be something easy that I can get done fast 'cause she'll be home soon.
Maybe some pasta since we both like it.
I sift through all the recipes in my head that my Grammy taught both Parker and me how to make when she was going through her “You have to be able to take care of yourselves, boys” phase and settle on some type of pesto. Maybe the classical Genovese one with fresh basil, garlic, pine kernels and grated Parmigiano cheese on penne pasta, ‘cause I think I’ve got all the ingredients handy —well, maybe not the pine kernels, but that can be substituted with any kind of nuts in a pinch and you still get a very tasty variation on the recipe—, plus, it’s a type of cold sauce you can whip up in minutes as long as you either have a bowl and pestle to crush stuff with around the house or, even better, a blender, which I think I saw in one of the cupboards.
Good.
My mind wanders to my girl and away from anything having to do with cooking, and within seconds, my cock goes north and starts to twitch.
I glare down at my erection.
Dammit!
How does my dick get this hard this fast whenever I think of her beautiful face or other soft gorgeous cushiony parts of her?
My cock jerks, and I sigh.
I fiddle with the shower and turn the spray as cold as I can stand, trying my best to get myself under control, but it’s not easy.
I want inside my woman in the worst way, and turning off this type of feeling isn’t simple!
I close my eyes and try to go over my to-do list again, but it’s no use since I keep seeing her under me and thanks to all the sexy times we’ve been sharing, I can come up with some pretty accurate dirty visions of all the nasty, wonderful things I want to do to her and have her do to me.
I shake my head. It’s a lost cause.
There’s no taking my mind off from this line of thought once I start on it.
I finish washing up as briskly as I can while doing my best to ignore my misbehaving cock, which is, for all intents and purposes, being a dick —pun intended– and step out of the shower once I’m done.
I wrap a towel around my waist and use another small one to rub my hair dry as I leave the en-suite bathroom behind with my dick still pointing right in front of me and making its way through the opening in my towel no matter how I attempt to subdue it until l give up and just walk stark naked in my bedroom.
I find myself muttering the lyrics to Pink again while I keep on rubbing the towel over my head and face to get my beard to dry some, too, and once more, I make myself stop.
God, this is worse than when you get some infomercial jingle on your brain without hope of ever be rid of the damn thing!
I let the towel slide off my face and get the shock of my life because my woman is lying in the middle of my king-sized bed wearing a sheer purple babydoll that goes incredibly well with her milky skin and is a shade surprisingly close to that of the balayage –she taught me that word– in the lower part of her hair.
She looks at me all shy and cute and slowly starts to smile, saying nothing as I stare at her, stunned, devouring her in her achingly sexy getup that's so transparent I can make out her areolas and nipples and perfectly see the strip of blond little curls over her pussy mound.
She's practically naked and yet somehow looks hotter like this than she could if she really was totally the nude.
I think I just forgot how to speak and swallowed my tongue all at once, but even if I don't talk, a very obvious part of me that already was having trouble staying still is doing its saluting bid right now, jerking and jolting toward her.
Piper's eyes fall on my erection, and she smirks while she flushes a becoming shade of pink that goes from her cheeks to her throat and disappears behind the see-through flimsy material of her babydoll. She’s managing to look sexy as fuck and bashfully innocent all at once. She's the only woman I know who could pull off this look and get this much of a rise out of me with it; maybe because I know it's all-natural, and there's no artifice in it.
This is all her.
She wants me as much as I want her, and I guess this is her way of telling me without words that she's ready, maybe, since she's not exactly a sheer lingerie type usually.
I clear my throat and try to speak again to no avail.
She's so beautiful, fuck!
I make myself walk toward the bed, toward her, my hard cock leading the way, my hands shaking slightly.
I lean over her to touch her soft, peachy cheek when I reach her.
Piper rubs her face into my palm, her wide, gorgeous eyes shining up into mine before she does the one thing that’s sure to make me lose it.
She sinks her teeth into the corner of her plump lower lip for a moment, her long lashes fluttering as she struggles not to look away from me.
I do the only thing that my poor brain remembers how to do.
I kiss her. Hard. And for as long as we can stand not to breathe.
She touches her tongue to mine one last time and then pulls her lips away from mine, gasping.
I try to blink away the fog of lust enveloping me.
I don’t think there’s much doubt as to why I just found her in my bed wearing sexy lingerie, but I still want to make sure I’m not misreading her signals.
I clear my throat. “What’s all this, baby?” I ask, my voice so rough and low I can barely recognize it.
She gets up on her knees and takes a deep, shaky breath before putting her hands on both sides of my face.
“Exactly what you think it is, Gage.”
Now, I suddenly feel like there’s not enough oxygen in the room.
“You mean…? Are you sure?”
She nods, her eyes still on mine. “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. I don’t want for us to hold back anymore. I know… I know it’s going to be a big change in my life… and in our relationship… but I want it to happen. I… I need it to happen. Now . You’ve been so good about this! So patient… never pushing for more than I was willing to give, never taking me out of my comfort zone unless I was one hundred percent on board. You’ve been always so careful and thoughtful about the whole thing. And now I’m ready for you. For us. For everything. I want to know what it feels like to have you that close to me… to have you inside of me. If you want me, today is the day. There’s no other man I would ever want to do this with. No one I could ever need more, love more than you! I want us to have it all, and I don’t want to wait any longer.”
I can hardly speak and my vision is getting blurry because of something other than lust now, something that feels suspiciously like a sheen of tears.
“Oh, love… I… I don’t know what to say other than I love you and… and I’m so very happy right now! I just want you to be absolutely sure. I really want you… I want you really bad, but I don’t want you to do it now just because you think you’ve made me wait long enough or too much… I want you to be certain.”
She smiles at me. "Gage, I am! I'm absolutely certain and so very happy. You have my heart. You've had it since the first moment I saw you… and I know you feel the same. I know I have your heart, and… that makes me feel brave like there could never be a reason for me to be worried or afraid about this or anything. Nothing could ever hold me back, and sure, I'm a complete nervous wreck right now, and I know that I'm totally babbling and… and… I mean, look at my hands… see how they are shaking? But… but that's not from fear… I'm just really excited… and… sure a little nervous, maybe, but… but I want this… I really do, and I trust you, and that’s all I need for us to move forward.”
Okay, now I'm really speechless.
That's what I get for being in love with someone so good with words!
I fucking feel tears in my eyes for real now.
I take a fortifying breath, too overcome by emotion to say anything, but I guess my silence makes her feel even more jittery because she calls my name, her voice soft and small.
Once more, I pull her to my chest, kneeling down the mattress until we’re in front of each other and I kiss her. Slow and sweet this time as I try to put all the love and tenderness I have in my heart for her into it.
My arms are holding her tight. The feel of her warm body close to mine always makes me feel like I’ve finally found my home and right now is no different.
I can’t believe this is going to be my reality every day now.
I can’t put into words how grateful I am to have her in my life and to know that this is not going to end. Not ever. Not even when we’re both no longer of this world.
I break the kiss and move away from the bed.
Piper gives me a perplexed look. “Gage? Where you going?”
I grin at her to reassure her. “Nowhere, baby… I just need to– just bear with me for a sec, okay?”
She nods, but there’s still a confused frown on her lovely face. “Sure…”
I exhale loudly and move toward the high chest in the corner.
Well, I never thought I would do this today, let alone do it while totally naked and with an erection that’s still pretty much holding its own no matter how much my woman has been able to soften me down to my very soul with her treasurable words.
But I guess circumstances don't entirely matter. This is the perfect moment.
I open the third drawer and rummage to the side, looking for the little box I stored there less than twenty-four hours ago.
Walking back toward the bed, I keep the little velvet box on my open palm. Piper clocks it immediately and gasps, bringing her entwined hands to her chest as if trying to press her heart back into place.
I plop down on the bed in front of her.
Without saying a word and always keeping my eyes on hers, I slowly open the little box, bringing the engagement ring into view.
I retrieve the band from the little pin cushion where it’s nestled and toss the box on the nightstand.
I reach out for my woman's hand and smile at her when I feel her little fingers trembling in my grasp.
Not that I'm doing much better since both of my hands are shaking just as badly.
I look away from her Piper’s face for a moment and gently push the ring in place on her fourth finger, then I lower my lips to her hand, kissing both the ring and her finger while I look up at her.
I see tears standing in her beautiful gray eyes and blink back my own.
“I love you, Piper. You are going to be my wife, and I’m going to be your husband forever. And this ring is never going to leave your finger from this day onward, little doll.”
She sniffles and then throws her arms around me, crying hard in the crook of my neck.
I feel my heart squeeze at the sound and feel of her tears on my skin.
“Oh, love… please! Don’t cry… please…”
She tightens her hold on me.
“Happy… happy tears —she hiccups— I love you, too, Gage! So much… and even if you pretty much stated rather than asked me to be your wife, I’m still gonna pretend it was an actual proposal and answer the question you didn’t speak out loud with a yes . So, yes! I want to be your wife, and I want you to be my husband. Always and forever! And this is such a beautiful romance-book-worthy ring! I’ve had to do lots of research on these things in my career, so I know my shit. That’s why I know you are out of your mind for spending so much on an engagement ring!”
“Kill this noise, baby! No diamond, no matter how pricy, can hold a candle to what you are worth to me. You gave me your heart, and there’s nothing more precious to me,” I tell her, my lips pressed to the side of her neck as she squeezes me harder into her little curvy body, her chin on my shoulder.
She pulls away a little. “I want you inside me, Gage…”
“I know, baby… I want that, too. And we aren’t going to leave this bed without the both of us getting what we want today…”
I kiss her forehead as I take off her glasses, wiping the tear tracks from her cheeks with my thumbs as I softly kiss her lips.
She’s still crying a little, so I cradle her to my chest, my hand stroking the back of her head until her sniffles subside altogether, and then I kiss her again. Hard this time, and she kisses me back just as hard, with lips, tongue, and teeth.
I work her thighs around my waist, keeping her glued to my body as we kiss, and then I take her down to the bed, pulling her under me.