13. Miri
13
Miri
A fter Carter left me with my prince of darkness, most of the tension inside eased. Not that I didn’t love Ivy and Carter, but Lex was my most favorite person in the world. He and I matched in so many depraved ways, and I’d never found anyone else who reveled in the grittier side of life like I did.
Lex’s mouth still curled the same and his hands were just as rough as they used to be when he glided them across my soft, wet skin.
“What does my princess want, huh?” He nibbled at my throat, his fingers working between my legs, teasing at flesh that ached.
After these last three days together, I shouldn’t yearn for him the way I did. I shouldn’t want anyone this desperately. Hadn’t I had my fill? But I couldn’t stop myself. I had to get more.
“Tell me you missed me.” I kissed him and wrapped my hands around his neck, positioning his cock at my entrance.
“I missed you more than you can ever know.”
“Do you still love me?” I knew he did, of course he did, but I wanted to hear him say it.
“I’ll always love you.” He grabbed my wrists and twisted them behind my back, holding them at the base of my spine, pinning me to him. I sank lower, sheathing Lex’s big cock inside me, arching into the agony and the nirvana mixing together. He took my nipple between his teeth, biting and pulling as he worked himself in and out, sending a tremble up my spine and down my legs.
“Tell me you love me, too.” He gave the other nipple the same attention before grabbing me by the back of the neck and pulling me upright, his hand in the back of my hair. “Tell me I didn’t lose you to the Hollywood heartthrob.”
I laughed and rocked against him, smiling as tingles of electricity shot through our connection. I was sore, but in the soothing warm water, I’d do anything for him. I craved his body as much as it appeared he craved mine.
“I love you. I love you. I love you.”
We took each other the way we always did, with nails and teeth and filthy words. When my climax claimed me, wrenching from my body in a combustible mix of pain and ecstasy, I moaned into the space between his neck and his shoulder, delighting in the kick of his cock inside me.
“Fucking hell, Miri.” He kissed me, groaning and gasping, making me feel so damn lucky to have him.
“My prince,” I murmured between gasps. “My love.”
In the aftermath, he helped me out of the bath and dried me off, wrapping the towel around my shoulders with a wink before grabbing his own.
“Are you happy, darling?” I asked. “With all this?”
“Happy?” Shaking his head, he snorted and pushed the lever for the drain on the bath, gesturing me to go in the opposite direction of where Ivy had left, into his room. “No, none of us is happy.”
The walls were painted a gunmetal gray and decorated with black-and-white photographs. I got closer and realized they were places from his life—our college, our old dorm, the Naval Observatory where he lived as a child, and finally a stunning one of Ivy.
It took my breath away.
She sat naked on a chair, facing the floor-to-ceiling window in a former apartment, the Washington Monument and the Capitol in the distance. One long leg crossed over the other and a high heel dangling from her toes, she had her elbow on her knee and a cigarette hanging between two fingers. She’d been crying, but the way she absently stared out at the DC skyline indicated the scenery wasn’t the cause of her tears.
It was beautiful, and it said so much about Ivy as a person—facing the physical manifestation of her legacy, crying because, at the end of the day, she was human like the rest of us.
“Who took this?” I asked, desperate for a copy of my own.
“I did.” Lex walked up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “When you don’t fuck everything that moves, you have a lot of spare time on your hands.”
I turned in his hold.
“You’re not slagging around?” This surprised me. Of course, I had stopped all my extracurricular activities as well. But when we met, we were equally as disreputable.
“No,” he said. “After Ireland, it didn’t feel right.” He walked to his dresser, digging through his clothes to find something suitable to wear. “I tried with Ivy for a while.”
“Oh?” I pretended that didn’t hurt. It did and it didn’t. I couldn’t act like I hadn’t done the same thing with Carter. We’d needed each other in a way only we understood. Lex and Ivy had to have felt the same way. To distract myself, I went to my luggage so I could find my own sleepwear. “How did that go?”
Another sardonic laugh. “About as well as you’d imagine.”
“That great, huh?” I smiled, remembering how they used to fight.
He sighed as he bent his arms through a shirt to pull it over his head. “She’s convinced whatever’s between us is just because of some fairy curse.” He shoved his long legs into gym shorts. “And I don’t have a good enough reason to argue with her.”
“Fairy curse.” I thought of my gift, of how I could grow flowers. In two years, I hadn’t told a soul. Maybe I should have said something to Lex right then and there, but I imagined what he’d think of me and held my tongue, and it wasn’t him I needed to tell first. If anyone deserved that honor, it was Ivy.
“Yeah,” he said. “Siobhan and the ring and the nightmares.”
That got my attention. I pulled my leggings up to my waist and yanked an old T-shirt over my head before turning to face him. “Nightmares?”
He nodded, putting his phone and a pack of smokes into his pockets. “Sometimes. They were bad right after we got home from Ireland. it’s been quiet for a while. Until…well…until this.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Right.”
“I don’t know what to make of it.” Lex sighed, staring out the window to the DC skyline beyond it. “There’s no reason we should still feel like this. There’s no reason for this to happen. Unless?—”
“Unless she was right,” I said.
“Yeah.” It came out like a sigh, and I let the topic drop because I was exhausted. Tomorrow, we’d talk. Tomorrow, we’d ask the hard questions and spill all our secrets. But tonight, I wanted to disappear into the abyss of being with them again, of being complete. Because certainly, I’d never known wholeness like I did standing in that room with him, knowing Ivy and Carter were on the other side of the house. We were together again, perfect in a way we hadn’t been in two years.
I traced a finger over a black binder on his desk, touching a photo that stuck out at an odd angle. I flipped it open and turned it so I could see another picture of Ivy. This time, she was looking at the camera with that haunting mix of vulnerability and malice. She had a lit cigarette hanging out of her mouth, holding up a hand to give the camera… Lex… the middle finger.
“Wow,” I said, flipping to the next page. This one was a boudoir shot on her giant bed. Naked, she arched her back and bent her knees, the curves of her body dark against the white sheet behind her. My lower stomach clenched, and a shiver of arousal went straight down my center at how amazing she looked.
“Ohhh, no, no, no.” Lex rushed over and flipped the binder closed, scooting his body in between me and the desk. “Uh-uh. You’re not supposed to see those.”
“What?” I balked, half amused, half surprised. “Why?”
“Because I promised,” he said. “I pinky swore no one else would ever see them except for the two of us.”
The cut stung. “Certainly, I don’t count. I’ve seen both of you naked a million times.”
Lex pulled his lips into a devil-may-care grin and put his hands on my neck, pulling me in for a kiss to distract me. “I promised, Princess.” Another kiss. “You know I always keep my promises. Even to stuck-up gingers like X.”
I rolled my eyes and huffed, going for them again.
“Don’t be a spoiled brat,” he teased, biting my lower lip as he circled his fingers around my wrist to stop me. “You don’t own everything.”
“Why can’t I see, darling?” I asked. “She’s my best friend.”
“She’s my best friend, too,” Lex said. “I needed help with a project, and she offered. But this was just for us. For her.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and relented, pleased by his respect for her and surprised that he had called her his best friend. Until two years ago, that title had been reserved for Carter. It had taken all their lives, but Lex finally saw what I had in our American sweetheart. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my body against his, all the way from our chests to our knees.
“You know I think it’s sexy when you tell me no,” I murmured.
“I remember.” He slid his palms along my biceps and down my torso to my waist, sending chills over my skin. “And if I wasn’t so fucking wrung out, I’d deny you. All.” A kiss. “Fucking.” Another. “Night.”
How I’d missed him.
“You think they’re sufficiently reacquainted?” He nodded toward Ivy’s room.
“The moaning stopped a few minutes ago, so I’d say we’re in the clear.”
He chuckled and guided me into the hallway. As I took one last look at that solemn picture of Ivy on the wall, I told myself I’d get my paws on one of those prints somehow, no matter what favors I had to promise in return.
He didn’t knock on Ivy’s door, just twisted the handle and went inside, where we found Carter and Ivy huddled together in her massive Alaskan king-size bed. It dwarfed them, swallowed them whole in a poof of blankets and pillows.
“Are we all caught up?” Lex crawled onto the mattress and sat back on his haunches, while I walked on my knees across the bedding so I could slip under the covers next to my wife.
“We’re good.” Carter hauled Ivy in closer to him. I smiled and kissed her before I went to Carter and kissed him, too. They both tasted like sex and each other, but that didn’t bother me. It felt right. All of this just felt so right.
I grabbed Ivy’s hands and cuddled closer to her while Lex scooted in behind me. We teased and prodded each other for a few minutes, but peace eventually fell on our achy bodies. We drifted off to an easy slumber, once again in the safety of each other’s embrace.